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Mr Speaker
Before we move on to questions, may I just say that I wish Oliver Dowden well? He worked well, but I know he has a very able replacement. I welcome the new Secretary of State, who I know must have the greatest interest in rugby league; I welcome her team—herself and the new Minister.
The Secretary of State was asked—
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ms Nadine Dorries)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for that very warm welcome.
Football is central to our national life, which is why my predecessor announced this root-and-branch review of the game led by the fans. This might be a good point to mention my own interest in football, as well as in rugby league. My great grandfathers were founding members of Everton football club, although I am a Liverpool supporter, so I declare my interest on day one.
My Department has supported the chair and advisory panel to collect more than 100 hours of evidence and 20,000 responses from football fans. I look forward to receiving the final report of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and the recommendations later this autumn, and I am ready to take bold action whenever necessary to protect the identity of our national game.
Clive Efford
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer and I welcome her to her new post and congratulate her on the appointment. The interim report from the chair of the panel makes it clear that the panel intends to introduce a golden share for fans to have a veto over certain reserved powers such as club names and colours and similar powers to those under assets of community value legislation to protect stadiums and training grounds. This is a welcome recognition of the power of football fans, but what discussions has the Department had in preparation for the final report with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and local government to make sure we can move quickly on the recommendations that we know are coming in the autumn?
Ms Dorries
I obviously do not want to predict the findings of the final report or predetermine the outcome, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, the interim report is available on the Government website. My predecessor saw at first hand at Brentford that a golden share can do what the hon. Gentleman outlines without undermining the ownership of clubs. The review has been extensive, involving over 150 clubs and 20,000 fans, and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford has met numerous organisations and stakeholders throughout the industry. I look forward, as the hon. Gentleman does, to my hon. Friend’s report later this year. I can promise from the Department’s perspective that it will be extensive and will certainly have consulted many people.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her appointment; she will do a sterling job, as she has done at the Department of Health and Social Care in extremely difficult circumstances over the past year and a half. The fan-led review is hugely important, especially given the recent European super league proposals. What discussions is she having with football clubs on the review and does she plan to meet any clubs in the near future?
Ms Dorries
The review is a root-and-branch examination of football in this country and looks at the financial sustainability of the football pyramid as well as governance, regulations, ownership and the merits of an independent regulator. There is much work to do; being just 35 minutes into the job I have not arranged a meeting yet, but I will be holding a roundtable this coming week with football industry representatives.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be fed up with congratulations soon, but let me add mine as well. She mentioned the question of ownership in football. She knows the north-west well enough where we have seen the collapse of Bury football club because of incompetence and malign owners, and very recently a hostile takeover bid for Rochdale football club in my constituency, which was resisted and, fortunately, defeated. There needs to be some review not only of a potential super league but of the capacity of owners to deliver to the communities that spawned their clubs in the first place. Will the Secretary of State make sure that that is taken properly on board following the review?
Ms Dorries
I absolutely will. Fans are the lifeblood of football and sport. The review is considering the issue of club ownership in light of the submissions and evidence from supporters representing more than 150 clubs, and I will certainly consider any proposals very seriously.
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con)
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
As the current broadband Minister I can say that, as Members will have seen, across the country gigabit broadband is now at 47%, up from just 10% in November 2019. This Government will leave no stone unturned to get that number as high as possible as quickly as possible.
Dr Wallis
May I, too, offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Secretary of State on her very recent promotion?
I thank the Minister for his response. Residents of the newly built Parc Derwen estate in my Bridgend constituency, and others across the UK, have found themselves tied to disagreeable fibre providers and unable to seek competitive quotes due to restrictions placed on them by developers as they are laying infrastructure. What will my hon. Friend do to ensure a competitive market as we roll out gigabit broadband?
Matt Warman
My hon. Friend is right that competition is a crucial part of a functioning broadband market. FibreNest, the company that he refers to, says that it is willing to let other providers use its networks, and it is a commercial decision for the company. It is important that all the right steps are taken to ensure that that promise becomes a reality, and the Government will work with him and the company to ensure that it does so.
Craig Williams
It is very good to see my hon. Friend in his place at the Dispatch Box. As a rural constituency, Montgomeryshire is very reliant on the roll-out of Project Gigabit, which I welcome very much. Not only is that integral to increased speeds, but the backbone of that fibre network is key to our levelling-up ambitions. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to deliver it at pace?
Matt Warman
My hon. Friend is very kind; I hope that is not the kiss of death. He is right that, in areas such as Wales in particular, the power of levelling up through digital infrastructure is key. We have recently made positive announcements with the Welsh Government. We look forward to making more, and I know that Montgomeryshire will be a key part of delivering that mission.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister on retaining his position and welcome the new Secretary of State to hers. The Minister’s is a wide-ranging and critical role, not least because we need our broadband. Parliament, our businesses, our students, our economy and our social lives depend on it—but it is another broken promise. Full fibre by 2025 was the Prime Minister’s pledge, and the 2020 Budget set aside £5 billion to deliver it. Will the Minister confirm that only £1.2 billion of that £5 billion is planned to be spent by 2025 and that, far from full fibre, we will not even get affordable broadband? According to Ofcom, more than 2 million households find it hard to afford broadband, yet the Government are slashing broadband price controls, slashing the broadband budget, slashing universal credit support, and slashing gigabit targets. When will we get the broadband we need?
Matt Warman
I enjoyed the hon. Lady’s speech, Mr Speaker. The fact remains that this is a £5 billion commitment to—
Mr Speaker
Order. I just say gently to the Minister that I make the judgment call. He is very kind to offer his assistance, but I will let him know when I need it.
Matt Warman
Absolutely, Mr Speaker.
The fact remains that this is a £5 billion commitment to getting as close to 100% broadband across this country as fast as we possibly can. The only barrier to doing that is the speed with which we can dig up the roads and lay the cables. This Government will do every single thing we can to make sure that every single barrier is removed in order to spend every penny of that £5 billion as quickly as we possibly can.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
The Government are committed to tackling online fraud. That is why, later this year, we will be consulting on the online advertising programme, which is considering all options, including legislation, to tackle paid-for advertising online. Meanwhile, the draft online safety Bill, which is currently in prelegislative scrutiny, will address fraudulent user-generated content.
Stephen Timms
Paid-for scam adverts are rife online, and it is not unusual for people to lose their entire life savings to them. The Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee in July that
“one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud,”
but the Bill as drafted does not cover paid-for scam adverts at all. I am pleased that the prelegislative scrutiny Committee is going to take a look at this, but will the Minister review the Department’s currently indefensible position? We cannot wait years for the other process that he referred to to work its way through the system.
Matt Warman
The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise a hugely important issue. I and this Government share his impatience to tackle it, but that is why we are talking, through the online advertising programme, about looking at every single option, whether it is to tackle user-generated content through one mechanism or, potentially, advertising through another. It is about getting that combination of measures right so that we can achieve the maximum possible effect.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
May I, through the Minister, pass on my congratulations to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), on her appointment?
In line with the whole issue of fraudulent adverts, there is also the big issue of the appalling behaviour of gambling companies and their advertising, which causes huge problems and addiction for many young people. May I, through the Minister, ask the new Secretary of State whether she would take a meeting with families bereaved as a result of gambling addiction?
Matt Warman
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that terrible scourge. I am happy to tell him that my hon. Friend the Secretary of State would be delighted to take the meeting he suggests.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
May I, too, extend a warm welcome to the new Secretary of State and the new Minister? I hope that, as Digital Secretary, she has changed her parliamentary password.
Online fraud is a growing goldmine for fraudsters and online child abuse is a growing goldmine for paedophiles. Latest figures from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Internet Watch Foundation show a 70% increase in sexual communication offences with children, and a 77% increase in self-generated child sexual abuse material. Why are the Government still stubbornly and inexplicably refusing Labour’s call and the NSPCC’s call for the immediate implementation in the online safety Bill of personal criminal liability for senior tech executives whose actions consistently and significantly put children at risk? We already have such a legal regime that works in financial services and in health and safety. There must be a compelling reason why the Government refuse to do the same to protect our children online. Can the Minister tell us what it is?
Matt Warman
As the hon. Lady knows, the Bill is going through the pre-legislative scrutiny process. We are entirely aware of the issues she raises. The aim of the Bill and the aim of the Government’s approach will always be to take the most effective attitude to tackling them. As the Bill goes through that process, we will of course continue to look at all the options, but our priority will be the effectiveness of the legislation. A mechanism may well work well in other industries, but that does not necessarily mean we should copy and paste it into another.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
As I am sure the hon. Member would agree, youth services play a vital role in supporting young people, and the £500 million youth investment fund remains a manifesto commitment. It builds on more than £12 billion given this year to local authorities, who have the statutory duty to allocate funding to youth services in line with their local needs. Detailed plans for the fund are subject to the 2021 spending review, which, as she knows, will be coming later in October.
Cat Smith
Will the Minister join me in welcoming the innovation and expansion we have seen in the Scouts this week with the launch of the Squirrels, which will open up Scouting opportunities for four and five-year-olds? The sector is hugely innovative, but it is also really struggling financially. It has been two years since the £500 million youth investment fund was announced, but not a penny has been spent. Can the Minister tell the sector when it can expect that money to come forward, or whether the Government have raided our children’s piggy banks?
Matt Warman
We all, I am sure, have Scout troops in our constituencies to which we would pay tribute, and the expansion is hugely welcome. I am afraid, as I said in my answer, that the detailed plans for the fund are subject to the 2021 spending review. I look forward to being able to talk more about those plans after the spending review.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)
Ministers, officials and diplomats have been speaking to EU member states to establish arrangements for touring musicians and other artists. I can confirm that at least 19 out of 27 member states allow some visa and permit-free touring. We are continuing to engage with the remaining member states to encourage them to align requirements more closely with our own.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The reality is that there has been limited progress on this matter. South Shields is home to many independent musicians, who used to be able to showcase their talents right across Europe. The cost and bureaucracy involved now prohibits them from doing so. Carry on Touring has written to the Minister with a solution: a pan-European EU visa and work permit waiver. Will she please ask the new Secretary of State to use her first day to implement it?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for her question; I had a wonderful break up in the north-east and enjoyed her constituency over the summer. I will be happy to ask the Secretary of State to look at that proposal, but we put forward, as part of the EU negotiations, a very fair proposal to our EU member state counterparts, which, unfortunately, they rejected. I know that my former Cabinet Office colleague, the right hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) did a lot of work in this area as well. There has been a lot of engagement at ministerial level with our counterparts and we intend to continue that work, because we know that this is an important issue and a frustration not just for some of the major touring artists but, more importantly, for some of the smaller groups who may not have the financial funds to be able to negotiate some of the complexities in this area.
Wendy Chamberlain
North East Fife is home to, among others, StAnza festival and East Neuk festival, where local artists can share their work and experience with performers from Europe and beyond, but clearly—I agree with the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck)—sufficient steps are not being taken. Bureaucracy is stifling this industry. What other steps can the Minister take to ensure that we get people out to Europe and performing?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. As I mentioned, there have been intensive negotiations at a ministerial level with our EU counterparts and a lot of progress has been made. As I mentioned in my opening reply, we now have agreements with 19 of the 27 members states that allow visa and permit-free touring, but we want to make more progress because we know this is a very important issue for musicians and artists across the country.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
We welcome all the new Ministers, but I want to be clear on this issue: the Minister said in response to those questions that extensive efforts are being made, yet on 4 August when the Department published a statement describing the situation, the industry was clear that nothing has changed. Will she refer to that 4 August statement on touring and tell me, since the original Brexit deal was signed, exactly what has changed?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for her passion, and we share that intensity of desire to get this issue sorted for UK musicians. The challenge is our desire to secure the same freedoms for our musicians in the EU that EU musicians are allowed when they come over to the UK. It is a shame, because the quality of musicianship in our country is second to none, so in a sense EU member states are missing out if they continue not to provide the freedoms that we provide to their artists. We will continue our intensive negotiations, but we have to accept that this is not in our control. We put forward a very fair and sensible deal to our EU counterparts and it is for them to agree the same freedoms that we grant them.
David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ms Nadine Dorries)
In July, we removed all restrictions, enabling audiences to return to live events. In August, the Government announced a live events reinsurance scheme worth £750 million, which will instil confidence and support events previously unable to obtain covid-19 cancellation insurance. DCMS has continued to support the events sector throughout the pandemic, including through the £2 billion culture recovery fund.
David Warburton
I warmly welcome the new Secretary of State. The live music sector has had an enormously challenging 18 months. Although I strongly welcome Government interventions such as the culture recovery fund and the live events reinsurance scheme, VAT on tickets for live events is set to double by the end of this month. As we all know, live music is not only essential to our economy, but plays a vital role in bringing us together after so many months of lockdown. As live events return, will the Government consider a permanent extension of VAT relief on music tickets to aid the sector’s recovery and to ensure that the show can go on?
Ms Dorries
I assure my hon. Friend that I will be working closely with the Chancellor to discuss the support required for the live events sector. The 5% rate on VAT for event tickets has been extended until 30 September 2021, when the 12.5% reduced rate will be introduced until March 2022. We have already provided £21 million to festivals and £2.5 million to grassroots music venues through the culture recovery fund, and our reinsurance scheme is designed to support the continuation of live events.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Has the Secretary of State any information on the take-up of that reinsurance scheme? Some promoters have said it is so inadequate, and covers such specific circumstances, that there is almost no point in taking it out. Was it always the Government’s intention to design a scheme in such a way that they could claim to be acting, while being safe in the knowledge that the scheme would not actually be used?
Ms Dorries
At this stage in my appointment, I am afraid I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an exact figure for the take-up, but I will write to him.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
The Government have already provided more than £35 billion for the tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors in the form of grants, loans and tax breaks throughout the pandemic. When I last spoke to the House about this, the figure was £25 billion, so there has been a considerable increase since then. As our tourism recovery plan makes clear, we will continue to support the sector’s return to pre-pandemic levels and beyond, hopefully well ahead of independent forecasts. For example, the £10 million national lottery days out campaign, to be launched next month, will stimulate demand for more off-season day trips to tourist sites across the UK this autumn and winter.
Sally-Ann Hart
Tourism and hospitality has often been viewed as a Cinderella industry, but we know, particularly after covid-19, how vital it is not only to local economies such as mine in Hastings and Rye—of which it represents more than 30%—but to the UK economy, and also what a wide range of opportunities it offers globally. What steps is my hon. Friend taking to encourage people, particularly the young, to choose this industry as a fantastic career path?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this topic. I know that she is passionate about the sector, having visited her fantastic constituency on a beautiful sunny day in June this year.
We recognise the importance of recovering from the pandemic with a more resilient tourism industry that will offer exciting, good-quality, well-paid jobs to young people as well as long-term careers for everyone, throughout the country. We work closely with the Tourism Industry Council to ensure that the sector is signposted to key Government initiatives such as the £2.5 billion national skills fund and the UK-wide kickstart scheme.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for all the help that he has given us over the recent period. In my constituency, tourism is a key marker for economic growth, jobs, wages and so forth. May I ask the Minister what has been done in co-operation and partnership with the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in particular, to ensure that we all benefit in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—always better together?
Nigel Huddleston
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. I had the privilege of visiting Northern Ireland this summer, and saw many tourist attractions there. We work very co-operatively with our colleagues in Northern Ireland, including, obviously, Members in this House, who I know talk passionately—as the hon. Gentleman does—about tourism and the value of tourism. Obviously, the tourism recovery plan has implications for the whole United Kingdom, although some elements are devolved, but we work closely with our Northern Ireland colleagues, and there is Northern Ireland representation on the Tourism Industry Council. They contribute significantly, and I hope that positive relationship continues.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I thank the Minister for all he has been doing over the last 18 months to support the sector, and for meeting hoteliers in my constituency this week. He will recall that, despite Cornwall’s having the busiest summer it has ever had, many hotels were operating at less than capacity because of the lack of availability of staff. As he will understand, one of the issues is accommodation, and the current limit of £58 that staff are allowed to offset on accommodation provided by their employer. Will he commit to work with me to get that figure reviewed, so that we can have a more workable solution for the future?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank my hon. Friend for his continued passion and support for the sector throughout the country, let alone in his own fantastic constituency, which I have also had the pleasure of visiting. Perhaps I have travelled a bit too much, although I am sure there is no such thing.
This issue was indeed raised by my hon. Friend’s constituents during the conversation that we had earlier this week, and they provided some compelling information. I make the commitment to him and his constituents that we will look very carefully at the issues raised, and that I will work across Departments to see what solutions can be found.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
Public service broadcasting remains critical to the UK’s media landscape, and the Government are committed to ensuring that it continues to thrive. We will present proposals in the form of a broadcasting White Paper to update the existing public service broadcasting framework later this year.
John McDonnell
I admit I was hoping that the Secretary of State would answer this question so that I could say “from one red to another”, although maybe not in the full range of meaning of that term. I am the secretary of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group. NUJ members are concerned about the future of public broadcasting, because of the sale of Channel 4, because of the 25% cut that has already been incurred at the BBC and because of reports that the Government are considering refusing even an inflation-rate increase in the BBC licence fee. Will the Minister meet a delegation from the NUJ parliamentary group to discuss these concerns?
Matt Warman
As a former member of the NUJ myself, it would be churlish to refuse.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ms Nadine Dorries)
I want to start by saying how delighted I am to have been appointed Secretary of State at DCMS. This is one of the most important Departments in Government, economically, socially and culturally, and I am determined to ensure that our sectors bounce back stronger than ever from covid. We continue to support them through this stage of the recovery, particularly through our £750 million events insurance scheme. London Fashion Week and London Tech Week are back with a bang. The creative and tech industries are British powerhouses, and I am committed to driving them to even greater heights. In the meantime, we have all enjoyed a fabulous summer of sport. It started with the Euros final, followed by incredible success at the Olympics and the Paralympics, and it was topped off by Emma Raducanu’s wonderful victory on Saturday—the best tennis match I have ever watched. I am sure the whole House will join me in congratulating our fantastic athletes.
Mr Davis
Can I express my delight at the arrival of my hon. Friend in Cabinet? She demonstrates that you do not need to be a boring conformist to get on in this world. Returning to the boring conformity, however, I shall put my substantive question to her. What assessment has she made of delegating the decision on what is harmful and what is not harmful to the online platform providers?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
The fact is that the Online Safety Bill does not delegate that decision to online platforms. What it does is define the harmful content that companies must address. The Government will set out the categories for those harmful contents later. Companies will need to ensure that children are protected from any content that meets this definition, and that will clearly be directed by Government; it will not be delegated to them.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
We know that the new Secretary of State has set out her own views and interpretation of racism online, because she has written about it, so I am sure she will remember what the Prime Minister said about the torrent of online racist abuse against England footballers on 14 July. This is what he said:
“Today we are taking practical steps to ensure that the football banning order regime is changed, so that if a person is guilty of racist online abuse of footballers, they will not be going to the match—no ifs, no buts, no exemptions and no excuses.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 362.]
I am really pleased that the Prime Minister heeded my call to extend banning orders to online racism. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly what practical steps have been taken to change the football banning order regime since 14 July?
Ms Dorries
I am afraid that I am going to have to write to the hon. Lady, being new to the job as I am. I will do that immediately.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
Matt Warman
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in endorsing that bid. It is a key ambition of this Government to ensure that augmented reality and all those future technologies are made a reality not just in London and the big cities but across the whole country, so Eastbourne is a real opportunity. I would be happy, for instance, to facilitate a meeting with the BFI or something of that nature in order for her to help to pursue this endeavour.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
I would also like to welcome the Secretary of State to her place. I have been glancing at her oeuvre, and now is perhaps not the time to discuss the alarming dumbing down she once identified in the once highbrow artform of panto or, indeed, to ponder her long anti-gay rights voting record. Just as well there are no homosexuals in the arts sector.
Instead, let us continue to focus on Afghanistan. We know the Taliban respect only violent power. They care nothing for culture or heritage. UNESCO is monitoring the evolving situation, focusing on the universal rights to education, freedom of expression and heritage. Does the Secretary of State agree that the women standing up for their rights and national culture in street protests are extraordinarily brave? Will she outline what the UK Government will be doing to protect all those who feel abandoned in Afghanistan, whether they are women, LGBT people or minorities who fear for their lives and futures?
Mr Speaker
Order. Topical questions are meant to be short and punchy, not big, long questions. If you want to ask a long question, come in earlier, please. We have a very short time.
Ms Dorries
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) for his warm and kind words of welcome.
Of course, we all stand with the women of Afghanistan. I know the hon. Gentleman has been looking through my long tweet history of 20 years, or whenever I first went on Twitter, and he will therefore know that I have repeatedly supported the women of Afghanistan and will continue to do so.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
Matt Warman
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the world-leading pace of this country’s broadband roll-out, but we know there is more to do. I would encourage everybody in his constituency to fill in his broadband survey, and I would be very happy to meet him.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Matt Warman
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the need for affordable broadband and mobile access, which is why this Government have worked with the companies during the pandemic and since to make sure there are social tariffs so that cheaper products are available. Such tariffs are a crucial part of making sure everyone has the access we all need in the 21st century.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
That sounds like a very good idea, and I know there are many D. H. Lawrence fans in this House, including my hon. Friend. I should explain that it is not normal practice—in fact, it is very rare—for central Government to fund or get particularly involved in new memorials and statues. Of course, organisations often propose, fund, develop and deliver memorials commemorating a huge variety of events and people at local and sometimes national level. These groups should work with the relevant planning authority and other organisations to identify a suitable site and obtain the necessary planning permissions. I hope his proposal is treated sympathetically.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Nigel Huddleston
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and we are all alarmed about the situation. We are closely monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and stand ready to provide whatever support we can to help to protect Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage for future generations. We urge all parties in Afghanistan to protect the cultural heritage of their country, including the museums and cultural institutions.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Warm congratulations to the Secretary of State. It was a big relief to everyone that the Government withdrew their vaccine passport plan but, if we do see the return of vaccine passport ideas or other covid restrictions, please can the Government distinguish between events and conferences, where covid-secure measures and tracing are highly developed, and nightclubs and mass gatherings, where more precautions may be needed? They are very different sorts of venues, and they require different sorts of precautions.
Nigel Huddleston
I know that conference venues and organisers have put a huge amount of work into reopening safely, with many already using voluntary certification. I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s huge support in this area. I take her point about the nature of business events; they are more organised and structured than some other events. The Prime Minister announced a range of plan B measures. Further details will be coming out, but I should emphasise that they are plan B. I would be happy to talk further with her.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Nigel Huddleston
I know the hon. Lady’s passion for all things sport. We should probably take the opportunity also to congratulate Alfie Hewett, Gordon Reid and Joe Salisbury on their success last Saturday in the United States. On the point the hon. Lady is raising on women’s sport, I can tell her that that is absolutely a priority of mine and of the Department. W£58e have a women in sport working group, which is very effectively looking at what further actions we can take to promote and support women’s sport. I would be happy to continue talking to her about this and other issues.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Before we begin questions to the Attorney General, may I take a moment to welcome back the Attorney General from maternity leave? May I also thank the stand-in Attorney General, Sir Michael Ellis, for his service while she was away?
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I take this opportunity to place on the record my gratitude to you, to the Prime Minister and the Government, to Opposition parties, to the whole of Parliament and to the brilliant team at the Attorney General’s office for all of their work, which enabled me to take that precious time with my baby? On behalf of my family, may I say that we are incredibly grateful?
The Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office both play a crucial role in tackling financial crime. In 2020-21, the CPS prosecuted more than 6,500 defendants for fraud and forgery, with a conviction rate of 85.6%, and the SFO secured successful judicial outcomes in 84% of cases over the past four financial years.
Felicity Buchan
It is now estimated that 86% of reported fraud is cyber-related. I am concerned that the CPS, the SFO and Action Fraud need the right skills and sense of urgency to deal with this rising crime, which has devastating effects on people’s lives. Can my right hon. and learned Friend update the House on that?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend rightly highlights the significant increase in cyber-crime. I am particularly interested in the issue, and last year I addressed the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime and outlined that cyber-crime is a key priority for this Government. That is why in March this year the CPS launched its first ever economic crime strategy, to ensure that it remains ahead of the changing nature of this complex crime.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
Effective handling of digital information is crucial to ensuring robust disclosure practices and effective trials. Alongside the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor, I will be co-hosting a tech event later this year with industry experts to investigate novel approaches to managing mobile device data throughout the criminal justice process. The revised disclosure guidelines that I published earlier this year specifically address technological issues, to assist practitioners in this ever-complex field.
Lee Anderson
Could my right hon. and learned Friend please explain how mobile phone data is being used to track and capture people smugglers who are sending illegal immigrants over the channel?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend raises an important and concerning issue. People smuggling is a terrible crime that blights the lives of vulnerable people and I welcome all the efforts the Government are making to combat it. The Crown Prosecution Service regularly uses mobile phone data when prosecuting offences under the Immigration Act 2016. Phone metadata can identify the location at which the phone was used, while the information content can identify details of the offence, or even wider offences. The CPS is highly cognisant of the effective use of mobile data, where available, to pursue effective prosecutions.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
Together with colleagues in the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice, we have developed a criminal justice action plan to drive system recovery as we rebuild after the pandemic. Progress against the action plan will be measured by a set of criminal justice scorecards, which will be published quarterly from this autumn. This approach will enable a cross-system response to dips in performance and hold each part of the system accountable for improvement.
Kenny MacAskill
As a former Scottish Justice Secretary, I am well aware of Scotland’s distinct legal jurisdiction, but broadcasting and human rights are reserved responsibilities. Craig Murray, a Scottish journalist, has been jailed for eight months without appeal. Is the Attorney General able to make any representations to ensure that the European convention on human rights and other protocols are followed when they apply to such rights and powers?
The Attorney General
We must ensure that all journalists have the right to express themselves and work in a free society. We are incredibly proud of that tradition in this country and our human rights regime rightly protects freedom of expression. I am happy to discuss this vital matter further with the hon. Gentleman.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I welcome the Attorney General back to her place. I am sure she will agree that it is also right to pay particular tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) for the way in which he discharged his duties as the Attorney General to the very high standards and with the impartiality of that office—it could not have been done better.
Does the Attorney General agree that for an effective system it is important that we have not only a fully joined-up plan but effective funding for all parts of the justice system? What steps is she taking to ensure a joint approach to getting the best possible outcome for the Law Officers’ Department, the CPS and the Ministry of Justice in the coming spending review?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the need for resources as we rebuild after the pandemic. We need to ensure that the court backlog, which we all accept exists, is dealt with. That is why we have been working across Government, with the sector and with local bodies to ensure that comprehensive support is available for victims and witnesses. After all, it is victims for whom we are here and for whom we need to fight.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I welcome the Attorney General back to her place—it is good to see her—and thank the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) for all his work during her maternity leave.
The court backlog is at a record high, with victims waiting years for their day in court. The latest Government data reveals that in the year ending March 2021, a staggering 1 million victims of crime abandoned their case because they lost faith in the justice system. The CPS budget has been cut by 33% in real terms over the past decade. Ahead of the comprehensive spending review, what specifically will the Attorney General say to the Treasury? What does she say specifically to the millions of victims who have lost faith in the system?
The Attorney General
As I say, we accept that there is a court backlog, and it is a priority for this Government as we build back from the pandemic. The CPS has implemented a number of changes, with cross-system partners, to assist the criminal justice system in its response to covid. I was pleased that the independent inspectorate praised the CPS response to the pandemic. The CPS has recently introduced specific measures to accelerate its management of cases in the context of the pandemic.
The Chancellor has been clear that there will need to be tough choices as we come out of the pandemic. The public expect us to deliver the highest-quality services at the best value, ensuring that every pound is well spent. The CPS has received funding uplifts in the past three spending rounds, including £85 million to allow it to recruit more than 350 new prosecutors to boost capacity and support court recovery.
Ellie Reeves
I have listened to what the Attorney General has said, but say to her that the criminal justice system is on its knees. In rape cases, 44% of victims are pulling out before their case gets to court. The latest Crown Prosecution Service data shows that it would take the Government 22 years to reach their own target of returning to 2016 rape prosecution levels—22 years! It is absolutely not good enough, and we see this Government repeatedly fail rape victims. Will the Attorney General tell me what she plans to do to ensure that the Government meet their target, or will she sit on her hands and oversee the further decriminalisation of rape?
The Attorney General
The assertion that there has been a decriminalisation of rape is simply not backed up by the facts and is a very damaging narrative to proffer. It is very important that we recognise that, yes, there have been delays in the system, and I recognise how distressing those delays are. I want to reassure the hon. Lady that progress is being made to boost court capacity and to enable cases to continue to flow through the system. That includes harnessing technology, such as the cloud video platform, making use of the Nightingale courts and exploring the use of extended operating hours in court. The special measure allowing vulnerable victims, including rape victims and those who are witnesses in those cases, to pre-record their cross-examination evidence to reduce waiting times, which is under section 28, has been rapidly rolled out to cover all 82 Crown courts as of 23 November last year, and the CPS was a key partner in ensuring that that roll-out went smoothly.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
I welcome the Attorney General back to her place and wish her growing family all the very best.
Does the Attorney General agree that any effective criminal justice system must ensure that cases are brought in a timely manner? Will she join me in welcoming the £50 million announced by the Scottish Government to clear the court backlog, and outline any advice that she has given to her Cabinet colleagues to ensure that victims can access effective and prompt justice through the court system?
The Attorney General
There has been a real focus on dealing with the backlog and ensuring a better flow of cases right from reporting at the police station through to conviction. That was most pertinently highlighted in the recent rape review published by this Government with a particular focus on those victims. There have been a huge number of changes implemented by the CPS with cross-system partners to assist the criminal justice response to covid. As I have mentioned, it includes the interim charging protocol, which is designed to be clear that the high-harm crimes and covid-related crimes, such as spitting and assaults on essential workers, are prioritised. That will be and has been an effective step forward in dealing with the backlog.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
It is vital that children of all ages learn about our famous legal system. My office works very closely with the Department for Education to ensure that the curriculum covers a full range of important legal concepts, including fundamental rights and criminal law. My office also works very closely with members of the pro bono and public legal education committees, who run programmes to engage and educate young people about the law outside the curriculum.
Antony Higginbotham
Our legal system is the cornerstone of our society, so does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we need to work with not just with schools but voluntary organisations to make sure that young people understand not just the law and our legal process, but Parliament’s role in forming the law?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend has put it very well. Understanding the law is vital for young people. To that end, I wholeheartedly support pro bono work as part of education and a way in which students can support their communities to understand the law, their rights and what is required of them. When I was both training for and practising at the self-employed Bar, I undertook pro bono work and also volunteered for the free representation unit. I encourage all practitioners, young and older, to maintain that very proud tradition of the Bar.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
In 1975, a 17-year-old young man died while on Army training. He was a recent recruit. The family have never believed the account of his death given by the Ministry of Defence. In 1998, my predecessor wrote to the then Attorney General about the case. Now it appears that new evidence has come forward. Will the Attorney General meet me and some of the family members to discuss this, in their pursuit of the truth?
The Attorney General
I send my condolences to the family, and applaud the hon. Lady’s campaigning and work on the issue. I do not know about the case other than what she has just told me, but I am very happy to meet her to discuss it further.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
I frequently meet criminal justice partners to discuss the important issue of criminal justice capacity since the covid-19 restrictions have been eased. The covid outbreak has been felt keenly by the criminal justice system. I have been proud of the resilience that the criminal justice agencies have demonstrated. There is still more to do, but both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office have been commended for their efforts during this difficult time, and I thank them for continuing to support the delivery of justice.
Selaine Saxby
I support the Government’s efforts to address the recovery, and pay tribute to all those working hard across the country to make this happen, but can my right hon. and learned Friend tell me how victims are being supported so that they do not drop out of the criminal justice process due to the time lag?
The Attorney General
I regularly meet the Director of Public Prosecutions and CPS teams around the country. I was pleased to meet CPS South West last year to learn more about its case progression and response to the pandemic. In February this year, the Government announced an additional £40 million to support victims of crime during the pandemic and beyond. Throughout this period, almost £600,000 of funding has been made available to assist helpline services, and £3 million per annum until 2022 has been committed to independent sexual violence advisers. That is a reflection of the comprehensive package of support put forward by this Government to help to build back better after the pandemic.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
Any request for my advice is subject to the Law Officers’ convention, but I must make it clear that the UK prides itself on its leadership within the international system and discharges its international obligations in good faith. We have a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, in accordance with our international obligations. The Home Office’s new plan for immigration is based on fairness, and the Government stand by our moral and legal obligations to help innocent civilians fleeing cruelty from all over the world.
Anne McLaughlin
Speaking in the House on Tuesday of the Home Secretary’s plan literally to push back migrant children and their parents arriving by boats in the channel, the now former Justice Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), said that these actions would not even
“come close to breaking international law”—[Official Report, 14 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 799.]
Given the number of leading UK legal experts with no axe to grind who say the absolute opposite, can the Attorney General at least reassure the House that she has not advised the Home Secretary that pushback plans would be either legal or moral?
The Attorney General
The Government are committed to addressing the unacceptable rise in dangerous and unnecessary small boat crossings, and are continuing to explore all options available to bring the numbers down. Our primary focus is on preventing people from entering the channel, tackling the criminal gangs responsible and protecting lives. As part of the Home Office’s ongoing operational response, it will continue to evaluate and test a range of safe and legal options for stopping small boats.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
In 2020 my office received, and as the Law Officers we reviewed, 552 referrals under the unduly lenient sentence scheme. Ninety-seven of those were referred to the Court of Appeal and 61 sentences were increased. In February, I was proud to present in the Court of Appeal a case in which the victim was raped while in a relationship, and I was successful in increasing the defendant’s sentence. It is important that victims report these crimes and that justice is seen to be done.
Jacob Young
Last month Cleveland police’s former head of corporate communications, Mr Green, pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children. The district judge gave Mr Green a sentence that involved no jail time and a community order lasting just 24 months. That strikes me as an unduly lenient sentence in any case, but given the position of trust he held in his senior role in Cleveland police, I believe that the case must be reviewed. Will the Attorney General review Mr Green’s sentence and ensure that justice is heard for the victims of his crime?
The Attorney General
I thank my hon. Friend for his tireless work on behalf of those who have been affected by cases of this nature. This case was brought to my attention by Steve Turner, the Cleveland police and crime commissioner. As my hon. Friend will be aware, I can only review sentences that fall within the unduly lenient sentence scheme, and as this case was heard at the magistrates court it is ineligible.
AUKUS
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about our friendship with Australia and the United States, and the security of the Indo-Pacific.
Yesterday I joined President Biden and Prime Minister Morrison to create a new trilateral defence partnership between our countries known as AUKUS. Australia has, for the first time, taken the momentous decision to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, and it has asked for our help in achieving this ambition. I am delighted to tell the House that we have agreed to this request and we shall place the UK’s expertise in this field, amassed over decades, at the assistance of our Australian friends. The first task of AUKUS will be an 18-month trilateral collaboration to determine the best way of delivering advanced nuclear submarines for Australia—emphasising, of course, that they will be powered by nuclear reactors, not armed with nuclear weapons, so the nuclear non-proliferation treaty places no prohibition on that work. The House will understand how Australia’s future possession of that capability will help safeguard the peace and security of the Indo-Pacific.
Nuclear submarines are the capital ships of our age, propelled by an effectively inexhaustible source of energy, allowing them to circumnavigate the world without surfacing, deriving oxygen and fresh water from the sea around them. While on patrol, they keep silent watch over vast expanses of ocean, protecting shipping, gathering intelligence, deterring adversaries, and guarding the trade routes on which our livelihoods depend.
To design, build, operate and then safely decommission a nuclear submarine ranks among the most complex and technically demanding enterprises yet devised. Only six nations possess nuclear-powered submarines, and to help another country join this tiny circle is a decision of the utmost gravity, requiring perhaps the closest relationship of trust that can exist between sovereign states. I hope that I speak for the House when I say that I have no hesitation about trusting Australia, a fellow maritime democracy, joined to us by blood and history, which stood by Britain through two world wars at immense sacrifice.
Today, the UK and Australia defend the same interests, promote the same values and face the same threats: we are as closely aligned in international policy as any two countries in the world. One of the great prizes of this enterprise is that Australia, the UK and the US will become inseparable partners in a project that will last for decades, creating opportunities for still greater defence and industrial co-operation.
The integrated review of foreign and defence policy described Britain’s renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific, a region that is fast becoming the geopolitical centre of the world, and ever more important for British trade and therefore British jobs and British livelihoods. If there were ever any question about what global Britain’s tilt towards the Indo-Pacific would mean in reality, or what capabilities we might offer, this partnership with Australia and the US provides the answer. It amounts to a new pillar of our strategy, demonstrating Britain’s generational commitment to the security of the Indo-Pacific and showing exactly how we can help one of our oldest friends to preserve regional stability. It comes after the UK’s success in becoming a dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and our application to join the trans-Pacific free trade area.
At the same time, this project will create hundreds of highly skilled jobs across the UK, including in Scotland, the north of England and the midlands, reinforcing our industrial base and our national scientific expertise, exemplified by the British companies participating in this week’s Defence and Security Equipment International event.
A nuclear submarine programme exists within a different realm of engineering from any other marine project, requiring a mastery of disciplines ranging from propulsion to acoustics. In these fields and many others, we will have a new opportunity to strengthen Britain’s position as a science and technology superpower, and by generating economies of scale, this project could reduce the cost of the next generation of nuclear submarines for the Royal Navy, helping us to renew our own capabilities.
While our partnership will begin with nuclear-powered submarines, now that we have created AUKUS, we expect to accelerate the development of other advanced defence systems, including in cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and undersea capabilities. This partnership will open a new chapter in Britain’s friendship with our closest allies, help to safeguard the security of the Indo-Pacific, create jobs at home and reinforce our country’s place at the leading edge of technology. I commend this statement to the House.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister for an advance copy of his statement. The recent events in Afghanistan show us how precarious international stability can be. New challenges can emerge and issues in faraway corners of the globe can quickly turn into threats at home, so Labour welcomes increased co-operation with our allies. Australia and America are two of our closest security partners. Sharing resources and intelligence with them and enhancing capabilities makes them safer, makes Britain safer, and makes the world safer.
The lesson of the past few weeks is that Britain must look after our most important relationships, or our influence and security quickly decline. Labour welcomes this announcement, but may I ask the Prime Minister to outline in a bit more detail what the agreement means in practice? The strategic review identified China as a “systemic competitor”. China’s assertiveness does pose risks to UK interests in a secure Pacific region, in stable trading environments and in democracy and human rights. We need to deal with those risks, defend our values and defend our interests, but the same review also rightly stated that the UK must maintain a commercial relationship with China, and we must work with them on the defining global issues of the day, such as climate change and pandemic preparedness. Without diplomatic strategy and skill, those goals will come into conflict. So what plan does the Prime Minister have to ensure that this new arrangement increases, rather than decreases our ability to influence China?
In order to protect our security and interests, we also need to look after our broader alliances. NATO remains our most important strategic alliance. It is also the most successful, having delivered peace and security in Europe for three quarters of a century. Whatever the merits of an Indo-Pacific tilt, maintaining security in Europe must remain our primary objective. Will the Prime Minister guarantee that the arrangement will not see resources redirected from Europe and the high north to the Pacific? Will he also guarantee that the arrangement will strengthen rather than weaken the NATO alliance, including our indispensable bilateral relationship with France? We are also in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangements with Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the US, which is vital to our security. Will the Prime Minister assure the House that this new trilateral arrangement will not weaken our intelligence capabilities by producing a two-tier Five Eyes operation?
Finally, the arrangement clearly brings potential economic opportunities for Britain. We need the well-paid, high-skilled jobs that the defence industry provides in every corner of Britain. The Prime Minister said that the project will create hundreds of skilled jobs. Will he give more detail on what he has done to ensure that Britain gets its fair share of any contracts that come out of the arrangements? What will he do to ensure that no region or nation in Britain misses out on any job opportunities that the arrangement may bring?
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for welcoming the statement and AUKUS. I will answer some of the detailed points that he made.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman began by asking whether AUKUS was in any sense adversarial to China and how we will manage the relationship with China. It is important for the House to understand that it is not intended to be adversarial towards any other power; it merely reflects how the close relationship that we have with the United States and Australia, the shared values that we have and the sheer level of trust between us enables us to go to the extraordinary extent of sharing nuclear technology in the way in which we propose. Obviously, we also have a shared interest in promoting democracy, human rights, freedom of navigation and freedom of trade around the world, which are values and perspectives that I hope the whole House will support.
On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s point about NATO, the House should be in no doubt that the Government’s commitment to NATO is absolutely unshakeable and indeed has been strengthened by the massive commitments that we have made. With the biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war—£24 billion—2.2% of our GDP now goes on defence spending. He rightly raises the question of our military relationship with France, which, again, is rock-solid. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the French, whether in the Sahel, where we are running a joint operation against terrorists in Mali, or in Estonia, where we have the largest NATO operation.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked reasonably about the jobs that this great project will unquestionably produce. What I can say is that there will be an 18-month scoping exercise to establish where the work should go between the three partners, but clearly there are deep pools of expertise throughout the United Kingdom, whether in Derby, Plymouth, Scotland or Barrow. I have no doubt whatever that it will bring hundreds of high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the kind that we want to see, and increasingly are seeing, in our country.
Finally, it is a pleasure to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s change of heart about NATO—I had to say this, Mr Speaker, pain me though it does—after he only recently campaigned to install a Prime Minister who wanted us to withdraw from NATO.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
We must work with but stand up to China. This is about a more co-ordinated, long-term strategy in challenging China’s increasing, hostile dominance in the South China sea. But as the Prime Minister says, it is also a reminder of how we must work with alliances and rekindle an appetite to robustly defend international standards, so we cannot gloss over how bruised NATO now feels after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I hope the Prime Minister would agree that there is an opportunity for Britain to help shape western thinking and reinvigorate international resolve in what we stand for and are willing to defend. Would he agree today that this initiative is in response to the increasing, constant competition that we now face? I hope he now recognises that our peacetime defence budget is no longer adequate, and we will soon need to increase it to 3% of GDP if we are to contain the threats that now we face.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend very much. The increase that we have seen in our defence spending is unparalleled in modern times. It is the biggest uplift since the cold war—£24 billion. I think everybody can see the value of that and the importance of that, and, by the way, it is enabling us to take part in this historic partnership in the way that we are. On his point about our relationship with China, I just want to be clear with the House. Yes, it is true that this a huge increase in the levels of trust between the US, the UK and Australia—it is a fantastic defence technology partnership that we are building—but from the perspective of our friends and partners around the world, it is not actually revolutionary. We already have been co-operating over, for instance, the Collins class submarines in Australia.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
Let me begin by thanking the Prime Minister for advance sight of the statement and for the briefing from the National Security Adviser that was arranged last night.
Over the course of the last number of weeks and months, we have all witnessed on the streets of Kabul the devastating consequences of failure when international co-operation falters. Deepening co-operation and advancing agreements with allies that seek to aid stability and security is an important step, especially if past mistakes are never to be repeated, and I welcome this announcement. In particular, the recognition of the growing cyber-threat in this agreement may be overdue but it is none the less welcome. I would hope that the extent of this co-operation on cyber-security can and will be extended to include our other key allies, especially in Europe.
There are a number of points and questions I would like to raise about how this agreement was reached and what has been agreed. First, can the Prime Minister inform us as to what discussions have been held with other NATO allies in advance of this announcement and what interaction there will be with this initiative? Were these allies informed that this agreement was being progressed at the recent G7 summit in Cornwall?
Secondly, on the nuclear agreements, I understand and welcome the fact that the Australian Prime Minister has firmly ruled out any development of any nuclear weaponry, but in terms of future obligations under nuclear non-proliferation treaties, can the Prime Minister give a cast-iron guarantee that this agreement can never be used as a stepping stone to nuclear weaponry if any future Australian Administration were to change this approach?
Finally, on the broader geopolitical positioning that this agreement signals, a number of military experts, including the US Defence Secretary, have previously stated that the resources of allies on the European continent would be better targeted regionally rather than risk being stretched thinly across the Pacific. With all the focus of this agreement on the Indo-Pacific, what risks are there that vigilant eyes are taken off the threats closer to home, specifically from the Putin regime in Moscow, or indeed matching up the UK and the EU strategic interest in shoring up stability and providing the humanitarian assistance that is needed in parts of Africa?
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what I think was a broad welcome of this AUKUS agreement. It is historic and it is good for the whole of the United Kingdom. There is no conflict with NATO; NATO members are obviously fully up to speed with what is happening and this in no way affects the NATO relationships, which are absolutely fundamental for our security. There is also no prospect of its breaking the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as I informed the House earlier, and no risk at all that it will mean that the United Kingdom or any of our allies take our eye off the ball on the threat from the Putin regime or Russia. The House should therefore understand that this is a defence technology agreement that is very sensible given the huge geopolitical weight now to be found in the Indo-Pacific region; the economic growth in that area is phenomenal and the security issues there are very important for our country—such as in the maintenance of trade flows—and that is why it is vital that we take part in this agreement.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
My right hon. Friend said yesterday that this partnership has
“the aim of working hand in glove to preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific.”
What are the implications of this pact for the stance and response the United Kingdom would take should China attempt to invade Taiwan?
The Prime Minister
The United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law, and that is the strong advice we would give to our friends across the world and the strong advice we would give to the Government in Beijing.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I warmly welcome this agreement on nuclear technology co-operation with Australia, but what steps are being taken to develop defence partnership and technology agreements with other countries such as India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, who have a lot to offer in terms of technology that we could gain from for our own defence?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and we are currently developing partnerships around the world including in the Indo-Pacific region. For instance, we may wish to develop the future combat air system—FCAS—with our Japanese friends.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
This par is enormously welcome because it makes us safer in an area of the world where there are particular challenges to our ability to trade, secure our interests and protect our allies. Those who serve on our submarines do mission-critical work, but because they are our silent protectors they are often forgotten. So will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking them because they keep us safe every hour of every day, and will he confirm this is the first step towards further upgrading our presence in the Indo-Pacific?
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to our submariners, who have had a particularly difficult time during covid, when the necessity of protecting submarines has been particularly acute. My hon. Friend makes a good point about the further steps we can take now within the context of AUKUS; this is just the beginning of collaboration on defence technology. I have mentioned some of the areas in which we now wish to go further such as cyber, AI and undersea defences; there are many areas now where countries with shared values and a shared belief in democracy will want to take collaboration much further.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
As consistent internationalists, Liberal Democrats welcome this enhanced co-operation with our Australian allies, especially because it is for our mutual security. Just because the Prime Minister has failed on past occasions to effectively co-operate internationally does not mean we will not give him credit on occasions like this. But further to his answer to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), in the context of standing up for our national interests against threats from China, Russia or elsewhere will the Prime Minister confirm that the UK is seeking to enhance co-operation with other allies in the Indo-Pacific region such as India, Japan and South Korea, and will he give more detail on that or at least commit to the House to come back with more detail?
The Prime Minister
What I can tell the House is that, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the carrier strike group is now in that region, and it has been doing exercises with a total of 40 other countries—friends and partners around the world—from India right the way through to Japan. I am not going to give much more detail now about FCAS, for reasons that I am sure the House will appreciate, but the UK will be developing friendships and partnerships throughout that region, for the very good political, security and economic reasons that I have given the House.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement. One of the reasons that some of us have opposed our foreign interventions since 2003 is that we felt they acted as a distraction from many greater dangers around the world, including in Indochina, so this agreement is very welcome. Will the Prime Minister confirm, though, the extent to which jobs and skills in this country will be reinforced, if not enhanced? For example, are the 12 submarines that are presently within the French contract going to be re-bid for?
The Prime Minister
I do not want to go into the details of the contracts, but the House will understand that what we are doing is seeking, with our American friends and our Australian friends, to help the Royal Australian Navy to acquire the type of nuclear submarines that are appropriate for the current geopolitical situation they find themselves in. I have absolutely no doubt that the skills and expertise that are available in this country—across the whole UK—will be called upon extensively to fulfil that objective.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is important that we maintain a diplomatic dialogue with China. Without it, solving some of the world’s greatest challenges, such as climate change, will not be achievable. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what is being done to increase our influence with China, and what impact this alliance might have on COP26 negotiations later in the year?
The Prime Minister
I can tell the hon. Lady that the President-designate of COP, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), was in Beijing recently and had very productive conversations with his Chinese counterparts. We are hopeful that China will be able to go even further than its current commitment to get to net zero by 2060. We are hoping that we will see a very productive commitment from China.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I welcome the news of this partnership. Will the Prime Minister look at using it to drive forward closer working with our allies towards a more secure and resilient supply chain for digital technology so that we can be less reliant on countries such as China, which the Government have quite rightly identified as a competitor in this space?
The Prime Minister
Yes, and the opportunities are boundless. We are building on firm foundations. It is 50 years since the five power defence arrangements, the oldest defence agreement in the Pacific, which colleagues will know involves Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. There are already structures in that region. AUKUS adds a new structure and a deeply intensified level of co-operation, on a scale that has not been seen before.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the deepening of our defence and security relationships with our long-standing friends and allies, Australia and the United States, and the bipartisan support for that, not only here but in Australia. At its base, must not this agreement ultimately also be part of the defence not only of our interests but of the rules-based international order, democracy and human rights, and an alliance of democracies? Does the Prime Minister accept that foreign aid soft power is an important component of that too?
The Prime Minister
Yes, it certainly is. That is why I think the UK can be very proud of the massive commitments that we make—£10 billion this year alone in official development assistance spending. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this enhanced defence agreement between the UK, Australia and the US is founded on shared values.
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that this new partnership with Australia, which builds on the recently announced trade deal that will boost jobs and businesses across the country, including the east midlands, shows the huge opportunities available to global Britain as we look beyond our friends and allies in Europe to become a truly global power on the world stage?
The Prime Minister
Yes, I think is the short answer to that superb question. [Laughter.] I really do not think I could have put it better myself.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
The recognition that cyber-warfare is as much a part of modern conflict as troops on the ground is reassuring, but the statement was a bit light on mentions of industrialised weaponised misinformation which has caused so much damage over recent years. What reassurance can the Prime Minister give that cyber-troops based here and in hostile states will be high on the AUKUS agenda?
The Prime Minister
The Five Eyes partnership is also of huge importance. We share intelligence on a very, very free basis with our Five Eyes friends, but cyber, AI and so on will now be progressed within the AUKUS context as well.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
Will the Prime Minister accept the thanks of the House for deepening collaboration with some of our oldest allies and putting flesh on the bones of global Britain? In that vein, will he join me in welcoming to London Mohamed bin Zayed to not only deepen further links, but unleash economic benefits as well as tackling issues such as defence, climate change and regional instability?
The Prime Minister
Yes. I will indeed be seeing Mohamed bin Zayed very shortly—in fact, just after I leave the House today. I think I am right in saying—my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will correct me—that our relationship with the Gulf States is our single fastest growing market.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
indicated assent.
The Prime Minister
It is. I am sure that that will be on the agenda.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Maintaining and strengthening our alliances is now more important than ever. I welcome today’s announcement, but can the Prime Minister answer the question posed by the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), which was how this trilateral agreement sits with our Five Eyes relationships, and whether it will strengthen them and not weaken them?
The Prime Minister
It sits within the Five Eyes arrangement. The Five Eyes arrangement obviously comprises Canada and New Zealand as well. They, for various reasons, are not part of this very greatly intensified technological partnership. The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership is of absolutely huge value to the security of the western world. It remains one of the pillars of our strategic defence.
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
In welcoming AUKUS, which is a fantastic opportunity for new jobs and development to come to the north-west of England, does my right hon. Friend agree that it also dovetails nicely with our ambitions towards the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, and shows our intent towards a stronger presence in our tilt towards the Indo-Pacific?
The Prime Minister
Yes. The whole Indo-Pacific tilt, of which this is a part, is a recognition of the fact that the CPTPP area my hon. Friend talks about is a £9 trillion trade area in which the UK has an increasing diplomatic and commercial presence.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I welcome the statement. China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region can be destabilising, particularly in the South China sea. What support will be given to Taiwan at this difficult time?
The Prime Minister
We vindicate international law. One of the reasons we have sent the carrier strike group to that part of the world is to make that point.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that this new partnership is an absolutely golden opportunity for jobs across the country, including at home in the midlands? It not only gives people the opportunity to defend our shared interests and values across the world, but the opportunity of a high-skilled job and the security of a pay packet.
The Prime Minister
Yes, that is exactly right, and I thank my hon. Friend. The UK leads the world in some of these technologies. The factories, plants, ports and docks that make this stuff are distributed across the United Kingdom. There are opportunities for high-wage, high-skilled jobs that will last a generation and more.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The human rights atrocities against the Uyghur people in China have yet to abate. They continue with such brutality. While co-operation is welcome, how will this new strategy make protecting human rights more possible since escalation of operations can have a chilling impact on diplomacy?
The Prime Minister
I think it is very important that we continue to engage with our Chinese partners, but to engage very firmly on the points that we care about, whether it is human rights in Hong Kong, democracy in Hong Kong or the treatment of the Uyghurs. The UK, as the hon. Lady knows, has imposed sanctions on those who exploit forced labour in Xinjiang and taken many other steps besides.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
For 60 years, we have been manufacturing nuclear submarines and we are a world leader. I can confirm that this is a great Union story, with the supply chain even finding its way to the landlocked Montgomeryshire in the middle of Wales. May I ask the Prime Minister to confirm that, while, of course, the security and the safety of the world is foremost, this will be great for jobs across the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister
I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that this will be great for jobs across the United Kingdom, but as I said, there is an 18-month scoping programme to work out exactly how the labour is going to be divvied up.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
I have listened very carefully to the Prime Minister’s statement. He mentioned the new well-paid jobs, which we all welcome, and all countries of the UK, but he did not mention Wales. Will he tell me why Wales has been left out of this jobs fest?
The Prime Minister
All parts of the United Kingdom, including the great Principality of Wales, will—I have no doubt—benefit from this agreement.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. It is right, in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape, that we review and, where possible, strengthen our links with like-minded countries around the world. Will he confirm that this new partnership will help us to continue to protect the rules-based international system in the region? I am thinking particularly of Hong Kong.
The Prime Minister
What this does is allow the three countries that share very close perspectives on human rights, the rule of law, free trade and international shipping to come together and, above all, to uphold our belief in democracy. We do not wish to be adversarial towards any other global power, but we wish to underscore that we work together to uphold those values, whether in our military co-operation or in technological transfer.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said that Australia’s new nuclear submarine would not be allowed in its waters due to a nuclear-free policy, yet under this great Union, Trident nuclear submarines are forced on Scotland. Indeed, we recently read that senior MOD officials have been looking at where to base its Trident fleet when Scotland becomes independent. Although France and the US were mentioned, will the Prime Minister confirm that they are not looking at the proposal of an “imperial days of empire” solution of creating a British overseas territory in Scotland?
The Prime Minister
I think most commonsensical people will welcome the arrival of jobs across the whole of the United Kingdom, particularly in Scotland. By the way, the Type 26 frigate programme, which I have seen being built in Govan, is worth £19.5 billion to this country and, like the nuclear submarine programme, will generate jobs for decades and decades to come. It is a great thing for the whole of the UK.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
The Prime Minister will know the glorious tourism, hospitality and history offered by Hastings and Rye, but he may not know that we have some fantastic defence manufacturing and vacuum engineering businesses—a sector that I would like to see growing in Hastings and Rye, because we really need to expand those well-paid jobs. Will he promise to consider those sorts of jobs in Hastings and Rye as we move forward under this amazing partnership?
The Prime Minister
Absolutely. Of course, Hastings and Rye was the last place in which this island suffered a reversal at the hands of the French, but our relations with the French remain very good. My hon. Friend is certainly right about the benefits that this will bring throughout the UK, including, I hope, Hastings and Rye.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I welcome this development in the light of the strategic challenge posed by an increasingly assertive China, but the Prime Minister will be aware of the sensitivities in relation to the timing of the announcement, given the launch of the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy today. What further reassurance can he provide that the new partnership will not come at the expense of defence co-operation with our European NATO allies?
The Prime Minister
This is not zero-sum. I have spoken to the House already about the depth of our co-operation with the French—which has a nuclear dimension as well—whether it is in Estonia or in Mali. One of the potential winners from this technological partnership is the French company Talis, which of course has many people working in this country.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
I welcome the agreement, which shows the depth of our relationship with one of our oldest and closest allies, but can the Prime Minister confirm that it allows us to expand it into even more areas for the protection of our people and those of our allies?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. AUKUS is a big, big leap forward in terms of trust—agreeing to share nuclear propulsion systems is a giant step—but what this means now is that we will build on that platform to co-operate on cyber, artificial intelligence and all the other types of technology in respect of which it is vital that we stick together.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
We welcome co-operation with our allies for mutual security, and we welcome co-ordinated action in the Indo-Pacific, but today in relation to Hong Kong the Government have failed to uphold their duty under the joint declaration at a time when democratic values have effectively been snuffed out. Because of our special obligations to Hongkongers, if we lead the way by imposing Magnitsky sanctions on those involved in this crackdown, our allies will follow. Will the Prime Minister finally take meaningful action on Hong Kong?
The Prime Minister
I think most people in this country would consider that a bit bizarre. We have not only stood up for human rights in Hong Kong, but have taken the step of welcoming the British nationals (overseas), 30,000 of whom are coming to this country. We should be very proud of what we are doing to protect and help them, and we will continue to do so.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I warmly welcome this alliance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it shows that we are successfully delivering the integrated review, and are deepening our foreign policy, defence and security relationships with our global allies?
The Prime Minister
Yes. I wish to repeat that this makes visible and incarnates the Indo-Pacific tilt that we have been talking about. It is an incredibly important development for our relations in the Indo-Pacific. However, it in no way detracts from our commitment to the north Atlantic area, to the European theatre and to our overall security.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
Obviously we have an interest in maintaining a peaceful region in the Indo-Pacific, so I welcome this, but will the Prime Minister make something clear? He has described the agreement as being essentially about technological transfer, not about a major commitment of military assets. Can he guarantee that that is where we are going, and that no overstretch will be involved as a result of this agreement?
The Prime Minister
Yes, of course, although I remind the House that the carrier strike group is out there expressing British influence—hard power and soft power—8,000 miles away, which is something that very few other countries can do.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I note that our friends from New Zealand have already announced that the new submarines will be banned from their waters, but can I press my right hon. Friend on the opportunities to expand co-operation with India, which is a key strategic partner in the region?
The Prime Minister
I should stress to the House that what New Zealand has said is its historic position; it has been in that place for 30 years or more. What my hon. Friend says about India is absolutely right. Again, there is a great deal of community of interest and values, and we should pursue that.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I am pleased that the Government recognise the importance of protecting and growing sovereign and allied strategic capability, especially given their recent attempt to hand over domestic nuclear power capability to the Chinese. During the passage of the National Security and Investment Bill and the Telecoms (Security) Bill, Labour called for just such partnerships with countries that share our values to develop key technologies such as 6G. Can the Prime Minister set out how he plans to develop further partnerships, and whether European countries might be included?
The Prime Minister
Yes, we will continue to pursue that type of partnership with every other country where we think that it can be done without any threat to our critical national infrastructure. I think that is what the House would support.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s commitment to Welsh workers and that they will be eligible for these opportunities, because workers in Pontypridd have already lost their jobs at BA in Llantrisant and GE in Nantgarw. I urge the Prime Minister to meet the leaders of the devolved nations, because he clearly needs a constitutional lesson. Wales is not a principality; it is a country—a country that has been forgotten by this Westminster Government. Will he commit to meeting them to look at contract opportunities for Welsh workers?
The Prime Minister
There will be jobs and growth across the whole of the UK as a result of this partnership, but above all as a result of the policies that this Government have been pursuing, which are leading to higher wages and higher skills—a policy that I am afraid the Labour party continually opposes.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. He will know that Northern Ireland plays an integral part in the procurement and manufacture of defence products; we have the highest technical and scientific manufacturers. We wish to be part of this move, and I know the Prime Minister wishes Northern Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, better together, but we need to be assured. Will he tell us today in the Chamber that Northern Ireland will play its part?
The Prime Minister
Of course Northern Ireland will play its part, not least in the shipbuilding strategy that will follow after the spending review. I should have made more of that. I am delighted to say that Harland and Wolff has, as I understand it, just taken on another 1,000 apprentices for the first time in a very long time to get ready for exactly that strategy.
Business of the House
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
The business for the week commencing Monday 20 September include:
Monday 20 September—Consideration of a Business of the House motion, followed by all stages of the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill, followed by a motion to approve an instruction relating to the Elections Bill.
Tuesday 21 September—Opposition day (6th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition, subject to be announced.
Wednesday 22 September—Remaining stages of the Compensation (London Capital & Finance Plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill, followed by Second Reading of the Subsidy Control Bill, followed by a motion to appoint an external member of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body.
Thursday 23 September—General debate on baby loss awareness week, followed by a motion on human rights in Kashmir. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
At the conclusion of business on Thursday 23 September, the House will rise for the conference recess and return on Monday 18 October.
The provisional business for the week commencing 18 October will include:
Monday 18 October—Second Reading of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. I am glad to see him still in his place. There were rumours that it might have been the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) opposite me. He has been told to “shut up and go away,” and I am therefore relieved that I do not have to spend time today explaining that I am the Member for Bristol West and not the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). Perhaps I will not throw away my flashcards just yet; you never know.
This week inflation has leaped to 3.2%, the highest jump since records began in 1997. This comes in the same week as the Government rammed through their Tory tax rise, hitting hard-working families. Yesterday, they did not even bother to turn up to vote on their cruel and callous cut to universal credit, the biggest ever overnight cut to social security.
The Prime Minister seems to have deliberately used his reshuffle to distract from the fact that he will be taking more than £1,000 from 6 million households. Meanwhile, his sacked Ministers take home nearly £20,000 in severance pay. Nearly half of all people receiving universal credit are in work. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions thinks that people should just work harder to make up the difference, but from April the Government will be taking away more than 75p of every £1 that a full-time worker on universal credit earns.
One in six families cannot make ends meet already, and now key workers are facing a pay freeze, a personal allowance freeze, rising council tax and an unfair national insurance rise, and the price of bread and all the basics is going up. This Tory tax rise was not a plan last week to tackle social care or the NHS waiting list, and it is still not a plan this week. Working people know the Government are not on their side. They know the Government prioritise their friends over the British people. Could the Leader of the House please explain why the Government are pressing ahead with this?
Then there is the astronomical cost of childcare hitting working families. That is yet another broken promise from this Government, failing parents and children. A staggering third of all parents pay more for childcare than for their rent or mortgage. Just to let the Government know, as they often seem completely ignorant of the actual cost of living, a full-time childcare place costs £14,000 a year. The Government say they want to help people into work, but even before the pandemic nearly 1 million mothers wanted to work but could not afford to do so.
It is not just parents being squeezed but childminders, nursery workers and all the people working in childcare, 93% of whom are women. They are suffering on poverty pay after years of real-terms pay cuts under successive Tory Governments. The average wage in this sector is £7.42 an hour and, shamefully, one in 10 staff earns less than £5 an hour. The Government are not on the side of parents, they are not on the side of childcare workers and now they want to take even more money from them. This makes no sense educationally, socially or economically. We debated a petition on this crucial issue on Monday, but will the Leader of the House make Government time available for a full debate on the childcare sector?
The pandemic is still raging, and bereaved families are still waiting for a public inquiry so that lessons can be learned now to help now. I ask the Leader of the House again, when will the Government’s covid inquiry start?
The hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) has had his Conservative party membership suspended, although for only 12 weeks. I wonder if this says something about the seriousness, or lack thereof, with which some people treat sexual harassment. Will the Leader of the House finally find time for this House to debate Labour’s motion, which we first tabled back in July, to close the recall loophole and to allow the people of Delyn to decide for themselves whether that Member should continue to represent them?
Finally, last week I took a tour of the basement and some of the most damaged parts of the Palace. I understand that the Leader of the House also recently took the tour so, like me, he must have seen the high-voltage electricity lines next to the gas pipes and the wiring that goes nobody knows where. Has he now revised his previous view that restoration and renewal of this place is just
“a little bit of banging and noise”?—[Official Report, 11 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 1018.]
Does he now agree that we must press ahead with a full decant, which we have voted for, so that we can get on with protecting this magnificent symbol of British democracy that we are so proud of, not for us but for the British people we serve?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think the hon. Lady was ungallant in relation to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), who has been a very hard-working and diligent public servant over many years. It is inelegant not to thank people after a reshuffle for the service they have provided and to gloat instead; I am rather surprised at the hon. Lady behaving in that way.
The hon. Lady made some important points about inflation, but she will of course remember that monetary policy is run independently by the Bank of England, as a result of a decision taken by Gordon Brown when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997. The main control of inflation therefore rests with an independent body, but Her Majesty’s Government are doing their side of the bargain, although opposed by the Opposition, in ensuring that fiscal policy is responsible.
The two causes of inflation are widely believed to be the connection between monetary policy and fiscal policy. One of them is independently determined, but Her Majesty’s Government have taken steps to shore up the finances of this country. That must be correct, and the sensible and right thing to do, and universal credit is part of that; £9 billion of additional support has been provided to people on UC during the pandemic as exceptional support because of the circumstances that arose during the pandemic. As the pandemic is ending and as the furlough scheme is ending, it is right that we return to normal. What my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions so rightly pointed out was that those on UC who have children or limited capability to work, for example, through a disability, are able to earn up to £293 per month before the taper rate kicks in, rising to £515 for those who do not receive housing support. What she said is absolutely right and reasonable.
The hon. Lady then moved on to the issue of children in poverty, so I can point out to her that since 2010, a period of majority Conservative government, 100,000 fewer children are living in absolute poverty. That is one of the successes of which those on this side of the House are rightly proud. There is up to £2,000 per year per child of tax-free childcare, which was introduced by the Conservatives. We have given her an Opposition day next week if she wants a debate on that. She may have been listening when I read that out, but in case she was not, let me read it out again: the subject is to be announced. Perhaps she is hinting at what the subject may be, but it seems to me that when time is provided for an Opposition day and the hon. Lady raises pressing issues, one can fit a round peg in a round hole, and she can answer her own question.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that the covid inquiry will begin before the end of this parliamentary Session. This Session will run, as usual—since the reforms in 2010—until around May, so the date has already been set out.
The right hon. Lady—the hon. Lady; I am sorry to have promoted her inadvertently, though no doubt the Privy Council for her is merely a matter of time—raised the question of suspension from this House and recall. The Government did bring forward a motion, one that was agreed by the Commission and supported by the chairman of the independent expert panel, and it was a pity that the hon. Lady blocked it. If she decides not to block it, it will be back on the Order Paper straightaway. [Interruption.] She chunters, “Amended it.” She is an experienced parliamentarian and knows full well that amendments block when there is not time set aside for debate: so she blocked it.
As regards restoration and renewal, the hon. Lady’s oratory on my views was fundamentally inaccurate. It is well recognised that work needs to be carried out and that we need to re-plumb and re-wire. We have already done a huge amount of work ensuring that the fire safety systems are improved, and we had a successful fire safety test earlier this week to ensure that the structure of the building and the lives within the building are safe. The work is planned and I am supporting it enthusiastically.
Mr Rees-Mogg
That is a very helpful heckle. The right hon. Gentleman is a great expert on this issue and asbestos is one of the key parts of it.
What I have always been opposed to is spending very large amounts of taxpayers’ money. We had forecasts of £10 billion to £20 billion for trying to turn this place into Disneyland. That I am opposed to; that I will continue to be opposed to. We want rewiring, replumbing and the removal of asbestos, but we do not want Disneyland.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his reappointment. However, we have seen some Cabinet changes. One of the most important, for me, is the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Could we now have an early debate on the proposed planning Bill so that we can have our input, rather than having a Bill thrust upon us without pre-legislative scrutiny? That would allow Members across the House to give their views to the new Secretary of State.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind words. On the point he makes, I think he proves that that actually already happens, because nobody would ever dare stop him expressing his views on planning reform to everybody in the Government. The Government are, of course, listening to what people have to say, but the process that has been followed is the proper constitutional one. There has been a White Paper, which is a discussion document setting out the intentions of policy, to and about which there have been many responses and thoughts. That will lead to a Bill that will go through the House in the normal process. I think that I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Bill will be thoroughly discussed and that his views will be extremely welcome, particularly to my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove).
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
What happened to the right hon. Gentleman yesterday? All afternoon, the nation was at one: “What about the Mogg? Surely a big office of state awaits—a promotion is more than due.” Well, maybe he should not have said “No more taxes” in the week that his Prime Minister hiked them through the roof. Anyway, we are glad that he is back with us, doing what he does best: announcing the business of the week.
This is now getting beyond a joke. The scenes from a packed Prime Minister’s questions yesterday were simply a disgrace, with barely a face mask on a Tory mush. The House staff are now getting increasingly nervous and anxious about what they are observing, and it seems as if the Tories have absolutely no regard whatever for the safety of their colleagues and the staff who are here to support and help us.
The Government’s own advice states:
“Wear a face covering in crowded and enclosed settings where you come into contact with people you do not normally meet.”
Now, I do not normally meet any of you lot—I am quite happy with that situation; I have no desire to meet you on a regular basis—and yesterday at PMQs this place must have been about the most crowded enclosed space in the whole UK. The Health Secretary even excused the Tory “no face mask” policy, suggesting that people cannot catch covid from friends. Is this House not sending the worst possible message to the country and contributing to all sorts of confusion? Will the Leader of the House now be a leader? For goodness’ sake, put a face mask on!
We know that the Leader of the House likes his obscure historical battle references—he will probably quote one to me again, as if I am in any way interested in what he has to say—but there is a battle for Scotland going on just now and it is being fought with ideas, with democracy at its core and with a vision for what a nation can be, free from this place. So he can stuff his battles of Flodden and Falkirk where his top hat don’t shine, because this battle of Scotland will be won by its people.
Mr Rees-Mogg
In the cheerfulness and bonhomie that the hon. Gentleman brings to this House, he is competing with Countess Mona Lott herself. If that is the battle for ideas, they are ideas of gloom, doom and lugubriousness that I think are not particularly welcome in this House.
As regards face masks, the policy is extremely straightforward: face coverings are not mandatory for Members in the House of Commons Chamber, voting Lobbies, the Members’ Lobby and Westminster Hall. The advice of Her Majesty’s Government on face coverings is that they are not required by law in the workplace. The Government removed the legal requirement to wear face coverings in public places in indoor spaces. If someone is in a crowded indoor space where they come into contact with people they do not normally meet, wearing a face covering can help to reduce the spread of covid.
Is it not interesting that the hon. Gentleman—and perhaps this applies to the nationalists generally—does not normally meet other MPs? Perhaps that is because they are not very assiduous in their attendance in the House of Commons, but Members on my side of the House, who are rigorous and regular attendants, meet one another regularly and therefore are completely in accordance with the guidance of Her Majesty’s Government. Is it not a pity that some people do not like to come to Parliament? If they came a bit more, worked a bit harder and put their elbow to the grindstone, or wherever one puts one’s elbow—if they put their elbow to the wheel—they might not need to wear face coverings either, because they would meet Members of Parliament more regularly.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
First, in Hitchin and Harpenden, we are fortunate to benefit from beautiful countryside, including parts of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty. Will the Leader of the House confirm what mechanisms are in place to enable me to secure the extension of the area of outstanding natural beauty towards Hitchin?
Secondly, there are many good house builders in this country, but there are some poor ones. Will the Leader of the House consider providing time for a debate on how to deal with poor house builders—such as Crest Nicholson, which is badly mistreating leaseholders at Allwoods Place in Hitchin in my constituency—that mistreat leaseholders?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am glad to say that legislation is coming forward that will deal with the issue of poor house builders and set up an ombudsman who will have the ability to ensure that house builders are held to account. People have the right to expect that a new build house is built to a proper standard. As constituency MPs, we have all dealt with house builders that have let constituents down and been relatively unaccountable and unhelpful in their approach to residents with genuine complaints.
As regards the natural beauty of my hon. Friend’s constituency, part of North East Somerset is in an area of outstanding natural beauty; I do not really mind about these bureaucratic definitions because the truth is that the whole of North East Somerset is stunningly beautiful. It is one of the most beautiful parts of not only our great country but anywhere in the world. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) is sitting in her usual place, and I include Bath in that description—the whole of Bath and North East Somerset. We can view our areas as being of the greatest natural beauty without necessarily having a bureaucrat telling us so.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week, and particularly for the Backbench Business on Thursday when, as Members will have noted from the business statement, there will be a debate on Baby Loss Awareness Week. Of course, Baby Loss Awareness Week actually takes place during the conference recess, so we cannot have it in the week when it should be heard. With that in mind, if Members throughout the House intend to make an application for a debate on a specific date or commemorative event, will they please make their applications to the Backbench Business Committee as early as possible? We cannot always guarantee that debates will occur exactly when Members want, as we depend on the Executive to allow us the time and on the parliamentary calendar, but the sooner we know, the sooner we can put the wheels in motion to facilitate Members’ requests.
I have dozens, if not hundreds, of constituents who are refugees and asylum seekers in a state of limbo, if not purgatory, plaintively waiting in vain for the Home Office to determine their status. May we have a debate in Government time on the Home Office’s handling of such cases and how refugees and asylum seekers are left in this awful state, not knowing their future?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments about the business next week. He asked for that debate last week and I am glad we have been able to facilitate it. His point about early application is one well made, and I hope that Members were listening.
As regards a debate in Government time in relation to questions on asylum and Afghanistan, there are Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office questions on Tuesday 26 September—actually, I think that is a misprint and it should be October. There will be opportunities to raise those issues with Ministers in the normal way, but I suggest it would also be suitable for the hon. Gentleman’s Committee to provide time.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
Parents who have prematurely born children who require time in neonatal intensive care can go through a whole range of different emotions, from worry to pride to guilt, and they require all different types of support, from practical to financial and emotional as well. Can we have a debate in Government time about what support the Government provide to parents with children in neonatal intensive care?
Mr Rees-Mogg
May I thank my hon. Friend for his public service as a Minister of the Crown, which he carried out with great distinction and for which his constituents and the country can be very grateful?
I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for coming straight to this House to raise an important issue for his own constituents and for others. I know that he has had personal experience of how difficult it can be for parents in this situation. It is important to make it clear what support is available and what can be done. I will make sure that his comments are passed on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but I also suggest that a Westminster Hall debate would be a very good starting point on this crucial subject.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
My young constituent Sara Walbyoff from Calidcot lives with a rare form of spina bifida and this week has been meeting with Olympians and Paralympians at Great Ormond Street Hospital to talk about her experience of living with the condition. Sara’s family supports the campaign of Shine, the spina bifida charity, to fortify flour products with folic acid, which the Government have been consulting on now for two years. So please can the Government announce that they will do it?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this important issue and I wish Sara well. The campaign is an important one. I will pass on the hon. Lady’s comments to the Health Secretary. The question of compulsory medication is always a difficult and sensitive one, so it is not an issue that is easy to answer straightforwardly.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
Britain’s greatest king is spinning in his grave at the moment due to the appalling abuse of democracy when the unitary announcement came. It has been an absolute bombshell in Somerset, as my right hon. Friend knows. Paul Rowsell, the civil servant, has now agreed that we will get only about 80 councillors. Apparently, part of the reason, according to people, is that the leader of the council wishes to be paid the same as a Member of Parliament and he wants the councillors to be paid between £55,000 and £60,000 a year. Can we please have a debate in this place on local government? I know that there are changes in the Cabinet. It is a good time to do that and it is right that we should do so.
Mr Rees-Mogg
We do have regular debates on local authorities and matters relating to them. I am a great advocate of economy within the public service and of ensuring that the expenses paid to councillors are reasonable and proportionate. Essentially, it is a voluntary job where people should not be out of pocket, rather than a professional career where people should be getting the sort of salaries that they might get if they were employed by the state, rather than having put themselves forward.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will be aware that our hospitality industry has suffered primarily as a result of the pandemic, so will he join me in congratulating Janet’s Authentic Northern Chinese Kitchen, based in Pontypridd market, on its recent success at the British Street Food Awards? Will he commit to a debate in Government time to support our fantastic hospitality industry throughout the United Kingdom?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I heartily congratulate Janet in Pontypridd market on winning the award. I might even volunteer to come and visit her. I recently had the great pleasure of having one of the vanilla slices made by Margaret in Stoke-on-Trent, who was also mentioned in this House. I may be able to go round the whole country visiting the sellers of delicious food. Absolutely, the hospitality industry has suffered. It is getting back on its feet. People are working stunningly hard, and it is really encouraging to hear of the entrepreneurial attitude being taken by the hon. Lady’s own constituents.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
While trying to mask my disappointment at not being made Minister with responsibility for granting city status to Southend, but being put in charge of paperclips instead, may I ask my right hon. Friend to find time for a debate on discretionary increases in pensions for Ford employees pre-1997? These women and men gave a great deal of their time to the company and they deserve better treatment than they seem to be afforded at the moment.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think the whole country shares my hon. Friend’s disappointment that he has not been put in charge of making Southend a city; his campaign for that is boundless in its energy.
Let me turn to my hon. Friend’s actual question. This is a difficult matter, because whether or not discretionary increases are applied to pre-1997 pensions is a matter for the scheme, the sponsoring employer and the scheme members, as they are not required by law and they potentially have a large impact on the financing of the scheme. It would not therefore be right for a Minister to intervene in the running of an individual pension scheme, as the Government cannot force pension scheme trustees or sponsoring companies to exercise their discretion in a particular way. Keeping pensions affordable is very important and increases do, as I say, have a long-term consequence and very high costs. It is therefore right that it is left to the sponsors to see what they can afford.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
In a written parliamentary question to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 3 September, I asked whether she would meet me to discuss the impact of the cruel cuts to universal credit on the people of Newport West. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), replied to me on 8 September, but ignored my request. On Monday in Work and Pensions oral questions, I again asked whether the Secretary of State would meet me, and again I was ignored. Will the Leader of the House advise me how best I can go about getting a meeting with a Minister, or is it now the policy of the Government to ignore Members of this House?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I would be very concerned if anyone thought that it were the policy of the Government to ignore Members. We are held to account by Members and, in the normal course of events, Ministers do make themselves available for meetings when they are specifically requested by individual MPs or, indeed, often by individual groups of MPs. I will therefore pass on the request to the Secretary of State and see what can be done. If the worst comes to the worst, the hon. Lady can come to see me.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Members across the House will be familiar with road safety issues around school entrances, which cause considerable risk to children going to and from school. A recent incident in North East Lincolnshire has brought this subject to the headlines again. Could we have a debate in which we can explore whether councils have sufficient powers to deal with these road safety issues?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend, as always, raises an issue that is important not only in his constituency, but in many of our constituencies. Everybody wants to see improved road safety around schools. I have always thought that 20 mph limits that apply around schools at opening and closing times are much more effective for road safety than blanket 20 mph signs, which are not always taken as seriously by motorists as they ought to be. When such limits serve the specific purpose of applying near a school at specific times of days, I think they are much better respected.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I congratulate my constituency neighbour on his reappointment as Leader of the House; I would not want to miss our robust exchanges on a Thursday morning.
When I asked the Prime Minister yesterday whether he believed that burning fossil fuels would not be a source of energy in the future, he said yes. However, he then went on to talk only about coal. The Leader of the House will know that oil and natural gas need to be phased out, but there is no plan from the Government on the detail of how this will be done. For example, when will the national grid cease to use natural gas? Can we have a debate on this vital subject so that Parliament can fully scrutinise the Government’s plans? The climate emergency is not going to wait. Time is running out.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind words. I, too, enjoy our exchanges very much.
Since 1990, we have driven down emissions by 44%—the fastest reduction in a G7 country—and grown the economy by 78%. This is always going to be the key: we have to ensure that there is economic growth, but that it is cleaner growth. Therefore, things have to be done in a phased and affordable way. As the hon. Lady will know, gas prices have been going up, which is a burden on households and hard-pressed constituents in all of our constituencies. It is therefore important to get a balance. Since 1990, we have got the balance about right and we still have the economic growth, and it is that economic growth that will allow us to pay to green the economy.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The fire at the Bilsdale mast has left thousands people across Harrogate, and more broadly across North Yorkshire and beyond, without a TV and radio signal for some weeks now. The industry is working to recover services and it has made progress this week. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who is no longer in post, has been very helpful with this matter. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport updates the House on progress, perhaps via a written ministerial statement? The people who are most seriously affected by the lack of TV and radio are the more vulnerable and elderly, so I want services to be restored as quickly as possible.
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it will be the elderly who are less likely to have satellite channels and other means of accessing television entertainment, and they will therefore be the ones who most miss having the ordinary television signal that is not coming because of the damage done to the transmitter. I am grateful for his kind comments about our right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who is a very distinguished Member of this House and a very effective individual, and I will pass on his concerns to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
I am looking for some advice from the Leader of the House. A number of Members have been diligently submitting questions for departmental answer in oral questions sessions, only to find that as a result of yesterday’s reshuffle a number of questions have now been deemed out of scope. What advice can he give to Members who have so rightly put questions in, only to suddenly find that it is now not possible to ask them?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Members have a right to hold the Government to account and to ask written questions and oral questions. I would suggest that hon. Members who find that this is happening resubmit the questions. The Table Office is always extremely helpful in ensuring that questions go to the right Department. But Departments, as a rule, should not simply say that a question is out of scope; they should pass it on to the Department that has the responsibility for answering it. If there are specific problems with this, I would be grateful if they were taken up directly with my office and with the Procedure Committee.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
My constituent’s son Dylan has an incurable and progressive disease that causes his blood to attack his kidneys. To counter this, every week Dylan travels with his mum Rachel to London for a particular type of dialysis treatment called Liposorber. Yet Dylan’s mother has told me that complications relating to medical imports from Germany have meant that the hospital can no longer import the amount of fluid that is needed to conduct Liposorber. The issue can be resolved if the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency nominates a UK company to handle Liposorber so that it does not need to be imported from Germany, yet the agency has yet to respond to my office on whether it will look at this case and nominate a UK-based company. Will the Leader of the House therefore raise this issue with Health Ministers so that Dylan can continue to have access to this life-saving treatment?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this question. I am very sorry to hear about Dylan and his incurable condition, and I feel very greatly for him and his family. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue of this kind on the Floor of this House, as that that sometimes helps to force bureaucracies to work faster than they otherwise might be willing to do. I will therefore take this up with the relevant Ministers immediately after this session of business questions.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Over the summer I conducted a poll of my constituents about crime and antisocial behaviour, and the number of responses I received to that survey was the largest I have ever had in 16 years as an MP. Ninety-five per cent. of people who responded said they had been subject to antisocial behaviour, and 90% said things had got worse over the past few years. This is affecting so many people. Might the Leader of the House arrange for the House to have a debate to look at issues around policing, treatment services for people with drug and alcohol problems, and the siting of supported housing in communities, because all these factors play a part in why we have seen this spike in antisocial behaviour?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The Government are doing a great deal to tackle crime. The right hon. Lady will be aware that we are recruiting 20,000 additional police officers, and 9,800 additional officers have been recruited as of June 2021. A lot is being done to tackle violent crime as well: £105.5 million has been spent to develop 18 violence reduction units and £136.5 million to support and enhance police response. It is a question of dealing with this with the extra police resources. I have noted in my own constituency that when antisocial behaviour arises, if there is a targeted police response it is very effective in dealing with it. So I would urge her, in the first instance, to speak to her local chief constable to see what can be done to focus the police resources in the right way, because certainly Avon and Somerset has been very successful at dealing with these problems at an early stage.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
It was a pleasure at the beginning of this month to welcome my right hon. Friend and take him on a tour of Stoke-on-Trent’s rich history and heritage, from the pits of Chatterley Whitfield to the pots of Middleport Pottery, where we enjoyed learning what a saggar maker’s bottom knocker does. But Stoke-on-Trent’s history does not end there. Yesterday was Battle of Britain Day, which is important to the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, because we remember the man who invented the Spitfire, Reginald J. Mitchell, a Butt Lane lad. Yesterday, Stoke-on-Trent City Council unveiled a restored Spitfire in the new designer glass gallery of the Potteries Museum, which was opened by veteran Norman Lewis, who is 102 years old. Will my right hon. Friend use this opportunity to talk about how fantastic the history of Stoke-on-Trent is from his personal experience? Can we make time to have an opportunity to celebrate the history and heritage of our entire United Kingdom?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I had an absolutely fantastic visit to Stoke-on-Trent, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right: we were shown a saggar maker’s bottom knocker’s work, which is essential to the manufacture of pottery. It was very impressive to see that history. I also agree that the development of the Spitfire is one of the most crucial events in our modern history, ensuring that the battle of Britain went the right way. Celebrating the glories of our nation is something that I think we can try to shoehorn into every comment we ever make in this House. I will not promise him a specific debate, but an Adjournment debate on the virtues of Stoke-on-Trent would be time very well spent.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
We have had the priority lane, which is a list of companies bidding for billions of pounds-worth of covid contracts. We know not how they get on that list, although being a Tory donor or a friend of a Minister seems to assist. I have raised previously with the Leader of the House the matter of the Health Minister, Lord Bethell, who had 27 meetings in one week with companies wanting to bid for more than a billion pounds-worth of contracts, but sadly his office failed to record those meetings in his diary for that week. He seems a very unlucky chap, because he has conducted a negotiation for an £87 million contract over his personal mobile phone. When asked to produce it, he said he had lost it, then he said it was broken, and now he has said he has given it to one of his family members. This behaviour by Ministers is a disgrace, so can we have a statement in the House on the ministerial code as we go through this reshuffle, so that we can ask questions from the Opposition Benches of the Government and ensure that people behave better in future and abide by that code?
Mr Rees-Mogg
It is a particularly silly line of questioning. In the midst of a pandemic, it was fundamental that the Government acted with speed. Personal protective equipment was needed, vaccines were needed and we thought ventilators were needed. The hon. Gentleman would have sat on his hands and thought that we must go through some bureaucratic procedure and tick some boxes. Perhaps we should have gone off to the European Union and asked for its permission. This is typical of the socialist. The socialist always puts the process over the result. What my noble Friend Lord Bethell did was ensure results and save lives. I think these cheap accusations degrade Parliament.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
This House has not yet been given the opportunity to debate the UK Government’s disability strategy. I have been talking to disability groups, and they have said the strategy is underwhelming and falls well short of what was expected. Given that the UK Government think it a revolutionary strategy, can we have a debate in Government time to put forward the views of people with disabilities?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The disability strategy was published in July, as the Government had promised to do. It is very important in showing how seriously the Government take matters of disability and how they are being considered across all that the Government do. Obviously the Backbench Business Committee will have time available, and I think if the hon. Lady wishes to have a specific debate on the strategy, that would be a very good place to go, but the Government are very proud of the disability strategy and the continuing work we are doing to help disabled people.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Bearing in mind the shortage of hauliers—a 30% shortfall in Northern Ireland—will the Leader of the House allocate time for a debate on a special method to accelerate massively the turnaround on training and testing applications for new heavy goods vehicle drivers, and on the Chancellor offering incentives to attract more drivers for the long haul?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman is saying what the Government are doing. A number of steps have been taken to speed up tests and to increase by 50% the amount of testing that there was pre-covid. Car drivers will no longer need to take another test to tow a trailer or caravan—those of us who passed our test before 1997 can tow a caravan but those who did afterwards had to take a special test; that is going. Tests will be made shorter by removing the reversing exercise element and, for vehicles with trailers, the uncoupling and recoupling exercise can be tested separately by a third party. We will also make it quicker to get a licence to drive an articulated vehicle—without first having to get a licence for a smaller vehicle—making about 20,000 HGV driving tests available every year. The Government are well aware of the problem and steps are being taken.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Our planet is in crisis, COP26 commences in just 46 days, and yet the Climate Change Committee has highlighted how far we are from not just our sixth but our fifth carbon budget. I have raised many times in the House the opportunity that BioYorkshire will bring to cut our carbon emissions as well as create 4,000 jobs, upskill 25,000 people and create new businesses. The Government have committed to that but have not provided funding. Can we have a debate about BioYorkshire and the opportunity it provides not only for our planet but to produce £5 billion in revenue for the Government?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I point out what I said earlier: we have been able to get the economy to grow and emissions down. That is at the heart of what is being done. COP26 is a matter of building out from the G7 presidency, using international moments to encourage other countries to join in the efforts that we have been making. The Government are doing well in this regard, and COP26 will be an opportunity to encourage others in the same direction. I am encouraged that the hon. Lady is looking for developments and forms of investment, because that is the way in which we manage the balancing act of cutting emissions and growing the economy.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
My constituents living in Austen Apartments face bills for tens of thousands of pounds to remove dangerous cladding and pay for a waking watch. The building is less than 18 metres high, so they do not qualify for the building safety fund, and we still do not know the details of the loan scheme. Will it apply to all buildings of less than 18 metres? Will it cover the waking watch? Will it cover remedial work beyond cladding? My constituents are unsurprisingly anxious. Please can we urgently have a statement from the new Housing Secretary setting out exactly what he will do to fix this?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I reiterate what the Government are doing. For lower-risk buildings that are up to 59 feet high, we are bringing in a new finance scheme to pay for remediation with a cap of £50 on monthly payments. That is the policy, and a scheme will be introduced to ensure that the policy is operational. On higher buildings, £5.1 billion has already been spent to fund the cost of remediating unsafe cladding for leaseholders, so the taxpayer’s contribution has already been significant. I also remind the hon. Lady of what the Prime Minister said yesterday: not all cladding is dangerous. It is therefore important that we focus on what is dangerous rather than all cladding.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
The post office in Treharris in my constituency has been closed for 2.5 years, depriving the local community of a much-needed service. There is interest from a number of people who would like to take over the business, but I understand that all applications are currently on hold and there is no idea when they will be looked at. Can we have a debate or a statement from the Government on what the Post Office will do to support our communities as they adjust to a post-covid world?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue, because I was unaware that post office reopenings were on hold. The post office network is recognised to be extremely important, and it is encouraging to report that 99% of the UK population are within three miles of their nearest post office branch. At the 2020 spending review, the Government announced that they would commit £227 million of taxpayers’ money to the Post Office in 2021-22. There is that Government commitment, but, if the Post Office is not making decisions, I will take up his point with it after this session.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Two young children in Rutherglen in my constituency were hospitalised recently after finding and eating a packet of sweets laced with strong psychoactive cannabis. The sweets had been packaged to look like the popular American kids’ sweets Nerds. Will the Leader of the House join me in condemning this, and will he schedule a debate in Government time on the dangers of these drug-laced sweets being packaged misleadingly and made attractive to children?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady brings to the attention of the House something of great importance. It is really outrageous behaviour by drug people, who need to have the full force of the law bear down upon them. To try to trick children into eating cannabis sweets seems to me despicable, and I am glad the hon. Lady has brought it to wider attention. I would encourage the police to act forcefully with anybody who is behaving in this way.
Owen Thompson
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Following on from my question to the Leader of the House, I seek your guidance on, and wonder if you have been made aware of, changes to ministerial responsibilities. This morning, the amazing team at the Table Office informed me that the Cabinet Office has shifted questions related to the Union, elections and levelling up to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which significantly impacts a number of Members in trying to submit questions by the deadline. The shift was blamed on the reshuffle, but I am at a loss to understand why the Cabinet Office is ill prepared to deal with questions on the Elections Bill, which started in July, but was fine with responding to questions about business. May I seek your guidance on how I can ask for a Minister to come to the House to clarify the Cabinet Office’s ministerial responsibilities?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. It is up to the Government rather than the Chair to determine ministerial responsibilities, thank goodness. However, it is extremely important that the House is made aware of those responsibilities in a timely manner, not least so that right hon. and hon. Members may table questions to the appropriate Departments. Ministers will have heard what I have said, and I hope they will very soon set out the new departmental responsibilities following the ongoing reshuffle. In any event, given that Members have had to table questions for the Cabinet Office by the deadline of 12.30 pm today with a lack of clarity about new responsibilities, I hope that the Government will do all they can to answer those questions next week wherever possible, rather than just seek to transfer them.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on a very serious matter. On Tuesday, the Health Secretary, in a response to my question about the cancellation of the vaccine contract with Valneva in my constituency, stated:
“There are commercial reasons why we have cancelled the contract, but I can tell her that it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency here in the UK”.—[Official Report, 14 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 820.]
However, yesterday, Adam Finn, chief investigator of Valneva’s phase 3 trial, said:
“The Valneva COVID19 vaccine research programme towards MHRA authorisation is on track and moving forwards. The key results from phase 3 expected early Q4 and no one…has yet seen them. Study subjects and investigators should be reassured.”
Today, Clive Dix, the former chair of the UK Government’s vaccine taskforce has said:
“Since when did a politician assume the role of the independent regulator”—
I could not agree more—
“The phase 3 data is not yet available and the MHRA haven’t carried out their assessment. In my opinion Sajid Javid should resign for such a statement.”
Given this revelation, what can I do to get the Health Secretary to set the record straight and retract his misleading comments, which are causing serious confusion and worry to those taking part in the trial, as well as huge commercial damage to Valneva and, as others have said, undermining the independence of the regulator? I seek your guidance.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving me notice in advance of what she was going to raise in it, which is clearly a very serious matter for a lot of people involved. I also know that she has given notice of the point of order to the Secretary of State for Health. The contents of an answer to questions are not, as she knows, a matter for the Chair, but she has put her points on the record. I note that the Government’s own ministerial code requires Ministers to correct any inadvertent errors at the earliest opportunity, and I hope that that will be followed. We will leave it there for now.
Brexit: Opportunities
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement, which is also being made in the other place, on the opportunities the country has now that we have left the European Union.
While we were a member of the EU some of the most difficult issues that Governments of both main parties faced were to do with regulations, such as services directives, REACH—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—reforms of agricultural policy, and very many pieces of financial services legislation. Often such laws reflected unsatisfactory compromises with the other EU members. We knew that if we did not rescue something from the legislative sausage machine, as it were, we would be voted down and get nothing. These laws were designed to lock every country, no matter its strengths or weaknesses, into the same uniform structures, and they were often overly detailed and prescriptive. Moreover, the results usually either had direct legal effect in the United Kingdom or were passed into our law through secondary legislation; either way, that involves very limited genuine democratic scrutiny. This Government were elected to get Brexit done and to change this situation, and that is exactly what we will do.
Much has already been changed of course but, given the extent of EU influence over nearly half a century, the task is a mammoth one. To begin it, we asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) to lead a team to examine our existing laws and future opportunities. They reported back earlier this year and since then my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my noble Friend Lord Frost have been considering that taskforce on innovation, growth and regulatory reform—TIGRR—report in some depth. Lord Frost is today writing to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green with our formal response to his report and, more importantly, our plans to act on the basis of his report. Lord Frost is sharing the Government’s formal response with Committee Chairs and will deposit it in the Libraries of both Houses; it will also be available shortly on gov.uk. I will now highlight some of the most important elements of our plans.
First, we will conduct a review of so-called retained EU law; by this, I mean the many pieces of legislation that we took on to our own statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We must now revisit this huge but anomalous category of law, and we have two purposes in mind. First, we intend to remove the special status of retained EU law so that it is no longer a distinct category of UK domestic law but is normalised within our law with a clear legislative status. Unless we do that, we risk giving undue precedence to laws derived from EU legislation over laws made properly by this Parliament. The review also involves ensuring that all courts in this country have the full ability to depart from EU case law according to the normal rules. In so doing, we will continue restoring this sovereign Parliament and our courts to their proper constitutional positions, and indeed finalise that process.
Our second goal is to review comprehensively the substantive content of retained EU law. Some of that is already under way—for example, our plans to reform inherited procurement rules and the plan announced last autumn by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to review much financial services legislation. But we will make this a comprehensive exercise, and I want to make it clear that our intention is eventually to amend, replace or repeal all retained EU law that is not right for the UK. That is a legislative problem, and accordingly the solution is also likely to be legislative. We will consider all the options for taking this forward, and in particular look at developing a tailored mechanism for accelerating the repeal or amendment of retained EU law in a way that reflects the fact that laws agreed elsewhere have intrinsically less democratic legitimacy than laws initiated by the Government of this country.
We also intend to begin a new series of reforms of the legislation we have inherited on EU exit, in many cases as recommended by the TIGRR report. Let me give some examples. We intend to create a pro-growth trusted data rights regime that is more proportionate and less burdensome than the EU’s GDPR—general data protection regulation—and the previous Culture Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), on 10 September announced a consultation that is the first stage in putting new rules in place.
We intend to review the inherited approach to genetically modified organisms—GMOs—which is too restrictive and not based on sound science. My right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary will also shortly set out plans to reform the regulation of gene-edited organisms. We will use the provisions of the Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021 to overhaul our clinical trial frameworks, which are based on outdated EU legislation, giving a major boost to the UK’s world-class research and development sector and getting patients access to new life-saving medicines more quickly. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is already reforming the medical devices regulations to create a world-leading regime in this area.
We will also unleash Britain’s potential as a world leader in the future of transport. My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary will next week set out ambitious plans including modernising outdated EU vehicle standards and unlocking the full range of new transport technologies. We also intend to repeal the EU’s court services regulations, a good example of a regulation that was geared heavily towards EU interests and frankly never worked for the UK. We will drive forward our work on artificial intelligence, where the UK is already at the forefront of driving global progress. We will shortly publish the UK’s first national AI strategy, setting out our plans to supercharge the UK’s AI ecosystem and set standards which will be world leading.
As recommended by TIGRR and the Penrose review and promised in the current consultation on reforming the better regulation framework, we will put in place much more rigorous tests within Government before taking the decision to regulate. Now that we have control over all our laws, not just a subset of them, we will consider the reintroduction of a one in, two out system, which has been shown internationally to make a significant difference.
Finally, Brexit was about once again giving everyone in this country a say in how it is run, and that is true in this area, too; we aim to tap into everyone’s ideas. Accordingly, we will create a new standing commission under visible and energetic leadership to receive ideas from any British citizen on how to repeal or improve regulations. The commission’s job will be to consider such ideas and make recommendations for change, but it will only be able to make recommendations to us in one way: in the direction of reducing or eliminating burdens. I hope in this way we will tap into the collective wisdom of the British people and begin to remove the dominance of the arbitrary rule of unknown origin over people’s day-to-day lives.
Let me finish by being clear that this is just the beginning of our ambitious plans. I will return to this House regularly to update Members on our progress and, more importantly, to set out further intentions. Brexit was about taking back control: the ability to remove the distortions created by EU membership and to do things differently in ways that work better for this country and promote growth, productivity and prosperity. That is what we intend to do.
I recognise Brexit was not a choice originally supported by all in this country, or even by some in this House, but Brexit is now a fact. This country has now embarked upon a great voyage. We each have the opportunity to make this new journey a success—to make us more contented, more prosperous and more united—and I hope everyone will join us in achieving that. I commend this statement to the House.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Let me begin by welcoming the Paymaster General to his new role. I thank him for advance sight of his statement. In fact, I imagine he had about as much advance sight of it as I did—11.40? However, I sympathise with him, not just for being thrown into this particular deep end, but for the title that was given to him for today’s statement.
Before I go into that, let me say that the proposals that the Paymaster General has mentioned will demand careful consideration once we have been able to examine the detail. For example, he mentioned the recent Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport proposals for reform of the data regime. If they are anything to go by, every measure in that package will need to be carefully considered, not just on its own merits but for the implications for our trading relationship with Europe. There was also reference in the statement to GMOs, research and development, vehicle standards and artificial intelligence, and all kinds of other things may be hidden in the huge category of law that has yet to be reviewed. We will come back to this, I have no doubt.
Let me return to the title of the statement: “Brexit: Opportunities”. That is the title, yet the country faces continuing shortages of staff and supplies, exacerbated by the Government’s Brexit deal, while businesses across the country face mounting losses in trade with Europe directly caused by the Government’s Brexit deal, and the people of Northern Ireland remain stuck in limbo as the Government refuse to implement the Brexit deal that they negotiated. Into all that, along comes the new Paymaster General to talk about all the wonderful opportunities that await us because of the marvellous Brexit deal, which is working so well at present. If he will excuse the unkind metaphor on the first day of his new job, it is a bit like the Pudding Lane baker strolling around the great fire of London asking people running for their lives if they have any orders for Christmas.
On the issue of opportunities, I will happily have a debate with the Paymaster General, whenever he wants to have one, about how the Government are wasting the opportunities of Brexit when it comes to the lack of ambition and innovation in both the roll-over trade deals they agreed last year and the new negotiations that they have begun since. I will happily have a debate, too, whenever he wants to have one, on the merits of the Government’s strategy to downgrade trade with Europe in favour of trade with Asia, on the fantastical basis that we can make up all the losses our exporters are facing in their trade with the EU through the gains that we will make through trade with the Asia-Pacific. The flagship policy of that strategy is the UK’s accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, according to the Government’s own figures, will produce a £1.7 billion increase in UK exports to those Asia-Pacific countries over a 15-year period. That is roughly a third of what we exported to Luxembourg last year alone—the covid-affected year.
I will happily debate that strategy with the Paymaster General on another day, but what I want to focus on today, and what I urge him to focus on in the new role he has been given, is not the imagined opportunities of Brexit that might happen in the next year, two years or five years, but the real practicalities that need sorting out today—the holes that need fixing in our deal with Europe to support British businesses through this period of economic recovery and resolve the impasse in Northern Ireland.
Can the Paymaster General tell us where we stand on the Government’s efforts to secure mutual recognition of professional qualifications and regulatory equivalence for financial services, so that our key growth industries in the professional and financial sectors can get back to doing busines in Europe with the speed and simplicity that they enjoyed before Brexit? Can he tell us where the Government stand in their efforts to seek mutual recognition of conformity assessments to remove the double testing of products that is costing our key industries both time and money? Can he tell us not just what the latest plan is to kick the can down the road in Northern Ireland, but how we are going to reach a sustainable and permanent solution?
On that note, may I ask the Paymaster General to clear up one specific mystery, which relates to the Cabinet Office? In March last year, without publicity and without an open consultation, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs paid McKinsey consultants £1 million for eight weeks’ work to provide
“the most effective solutions to ensure food security and choice is maintained for consumers in Northern Ireland”
after checks on GB-NI goods were introduced. My question to the Paymaster General is this: if the best brains at McKinsey were given two months and £1 million by the Government to examine that problem and come up with a solution, what is the answer that they provided? Is the reality that they, like the Government, have no better alternative solution than a veterinary agreement—the solution that businesses want, the solution that the EU says would work, the solution that every Opposition party in this House supports, but the solution that Ministers are refusing to consider?
That brings me to my final question—the great unanswered question when it comes to Brexit practicalities, which I hope the Paymaster General will not try to evade as so many of his predecessors have. When Lord Frost was asked on 24 June why he would not pursue the option, even in the short term, of a veterinary agreement with the European Union to resolve many of the problems at the border, he said:
“We’re very ambitious about TPP membership, so…it might turn out to be quite short term. That’s the problem.”
Can the Paymaster General answer two questions? First, why do the Government believe—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Just before the right hon. Lady asks any more questions, let me say that she has significantly exceeded her time. I know that we are in a bit of flux, so I will allow her to finish, but I hope that she and others will note that keeping to time is important as a courtesy to others.
Emily Thornberry
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The questions I want to ask are these. First, why do the Government believe that signing a veterinary agreement with the EU is incompatible with their ambitions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Secondly, if the answer is that joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership requires them to diverge from EU standards in relation to food safety, which is the only logical explanation for the comments that Lord Frost has made, can the Paymaster General tell us which specific standards they plan to diverge from?
I urge the Paymaster General, in his first appearance in his new position, to come out of the fantasy world that his predecessors have been living in together with Lord Frost and join us in the real world, together with Britain’s business community—the world of delays and shortages, red tape and bureaucracy, lost business and lost trade. It is a world that demands sensible answers and practical action from the Cabinet Office, not just another Minister addicted to dogma and wishful thinking.
Michael Ellis
I thank the right hon. Lady for her welcome and her kind words. I have now been Attorney General, Solicitor General and Paymaster General in the last seven days, so I think I ought to have a uniform. Her opening remarks were very welcome.
The right hon. Lady is quite right, of course, that everything will be considered carefully, and that is why we are asking the British people to assist us in this regard, but she should welcome the opportunities that Brexit has afforded this country. The Labour party’s relentless—may I say poisonous?—negativity about the opportunities of Brexit really is a sight to behold. What about the wonderful positions of this country now that we are free from the shackles of the regulation and bureaucracy, and the burdensome arrangements, that were applied carte blanche to all member states of the European Union?
I urge the right hon. Lady to look at the positives—the fact, for example, that this country is now the No. 1 country in the G7 for economic growth on the GDP front, and that we have a million job opportunities for our constituents and the people of this country. Those are positives. Those are things that have been delivered post Brexit, and work is in progress—negotiations and discussions. She knows well that the matters that she raises are at the forefront of the priorities of this Government and are being worked on keenly.
The right hon. Lady spoke of Lord Frost and his comments about ambition. Of course, Lord Frost and I share—as do the whole Government—the ambition of this country. If only the Labour party shared that ambition, I think that she would find greater support.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement. Our report was put together independently, taking full evidence from various areas of industry, services and so on. It represents their views about how best to resolve this issue. They include many who were strong remainers at the time of the debate, as well as those who voted for Brexit. There was no delineation. They all recognise where we are now and how we take advantage of it. I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to that and I thank my noble Friend Lord Frost for being so serious about implementation. One recommendation that I think is vital, and which the Bank of England was very clear it would like to see to help it in its heavy lifting, is to have a committee in the House that reports back on regulation/deregulation to follow up on all this. It should have the powers that, say, the Treasury Committee has, to dig into where the regulators go and whether they are getting the balance of economic advantage right in those regulations. May I ask him and the Government to think again? They have got rid of one regulatory committee, but there is definitely the need for another here to provide trust in the way we regulate.
Michael Ellis
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for the very able work he and his team did in this regard. I have taken note of his point about the Bank of England and a committee. I can say that, even though I have only been in office for a few hours, I have already touched on that with Lord Frost. Further discussions will ensue.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I thank the Paymaster General for his just-in-time approach to giving me foresight of his statement. Will he confirm he recognises that Scots law and the Scots legal framework is protected by the Act of Union, and that they should be treated appropriately during this exercise? I have to say that I very much doubt the majority of Scots will be rushing to do away with new protections enshrined in Scots law and protected by the Scottish Parliament. I am very concerned that this statement comes out at a time when we were expecting some real progress on helping our exporters get through the continuing muddle of exporting to the EU. National Farmers Union Scotland and Scotland Food and Drink are in bits trying to sort out what is happening, so can we have further explanation of what is actually being done in that regard?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I can, of course, confirm that. I know about Scots law, having held the Law Officer roles in this country. We have the greatest respect for Scots law. She is quite right that since 1707 the Act of Union has respected that position and will continue to do so. That is without question. On the point she makes about exports, she knows that these issues are occurring around the world at the moment for myriad reasons. We are working in that regard to improve the situation.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome the generalissimo to his place on the Front Bench. May I say what a pleasure it is to have been part of this project and to put on record our thanks to the civil servants in the Cabinet Office, led magnificently by Will Hayter? The team did a huge amount of work for us. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that there are three big messages from this? First, those who have insisted that there is not regulatory dividend from Brexit, other than rushing to the bottom and slashing standards, could not be more wrong. The approach we have set out here is that, liberated from an inevitably bureaucratic and slow-moving European framework, Britain can lead in setting the standards in clinical trials, AI and other fast-emerging sectors. I say that as a former Minister with responsibility for life sciences and the future of transport, and a former remainer. If we are going to go through this, as we are, let us make it an opportunity where we liberate our entrepreneurs and our innovators.
Secondly, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, crucially, there is a big message for levelling up? If we unlock those new sectors, it is not all about growth in Cambridge and Oxford. In nutraceuticals, functional foods, satellites, robotics and AI there are clusters around the country, including in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. That strengthens the United Kingdom as a centre of innovation.
Thirdly, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, crucially, we need to make sure that this links to international trade; Britain putting in variable tariffs around our standards so that we use our aid, trade and security to fly the flag for the best food, AI and technology, and to make Britain a global hub of innovation?
Michael Ellis
My hon. Friend could not be more right, if I can put it that way. Those who were naysayers and gainsayers, those who were so relentlessly negative, are clearly wrong. They now know they are in the wrong. They were saying that nothing could be done to improve this country’s position post Brexit. That is clearly wrong. Britain can lead the world. It is leading the world in many areas and will continue to do so under this Government. We are liberated and we are continuing to liberate our industries, trade and services from the shackles of bureaucracy. We will continue to do that, while at the same time, as he ably says, levelling up the whole of this country.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I listened carefully to the Paymaster General’s statement. A significant amount of legislation has come from Europe to protects workers, whether it is health and safety, workers’ rights or equalities legislation. Will he guarantee that under this new bonfire of regulation he will not diminish any of those workers’ rights, which have been hard-fought for by working people across Europe?
Michael Ellis
Of course, this is not about negatively affecting health and safety. This is about supporting workers. This is about supporting business. It is about making life easier for people and building the economy of this country. That is what it will do.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The huge success of the recovery trial for covid treatments and the development, authorisation and delivery of the covid vaccination programme show just some of what we can achieve in Brexit Britain. Will my right hon. and learned Friend give priority to repealing and replacing the clinical trials directive, and replace it with a modern regulatory framework that can lead the world in this important area of health and the economy?
Michael Ellis
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point and we will certainly be looking at that as a priority.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
“Brexit: Opportunities” seems to me very much a contradiction in terms, but I have listened carefully to the exchanges this afternoon. People recognise that we have now left the European Union. Whether we were a leaver or a remainer, that is the reality. I welcome that pragmatism. I urge the Government also to be pragmatic about what happens on the ground. Not everything is as well as it has sometimes been painted. My constituency of Bath is a global tourist destination. Several businesses are now operating shortened hours because of severe staff shortages caused by Brexit and the new immigration system. What are the Government doing in the next 12 months to address these lost economic opportunities in the hospitality sector?
Michael Ellis
I know the hon. Lady’s constituency well enough to know how beautiful it is. She talks, quite rightly, about its tourism value. The fact of the matter is that tourism has been very negatively affected, tragically, because of the covid-19 pandemic. It is nothing to do with Brexit. The reality is that, of course, we are pragmatic. We will be pragmatic and we listen to all. That is why we want to listen to the British people about how to reduce regulations.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I welcome the scale, scope and ambition of the impressive list of intentions that began the Minister’s statement. May I press him on one point, which he mentioned later on? It is a shared point between my report on competition policy, which he kindly mentioned, and the TIGRR report, which is about process ongoing to ensure that we do not return to a pro-regulatory ratchet. The difficulty we all face here is that the entire culture of this place and Whitehall more generally is to invent more rules. That is how we make our bones in this place. We need to have a really robust process that prevents that and puts it into reverse. The one in, two out—with no exceptions and no exemptions—is absolutely essential. I hope he will be able to firm that up and commit to it irrevocably as soon as possible.
Michael Ellis
I thank my hon. Friend for his work in this area. I agree about the almost inevitable direction of travel, unless there is an intercession, which is what the Government wish and intend to do with my statement today and the announcement that we are going forward with. I repeat my thanks for his work and assure him of our best intentions in regard to fulfilling his wishes.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Paymaster General is right—Brexit is now a fact—but clearly, the Government see advantage in keeping the grievance going. The EU remains our most important trading partner. It is hugely significant for businesses up and down the country, so instead of turning up the Brexit rhetoric, does he not think that the Government’s priority should be to listen to the problems raised by British business? Will he commit to looking at the recommendations highlighted in relation to those problems in the UK Trade and Business Commission’s report to be published on Monday?
Michael Ellis
I am happy to confirm that my party is the party of business. We do listen to business, and business prospers in this country under Conservative Governments and will continue to do so. Of course, our ears are open and always will be to views from all sides. That includes and, in fact, specifically in relation to regulations, will include businesses.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I commend my right hon. and learned Friend and his team on their excellent TIGRR report and on his very welcome statement. If he needs a uniform, I am sure Gieves & Hawkes will be happy to oblige him, for a reasonable fee. He said in his statement that we will establish a commission “to receive ideas from any British citizen on how to repeal or improve regulations”. I urge him to go further and include EU citizens—in particular, Michel Barnier, the former chief negotiator, who is now running to be President of France and has developed very strong views about repealing EU legislation that affects France. If he does not want to live under its laws any more, can we ask him to suggest which of its heritage laws we should junk as well? And as the Government will want to get on with it, can we remind Mr Barnier that the clock is now ticking?
Michael Ellis
My right hon. Friend makes a very good, apposite point. We will certainly take that back.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
As the Government look to consult on reform to personal data protection policy, concerns have been raised about the potential removal of article 22, which guarantees that people can seek a human review of an artificial intelligence-made decision, creating cause for concern for data protection campaigners. Will the Paymaster General confirm whether the Government have assessed the impact of this potential removal in relation to negotiating trade deals with other countries?
Michael Ellis
Of course, the whole area of AI will open up myriad issues such as the one that the hon. Lady referred to. The Government are alive to those points and will take all those issues into careful consideration.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend to his place and, as Chair of the Justice Committee, thank him for and pay tribute to the admirable way in which he exercised his duties as a Law Officer of the Crown, which he did impeccably. He will know from those previous posts, better than most, the level of complexity that surrounds retained EU law and that removing it will be no less complex. We need to ensure that we do so in a way that does not create legal uncertainty or disadvantage the United Kingdom financial markets, for example, in relation to ongoing, long-term contractual arrangements or financial instruments. Will he make sure that we do this with great care, perhaps working with experts such as TheCityUK and the Financial Markets Law Committee, and that we structure that in such a way that enables financial and legal services to benefit from access to new markets that we may be able to open up as a result of free trade agreements?
Michael Ellis
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and for his kind remarks earlier in the House. He is right about legal—as well as financial—services, and this is an opportunity. The legal community that I and he both know in this country is a world leader. We have first-class people who support our legal prowess around the world based right here. We want to do everything we can to further build on that and he is absolutely right to emphasise the importance of that sector. It is important economically, morally and in our leadership around the world, and we will continue to work to support it.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
I am glad to hear that the Paymaster General is looking at new export markets and opportunities, but the problem here and now, and what businesses in my constituency are concerned about, is the increased barriers that have occurred with our biggest trading partner across Europe. Will he undertake to listen to and address those concerns and perhaps outline what impact the changes that he has made today will have in supporting businesses to resolve this situation? Ultimately, it is costing more money for those businesses and costing jobs.
Michael Ellis
Of course, we are always listening to business. The point that the hon. Gentleman makes is one that we are focusing on. He will also recognise that there are issues around Europe and, indeed, in countries around the world of a similar nature. We are all faced with issues following the pandemic and other circumstances that have arisen and we will continue to support business in all the areas we can.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, I welcome the Paymaster General to his position and wish him well. I remind him of his comments when he referred to eliminating the Brexit burden for the United Kingdom, especially for Northern Ireland. Can he outline what steps are being taken to address the disgraceful Northern Ireland protocol regulations, which see empty shelves, increased cost for every Northern Ireland citizen and disregard for the constitutional position of Northern Ireland? I remind him of the petition with 100,000-plus names that came to this House. Will he take the readily available opportunity to resolve this issue and trigger article 16?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. If I may make a personal remark, my mother was born in Northern Ireland and I understand the issues that he refers to. His support for his constituents and the people of Northern Ireland is something that everyone in this House recognises. The Government recognise the importance of our Union and of Northern Ireland and everything will be done that needs to be done to continue to support Northern Ireland.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. and learned Friend to his new role and thank him for his statement. It is absolutely right that we review retained EU law and do what is right, in the interests of this country, but does he share my concern that there will be some, I suspect even in this House—I know that will shock you, Madam Deputy Speaker—who will see this review as an opportunity to continue the referendum debate and to continue the divisions? Does he share my view that we should now accept that we have left the EU and unite together to not only face some of the challenges that we inevitably face, but grasp the opportunities for the benefit of our whole country?
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
Northern Ireland did not seek Brexit and it has been very destabilising for the region, but from the Social Democratic and Labour party’s pragmatic perspective, we are trying to make lemonade out of the lemons that we have been handed. It is disappointing that Northern Ireland’s unique dual market access is not among the opportunities that the Paymaster General has identified. The fact is that, under the protocol, being at the hinge of the UK and EU single markets is the first unique economic selling point that Northern Ireland has had after decades of sluggishness and low productivity. Will he commit his Government to working with all parties and with the business community in Northern Ireland to allow Northern Ireland to try to make the best of the hand that we have been dealt, in the interests of people and businesses of all communities, by promoting that unique dual market access to businesses in the UK and overseas?
Michael Ellis
I disagree with the hon. Lady on one thing: I do not think that Northern Ireland has only one unique selling point. I think it has multiple selling points and the people of Northern Ireland are an integral part of this kingdom. Of course, tourism is one element of Northern Ireland that is also a substantial prowess. She does recognise, I know, that in this House, this party and this Government have always focused on supporting the people throughout the United Kingdom, which is why we are pushing the levelling-up agenda that she has been hearing so much about. She will find that that will continue to support her constituents and the people of the whole Province of Northern Ireland.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Paymaster General to his place, and, obviously, I warmly welcome the statement.
One of the many reasons the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke—over 70%—voted to leave the European Union was their wish to see us take back control of our borders. As we are being asked to feed in some ideas, may I feed one idea to the Paymaster General? Let us get out of the European convention on human rights, and then let us scrap the Human Rights Act in this country, so that foreign criminals who are taking advantage of the current system, and economic migrants who are crossing the English channel and entering this country illegally, can be deported very much more quickly than they are now.
Michael Ellis
I hear my hon. Friend’s points and of course he knows that we are now taking back control of our borders.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
I, too, warmly welcome the announcement from the new Paymaster General. It means that laws in this country will be made here in this Parliament, which is something that residents throughout Burnley and Padiham very much want to see. Will the Paymaster General confirm that this new approach will go hand in hand with our new free trade agreement policy, ensuring that our absolute focus is on supporting the small and medium-sized enterprises that are the backbone of this country?
Michael Ellis
My hon. Friend is, of course, quite right. With the establishment of the points-based immigration system that I have just mentioned, and the bilateral trade agreements that my hon. Friend has just mentioned—agreements with over 60 countries in addition to the EU, accounting for £889 billion of UK bilateral trade in 2019—things are looking up, and will continue to do so.
COP26: Devolved Administrations
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
And so we move on, and come to the debate on the role and response of the devolved Administrations to COP26, an event that will take place in the wonderful city of Glasgow. I call Brendan O’Hara to move the motion.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the role and response of the devolved Administrations to COP26.
It is a pleasure to open the debate. May I put on record my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for it?
Before I begin, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I seek your indulgence to mention, as a curtain raiser to COP26, that we are in the middle of Oxfam’s Second Hand September campaign? It encourages people to think about the 13 million items of clothing—95% of which are perfectly good, and could and should be reused and recycled—that we send to landfill every year. It will come as no surprise to my colleagues sitting behind me that today I am kitted out head-to-toe in clothes sourced from the wonderful charity shops across Argyll and Bute.
We are just 47 days away from the start of COP26, which will probably be the most important gathering of world leaders ever to take place. They will come to Glasgow with one job: to keep their promise to cut global emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°, and thus to give the world a fighting chance in the war against climate change. It will take courage, it will take determination, and it will take sacrifice. It will require all the developed countries to make good their promise to help others to move away from producing planet-warming emissions. They have no option: it has to be done, and it has to be done now.
Just last month, a report co-authored by 200 climate scientists and described as a “code red for humanity” was published by the United Nations. It makes harrowing reading. Those scientists were unequivocal in saying that global climate change is accelerating, and that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the overwhelming cause of that change. The UN Secretary-General said:
“This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
According to the report, global surface temperatures are reaching levels not seen in the past 100,000 years, and each of the last four decades has been the warmest on record.
Those scientists were simply confirming what we have all seen or experienced ourselves. We know that our summers are becoming hotter and drier, and our winters warmer and wetter. Flooding is increasing, as I know from my own constituency, where unprecedented levels of rainfall are causing the already unstable hillside which towers over the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful to crumble on to the road with alarming regularity. This summer saw the highest recorded temperature ever on the planet: 54.4° in Death Valley, California. We also witnessed wildfires raging out of control across Europe, Canada and the United States, and down into Central and South America. It was the same in Africa, Australia, and Russia, where fires were raging out of control and more intense than ever before. Now, human habitation is no longer possible across great swathes of the world, because we in the developed world have created a climate emergency—one in which, as always, those who are least responsible for creating the problem are having to bear the biggest burden of sorting it out
The world’s largest economies all signed up to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, but most of them are set to miss those targets because of our continued over-reliance on fossil fuels. Although it makes grim reading, the UN report does provide a glimmer of hope, saying that it is still possible to avoid catastrophic levels of warming—but only if we dramatically and permanently cut our emissions now, and that will require unprecedented and transformational change. We have a very small and fast-diminishing window of opportunity in which to act, but act we must. This COP26 meeting is the most important meeting that any city has ever hosted, because the world has one last chance to deliver on what was signed up to in Paris, and we have to get it right.
Although it is the UK Government who will be officially hosting COP26, it is hugely important, given that it is the Governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast who are designing and implementing their own policies to tackle climate change, that all the nations of these islands are given a fair voice at the meeting. It is also important to recognise that the nations of the United Kingdom are not necessarily moving at the same speed, or with the same priorities or the same degree of urgency, in addressing climate change. In that regard—and despite being the host of an event in Scotland—the Prime Minister does not necessarily speak for the whole United Kingdom on these matters.
Just last week, when the public in Scotland were asked who would better represent Scotland at COP26, the Prime Minister polled just 16% of the vote, while our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, polled well over 50%. That was not an accident. I believe that those figures reflect the fact that the people of Scotland trust their Government to make these difficult but important decisions—the ones that are required to save the planet—and that they are extremely sceptical about the ability, or indeed the commitment, of the Prime Minister to make those changes. Scotland knows that our Government were among the first in the world to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency, and that this conference will provide Scotland with a fantastic opportunity to showcase to the rest of the world our ambitious approach to tackling the climate emergency and achieving a net zero future.
I expect that Conservative Members will be primed with notes saying, “What about this target that was missed?” or “What about that goal that was not reached?” Of course, they may be factually correct, but it is a consequence of setting the bar so high, and having an ambition to achieve that goes far beyond anything that has been achieved before, that on occasion, unfortunately, things will not go to plan and targets will be missed. But I —and, I am sure, the people of Scotland—would not want our Government to have taken the path of least resistance and to have set low, almost meaningless targets. And what we are doing is working, with Scotland recently managing to produce 97% of its electricity requirements from renewable sources. In the decade to 2018, Scotland reduced emissions by 31%, faster than any other nation of the UK and ahead of any G20 nation. Transport, however, remains the largest source of emissions, which is why the Scottish Government are committed to reducing emissions by 75% by 2030, and have set a legally binding target of achieving net zero by 2045.
As we all know, the oil and gas sector is a significant and important player in the Scottish economy. That is why the Scottish Government are committed to a challenging but necessary “just transition”, to move away from fossil fuels and to a future based on renewable energy. We all understand that, while moving away from oil and gas is essential, and while it is important to do that as quickly as possible, it must also be done fairly. Those of us old enough to remember what happened in Scotland in the 1980s, when the Tory Government callously destroyed mining communities to such an extent that many have not fully recovered to this day, will understand why we could not possibly let that happen again. That is why, backed by £500 million, the Scottish Government’s Just Transition Commission will work with communities, businesses and trades unions to ensure that those in high-quality, highly skilled jobs are supported in transitioning away from traditionally carbon-intensive sectors.
While Scotland is doing everything it can to meet those challenges, there are areas in which, because of the current constitutional situation with power being held in this place, we will require the UK Government to assist Scotland in becoming net zero by 2045. Specifically, that relates to our ability to benefit from the world-leading tidal energy technology that has been developed by companies such as Nova and Atlantis, but whose growth is being stymied by the lack of a proper route to market via the contracts for difference options, which would allow this hugely important sector to grow and flourish.
It is a similar story for the development of carbon capture and storage. The Government will remember, as we all do, how they pulled the plug at the last minute on the Peterhead carbon capture and storage plan back in 2015. After all the work that had gone in to preparing it, that was a particularly cruel blow for the UK Government to inflict. The only silver lining is that Scotland now has the infrastructure in place for when the UK Government announce their preferred carbon capture and storage facility next month. That would mean all the emissions from the Peterhead power plant, from the hydrogen production facility at St Fergus and from Grangemouth—Scotland’s largest polluter—could be captured and stored in a basin deep under the North sea. Indeed, so vast is that basin that it is estimated that 6.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide could be captured and stored each year by 2030, totalling half a gigatonne of C02 by 2050, with the ability to expand even further thereafter. As well as allowing Scotland to reach its net zero target, it is estimated that this one CCS project could create up to 20,000 green technology jobs. The Scottish cluster is ready to go, and if the UK Government fail once again to deliver this facility to Peterhead, it will quite rightly be seen as a political decision taken in this place, against the interests of Scotland.
In conclusion, the Scottish Government have repeatedly said that they are committed to working closely with the UK Government and others to deliver a safe, secure and, above all, successful COP26. However, they are also determined that this will be a people’s COP and that the communities and groups whose voices have been continually ignored and sidelined in climate discussions will be heard. Often vulnerable indigenous communities whose land has been devastated by soaring temperatures, a lack of rain, too much rain or rising sea levels, or destroyed by hurricanes or deforestation, must be heard and they must be heeded.
I am delighted that the Scottish Government have set up the world’s first climate justice fund to support vulnerable communities in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda to address the impact of climate change. It would send a wonderful message to the world if the United Kingdom Government were to follow that lead and establish their own UK climate justice fund ahead of COP26. However, we should be in no doubt that in Glasgow next month the world’s leaders will be drinking in the last chance saloon. For all our sakes, they have to get it right. Will be watching closely what they do.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
It is a great privilege to rise and talk in this debate. I welcome the topic and I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can involve the devolved Administrations in this. The first half of the speech by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) was a spectacular opening, and I pay tribute to him for that. It went downhill a bit, with a couple of political points and some charged polling. I would be interested to see who commissioned the poll and what the target audience was, but I am sure that we can take that offline to discuss it further.
Representing Montgomeryshire, I represent the Centre for Alternative Technology. The people there have been talking about this subject and devising plans since way before it was fashionable, and way before devolution. They have been at this for decades. I would have liked to hear much more in this debate about getting communities involved, more broadly than politicians and more broadly than the typical argument about the devolved Administrations being left out. Clearly, much of what needs to happen at this very important COP involves UK reserved powers.
I very much welcome the fact that the UK Government chose Glasgow and that we will be able to showcase what the devolved Administrations and many cities have led on. I welcome both the working groups that were set up early in this process to bring the DAs together with the COP President and to bring together the cities and Mayors of the United Kingdom, including Edinburgh, Manchester, Cardiff and Birmingham. They brought our huge urban conurbations together to talk about what we can do in the urban and rural space.
I thought it was remiss of the hon. Gentleman to comment about who should lead the welcomes and who should be front and centre. We need to put politics aside over the last couple of weeks before COP. We need to get behind the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the negotiations that are happening right now to get international leaders together. As the Centre for Alternative Technology has set out time and again, this needs to be tackled on a global basis.
I have no doubt that we will hear in this debate how the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government are world leading and the best. Maybe even the Northern Ireland Executive will feature, but let us be frank about the significant changes that have happened under this Government. Let us be frank about the fact that we have settled the climate change argument and are moving at a pace on energy distribution and on fundamental policies that have been difficult to grasp. This debate is happening in nuclear week, and there is no doubt in my mind that the nuclear industry has a huge role to play in achieving that, be that through the small modular reactors of Dwyfor Meirionnydd or through Wylfa in north Wales, a larger, more strategic site. Clearly, these are UK competences that we need to be lobbying and levering the UK Government on.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Would the hon. Gentleman nevertheless admit that his Government now need to start moving ahead from the short-term decisions that they are making, and to start making real decisions and announcements in relation to energy and how it is to be funded in future? Otherwise, I fear that we will just be making more empty words.
Craig Williams
The right hon. Lady and I share the campaign to get an SMR into our area of the world, and she is of course right. We on these Benches are looking to the UK Government to make these important decisions. Sizewell C hangs over all our heads across the House, as do the more practical applications of SMRs. There are important decisions to be made, but I suppose that underscores what I am trying to say about how this debate needs to focus on bringing these ideas together.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Yesterday, I asked the Prime Minister whether he believed that burning fossil fuels would be a source of energy in the future and he replied that it would not. But he was only talking about coal. Today I have asked for a debate on this important issue. How do we go about stopping burning fossil fuels as a source of energy? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need an urgent debate in Parliament to discuss these vital issues?
Craig Williams
I was here when the hon. Member asked that question, and I heard the answer. It was a very good answer. I remember the Prime Minister emphasising coal, and that was not just words; it was clear action. I do not think anyone in the Chamber could doubt the reduction of coal in our energy network, and that has been due to clear action by this Government, putting their money where their mouth is. I would welcome a further debate on fossil fuels.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member not realise, though, that his Government continue to funnel billions into fossil fuel projects overseas, locking communities into the fossil fuel age for generations?
Craig Williams
Clearly that is being phased out, but the hon. Member will know that her constituents expect a fair energy price. We need to transition carefully to new technologies—[Interruption.] I am sure she will have an opportunity to make a speech soon.
I want to bring my remarks to a conclusion, because I know that other Members want to talk in this important debate. Hopefully, to change the tone from some of what Opposition Members have said, this is about bringing together communities, businesses and third parties such as the Centre for Alternative Technology. Rather than have a fuzzy, politically charged constitutional debate, the UK Government have taken COP to Scotland, which is brilliant. There is no doubt a role for the Scottish Government, as the Prime Minister has said, but these international negotiations are clearly led by the UK Government. We must work together as a family of nations, but we cannot have a constitutional debate on the sidelines as it would distract attention and not help with the important matters at hand.
I implore SNP Members that, if they really want to put their mouth where these issues are, the next couple of weeks are critical. They should get behind the negotiation process and the communities that want to see real action. It is incredibly clear that politically charged comments such as “We want our First Minister to be at the head of the queue” add nothing.
Brendan O’Hara
I fear the hon. Gentleman may have written his speech before I gave mine.
Brendan O’Hara
That probably says a lot. Where in my speech did I suggest anything of the sort? I thought I was being collegiate from beginning to end, while pointing out areas of difference. Differences do exist, and to pretend that they do not is to deny reality.
Craig Williams
I will check Hansard, but I am absolutely sure that the hon. Gentleman mentioned a politically charged poll, to which I alluded. By implication, he was trying to undermine the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I realise that his speech was written way before he came into the Chamber and I am merely retorting, but that seemed to be the charge. I finish by reiterating that I think such comments add nothing to this debate, and if there is any Opposition rhetoric saying, “We’re good, you’re bad,” I ask why. What does that achieve today? [Interruption.] There will be plenty of time for the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) to speak, and I look forward to intervening on her.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
I rise to make a short contribution to today’s important debate.
We all know that our planet and way of life in this country and around the world are facing an existential threat from climate change. COP26 is probably the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control, and no one should underestimate the importance of the next few weeks.
The past few months have seen record high temperatures in the Pacific north-west, and we are increasingly familiar with extreme weather events closer to home. February 2020 was the wettest on record in Wales, resulting in Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis, which devastated homes in my constituency and many others. All this underlines the fact that this is not a challenge that we can or should leave to future generations; it is one that we must all face together now.
I am proud that the Senedd became the first Parliament in the world to vote to declare a climate emergency in 2019, and that is why the Welsh Labour Government introduced measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Wales, culminating in a target of net zero emissions by 2050. The target is vital to protect our planet’s future, and it is an ambitious target that will require a concerted effort from all of us: Governments, industries, communities and individuals.
Of course, Governments must take a lead. Through their warm homes scheme, the Welsh Labour Government have installed energy efficiency measures in more than 60,000 households that are experiencing fuel poverty They have also invested in major renewable energy infrastructure projects, including the Awel y Môr offshore wind farm and the world-class centre for marine engineering at Pembroke Dock. All the while, they are taking action to combat and limit the technologies that threaten our climate and environment in Wales and across the country, including by opposing fossil fuel extraction and maintaining the ban on fracking.
Wales has reached the milestone of generating more than 50% of the energy we consume from renewable sources, up from 19% in 2014. But of course there is more that must be done for us to meet our 2050 target and ensure a sustainable future for all communities.
Colleagues will know that, following the Senedd elections in May, the Welsh Labour Government established a new Ministry for Climate Change, under the leadership of Welsh Ministers Julie James and Lee Waters. This bold decision to bring housing, transport, planning and energy policy together under one roof is a clear signal that the Welsh Government will use all the levers they have to tackle the climate emergency. Their plan, “A Climate Conscious Wales”, is now in its second year of delivery, and a national flood strategy, published in October 2020, sets out how Wales will manage flood risk over the next decade.
In the coming Senedd term, the Welsh Government will expand renewable energy generation by public bodies and community groups in Wales, working towards a target of 1 GW of public sector and community renewable energy capacity by 2030. Of course the transition to a fully green economy requires difficult choices. In Wales, we are embedding the concept of a just transition through a social partnership, bringing together Government, trade unions and employers to consider the action that must be taken. We must also involve communities and residents.
As a relative youngster way back in 1992, I remember that the headline from the Rio summit was “Think global, act local.” That has stuck with me for many years, and it underlines that we can all do our bit to contribute to the whole but, as I said, Governments can and must take the lead.
I have outlined some of the measures being taken in Wales to combat climate change, and I hope there can be close co-operation with the UK Government as we all focus our attention on hitting that 2050 target. As we know, the UN climate summit, COP26, which this country is hosting in Glasgow in just a few weeks’ time, is a critical moment for our planet and our country. The eyes of the world will be upon us, so I hope Ministers will ensure they meaningfully involve the Welsh Government and, indeed, devolved and regional Administrations across the UK in the preparations for COP26. It is important that we provide a co-ordinated UK-wide approach to the challenges we face. If we cannot come at this together in our own country, we cannot expect the rest of the world to rise to the challenge. COP26 is an opportunity to provide the leadership that we and our planet need. We are at a crucial point and it will take all of us to put our shoulders to the wheel.
I hope the Minister will provide some of the necessary reassurances that we are all looking for.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, particularly given how close we are to COP26. If we are to make a success of COP26 and of cutting our emissions, it must be a national endeavour. The UK Government cannot do it alone, and no devolved Administration can do it alone. It will require all of us—local authorities, regional Mayors, devolved authorities, the UK Government and the private sector—to come together in this shared national endeavour.
Everyone has a vital role to play, because everyone has different economic levers to pull, everyone has vehicle fleets that need to become wholly electric and everyone has building stock, office stock and housing stock that need to change. Across every single layer, we all have an opportunity to be ambitious, to show the world what we can do and to show the world that team UK, as host of COP26, is working in the same direction.
I was pleased to see the Prime Minister recognise that it is a shared endeavour when he pulled together the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group, which brings together the COP26 President and not only the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but the climate change Ministers from all the devolved authorities, the Mayors and the regional advisory councils that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) mentioned. Doing all of that, and pulling together the different levels of government and the private sector, shows the world what needs to happen. There are countries that look to us for that leadership.
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
My hon. Friend just made the important point that COP26 is about countries coming together to work with the UK on tackling climate change. My constituents constantly have flooding. Our all-party group on the United Nations global goals for sustainable development has a new report coming out and it says that the SDGs are the framework for all countries to work together to tackle issues such as climate change and flooding in my constituency.
Antony Higginbotham
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and wholeheartedly agree with her. In Burnley and Padiham, we have suffered flooding as well, and this is not just a UK problem; it is a problem across the whole world. It is only by working together that we can solve some of those big issues.
I agree with what the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) said about setting stretching targets. That is absolutely what we need to do. He is right to say that we may not always hit those targets, but we stretch them because it spurs on investment and encourages people to think innovatively. However, may I give a word of caution? We also need to make sure that stretching targets are realistic. There is a balance to be struck between stretching a target and creating a realistic one.
We should also use COP26 to show people where we have come from and what some of those stretching targets have achieved; we can look at the huge reduction in coal power, which my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire mentioned, and at the investment we are making in renewables. We need to see the rest of the world follow us in some of that investment. We have wind power in Humberside, hydrogen in the north-east, nuclear in the north-west and tidal up in Scotland. All of those things will make a difference and if we can use COP26 to encourage the rest of the world to follow our lead, and ideally to buy British as they are doing it, we will make this a success.
The devolved authorities, local authorities and regional mayors all have an important part to play. There are incredibly positive opportunities for all levels of government to use. I wish to say one more thing on cost, because the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) rightly mentioned the enormous cost that will come from this transition. We spoke about that at a meeting with Net Zero North West just a few weeks ago, and it is why it is so important that all of team UK works together. This cannot be done just by a local authority or a devolved Administration. It requires the broad shoulders of the Treasury and of the private sector as well. I hope that at COP26, in a few weeks’ time, we see all of team UK, all the different representatives, come together to show the world what we can do.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
The scale of this climate crisis is huge and we are reaching a pivotal moment, with COP26 just weeks away. That is the time when we all need to come together, and the UK Government must show that they can lead, prove their diplomacy and bring the world together to take that urgent action that is so needed. We have seen the scale of this climate crisis; over the summer, we have seen heatwaves, flooding, forest fires and fires in the Arctic. In my constituency, I have seen devastating flooding, which has a huge human impact. There are people in my constituency who are afraid to go to bed at night when they hear heavy rain, and they take it in turns to walk around the perimeter of their area—of the roads—looking at the river levels, living for weeks on end with their furniture upstairs. That is no way to live. That means we must be acting, as this is happening not only in our own backyards—across this country, across Wales—but across the world.
Wales may be a small country, but we are one that punches above our weight. The scale and delivery of what we offer is huge, showing that the Welsh Labour Government can lead the way on action—action on cutting carbon emissions and on recycling, making us the second best in Europe and the third best in the world. I am proud to have played a part in that. I am proud that when I was a special adviser to the Welsh Government for many years we brought in those strategies, with the result that we are now leading the charge. I am proud to have helped bring in the groundbreaking Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which puts sustainability at the heart of every decision the public sector makes in Wales. That is groundbreaking and it has changed how public service and the public sector work together in Wales. We also have a moratorium on road building and we have stopped fracking.
We are doing all those things in Wales to play our part, but we are not doing it alone and we cannot do it alone. We work alongside many other devolved nations and regions across the world. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) mentioned, we are also doing it at home, establishing a super-Ministry for climate, with the Minister for Climate Change, Julie James, at the helm, overseeing energy policy, housing, planning, transport, climate and environment. All those things are in one ministry together, and the UK Government could well take a leaf out of our book in Wales.
We have seen action not only at government level, but at local community level, where we all have local community groups working well towards this; so many people understand the impact that climate has. In my community and constituency, we know the Great Big Green Week starts this week and we have many events starting. I helped to establish a local climate organisation, an environmental organisation, called Footprints, which helps build awareness of what each and every one of us can do to play our part. I also wish to mention Martine Brown, who works with my local Birchgrove Women’s Institute and has been a fantastic climate champion across the whole of Cardiff North.
Under Labour, Wales looks outward, working with other devolved nations and regions, where we know the action happens. I was fortunate to have played a key role in many COPs leading up to the Paris climate agreement. I saw the role that devolved nations and regions have to play. In the run-up to that agreement, I represented 50 states and regions across the world to make sure that in the official treaty—the official climate agreement text—it was ratified and acknowledged that these states and regions, devolved nations, play a part. It is where the action happens closer to the people. So why are Wales and devolved nations being left out in the cold at COP26? I hope the Minister can answer that in his response. Why have we had only three devolved meetings in the run-up to COP26? That is shameful.
Liz Saville Roberts
Will the hon. Lady join me in being concerned at how state aid is now to be reserved to this place and at the impact that will have on the good work being done in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Anna McMorrin
I thank the right hon. Member for that very good point. I hope that the Minister will address it in his response.
At the G7, the Prime Minister said that
“the world cannot have a prosperous future if we don’t work together to tackle climate change.”
He was absolutely right, so why cannot he and the Government work closely with the devolved nations to make that happen as a central part of this COP?
We know that developing nations are where people are most vulnerable to the climate crisis. I have spoken to many people at the front face of it, and I have talked about those in my constituency of Cardiff North, but it is people across the world in developing nations who are suffering the most. They are most vulnerable, but they do not have a seat at the table. Why not? They need that seat and they need proper finance where it is going to reach the-m.
We know that it is women who suffer most in the climate crisis—and it is women who find the solutions and the way out, keeping their families together. It is usually young girls who have to leave school early to cope and look after their family after suffering great floods or crises caused by the climate.
I hope that this Government will think again and put action over rhetoric and words. We hear great ambition and great targets, but no delivery and no action. As I mentioned in an intervention on the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), the Government continue to funnel billions into fossil fuel projects overseas. As they do that, they continue to cut aid. It does not work, and it is not compatible with tackling the climate crisis.
I hope that this is a pivotal moment, that we can come together and that the UK Government can learn from our devolved nations, work across the world and bring the world together to take action to meet the 1.5° target that is so desperately needed for the future of this planet and the future of humanity.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I should say for the sake of clarification that I hope we can manage without a time limit this afternoon. That will be possible if Members take about eight minutes or less. Most have taken considerably less, but if others speak for longer I will have to impose a time limit, which would be a pity because it should not be necessary.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I welcome this general debate on the devolved Administrations and COP26.
It is fantastic that the COP26 UN climate change conference, which is hosted by the UK in partnership with Italy, will take place this year at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. Wonderful, cultural, innovative Glasgow was chosen by the UK Government to host COP26 because of its extensive experience in hosting world-class events, its commitment to sustainability and its excellent facilities. It has recently been awarded the status of global green city and is ranked fourth in the world in the global destination sustainability index, which promotes best practice in responsible business tourism. That is a great achievement for a UK city—a Scottish city—and for Glasgow City Council and all its residential and business communities.
COP26 will be the largest summit that the UK has ever hosted, bringing together representatives from nearly 200 countries, including world leaders, experts and campaigners, as we accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris agreement and the United Nations framework convention on climate change. The UK is already leading the world in tackling climate change, and as we emerge from the pandemic we are determined to go further and build back greener in a way that benefits every part of society in every part of the UK.
The Government’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution will help us to deliver on that mission, including by creating thousands of new highly skilled green jobs, restoring our natural environment and helping people to save money by upgrading their home’s energy efficiency. Our green industrial revolution will be powered by companies and technologies from across the UK, delivering on the Government’s and our Prime Minister’s promise to level up and create jobs as we build back better and greener.
COP26 will unite the world to tackle climate change, but it also unites Great Britain and Northern Ireland—the United Kingdom—in its endeavours. Its aim is to encourage other countries to increase ambition and boost their climate plans for emissions reduction, as well as increasing climate finance pledges for developing countries.
The UK leads the world in tackling climate change: we were the first G7 country to legislate to achieve net zero by 2050, and we are decarbonising faster than any G20 country. All the devolved nations are part of that progress. The UK Government have established a COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group to bring together my right hon. Friend the COP26 President-designate, territorial Secretaries of State and climate change Ministers from the devolved Administrations. The ministerial group has been meeting quarterly and is designed to
“ensure effective engagement and collaboration on COP26.”
UK Government Ministers are working through the group to ensure that the summit is representative of the whole UK.
The UK Government are working with the devolved administrations to
“ensure an inclusive and ambitious summit for the whole of the UK.”
Ministers have repeatedly stressed that all parts of the UK will have important roles to play in ensuring the summit’s success. As a member of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, I welcome the joint delivery framework agreed between the Scottish delivery partners, including the Scottish Government, and the COP unit. The UK Government say that they want it to be as inclusive as possible.
It is absolutely brilliant that the Scottish Government have been undertaking work to prepare for COP26, including by announcing a community engagement programme, the stated aim of which is to
“engage communities in the journey to net zero and empower them to take action.”
It is also fantastic that the Scottish Government will host COY16, the 16th UN climate change conference of youth. As the official youth event, it will give young people a voice in the climate negotiations and set out their hopes and expectations for them. I am aware that the Scottish Government have provided £300,000 to deliver the event, and that as part of the Scottish Government’s legacy ambitions Scotland’s Climate Week is running this week, 13 to 19 September.
I am really looking forward to going to Glasgow the Select Committee, including some hon. Members present, to see how preparations for COP26 are progressing. We really have a great opportunity in this country to host such a historic event.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Diolch yn fawr iawn, Madam Ddirprwy Lefarydd. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) for securing this debate.
The summit to be held in Glasgow is a pivotal and welcome moment for the world to get climate action back on track as we look to rebuild post pandemic. It is also a welcome introduction for the world to the devolved nature of our islands’ Union. To give some context, I will quote the Prime Minister:
“I guess I don’t mind seeing a Saltire or two on that summit, but I want to see a Union flag—I don’t want to see Nicola Sturgeon anywhere near it.”
It is clear from his words that the devolved Governments have never been far from the thinking behind our collective UK approach to the COP26 summit and the pivotal role of devolved Governments in its potential success. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) —for Sir Drefaldwyn—made a very valid point earlier, even though he made it politically: climate change extends beyond the nation state. It also starts with what we do as individuals, and of course the role of the devolved Governments is absolutely critical within that.
The Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have long been leading lights in the UK’s climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. In Wales, our deep-seated commitment to sustainable development is enshrined in our founding constitution, I am proud to say; we have declared a climate emergency and legislated to ensure that decision making meets our global climate and justice responsibilities. In Scotland, our political cousins in the SNP, the gracious hosts of the summit, continue to implement the green transition both at home and abroad, in the latter case with a ground-breaking climate justice fund that brings much needed assistance to the global south. The same cannot be said in every case about this Government or their handling of the summit.
I recognise the work of the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group. I hope that today the Minister will greatly expand on the succinct communiqués—I think that is probably the best way to describe them—issued by the group to demonstrate this Government’s engagement with the devolved nations. But, as many have said already and will continue to say, actions speak louder than worders.
From support for fossil-fuel projects both at home and abroad to cuts to the overseas aid budget, inexplicable delays in key Treasury reports and the frankly shameful removal of climate commitments in trade deals, this Government have shambolically handled the dual opportunity presented as they are co-host to COP26 and the G7 president. In doing so, this Government have shown their conflict of priorities or disorganisation —we can describe it in different ways and I am sure it would be described differently on each side of the Chamber. For many people outside, and for many of our neighbours and the coalitions around the world, there will be a commentary on an obsession with display over substance, which has never been so dangerous as it is now, in that it threatens the global climate progress.
Just this week, the Scottish Government have had to step in to fund the UN conference of youth, which runs alongside COP26, after the UK Government refused. I thank the Scottish Government for remembering the fantastic efforts of the world’s youth through the Fridays for Future movement and acknowledging the need for youth engagement in climate policy, given that, in 2019, 1.2 billion people—or 16% of the global population—were aged between 15 and 24 years old. Where Westminster falters, the devolved nations lead—a truth that I hope the world will see at COP26, when it will see the reality of the relationships of the nations of the UK. When we talk about global Britain, let us remember that other structures are in play and that we need to use them to best effect.
In conclusion, the devolved Governments have long had a role to play and responsibility for climate action. Despite the best efforts of Westminster and the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, they will no doubt continue to do their best. I therefore wish the Scottish Government the very best of luck with the summit, and I urge the UK Government to match the devolved Governments’ levels of ambition and engagement, to ensure that this pivotal, critical summit is a global success.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
Despite being an MP who represents an English constituency, I believe it is important that Unionists, wherever they are from, speak up for the benefits of the United Kingdom. The “United Kingdom”; I love saying that. “British steel”, “British made”, “United Kingdom”—they all come together. I love the fact that we are a great Union together.
The United Kingdom is a world leader in tackling climate change. We are the first major economy to set a legally binding target to achieve net zero.
Anna McMorrin
I think the hon. Gentleman has missed the point of this debate, which is about the role of the devolved Administrations.
Nick Fletcher
I thank the hon. Lady for her comment, but all four nations come together to create the United Kingdom.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady questions whether the hon. Gentleman is speaking to the motion; I think I know the motion quite well, and the hon. Gentleman is introducing his speech.
Nick Fletcher
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We reduced our emissions by a significant 44% between 1990 and 2019. The speed at which we have managed to decarbonise our electric grid is just one example: a decade ago, 40% per cent of our electricity came from coal; it is now a mere 1.8%. Under this Government, this country is embarking on an ambitious industrial revolution that will help to transform the lives of people up and down the country, no matter which nation they belong to.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
In the light of the comments the hon. Gentleman is making, does he agree that it is about time that the Government introduced an outright ban on underground coal gasification in this country? UCG threatens my constituency in the Dee estuary, and COP26 offers the Government a perfect opportunity to show that they are absolutely serious about climate change and to ban UCG.
Nick Fletcher
There has to be a transitional approach to this issue; there is no way that we can just stop things happening. We have constituents who depend on us to make good decisions for them so that we can gradually move to net zero. We need to take people with us. Just banning things—banning flights, coal and other things—will not take the people with us. We need the people to go with us. If we do things correctly here, we will take the rest of the world along with us; if we do it wrong here, the rest of the world will not do it. It is very important that we do it properly.
The success of the campaign for a greener economy has been made possible only because of our Union, and the reduction of our emissions has indeed been a Union effort. The decision to host COP26 in Glasgow—one of our country’s most important cities that has for so long been the gateway from the UK to the west—was made by the UK Government for the benefit of Scotland.
Nick Fletcher
I think I have given way enough.
I am confident that COP26 will not only be a great advert for the UK’s role in reducing emissions but an advert for the pivotal role that Scotland can play as part of our United Kingdom. After all, the summit will bring together representatives from 200 countries right at the heart of Scotland.
The Prime Minister has clarified that COP26 will be an inclusive enterprise in which all nations will feel fully involved. The evidence for that is widespread, with the relevant devolved Environment Ministers having considerable influence over the direction of the summit through the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group.
Until recently this has been a good-natured debate. I could speak to many other issues, but will finish by saying that if we all come together at COP26 and do the right thing for the right reasons, we can really make a difference to the rest of the world.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to listen to all sides in this debate, and it is important that we debate and bring out the differences, because clearly there are some. Time and again from this Government I hear the word transition. I understand that argument and the importance of bringing people with us, but we might be in this transition for too long. We have an end date, and we have now been waiting for such a long time that the urgency of the current situation will dictate our having to take rapid, urgent action, rather than transitioning for too long.
Sally-Ann Hart
Does the hon. Lady agree that when it comes to transitioning, we cannot rip the rug out from under people’s feet? We have to reskill people for future jobs so that they can have those jobs; otherwise, we will end up with people with no work.
Wera Hobhouse
I absolutely agree. We need to make sure that we have the right skills in place and that we create opportunities for each local community, area and region, so that people have jobs and we do not pull the rug out from under their feet. I totally agree on that, but we also need a Government who set a direction for where all this is going and make coherent plans for how we create new job opportunities. What is the direction we are going in? When will we set the final time limit for, for example, ending the national gas grid? Those Government actions are currently missing.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is really rather disappointing that we are yet to see a net zero strategy document from this Government? We have been waiting for a significant amount of time for such a document to set the direction of travel for all Whitehall Departments and the Government themselves in respect of how they might achieve the UK net zero targets, and we are yet to see any sign of one.
Wera Hobhouse
Indeed. The Opposition are waiting urgently for exactly those things because we want to co-operate. We all understand how urgent this issue is and how only co-operation among all nations will get us on the right track. We should not be setting each other up and creating competition among us, with people saying, “We’re the best here” and “We’re the best there”. The whole globe has to come together to tackle this urgent issue that transcends nations. The Government often do not understand that, which is why we are here to urge them to change the pace of their action. The negotiations begin in only 46 days’ time and will determine the choices that we make about the future of our planet. They will determine whether we want to be ambitious enough to limit global temperature rises and avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency, which will hit the poorest nations the hardest. The fact that it is the poorest nations that will be hit the hardest is not well enough understood.
At this pivotal moment in the fight against climate change, the Government cannot continue to treat the devolved Administrations as an afterthought. There are so many brilliant examples of where the devolved Administrations and local authorities have got it right on climate. Wales, as we have heard today, is second in Europe and third in the world for household recycling centres. It is also admirable that it introduced the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015, which is a progressive and forward-looking piece of legislation. The rest of the UK should follow Wales’s lead, as it is a global leader, and legislate a future generations Bill. I am not lining myself up to become an honorary Member for Wales, but offering credit where credit is due.
The devolved nations’ knowledge and understanding of their local communities will be vital in providing solutions to the climate and ecological emergency. It is essential that they are included in a meaningful way in the lead-up to COP26. Local governments have been pushing for years now for a multi-level conference of the parties. As the COP26 president, the UK should be leading the way. I urge the Minister to push for stronger multi-level co-ordination, not just at COP26, but beyond.
There must be a deeper discussion on the localism of climate finance during the relevant negotiations, particularly on funds for loss and damage and adaptation. The devolved Administrations should have a seat at the negotiating table.
We Liberal Democrats have long believed in empowering local communities. Devolved Administrations must not be pushed to the fringes of these negotiations. Each one of our family of nations deserves to be heard at COP26, the most important climate talks since the Paris agreement. Inclusion in the official party delegation is the only way to ensure that all the voices in our nations are heard.
There is also a strong desire among local authorities to be much more ambitious than central Government. Many were quick off the mark in declaring a climate emergency. My own local authority of Bath and North East Somerset was one of the first to do so—a month before central Government. Just this week, our council has launched its first ever climate and biodiversity festival. It is showcasing the action taken locally to tackle the climate emergency, but, even more importantly, the festival is about starting the conversation with our residents ahead of COP26.
May I say one more thing, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is alarming how few people in this country know what COP26 is about. I think the statistic was that about 13% of people in this country actually know what it is about. What have the Government done to engage people in this important discussion about climate change?
Wera Hobhouse
I will not, because we are running out of time.
The climate emergency is our shared responsibility. I am so grateful to those in our Bath community who have already got involved, and I urge all Members of Parliament to do something similar in their local areas in order engage local people in the discussions about the urgency of climate change and the very difficult decisions on which we need to agree.
The Government cannot deliver their climate programme without local authorities such as mine. Climate action begins at local level. The Government must empower local authorities at COP26 and beyond so that they can deliver on green transport, homes, energy, infrastructure and waste management policies that we need to implement if we are to get to net zero.
Again, it is a shame that our local government has been disempowered by central Government for decades now, and for the last decade in particular. We need to empower local authorities to do the things for local people, because only then will they have the real understanding of how to deliver to make sure that we have the jobs and the infrastructure in place. If central Government continue to disempower local government, we will not be in a good place. Most of all, the Government must recognise that the climate crisis is a real emergency, and that business as usual is not good enough. We need a change of pace from what we have seen so far from this Government and we need it urgently.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
I am delighted to be taking part in this debate and grateful to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) for securing it. I am also delighted that the UK Government are working proactively with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure an inclusive and ambitious summit for the whole of the UK. As many Members have mentioned already this afternoon, all parts of the UK will have an important role to play in ensuring the summit’s success.
Colum Eastwood
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is good that some people are up for discussion across the Chamber.
It is wonderful to hear the glowing tributes about the devolved authorities from Members on the Government Benches—it is great to hear it—but if the Democratic Unionist party gets its way and pulls down the Stormont institutions, there will not be anybody at COP26 from Northern Ireland. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that this is an issue that the Government really care about, and if he thinks that they really want to engage with local devolved authorities and ensure that they actually exist, will he ask them to step in now and ensure that no single party can rip down the institutions of the Good Friday agreement when we are trying to deal with issues as important as this?
Simon Baynes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his interjection. It is perhaps an issue that is slightly above my pay grade. Perhaps the Minister would like to comment on it. The point I make though is that, regardless, as a member of the UK, Northern Ireland will be represented at COP26, but I take on board his point that he is making in a very genuine fashion.
The Climate Change Committee has noted that
“the UK climate targets cannot be met without strong policy action across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, tailored for national, regional and local needs”
and that the
“governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have an increasingly important role to play in tackling climate change.”
I think we can all agree on that.
I represent the Welsh constituency of Clwyd South, so I am determined that Wales, like the rest of the UK, should rise to the climate change challenge and play its part in this international conference. Like other hon. Members this afternoon, my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) talked about the importance of community groups in tackling climate change, and this is something that I passionately believe in. I am delighted that many such groups across Wales, and across the UK, are putting belief into action and providing solutions to some of the questions and problems that will be debated at COP26.
For example, there is the huge hydro-electric potential of small-scale energy products, such as the Corwen community hydro power scheme in my constituency of Clwyd South. Here, local people came together as a community to build a 55kW hydro scheme in the town. The scheme is 100% owned and run by the community; it raised £300,000 for the construction with a share offer five years ago, over 50% of which was bought by people in and around Corwen. The success of that has led to a second project, which we hope will go into effect in the autumn of this year.
I have also been championing the hydro-electric potential of the River Dee in Llangollen with Town Councillor Stuart Davies. I warmly welcome the decision by members of Llangollen Town Council in April to set up a task and finish group to investigate the feasibility of using the site of de-commissioned hydro units in the town. Schemes such as these highlight the vital role of communities in tackling the bigger challenges of the climate crisis. When it comes to providing the solutions, Wales has historically punched above its weight, and it continues to do so.
Anna McMorrin
The hon. Member is making some excellent points about local community initiatives. Does he agree though that some things need the impetus and leadership of the UK Government, particularly on waste? At the moment, there are still 3 million items of non-recyclable packaging being produced every single day.
Simon Baynes
I agree that the UK Government do play a vital role in this, and I take on board the point that the hon. Lady is making about waste, but I will come on to other aspects of what the UK Government can do later in my speech.
The Prime Minister has said that there is a huge role for Wales and the Welsh Government, stating:
“It’s a huge undertaking by the whole of the UK…Every part of the UK is now working together…to lead the world to get everyone to commit to net-zero by 2050”.
I know that UK Government Ministers frequently speak with their Welsh Government counterparts at the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group and liaise with the Welsh Government’s new Minister for Climate Change. As a strong supporter of the Union, I am pleased that the Welsh Government have said that they plan to attend COP26 as part of the UK delegation, as well as to join events with key international networks such as the Under2 Coalition and Regions4. They have also said that they are working closely with event organisers. The future generations commissioner has said that COP26 represents “significant opportunities” for Wales to showcase its achievements in tackling climate change “on a global platform”, and that the Welsh Government have been in discussions with COP26, including on hosting fringe events.
Let me turn to one of the more contentious issues that we have heard about this afternoon. If I may, I will summarise it using the words of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for whose work and commitment to the environment and climate change I have very high respect. She used the word “transitioning”, which is really important in this debate, because I honestly do not think that any of the devolved Administrations or the UK Government get everything right all the time.
I take on board the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire about having an inclusive debate, but I would constructively suggest that there are areas for improvement by the Welsh Government. For example, they have been slow to establish long-term arrangements for environmental governance. The Interim Office for Environmental Protection is now up and running in England, but the Welsh Government have ruled out joining the OEP and are instead looking to establish a commissioner for the environment. This brings delays—and that is my point about transitioning.
Another such example is that, despite committing to introducing a clean air Act, the Welsh Government have announced that it will not be introduced in the coming parliamentary year. Again, the delay is disappointing. I am sure that some Labour Members could provide constructive explanations as to why the delays are taking place, but delays there are. We should really respect the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) that transitioning to the great climate change revolution that we all want is not always the easiest thing to achieve.
I return to the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) about the UK Government’s involvement. I am pleased that the Government have committed £90 million to innovative Welsh net zero projects across the country. Wales has the opportunity to benefit from further UK funding, including the active £289 million industrial energy transformation fund, the £250 million clean steel fund, the £240 million net zero hydrogen fund, and the £1 billion carbon capture and storage infrastructure fund. I feel strongly that the UK Government, just like the devolved Administrations, are playing a constructive part in the process.
I join hon. Members from across the UK in my optimism and best wishes for the conference, which the eyes of the world will be following, and I look forward to continuing to champion the role of Wales and the UK in rising to the greatest challenge of our age.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Once again, I am struck by a welcome and rare note of consensus across the House on this subject, and the sincere efforts of Members across parties to suggest areas where Governments might make further progress in their drive towards net zero and in creating the truly successful COP that we all want to see. Our planet depends on it, and it is heartening that many Members seem to recognise that. There were too many moments to pick out specifically, as I am conscious of time. Several questions were posed to the Minister, to which I am sure we will be interested to hear the answers, but it appears that the House is of one mind—or at least those Members present are.
Let me just quickly point out to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), in answer to his question to my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) about the poll showing the people of Scotland’s preference for the First Minister to represent them at COP, that that was part of a wider opinion poll that, by the way, also showed the SNP taking every seat in Scotland at a Westminster election and support for independence in the majority.
Scotland’s abundance of renewable energy resources is widely recognised. It is reckoned that Scotland has won the renewables bonanza, with marine offshore wind and green hydrogen production just a few of the exciting possibilities that we are looking to develop much further. In the last year, 97% of Scotland’s electricity came from renewable sources. We also managed to reduce emissions by 31% between 2008 and 2018—faster than the rest of the UK and any G20 nation. Of course, there is much more progress to be made to achieve the ambitions that we all have for emissions reductions, but we are in a fair place, with plenty more to come.
The sixth carbon budget published by the Climate Change Committee said:
“UK climate targets cannot be met without strong policy action across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, tailored for national, regional and local needs… frameworks in Wales and Scotland are ahead of the rest of the UK in emphasising the importance of the potential health and environment benefits, and the need for a just transition.”
I have mentioned just a few of the areas in which Scotland is playing its part in addressing the world’s climate emergency—I will be sharing others with the House shortly—but I think those examples serve to demonstrate why the UK Government should be welcoming the genuine participation of the devolved Governments in COP26: they have very good stories to tell in their own right. I would have thought that a Government who were confident in themselves and their own achievements would be prepared to recognise and promote those stories at this vital climate conference. Scotland not only is providing the stage and setting for COP, but has offered a leading example in many of the areas that need to be tackled.
The Scottish Government have submitted an indicative nationally determined contribution. I understand that it is the first time that a devolved Government, city or region have presented their plans in the format required of nation state parties to the Paris agreement. Scotland also has the world’s first climate justice fund, which was recently doubled, and which supports vulnerable communities in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. We are European co-chair of the Under2 Coalition—a group of more than 220 Governments, representing more than 1.3 billion people and 43% of the global economy—and were one of the first Governments in the world to set binding net zero targets earlier than 2045. We have ambitions to be the world’s first net zero aviation region by 2040 and to decarbonise passenger rail by 2035. There is so much more, but I hope that that short taster convinces Members and the Government that Scotland’s measures more than warrant our inclusion at the heart of the negotiations.
There has been good co-operation on the considerable logistics around the COP. That is to be welcomed and shows that the Governments are more than capable of pulling together on this vital issue. We welcome the assurances from Ministers that the full costs of policing, transport and other services will be met by the UK Government, as has been agreed. It is, of course, also welcome that the COP President decided to set up meetings with Ministers from the devolved Administrations, stating as he did so:
“All parts of the UK will have important roles to play in ensuring the summit’s success”.
However, he will know that, without enabling their meaningful involvement at COP, that exercise is in danger of looking like just box-ticking; and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) has already mentioned the rather brusque communiqués that have issued forth from those meetings. I urge the COP President and the UK Government to give serious consideration to the involvement of the devolved Administrations in the negotiations themselves. That would give additional weight to the Government’s influence and credibility.
Anna McMorrin
The hon. Member is making some excellent points on the role of the devolved Administrations in the negotiations themselves. In a past career, I was involved in those negotiations, playing a part with Wales and Scotland along with the UK. It is so important that all parts of the UK are involved in the negotiations themselves. I hope that the Minister will answer that point today.
Deidre Brock
I thank the hon. Lady. I absolutely agree and I am looking forward to the Minister’s response on this.
As I say, the involvement of the devolved Administrations in the negotiations would give much more additional weight to the Government’s influence and credibility, which, I am afraid, particularly following their decision to cut £4 billion from international aid support and the consequent impact on many mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries, is on a bit of a shoogly peg. It has been significantly diminished, to the COP President’s considerable dismay, I am sure.
As the Leader of the House said this morning, COP presents an opportunity to encourage others in the right direction. Scotland’s participation, and Wales’s and Northern Ireland’s, would surely point to the ambitious targets that can be set and the rapid progress that can be achieved, and would serve as a tremendous example of the differences that can be made quite rapidly by even a medium-sized country in its approach to this global crisis. A recent report by the Pembina Institute in Canada concluded:
“None of the oil-and gas-producing provinces are preparing for the decline of oil and gas with”
inclusive, equitable
“transition plans and sufficient measures to deal with fossil fuel liabilities”.
Scotland, on the other hand, has just announced a £500 million addition to its just transition funding, with our First Minister making it clear that the destruction wrought on the mining communities by Government policies in the ’80s would not be repeated. As she said, failing to plan for the transition to net zero is not an option. As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute mentioned, it would be good to see the UK Government commit to match-fund that amount, at least. After all, the Exchequer has done pretty well out of Scotland’s oil and gas profits for decades now. It is surely right that there is some recognition of that and that some of that money is returned to Scotland, and the north-east, to assist the tens of thousands of people currently employed to shift to employment in our burgeoning renewables sector, among other opportunities.
Scotland’s Just Transition Commission, formed in 2019 by the Scottish Government, produced a report this year, the recommendations of which were all accepted in full by the Scottish Government. A new version of the commission that the Government intend to seek advice from over the life of this Parliament was announced just a couple of days ago. It is worth reminding the House that, in areas the Prime Minister has focused on in his 10-point plan for the UK, such as forestry, electric vehicles and finance, Scotland already leads the way. Scotland already contributes the vast majority of the percentage of plantings to the UK overall figures and recently announced a further £20 million for peatland restoration. We were the first to set ambitions for no new petrol or diesel cars. We created the first climate justice fund in the world. I look forward to the UK Government following suit on that, as it would send an extremely powerful message internationally.
As Scotland and Wales play their part, so we know that our targets cannot be met without similarly strenuous efforts by the UK Government. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we have been looking at renewables on the Scottish Affairs Committee, and our report on aspects of that topic is due out on Friday. Obviously, I cannot refer directly to its contents, but we have heard from a variety of experts on the impact that the unfair transmission grid charging system is having on renewables development in Scotland. Ofgem has been reviewing that outdated approach, since 2018, I believe, but perhaps the UK Government could have a word in its collective shell-like and get it to put its skates on to arrive at a proposal that does not penalise those developers wishing to take advantage of Scotland’s many natural energy resources.
Turning to other areas that my hon. Friend alluded to, carbon capture and storage has been rather kicked from pillar to post over the years, with two carbon capture and storage competitions announced, run and then pulled, at a cost of some £140 million, sadly, just before it looked as if the St Fergus cluster in Scotland was going to win out. We know UK climate targets cannot be met without strong policy action. The St Fergus cluster is by far the most advanced, having established capabilities and in-place supply chains, and deserves to be, I hope, one of the two selected early on in the current competition for increased UK Government investment. I also urge the Government to engage more substantially with the Under2 Coalition on a formal role for states and regions in the negotiations and on the agreement.
We have all seen newspaper reports of silly games being played by Whitehall advisers over how they can cut Scottish Ministers out of participation at COP, but a positive outcome from COP is so much more important than such pettiness. Surely there could be no better sign that the UK is comfortable with being a country of four nations than to invite Scottish Ministers and others into the negotiations to help the UK to deliver the most successful COP26 outcome possible.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to respond to this debate on behalf of the Opposition. It has been an interesting and, I must say, surprisingly good-natured debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) on securing it.
Let me state at the outset, as indeed I have on each of the all too infrequent occasions this place has considered COP26, that I very much hope we will have more debates on this important subject in the 46 days that remain before the start of the conference. This is a critical moment in the fight against runaway global heating, and the lives of each and every one of our constituents will be affected by its outcome. I think it is still fair to say that this House has not been given sufficient opportunity to engage properly with the summit in the way it should have been, given its significance.
We have heard many thoughtful speeches covering a wide range of issues relating to COP26 and the devolved Administrations. I draw the House’s attention, in particular, to the strong contribution made by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, the excellent contributions of my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) and for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), and the passionate speech by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), whose contributions I always enjoy and who rightly stressed that while we must have a just transition we must also have climate action at pace and at scale, not least because every year that we delay that action, that transition will become more disruptive for the people we represent.
There is already debate under way internationally about whether the role of devolved Governments, as well as regions and cities, should be more prominent in the UNFCCC process, and if so, how. For example, should their efforts be formally considered as part of the periodic global stock-takes of the Paris agreement so as to provide for a more accurate sense of where individual countries are in implementing their climate commitments? Of course, when it comes to the negotiations themselves, and our country’s role as the host of COP26, primary responsibility lies with the UK Government as the formal party to the UNFCCC. However, as this debate has aptly illustrated, all the constituent parts of the UK clearly have an important contribution to make in ensuring that the summit is a success, and a role in shaping the objectives and efforts of the COP presidency that we hold.
As a number of hon. Members mentioned, the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group is the primary mechanism through which the latter can happen, but I hope that as a result of this debate the Government will go away and consider whether they have got the balance right in the extent and nature of the engagement—and, one would hope, collaboration and co-ordination—that has taken place to date, and whether it might in any way be improved on over the coming weeks. Ultimately, we cannot allow tensions between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations—or, for that matter, as several hon. Members said, any constitutional bickering—to put at risk in any way the outcome of this important international event.
Much of the debate has focused on the record of the devolved Administrations as regards their role in UK-wide emissions reductions. That was obviously to be expected, not least because the main input that devolved Governments in general have in domestic implementation and reporting under the UNFCCC process is through the Marrakech partnership for global climate action. However, given the centrality of delivering on our domestic climate commitments to the success of our COP presidency, both in establishing our country’s credibility and in maximising its influence as hosts of the conference, we would argue that the devolved Administrations’ efforts in this regard are just as important to the outcome of COP26 as their ability to directly influence the Government’s negotiating objectives and efforts.
Several hon. Members referred to the record of the Welsh Government, who have not only legislated for a net zero target but published a series of detailed strategies to ensure that that target is met, and are using the policy levers at their disposal to drive decarbonisation efforts, whether that be the use of planning and marine policy to reduce fossil fuel extraction, their innovative housing and optimised retrofit programme, or their success in ensuring that more than 50% of the energy that Wales consumes comes from renewable sources.
Northern Ireland, of course, faces a unique set of circumstances, and concrete progress in areas such as transport has been held back by the failure to deliver on key promises made in the New Decade, New Approach agreement. Even so, the Executive in Northern Ireland are in the process of legislating for a climate change Bill. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), who is no longer in his place, mentioned in his intervention, it is incredibly important—I hope the Minister takes this on board—that the Government are doing everything possible to ensure political stability in Northern Ireland, not least to help get that legislation through, if possible, before the next set of elections.
When it comes to Scotland, we rightly acknowledge that the Scottish Government have set an ambitious 2045 net zero target and that the Scottish climate change plan has been updated to integrate it, but it is also the case that the SNP Scottish Government have failed to meet their emissions reductions targets for three years running and—I think SNP Members would agree with this—without an acceleration in progress on delivery, beyond the power sector, Scotland will achieve neither the net zero target it chose to set itself nor its interim target of a reduction in emissions of 75% by 2030. Nor—this is the one partisan point I will make in what has been a good-natured debate, but I think it warrants saying—will Scotland’s claim to climate leadership be taken seriously if the SNP Scottish Government fail to take a firm stand against projects such as the development of the Cambo oilfield, which I would argue are at odds with that net zero target.
Deidre Brock
Unfortunately, energy is still reserved to Westminster, and the decision on Cambo rests with the Westminster Government. The First Minister has sent a letter to the Prime Minister questioning that and asking that the project be reassessed and, until that reassessment has been made, the development paused or, indeed, halted. That is an important point to make. Of course, the licence was issued under a Labour Government back in 2001 and 2004. That is another point that needs to be made, if we are to get a little party political about it.
Matthew Pennycook
There was no question there, but I take the point. I do not think it is justifiable to hide behind the UK Government or to reference decisions taken in the past. Yes, the leader of the Scottish Government has called for a review. I urge colleagues on the SNP Benches to come out unequivocally in opposition to the Cambo development, as we on the Labour Benches have done.
Ultimately, we all must do more. If each of the devolved Administrations is to exploit the climate action opportunities available to them in key areas such as agriculture, tree planting, waste management, buildings efficiency and public transport, they require a comprehensive net zero strategy from the UK Government and, we would argue, as part of that strategy, a framework for delivery covering every level of sub-national governance.
That point brings me neatly back to the UK Government, and I will begin to bring my remarks to a conclusion at this point, not least because many colleagues want to speak in the next debate. As much as the devolved Administrations can and must do everything within their power to help ensure COP26 is a success, they will be held back unless and until the UK Government do the same. I have to take issue with the contribution from the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), who seemed to suggest that any attempt to chide the UK Government’s record when it comes to climate and any attempt to push the Government to do better somehow undermines the Prime Minister at negotiations. It is precisely because we want to strengthen the UK Government’s hand that we are arguing that we have to get our own house in order before 1 November and that crucial conference.
It will only be by beginning that conference having unequivocally established our country’s credibility as a climate leader here at home that we will have the necessary influence as host in the critical moments that are bound to arise during the negotiations. That means getting on track for net zero, not just announcing the target. It means showing that we are prioritising decarbonisation across the whole of Government, that we have a comprehensive plan for achieving net zero, that we have locked in a genuine green economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis, and that all decisions the Government make, whether they relate to potential deep coalmines in Cumbria or new fossil fuel projects in the North sea, are entirely consistent with our net zero target. They are not at present.
The Government now have precious little time left to bolster their domestic credibility and to secure the wide range of other pre-conference outcomes necessary to make COP26 a success, not least ensuring that the 2009 promise of $100 billion in climate finance annually to the developing world is honoured by the end of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly later this month. We must look at our Government’s contribution to that commitment. Put simply, every sinew must be strained in the weeks ahead, or we run the very real risk of failure in Glasgow in November. Were that to happen, it would not only be an embarrassment for the Government, but a disaster for our planet. We owe it to future generations to do everything we possibly can to make this conference a success.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Duguid)
First, I associate myself with the remarks made by both Opposition Front Benchers on the relatively good-natured nature of this debate. It is fair to say that across the House and across the country, we share an ambition to deliver on the targets we have set. We may debate how we do that from time to time, but we all share that ambition. I also congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) for securing this debate. I thank Members from right across the UK—all nations of the UK and both sides of the House have been well represented today—for their contributions.
As a number of Members have said, there are now only seven weeks until the start of COP26, when parties will come together in Glasgow to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris agreement and the United Nations framework convention on climate change. COP26 will be the moment that we will secure a path to global net zero emissions by 2050 and define the next decade of tackling climate change. Together with our Italian partners, with whom we co-host the event, we will work to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5° C and protect our planet and people from the intensifying impacts of climate change.
To achieve that, the UK has spent the lead-up to COP26 taking four key goals to Governments across the world. Those are, first:
“Secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach”.
Countries have been asked to come forward with ambitious 2030 emissions reductions targets that align with reaching net zero by the middle of the century. To deliver on those stretching targets, countries will need to accelerate the phase-out of coal, curtail deforestation, speed up the switch to electric vehicles and encourage investment in renewables, among other things.
The second of those key goals is:
“Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats”.
The climate is already changing, and it will continue to change even as we reduce emissions. At COP26 we need to work together to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to protect and restore ecosystems and build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture, to avert, minimise and address loss of and damage to homes, livelihoods and, sadly, in some cases even lives.
The third goal is “Mobilise finance”. To deliver on our first two goals, developed countries must make good on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. International financial institutions must play their part and we need to work towards unleashing the trillions in private and public sector finance required to secure global net zero.
The fourth goal is “Work together to deliver”, a key theme in today’s debate. We can only rise to the challenges of the climate crisis by working together. At COP26, we must finalise the Paris rulebook—the detailed rules that make the Paris agreement operational—and accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis through collaboration between Governments, businesses and civil society. Again, that is a key point made by many Members today.
Working together also extends to working together across all parts of the United Kingdom. The UK Government are committed to working with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure an inclusive and ambitious summit for the whole UK. All parts of the UK will have important roles to play in ensuring the summit’s success.
On summit preparations, the UK Government, on behalf of the UNFCCC, is delighted to be hosting COP26. As we prepare for November, we wish to create a safe, secure, sustainable and inclusive COP26 that sets the conditions for outstanding policy outcomes. We want this to leave a lasting legacy of change in Glasgow, Scotland and the UK, leaving Glasgow flourishing as the host city, while representing value for money for the UK taxpayer. The Government are working closely with public health officials across the UK, the Scottish Government, all our partners and the UNFCCC to enable relevant delegates to participate on an equal footing, while also using technology to make the summit as inclusive as possible. In common with many international events, how COP operates has to adapt to the covid context, so we are making suitable arrangements for that.
The Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, Public Health Scotland and all the emergency response services in Scotland must be recognised for their work in that.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
Beyond the established blue zones and green zones, we also have the fringe around COP26: a very inclusive community with community involvement. A huge part of COP26 is about communities talking to politicians and putting pressure on us to do the right thing. I am delighted that SWG3 has the hub sponsored by The New York Times, which has been organised by Louise Hunter, a constituent of mine.
David Duguid
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s constituent will appreciate that mention. With regards to the role of devolved Administrations—the key point of the debate—the COP26 devolved Administration ministerial group, which the COP President-designate chairs, ensures effective engagement and collaboration on COP26 with Ministers in all the devolved Administrations. The most recent one, which I was delighted to attend, took place yesterday. The CPD also regularly speaks to the relevant Scottish Government Minister, Michael Matheson MSP, on the operational matters that I described earlier.
On the role of First Ministers, all parts of the UK will have important roles to play in ensuring the summit’s success in line with precedents, and we expect First Ministers and Ministers from the devolved Administrations to play a role, including as part of the UK delegation. The Prime Minister has said that he wants the First Ministers to play an important role. Discussions are ongoing.
Before I conclude—we are pushed for time—I will reflect on a few things said by the CPD in response to a Scottish Parliament Committee this morning. He said that the UK Government welcome the devolved Administrations providing further views on where they wish to be involved. The UK Government will shortly engage with the Presiding Officers of all the devolved legislatures to invite Members to express an interest in attending COP26 in the blue zone. He has ongoing engagement in chairing the UK Mayors and Regions Advisory Council, which includes input from mayors and councils across the United Kingdom.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for being generous. Will the devolved Administrations be within the negotiating team in the delegation? Will they be in the room, taking part in the delegation?
David Duguid
Like I said earlier, there will be a net zero committee—[Interruption.] Fundamentally, as the shadow Minister acknowledged, the United Kingdom is the negotiating party, but, as I said—I will refrain from going into detail, because hon. Members are in their places for the following debate—we are committed to getting as much involvement as we can from the devolved Administrations and parliamentarians in those devolved Assemblies in the run-up to the negotiations. I thank hon. Members again for their valuable contributions and for their support to date as we continue preparations for the United Nations climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow.
Brendan O’Hara
I put on record again my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), the hon. Members for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham), for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) and for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) and the Minister for a useful and thoughtful debate.
Although I am the Member of Parliament for Argyll and Bute, where I have lived for the past 20 years, I am Glaswegian to the straps of my second-hand boots. I would burst with pride if Glasgow’s COP26 becomes a turning point for the world, but we know that that is not a given. World leaders have the future of our planet in their hands. They have an onerous responsibility, but it is one that they must rise to and meet. They cannot let us down. I thank all Members and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the role and response of the devolved Administrations to COP26.
Criminal Justice System: Families Bereaved by Public Disasters
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I beg to move
That this House has considered proposed reforms to the criminal justice system to better respond to families bereaved by public disasters.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this timely debate about learning the lessons of the Hillsborough disaster so that never again will families bereaved by a public disaster have to endure the more than three decades-long ordeal of the Hillsborough families. It is about changing the law to ensure that what happened to them can never again happen to any families bereaved by a public disaster.
I begin by noting that, since the final criminal trials arising from Hillsborough collapsed in May, Mr Andrew Devine sadly died, aged 55, as a direct result of the catastrophic injuries that he received in the crush at Hillsborough in 1989. Liverpool coroner André Rebello recorded a verdict of unlawful killing following his death, which confirms that Andrew Devine is the 97th victim of the Hillsborough disaster. It is only right that his name is read aloud and noted in this place, as were the other 96 by Steve Rotheram, the former Member for Liverpool, Walton, in a debate in the House in 2011.
Hillsborough was a national disaster, not just a disaster affecting Liverpool or a disaster affecting football, and the lessons to be learned are applicable far beyond the circumstances around it.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that important point. The debate is obviously centred on Hillsborough, but the lessons apply to other public disasters such as the contaminated blood scandal. The people who have been infected and affected by that scandal stand in solidarity with what she proposes: to ensure that no other family ever has to go through what the Hillsborough families have gone through.
Maria Eagle
I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. It is true that there is a much broader application for the lessons learned from Hillsborough as they relate to other disasters.
The last of the criminal trials relating to Hillsborough collapsed in May, some 32 years after the event. It is surely a catastrophic failure of our criminal justice system that it took so long while still failing so badly to do justice to those who died, their families, those injured and the traumatised survivors. There is something very wrong with how our legal system handles public disasters. Thirty-two years after 97 people were unlawfully killed at a football match, primarily through the gross negligence of the South Yorkshire police—that was proven at the second inquests to a criminal standard of proof—no one has been held to account through our criminal justice system for those killings. For 32 years, those responsible for the disaster have sought to blame the victims and survivors for what happened and deny their own culpability.
It took 23 years for the truth to be acknowledged, following the work of the Hillsborough independent panel in 2012. It was fortunate that the panel was even set up to do its work following the 20th anniversary memorial event. Earlier that day, Andy Burnham and I, as Ministers in the Brown Government, and with the permission of the Prime Minister, launched our joint call for all documentation relating to Hillsborough to be published to facilitate transparency. The Hillsborough independent panel was established with the powers of a data controller only because of insight from Lord Michael Wills, who was then in charge of freedom of information at the Ministry of Justice. Only because of that formulation was the truth about what happened on that terrible day finally able to be revealed incontrovertibly, with documentation. Only because of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—I am glad to see her in her place—was it allowed to complete its work after the change in Government in 2010. It would have been easy to cancel it at that point, but she did not. For that, she deserves great credit.
It should also be noted that the Hillsborough independent panel was a non-legal process and that it worked by making use of openness and transparency. As a consequence of its work, the original inquest verdicts of accidental death were quashed, but it took 27 years for correct inquest verdicts of unlawful killing to be recorded. Families had to fight for 23 years for the truth to be officially acknowledged, but to this day no one has been held to account for the Hillsborough slurs and the decades-long smear campaign that was conducted by those responsible, the South Yorkshire police, to deflect blame from themselves on to the innocent victims—the dead, the injured and the traumatised survivors.
As Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron apologised to the families in 2012 for the smears they had endured over what was then a 23-year period. From the Dispatch Box, he said that
“these families have suffered a double injustice: the injustice of the appalling events—the failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth; and then the injustice of the denigration of the deceased—that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths. On behalf of the Government and indeed our country, I am profoundly sorry that this double injustice has been left uncorrected for so long.”—[Official Report, 12 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 285-286.]
That full and unequivocal apology was made nine years ago. That should have put a stop to the self-serving lies by the representatives of those who were at fault, but it did not.
Since evidence began to be heard at the new inquests in April 2014, there have been legal proceedings that have required the families to maintain a public silence to avoid prejudicing them, yet the apologists and defenders of the South Yorkshire police and of the individuals responsible for what happened on that day have not been silent. They have reiterated the smears for which the Prime Minister apologised to the families in 2012, and they have done so inside and outside the courtroom. We must change the law to stop this kind of cruel abuse, perpetrated by a public authority using taxpayers’ money over decades, from ever happening again.
We must stop legal proceedings arising out of disasters from lasting for decades and from going so wrong, because once things go this wrong, our legal system appears to find it very hard to put things right. We must give the collective voice of the bereaved families agency in the proceedings that inevitably follow a disaster. We must search for the truth using transparency as a key tool, not allow the legal forums to become a way for moneyed vested interests to set about evading their responsibility for the disasters they have caused. The Public Advocate Bill, which I have introduced again into the House—I have been doing so for a number of years, as Lord Michael Wills has done in the Lords—will do that.
It is timely to have this debate because I know that the Government are now considering their response to Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report into the lessons to be learned from Hillsborough, which was commissioned by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead. I hope that, as part of the response to that, the Minister will agree to legislate for an independent public advocate. I know that the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) was very sympathetic. I am sorry to see that he has lost his place in the Government as I think he was very sympathetic to this call.
My Bill seeks to put bereaved families collectively at the heart of the response to disasters through the establishment of an independent public advocate, who if the bereaved families wish it, will act as a representative of their interests, an adviser and a guide. The advocate, as a data controller, would be able to establish a panel, like the Hillsborough independent panel, to facilitate transparency about what has happened at an early stage. Crucially, this would give the families the capacity to decide collectively on an initiative that would put them at the heart of events, instead of feeling, as bereaved families often do, that they are a mere adjunct to proceedings. This enforced transparency, shining a light into the darkest recesses of the reaction of public authorities caught up in disasters, would torpedo attempted cover-ups and do so at an early stage.
Let me be clear: this role would not replace that of more traditional legal advocates—barristers, solicitors—who would continue to act for individuals in specific legal proceedings; it would fulfil a different and an additional role. The proposal would not require new institutional arrangements or place any burden on the Exchequer. It would not require an open cheque book. On the contrary, the transparency it would bring could save millions of pounds in drawn-out adversarial proceedings over many years or decades.
I am pleased to have the support of many of the most prominent and active members of the Hillsborough Families Support Group who have written a letter published today in the Daily Mirror. They say:
“We are members of families bereaved by the Hillsborough disaster more than 32 years ago who have been active in the campaign for truth and justice.
It took us 23 years of relentless campaigning to have the truth about what happened to our family members finally officially acknowledged. It took 26 years to get accurate inquest verdicts of unlawful killing. The collapse of the criminal trials in May means that after 32 years no-one responsible has been held to account by our criminal justice system for the unlawful killings of 97 innocent children, women and men.
We do not want any other families to endure what we have had to go through simply because they are caught up in a disaster through no fault of their own.
We believe that an independent Public Advocate as proposed by Maria Eagle MP and Lord Michael Wills would stop families bereaved by public disasters in future from ever having to go through what we have had to endure over the last 32 years.
We note that the Government of Theresa May consulted on establishing such an office in 2017 but the proposal appears to have been dropped by the current Government.
We hope that the Lord Chancellor will use the occasion of the debate in the House of Commons on September 16 to announce the creation of an independent Public Advocate as promised in his 2017 manifesto. We consider that such a change will be an important part of the legacy of the 97 and of our long and hard campaign for truth and justice.”
As the Government are considering their response to Bishop James’s report, I say that I know, because he has told me, that he is fully supportive of the establishment of an independent public advocate. He told me that he has been persuaded by his experience of meeting families involved in other disasters, such as Gosport and the infected blood scandal, that such a position is necessary. I am very supportive of his own findings. In particular, three recommendations of his are key: the proposed charter for families bereaved through public tragedy, equality of arms at inquests and the statutory duty of candour. These measures are undoubtedly valuable, and the Government should adopt them. However, I think the only way of preventing disasters going so catastrophically wrong over decades is to establish an independent public advocate. The families back this reform, Bishop James backs this reform and the Conservative party had it in its manifesto in 2017, so I hope that all of us across the House can get behind it and legislate for it now.
I was first elected to this House, over 24 years ago, on 1 May 1997. The first of my new constituents to contact me shortly after were the bereaved families of those who had been killed in the Hillsborough disaster then nine years earlier. They had by that time already endured almost a decade of legal actions, including the Taylor inquiry, the first inquests, civil claims, decisions not to discipline or to prosecute the South Yorkshire police commanders in charge on that day, judicial reviews of various such decisions, appeals and every other kind of legal action imaginable, such that it seemed even then as though there was little chance of further recourse for them through our legal system.
I met four of the Hillsborough Families Support Group committee in the home of one of them in my constituency. I met Phil Hammond, who lost his son in the disaster and was then chair of the Hillsborough Families Support Group. I met Jenni Hicks, who lost both her daughters in the disaster. We met in the home of Doreen Jones, who lost her son and his fiancée, and very nearly her daughter too. I also met Trevor Hicks, who was prominent then in the campaign.
I was struck by the raw pain and deep anger of Phil Hammond. I still remember it; it was as if he was reliving the day of the disaster—as if it had been yesterday—in minute detail as he talked, yet this was nine years on, and almost all possible legal avenues had already been tried and had failed the families in getting to the truth or achieving justice for the bereaved. He was so appalled and upset at the fact that he felt that his young son who had been killed was being blamed for what had happened to him when he was a wholly innocent boy and that those responsible, South Yorkshire police, were not intent upon telling the truth and learning lessons, as Lord Justice Taylor had exhorted them to do, but were instead engaged in the callous pursuit of blaming the victims of the tragedy, no matter what pain and hurt they caused in the process.
While we had a tea break in our meeting, I overheard Trevor Hicks telling Jenni that he had been contacted by a new witness who perhaps had some information about one of their two young daughters and what had happened to her during the missing hours between their going into Leppings Lane and the confirmation that both of them had been killed. I was struck by the fact that this basic information was what the inquests were supposed to have provided to the grieving families, but the inquests came nowhere near fulfilling that basic purpose. It was not until the second inquests began, a full 17 years after this meeting, that our legal system even tried to answer those questions for the bereaved families.
I knew how wrong things had gone, how thoroughly the families had been let down and their loved ones, Liverpool fans and the survivors traduced, and I have tried to do all I can to help them and other families ever since. They have all been central figures in the Hillsborough families’ fight for truth and justice, along with many others, and I want to take this opportunity to say that without their unbelievable efforts over so many years the truth would not have been acknowledged and the correct inquest verdicts would not have been handed down. Their achievements and those of other families and representatives, such as Margaret Aspinall, Sue Roberts, the indefatigable Anne Williams and others too numerous to mention, are monumental. Their fortitude, dignity, persistence and determination had to be seen to be believed. They have needed all of those qualities for all of the 32 and a half years that it has taken.
This year the Hillsborough Family Support Group has disbanded, knowing now that they can do no more. They have the truth and they have achieved a measure of justice, but there has been no accountability. They have, between them, all truly done everything they possibly can for their lost loved ones. Now it is up to those of us in this House and Ministers in this Government to learn the lessons that their commitment, their fortitude and their togetherness over such a long period have taught us. We owe it to them to get it right: we owe it to those 97 people unlawfully killed by the gross negligence of South Yorkshire police on that day in 1989 to make sure that what has happened to these bereaved families and survivors can never happen again to families bereaved in public disasters—and there will be more disasters; there have been.
The establishment of an independent public advocate will help to achieve that. I call upon the Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the Government to heed those who really do know best, the Hillsborough families themselves, and use the occasion of this debate to announce that they will now do what they said they would in 2017 and establish an office of the independent public advocate. Now is the time to move forward and implement those learned lessons of Hillsborough and at long last change the law to prevent what went so wrong in that case from ever happening to any other families again.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing this important debate. I thank her for her kind words about me, but I also congratulate her on a passionate and heartfelt speech. I agree with what she said; I will come on to the reasons why but want first to say that she has been a fine and fiery champion for the Hillsborough families since she entered this House. I am only sorry that it has taken so long for us to get to the position where the Hillsborough families actually know what happened on that day and where Government should be in a position to take action to ensure other families do not suffer in the same way.
In my time as Home Secretary and Prime Minister I dealt with a number of situations where victims, survivors and families bereaved as a result of public disasters found that their pain and suffering were compounded by the fact that they had to deal with the reaction of various organs of the state. Obviously, the hon. Lady focused on Hillsborough, but, as the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) referenced in an intervention, that is not the only example of such situations happening. Too often the public sector and Government, which should be supporting bereaved families when there has been a public disaster and be on the side of those families, instead retreat into a defensive position: they put up the barricades. The families and victims and survivors then find that they not only have to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy—with loss, injury and all the other aspects of that tragedy—but that they are beating their heads against the closed door of the public sector. That is in the criminal justice system and in other aspects of the public sector.
Of course, what that leads to is an adversarial situation where both sides grow increasingly apart and increasingly sense that the other is just against them. That should not be the case, but more than that, that adversarial situation makes it much harder to provide for the needs of the bereaved families, it makes it much harder to get to the truth of what has happened, and it hampers the justice process.
It was the need to change that situation that led me to putting this commitment in the Conservative party manifesto in 2017:
“To ensure that the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families over the last twenty years is not repeated, we will introduce an independent public advocate, who will act for bereaved families after a public disaster and support them at public inquests.”
However, that is not just an idea that we have heard from the Conservative Benches; the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood has been promoting it for some considerable time, and it has cross-party support. It should have support from everybody in the House. May I just say, as an aside, that I am grateful that the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), is here? I am only sorry that there are not more of my colleagues here to speak on what I consider to be a very important topic.
The need for an independent public advocate was echoed later by Bishop James Jones in his report, “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”. He wrote:
“I believe that this report confirms the need for an independent public advocate in these circumstances, but to ensure that the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families is not repeated I would caution against the adoption of too narrow a definition of ‘public disaster’. As this report shows, many of the experiences of the Hillsborough families are very sadly also reflected in the experience of families bereaved through other forms of public tragedy where the state has fallen short.”
He provided a charter for the public advocate. He also suggested that they should be involved in ensuring that social work and other support was available to bereaved families in engaging with the media, to try to ensure that the bereaved were treated with dignity and respect—something that certainly did not happen in the case of the Hillsborough families; in fact, the very reverse happened to them—and in ensuring that bereaved families were kept properly and fully informed at all times.
That point of information is critical. Families want to know what is happening; they want to be informed. But that can be a two-way street, because there will be occasions when it is important for the families to have full information as to why they cannot have a particular piece of information—for example, if it would prejudice an ongoing criminal investigation. What matters is that there is that degree of transparency and not a feeling of cover-up.
Critically, the independent public advocate must be not just, as the name suggests, independent, but someone who can be recognised as independent by the bereaved families. To put it simply, the independent public advocate is there to be on the side of the families, to help explain and guide them through the processes and to get information for them—including, I suggest, dealing with breaking down any barriers to information that are put up by the public sector.
None of us wants to see any more public disasters that lead to the loss of lives, but sadly, as the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood said, we know that things will happen, and therefore it is imperative that the Government act with urgency to put in place an independent public advocate. We took an important step in 2017. I am sorry that it was not repeated at the 2019 election. The previous Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), recognised the importance of this issue, and I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him for the work that he did in Government. He recognised the need for this role, and I hope that the incoming Lord Chancellor will do so too.
I am certain that introducing an independent public advocate is critical to ensuring that families bereaved as a result of public disasters in the future do not suffer in the way that the Hillsborough families suffered, but that they have someone they can turn to in their hour of need, and someone who they know will be working for them. Let me say to the Government that it is not just in the interests of those families but, actually, in the interests of the Government and the public sector that an independent public advocate should exist and should be able to ensure that we do not get into an adversarial situation, smooth the relationship between the two sides and ensure that everything moves rather more quickly. Governments should not just see this as something they may or may not be giving to potentially bereaved families in future; they should see that, actually, there is an interest for the Government in having an independent public advocate in place. That is certainly what I would argue. I would hope that the introduction of such a post would, over time, lead the public sector to recognise that it should not be defensive in such situations and that it should take a different approach—stopping the cover-up mentality in future.
I want to raise one further issue if I may. The reason why the most recent trials collapsed was that, although it was accepted that individuals had doctored evidence, it was evidence given to what was an administrative function of the Home Office rather than a public inquiry. Obviously, the Inquiries Act 2005 did not exist at the time. If we take the logical next step, it would be to set everything up as a 2005 Inquiries Act inquiry. Government Departments have a natural reluctance to set up public inquiries, partly because of the cost and the length of time they often take. We have seen, through the Hillsborough independent panel, that there are often other means of getting at the truth that can be equally beneficial and indeed, in terms of process, may be more helpful to all those involved. I ask the Minister to consider whether it is possible for the Government to address the issue that something that is not under the 2005 Act could lead to a similar situation in future, but to keep open the options for Government in terms of the types of inquiry that can be set up—the panel or the 2005 Act.
Finally, I want to return to the issue of the independent public advocate. I absolutely agree with everything the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood said on this issue. It is something the Government should take up as a matter of urgency. I am happy to beat a path to the door of the new incoming Lord Chancellor, once he has got his feet under the table, to try to persuade him, should he show any reluctance, of the importance of doing this. The Hillsborough families deserve that. They have been through hell since that fatal day. They do not want to see other people having that same experience. We owe it to them.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
This is the commitment from the Government in their consultation paper, apparently establishing an independent public advocate:
“The government is committed to introducing an Independent Public Advocate who will act for bereaved families after a public disaster and support them at inquests and inquiries.”
I welcome the presence today of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). She has done so much to push this matter on, and I would like to thank her.
The consultation ended on 3 December 2018, not far off three years ago. I need not remind right hon. and hon. Members, as my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) did, that it took from 1991 to 2016, a quarter of a century, for a decision to overturn the 1991 verdict of accidental death for the 96 Hillsborough victims, now 97, concluding that those who lost their lives were unlawfully killed. In that case, the wheels of justice did not even move one inch for decades, let alone grind slowly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) put a written question to the Justice Secretary on 13 January 2020 on when the process would be in place for the advocate. The Minister responded, “in due course”. At the risk of sounding a tad exasperated, an awful lot of things come in due course—the timeline is pretty long. For example, the end of the world will come in due course. So it would be helpful if the Minister could, in due course, preferably by the end of this day, give the House a date for when the Government’s commitment to what they promised will actually be delivered.
Is it too much to ask, on behalf of those who lost their lives in those dreadful disasters, that their families and loved ones will be able to get the answers they need and deserve, the support they need, the comfort they need and the justice they need? The justice is calling out to be heard. It is our responsibility here to ensure that those cries, those demands, those entitlements are not just heard, but acted on. Is my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood asking for too much?
I thank my hon. Friend for pursuing this matter with her usual single-mindedness and determination. Her usual forthrightness, focus and tireless work on this issue is matched only by her compassion for those affected by such life-changing experiences. She has shown that again today in spades. It is the responsibility of this House to match her action, her compassion and her determination and support her Bill, not in due course, but now. Let the Minister end this delay, prevarication and procrastination now—today, this afternoon. Let him give not just another commitment or promise, but on behalf of the Government, a cast-iron guarantee that they will support my hon. Friend’s Bill through its parliamentary journey. In a civilised and modern democracy, which has had more than its fair share of disasters that have so affected the lives of so many people, is it really too much to ask for the Government to get on with the job? Is it too much to ask the Government to deliver what they promised? Is it too much to ask the Government to ensure that the victims, in the wider sense of the word, are looked after?
It is time to stop hiding behind the hackneyed old excuses for not acting. We all know that the Government can act if they choose to do so. Only this week a Bill spending £10 billion annually—the Health and Social Care Levy Bill—went through the House of Commons in just one day. Why did the Government do it? Because they wanted to and because they had the will, the wherewithal and the commitment to do it. That is the question that the Government must ask of themselves: do they have the commitment? It is the question that this House must ask of them. It is the question that the families of the victims are asking. It is the question being asked of the Government by so many people who see the injustices being prolonged. Do the Government have the will to do it? If so, the next question is: when?
Finally, my hon. Friend’s Bill has the widespread support of so many individuals and groups, including our former Members of this House, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool city region. It also includes the former Hillsborough family support group led by its former chair, Margaret Aspinall, who my hon. Friend referred to and who did so much over 30 years to keep the flame of justice burning for the 97 people who died as a result of that disaster. Let the passing of this Bill be another tribute—one of many—to those who have lost their lives in such tragic circumstances and to the persistence, passion and determination of their loved ones.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
It is a privilege and it is actually very humbling to speak in this debate. I wanted to do so both as Chair of the Justice Committee and out of respect for my fellow Committee member, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle)—as well as the victims, of course, of this awful disaster and many others—because she has pursued this issue with great vigour as a constituency MP. She has also pursued it—I am grateful to her for doing so—through the Justice Committee and the report that we recently published on reform of the coronial system, so I particularly wanted to be here.
As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will start by asking the House’s indulgence of the fact that I may need to leave before the end of the debate, because there is a pressing family matter that I need to attend to and which the Front Benchers and the hon. Lady also know about. None the less, I thought it was important to be here.
I also welcome the Minister to his place. He will know from his service on the Justice Committee how seriously this matter has been taken and the energy with which the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood has pursued this case. She has done a service for the House, for her constituents and for the country more broadly, because this raises important issues of policy relating to how we deal with a particular tragic set of circumstances, where there are multiple deaths in consequence of a catastrophic failure through the regulation or other form of conduct by a public authority, in most cases, and sometimes by significant private corporations.
I was also particularly pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) here, and I join the tributes to her for the courage and sheer decency that she showed throughout her pursuit of this issue both as Home Secretary and Prime Minister. The fact that she continues to pursue these issues having left office, says a great deal about her and the calibre of person she is. I agreed with everything that she said in her speech, and I hope that the Government will take it on board.
I cannot see for the life of me why we did not continue that commitment to a public advocate in the 2019 manifesto. As far as I am concerned, to paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, the facts have not changed, and I see no reason why we should change our opinion either. The overall cost of such a matter to the public purse is very small indeed in comparison with the importance in human terms of the issues that arise, and the public good that can arise. The purpose of inquests is not simply to determine the cause of death, but also—particularly through the powers of the coroner to write a statutory letter—to improve behaviour for the future, and to change practice. I think the importance of that is often underestimated.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for all those reasons. I also wish to join in the tributes that have been paid to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), who showed such sensitivity towards this issue during his time as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. I have made no bones about what I feel about his departure from government. I simply say now that the Government are the poorer for his departure.
The specific issues that we are debating have been well rehearsed by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, and I do not seek to repeat what she has said, but I do point out that what she has said is reflected, in many respects, in a number of the recommendations of the Justice Committee’s report on reform of the coronial system, which was published earlier this year. I am grateful to other members of the Committee, past and present, for being here today.
The coronial system has many merits, but in these cases it does not work satisfactorily. There are other issues with it, some of which coincide with the issues that are highlighted here. Examples are the variation of practice between coronial areas and the lack of a strong system of central support—the appointment of a new Chief Coroner, together with the work of the first two Chief Coroners, has done a great deal to improve that, but there is still a lack of structure to underpin it—and the fact that the inquest rules and procedures do not give the coroner anything like the degree of case management control that, for instance, a High Court judge or a circuit judge would have in the same circumstances, in terms of dealing with interlocutory issues, admissibility of evidence, and the appropriateness of lines of cross-examination.
If we are to try to preserve the coronial system, which I think is a good one, we must ensure that it can be adapted to different types of case. That which relates to a tragic death, for example in unexplained circumstances, but where the medical issues are pretty simple and straightforward and there are no other significant extraneous issues of fact to consider—or even to a comparatively straightforward but sad personal injuries death—requires a procedure that is wholly different from, and much simpler than, that which occurs in multi-handed inquests in which significant state or private actors are engaged and in which the issue of legal resource will come into play.
We also need to think about the position of a purely inquisitorial system when there are third parties, the bereaved families, who have a direct means of engagement. Regrettably, the current system cannot always guarantee that they will have the level of input to the system that they should have, and that they will have, for example, sufficient access to evidence to make the case in a way that enables them to feel that all the relevant issues have been fully ventilated.
There are broader issues, too, that arise from Hillsborough, in relation to what I think we can now perceive to be deficiencies in the substantive law itself, in two areas. One, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead referred, is the whole question of the status of evidence given to a non-statutory inquest. I think most people were surprised that that exists. It was inevitable—the ruling of the judge, Mr Justice Davis, a very experienced trial judge, cannot be faulted in law—but that does say something about the position of the law.
Perhaps, as my right hon. Friend suggested, it would be a measure of over-engineering to require every such inquest to be conducted on a statutory basis, but that is the only safe means by which people could be held to account in these circumstances. Perhaps we could expand the definition in some way, let us say by analogy with the law of perjury or by adopting other definitions of misconduct in public office, because after all these people were acting in public office in this case when they made the demonstrably false statements. There ought, surely, to be a legislative device which could achieve that, and I am sure that it would have the support of the whole House. Maybe the Law Commission could be asked to look swiftly at these matters. It is able to respond in a timely way to specific technical issues of law when required.
There is also the issue of procedure. We need to strengthen the tools for coroners to get to the truth and ensure fairness for all the relevant parties and interests involved. We also have to ensure that, in cases involving bereaved families, the families are made much more central to the system. That is why we have recommended that there should be a charter for bereaved families appearing before the coronial system. There is already a guide to service for bereaved people, and that is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. We recommended going further and putting this on a much stronger and more formal basis. We also recommended strengthening the amount of specialist support services available.
I rather regret that the Government have not gone as far as I would wish in adopting all these recommendations. Again, the cost in the overall scheme of things is tiny. The Minister, when he was a very effective member of the Justice Committee, often made the case that, when we talked about spending on the courts system, we were talking about a fraction of a fraction, and I totally agreed with him. Well, spending on support services for bereaved families in coroners inquests and proceedings is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, if I can put it that way, but the benefit in human and societal terms would be very great indeed. I hope that the Government will reflect that they can move further on their response to our recommendations.
In addition to arguing for a charter of rights, we argued that there should be a much more structured means of ensuring access to evidence. At the moment, this is far too dependent on the discretion of the individual coroner. There are not the same rules on the disclosure of evidence as would exist in a criminal trial on like facts in the Crown Court, and that is unsatisfactory. We also supported the recommendation for a duty of candour, and I suspect that Bishop James’s report will also go down that route. I know that the Government have said that this recommendation will be considered alongside their response to Bishop James’s report. The Select Committee reached this conclusion on very compelling evidence. The evidence that we heard throughout the inquiry pointed strongly in one direction on virtually all the points before us. I hope that, when the Bishop has produced his report, the Government will take the opportunity to act and bring in a duty of candour.
The other important issue that we want to look at is equality of arms. Where there has been a significant loss of life and where significant public interest issues arise in terms of the conduct of those responsible for the premises or the events that have given rise to the deaths, it cannot be right that one side can be represented by heavyweight legal teams, effectively at the taxpayer’s expense when these are public bodies, while the families have to rely on the very restrictive parameters of the exceptional funding scheme for legal aid. Again, we are not talking about a large number of cases. We are not talking about a general extension of legal aid to inquests, because that would change the inquisitorial nature of the system. That is not what we are arguing for, and that is not what the evidence has suggested. It said that, for a specific type of inquest involving specific tragic events, equality of arms and fairness would dictate that those families should have access to non-means-tested legal aid. That would be in the public interest, to ensure that all the issues were properly ventilated and that the coroner’s recommendations would fully deal with any issues relating to the prevention of future deaths.
I have perhaps trespassed for some time on the House’s time, but I think this issue warrants full and proper debate. It is a shame that we do not have more people here to discuss it, but I hope that we will have other opportunities to do so. If I am unable to be here when the Minister responds to the debate, I shall read his remarks with interest. I know that he will respond fully and conscientiously, for he is a considerable asset to the Government and I very much hope that he will continue to be so when the day is out. I am confident that he will, if there is any reward for ability and diligence in politics. I know that he is well seized of these issues, and if he cannot give us everything that we would like today, I urge him to ask the new Lord Chancellor—who I hope will continue to be his boss—to take these issues seriously and not to be afraid to revisit them, because there is profound evidence to support them. On that Keynesian basis, if the evidence and the facts are there, a shrewd person will act according to the evidence and facts and make these reforms, which would cost very little but would achieve a great deal.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing this important debate. She has, for many years, worked with campaigners and used her voice in this place to speak up for our city, which suffered its darkest hours on and in the aftermath of 15 April 1989.
Our city on the banks of the Mersey in the north-west of England is one that knows only solidarity, love and empathy. We are a city that has one another’s back, and we know all too well that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. I can say proudly that the bonds that were forged in the fire of 15 April 1989 are as strong as ever.
As I have said previously in this place, Scousers have long memories. We shall never forget. We will continue to mourn our lost sons and daughters, and we will always fight for justice and for truth, opposing with every fibre of our being those who continue to spread the appalling lies of that fateful day.
More recently, in July, we lost Andrew Devine, who suffered a severe loss of oxygen in the crush on that day in 1989, resulting in brain damage. We now say, “Justice for the 97.”
It is these characteristics of solidarity and love, and these experiences of loss and trauma, that have come to define who we are as people. That spirit of a people who speak with one voice is written in the words of Jenni Hicks, who lost her two daughters, Victoria and Sarah, at Hillsborough:
“I’ll never get that accountability for my daughters but we’re still fighting on behalf of Grenfell, Manchester Arena and other disasters that are bound to happen in future. What runs alongside the loss of my daughters is the knowledge that this is a country that’s prepared to accept this injustice and that’s why the system has to be changed. You can’t just say that’s it, that’s how it is. If something’s wrong you have to try and do something about it.”
Those words resonated with me and I am sure they will with anyone who reads them. After it was ruled in May this year that the quest for justice and the accountability that comes with it may well be over, Jenni had the bravery to recognise the progress that had been made and that the decades-long campaign had not been in vain, even if those responsible for the loss of human life and the resulting cover-up will not be held accountable.
While the trial was proceeding and they were denying a cover-up, present-day South Yorkshire police were agreeing compensation to 600 relatives and survivors on the back of the force’s campaign of lies, perverting the course of justice and sweeping under the carpet their own gross negligence that resulted in the deaths of so many. The fight for justice was long and, yes, it has still eluded all in our city who believe with every fibre of our being that, with truth, comes justice and that, with justice, accountability should follow. Of course, as we know, the latter has never been delivered for the people of my city.
But we do not sit still in Liverpool. We say “Never again,” and it does not just apply to our struggle. Jenni Hicks has it right. If something is wrong, we have to try to do something about it. That is why we are here today. Sadly, we know too well that future disasters will happen, that human suffering at certain flashpoints will be immense and that the establishment’s immediate response will be to batten down the hatches and protect its own interests, against the interests of those who have suffered and lost so much. If any small flicker of light can come from the darkness of Hillsborough, it must be protection for succeeding generations from the pain and anguish of the lies, misinformation and cover-up that we witnessed and suffered for more than three decades.
We know here today that we can go so much further, and the provision afforded under law can be expanded. Ultimately, the criminal justice system must better respond to families bereaved by public disasters. Not doing so is a grotesque abdication of the responsibility of those in this place to those we represent—those who do not possess the levers of power and those with little resource, other than their collective and determined voice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said, this is why we need thorough legislation and the introduction of an independent public advocate. I also thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for her comments today.
So when we say, “Never again” on Hillsborough and the likes of Grenfell, we are not just referring to the tragedy itself. Loud and clear, we say “Never again” for a decades-long fight for what I talked about earlier: truth, justice and accountability. If the law does not place itself on the side of ordinary people—good and decent people—it will only consign itself as a hobby tool for the privileged and powerful in safeguarding their own interests. I implore this Government to hear the voices not just of those in this place today, but of the people who do not walk these corridors of power. Let us give some power to them. Let us elevate their voices. Anything less is an injustice itself.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing a debate that is of such great significance to our constituents. Like all of my hon. Friends from Merseyside, my thoughts today are with the loved ones of the 97 victims of the Hillsborough disaster. Andrew Devine, the last victim, died in July, aged just 55, from the catastrophic injuries he suffered that day, before he ever had the chance to see justice done.
More than 30 years after the tragedy, the campaign for truth and justice continues. Throughout it all, the families of the 97 have endured things most of us could barely begin to imagine. The pain and grief of losing loved ones who simply went to watch a football match but never came back is heart breaking, but the disgusting lies and smears against the victims by the gutter press, the protracted efforts by South Yorkshire police to cover up their role in that day’s events and the disinterest in doing anything to redress injustice shown by successive Governments all magnified the terrible hurt suffered by the families. Through all this, those families and their supporters stood firm and dignified. They never gave up their quest for justice. We must take inspiration from their determination. It is incumbent upon those of us who have the privilege of serving in this place to ensure that no one is left to struggle so hard and for so long again.
I applaud the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood to enshrine the right to a public advocate in law. For far too long, grieving families have been forced to navigate complex legal bureaucracies alone, without the resources, connections and access to expertise that the wealthiest in our society take for granted. Her private Member’s Bill would go a long way to putting this wrong to rights and to ensuring that no one is denied justice, as the families of the Hillsborough victims have been. I look forward to supporting its Second Reading next month. She has brought to this debate characteristic passion, as well as her considerable experience, both in law and in government, but in truth it should never have fallen on her shoulders to fight this fight. The right to a public advocate has broad cross-party support and was even included as a proposal in the 2017 Queen’s Speech, but more than four years later, the people whose lives were torn apart by the Hillsborough disaster are still waiting, as are the victims of subsequent disasters such as the Grenfell fire.
The Lord Chancellor’s unceremonious firing yesterday was met with widespread condemnation from Conservative Members, but it would have been warmly welcomed by many of the people I represent who have waited so long to see the Government honour their commitments. After all, a Justice Secretary who does not see justice done does not merit that high office. His successor must prove that the Government are serious when they say that they are committed to giving families bereaved by public disaster a voice. They must act to end the wait for truth and justice.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for everything that she has done for Hillsborough survivors and families. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for allowing me leave from the Building Safety Bill Committee. I know that he and my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) both desperately wanted to attend this debate; however, they have to attend the Committee to scrutinise the Bill, so I place this on record on their behalf and for their constituents.
On Wednesday 26 May 2021, the British legal system and the establishment delivered their final insult to the families and survivors of Hillsborough, after three decades of what felt like a targeted attack on them and on a city. Ninety-seven people were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, due to police gross negligence. A nightmare 32-year ordeal through the British legal system has ended with an outcome that feels like a final insult. Mr Justice William Davis’s ruling in May acquitted two ex-South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former lawyer of perverting the course of justice by amending police statements. Mr Justice Davis’s view, apparently, is that the police officers and their solicitor could, in principle, legally withhold crucial evidence from the Taylor inquiry.
The result is that nobody has been held accountable for the needless deaths, injuries and enduring trauma suffered at Hillsborough, despite the 2016 inquest verdicts that the 96—now 97—victims were unlawfully killed due to the disastrous actions of the police and the officer in command, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield. Is it any wonder that faith in the legal system has been utterly corroded for many after the experiences suffered?
This can never be repeated. Justice has been denied for so many. That is why the proposed Bill and set of reforms matter so much. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) has been a champion of the families and survivors since her election; I thank her for everything she has done for them. She will never know how much it has meant.
My own experience will be familiar to many survivors, but I would like to take the House back to a 16-year-old in 1989—how his view of the establishment was shaped and why this Bill matters so much to him. I watched the horrors of Hillsborough unfold from the side pen because of fate.
In 1988, I had stood with my two friends directly behind the goal—it was edgy, but we walked out celebrating a great victory and got home safely. In 1989, we had another Kopite with us. We headed back to the same place for the big game hours before, full of excitement and anticipation, like so many others. My friend started feeling extremely uncomfortable with the numbers, and we decided to move our way back down the tunnel to a side pen. That was fate, because it was before Duckenfield made his disastrous decision. I am sure all four of us who were there, and who are now parents and grandparents, thank whatever powers made us take that fateful decision to move.
I knew my dad and his mates—
Sir George Howarth
My hon. Friend is making a powerful and suitably emotional case. As he knows, I spent a day at the original inquest; does he agree that that inquest, which thankfully was overturned later, was an absolute travesty of what should have taken place? A few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) talked about the importance of truth; an inquest should be the occasion on which we get the truth, but that inquest did not.
Ian Byrne
Absolutely. I thank my right hon. Friend.
I knew my dad and his mates were also in the stadium, along with many of my friends from school and my area. You immediately think of your nearest and dearest, while watching events, powerless to do anything, next to the pens. I will never, ever forget the kindness of the people of Sheffield who, as we walked home to the station, numbed, were asking whether we wanted to phone home to tell our families that we were safe. Like many others, I had family and friends in Leppings Lane, and—this was before we had mobile phones and social media—we were hearing rumours of how many people were injured and how many had died. So it was a long, long journey home. In the next few days, I got the call from my dad saying he was okay, plus his friends. But then the calls came telling us we had lost friends from school and our community. It is something you never forget. Thirty-seven people who died at Hillsborough were teenagers.
Back in 1989, the printed media were all-powerful, and in the days after the disaster, when you were trying to come to terms with what had happened and process it, we had the infamous headline from the rag I will not name. The “Truth” headline made me, at 16 years of age, question my own sanity. I had watched the fans supporting each other, giving mouth-to-mouth on the pitch, ferrying the injured on stretchers—how could this be what the media were saying? Then we had South Yorkshire police initiate the smears and lies that reverberated around the world, backed by the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, and her press officer, Bernard Ingham. The narrative was all-powerful and the establishment was spinning it for all it was worth. And we had a set of fans and a city that never stood a chance. In the face of the unrelenting media onslaught and spin, if I was questioning my own eyes, how easy was it for the vast majority of this nation—and, indeed, the world—to swallow the orchestra of lies that was the establishment’s version of Hillsborough?
In the weeks after Hillsborough, when we had laid our scarves on the hallowed turf at Anfield and laid our friends to rest, I was visited by two police officers from the West Midlands police force to take my version of events on that fateful day. We sat down in my living room—I was 16—and the first and last question was, “How much alcohol had you drunk on the day, Ian?” I asked them to leave—that is the polite version for this Chamber—and that was my first taste, in person, of the cover-up by the respective police forces. That is why the proposed reforms—the Public Advocate Bill, the Hillsborough law and the set of measures that have been so well outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood—matter. We cannot ever allow the events and response after a disaster to be shaped by the perpetrators and the innocent to be smeared and denied justice. We cannot ever again allow mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters to go through the pain and agony that the families and survivors of Hillsborough endured.
If we learn one thing from the greatest miscarriage of justice ever seen in this country it must be this: truth and justice must be something that every victim of a disaster can expect to receive from the state. The template must be the Hillsborough independent panel, which changed everything. I am eternally grateful to the politicians who enabled it and to the panel members for their work in giving the world the true story of the Hillsborough disaster.
In this fight for truth and justice, I have met some of the greatest people I will ever meet in my life—through the tragedy of Hillsborough. These are the people and experiences that have shaped my life and my thinking. Over the last three decades, I have watched politicians from both side of this House betray the families and dismiss their version of events, afraid of upsetting the establishment narrative. And some on this side still pander to the media barons responsible for the headlines that have caused such anguish to our people and city. It is hard to swallow now that we know the real truth.
The decision by a judge in May to ensure that no one was held accountable for 97 unlawful killings, after 32 years of lies, smears and cover-ups, was a bitter pill to swallow for so many. I personally feel a huge sense of responsibility—as a 16-year-old boy at Hillsborough who has travelled to these green Benches—to the families, survivors and my city to do everything in my power to ensure that we have some form of legacy from an establishment that owes us.
My esteemed colleague’s Bill and its proposed reforms will give some comfort to the families and survivors that other families involved in any future disaster will not face what befell them after the fateful day of 15 April 1989. I wholly support the Public Advocate Bill and I urge the Minister to do the same.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
It is an honour and a privilege to follow my friend, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), in this debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on her tireless campaigning on this issue and on what I thought was an excellent speech that covered what the families have been through for years and years.
I pay tribute to the bereaved families, the survivors and the campaigners for their courage, tenacity and inspiring example to people fighting injustice everywhere. I was only two years of age when the Hillsborough disaster happened, but I grew up with people who were affected by it. We are a city influenced by it still today.
Let me thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for being here today and for her continued support, which I know means so much to the families. I hope the Minister will take away the real feeling and passion that we have heard today.
It is 32 years since the victims of the Hillsborough disaster left to watch a game of football and never came home. It is nine years this week since the Hillsborough independent panel report exposed the gross negligence of members of the South Yorkshire police, who, instead of answering for their actions, sought to shift the blame on to those whom they had failed to protect. We remember it as “Truth Day”. It is five years since the inquest verdicts found that the victims of the Hillsborough disaster were unlawfully killed, and it is seven weeks since Andrew Devine, who suffered life-changing injuries at Hillsborough, became its 97th fatality.
We know now that witness statements were altered, that the reputation of the victims was impugned, and that lies were fed to the gutter press in one of the most despicable cover-ups in modern history, yet the only conviction secured was for a health and safety breach, resulting in a fine. No one has ever answered for the unlawful killing of 97 people. What kind of justice is that? What message does it send to those who campaigned for decades not only for truth, but for accountability? What message does it send to the bereaved families and survivors, who were forced to bite their tongues while discredited slurs about their loved ones were repeated inside and outside the court? The horrific experience that they endured is all the evidence that we need that the legal system in this country is broken. It is incapable of delivering justice for bereaved families and survivors, and it needs to change.
I commend the tireless work of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood to help deliver that change, and I am proud to add my name to her Public Advocate Bill, which would provide support for bereaved families at an early stage following a public disaster to prevent them from having to endure what the Hillsborough families have endured.
Back in June, following the collapse of the recent trials, the then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice told me in this Chamber that the Government would engage with the Hillsborough families and survivors every step of the way to review and propose changes to the law, and I hope that the new Secretary of State will commit to do that as quickly as possible.
The Public Advocate Bill has the support of the Hillsborough families and of survivors—including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby—so when it is brought back to the House next month, will the Minister guarantee that the Government will not block its passage through Parliament? Together with this vital change, it is also time to take forward the work of the families, the former Member for Leigh, Andy Burnham, and my predecessor, Steve Rotheram, to introduce a Hillsborough law. This would make it a legal duty for public institutions to tell the truth in proceedings, investigations and inquiries, and to act with candour and frankness. Ahead of the inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic, calls for a Hillsborough law have also been taken up by families whose relatives died due to covid-19, so it could not be more pressing.
During the last debate on this matter, the then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice said that the Government were considering the points made by the former Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, in his 2017 report on the experiences of the Hillsborough families, including in relation to proposals for a Hillsborough law. Will the Minister tell us when the Government will publish their response to the report and on what timetable they will act on the report’s recommendations? Although criminal proceedings may have prevented a public response until now, the Government have had years to consider the report’s findings, and there is no excuse for any further delay. Our legal system must be fundamentally rebalanced, so that the bereaved families and survivors have access to the same tools as the powerful and the state.
Let the greatest legacy of the decades-long fight for truth and justice following the Hillsborough disaster by the families, survivors and campaigners be the introduction of these changes to ensure that their experiences are never repeated.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing it, on all her work in support of the families and for a Public Advocate Bill, and on the clarity and passion with which she spoke today.
Those who lost loved ones on that painful day of 15 April 1989 and since, including many in my constituency have not only suffered bereavement in the most terrible of circumstances; they have then had to endure decades of pain in the pursuit of justice. I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved in that campaign. The collapse on 26 May 2021 of the trial of two retired police officers and a solicitor who were accused of perverting the course of justice was absolutely devastating for families and campaigners. In 2016, an inquest jury ruled that those who tragically lost their lives were unlawfully killed, yet no successful criminal charges have been brought against any individual. That is a massive failing of the criminal justice system.
Let me turn to the proposed reforms of the system. I fully support the Public Advocate Bill—the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood—which would establish a public advocate to provide advice to and act as data controller for representatives of the deceased after major incidents. Between September and December 2018, the Government ran a consultation on establishing an independent public advocate. It is disappointing that nearly three years on, the Government are still analysing the feedback to that consultation, so will the Minister give us an update today on when the Government will be issuing their response?
I thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for her commitment to support the 97 and for making it clear that she supports the concept of the public advocate. I ask the Minister: is that the current Government’s view? If so, why have they not yet brought forward their own legislation or at least responded to their own consultation? In the aftermath of the collapse of the trials in May, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and long-time Hillsborough campaigner, called for there to be
“a duty of candour in law for public officials”.
The Right Rev. James Jones, who was the Bishop of Liverpool between 1998 and 2013, in his report on the experiences of the Hillsborough families, called for a statutory
“duty of candour which addresses the unacceptable behaviour of police officers—serving or retired—who fail to cooperate fully with investigations into alleged criminal offences or misconduct.”
In addition, the report of the Daniel Morgan independent panel has proposed the creation of a statutory duty of candour to be owed by all law enforcement agencies to those whom they serve, subject to the protection of national security and relevant data protection legislation. Shortly before the summer recess, the Government indicated that they were considering this, so will the Minister tell the House whether there has been any progress?. On 10 June, the previous Secretary of State for Justice told the House that following the collapse of the trials earlier this year, the Government’s focus would
“be on publishing the Government’s overarching response to”
James Jones’s report,
“after having further consulted all the families.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 1128.]
So what consultation with the families has taken place between then and now?
As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), has noted in this House, the issue of the creation of a statutory duty of candour is particularly urgent given that there will soon be an inquiry, sadly, into the covid-19 pandemic. We need to see action from the Government. No families bereaved by public disasters should have to go through what the brave families who lost loved ones at Hillsborough have had to endure.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
Truth and justice: two words that should underpin our criminal justice system. But from Hillsborough, to Orgreave, to the Shrewsbury 24, to Grenfell, we know that too often this just is not the case. The recent collapse of the Hillsborough trials, where police who perverted the course of justice by tampering with evidence were let loose with no case to answer on a mere technicality, lays bare the current flaws in our system. There are no words that do justice to the agony and the trauma the families have faced in their decades-long fight for justice, nor how this defeat crushed the last remaining hopes and faith the survivors, families and their supporters had in our justice system. The fact that no individual has been held responsible by the justice system for the decisions that led to the deaths of 97 people is nothing short of a national scandal.
The same applies for the families of those who have died at the hands of the police, particularly black victims, who make up 8% of deaths in police custody despite being only 3% of the population. Cases such as the untimely deaths of Christopher Alder, Kingsley Burrell and Sean Rigg have seen inquest after inquest into police conduct fail to hold a single person accountable. Indeed, since 1969 just a single police officer in the UK has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their care.
We must seize this opportunity today for a serious rethink about how we support survivors and loved ones who are already dealing with the pain of bereavement so that no one ever has to face this nightmare again. We need measures that will rebuild trust in these processes; measures that will promote transparency and uphold accountability; measures to prevent things from going wrong as they did with Hillsborough. We have seen some recent progress after much campaigning by survivors and bereaved families, supported by incredible organisations such as Inquest. Just last week, the Government response to the Justice Committee’s inquiry report on the coroner service put forward some positive commitments around the means-testing of legal support for some bereaved families. This commitment is incredibly welcome. If properly implemented and coupled with non-means-tested publicly funded advice for families, it will make huge strides forward in ensuring equality between families and public bodies at inquests—a fundamental principle that the state has a duty to uphold. However, there has been no response from the Government on the calls from the Justice Committee for major reforms to the statutory duty of candour, creating a system for appealing coroners’ decision, or the establishment of a charter of rights for bereaved people. Can the Minister explain why his Government are yet to come forward with a position on these crucial reforms, and give us a timetable for when they are likely to do so?
I now turn to the Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill, which is backed by the Hillsborough Family Support Group. I thank the families, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for her work on developing and bringing this legislation to Parliament. If adopted by this Government, it would enable families to set up an independent review and establish an independent, fully-resourced public advocate supporting the survivors and families who have lost loved ones at the heart of the process to get answers for their loss. These much-needed steps would improve trust and transparency in systems that alienate relatives and survivors, who too often feel pushed to one side in the official scramble to shift blame and protect reputations. To avoid taking action is to be responsible for preserving a system that time and again shields actors of the state from accountability, while deflecting blame on to their victims.
Last month, Andrew Devine tragically became the 97th victim of the Hillsborough disaster to be unlawfully killed. In his name, and the names of the 96 other victims, I ask a simple question—yes or no—will the Minister take this opportunity today to commit to the provisions in the Public Advocate Bill, as well as the recommendations from the Justice Committee report, and take these long-overdue steps to redress the balance of the scales of justice and provide survivors and families with the support they need to gain truth, justice and true accountability? As we know, justice delayed is justice denied.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the chance to participate. Just last Friday, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) was here for the consideration of private Members’ Bills and referred to this debate. I wanted to come along—I do not provide support to any of the victims as an MP—to convey from my point of view our understanding of what the debate means to everyone here today. None of us could fail to feel the sorrow, hurt, loss and raw pain that we have all heard here today. The hon. Lady has been a stalwart in putting this matter forward, and I wanted to come and support her, and I am here today to do just that, and I put it on record.
If I may, I will refer to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I am always impressed—I have said this to her, so it is not something she has not heard before—that she is on the Back Benches contributing to debates. I am impressed every time I come here and she does that, because it shows the depth of her and her commitment to the issues she brings forward. We should all be impressed by that, including the Conservative side.
This is a very sensitive topic, and I know there are people listening today who are members of families who have lost loved ones due to public disasters. Many out there will resonate with what those MPs who have spoken today have said, as well as with those who have spoken before and are not here now, and they will understand where the Bill needs to go. We look to the Government to respond positively. We all know—I have written down “96 Liverpool fans”, but as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) reminds me, it is now 97—that the impact goes long beyond the event. I remember well that awful day and the vivid scenes that took place afterwards.
The previous Justice Secretary stated that the Government would
“always consider opportunities to review the law”.—[Official Report, 10 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 1128.]
Well, today is the day, and the House is asking for that to happen. However, given the devastating situations that families were left in as a result of what many families perceived to be Government inaction after the Hillsborough disaster, it is fair to say that a review of the current law is the minimum action that could be taken. Steps must be taken, as every hon. and right hon. Member has referred to, to ensure that this process is never repeated in any way and that the correct process takes place not only for victims, but the victims’ families who have been left behind.
The motion for this debate is clear. It calls for reforms that
“better respond to families bereaved by public disasters”.
I want to take a moment to reflect on an event in the past that also supports the claim for reforming the criminal justice system. I refer to the Omagh bombings of 1998. I also remember that day. It was a Saturday, and I always remember it very well. It was 15 August, and 29 people were killed.
Sir George Howarth
The hon. Gentleman is right, as others have, to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle). I add my thanks to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for all she has done to support the families. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the major problems that has beset all this is the lack of a process that takes any account of the legitimate interests of those who either were bereaved or survived it? Does he therefore believe it is about time we put that right?
Jim Shannon
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for intervening. Absolutely, we want to associate ourselves with those who lost loved ones in Liverpool and their pain. We in Northern Ireland have had the same pain for some 23 years from the Omagh bombings in particular.
After multiple court cases and futile arrests, there was no real closure for those poor families. My point is: this is not a Northern Ireland-based dig-up of history but another illustration of how there is, as the right hon. Gentleman said, a lack of justice and judicial support for the families of the victims. For 23 years, the families of the Omagh victims have had no closure and no explanation. The process that they have been through shows again that we need to do better by victims of public disasters.
Such disasters should be treated no differently from individual cases. The mark left behind is the same. The pain is the same. The long-lasting hurt is the same. The feeling of losing a loved one hurts all the same, and more effort needs to be put into reforming the system to ensure that there is a better response to the families of the victims. They have waited for something to happen, but nothing has happened. That could be done through communication and better liaison between families and the police, emergency services and, ultimately, the courts. I look to the Minister for a response.
The Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill would allow for better scrutiny for investigations. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood said that, as did the right hon. Member for Maidenhead—everyone has said it. Perhaps I sometimes look at things simplistically, but it looks simple enough—so just do it. I fear that, all too often, victims are left in the dark, making the process more devastating. An independent advocate would allow for those all-important questions to be answered from the aftermath of a tragedy that is still raw. We have witnessed that in recent years with Grenfell, which other hon. Members referred to, and the Manchester Arena bombings. Many of us did not cry tears at that, for people we did not know, but for the victims, the tears, the sorrow and the hurt are the same, and we need to help the victims. They and their families should be at the forefront of legislation. The authorities have a moral duty to ensure that information and investigative movements are transparent to all victims’ families.
One of the most prominent duties of hon. Members in this House—we all do this, hopefully to the best of our abilities—is to represent our constituents. I stand up here for all who have suffered loss with no closure or justice at all. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland knows only too well about victims, and there is often little to no closure. As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, it is crucial that no negligence or wrongful information has the potential to dissipate relations further. I cannot fail to be angered about that; I want the response to be as it should.
The core element of the Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill is to ensure that things are done properly from the start. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood has raised this issue in Parliament over a great many years—long before I came here—and I hope that consideration will be given to the Bill. I urge the Minister, to whom I look as a friend, to work collectively with the victims’ families. It is not enough, and moreover it is not fair, that it is down to the families to set out their own methods of support and victims support groups. The Government must do more to ensure that the pain that victims’ families go through is met with understanding and support. If we cannot give support to our grieving and vulnerable, we as a society are failing and we in this seat of democracy as MPs have failed. Today we want to take failure and make it success, so we look to our Minister to make that happen.
I support the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and everyone who has spoken across the Chamber. I would just say this: to their repeated efforts to secure this support in legislation, I add my voice—as one who represents Strangford in Northern Ireland and does, I believe, understand the pain—as I do to the request they have put forward today. That request in this House today will help us all in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and, on behalf of the victims and on behalf of the families, make sure that we can learn from past mistakes and simply, but most importantly, do it better.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I would like to start by saying, in my 21 years in Parliament, what a privilege it has been to participate in this very important debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing this debate, as well as Lord Michael Wills for his work alongside her in championing the Public Advocate Bill (No. 2) Bill.
We have had so many important speeches in this debate. There is the leadership shown by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and I think we are all very grateful for her continuing to champion these issues. It has been good to hear from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), as Chair of the Justice Committee, as well as from my hon. Friends the Members for Bootle (Peter Dowd), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson).
We heard two very emotional speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and they both brought tears to my eyes. The truth is that I may well get emotional myself, because I have been thinking throughout this debate about the victims and the loved ones of the Grenfell fire, and my friend Khadija Saye and her mother, who lost their lives. It is for that reason that we must set this right, because tragedies have come after Hillsborough, and we are still waiting. That is unacceptable because we have to demonstrate that we can act, so I hope that the Minister, when he rises to his feet, has some news for us on this occasion.
None of us in this House will forget that, in the FA cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989, 97 football fans tragically lost their lives. The victims were young and old. Jon-Paul Gilhooley, Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard’s eldest cousin, was the youngest, aged just 10. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood recognised, the most recent is Andrew Devine, who died this summer as a result of the catastrophic injuries he received 32 years ago.
Inquests carried out since the Hillsborough tragedy have shown that the 97 victims were unlawfully killed by the negligence of others. The authorities shamefully failed the fans whose lives they were supposed to protect. But it was not only the lack of experience at managing large crowds that was wrong and it was not only poor decision making; it was the gross and repugnant lies that they have since admitted and the desperate attempts to cover their own tracks. Earlier this year, the collapse of the most recent case was yet another slap in the face for the families of all those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough.
It is truly shameful that, still today, not one person has been held accountable for these deadly failures. The truth about what happened that day in 1989 was only acknowledged 23 years later as a result of the Hillsborough independent panel, but still not one person has been held accountable, not one victim has got what they deserve, not one family has received closure. South Yorkshire police have not been held accountable for their lies but tried to deflect blame from their own failures on to the victims. The lack of justice in this case fatally undermines the very concept of a public inquiry: what is the point of a public inquiry if it is incapable of shedding light on the murkiest of dealings and if it is incapable of or unwilling to provide closure for the families of the victims?
The reforms we are debating today stem from the Hillsborough tragedy but their benefits would reach far beyond it. The appalling thing about the travesty of Hillsborough is that it is by no means a one-off. I referenced the parallels that I see in the dishonesty and criminality at the heart of the Grenfell tragedy, in which I personally lost a friend. I will never forget waking up on the morning of 14 June 2017 at around 5.30 am, a few hours after the catastrophe had started that would take the life of my friend Khadija Saye and 71 others. What has emerged since the blaze is a pattern of deception and untruthfulness from the authorities. The inquiry is still ongoing but not one person has been arrested for the clear criminality that has been revealed, no one has been convicted, no one has been punished, no one has been held to account to this day. It breaks my heart to admit there will be more injustices like it; that is why it is so important that our justice system is prepared for them.
The Opposition firmly believe that changes to the law are needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood is right that an independent public advocate should be available to the victims of disasters to advocate for their best interests, to establish a panel to review all the evidence, documentation and data relating to the tragedy, and to advise on the course of action most likely to get justice and push for it. The creation of an independent public advocate was promised in the Government’s 2017 manifesto, and I am sure all in the House will agree this is too important a promise to break.
The Opposition also support the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, as proposed by Andy Burnham, former Member for Leigh. When disasters like Hillsborough occur, the public expect those in official positions to be honest and transparent about the events which took place. If mistakes are made, they expect officials to be held to the same standard as they themselves would be if they made a mistake at work. That is why the Opposition support the principle that those in public office should face legal consequences if they fail to co-operate with inquiries in a truthful, open and honest way.
The Opposition would also take steps to end the fundamental imbalance of power at the heart of the inquest system. It is absurd beyond belief that after terrible events like Hillsborough and Grenfell a modern-day David and Goliath situation exists when it comes to public disasters. It simply cannot be right that state bodies and their representatives have unlimited access to a pot of public money to spend on the country’s best legal minds while the families of victims get little or nothing. How can it be just for a family who has gone through the most unimaginable pain of losing a member in horrendous circumstances to have to rely on crowdfunding just to be represented at inquest? Yet we know this happens all the time.
Let us consider the case of Zane Gbangbola, which I raised last year. On the evening of 7 February 2014, seven-year-old Zane and his mother and father went to bed in their Surrey home and owing to circumstances which remain unexplained Zane tragically died in his sleep and his father was left paralysed for life. The inquest into Zane’s death found that he died as a result of poisoning caused by a petrol pump in their home; however, doubts regarding this verdict have been expressed from all sides of the political spectrum. When Zane’s family applied for legal aid they were denied it because the case was not considered to be in the public interest. Of all those present at the inquest into their son’s death, they were the only ones not to be publicly funded. How can it be fair for this family in their moment of absolute grief to be left to present their case with one crowdfunded lawyer against six teams of top lawyers funded by the public? Labour would end this injustice by ensuring that bereaved families at inquests and public inquiries received public funding to ensure that they have basic equality of arms in their struggle for justice. Both these changes would put victims first, leaving the justice system much better prepared for the worst.
Truth and justice are the fundamental principles that must guide us in this debate. The families of victims must be supported, and authorities must be held to account. Those are simple commitments that everyone in this House can agree on. We cannot have more cover-ups. We cannot have decades of mistruths placed on the shoulders of victims who have already suffered too much. We cannot allow lies to linger for as long as they did over Hillsborough ever again. It is time for the Government to do the decent thing and change the law.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)
Occasionally—very occasionally—a debate takes place in this House that has such searing force that it lodges forever in the memory because of the way in which it measures up to the gravity of the subject matter. This is one such debate. I thank the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing it, but even more for giving a speech that was of such exceptional clarity and force that I hope not just her constituents, but those more widely in the great city of Liverpool, will read it and, even better, listen to it.
I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), to whom I shall return in a moment; the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd)—what a joy it is to see him in his place—my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill); the hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley); the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), who also made an exceptional speech; and the hon. Members for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon).
I want to mention the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, because it says an awful lot that, having acted as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister, she now acts as a Back Bencher. That can be encapsulated neatly, hon. Members may think, by the single word “duty”. She encapsulates duty, and Parliament is the richer for it.
The Government recognise the fundamental importance of placing the bereaved at the heart of any investigation that follows a major disaster. That, perhaps, is taken as read. We remain committed to ensuring that bereaved people are supported. That means that they are not just treated with the basic humanity and respect, which I am afraid was not the case in the past, but provided with—the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood used this word—agency, given a voice and thought of not as spectators but as participants. The way she put it—I think she was absolutely right—was that the bereaved cannot be considered a mere adjunct to proceedings. I cannot put it better than that.
Stepping back from inquests for a moment, I think that there is a new and welcome culture in that regard in criminal courts, as well as in inquests, in so far as I remember that when I began prosecuting as a barrister, witnesses and the bereaved were considered to be completely incidental. In fairness, because of reforms made when the Labour party was in power and while we have been in government, there has been a welcome trend to ensure that witnesses are spoken to by prosecuting barristers, shown round the court, given a copy of their statement and so on. However, we do need to go further.
Before I turn to the IPA proposals specifically, I want to take a moment to set out a bit of context. Just before I do that, however, let me reiterate that the apology that was made from this Dispatch Box by David Cameron for the double injustice that the hon. Lady referred to is as relevant today as it was then. It is worth spelling out what that double injustice was: the first injustice for the families was losing their loved ones, and the second was being traduced.
Let me turn to that context. In recent years, as the House has discussed, a forensic spotlight has been shone on the experience of the bereaved, and on bereaved people in general. First, there was the report by Dame Elish Angiolini into deaths and serious incidents in police custody. Then, most pertinent to today’s proceedings, there was the report by Bishop James Jones, commissioned by the former Prime Minister, to ensure that the pain and the suffering of the Hillsborough families would not be repeated. I want to take a moment just to focus a little on what was said in that report, a copy of which I have here and have had the opportunity to re-read.
In section 2 of the report, on the proper participation of bereaved families at inquests, Bishop James Jones talked about two things in particular: first, legal representation for bereaved families in appropriate cases; and, secondly, cultural change. Legal representation can be so important. It was, in fact, the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, who ensured that in those second inquests the families did have legal representation. If one takes a moment to read what is in Bishop James Jones’s report, one can see that he included some of the testimony from the bereaved families. One said:
“The second inquest gave me my children back.”
The opportunity to lodge pen portraits, and to have those lawyers to speak to, was transformational in terms of providing the very agency to which the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood referred.
Bishop James Jones went on to talk about another matter as part of proper participation: cultural change. Here, I wish to pick up the point made by the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. Bishop James Jones, in paragraph 2.95, said:
“I believe that ‘proper participation’ of bereaved families at an inquest is not just a question of funding, but also of cultural change.”
What he observed was the point that others have made:
“the highly adversarial behaviour of some lawyers employed by public bodies suggests that additional training may be required for solicitors and barristers working in the inquest system.”
He was not the first person to make that point. The Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, in his judgment of 19 December 2012 which quashed the original inquests, described the original proceedings as having been “scarred” by having degenerated into “a kind of adversarial battle”. That is something we need to consider as well.
The current Chief Coroner, his honour Judge Teague QC, said publicly that it is “precisely the inquisitorial nature of the coroner’s investigation that is important to the centrality of the bereaved. Where proceedings take on a more adversarial character, the focus is liable to be diverted away from the bereaved where it properly belongs and channelled instead into some extraneous satellite dispute, with the risk that it ends up as yet another form of litigation.” I speak as a lawyer myself. I know that sometimes that can make the situation worse.
Sir George Howarth
Mr Deputy Speaker, I neglected to apologise earlier for not being here at the start of the debate. I was chairing Westminster Hall and it was therefore impossible for me to be here.
The Minister is making a very good point. I can remember an exchange between the right hon. Member for Maidenhead and myself when she was Home Secretary in which we talked about the stereotyping of people. Somewhere at the bottom of all this, the way in which the judiciary and some sections of the media dealt with it was all about a stereotype—a stereotype of football fans—which was convenient for them, but actually, in this case, bore no resemblance to the truth. Does he agree that stereotyping in any situation is wrong, but that in this one it has been absolutely appalling?
Alex Chalk
What an excellent point. The idea that all football fans are the same, behave the same way and think the same way is an absurdity. Perhaps we understand that better now than was the case 30 years ago.
To conclude the point about the context, what has happened since 2017 is a document that was referred to, but which I just want to take a moment to discuss—“A Guide to Coroner Services for Bereaved People”. I mention it because there is a welcome focus on bereaved people and it contains all the information that one would expect. I will not rehearse it in exhaustive detail, but I just want to pick up on one point made by the former Home Secretary and former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, which is that it is really important that there is never inequality of arms—in other words, in a situation where the state is potentially on trial or certainly under scrutiny, it acts towards the bereaved parties in a way that is defensive and unfair. So I was very pleased to see the annex to that document effectively has a code of conduct in those circumstances. It states:
“Where a Government department has interested person status to an inquest, the Government and the lawyers it instructs at inquests will adopt the following principles”.
I will not read them all out, but it includes, in paragraph 3:
“Communicate with the bereaved in a sensitive and empathetic way which acknowledges and respects their loss.”
Hon. Members would have thought that that is obvious, but it bears emphasis. The annex also includes:
“Keep in mind that the bereaved should…Be at the heart of the inquest process…Feel confident that the inquest will get to the facts of what happened…Feel properly involved throughout and listened to.”
That is part of a new code of conduct and it is absolutely right.
I want to make a final point in focusing on there not being a “closed door of the public sector” , which is the phrase that my right hon. Friend the former Prime Minister used. The Bar Standards Board published, I think as recently as this week, resources for those practising in the coroners’ courts, which includes instructions to:
“Adapt your style of communication and engagement to the unique purpose of inquests”—
and so on. That effectively says to representatives, “Remember bereaved people. They are not simply observers in this. They are participants. They are vulnerable people. They deserve to be treated with respect.”
Finally on context before I turn to the IPA, there have been very important changes made to the exceptional case funding scheme. I know that there are a lot of people in the House who greatly value legal aid, and we certainly do. The Government recognise that although legal aid is generally not available for inquests—by the way, that is as it should be, because the inquest is essentially a fact-finding process—there are some circumstances where legal representation may be required for bereaved families, as the former Prime Minister noted in respect of the second inquests, and that is provided through the ECF scheme.
We believe that where there should be legal aid for bereaved families, access to it should be as simple and easy as possible. That is why we have reviewed this process as part of our legal aid means test review. Following that work, I am delighted that we have made a commitment, in the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report of its inquiry into the coroner service, that ECF applications for representation at inquests will no longer be means-tested. That is a very important development. It will broaden the scope and access to legal advice and support.
Let me turn to the IPA and the Bill that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood prepared, which I have read. As the House knows, in 2018, the Government consulted on proposals to establish an IPA, and the consultation looked at a range of issues about how best to support those bereaved following a public disaster. It asked a number of challenging questions because, as always, we know in this House that the devil is in the detail. We need to focus on issues such as: how exactly an IPA should interact with investigatory bodies, how one avoids duplication, whether the IPA should be involved only where fatalities occur, whether it ought to have a wider remit, and so on.
It is right to say that there was a mixed reaction from those who provided responses, including on the circumstances in which such an appointment should be triggered. There was also the issue of the name. As the consultation document noted, the Government do not see an IPA as providing legal advice and representation—of course not—and it is not an advocate in that sense. It also noted that such an IPA may be supporting a
“diverse group of people whose views may differ, perhaps strongly”.
Just as the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) made the point that it is absurd to put all football fans in one category, it is also very dangerous to put all the bereaved in one category, and we must be mindful of that. There was, however, more agreement on the importance of the IPA dovetailing with other support already provided. Plainly on that latter point, it will be important to consider the new and, we would suggest, significantly improved landscape, in terms of the culture and support that I referred to.
Since that consultation, there have been a number of significant events, such as a new Government, a general election and a pandemic, but perhaps most importantly, there has been a criminal trial, which has been referred to. Right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that that does mean that there are necessarily some things that cannot properly be discussed for fear of prejudicing, but that is now behind us, and I am pleased to announce today that we will be responding to the 2018 review by the end of this year, and I expect it to be rather earlier than that.
Quite apart from that, the Government are committed to continuing their engagement with the families bereaved by the Hillsborough disaster. Indeed, we have done so earlier in the summer and will continue to do so. It is critical that the lessons that can be learned from their awful experience are not lost. To that end, the Home Office has been working closely with its partners in the relevant Departments and organisations, and is now engaging with the Hillsborough families before publishing the Government’s overarching response.
The former Prime Minister made the point that we must make sure that other types of inquiry do not fall within the loophole that has been observed in criminal cases such as this. If an inquiry is not set up under the auspices of the Inquiries Act 2005, we need to ensure that we do not have a situation in which people can apparently avoid the consequences of their actions. We are considering very carefully a report from the Law Commission, which, as Members will know, is there to look at lacunae in the law and try to improve it. The commission came up with some recommendations in December last year, considering potential offences of corruption in public office and breach of duty in public office. Those are two potential offences that we are looking at with great care.
Ensuring that the bereaved are still at the heart of the investigatory process that follows a major disaster remains fundamentally important, and important steps have been taken. However, we are going to go further and, as we do so, we will continue to welcome the interest and, yes, the challenge—the proper challenge—from people standing up for their constituents, standing up for their city and standing up for accountability. I thank Members on both sides of the House for some measured, powerful and principled contributions today.
Maria Eagle
I thank the Minister for his response and the information that he will now be responding to the consultation. “By the end of the year” is a little disappointing. I appreciate that there has been a change of Lord Chancellor and that always delays things, but it should be remembered that we will be heading towards 33 years by then.
As I think the Minister should have understood from the debate today—including the powerful contributions from a survivor of Hillsborough, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), and from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—the power of the emotions expressed indicates quite what an impact these events have. The small, cheap, relatively speaking, reforms that have been proposed will make a real difference. The introduction of a public advocate, and three or four proposals in the report from the former Bishop of Liverpool, will make a real difference to bereaved families and survivors. They will be a monument to the powerful campaign—which has continued for 32 and a half years so far—of the Hillsborough families, the survivors and those who have been bereaved and affected by this terrible disaster.
I hope that the Minister will remember the emotion and power of the speeches because something really must be done. Just coming back in December and saying, “We will have a code of conduct” will not cut it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
It has truly been an honour to be in the Chair during this debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered proposed reforms to the criminal justice system to better respond to families bereaved by public disasters.
Chatham Docks
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
I am extremely proud of my constituency, its people and its history, particularly our great maritime history and the connection with our river, the Medway, which has been a significant contributing factor in how the five Medway towns—Rochester, Chatham, Strood, Gillingham and Rainham—have developed over the centuries. The towns have been a hive of industry and innovation, and home to talented and exceptional people who have shaped, and continue to shape, the area that I love so much.
The fact that we have the River Medway flowing through our towns means that we have a rich industrial and commercial past and present. We have had large numbers of cement works, shipbuilders, boatbuilders, brickworks, world-class engineers, manufacturers, aerospace workers, energy producers, artists, innovators and significant industries based in the Medway towns. Our geography has played a major part in the towns’ success and meant that Chatham was chosen as home to the royal dockyard, which has been in existence since 1613 and in its heyday was the most important shipbuilding and repair dockyard in the country. The dockyard was sadly decommissioned in the 1980s, after much opposition from the people of the towns and one of my predecessors, Dame Peggy Fenner. It was a devasting blow to the Medway towns and had a major impact on its people.
Since the closure of the naval dockyard, fantastic work has been carried out by successive Governments, local authorities, businesses and investors to see the old dockyard site regenerated, making it a vibrant area with housing, leisure, universities and businesses. The historic dockyard site has been separated and preserved, with our three deep-water basins built in the mid-1800s being maintained and still in use. One is now a thriving marina. The second is used by the local community and for water sports. As recently as 2019, we welcomed HMS Medway and, in 2017, HMS Richmond and the Dutch Navy frigate HNLMS Holland. The third basin, known as Chatham docks, is a working commercial port, where many businesses are benefiting from what is a strategic, regionally significant asset, a 70-acre commercial port and manufacturing hub. It is home to successful and growing maritime and construction businesses providing over 800 jobs and 16 apprenticeships, with far more—around 1,500—in the supply chain or in some way dependent on the facility. Businesses with a combined annual turnover approaching £175 million and future investment plans for more than £60 million are occupying the land, buildings and berths.
Despite all this, the landowners have said that they feel the site is no longer viable and that too much investment would be required to repair or renew the lock gates. Therefore, they wish to close the docks and in their place build high-rise flats, with tall promises on the number of jobs that will be created there. I must point out that this is in the context of the landowner already having developed over 26 acres with high-rise flats and mixed-use retail and leisure, through which the landowner has already realised significant increases in land values. As Members might imagine, the suggestion of closing Chatham docks has united residents, businesses and political opponents against the idea.
Medway Council is currently finalising its draft local plan. It has been widely suggested that the council will redesignate Chatham docks for housing and mixed use when the draft local plan is finally published. Changing the designation of Chatham docks from commercial to housing will be another devasting blow to the area, the local economy, the businesses operating within the dock, the supply chain and the people who work there, putting an end to future use of a strategic infrastructure asset, despite there still being a need and a demand, on a site that would never ever be replaced. Redesignation within the local plan by the council would be an overwhelming contribution to the closure of the docks and to the loss of businesses, jobs and opportunities for generations to come.
Independent consultants have said that
“the economic and strategic implications of terminating the port operation make no sense for the local community and for the wider region since this move is both irreversible and not required from an economic or financial perspective.”
Much has been said by the landowner and the council about the viability of the docks, which has been challenged robustly by the businesses that operate there. That is supported by evidence and independent assessments. The cost of the repairs to the lock gates has been used as one reason why the dock needs to shut. So this could be the end and the last chance of ever seeing a large naval vessel enter Chatham again. That was never the intention when the three basins were handed over to a private company in the 1980s. In fact, the intention was that basin 3 would always be accessible for large ships, as per agreements that were put in place at the time. Development would also mean establishing a fixed access road between basin 2 and basin 3, which would landlock basin 2 forever. How very sad that, when there could be so many other options, we will oversee its destruction. I hope Medway Council learns from the regrets of London at what was done to its old dock basins in the name of regeneration, and of Liverpool at the loss of its world heritage status. I wonder whether the Minister could offer an insight into how regionally important infrastructure can be protected within the planning system.
To support a narrative around the closure of the docks, the success of the businesses operating within it has been described by some as a “moot point,” so this is an opportunity to highlight their success and continued growth. Chatham docks is a thriving port that provides high-end, value-added employment ranging from semi-skilled and skilled through to highly technical work, with staff educated to degree level and beyond. This is an area of growing businesses offering high-quality jobs, with technology and investment contributing to increased productivity locally.
The docks are well used and the operations benefit directly from the good harbour and berthing facilities on the River Medway. Such facilities are unavailable anywhere else on this stretch of the coast from Essex to Kent. Located at the docks are some very large and successful businesses, including Downton, the national logistics company, and ArcelorMittal, a leading manufacturer of steel fabric reinforcement, as well as Uplands Engineering, EPAL and other businesses whose activities include waste recycling, ship repair and the importation of timber, cement and steel products.
Examples of current and recent major infrastructure projects involving the businesses based within the docks include the Olympic park, Crossrail, Wembley stadium, the Tideway tunnel and many others. There are also marine businesses within the supply chain based on the river, including GPS Marine Contractors, which operates all over Europe. The company has said it would need to pull out of the Medway if the docks were to close.
Part of the business of GPS Marine Contractors is transporting goods by barge. It transported 2.3 million tonnes of cargo by barge to and from three major projects in London, which eliminated 7.5 million heavy goods vehicle road miles and reduced CO2 emissions by 7,200 tonnes compared with using Euro 6 trucks. This year the company began using hydrogen-treated vegetable oil, which is 100% renewable and derived from waste vegetable oil, and it is now trialling a number of post-combustion technologies to reduce emissions further.
Scotline, one of the UK’s largest importers of timber, has also invested heavily in the Medway towns and in green maritime technology. Big names such as Hanson, Tarmac and Cemex all require the facilities at Chatham docks and the skills of the businesses within it to service their fleets of vessels to transport the aggregates needed to continue the huge building programmes in London, the south-east and beyond.
ArcelorMittal has recently announced that it is planning an additional £1 million investment in its site, following its successful bid to help build the High Speed 2 line. It expects to employ 50 new members of staff—newly trained, highly skilled and well-paid people—between now and the end of the year, with further opportunities on the horizon.
These are exactly the opportunities I would like to see more of in my constituency and the wider region, and it is testament to those businesses that they are continuing to deliver and grow with this uncertainty hanging over their future. These small examples show that Chatham docks are providing the right opportunities for local businesses to win contracts and support national projects. Closing down the site for housing would prevent any future for this type of development and growth. My constituency’s unemployment rate is in line with the national average at 5.2%, equating to 3,755 people looking for work, which is 1,585 more than in March last year. It is clear that greater certainty would allow even more confidence for businesses to invest, including major investment in the short term by Street Fuel Ltd in its south-east recycling operation and in expanding its current ship repair and dredger maintenance facilities. The future investment plans would seek to grow the existing employment figures from 800 to more than 1,000 people in the port and manufacturing jobs. This would also mean a big increase in apprenticeships offered.
Oxford Economics has advised that manufacturing sector workers, such as the ones at Chatham docks, enjoy significantly higher wages than the median average. Nationally, the median wage in the manufacturing sector is £27,430, which compares with a figure of £23,084 in the economy as a whole. This positions workers on the site at Chatham docks significantly above the national averages, generally and by sector.
The landowners have claimed that the docks are unsustainable. Who could blame a developer for being drawn to the attractiveness of a capital return on 3,600 flats over that of a commercial dock? A financial viability report produced by the Crossley Group of chartered accountants suggested that the return on capital employed is above the expected average; that the overall return and level of rental income should be sufficient to rectify the historical lack of maintenance and repairs of the docks; and that there is potential for further opportunities to increase returns. That is against a backdrop of the businesses within the docks being prepared to cover the costs of the replacement lock gates.
More worryingly, after much concern expressed by myself, councillors, residents, businesses, academics and industry, Medway Council still feels that the docks must be redesignated for housing in the local plan. That is because the Government’s blunt formula for housing targets in Medway is 1,662 a year, resulting in a total of 28,259 over the life of the plan. In itself, that is an undeliverable target for a such a small geographical area, which is already densely populated. Medway Council says that it must redesignate the docks for housing, lose these jobs and damage our local economy in order to meet the Government’s housing target. Has the Minister or his Department had discussions with the council on what its assessment is of the number of homes that it could deliver across Medway without closing the docks?
The council has also said that if it is unable to build those flats on the docks, it would need to build them elsewhere on another site within my constituency. Medway is made up of three constituencies, but nearly two thirds of the total target is being proposed to be built in Rochester and Strood, particularly on the Hoo peninsula. That is causing tremendous angst within the communities I represent. My constituents feel that their way of life is being destroyed in order to build for the overspill from London: to build flats that local people cannot afford without the provision of well-paid jobs such as the ones we will lose if the docks close. These homes are being marketed to buyers outside Medway and, would you believe it, are even being advertised in China. So really, what is my community gaining? Do the Government really want to see thriving, growing commercial businesses and regionally important infrastructure close, people being put out of work and future opportunities being lost, in the pursuit of building flats to meet arbitrary housing targets? Most people find it unbelievable that this is even being considered.
Medway has a thriving economy made up of a diverse range of businesses; it is second in terms of the concentration of transportation and storage facilities. Our local economy is uniquely reliant on this sector, and proposals by the landowner to move businesses to Sheerness do not offer an alternative solution. First, there are not the same facilities and the businesses would be unable to operate in the same way—that is if this offer of moving those businesses to Sheerness, which has been much talked of, ever actually materialises for these businesses. It is absurd to think that businesses that are using a unique piece of infrastructure can just be relocated anywhere.
The majority of workers are local to Medway: 20% live on the doorstep of the docks and 65% live in the Medway towns. There is also an associated supply chain that stretches across the local area and the wider region. An economic impact report has concluded that the docks generate a total economic benefit of £258 million; for comparison, that is 10 times greater than the published economic benefit generated by our much-loved and promoted Historic Dockyard Chatham part of the site, which no one would ever suggest closing to make way for flats.
Our coast and waterways are one of the United Kingdom’s greatest assets. We are blessed with the River Medway, which has shaped our towns historically and has an important role to play in our future. We have increased our focus on the Government’s ambition of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and it is vital that we support resources such as Chatham docks and the work of the investing, innovating and nimble businesses that use our waterways, which are essential to our moving forward with decarbonising the economy. With our close links, we are uniquely situated to reduce the time and cost of trade between Medway and London.
The dock operations benefit directly from good harbour and berthing facilities that offer the opportunity to significantly improve the position with respect to the climate change emergency declared by Medway Council and the key outcome of achieving a clean, green environment. There is huge potential environmental cost to Medway from the closure of the docks, with a massive increase of 12,610 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year through the loss of on-site recycling, engineering and the transportation of finished goods that can currently be transported by river. We should be building a strategy and working with some of our impressive local businesses based at the docks, in the supply chain or operating on the river, creating opportunities to contribute further to our carbon reduction targets and sustainable development of our local economy for the future.
The message is loud and clear: the closure of Chatham docks would mean short-term gain for some, to the detriment of the long-term future and prosperity of the Medway towns. At the heart of the 2019 Conservative manifesto was the importance of place and community to so many people across the country. We recognised that allowing communities to make sure that their town’s future is in the hands of the people who live there is the best way to ensure that they can thrive. If we allow Chatham docks to turn into housing, we will be failing to live up to that promise. It is the last remaining and most significant facility left on the river today; if it is lost, we will lose not only jobs from Medway, but future opportunities for generations to come. Once it is lost, we will never get it back—in today’s world, the impressive docks structure would never be built because the expense would be far too great.
In my maiden speech on 25 June 2015, I quoted from my predecessor Dame Peggy Fenner:
“Does my right hon. Friend believe that the people of Rochester and Chatham elected me to support a Government that would do what has just been done to their dockyard? My right hon. Friend need not reply. I shall tell him the answer: they did not, and I will not.”—[Official Report, 25 June 1981; Vol. 7, c. 391.]
Forty years on, the similarities are extremely sad, but this time closure is avoidable.
I hope the Minister will agree that common sense will prevail and that the right decisions will be made for the people of my constituency, rather than the opportunity being taken to put cash into just another developer’s pocket, losing an asset like Chatham docks for generations to come.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I remind the Minister that at 5 pm the Whip will again move that the House adjourn; I will then propose the Question so that the Minister can continue.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)
We all appreciate that a reshuffle has been going on, although it seems to have been paused for the moment. I strongly suspect that the Prime Minister has tuned in to this debate; if so, and if he has a gap to fill in his ministerial appointments, I think he will have been compelled by the passion and enthusiasm shown by my hon. Friend, who already has experience as a Whip and a Minister. Should he have an opportunity to return her to government, it would be a very smooth transition. The only problem is that if the Prime Minister is watching this speech, he will see my hon. Friend’s brilliant oratory followed by my mundane contribution, which might mean that I get dropped off the list. So I hope he is quite busy and caught only the first half of this debate.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate and raising issues that she feels passionately about—she certainly conveyed that passion. I shall address those issues in the context of the wider regeneration effort that she, Medway Council and local communities continue to pursue and to which this Government and previous Administrations have given considerable support.
First, I acknowledge the role of all Medway towns in our national heritage and economy. As my hon. Friend described, the strengths of the transportation and storage industries in this part of the Thames estuary are a real asset, as are, indeed, many of the impressive local businesses that have made their home in the Medway towns. I understand the important role that the waterways play in the Chatham economy past, present and future, from Chatham’s proud shipbuilding history to its modern-day aspirations to support the Government’s net zero ambitions. I am sure that links to the river will continue to be a huge part of Chatham’s future.
As my hon. Friend highlighted, the future of Chatham docks is currently uncertain. The docks are part of the urban waterfront, surrounded by residential, commercial and academic assets, including the Medway campus of the University of Kent. I understand the desire to protect the existing businesses and industry currently at the docks but, ultimately, it is not for central Government to comment on their immediate future. We have, though, been encouraged by the significant regeneration and change over the 30 years since the closure of the naval dockyard. I know that my hon. Friend contributed to the thinking of the Thames estuary growth commission, which reported in 2018 and to which the Government responded positively.
Chatham continues to suffer from high levels of deprivation, making it one of the most challenged parts of the Thames estuary. It consistently performs worse than the national average in key social indicators such as child poverty and financial prosperity, although we recognise the progress that has been made in recent and challenging times. My hon. Friend set out some of the exciting things that are going on in the area. The Government have continued to support efforts to regenerate the area, committing more than £50 million to projects in the area via the South East local enterprise partnership.
Aside from around £28 million committed to local transport improvements, significant investments include more than £8 million for the new Medway innovation park at Rochester airport—at the opening of which I understand my hon. Friend presided as guest of honour. The Getting Building fund that we announced last year is supporting two projects in Medway, with just under £2 million for the Britton Farm learning, skills and employment hub and £2.3 million for digitally connecting rural Kent and Medway. Each of those projects will help adults into new employment opportunities, with a focus on new and emerging digital skills.
Additionally, we are investing £9.5 million in Chatham town centre through the future high streets fund. We have already set out some of the key elements of our levelling-up strategy, including the community renewal fund and the levelling-up fund, and I am not surprised to hear that Medway has bid into both. As those bids are currently being considered, I am afraid that I cannot dwell on them too much. Nevertheless, I am pleased that there is such enthusiasm, which speaks to the desire and appetite to continue to strive to do more to revitalise Medway, especially as we begin to emerge from the pandemic.
I recognise the concern about the future of Chatham docks. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend is aware, I cannot discuss the details of individual plans because of the quasi-judicial role of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in the planning system. Nor can I comment on individual sites.
Medway’s last local plan was adopted in 2003, and I reiterate today that having an effective up-to-date plan in place is essential to identifying development needed in an area, deciding where it should go and dealing with planning applications. The local plan will set out the vision for Medway and a framework for addressing housing needs and other economic, social and environmental priorities. It is a key tool for encouraging and directing investment in the local area, helping to secure the housing and jobs that our communities need.
Eddie Hughes
The national planning policy framework is clear that strategic policies should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design and quality of places. They should also make sufficient provision for a variety of considerations, to include housing—including affordable housing—employment, retail, leisure and other commercial development, as well as infrastructure, community facilities and a number of other considerations.
The Government are clear that councils and their communities are best placed to take decisions on local planning matters, providing certainty for communities, businesses and developers. The preparation of local plans involves ongoing engagement and consultation with local communities, businesses and other interested parties. There will be further opportunities to make representations on the local plan in a consultation prior to its submission for examination. I encourage my hon. Friend and her constituents to take every opportunity to shape the local plan for their area—that feels like an invite that I do not need to make. I think she will be very firmly involved in that.
My hon. Friend has raised concerns about the number of new homes that can be delivered across Medway. Our manifesto commits us to a target of 300,000 homes being built a year by the mid-2020s, and delivery of at least 1 million more homes, of all tenures, over this Parliament. That is why, in the national planning policy framework, we introduced a standard method for assessing local housing need to enable all communities to have a clear, transparent understanding of the minimum number of homes that they need.
However, local housing need is not a housing target. It is a standard method of measuring housing need in an area that is used by councils as a guide when they develop their local plans. Councils decide their own housing target once they have taken account of local constraints, such as green belt, that prevent it from allocating enough sites to meet need. Nor does the method dictate where homes should go. It is up to councils to decide what sort of homes can be built and where they should be located in their area. Indeed, councils can only adopt a plan that is sound. It must conform with national policy, be supported by evidence and take the views of local people into account. Each plan is subject to a public examination in front of an independent inspector, who plays an important role in examining plans impartially to ensure that they are legally compliant and sound.
Our changes last year to the standard method enable us to plan for approximately 300,000 houses a year while prioritising brownfield sites and urban areas, where homes are often least affordable. This Government strongly encourage the re-use of suitable brownfield land, especially for development to meet housing need and to regenerate our high streets and town centres. Indeed that is why the Government have made significant investment of £400 million through the brownfield housing fund and £75 million through the brownfield land release fund to unlock brownfield land across the country.
However, brownfield sites vary greatly, and local authorities are best placed to assess the suitability of each for development. It is true that paragraph 123 of the national planning policy framework sets out that where an area is
“currently developed but not allocated for a specific purpose in plans”
then local planning authorities should take a “positive approach to applications” where this would
“help meet identified development needs”.
However, it goes on to say that this should only happen
“provided this would not undermine key economic sectors or sites or the vitality and viability of town centres, and would be compatible with other policies in this Framework.”
Our policy is clear. We support brownfield regeneration to meet needs for different land uses, but this must also support a strong economy and local prosperity. I acknowledge the commitment of my hon. Friend in her efforts to deliver the best possible future for the people of Chatham, and will continue to reflect on the points that she has raised during the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Health and Social Care
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sajid Javid
There are commercial reasons why we have cancelled the contract, but I can tell her that it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency here in the UK, and obviously she is not recommending that we administer vaccines that do not get approval.
[Official Report, 14 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 820.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell).
The correct response should have been:
Sajid Javid
There are commercial reasons why we have cancelled the contract, but I can tell her that it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing has not yet gained approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency here in the UK, and may not, and obviously she is not recommending that we administer vaccines that do not get approval.
Elections Bill (Third sitting)
Thursday 16th September 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Elections Act 2022 View all Elections Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 September 2021 - (16 Sep 2021)
The Chair
Before we begin, I have some reminders. I encourage hon. Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. Please also do what you can to give one another and members of staff some space. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent mode. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. We just have some private business before we start.
The Chair
Q
Before the first Member asks a question, 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 order that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 12.15 pm. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves? Heather, would you like to go first?
Heather Harper: I am Heather Harper, chairman of Conservatives Abroad—the global network of Conservative members and supporters around the world.
The Chair
Thank you. George Cunningham, would you like to introduce yourself?
George Cunningham: Thank you very much. First of all, honourable Members, I am very happy to be with you today. I am the chair of Liberal Democrats Overseas, which is one of three local parties that are abroad, the others being LibDems in France and Liberal Democrats in Europe. I am the chair of Lib Dems Overseas; I have also been chair and vice-chair of Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats, so I have covered geographically all the areas of the party outside the UK. I stood for Parliament in the 2015 UK general election while being disenfranchised because of the 15-year rule, so I was a candidate without a vote. It is very nice to be with you today.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Q
George Cunningham: It is important that we try to take as much of the pressure off the councils having to do this and try and automate things as much as possible. Effectively, using a purely postal system is denying thousands the ability to vote and in some countries, such as Indonesia and parts of Africa, there is no postal service worth talking about. The outcome is that British citizens living closest to the UK get a chance to vote, but it is denied in far-flung places. If you imagine the numbers in Australia, for instance, of British citizens, you are basically excluding almost a million over there out of the 5.5 million or so British citizens abroad.
The problem is accentuated further with the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and a possible shortening of the time period between the proroguing of Parliament and election day. There is also an issue—and this is personal experience—of prepaid envelopes. In some countries, local postal offices that do not really get the information do not accept them as prepaid. They just chuck them in the bin because they do not have local or national stamps on. So it might be best not to have them prepaid so that post offices see that the correct postage stamps have been put on for mailing.
As coming up with a secure system online voting does not seem yet to be on the cards, our embassies and consulates could get involved, as is the case with other countries. A few days could be saved if they were posted out by the embassy on the day the election was called, based on the register held there. Alternatively, ballot papers could be downloaded from the UK website, limited to those who have registered online via the gov.uk website, and then mailed back, because that cuts in half the amount of time for the stuff to come back.
Proxy votes are not adequate because we are talking about people who have been away for more than 15 years so they have lost a lot of friends, perhaps even through death. We have to do the best we can to speed up this whole process, and also to reduce the pressure on councils.
The Chair
Thank you. Heather, would you like to add anything?
Heather Harper: Only that, although I have been an expat for many years, I have not personally voted from overseas. However, having worked on these matters with so many of our overseas voters, I would say that I am very strongly supportive of the Bill in its current state because it addresses so many of the issues that have arisen from the complaints, in just some of the things that are addressed, and the difficulty in overseas voting. What is in the Bill is very streamlined and will increase overseas voters and make it much simpler and easier to vote—or register, rather.
Cat Smith
Q
George Cunningham: They are two separate issues. It is important to recognise that a lot of people living abroad are pensioners or teachers—they are all kinds of people from ordinary walks of life like ourselves. They are all equal in front of the law and in front of God, let us say. That is one issue. There is a separate issue concerning the financing aspects, which, of course, many of us consider to be very unsatisfactory, but I do not think it has affected things enormously. The fact that companies can donate and so many companies that are foreign are on the stock exchange and de facto foreign, and through their subsidiaries they can donate to the parties here: that is the critical issue that needs further addressing in a separate Bill. I think it should be disassociated from the Elections Bill.
The Chair
Heather, would you like to add anything to that?
Heather Harper: Yes, I would. Electoral law regarding donations to political parties is set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which already allows British citizens on the electoral roll to donate to any party. UK nationals living overseas are not foreigners, and they should not be conflated with foreign donations. I do not see any significant effect on donations. It may increase our membership, which is £25 a year—quite honestly that is hard enough to get most of the time. Conservatives Abroad is not an organisation that solicits large donations; our emphasis is on engagement. There is already a robust a legal framework in place that bans foreign donations—I do not see any significant increase there. What is important now is to increase the awareness of voter registration.
The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)
A big welcome to our two witnesses. George, it is lovely to see you again in person, and Heather it is very good to see you again. Is it the case that Anne is still unable to join us?
Chloe Smith
Q
Heather Harper: I think they should be treated exactly the same. One of our expatriates in France said,
“We want to be able to live our lives not as some kind of second-class citizens denied our right to participate in the democratic processes of our country, but as fully capable and fully recognised citizens of the UK.”
Minister, our British citizens have a long history of living and working overseas, starting with explorers, engineers, teachers, scientists, hospitality workers, sportspeople, financial services and health workers. Many of them return to our country with a new-found wealth of knowledge and experience that they gained overseas. They should be treated exactly the same as every British voter. We are one of the few democratic countries in the world that actually denies, and puts a time limit on, their citizens’ right to vote. In answer to your question: they should be treated equally.
Chloe Smith
Q
George Cunningham: First up, I have to say the Liberal Democrat party has long campaigned for the abolition of the 15-year rule and for establishing the institution of overseas constituencies, which we feel is the best way for people to have their voices heard. Perhaps we will come back to that. The commitment to both of these is featured in our 2017 and 2019 general election manifestos. We support the Bill’s aim to abolish the 15-year rule as an important first step for British citizens having equal rights, to be properly represented and to have their voices heard.
With that in mind, we have the unfortunate—from our perspective—situation of the referendum in 2016, which showed that a lot of people who had lost their vote were not able to participate in something that would fundamentally change their lives in Europe. That is the most prominent thing that has happened, but there are many other things that, if we had MPs representing overseas constituencies, are issues of concern to overseas voters regarding the UK. For instance, unfreezing pensions; in Australia, Canada and in many parts of Africa where, if there is not a reciprocal agreement, people’s pensions are not increased, meaning that they receive something like a quarter of the pension received by UK citizens here. This is an important campaigning issue. Another is NHS access. We have a member who is very sick at the moment, and it is not possible for him to access the NHS because he has not been living in the UK for a while. There are many issues there that are of great importance to us.
Our voice will be heard so much more. Many of those who will have been abroad for more than 15 years when the rule is, hopefully, abolished are of course pensioners, who are the most affected by these things, which have to be addressed. Those are some examples of issues that are of concern to UK citizens abroad in terms of the importance of treating everybody equally—all citizens being equal in front of the law.
Chloe Smith
Q
Heather Harper: I have many examples; I have just mentioned Christopher from Paris. My inbox is full of people from around the world who are so angry about their right to vote because they basically feel that they are not valued. I do have to say, though, that this is not a party political issue. This is about granting the right for all British citizens to register to vote, so I have to acknowledge the fact that Harry Shindler, of the Labour party, has been campaigning for his right to vote for the last 20 years. I have been working hard—with support, indeed, from Labour International—to represent all the people who have been disenfranchised. Harry, by the way, says,
“I fought for my country”—
he is 100 years old
—“and I feel that I have been fighting for my right to vote, why should I be denied that?”
The Bill will improve the House significantly. It will get people to actually register, and it will encourage people who have fallen off the register because of the difficulties that they have faced: they come up to the 15-year rule and think, “No, I can’t be bothered, because I am going to be disenfranchised,” or they face difficulties in having to annually re-register.
Minister, removing the 15-year rule and treating everybody equally removes the uncertainty about who can and who cannot vote. By making the registration last for three years, the process is less cumbersome and more people will be encouraged to engage with it. By introducing the prior residency criteria, the Bill is going to help, in particular, younger family members who have not previously been registered in the UK.
The Bill addresses so many of the issues that actually have stopped overseas British citizens from registering to vote. I hope that that goes some way to answering your question.
George Cunningham: Two things come to mind. One is Brexit and the impact that it has had on our citizens in the European Union. This is an ongoing issue that has not been resolved. They are very frustrated about the fact that many of them had no say, and then were left in the lurch in many respects. To give them the vote will perhaps push more of an interest within Parliament to protect their interests and see ways in which the situation they face can be alleviated.
It does depend on the country within the European Union and the reactions towards our citizens, and I am happy to say that many countries have tried to be as helpful as possible concerning our citizens, albeit in terms of residency rights that is a bit of an issue. There will be a voice for those who are in pain because their pensions have been frozen, and perhaps it would then become more of a political issue. Certainly in our party we would be encouraged to put some overseas issues into the manifesto for elections, and I think that would be very helpful to them. I actually see positive things.
Of course, if there are no overseas constituencies, it would be so much simpler to register. If a person has a British passport and is above the age limit, then surely they would be able to vote for a constituency, which has a geographical limitation. This would help, for instance, where a child has not been living in the UK—at the moment they continue to be disenfranchised, even if they are British citizens. This would overcome the problem.
The Chair
Before I bring Patrick Grady in, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that the technical fault is nearly resolved; the bad news is that we are not quite there yet. Minister and Cat Smith, would you be content to repeat your questions to Anne Wafer once she joins, if we have time?
Chloe Smith
I am happy to, as long as it does not take time away from colleagues.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Q
I was also interested in something you said in passing, George, about an overseas constituency. I wonder if either of the panellists have a view on that. At the moment, a vote goes towards wherever the voter last resided, and I can well understand the point that although someone maintains an affinity for their country and has citizenship of the UK, surely after a considerable passage of time the local issues in the constituency will have changed considerably. Not every single overseas voter will still be paying attention to the exact circumstances in the constituency in which they lived. Is there any merit in the concept—which exists in other parliamentary democracies—of a dedicated overseas constituency that is represented by an MP for the overseas?
The Chair
Before you answer, may I interrupt to say that our third witness, Anne Wafer, is now with us. Anne, would you introduce yourself to the Committee please?
Anne Wafer: I am sorry for the delay; my computer decided to update something at just the wrong moment and it is now running a bit slowly, so it may not be perfect. It has been fine—it was perfect for the test.
Anyway, I am from Labour International, the international section of the Labour party. I am the communications officer. We have about 3,000 members, who live all over the world. I live in Slovakia and am the secretary of the central and east European branch. I could answer the question that has just been asked. Is that okay? Can I carry on to that, or do you want to know more about me?
The Chair
No, that is a lovely introduction and we will leave it to the first two witnesses to answer that question first, and then you can come in, Anne. That will be fine. Heather, would you like to go first?
Heather Harper: I am not in favour at all of an overseas constituency. The home constituency is and always has been the fundamental building block of democracy. All Britons overseas hail from all parts of the country, and their insight into their home constituency should not be lost in any way. Nor should their voices be muffled by being aggregated into a few catch-all expat seats.
Boundary changes may have occurred and may still occur to those constituencies from which our members departed when they went out to the world to study or work, but it is the town or area that our members call home. I think that is fundamental.
An idea that some members of Conservatives Abroad have come up with is an expats office, akin to the one that has looked after British veterans’ affairs under various Governments. Such a ministry, office or agency would be able to serve as a focal point for communication to and from expats, enabling the Government to gain insights from our global Britons and to swiftly address all the concerns and queries raised by expats.
George Cunningham: On my side of course, as we say in our manifesto, we are for overseas constituencies. We look at France especially, but also at other countries, to see how well that system works. Specific issues that are of concern to our members and other British citizens abroad are specific to being abroad. For instance, say in Australia or in Canada, when it comes to frozen pensions, they want the Government to negotiate an arrangement with the Government of Canada and the Government of Australia—a reciprocal arrangement—so that they can upgrade their pensions to a proper level.
These are the kinds of areas—that is just one of them, but there are many other areas, for instance within the European Union—where people want to have a way to funnel their view. If you dissipate that voice across 650 constituencies, only a tiny number of people in each constituency voice that view within the totality of the work of the Member of Parliament.
We understand that maybe we cannot reach overseas constituencies yet; we understand that this Bill is a building block. That is why we support this Elections Bill when it comes to the overseas side—pretty much—but we would like to see overseas constituencies as a stage 2 in due course.
Anne Wafer: I left the UK in 1978. Before then, I was a student and then I lived in a few different places. The job I had before I left was a one-year contract, so I cannot actually remember where I was last registered to vote, and this could be a problem; it may be a place that I do not now have a lot of connection with. Obviously you cannot just choose a constituency at random. If there was the opportunity to pick one that you had some proven connection with, rather than the last one, I think that would suit us better.
Also, I wonder how we can find out. I am pretty sure that I was registered, but I do not have a clear memory of it, because in those days you did not have to register yourself. How do we find out where we were last registered and how do we prove it?
Moreover, I know that our members have been talking about having a constituency for overseas citizens, or would be interested in that, but I am not sure that now would be the time to include that. If this becomes law, as it probably will, potentially a lot more people will become interested in joining political parties and registering to vote, so for that reason perhaps an overseas constituency is a good idea. At the moment, we will probably just take this step, if we can. But we have certainly been considering it, and some of our members live in countries where that is allowed—where they do have overseas constituencies. So yes, we would look at that favourably.
The Chair
Only one member of the Committee has indicated that they wish to ask a question, so I now call Cat Smith, the Opposition spokesperson, and then the Minister to ask a couple of catch-up questions.
Cat Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: I am very pleased to meet you, Cat. The last constituency where I was registered to vote may well have been Lancaster, your constituency, because that is where I went to university, and I would be very happy with that.
On problems, I have been abroad for more than 15 years, so I do not have a vote. I notice that the Bill will extend the vote for parliamentary elections, but it does not mention referenda. I think that is an important omission, because it is a big bone of contention for our members that we could not vote in the EU referendum. I did see some news that said we could vote, but then the same day I saw another piece of news saying they had decided we could not.
Brexit has affected our right to free movement within Europe and our right to bring home any European-born family members, for example, which is going to be much more difficult. A lot of people would have liked to return with partners, family members and foreign-born children, and maybe elderly parents who need care and do not want to be left behind, but that is much more difficult now. We would very much like to have voted in that referendum, although it probably would not have made any difference to the result. However, there could be future referenda, perhaps to rejoin or for regional assemblies, or anything like that, so we would like referenda to be included.
There will be quite a lot of bureaucracy involved. I feel as though I have been swotting for an exam that I never attended the classes for, because I have stepped in fairly last minute and I have not paid particular attention to the Bill before. However, I do know what our members’ opinions are, because they have been campaigning for a long time for voting rights to be extended to people who have been abroad for more than 15 years. One of our best known members is Harry Shindler, who lives in Italy and turned 100 in July. He has been campaigning for the extension of voting rights for a long time, and I am sure that some of you have worked with him—Heather, I have seen a photograph of you with him. He is still a very active member at 100 years old.
We are very strongly for this part of the Bill, but there are other parts that we are not so happy about. There will be quite a lot of bureaucracy involved. We are used to that, because anyone who has lived abroad has had to fill in forms for British bureaucracy, or the bureaucracy of whatever country they live in, but hopefully registration will be made much simpler for everyone.
I notice that there is a section on accessibility. Accessibility at polling stations does not affect us directly, but it does affect our family members, so we think that should be a lot stronger.
Cat Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: That could be a concern, because the perception is that British people who live abroad are all wealthy and living in tax havens with lots of money. That is not necessarily true, certainly among our members. I have not studied that part of the Bill closely, but there does now seem to be a potential for wealthy people living abroad to be allowed to send huge amounts of money to their favoured political party. There needs to be some regulation of that. I cannot really say any more about it because I have not studied the details of exactly how that would work under the Bill, but yes, I would be concerned about that.
Cat Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: I do not know. I study genealogy, and there are electoral registers going way back to the 19th century, so I wonder why there are no records, because that is news to me. I assumed there would be. There would need to be some proof that you had that connection and lived in a particular part of Britain. I am getting my pension from Britain, so that should be sufficient proof, for example. It is not a very big one—I am getting a tiny pension—because I left quite early, but I am getting one, so there should be an alternative way of proving that you had that connection and had lived there.
There are a lot of measures in the Bill on voter fraud, but there does not seem to be much evidence that it actually happens. I am sure there are ways to prevent it without disenfranchising people, which has a bigger effect on the electoral result than small amounts of voter fraud. As people who live abroad, we have to jump through so many hoops to sign up to register and get proxy votes, and I do not think the potential for voter fraud is very high. Obviously there need to be some protections in place, but it should not be too difficult to prove that you have lived in a place. If you have a pension from Britain or had a job in Britain, there must be some record that you lived there.
There should be some flexibility in what records could be provided if no record can be found that you were on the voting register, because we do not want to be disenfranchised on that account. Although I have lived abroad for a long time, I still have a lot of connections. I lived in Ireland before I came here, but I visit my family every year when I can—of course, the pandemic has prevented that—and take a strong interest in politics.
The Chair
Thank you, Anne. We are running out of time, so I would just like to squeeze the Minister in.
Chloe Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: I did see that, but I was not quite sure how that would work in practice. I did see something—maybe not in this Bill—about how if you had left before you were old enough to register, then you could prove residence. Hopefully it is not just limited to that but is extended to everyone.
Chloe Smith
That’s right, Anne.
Anne Wafer: Can you assure me of that? It might have been a preliminary discussion—
Chloe Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: Does it cover oldies like me, though—the residency?
Chloe Smith
Absolutely, yes.
There are three questions I put to the witnesses previously. I will ask them swiftly. I asked, first, whether witnesses thought that British citizens overseas should be treated as equally as possible with British citizens in the UK. Secondly, I invite you to suggest what kinds of policy topic matter to overseas citizens. In other words, what are their interests in UK politics? For example, pensions are one interest, but there might be others. Thirdly, I wonder whether you have examples from your membership, your friends or your network of how people feel when they get, effectively, kicked off the register —disenfranchised, in the proper sense of the word.
Anne Wafer: Can you ask the first question again?
Chloe Smith
Of course. Should British citizens overseas be treated as equally as possible with those in the UK?
Anne Wafer: Yes, I think so, although even as members we are not treated completely inclusively. Of course, we cannot stand candidates in Britain, but other than that, in our party we are equal to any other constituency Labour party that is in Britain. We send delegates to conference and everything else, so I think as citizens that should be the case as well, because we still have an interest in our country and the regulations still affect us. Many of us are getting pensions, and some of us will want to return at some stage. I thought of returning, but I couldn’t afford it—it is too expensive there.
On policies, my members are interested in a huge range, not just ones that affect us directly. Climate change is a big one. That is a huge one for us. Reversing austerity—all the Tory cuts to all sorts of things; we want to reverse them. We have family members—for example, I have a sister who is disabled. My father is 97. I have nieces and nephews who are disabled. I have nieces and nephews with children and new babies. We are all concerned for everybody in Britain and that they have better lives.
As I say, climate change is a big one. One of our motions at conference will be on proportional representation, which a lot of our members think would be a good idea—changing the electoral system. Reform of the House of Lords is one we would be concerned with.
Chloe Smith
Those are great examples. Thank you so much—they are a bit broader than we might normally discuss. That is really helpful.
Anne Wafer: One would be the education system. We are very much against tuition fees for universities. We want to be rid of those. We are very concerned about what has happened to people during the pandemic, and we need the green new deal and regeneration of jobs, but those need to be green jobs because of the climate crisis.
Chloe Smith
Q
Anne Wafer: Most people are not happy about it. Some people get citizenship when they get voting rights in their own countries, where they live, so maybe they are less upset in that case. We can vote in local elections in the countries we live, or we used to be able to. I have not checked whether I still can since Brexit. But yes, we are not very happy about being kicked off the register for sure. We would like that changed. We finished on hearings on that one.
We are also not happy about—
The Chair
Thank you, Anne. Unfortunately, we have come to the end of our time. May I thank all the witnesses for their evidence this morning and the Members for their questions? We are now going to move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Maurice Mcleod gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Hi there. My name is Maurice Mcleod. I am the chief executive of Race on the Agenda, an anti-racism charity.
Chloe Smith
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Hello, thanks for having me. It is not a bad idea to make it free and allow local authorities to give out these passes. The problem is that it ignores what it feels like to be part of that group without any voter ID—part of that group that is reticent even to cast a vote.
Probably everyone in this room and everyone listening sees the value of voting and feels like it is an important part of their democratic rights and that they can affect things if they turn up and vote. When you are talking about people who often do not feel very connected, do not feel very engaged, do not feel very empowered within society, yes, you can say “This is only a small hurdle, you just need to apply to your council and they will give you a free voter ID,” but that is just another hurdle that gets in the way, though. It is just one more step away from them feeling that they can engage with our democratic process. So I think it is a good thing. If we are going to have voter IDs—I would strongly argue that we do not—at least give people access to getting them for free, sure. I just think that does not solve the problem.
Chloe Smith
Q
Maurice Mcleod: I absolutely agree with that. I would go further. I do not really understand why you are not automatically registered. I remember turning 18; you get your national insurance number because going out to work and paying your national insurance and your tax are important rites of passage. I do not know why we do not do the same with voting. You should not have to apply to register to vote; you should be automatically registered.
Cat Smith
Q
Maurice Mcleod: You are right that part of the problem is that this data is not always readily available. The data I have found—the Government’s own data—says that while 76% of white people hold a form of relevant photo ID, such as a driver’s license or a passport, when it comes to black people, about half do: 47% do not hold one of those forms of ID. There are 11 million people in Briton who hold no form of photo identification. That drastically discourages people from voting. You are adding an unnecessary extra burden on people who we want to turn out and vote.
Cat Smith
Q
Maurice Mcleod: You are very right to bring up the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Of all of the communities that make up Briton, they are already among the groups that are most likely to be disenfranchised. You do not need to be a genius to work out that if you are moving around, and your residence is not set in one place, it makes it very hard to know who to engage with, and what needs to be done to get the ID that allows you to vote. It cannot be assumed that everyone has good links with their local authority and understands where they need to go.
Looking at other communities, you have to acknowledge that the slightly hostile way that we have dealt with migration means that there is nervousness among some communities, even with people who are perfectly legal and allowed to be here. Sometimes there is a nervousness about engaging with the authorities on anything other than something that is considered essential. Sadly, for a lot of people, voting is not something that they consider essential.
Cat Smith
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Without a doubt, I believe it will decrease participation. There is already a problem with getting people from minority communities to even register to vote. Now you have to register to vote, and you also need to find some form of voter ID to—as has been said—solve a problem that I am unsure anyone thinks exists. It is very hard to see the impact of this being anything other than voter suppression within those groups. There is certainly not any suggestion that this will increase voter turnout—I cannot see how you would even make that argument.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
Q
“Diluting rights, denying racism, delegitimising protest, and diminishing voter turnout.”
You added:
“Anyone who doesn’t see a concerted campaign at work here simply isn’t looking.”
What is that concerted campaign?
Maurice Mcleod: We have had mention of what happened in America with voter suppression, the methods that some parts of the political machine have gone through and the fights to pull back the other way. I think that there is a concerted effort, first, to instil the idea that our voting system is not secure, that there is loads of fraud, that there are loads of people doing something dodgy and that people are cheating. As I have said, I do not really see much evidence of that. Our voting system is pretty trusted and robust. So first, there is this idea of bringing in a measure. When you bring in a measure in Parliament, people think, “Oh, there must be a reason that they’re doing this; it’s because there’s loads of fraud.” It undermines faith and trust in our democracy.
Secondly, as I have said, these measures also put an extra barrier in the way of groups that some parts of the political establishment may think will not turn out for them or are not particularly strong supporters of them. What some people behind this may be thinking is, “If those people do not turn up and vote, is that such a bad deal?” When I said a concerted effort, that is what I mean.
Paul Bristow
Q
Maurice Mcleod: If I said non-existent, that is not what I meant. I meant that it is very small. Yes, there have been issues in various places. To my mind, though, those issues would not be fixed by voter ID. The suggestion that there is a massive lack of faith in our electoral system just is not borne out in the polling. That is not the evidence of anyone that I have spoken to or any research that I have seen. People trust our electoral system, and that is a good thing. We should not do anything that undermines that.
Paul Bristow
Q
“wants to bring in Voter ID to tackle non-existent voter fraud.”
I suggest that you take a look at the evidence from Peter Golds, Lord Pickles and others yesterday; it may enlighten you.
In 2018, you argued that people should be able to vote online. You then dismissed one social media user’s comment about fraud by saying,
“Sure, I understand the security risks but they are no greater than the risks of postal voting or even voting in person.”
What are those risks of postal voting or voting in person?
Maurice Mcleod: I see what you have done there. I was arguing, and I still argue, that we should move to online voting eventually. We should have ways of allowing more people to vote in more easy ways that fit in with their lives, so that they do not have to take time off work and go to a polling station, a post box or wherever. That is what I was arguing for. When I said that there are no more risks with that than with other types of voting, I meant that there are hardly any risks with those other types of voting, and therefore there are no risks with online voting.
Paul Bristow
But that is not quite what you said. You said:
“Sure, I understand the security risks”.
The Chair
Order. Online voting is not in the Bill. He was entitled to respond, but we are going a little bit wider than we should. Do you have a small supplementary?
Paul Bristow
Q
“Voter ID will have a terrible impact on voter turnout.”
Why do you think that this impact has not been seen in any of the Cabinet Office trials, or indeed over many years in Northern Ireland?
Maurice Mcleod: That is valid. The Northern Ireland point is brought up a lot. I think I am right in saying—I could be wrong—that there is more of a tradition for carrying ID there than there is here. I could be wrong on that; I am not sure. I have not really looked into that too much.
Paul Bristow
No, I think you are wrong.
Maurice Mcleod: Am I wrong on that? Okay. It stands to reason that if you have a chunk of the population that does not have what you are being asked to have to turn up to vote, then you are going to lose voters among that demographic. I do not think that is really controversial. I am not sure how you would argue against that. You can argue that there is a bigger problem that needs to be fixed than I seem to think there is, but I do not see how you can argue that it is not going to dissuade people—it is not going to encourage more people to vote, is it?
The Chair
Order. I think we will move on. You have had quite a few questions. Patrick Grady is waiting to come in.
Patrick Grady
Q
“Voter fraud played a very small part, funnily enough, in Tower Hamlets.”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 14, Q13.]
Thank you, Maurice; your contributions have been extremely helpful. You spoke a little bit about automatic voter registration. Could you say a little more about how you think that might work in practice and what impact it could have on turnout and participation, particularly among minority communities? Could you also say something about access to postal voting among minority communities and what impact that has? Does that help or hinder turnout, participation and engagement?
In Scotland, we have recently extended the franchise for Scottish Parliament elections to pretty much everyone with settled status, including EU nationals and people with settled refugee status. Are there any lessons that might be learned from that, particularly in terms of the message it might send to counteract some of what you have described as the hostile environment and how it might make it clear that everyone is welcome and everyone ought to participate in the democratic system?
Maurice Mcleod: I will try—sorry; I was not writing those down, but I will try to remember the questions.
The first was about how automatic registration could happen—I think that is what you said. I am not a techie, so there is no way I will be able to describe what the functions would be to make sure that happens, but, as I said, the same process that issues a national insurance number or the same process that says, “You are now this age and a British citizen, or whatever, therefore you can work and pay taxes” should also say, “Therefore you can now vote” and some information should be sent out with that. It might say, “Congratulations, you are 18”—you can argue whether the voting age should be younger, but it should be like a rite of passage—“You are now an adult in our society. You now have this right to have a say in how we are run as a country.” That would send a really strong message, rather than having to apply.
One of my fears about the Bill is that the people who will be most impacted by it and who really will be excluded from having a say are probably the people who are less able and probably less keen to talk about it. It is not something they are bothered about; they do not vote, so they do not vote. They are not going to be marching on Parliament demanding a vote that they do not use anyway. You end up arguing on people’s behalf.
I cannot remember the second part of your question.
Patrick Grady
Q
Picking up on what you said there, however, that relates to some of what was discussed yesterday. Is there something about civic education and awareness raising about the importance of participation in our democratic systems among minority communities that might also help to increase turnout and participation?
Maurice Mcleod: Absolutely. We should do loads more for all communities, not just minority communities. Learning how your country works, how you get involved in it and how you change things, if you feel that they need to changed, should be among the most important things that we are taught as we grow up in this society. Instead, it is seen as a bit of a fringe subject or people say, “Oh, let’s not talk about politics because it might get too political and then we might be accused of being one way or the other.” Instead, we should have a real love for democracy. We should instil the idea that you, as an individual, have a say in the country that you run. That is really important and I do not think we do anywhere near enough of that, so we should consider anything that increases knowledge among the public about how you change things—what’s a councillor; who’s an MP; what’s an Assembly Member; what do these things mean; who does what. Most of us do not know this stuff—most of us in this room might do—most people out there do not know this stuff. Anything that improves that would be great.
In terms of extending the mandate, I personally am of the opinion that anyone who is resident here should have a say in what goes on here. Anyone who lives and works in our society should have a say about what goes on here. I would extend that in ways that may be tricky to do, but I think prisoners should have a say—lots of people should have a say. In my opinion the mandate should be extended to all residents in this country.
You mentioned postal voting. I have not got any evidence of whether it has a particular impact on black and minority ethnic people, but I know that you have a longer window when you have a postal vote. We should give people the ability to go down and post their vote in the middle of night, or whenever they want to to fit in with their lives; we all live these piecemeal, sometimes slightly precarious, lives and we have responsibilities. You cannot always say, “Right, I am going to go down on a Thursday and queue up if I need to, and vote” because you might need to be at work or drop off your kids. Just allowing people to vote by post is massively beneficial.
The Chair
I have Tom Randall, followed by Fleur Anderson, Kate Hollern and Jerome Mayhew. If there is time at the end, I will bring Paul Bristow back in.
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
Q
Maurice Mcleod: No, it has not.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Absolutely. I am not claiming that this is based on any specific research that ROTA—that is my organisation—has done. There is an amount of research out there, I guess.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: I would argue that it is all of us. If there is anything going wrong with our electoral system, we all suffer. We might end up with a Government who we do not want or a local authority that did not actually win the vote. We all suffer if there is voter fraud.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Yes, if we agree that it is a problem. I am afraid that I have not seen the evidence from Tower Hamlets, but I will take your word for it; I am sure you are right. Like I say, I am not sure whether it would have been solved by the measures that you are talking about bringing in, but if it is a problem, everyone suffers. I do not think just the residents or the voters in a particular area who might be disenfranchised suffer. We all suffer because our system does not work properly then.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Yes—sure, of course. Absolutely. But I would also like to know how prevalent this is. Is it a one-off situation in one place that needs to be dealt with in a particular way, or is it an endemic thing in our system? I am not really convinced that it is endemic in our system. I guess that is what I am saying.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Do you mean the voter ID measures?
Tom Randall
Yes.
Maurice Mcleod: If there are particular groups—the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community was mentioned earlier; those communities are particularly vulnerable to this—who, for one reason or another, are less likely to have the ID required, the impact will fall disproportionately on them. If a larger percentage of black Caribbean people do not have this ID, bringing in the measure will have a bigger impact on them.
Tom Randall
Q
Maurice Mcleod: No, I have not.
Patrick Grady
On a point of order, Ms Rees. Can I just confirm that witnesses have been invited to speak to this Committee on the basis of their experience and there is no requirement or expectation of any of the witnesses who appear today or who appeared yesterday to back up their evidence with primary source research evidence? We have not asked any other witness to detail the evidential base. We are entitled to ask questions and witnesses are entitled to respond on the basis of their experience. Can I confirm that, please?
The Chair
Thank you, Mr Grady. The witnesses have been invited to give evidence on the basis of their experience. They do not have to have any research as a back-up. We are very grateful that the witnesses have agreed to come along and give evidence.
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Ms Rees. Is it not the purpose of this Committee to scrutinise any evidence that is given to us, regardless of whether it is backed up by data?
The Chair
Yes, it is perfectly proper to ask any questions you want, but I was just clarifying that it is not necessary for the witness to be backed up by research.
Chris Clarkson
But it is appropriate for us to push back if we do not agree?
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Q
But if the Bill does go ahead in this way and ID cards are expected, are there any other measures that could mitigate the potential for suppression? From your experience of working with the black community, what would need to be put in place that would make this less of a bad deal?
Maurice Mcleod: Thank you. As I was saying earlier, if we cannot move to a place where people are automatically registered and you get sent your photo ID that is relevant when you turn up and vote automatically, I would like to see a massive effort from all local authorities to actively seek out the people who do not have photo ID. Authorities must contact them and say, “Look, here’s a form, here’s how you apply for your free photo ID from the council.” It is not enough just to say, “Oh well, if people want it, it’s easy enough for them to go on this website or turn up at the town hall and ask for this stuff.” Yes, it is easy for us because we want those things, we want our vote and we see the value in it. So much more needs to be done.
It is bigger than just getting people voter ID cards: it is making our democracy transparent and making it easy to engage with your local authority, MP or Assembly member. It is making all those paths much clearer and simpler to use than they currently are. If you know how the system works, who to put pressure on and how to impact your world, you have a much better existence. If you are not that of sort of person, politics just happens to you. It is not something that you actively engage in. We should be doing everything in our power to encourage and show people where their power is, what they can do and what they can change. If you have a society that feels it cannot make changes or be engaged in the way that it should, people switch off or get distracted into things that do not benefit society at all. That is a bit wider than the question you asked, but we need to be proactive in reaching out to these communities. We can find them. We can work out who does not have a driving licence. We can work out where these people are, so let us do that and ensure that they have everything they need to be able to express their democratic rights.
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
Q
I have just checked the allegation of fraud made by the hon. Member for Peterborough and, in those cases, it was found that no offences were committed. Does the message that electoral fraud has happened in black and ethnic minority communities act to disfranchise those communities, which we are trying to reach?
Maurice Mcleod: Sadly, I think it does, whether deliberately or not. I think we should always lean towards things having been done in good faith, but if you say things like, “There is very serious electoral fraud, and it happens in areas where there are lots of black and Asian people,” it is not a massive leap in people’s minds to, “Okay; so black and Asian people are somehow doing electoral fraud. That is what we’re clamping down on. We’re stopping people doing something dodgy to our process.” That is exactly the sort of alienating message that ends up with people saying, “I’m not interested in any of that stuff. All that politics stuff has nothing to do with me.” Those sorts of narratives do play into that, I am afraid. I have forgotten the beginning part of your question, but I worry about the narrative of, “We need to solve this massive fraud problem that is happening in minority ethnic areas.” I will not say it is a dog whistle, but I think it has an impact on minority communities, certainly.
The Chair
I do not really want to go down the road of more points of order. The Committee is becoming quite agitated. If there is anything you would like to raise, perhaps it could be raised after the witnesses have left. Would the Committee be content with that? We are against the clock, and more Members would like to come in.
Paul Bristow
I am perfectly happy to raise my point afterwards, but it is worth noting that it has been implied that my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling and I were unreasonable in our questioning, and that it may be because the witness comes from an ethnic minority. It is perfectly legitimate to place on record that that is not the case. Our questions were perfectly in order. I find it insulting that the hon. Member for Blackburn would even suggest such a thing.
The Chair
Can we leave it there, please? Your comments are on the record now. We need to move on and take more questions, but your point is noted.
Kate Hollern
Q
Maurice Mcleod: That is very hard. You make a really good point. It is all very well saying that photo ID should be used, but if you are not supposed to reveal your face to a man who is not in your immediate family, that is really hard. Even if councils say, “We’ll make sure there are women, or people who know what should happen, at the polling station,” there is still that worry in your head, if you are that woman who is not that confident about whatever, and you need to go out and vote. There is still that concern—“Will I be treated properly? Do they know what my faith needs?”
If that is the route we go down, I would want to see a real effort, through mosques and any other faith groups that would be impacted, to bring those communities on board and show them, “This is how it will be. It will be completely safe. We totally get what you need to do to be observant.” It is another worry—one that I have not brought up so far. Not everyone can use their face as ID as freely as the rest of us.
Kate Hollern
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Sorry, I am not sure. Can you say that again?
Kate Hollern
Q
Maurice Mcleod: I do not, I am afraid. I am not from a constitutional background or a legal background, so that is not something I could comment on.
The Chair
We have to move on. I promised Jerome Mayhew that he could come in, so if we have time at the end, I will bring you and Paul Bristow back in, Ms Hollern. We are against the clock. Mr Mayhew?
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Q
Maurice Mcleod: Sorry, can you say that stat again? I may have got the stat jumbled at the time. Can you repeat that?
Jerome Mayhew
In your evidence earlier on today, you suggested that when you started to look at BAME voters, the incidence of availability of photo ID dropped to 47% to 50%. Is that your view?
Maurice Mcleod: Yes. I believe it is 48% of black people.
Jerome Mayhew
Q
Maurice Mcleod: It is part of it. It is one of the things that gives me concern that this will have a particular impact on those communities, yes.
Jerome Mayhew
Q
Maurice Mcleod: If it turned out that 99% or whatever you just said of BAME people do have relevant ID, that is quite reassuring indeed. There was lots of talk about this in the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities’ report; I would be interested in seeing a proper breakdown, because it is all very well saying, “Minority ethnic people have IDs”, but if that ignores Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in particular, or particular groups who have much lower numbers of take-up, that would still be a concern. In fact, it would mean that those groups are even more marginalised, because they are a special case: their lack of the required ID is not being flagged up.
Jerome Mayhew
Q
“What percentage of the eligible population do not hold at least one form of photo ID currently under consideration for the voter ID requirement?”
and
“What is the level of ownership of the required photographic ID in groups with protected characteristics? specifically with reference to:
Race or ethnicity
Disability; and
Age.”
This was a very thorough and independent piece of research, and if that is the case—you can look at it on the gov.uk website, so it is publicly available—that would, as you say, provide you with a degree of reassurance.
Maurice Mcleod: I would feel slightly better. If everyone had a relevant form of photo ID, I would feel slightly better about this. It is like saying you need to bring your front door keys when you come along and vote. Most people have a front door key; it would still stop some people from voting.
Jerome Mayhew
I agree, and you made some very good points. Thank you very much.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted to the Committee to ask questions, and indeed for this morning’s session. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witness for his evidence. The Committee will meet again here at 2 pm this afternoon to continue taking oral evidence. I invite the Government Whip to move the adjournment.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(David Rutley.)
Building Safety Bill (Fifth sitting)
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary reminders for the Committee. Please switch all electronic devices to silent. No food or drinks are permitted during Committee sittings, except for the water provided. I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with the current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk.
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room. It shows how the selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. Please note that the decisions on amendments do not take place in the order they are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. The selection and grouping list shows the order of debates. Decisions on each amendment are taken when we come to the clause to which the amendment relates. Decisions on new clauses will be taken once we have completed consideration of the existing clauses of the Bill. Members wishing to press a grouped amendment or new clause to a Division should indicate when speaking to it that they wish to do so.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss that schedule 1 be the First schedule to the Bill.
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am pleased to see that we seem to be, if not sharing political attributes, at least sharing some new facial attributes. It is very good to see you in the Chair.
Before we begin to further scrutinise the Bill, I acknowledge and thank all those who have been involved in the legislative process so far, from the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who oversaw the prelegislative scrutiny by the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government, to independent advisers, such as Dame Judith Hackitt, whose independent review formed the bedrock of the Bill. I also extend my thanks to those who sat in the Wilson and Boothroyd Rooms for being part of this Committee’s process, some of whom have already been involved in the development of the legislation and who have helped to make it as ambitious as it is in its scope.
I am sure that over the coming weeks we will work constructively together to achieve the same ends. The Bill takes forward the Government’s commitment to fundamental reform of the building safety system. It delivers on each of Dame Judith’s 53 recommendations detailed in her independent review of building regulations and fire safety, which was published in May 2018.
The independent review found a sector that needed significant reform, that was opaque and fundamentally lacked clear accountability for safety. It has understandably been a complex and extensive process to get to this point today, but for that I do not believe we should make any apology. The Government accepted all the independent review’s recommendations and published our “Building a Safer Future” consultation in June 2019. Nearly 900 responses were received from individuals, resident groups and representatives from the fire safety and built environment industry. The Government published our response to the consultation in April of last year.
Having considered stakeholder feedback, the Building Safety Bill was published in draft on 20 July 2020. Prelegislative scrutiny then followed, as I have indicated, with the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee publishing its final report on 24 November last year, which the Government considered carefully and gave our response to in July this year. I hope the Committee agrees that it has been a comprehensive process.
I welcome Graham Watts’s comment in evidence last week that there has not been “a more exemplary case” of the Government consulting with industry on policy matters. I trust that that will stand us in good stead as we scrutinise the Bill. I hope the Committee will agree that at the end of this process, the Bill will usher in a new age of safety for our built environment, and that at its heart it will ensure greater accountability and responsibility for fire and structural safety issues throughout the entire life cycle of buildings that fall within the scope of our new regime.
Clause 2 establishes the national Building Safety Regulator as a new operational arm within the Health and Safety Executive. The Committee will be aware that clause 1 acts as an overview of the Bill’s constituent parts and will be considered at the end of the process. The independent review of building regulations and fire safety recommended that the Government should make a series of important improvements to create a more effective regulatory and accountable framework for buildings.
At the centre of the Government’s strategy to implement those improvements is the setting up of the Building Safety Regulator, to bring national focus, drive and expertise to the delivery of the reforms. The Building Safety Regulator will implement a more stringent regulatory regime for high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings, oversee the safety and performance of all buildings, and promote the competence of professionals working on all buildings.
The key effect of clause 2 is to determine that the Building Safety Regulator should be delivered by the Health and Safety Executive. The Government believe that the identity of the Building Safety Regulator is critical to the success of the Bill, so we took independent advice on the matter. Following the independent review, the Government took independent advice from Dame Judith Hackitt on who should deliver the new Building Safety Regulator. Dame Judith suggested that the Health and Safety Executive would be best placed to deliver the Building Safety Regulator. That reflects four particular strengths of Health and Safety Executive delivery.
First, the Health and Safety Executive is an established regulator—it was established in 1975, as we all know—and has extensive experience in making robust and proportionate regulatory decisions, including in a construction industry context.
Secondly, Health and Safety Executive delivery offers the fastest and most efficient route to establishing the new regulator, and is therefore the quickest way to provide reassurance to residents about their safety.
Thirdly, we believe that the Health and Safety Executive’s expertise, reputation and knowledge will send a signal to industry that it will be properly held to account by a robust regulator, as offshore drilling was held accountable by the Health and Safety Executive after the Cullen inquiry in 1988.
Fourthly, the Health and Safety Executive combines being an independent regulator with extensive expertise in working with local government in order to deliver—I believe that that is a really important consideration.
The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee also took evidence on this issue as part of its prelegislative scrutiny. I am grateful to its Chair and members for highlighting that the
“evidence overwhelmingly supported the Building Safety Regulator being established within the HSE.”
It concluded:
“We welcome the location of the regulator within the Health and Safety Executive and agree that it has the experience and expertise to implement the new building safety regime.”
In the light of the strong external evidence that the Health and Safety Executive will deliver an effective Building Safety Regulator, I hope that this Committee will welcome its role.
Where possible within existing legal powers, the Health and Safety Executive is already focused on improving building safety and standards as a shadow regulator. The focus of its work is to develop and pilot key elements of the new regime, work with early industry adopters, and recruit the top team, including the first Chief Inspector of Buildings, Peter Baker. We heard evidence from him, and from Sarah Albon of the HSE, to very good effect last week.
It will be this Bill, however, that gives the Health and Safety Executive the tools and powers to deliver the independent review’s vision for an enhanced building regulatory system. Clause 2 introduces schedule 1, which makes a number of necessary amendments to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, to support Building Safety Regulator delivery. Those provisions give the Health and Safety Executive a broad power to determine the right administrative arrangements to deliver its new building functions, and to set up committees to support those new functions.
The provisions ensure that up to four members of the Health and Safety Executive Board may be appointed due to their building safety, building standards or fire safety expertise. That will ensure that the Health and Safety Executive board will have the requisite expertise to effectively oversee the Building Safety Regulator. Schedule 1 creates important safeguards around the use of the Secretary of State’s existing power to direct the Health and Safety Executive. Under those provisions, a ministerial direction can never be issued in relation to the enforcement respect of a particular case.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
I welcome the Bill, especially as it will be of much benefit to my constituents in Bolton North East. Can the Minister assure me that HSE will have the resources it requires to undertake this role?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I quite agree that the Bill will help his constituents, and those of all right hon. and hon. Members on the Committee and in the House. We want to ensure that HSE has the appropriate resources to do its work. I am sure that we will discuss that in greater detail as we proceed, but I can say that the finances available to HSE were increased by 10%—to some £14 million—for the course of the covid emergency. That is an example of the financial stimulus that we provided to HSE, and we will of course continue to support it in its new and important role.
Clause 2 and schedule 1 are vital to our wider reform, which the Building Safety Regulator within HSE will sit at the heart of. They provide the regulator with the necessary powers to effectively deliver a new regulatory regime, and I commend clause 2 to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, with your very colourful tie, Mr Dowd. It will be a pleasure to work with everybody in this room over the next few weeks, scrutinising and hopefully strengthening the Bill, which will alter the building safety landscape.
The Chair
Order. The Minister had a little bit of leeway to make a general speech to begin with, but this debate should be about clause 2 and schedule 1. May I exhort you to deal with the specifics of those provisions, please?
Mike Amesbury
I certainly will, Mr Dowd.
Giles Grover from End Our Cladding Scandal referred to the many complexities that make up the layers of the building safety scandal, from waking watch to inflated insurance premiums and the funding lottery created by the limited size and scope of the building safety fund. Do the many clauses and schedules of the Bill respond to that immediate crisis? Does clause 2 do that? The answer is no. This is the very Bill that the Minister with responsibility for building safety, Lord Greenhalgh, said was the appropriate vehicle for responding to the crisis. If there were a prize for being consistently inconsistent, this Minister would win hands down—top of the premier league.
Moving on to the fundamental details of clause 2, many witnesses, including the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Matt Wrack, welcomed the new building regulator and spoke of the constructive working relationship with the Health and Safety Executive, reaffirming the Minister’s statement and the evidence from other witnesses about the appropriateness of HSE. Other witnesses, such as Martin Boyd from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, spoke of the need to capture the residents’ voice, from the grassroots to the highest table of the new regulator, to help to establish and change that culture, and to improve the competence referred to in future clauses. Given the commitment highlighted in the previous social housing White Paper, for example, I am interested in the Minister’s thoughts about the residents’ voice.
The evidence from HSE management team seemed to indicate that they have the necessary resources to carry out the terms of reference of this new regulator.
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that this Bill does in fact make buildings safer, specifically because the Minister said in his opening remarks that HSE will now have the right expertise to oversee the regulator?
Mike Amesbury
I do hope so. Working together in Committee and across the Floor of the House, I hope we can contribute towards changing that landscape and making people and buildings safe. However, on resources, and this point was mentioned by—I know the Member has a Bolton seat, but do excuse me—
Mike Amesbury
It was Bolton South East, yes.
I know it is important to hon. Members that HSE is resourced appropriately, but given the evidence from the inspection regime, with the number of inspectors cut from around 1,400 in 2011 to 900 in 2019 and funding cut by over 30% by HSE, I am not filled with confidence. Will the Minister ensure for residents and leaseholders, let alone Members of Parliament, that the new regulator does indeed have the necessary resources?
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
While it was reassuring to hear that HSE has been assured by the Government that it will receive the resources it requires, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is imperative that local authorities are also given the resources they require to deliver this new building safety regime?
Mike Amesbury
I concur with that powerful point. Indeed, the Local Government Association made the same representations. Of course, local authorities have been somewhat hammered over the past decade in terms of resources and austerity. The hon. Lady makes a good point.
In conclusion, Labour welcomes the regulator overall, but we would of course go further and establish a building works agency to deal with the crisis here and now, building by building, with the principle of find, fund, fix and recover, and that the polluter pays. That is the immediate way forward.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, to participate in this Committee and to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. His contribution was fascinating, and I want to pick up on one of his points about clause 2. I hear what he is saying about not necessarily dealing with the present, but clause 2 is also focused on the future. I am sure he will agree that we have to ensure that we do not see a repeat of what we have seen thus far. We have to ensure, as we heard in the evidence sessions, that the housing market and the industry is fit for the future and keeps people safe, and that we do not allow this race to the bottom to continue or put vulnerable people at the risk of individuals who seem to think it acceptable to create unsafe places to live. Clause 2 is part of the patchwork to do that.
My right hon. Friend the Minister talked about the importance of the Building Safety Regulator sitting within the Health and Safety Executive. I absolutely agree with him. He particularly mentioned the importance of collaboration. HSE has 45 years of experience in dealing with health and safety, and will now be focused on building safety too. That is the right approach. As the Building Safety Regulator is developed, we have to ensure that the right expertise is there, because it will have such a crucial role in the future of the housing market, probably for the next generation.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I agree that the Bill is better than what we had before. The hon. Gentleman talks about working for the future and future buildings. Is the system going to be resourced adequately to deal with both the future and the mistakes of the past? It was only through the Grenfell fire’s exposure of flammable cladding that the cladding was removed from the Paragon development in my constituency, which was built by the Berkeley Group 18 years ago. Two years after the cladding was removed, after a series of inspections, it was found that the structure of the building was fundamentally unsafe and the 800-odd students and 150 shared owners and leaseholders were given a week to leave. Should HSE and the Building Safety Regulator not be sufficiently resourced to find those buildings that are already occupied, by all sorts of different users for different purposes, to ensure that they are safe for future use, as well as being resourced to deal with the future?
Shaun Bailey
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East made a similar point about resourcing to the Minister. The Minister referred to a funding uplift, and I am hopeful. Obviously, I have no control over those levers, but I would be hopeful that part of the resource uplift would go into that. I do not disagree; the hon. Lady is absolutely right: if we are going to put in this regulator, it has to have the resource to do the job properly. We cannot have it cutting corners, because that only adds to the problems that many of her constituents have already had to deal with. It has to come with a commitment to ensure that the resources are there to adequately deal with the issue.
I am sure there will be debates on what that actually looks like and what the numbers are, but the hon. Lady and I can both agree that the fundamental, core principle is that the regulator needs to be resourced properly. The intervention on the Minister by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East was absolutely right. We can talk in high-level terms about how great it is to have a new regulator, but we have to make sure it can do the job day to day. That is the important part. The one thing I would raise with my right hon. Friend the Minister, while I have his ear in Committee, is that we have to ensure that the system works properly.
I broadly welcome clause 2. It is right that we have a regulator that draws on existing expertise. It is also right that, broadly speaking, the regulator has the ability to make the decisions unimpeded. I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Minister said about not being able to bring about ministerial directions to overturn decisions of the regulator. That is the right move. Given what we have seen in this space to date, having an empowered regulator that can stick up for the most vulnerable is absolutely vital. Those lives that we have seen destroyed by incidents such as Grenfell—that cannot happen again. This plan ensures robustness.
Returning to the point raised by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth, the resource has to be there and the regulator has to be allowed to do its job. I am hopeful, from the overtures that we have heard today, that that will happen.
I welcome clause 2. It is the right move. I think it ensures, in the longer term, the future of this market, and ensures that people looking to buy a home can live there safely, knowing that there is the oversight that they need and that we have an organisation in the Building Safety Regulator that draws on existing expertise but equally has independence. That is the key thing: the independence to do that job properly and ensure that those people are safe.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I listened very carefully to the comments from the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and to your point, Mr Dowd, about focusing on the proposed amendment. It is only natural that we want to look at wider issues. This is such an important Bill. There have been so many horrible incidents, and this affects lives, but the proposed amendment asks for the insertion of mitigation for building safety risks due to climate change—
The Chair
Order. That is clause 3, not clause 2. We will come back to that when we debate that issue. I call Ian Byrne.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Dowd. It is a splendid tie. I rise to emphasise that all of us on the HCLG Committee thought that the independent Building Safety Regulator was a fine idea, but over the last decade there have been 46% cuts to HSE and a third of officers have gone. There is a real worry about whether this will be resourced. I know people have spoken about that this morning, but we cannot emphasise it enough. Without an independent, well-resourced Building Safety Regulator, it all falls down.
I would like further commitments about where we are going, and what sums we are talking about. Will there be a complete recapitalisation of HSE to where it was pre-austerity, which we will then build on? It is so important that this is capitalised, and that the experience, officers and moneys are available to ensure that HSE can play a hugely important role in changing the culture. We all heard in the evidence sessions—and I have heard since 2019, sitting on the Select Committee—about how the culture in the building industry has created what we have talked about over the past two days. We heard some heart-rending evidence from so many people.
Shaun Bailey
The hon. Gentleman is very experienced in local government and an experienced member of the HCLG Committee. Does he not agree that it will be really important to ensure that the regulator has a culture of independence? I am sure he will agree that ensuring that the regulator is beholden to no one but itself will be the only way to ensure that it truly keeps people safe.
Ian Byrne
I completely concur with the hon. Gentleman. It is a very valid point, but as I said, this is about ensuring that the resources are there. The hon. Member for St Albans made a very good point about local government. There have been 68% cuts to Liverpool City Council. It has been hollowed out. The ability to check on buildings has been catastrophic at times. This comes back to funding. The intent and the money have to be there. Without them, I am afraid that we could be back to some of the situations that many of us have faced in our constituencies with some buildings.
Christopher Pincher
I congratulate all members of the Committee on their contributions on the clause. A number of Members, properly and understandably, raised funding, including my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West and Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby. We have made further funding available for the creation of the shadow regulator within HSE. We also, as I said earlier, made funding available to HSE during the covid emergency. We have also made commitments through the building safety levy to ensure that developers that have made mistakes in the past provide appropriate and proper restitution for the remediation of high-rise buildings. We will provide more information about that in due course. Certainly, the funding of HSE is, as always, subject to discussions with the Treasury in the spending review, and I am sure we will hear more about that—to the benefit of HSE—in due course.
The hon. Member for Weaver Vale referred to Grenfell in his remarks, and he was right to do so because Grenfell was the wake-up call to the challenges that we face in a very complex development, ownership and safety terrain. That is why we must approach the Bill and the clause with care, to ensure that we address the complex situation of buildings, safety and ownership carefully, and that is what we will do throughout the course of the Committee.
The hon. Gentleman made two specific points to which I think I ought to respond. He asked about residents’ voices. Sarah Albon made clear in her evidence to the Committee last week that HSE is reaching out—to use that modern phrase—to stakeholders, including residents and dwellers of high-rise buildings, to ensure that their voices and concerns are heard. We have also committed to a new homes ombudsman. That is not the point of the clause, but it is something that we will debate later in our scrutiny of the Bill, giving the hon. Gentleman and other Members the opportunity to learn about the Government’s work to ensure that residents’ voices are heard. The hon. Gentleman also made the point about HSE funding, and I refer him to the comments that I have just made.
To conclude, we have heard the high regard in which HSE is held by all members of the Committee for its historical and, one might say, international reputation as a safety board of the highest regard. We believe that HSE provides the regulator with the necessary powers to effectively deliver the new regulatory regime. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 3
The regulator: objectives and regulatory principles
Mike Amesbury
I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 3, page 2, line 14, at end insert—
“(c) mitigating building safety risks due to climate change, including—
(i) flood risk
(ii) coastal erosion, and
(iii) overheating of buildings.”
This amendment would mandate the building safety regulator to mitigate for risks to building safety due to climate change.
Mike Amesbury
Although there is much to welcome in elements of clause 3, there are two points on which I believe it important to expand what is currently set out. Amendment 11 seeks to expand the objective of the regulator to include another major threat to the safety of people in buildings, beyond fire and the threat of climate change. In 2019, the Climate Change Committee published a report on housing in which it stated:
“UK homes are not fit for the future.”
It found that
“efforts to adapt the housing stock for higher temperatures, flooding and water scarcity are falling far behind the increase in risk”
from the challenging climate emergency. We will face serious consequences if we do not act soon. Some of the biggest risks are the lack of protection from increasing floods and coastal erosion, and the overheating of buildings. There is also the danger of under-insulating buildings. Projections indicate that maximum summer temperatures could rise by 9° by the end of the century. Some 20% of homes overheat in the current climate. Modern high-rise flats are disproportionately at risk of overheating due to lack of protection from the sun and lack of ventilation in many cases. As a result, deaths caused by overheating could triple over the next 30 years if we do not reduce the risk. This is about people and about building safety beyond fire safety. At the other end of the spectrum, cold deaths are also predicted to remain high, but we could reduce them by better insulating homes.
It is not just high-rise flats that are at risk from the effects of climate change; 1.8 million people now live in areas at risk of flooding. That could double by 2080, but we are simply not seeing the resilience measures that we need to be built into the framework. In mentioning flooding, I am not talking about eighth-floor flats, yet there is a clearly a huge risk. Many constituencies and constituents regularly face the threat of flooding. This summer has seen huge flooding that has killed hundreds of people across western Europe. This is another example of how we must look beyond the narrow definition of the present risk and of building safety.
Last year, the chair of the Climate Change Committee’s Adaptation Committee, Baroness Brown, wrote to Dame Judith Hackitt as chair of the board overseeing the establishment of the Building Safety Regulator. In the letter, she stated:
“The current building safety works programme must be broadened beyond its current focus on fire safety to include the risk of addressing climate change.”
We are in a climate emergency. Amendment 11 would put that very commitment on the face of the regulator’s objectives. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment.
Siobhan Baillie
Thank you, Mr Dowd, and I apologise for my eagerness earlier; I take all opportunities to talk about the climate change emergency.
The Minister was clear in his opening remarks that the Building Safety Regulator is crucial to the success of the Bill and that the Government have consulted widely and listened to many experts in drafting the Bill we are considering today. In those discussions, he spoke to Dame Judith Hackitt and other respected building mega-brains. Given that the people who were able to inform us about the regulator’s function have not suggested that there should be a clause that refers specifically to climate change and talks about flood risk, coastal erosion and the overheating of buildings, I am confident that we do not need one, not only because we know that they are thinking deeply about how to make the Bill a complete success, but because the climate emergency is on everybody’s lips and mind, and every Government Department wants to tackle it.
Mark Logan
Does my hon. Friend agree that the legislation does not need to refer to climate change, as the Government, across many pieces of legislation—both those in force and looking to the future—will consider the climate change issues that face the UK and the rest of the world?
Siobhan Baillie
My hon. Friend is right. We will address the climate emergency in many forms. I think the regulator will already be working on it, and I will come to that in a second.
Mike Amesbury
If the regulator and the Bill’s provisions genuinely address the climate emergency, why not add it to the objectives rather than making it an assumption?
Siobhan Baillie
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am somebody who does not think that we should add words for the sake of it, if the regulator is already doing the work. The explanatory notes describe the regulator’s core functions, stating that it will implement
“the new, more stringent regulatory regime for higher-risk buildings. This means being the building control authority in England in respect of building work on higher-risk buildings and overseeing and enforcing the new regime in occupation for higher-risk buildings. The Building Safety Regulator will work closely with, and take advice from, other regulators and relevant experts in making key decisions throughout the lifecycle of a building.”
We know from our constituencies that the Environment Agency, our local authorities and our parish councils are committing to looking very carefully at such issues—particularly, in my patch, those related to flooding. That work, and the work that the Government are already doing to combat flooding, will flow through. I am confident that the Bill as drafted achieves that.
Mike Amesbury
The hon. Lady referred to local authorities and other stakeholders giving due care and attention to flooding. In my constituency, given that new developments are still being built on flood plains, I do not think that is the case. I would again argue that, rather than making it an assumption that the regulator addresses the climate emergency, it should be added to the Bill.
Siobhan Baillie
Forgive me—I hear the point again, in a new form, but I still do not think that that is necessary. We have to rely on the expertise of the regulator and everybody who will be involved. We are so focused on building safety risk at the moment, and rightly so, given everything that has happened. I feel that the work is there.
I had my own mini-experience of coastal erosion growing up. It was not in Stroud, which is landlocked, save for the River Severn. I grew up in Yorkshire and went from Filey to Scarborough to school on a school bus. As we were going along, a hotel called Holbeck Hall fell very steadily into the sea. Many Members may know about it. It went on for many months. It was completely fascinating to school children, but even those many decades ago it was known about, thought through and seriously considered. Everybody was focused on it. Given the work that has been done in the Bill, I do not believe that, were a building in that state of peril, the regulator would not pick up on it and be able to help.
Ruth Cadbury
The hon. Lady feels confident that the regulator’s powers cover high-risk buildings and the risks to buildings from flooding, overheating and the other aspects of climate change that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale covered, but the Bill as drafted defines a higher-risk building in clauses 58 to 62 and onwards as being residential buildings over 18 metres in height. That will exclude many buildings built on flood plains, and many flats, such as those in my constituency that get dangerously overheated—
The Chair
Order. Ms Cadbury, please sit down. I exhort Members to make interventions short and sharp. People have the opportunity to speak to the substantive issue if they wish. Please keep it short and sharp and to the point. I do apologise for being direct.
Siobhan Baillie
There will be many discussions over the course of the Committee about the definitions, but ultimately we believe in the regulator, in the work that is being done, and in people such as Dame Judith Hackitt and Baroness Brown, who have been mentioned. Those climate change considerations have already been factored in.
Ian Byrne
We need culture change, so why not put it in the Bill to direct the culture of the building industry, which for a long, long time has been wrong in placing profit over safety? Why not put that change in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale has asked for?
Siobhan Baillie
As I have already pointed out, I do not feel it is necessary to add that given the scope of the Bill, the work of the regulator and the work that has been done to get to this stage. We need to be really confident in the regulator so that it is not hamstrung and can use the expertise of local authorities, the Environment Agency and all the other bodies with which it is directed to work, to make sure that the building safety work is done. I implore the Committee to agree that there is absolutely no need for the amendment.
Shaun Bailey
In the light of your comments, Mr Dowd, I shall try to keep mine short and sweet.
I do not disagree with a lot of what the hon. Member for Weaver Vale said. My concern, as a constituency Member who had real flooding issues last year, is that planning is a real patchwork. That is one thing that we perhaps need to go further on. The hon. Gentleman talked about house building, and he will know as well as me that water companies, for example, are not statutory consultees on planning issues. I would like that to change, because it is ridiculous that water companies are just asked to join an estate up to the network, having played no part whatsoever in planning. That is an example of something that needs to change.
On flooding specifically, we go down a plethora of different avenues. Flood Re is meant to cover buildings at risk, and some house building standards are being amended right now. I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the climate change issue; we know that temperatures are going up and that we all have a responsibility to tackle that. The environment that we are dealing with at the moment is complex and will require us to bring many strings together. Although I do not disagree with his intentions, my concern is about the mechanism for ensuring that that happens. I do not think that relying on the BSR should be our only avenue; we need a mechanism to ensure that this happens.
I have seen the impacts of flooding on my constituents, particularly in deprived urban areas, which are quite often overlooked. For the best part of 18 months, I have been making the case that there needs to be more of a realisation that it is not just nice shire areas that get flooding, but inner-city areas, too.
Mike Amesbury
In my own constituency, the Northwich area has been subject to flooding for the last two years. Undoubtedly, that is partially an impact of the climate emergency. In future, a high-rise buildings regulator could, through a planning gateway process, future-proof that and other environments.
Last week, I had the displeasure of visiting the Strand in Liverpool, near the waterfront. Work there was signed off by building control under a permitted development, and some secondary legislation has already been passed for that. The regulation for such buildings is minimal, to say the least. It is so important that this provision is added to the remit to future-proof and to respond to the climate emergency, including with the practical examples that the hon. Gentleman gave. Beyond this debate, I would like to sit with Ministers and have a conversation about the wording around this, because it is very important.
The Chair
Can I just be clear? People can speak for as much as they want with a substantive issue. Interventions should be pretty short, sharp and to the point.
Shaun Bailey
The hon. Member for Weaver Vale makes an interesting point, but I come back to my point about the environment we are dealing with from a legislative point of view. As an esteemed former member of Manchester City Council, he is much more experienced than me, and he understands the issues. We are crossing into the boundaries of planning reform as well. I do not disagree that that needs to be looked at in this space. However, while I do not disagree with and can subscribe to the amendment’s intentions, broadly speaking, I am concerned that doing it like will mean missing other opportunities for a much more comprehensive reform of this space to ensure that the issues that both the hon. Gentleman and I have experienced in our communities can be resolved.
Daisy Cooper
Given the rumours that the Government’s proposals for planning reforms have been dropped, does the hon. Gentleman agree with the content of the amendment? If he does not want to see it in the Bill, where does he imagine he would be able to put it over the course of the legislative agenda?
Shaun Bailey
The hon. Member is trying to tempt me into speculation on matters I have no control over, unfortunately. I could not possibly say, purely because I do not wish to speculate. To round up, I do not disagree with the hon. Member for Weaver Vale’s sentiment, but there is a better way that we can do it, outside the amendment.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Scott Mann.)
Elections Bill (Fourth sitting)
Thursday 16th September 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Elections Act 2022 View all Elections Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 September 2021 - (16 Sep 2021)
The Chair
Q
We will now hear oral evidence from Gavin Millar QC of Matrix Chambers. Thank you very much for joining us. Before we begin, I remind 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 order that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 2.45 pm. Would the witness please introduce himself for the record?
Gavin Millar: I am Gavin Millar. I am a QC at Matrix Chambers. I specialise in election law and have done for 35 years.
The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)
I think it is Cat Smith’s turn to go first.
The Chair
Shall I bring in other members of the Committee? Patrick Grady, would you like to ask a question? [Interruption.] Oh, hang on.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Q
Gavin Millar: I am sorry—I am having trouble hearing.
Cat Smith
I will try repeating my question. Is there anything that you feel is missing from the legislation that would strengthen elections, or anything that is amendable that needs to be tightened up?
Gavin Millar: As the Committee probably knows, there is a widely held view that what we have at the moment is a complicated mass of disparate election law provisions in statutes that have been enacted over many years, often containing historical provisions that have just stayed in them down the decades. The mass of that legislative material is difficult and confusing for election administrators—lawyers, judges, candidates and agents.
Accordingly, there is a widely held view that the way to tackle election law now would be to sweep that current body of law aside and modernise it, applying appropriate consolidating provisions in the existing law, into a single, simpler set of statutory rules. The Law Commission said this a few years ago, I have said it and others have said it often. It is disappointing that, in approaching the legislation, the Government have chosen to introduce another rather ad hoc set of disparate provisions that are unrelated, rather than the whole amazing, simplifying rewrite that is required. I suppose that is the first point, in terms of where we are. There is a case—[Inaudible]—to tackle the urgent problems in the electoral system, but with the exception of part 6 of the Bill, which deals with information to be included with electronic material, nothing that it tackles could conceivably be regarded as an urgent problem of the sort that ought to take priority.
The Bill ignores the other most urgent problem in our system, which is the lack of an effective regulatory and enforcement regime to ensure that foreign money and dark money do not enter our political system through donations to political parties. I would say that that is now an election law issue, because in reality there is non-stop campaigning by political parties between the short and long election campaigns, which can be funded by large and inadequately regulated donations. There is the risk not only of money coming into the system that should not be there, but of the level playing field that we have always striven to achieve in our election law during the narrower periods of elections being lost in the intervening periods. It is disappointing that nothing in the legislation addresses those problems.
Cat Smith
Q
Gavin Millar: There is no doubt that once you have got into the process of regulating non-party expenditure in elections, some very difficult questions arise. Traditionally, those difficult questions have arisen in our system in relation to non-candidate expenditure in constituencies or local government wards—whatever it is—during the election campaign. Local campaigners, non-governmental organisations and so on and so forth can spend some money to campaign, but it is heavily capped. Of course, we are now into the territory where national campaigning is capped and regulated, and the current laws in relation to that are incredibly complicated, very difficult to follow and understand, and very difficult to apply, even for the courts.
I suppose the broad considerations are that we should, in a democracy, encourage and facilitate non-party campaigning of either form, but including national campaigns, to the extent that we can, if it does not unbalance the level playing field across the piece, because that contributes to the democratic process. There are a great many NGOs, charities and third-party campaigners that are not directly party political or campaigning on a range of issues, but may be campaigning on just one issue. It enhances our democracy to enable them to participate, which is going to cost money—they will have to spend money on that—provided that it does not cross the line of unbalancing a level playing field. It is a difficult balance to strike.
One of the features of the legislation that is very difficult is clause 25. It tackles third-party campaigning where it crosses a particular line, which is what is known in the legislation as a joint campaigning arrangement, where the third party or third parties can be shown, as a matter of fact, to have a plan or an arrangement to campaign together. That is an incredibly difficult concept. There have been a couple of cases where the courts have struggled with this, and I do not find the drafting in the Bill very easy, particularly clause 25.
It will be very difficult for campaigners, who might be caught by a suggestion that that is what they are doing, to know whether they are on the right or the wrong side of the line. If they are deemed to be on the wrong side of the line, and a court or a commission says that there is planned co-ordinated expenditure involving more than one non-party campaigner and a political party, that will dramatically reduce the amount that they will be able to spend. They will have to go through the whole process of declaring all the participants in that arrangement, and their available spend will be reduced accordingly. It may be that there are cases where it is justified in having that end result, but you should not have unclear law that leaves people in doubt as to what they can and cannot do and what is and is not a joint campaigning arrangement.
At the moment, that is very unclear in our law and has not been properly resolved by the courts. I would not suggest rushing into the provisions of clause 25. If that part of the Bill is going to go through Parliament, there should be very careful scrutiny of exactly what it is intended to catch and what it is not intended to catch, and of what the consequences are for third-party campaigners who engage in that sort joint campaigning with a political party. I am just not sure that that is there at the moment. That is the problem. Therefore it will tend to risk encouraging that active participation that I said was so important in a democracy.
Cat Smith
Q
Gavin Millar: Yes, I am concerned that this part of a strand in our law that is developing, which gives powers to Government and to the Executive to fill in gaps in legislation and take legally binding decisions outwith the legislation. It is very undesirable. It means that nobody knows in advance what the law is going to achieve and how it will work. It reduces parliamentary scrutiny.
Everything that is going to be there that will affect non-party campaigning should be in the primary legislation. It should be simple, clear and easy to understand, and it should be justified in terms of what it is trying to achieve in preventing the skewing of the level playing field. It should be absolutely clear what the consequences are for third-party campaigners, many of whom I advise at election time and in between elections. They are very confused by this. They find it very difficult to know what they can and cannot do, what crosses a particular line and what does not cross it, and what their maxima are for spending. You do not need to be a lawyer to realise that that is undesirable in a democracy, with an activity of such importance.
Chloe Smith
I have no further questions but I am very grateful to Mr Millar for giving his time.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Q
You expressed a concern a moment ago that the Minister, under clause 25, would have the ability to add to the list of categories. There is a rationale for that, which I hope we can agree on: as the sector develops, there will potentially be a need for the legislation to respond to growth in the sector, and it would be beneficial were the legislation able to satisfy that need. In those circumstances, is it not reasonable for the legislation to allow for an affirmative procedure in both Houses to give Parliament’s consent to the decision of the Minister? I am really challenging the rather bold assertion that it is the Minister who decides. It is not, is it? It is Parliament that will decide, and not just by the negative procedure; it is by the affirmative procedure in both Houses. Is that correct?
Gavin Millar: I concede that point. There is a form of parliamentary procedure that will enable scrutiny of how the power is being exercised. Members of the Committee and parliamentarians will know better than I do as a lawyer how effective that is likely to be. The main thing is to avoid unconstrained powers. The premise of your question was that there would be a legitimate concern that needed to be addressed through subordinate legislation and the Minister’s decision. That is fine, but the question is what sort of things we are talking about, and in what circumstances such a power will be exercised. I get very anxious about provisions—perhaps I am too old, or too old-fashioned, because they are a rather more contemporary thing—that are in very broad terms. When the primary legislation is enacted, it is difficult to anticipate for what purposes they will be used and what would be regarded as a justifiable change in the law, but I take the point that if it is the affirmative procedure there is parliamentary scrutiny.
Jerome Mayhew
I am very grateful. That is the only thing I wanted to clarify.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Q
Could you also say a little more on the value or otherwise of a more comprehensive effort to consolidate electoral law? We have a lot of Representation of the People Acts. This is not a representation of the people Bill; it has been called the Elections Bill. I do not know whether there is any legislative or theological difference between the titling of these different Bills and Acts, or the things that they have done over the years. Where do you see the merit in perhaps a stronger effort to consolidate the different pieces of legislation that govern the electoral framework?
Gavin Millar: In relation to the Electoral Commission, we need to start at the beginning, as it were. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, known in the trade as PPERA, created the Electoral Commission for the first time—it was the first time we had had one in this country—but [Inaudible] an Electoral Commission that does not actually have a role in administering, overseeing and running elections in real time, and that does not have powers to investigate conduct and outcomes, and still less overturn those outcomes. It is important to understand that other countries have equivalent entities with much stronger roles in each of those areas. We are starting from a pretty low base in terms of what the Electoral Commission has been created to do.
As far as I can see, there is no case here for any of the three main changes proposed in the legislation in relation to the Electoral Commission. First, there is the strategy and policy statement, which, as I understand it, is going to tell the regulator what it should and should not be doing. Secondly, the Electoral Commission’s willingness to do what it is told, and its success or otherwise in doing what it is told, will be overseen—one might cynically say “marked”—by the Speaker’s Committee. Thirdly, clause 15 takes away from the Electoral Commission the power to prosecute. I can see no case or justification for any of those measures.
An Electoral Commission should be independent of Government; it should be free from Government influence as a matter of principle, because of its role in a democracy. It should be rather akin to the police or the Crown Prosecution Service in that respect. Its decision making, and indeed its powers to investigate and act, should be framed and guided solely by the public interest and the merits of the evidence before it. Does this need to be investigated? To what extent does it need to be investigated? What has gone wrong? What needs to be done? It should be answerable to Parliament as a whole rather than to a single Committee or a small group of politicians. That seems to me a key and obvious point of principle.
My own view is that the Electoral Commission should have more powers and resources—hopefully under the codified and modernised statutory regime that I have suggested—rather than less, which is what seems to be the aim at the moment, particularly in relation to the removal of the power to prosecute. Why? Well, because it is the only player in the game. It is the only possible resource for dealing with breaches of election law, in its limited area, other than through criminal prosecution and civil litigation.
As far as the former is concerned, the police and prosecutors frankly do not have the resources or expertise to tackle offending under the RPA or PPERA, and I am absolutely certain that much goes uninvestigated and unprosecuted at the moment. That is extremely undesirable in our system. Civil litigation—by candidates, judicial review, election petitions and so on—is costly, cumbersome, time-consuming and very difficult to undertake. All those factors indicate that we need an empowered and funded Electoral Commission to tackle problems as they come up. They are experts and specialists; that is why they are there and should be there.
On the second point you asked about—I will try not to become boring, because I could wax lyrical about this for hours—as you probably know, essentially we have two strands to our election law. We have the Representation of the People Act 1983, which is the primary statute regulating three things: the exercise of the franchise, the conduct of elections and challenges to elections after the event. There are various problems with it, but the main one is that it is the most recent of a long succession of Acts with the same name in the 20th century, and indeed there were earlier equivalents going back into the 19th century. They have often been a political compromise in Parliament, simply enacted by way of consolidation with only minor amendments. What we have ended up with is really an awful lot of 19th-century provisions that have hardly changed in their wording.
On top of that, in that strand of the law—the actual regulation of the administration of elections—there have been many, many more pieces of primary and secondary legislation relating to those three areas of our law since 1983. They either come in statutory instruments or they go into amendments to the RPA, so you get these long lists of amended sections with ZA numbers after the primary number, and it becomes wholly unwieldy and unmanageable.
The Law Commission’s report, where it recommended this, alluded to a problem that surfaced in the 2010 general election. I am sure you all remember that there were queues at polling stations and people were unable to get in and vote when they closed at 10 pm. That is an unresolved issue in our election law. The Law Commission make the point that when Parliament had to correct that to make sure people queuing at that point could get in, 10 different pieces of legislation had to be amended to achieve that one single result. That is how bad it is.
In addition, the second strand is the PPERA strand, which came into play in 2000 with completely new and different areas of election law. In particular, as we know, it included the regulation of national campaign expenditure by political parties and third-party campaigners, as well as permissible donations. Again, accretions and additions to that legislation over the years have made it incredibly complicated.
So what is election law? Well, it is ill-defined, but essentially it is everything surrounding those two huge pieces of legislation and the case law they have thrown up. One of the advantages of consolidation would be to be clear about what needs to be regulated in elections. As I have said, it seems to me that the whole issue of campaigning between long and short campaign periods is now election law. That is just the reality of it in the modern world, just as we have accepted that what goes on on the internet is election law, which we never did before. Modernising and consolidating would give us a much broader definition of election law.
As you point out, in this Bill we have bits relating to each. We have bits relating to PPERA and bits relating to the RPA regime, and it is now simply called the Elections Bill, which is a sort of combination of two strands of our law, and it is a bit of a rag-bag really. I am not saying that some of the things are not desirable—clearly they are—but they are not urgent and they should not be given priority over this much more fundamental issue that needs to be resolved, which is a consolidated and complete electoral code.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Q
Gavin Millar: This strand of convention law—by which I mean, whether a piece of domestic legislation is incompatible with the provisions of the convention—does not work on an individual case-by-case basis. It works on the basis that if you have to look at compatibility in a court case, it is at the impact of the domestic rule of law—here, the voter ID provision—across the piece and the whole of the electoral system in the contracting party.
Is the impact of that legislative provision one that can be justified as being compatible with the convention? The convention—Strasbourg—has its own internal set of rules for saying what is and is not compatible. Very few rights are absolute, which is why you can have laws that prevent certain people—criminals and so on—from voting for a period, but to be compatible with the convention they have to be justifiable, in the sense of achieving a legitimate aim, one that is legitimate in that country for that political system and that voting system. It has to be a proportionate means of achieving that aim.
The question here—I accept that it would be assessed by the impact on individual groups of people, such as the Roma, whom you mentioned, but it would be much broader than that—is, if you try to justify what the Government are proposing to do across the electoral system as a whole, can it be justified as meeting a legitimate aim? Is there a problem that is so bad that it needs addressing in this system in this way? Is this a crude or a proportionate way of addressing it? The problem I have with clause 1 is that I cannot see the problem and, even if there is a problem, I cannot see that this is a targeted and proportionate way of addressing it, because it would just sweep out of the franchise somebody who did not happen to have a card or voter ID but was properly on the electoral register and entitled to vote when they turned up.
Why do I say that there is not a problem? You are all politicians, you have been elected and you know how this works, but you may not have looked at this from the point of view of an election lawyer, a criminal lawyer or someone looking at election fraud, which for my sins I have spent a lot of time doing for the past 20 years. The sort of fraud we are talking about here is called “personation” under the RPA. It is an electoral offence—it is impersonation, but misses off the “im” in the statutory historical categorisation. Personation is A turning up at the polling station pretending to be B, who is validly on the register.
It is not a problem of any great consequence in our system, and I speak from experience. Personation cases are almost non-existent. There are reasons why it is not a problem. First of all, it is extremely risky for anyone to try that. You are liable to be caught because somebody spots you and knows you are not that person. It is also ineffective because there is the alternative possibility that that person turns up and votes later, or indeed has already voted and is marked off the register when you try to impersonate them. If you are going to do it, you have to be absolutely certain that the person is dead or is not going to come and vote, and that you will not be found out that way. It is also hugely inefficient compared with other forms of fraud that have been perpetrated, particularly since postal voting on demand. You have to get a range of people, or yourself, to go around different polling stations at different times in the day, and all you get out of each criminal offence you commit is one vote. It is just not efficient or effective as a fraud, so it does not happen.
As I understand it, this came from the 2014 Tower Hamlets mayoral election. There were a whole range of election offences pleaded in that case and looked at by the court. One of them involved some personation at polling stations, but it was not the core problem. If that were the reason we had got to this point, this would be an example of a hard case making very bad law, and I would counsel against that. The fraud that exists in our system, or has existed since 2000, that everybody has read about and knows about, is a very different type of election fraud. One possibility is what is called roll-stuffing in Australia, where you put additional voters on the register who are not entitled to vote in a concerted fraud before the election, and then vote in their name. You normally apply for a postal vote for those non-existent voters at a particular address, and you pick up the postal vote papers and you vote.
There are various other postal vote frauds that were recounted in the cases that have been cited. That form of fraud has been made much more difficult by Parliament and by the administrators because of the cases over the past 20 years, and there are less cases even of that form of fraud, but it is not a form of fraud that would be addressed by this piece of legislation, so what is the problem? What is it achieving? Why is this a proportionate way of addressing it? I have no answers to any of those questions, and of course in a situation where, by common estimates, we have something like 17% of eligible voters not on the register, one wonders why our efforts are not being concentrated on voter registration measures—getting more people on to the register and facilitating them in voting—rather than making it more difficult for them to do it by imposing this requirement, which we have never had.
I appreciate that advocates of the Bill will say, “It is not a lot to do, to get a piece of photo ID or have a piece of photo ID and bring it along to the polling station,” but we need only look at the Windrush scandal to see how many poor people and ordinary people in our society have difficulties with that sort of thing, not to mention disabled people and other discriminated-against groups who do not want to engage with obtaining this sort of identification, for fear that it will open them up to other scrutiny and investigation of an unjustifiable kind. It is wrong on every count, really.
To answer the question, yes, there will inevitably be challenges to this as incompatible with the European convention on human rights if it is introduced, and it seems to me that there is a strong case for doing that. The impact would be considerable, by all accounts—although somewhat unquantifiable—but I just have not seen the evidence that you would be required to produce at a judicial review or at a case in Strasbourg to justify this as an appropriate state interference with the right to vote.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank our witness for his evidence.
Examination of Witness
Fazilet Hadi gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Fazilet Hadi: I am Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK. Just so you know, I am blind, although it should not affect anything today.
The Chair
We have until 3.30 pm for this panel. Minister, would you like to start with the first question?
Chloe Smith
Q
Fazilet Hadi: I will briefly give a bit of context before answering that question. Some 14 million people in the UK are disabled, or one in five of the population, so we are a very big group and very diverse. About 45% of older people and 19% of working-age adults have a disability. As you and colleagues will know, that can range from sensory impairment to learning disability, mental health and mobility issues, so we face a wide set of challenges.
There are some real challenges in voting, so it would be good to see rigorous standards applied and enforced by Government, because voting should not be a postcode lottery; it should be equal wherever we are in the country. A couple of issues in the Bill concern me, particularly photo identification and the provisions on equipment, which seem to be turning the clock back a little, particularly for blind and partially sighted voters.
Coming back to your question on standards, the standards start even before the electoral officers—for example, in the way that local authorities produce information on elections and whether reasonable adjustments need to be considered for electors who have disabilities. Even for those first letters, people should already be thinking, “Can this person read the letter? Do they need an easy-read, audio or electronic version?” I think it starts very early, and it then moves through all the stages of postal voting, through to the actual physical buildings in which elections are held, the devices we are given to enable us to vote independently, the height of the desks where we cast our vote and wheelchair accessibility. It is almost like walking through the customer journey from beginning to end, ensuring that reasonable adjustments are made at every point, because I am sure the Government want to ensure that those 14 million people have a voice in the same way as everyone else.
Chloe Smith
Q
As you rightly say, we all want to see disabled voters, or voters with any condition or extra accessibility need, able to take part fully. What do you think ought to be focused on in communicating the changes encapsulated in this Bill? How could that be done with your members, for example, or others?
Fazilet Hadi: The provisions on photo ID will need a lot of communication, but they should not be communicated in isolation. Going back to what I said before, if we take something out of context, it presupposes that the electorate get everything else and know all the other things that are in place, and disabled people may not know about the other adjustments that are available. On photo ID, that does pose particular issues, and when there were trials, my recollection from colleagues at Mencap is that it took quite a lot of education, face to face, as well as written information, to communicate to people with learning disabilities what the change meant.
There will be an education imperative for the whole public, of course, but for particular groups of disabled people, some of us maybe do not access information so easily—British Sign Language users, people who access through audio or braille, people who need easy read, and people whose literacy skills are low. There is quite a communication challenge in actually getting across that photo ID is required, and that has to start well in advance of it being required.
Chloe Smith
Q
May I draw on your experience of voting as a blind person—as a person with a visual impairment? I would guess that you have used the tactile voting device. Could you describe to the Committee what it has been like using that device? What are its drawbacks and advantages?
Fazilet Hadi: I have not actually used it. I have voted through the post, and I have voted with the assistance of the electoral staff—
Chloe Smith
I apologise for making an assumption.
Fazilet Hadi: Not at all. I should have tried the template. My understanding is that it does not allow completely independent voting. If people can imagine, it is like laying a template over a piece of paper. You would probably have to memorise what was on the paper, which could be tricky. I suppose you would not have complete confidence, because you cannot check back. I think it was a device of its time. As I understand it, a judicial review said that it did not allow a completely secret ballot.
What the device should be is not a straightforward issue, but I worry about the provision in the Bill taking away the wording of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which says that the device should be prescribed by the Government. Whatever the device is, and whatever its limitations—hopefully we can improve on the current device—it should be available without question and without any decision making being needed from local electoral staff. It should just be made available because the Government says that it should be. Under the Bill as it is framed at the moment, there is a danger with that kind of wording being removed and a much looser wording about reasonableness being inserted instead.
Chloe Smith
Q
Fazilet Hadi: In this particular instance, I am not sure whether the Act envisaged a tactile template, but I think the wording means that the Government can prescribe “it” and update what the “it” is in guidance. The thing is to get to the principle that it is set down and must be provided. That would be the way to do it, not saying exactly what the “it” is. Indeed, the “it” will change as digital technology changes, with things like 3D printing. I am not a great technologist, but I think that the Act can get across the mandatory nature of the equipment that must be used. For people across the country who are registered blind, any sense that you could go to a polling station in one local authority area and get one device, and go to another elsewhere and get another device, would be a retrograde step.
Chloe Smith
Q
Fazilet Hadi: No. I am not an expert on the Elections Bill, but it seems very much to put it down to the individual electoral officer to decide what is reasonable. I accept that we could be talking in a much wider sense about what is reasonable for any disabled person. As I said earlier, some people might need a slightly higher or lower table in the polling station, depending on whether they are standing up or in a wheelchair. Some people might need a fatter pen because they have dexterity issues, and some people might need some sort of tactile device. In that sense, it is good that the Act tries to cover a broader range of equipment. Nevertheless, I still think that the Government need to specify those types of equipment in guidance and standards. As I said, voters would expect that consistency across the piece. At the moment, the language needs hardening. If the Government’s intention is to make this mandatory, I do not think that that comes across.
Chloe Smith
It is very helpful that you close with the point that it must be specified through guidance, because that is indeed what the intention is. It is also what one of our witnesses yesterday agreed was where much of the work should be done.
Cat Smith
Q
You opened your remarks by describing how you felt that the legislation is turning back the clock, particularly for voters who are blind or partially sighted. If I understood correctly, that is because the 1983 Act wording would be rescinded and there would be much more flexibility for local authorities to have potentially quite different ways of supporting blind and partially sighted voters. That would create something of a postcode lottery. What would the challenges then be for voters with a disability or impairment who have perhaps moved house to a different local authority area and might then get a different level of service or a different system to facilitate their needs? Would that be an additional barrier to voting for disabled people?
Fazilet Hadi: I like the words in the Representation of the People Act 1983, “prescribed equipment”. Obviously, guidance can say at any point what that prescribed equipment is for. There might be prescribed equipment for people with other impairments. It is not just tactile devices; it could be adjustable tables or pens that people can grip.
The Government signed up to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which says that there must be full participation in political and public life for disabled people. It specifies that there must be materials, facilities and procedures that are fully accessible and appropriate. It specifies that there must be a secret ballot. It specifies that there must be assistance from whoever the disabled person chooses. The Human Rights Act 1998 talks about the right to vote and how we all need to have the ability to express our opinion through voting. The Equality Act 2010 puts a public sector equality duty on the Government and local government––any government––to think about what they are doing to promote the interests of, and make reasonable adjustments for, disabled people and others. We have all these laws and a stated intention that this Bill should make things better for participation by disabled people, but it cannot be better for the equipment to be different in different polling stations. For me as an elector, it is about not knowing exactly what I am entitled to, so that I can try to enforce it if I do not get it. Leaving arrangements to the 152 local authorities in England, and I do not know how many in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is totally unacceptable.
Cat Smith
Q
Fazilet Hadi: Huge concerns. If we think about who does not have a driving licence or a passport, who does not have a blue badge or a bus pass or a railcard, we are asking those people who have obviously found it unsurmountable for various reasons—those reasons could be cognitive, sensory, digital exclusion; all sorts of reasons—to apply for a card. We are asking the most disadvantaged people in our community, who have not got one of those other cards, to go and apply for a card. It just does not make any sense. These are the people who are least likely to apply for a card. If they could apply for cards and that was easy for them, they would have one of these other cards. I just feel the proposal is completely impracticable.
If we really want the people who are really struggling to vote to come and vote—the people who do not have any of these cards—you can imagine how many challenges that section of the community has, and applying for a voting card would not come anywhere near the top of their to-do list.
Patrick Grady
Q
“such equipment as it is reasonable…for the purposes of enabling or making it easier for, relevant persons”.
Relevant persons would include blind or partially sighted people, but also people with other disabilities or impairments or difficulties.
Is there any reason why you could not just have both? You could keep the specific provisions, perhaps updating them so we are not limiting this to one specific piece of advice, and making a bit of a tweak so that we talk more generally about equipment that might change over time with technology, but keep those provisions and add in the extra requirement for a wider group of voters who might have difficulty accessing the polling stations. Do you see any incompatibility with that approach?
Fazilet Hadi: No, there is no incompatibility. My main point would be that if there is prescribed equipment—that is not just for blind people; if there is prescribed equipment for wheelchair users or people with dexterity problems—let that be prescribed, so that we get consistency across the board, but let us have an additional provision about how all reasonable adjustments should be made, which is actually just repeating the duty in the Equality Act, because electoral officers are discharging a public function anyway. I do not mind that being repeated, but I do not think we should be confusing prescribing equipment for whichever impairment group needs it with the duty to make reasonable adjustments. They can live together quite harmoniously—I agree.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness for giving evidence today. It is much appreciated.
Examination of Witness
Dr Alan Renwick gave evidence.
Cat Smith
On a point of order, Ms Rees. A motion to approve an instruction has been laid by the Government and will be heard on the Floor of the House on Monday, regarding expanding the Elections Bill to include electoral voting systems, specifically in terms of mayoralties within England and police and crime commissioners. Would it be in order to ask questions of Dr Renwick about electoral systems, given that they are not currently in the scope of the Bill?
The Chair
My understanding is that matter is not currently in the scope of the Bill. I am aware that the motion is on the Order Paper for Monday.
The Chair
If it is possible to have a supplementary programme motion, then that could be added, but that is not a matter for me. That is usually done through the usual channels.
The Chair
Q
Dr Renwick: I am Alan Renwick from the constitution unit at University College London and I lead our work on elections and referendums, and some of our recent work on the structure and functioning of the Union.
Cat Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: The principle for a good electoral commission is that it should be independent from the Government. The details of how that works in countries around the world depend a great deal on political culture; it is not just a matter of institutions. I would not attempt to draw a tight parallel between how things work in other countries and how things should work in this country. For example, some countries might have a procedure for appointing members of an electoral commission that might look quite political on the surface, but in practice, given the conventions in that country, it may be properly neutral and protect the commission’s independence. The key thing is how to ensure the independence of the Electoral Commission, alongside the appropriate accountability, in the context of the UK. I am afraid that the Bill’s proposals seem wholly contrary to the principle of independence of the commission.
Independence and accountability matter. It is absolutely right that there should be parliamentary accountability, and there is already a great deal of it. The Electoral Commission is, of course, accountable to the Speaker’s Committee; the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee scrutinises the commission’s work a great deal; and it is also accountable to the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd. I do not think that there is a deficit of accountability of the commission at present.
As for independence, I think that it requires, quite simply, that Parliament lay out the remit of the Electoral Commission, and that must happen through primary legislation, so that Parliament can properly scrutinise and amend that remit. It is not a matter that is written in Government and subject to much more limited parliamentary scrutiny or opportunity for amendment. Parliament should lay down the remit for the commission, which should then get on with delivering that—subject to appropriate scrutiny, as already exists. The idea of having an additional strategy and policy statement written by Ministers, without the appropriate degree of scrutiny, flies in the face of the principle of independence, and therefore seems to be wholly inappropriate.
Cat Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: It could potentially create very great tensions. The proposal would clearly require a legislative consent motion in order to be compatible with the Sewel convention. The Counsel General—the Minister in the Welsh Government—has already indicated that he does not recommend that a legislative consent motion be passed on this matter, and I presume the Scottish Parliament will do the same.
This part of the Bill envisages that Ministers in the UK Government, subject to affirmative procedure, would be able to specify guidelines for devolved matters and that Scottish and Welsh Ministers would only be consulted—and, indeed, would only potentially be notified—in the case of amendments to the statement. That seems wholly contrary to the principles of devolution that have been established, and I cannot see any justification for it. The Sewel convention indicates that Westminster will normally not legislate in matters that have been devolved. There is nothing abnormal here, there is nothing unusual and nothing has changed since these matters were devolved to Scotland and Wales—those devolution changes did not take place very long ago—so it seems very problematic.
That also heightens an issue that already exists with the governance of the Electoral Commission: the commissioners themselves are all appointed on the recommendation of the House of Commons, and that on the recommendation of the Speaker’s Committee. The Speaker’s Committee has, in recent appointments of commissioners with responsibility for Scotland and Wales, either consulted the Presiding Officer or the Llywydd, or included a representative of those people in the committee responsible for shortlisting, but that has been entirely at its discretion.
There is a need to review the arrangements for governance of the Electoral Commission in light of the recent devolutions of electoral matters in those areas. The last serious review of this question, conducted by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2007, said at that time that the current governance arrangements were appropriate because those matters were not devolved. These matters have been devolved now, and therefore there is a need for a review.
My impression is that this point has not been thought about terribly much. I do not detect that either the Scottish Government or the Welsh Government have done much detailed thinking on this, but some consideration is needed of how to ensure that the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd are properly represented in these processes.
One final point I should make in this area is one that has been made by others: the fact that the Speaker’s Committee has a majority from a single party is simply indefensible against the principle of independence of electoral processes. That has never happened before—it did not happen when there were large majorities for Governments in the early 2000s; at that time there was no majority for that party in the Speaker’s Committee—but it has been allowed to happen now, which suggests that conventional constraints on the improper exercise of power are not working, to be honest. Legislative action is needed to ensure that there is never a single party majority on the Speaker’s Committee.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: I am not a lawyer, so I wondered when I looked at those words exactly what they meant, but if they mean what you have described them as meaning, they do not trouble me. It was always the intent of the PPERA legislation passed in 2000 that the Minister with responsibility for elections and the Minister with responsibility for local government should be members of the Speaker’s Committee, and if the change is simply intended to ensure that the Minister who has responsibility for elections can participate, but there are only two Ministers participating, then that change does not seem to me problematic.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: That is absolutely correct. I do not know what went wrong in this case. I cannot see an argument against the view that something has gone wrong in the current composition of the Speaker’s Committee; it is wrong that it has its current composition. If you look at the 2007 Committee on Standards in Public Life report, there is a quotation from evidence provided by the Speaker’s Committee saying that the convention has been applied and that the Speaker’s appointments will be made such that there is no single party majority. That convention was understood in 2007, and the CSPL at the time recommended that it should be formalised. This has not taken place. Somehow, things went awry at the start of the present Parliament, and I do not know what happened or what went wrong. However, given that it has gone wrong, legislative change is now needed to ensure that it does not go wrong again.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: I would suggest simply a stipulation that that power be exercised subject to the constraint that there shall never be a majority of MPs from any one party within the membership of the committee.
Chloe Smith
Q
Your points about the Sewel convention were interesting. I wanted to have your written evidence in front of us, as well as what you have just said. In your written evidence you say the proposed strategy and policy statement violates the Sewel convention. Your words just now were accurate in saying that the Sewel convention says that this House will not normally legislate for affairs that are devolved without consent. You have clarified in your words here today that it is the existence or otherwise of an LCM that would violate the Sewel convention. For absolute clarity, can you confirm that the strategy and policy statement does not, in its own right, violate the Sewel convention, but instead, the behaviour and procedure around it is where you direct those comments?
Dr Renwick: I intentionally changed my comments because what I wrote in my evidence was somewhat inaccurate. What I should have said was, if there is no legislative consent motion on this aspect of the Bill, then the inclusion of the strategy and policy statement as currently set out would violate the Sewel convention. It seems very likely that there will not be a legislative consent motion; that was the presumption I was making, but it was a presumption that I should not have made without clarification.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: Absolutely. The Welsh Minister in his legislative consent memorandum indicates that he is in conversation with you, which I am very glad to hear, and I hope you will take your normal constructive approach in seeking a solution to this issue.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: It would be subject to much less scrutiny than primary legislation and it would not be amendable. As far as possible in this area, the principle should be applied that the rules are made in a reasonably consensual cross-party manner. I realise that is very difficult and it is not guaranteed by the primary legislative process, but at least there is a process for proper scrutiny and discussion of the proposals in a cross-party forum. The procedures around the strategies, policies and statements that are indicated in the Bill do not enable that degree of scrutiny, which I think is simply not appropriate.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: There is the kind of detailed scrutiny that we are having today, for example, in which there is an opportunity for detailed discussion of the proposals to take place. Also, of course, part of what we are doing here today is bringing in the views of a variety of people from beyond Parliament as well. It is essential that the processes of accountability for the Electoral Commission should be both cross-party and non-party. Those two features are essential for ensuring that electoral integrity is maintained for the simple reason that, as a member of the Committee alluded to earlier this afternoon, however wonderful MPs are—I have great respect for MPs; I know some of you on the Committee and I genuinely think you are great people—you have a vested interest in these issues. We are talking about a body that regulates some of the activities of MPs. In that context, it is essential to ensure there is a process that brings in voices from outside Parliament, and the primary legislative process allows that to a much greater degree than does a simple affirmative resolution.
Chloe Smith
Q
Dr Renwick: Yes. The changes introduced in 2009 with the introduction of party members of the Electoral Commission was a desirable step in ensuring that all voices are properly represented in the governance of the Electoral Commission, and those structures are not changed. As I have indicated, in some respects the governance structures need to be changed, particularly regarding the composition of the Speaker’s Committee and the question of how we reflect the devolved arrangements, but yes, I agree that the arrangements you mentioned are not changed.
Chloe Smith
Thank you, Alan. As always, it is good to debate with you and really good to have your expertise.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Q
Dr Renwick: No, I was not. I would not expect to have been aware necessarily of all the consultations that might have taken place, but I do not recall being aware of the proposals before they were announced by the Minister in June. To be honest, that is problematic. I have expressed concerns about the substance of the proposals, but procedurally there is a difficulty here as well because of the point that I have already alluded to. With the best will in the world, and with full respect to you as MPs, the fact that you have a vested interest in this issue means that it is incumbent upon you to proceed with particular care when you are thinking about electoral matters generally, and particularly the governance of the Electoral Commission.
I think the procedure that ought to be followed in such a case is that there is an independent review before any recommendation such as those that have been introduced here are put forward. That was the case in 2000; the introduction of the Electoral Commission stemmed, if I remember correctly, from the Fifth Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The changes in 2009, introducing, among other things, the partisan commissioners, reflected recommendations made in, if I remember correctly, the Eleventh Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There has been no comparable process in this case. I do not think that that is an appropriate way to introduce significant changes in the governance of the Electoral Commission.
Brendan O'Hara
Q
Dr Renwick: I do not think it is for me to speculate on that to be honest. I regret that it has happened in this way. I have great respect for the Minister, and I hope that there may be scope for reconsideration of some of these aspects. For example, as you will all be aware, the CSPL published a report just two days after the Bill was published on the regulation of election finance, which of course is part of what the Bill covers. I would very much hope that the Government have been considering the recommendations made in that report, and might introduce amendments to take account of many of them. I thought it was an excellent report. I hope that there is scope to change elements of the Bill in order to reflect the views that have been heard since its publication, because I do think that steps up to that point were too hasty.
Brendan O'Hara
Q
Dr Renwick: The main point is that the governance of the Electoral Commission should stand up to proper scrutiny, and should be appropriately independent. Frankly, I am not sure whether it has much impact on public perceptions. I suspect that most people have higher priorities in mind. Certainly, the measures diminish the integrity of the electoral process, or will do if introduced, and that ought to be regretted. Quite what effect that has on public opinion as such, who knows?
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, thank you, Dr Renwick, for your evidence. It is much appreciated. The Committee will next meet at 9.25 am on Wednesday 22 September to begin clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(David Rutley.)
Health and Care Bill (Seventh sitting)
Thursday 16th September 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Health and Care Act 2022 View all Health and Care Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 September 2021 - (16 Sep 2021)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
We are going to continue with schedule 2. I call Alex Norris to move amendment 34.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move amendment 34, in schedule 2, page 120, line 26, at end insert—
“(2C) The constitution must require integrated care boards, and any committee or sub-committee of the board, to meet in public and publish all papers and agendas at least 5 working days before each meeting is held.”
This amendment mandates integrated care boards, and their sub-committees including “place based committees” to meet in public and publish all papers and agendas at least five working days before each meeting is held.
It is a pleasure to resume proceedings with you in the Chair, Mrs Murray. This is a resumption of our discussion on schedule 2, which lays out the rules under which integrated care boards must meet. For all the talk of local flexibility, the reality is that the regulations are quite tight in schedule 2; the amendment seeks to tighten them a little more, but not disproportionately so.
The amendment asks for two things: first, that the boards meet in public, and, secondly, that they publish their papers five days in advance. To start with meeting in public, it has been mentioned on a number of occasions that the 42 different integrated care boards are in different states of development. There will be systems that are well advanced and model good behaviours of transparency and accountability, but we have to set regulations to ensure a minimum floor standard, and this is what the amendment does.
For a struggling system, the worst-case scenario, as we have said before, is that it can become a closed shop of leadership appointed centrally by NHS England and the leaders of the big acute trusts, because it is they who have the power and the resources. We cannot legislate to improve the culture of those systems—that is not what legislation does—but we can ensure proper oversight to try to minimise the risk, and meeting in public is a good way to do that. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as they say, and this will mean that the public have a good sense of what decisions are being taken in their interests.
A key part of that citizen oversight is to know what decisions are being taken and when. Including a provision in the constitution to publish papers with five working days’ notice seems a good way to do that. I would argue that that represents rather basic good governance, so it is a very low bar to clear. We have spoken before about wanting to allow integrated care boards to be able to vary to fit their local circumstances, but I cannot see under what circumstances it would be desirable or relevant to vary the publication of that information. I do not think there are any local circumstances that would call for that. The requirement would mean that members of the public, elected representatives and those who represent staff or anyone with a general interest would understand what is going to be decided and when, and would give them the opportunity to make representations so that the board members are making decisions in the full knowledge of the facts and the views of the broader system.
In the amendment, that requirement also applies to all committees or sub-committees. This matters, because we heard in the evidence sessions that it is almost inevitable that every system will want to establish sub-committees, both thematic—we heard from the system in Gloucestershire about its primary-care themed one, which I thought was a very desirable way to use a sub-committee—or, inevitably, given what we have said about the size of the footprints of some of the integrated care boards, place-based. It is important that the provision applies to those bodies too.
The question matters even more to the integrated care partnership and its status, and I hope the Minister will be able to address it. My reading of clause 20 and proposed new section 116ZA of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 states that this is a committee of the integrated care board and the local authority. I would argue that that remains an oddity, because the process was pitched to us on the idea that we have an integrated care board that will be the official NHS fund-holding body, but then we have the integrated care partnership that will provide the broader involvement on an equivalent basis, not as a sub-committee. I hope that point can be addressed, but nevertheless it will be important for that body that the public know what is being discussed and when. We will come back to clause 20, but the commitment from the Government that the meetings and papers should be public is a good thing.
Conceptually, the amendment lands the ICB and any sub-committees at about the level of an executive board of a council. That to me feels about right. The Minister may have reflections about circumstances where, by exception, the boards may need to meet in private for certain decisions, as local authorities would do. There are ways to do that for councils, so I do not think it is beyond our wit to do the same for these bodies, too. As a default, the basic principle of public meetings, with papers published five working days in advance, seems sound.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I offer my support to my hon. Friend and agree with everything he said. There may be a response from the Minister, although I do not know what he will say, but there is some discussion that perhaps the amendment is not necessary, as this already happens and the Bill refers to publishing—but that is not true. There are exemplar trusts and bodies across the country that have a culture of openness, but NHS boards are secretive and protected.
We have numerous examples of whistleblowing and good journalism uncovering the depths of NHS bureaucracy. Boards with which I have dealings, not just locally in Bristol, do a lot out of the public eye, and a culture of not liking scrutiny has evolved over a couple of decades, even though they should be really proud that people are taking an interest. We need to change that culture, and having a reference in the Bill would help.
Trade union colleagues have often come to me to complain about how they are blocked from getting key information about plans for changes. Changes are announced, and management often want to start TUPE discussions without really understanding what is behind the change. The use of freedom of information requests results in variations across the country in who responds and how they respond. That needs to stop.
The default should be to make things public unless there are reasons not to. I was a non-executive director back in the noughties, and was led by a chair who had come from local authorities—a Labour chair, but I do not think that matters. People who were used to chairing in local authorities found it quite peculiar that the NHS wanted to discuss matters in secret. As a board, we made it the case and culture that managers had to say if there was a really clear reason, and on several occasions we challenged why things were not done properly.
The new NHS is not commercial. The Government tell us that we are not quite getting rid of the purchaser-provider split, but we are moving away from competition as the driver of the health service. The confidentiality argument should be disappearing. I hope that the Minister accepts that the very highest standards now need to be set around openness and transparency and need actually to be enforced. All levels of the NHS and all these committees and sub-committees, however we end up organising them, have to be cognisant of the Nolan principles, which should drive all their work.
If a trust is finally forced by a tribunal to disclose information, it should have been provided earlier. There should be consequences. Where there is a bad culture, we need to change it. To reference my hobby-horse, there should be a business case to support every major decision. Later we will discuss my new clause 7, which comes from the pain I have experienced trying to unearth business cases, particularly in wholly owned companies and subsidiaries, to deliver facilities management. I have asked for business cases only to be told, “No, it is confidential.” There should be no need for it to be confidential at all. I do not understand how a business case can be confidential—at best, a few lines might be sensitive, but not a full business case.
That shows that NHS bodies who fear a change think they have something to hide. It is wholly wrong. If a change is proposed, the case for change should be published. We need to know why it is necessary. I would go further; I would publish all details of the tender process and the contract management. If anyone wants to do business with the NHS, which we welcome, they need to be open and transparent. It really is a test of the intention to change course and move to an integrated, collaborative model, because as we exit the market, we need to be make sure that the wellbeing of the public and the patient really comes first in commissioning. As I say, that culture needs to be changed.
To come back to my theme, ICBs need to be the bodies that the public recognise and understand as being where some sort of accountability resides. That means that nothing should be secret. Let us go further: the public has the right to question. That is what we come back to. There has to be a figurehead—ideally an elected figurehead —or non-executive directors who can be truly independent and challenge that secretive culture. I hope the Minister will look favourably on the amendment.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I am grateful to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, and to the hon. Member for Bristol South for their amendment, and for their comments on it. As the shadow Minister set out, it would require ICBs and their subcommittees to meet in public, including place-based committees. To address one of his specific points, if I understood what he was saying, I think he does interpret it correctly: the ICP is a committee of the ICB, albeit a joint committee with a whole range of other organisations. I would expect the same principles to apply to it as to the ICB, and I will go through those in a second. The amendment would also require all papers and agendas relevant to those meetings to be published
“at least 5 working days before each meeting is held.”
We agree with the shadow Minister that it is right that ICBs involve the public in their decisions, and do so in a transparent and clear way. I hope that I can offer him some reassurances that the Bill already provides much of what he is asking for. Like a number of hon. Members, I served on a primary care trust board as a non-executive director, back in the days when I had more hair and it was not grey—although that might have been just a day ago, before reshuffle speculation—and I take the point that the hon. Member for Bristol South has made. We sought to be as transparent as possible, but there were occasions on which total openness to the public about consideration of certain items would not have been appropriate. I will come to those in a second.
In terms of what is already provided for, the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 already places on such bodies a set of requirements to involve the public in meetings that is very similar to those in the amendment, and I suspect that Act was part of the genesis of the shadow Minister’s thinking. The Act requires meetings to be held in public, for the public to be made aware of the time and place of the meeting, and for the agenda to be published, alongside any reports or documents relevant to the agenda items. ICBs have already been included in the Act by the consequential amendments in schedule 4 to this Bill, and we may want to connect that loop up when we reach schedule 4, hopefully later today—I believe that is the intention. By using that legislation, we keep ICBs in line with the requirements placed on other public bodies, meaning that there is consistency across public bodies and they are held to the same standards.
I hope I can give some further reassurances that there are broad duties on integrated care boards to involve the public in the decision-making process, over and above those contained in the Act. Clause 19, which inserts proposed new section 14Z44 into the National Health Service Act 2006, places a duty on integrated care boards to involve and consult the public in the planning of commissioning arrangements, including in respect of any planned changes to those commissioning arrangements. This will ensure that the voices of residents —those who access care and support, as well as their carers—are properly embedded in ICB decision making.
Schedule 2 to this Bill, which concerns the constitutions of integrated care boards and which we will reach shortly, states that ICB constitutions must specify how the ICB plans to discharge its duty to involve and consult the public. Moreover, those constitutions must specify the arrangements that the ICB will make to ensure that there is transparency in its decision making, and NHS England will ensure that all proposed constitutions are appropriate and include the relevant provisions to meet those obligations. Under clause 13, which inserts proposed new section 14Z25 into the 2006 Act, NHS England will need to approve the constitution when making an establishment order, and proposed new section 14Z26 makes it clear that NHS England has the power to reject a proposed constitution if it does not meet the appropriate bar.
Turning to a few specific points made by the hon. Member for Bristol South, we are still clear that competition has a role to play in this space: it is about proportionality, and seeking to achieve a better and more proportionate balance in that respect. She rightly asked about the examples of circumstances whereby it might not be appropriate to be fully transparent. I was on a primary care trust board some years ago, and there were occasions when the board would discuss specific incidents or situations that could lead to the identification of an individual or a group of individuals. Clearly, such matters would be confidential. Similarly, matters that were due to be, or were, before the courts were discussed on occasions—again, we would expect that to be confidential.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South. I completely agree that where we will see the worst practices across footprints, each and every one will be secretive and not invite scrutiny, so it is very important that we set arrangements to ensure that that cannot happen.
I am grateful for the clarification that the 1960 Act will apply, which assuages my first concern. On the second, relating to the notice of board papers, the Minister has essentially said that local footprints will have to set that element of the constitution themselves, but that the safeguards and schedules will mean that NHS England has to sign them off. In that sense, there cannot be wide divergence, because the centre would not permit it. I reiterate that there should be commonality. I cannot see why it would be seven days in one place and five days in another. I do not know how we could explain that, so I hope that in those conversations the Minister stresses the need for uniformity. Perhaps the guidance might include strong encouragement on that. On the basis of the agreement that we have in principle, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 43, in schedule 2, page 123, line 2, at end insert—
“(5) An integrated care board must apply all relevant collective agreements for staff pay, conditions and pensions.
(6) An integrated care board must ensure that all relevant collective agreements for staff pay, conditions and pensions are applied throughout the area for which it is responsible.
(7) Any integrated care board which wishes to employ anyone directly on an annual salary greater than £161,401 must receive approval from their integrated care partnership before confirming the appointment.”
This amendment puts into primary legislation the current practice that NHS bodies honour collective agreements over staff pay and conditions and gives the integrated care board a role in ensuring this remains the case.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Murray. I would like to say that it is a pleasure to see the Minister, although when I saw the headline that two Ministers from the Department had been promoted to the Cabinet, I had expected that he would be among them—alas, not on this occasion. I am sure it is only a matter of time. Of course, if the Minister and other Members on the Government side want to keep their phones on in case a call comes through, we will not be offended if they have to pop out for a couple of minutes. I hope the Minister’s rush of blood and damascene conversion to the perils of privatisation at the end of the sitting on Tuesday have not blotted his copybook too much.
I turn to amendment 43, which plays into several points that have come up in the evidence sessions, particularly the anxiety that was mentioned by Sarah Gorton of Unison in her evidence to the Committee last week. She said that she wanted to see in the legislation confirmation of assurances that have been given verbally and in guidance. She referred to conversations that she had had—I am not sure with whom, but I assume with officials in the Department. Those conversations were to the effect that there was
“no intention for any new parts of the system to undermine the collective arrangements”.––[Official Report, Health and Care Public Bill Committee, 9 September 2021; c. 96, Q129.]
and that the “Agenda for Change” agreement would continue to apply across the board and, indeed, to ICB staff. That is an important matter to seek assurance on. Anyone who has been involved in “Agenda for Change” will know that years of hard, torturous work were involved in getting that agreed. Certainly, on this side, we know the value of the staff and their trade union representatives, and the importance that collective agreements have in bringing issues to the fore and ensuring a universality in treatment and a common understanding of the basis on which the employer and employee move forward.
Of course, whatever the collective agreements say, the staff would like to be offered increases that actually keep pace with the cost of living, rather than the real-terms cuts that we have seen in the last decade. However, as an overall framework for ensuring staff are treated fairly and consistently, it is certainly not something that we want to be chipped away at.
I will not try to persuade the Minister of the benefits of collective agreements across other sectors—it would be well outside the scope of the Bill—but it is worth pointing out that there is plenty of evidence from across the world showing that where workforces have negotiated terms and conditions within sectors and across whole industries, they tend to enjoy better terms and conditions and, crucially, better rates of workplace satisfaction and staff retention. As highlighted in the report recently published by the Health and Social Care Committee, the NHS faces an enormous challenge in retaining its workforce.
We do not want anything to undermine “Agenda for Change”. Sadly, though, we have seen attempts to do that in recent years, with the creation of wholly-owned subsidiary companies. I will not return to the argument about whether those are a good thing, because we have said that they are not, but let us examine for a moment why trusts sometimes seem eager to set these companies up.
There are, of course, huge financial pressures on trusts. I will not rehearse the arguments on that, but they are always looking at ways to reduce their costs, and potentially with these subcos to boost their income. The VAT advantages have been a big part of that, but one of the big concerns—cash-pressed trusts may see this as a big opportunity—is that the subcos potentially have the ability to move away from “Agenda for Change”. That is the heart of it; it is not that the trusts have a major objection to “Agenda for Change”, but moving away from it allows them to set their own terms and conditions, which is really a euphemism for saving money and cutting pay. We think that that kind of approach is a false economy and, ultimately, self-defeating.
There are other examples of where the private sector will step in. We saw the news this week that King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust will transfer staff at its urgent treatment centre in Denmark Hill to Greenbrook Healthcare under a three-year contract, starting in October. Of course, staff will expect TUPE to apply, but, as we know, it is not a panacea. It does not protect terms and conditions for ever more, so it is little wonder that the news of that change has led the workforce to raise concerns.
Unison’s written evidence sought clarification from the Minister that
“it’s not the intention that ICBs depart from Agenda for Change”,
which the Minister gave on Second Reading. The written evidence also states that
“UNISON would support amendments to ensure that ICBs will apply the relevant collective agreements for staff pay, conditions and pensions, and be responsible for ensuring that these are applied within the wider system. In addition, further reassurances should be sought that nothing in the Bill will compromise the assurances already given in the Employment Commitment, the terms of which should endure beyond the point of staff transfer.”
The evidence continues:
“Recently published guidance lists 10 ‘outcome-based people functions’”—
perhaps that phrase could be translated into plain English at some point—
“that ICSs will be expected to deliver from April 2022… In addition, the guidance suggests that the responsibility for engaging with trade unions will rest with the regional teams of NHS England / Improvement rather than with ICBs”.
That runs the risk of depriving unions of access to those who might be making strategic decisions in their area—or perhaps it just speaks to a larger truth about where power will lie in all this. We have covered those concerns in our amendment to some extent, but we would like reassurance from the Minister on some of the points we have raised about how this will all work in practice.
In particular, we need reassurance that the system will not undermine existing provider responsibilities on engaging with trade unions. As hon. Members will know, the vast majority of NHS staff will not be employed in commissioning bodies such as ICBs. The strong relationships with individual provider organisations should be a supplement to existing national and regional partnership forums. The concern is that the new kids on the block, the ICBs, will in some way disrupt those arrangements.
If, as we are told, the new ICSs—to use the correct terminology—will be system leaders themselves, it is not impossible that some of those leaders will want to set their own path in tweaking employment matters. We might see circumstances in which some agreement about staff mobility within ICSs comes to the fore, particularly for those whose duties cross organisational boundaries. In principle, that is no problem, as long as no ICB thinks that, as a result, it can move outside existing collective agreements. Our amendment would rule that out.
It is essential that ICBs have a positive role in all this and that they follow existing practice by referring to collective agreements. We would not want a re-emergence of what we saw some five years ago, with certain trusts trying to undermine collective terms and conditions. Those attempts failed, but we never know when that might re-emerge. We also believe that the ICB should honour national agreements for the staff it employs.
That should not need to be said—as we have heard, assurances have been given—but it needs to be made explicit in the Bill to give us the cast-iron lock that both we and Unison would like. We would certainly like some further assurances about whether the ICBs have the potential to circumvent or destabilise existing arrangements, should they seek to forge their own path at some point. We see this amendment as bolstering the commitment to “Agenda for Change”—I hope that the Minister will confirm that commitment when he responds —so that ICBs’ broad powers are not seen as an attempt to undermine or conflict with the hard-won terms and conditions that have been collectively agreed.
Turning to sub-paragraph (7) in the amendment, which relates to pay limits, hon. Members will have seen headlines in the paper, on Tuesday, I think, about the highest-paid NHS managers being “cleared out”; I think that was the term that was used. I am not quite sure what that means, other than redundancy. The story refers to a Government-inspired audit, which was—at least on Tuesday—going to be led by the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), who has since moved on to other matters. That is a shame, because he used to hold the same role as the Minister does now, and he would know exactly where to look if there were indeed examples of unnecessary management and bureaucracy in the NHS.
That news follows the headlines we saw last week about some ICB executives potentially receiving salaries of £270,000. Let us be clear what we are talking about here: that is the pay of 10 nurses. It seems that someone somewhere in Government is exercised about the number of managers in the NHS, but according to the King’s Fund, the actual figure is somewhere below 5%, and many of those managers hold dual clinical roles. If the Government think there is a problem here, I am not entirely clear what they think the scale of it is, or what the consequences would be if thousands of managers in the NHS were made redundant. I am sure that was not covered in the impact assessment, but we have the benefit of that now.
To be clear, the amendment is not about bashing managers at all. Every organisation needs managers if it is to be effective, and they play an important role in enabling clinicians to get on and do their jobs on the frontline. I am sure the Minister would not want to leave managers in the NHS with the impression that has unfortunately been left by some of the headlines this week, namely that there is no role for managers in the NHS. One could be forgiven for concluding that from Tuesday’s headlines. If the Government think layers of management, bureaucracy or management costs have got out of control, we can do something about it.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, for his remarks on the amendment. I echo some of his comments, which we covered on Tuesday in Committee in response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Bristol South. Members on both sides of the Committee made clear our recognition of the value we place on those who work in the NHS, irrespective of whether they are managers, in clinical roles or in any other role. In our exchanges, we recognised the centrality of having good, high-calibre managers for what we all know is a huge system.
Amendment 43 would have two effects. First, it would require ICBs to apply to their staff all relevant collectively agreed terms on pay, conditions and pensions. Secondly, it introduces new rules for oversight of pay for the most senior ICB staff. The Government and the NHS remain committed to the principle of “Agenda for Change”. If it gives the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston further reassurance, I am happy to write to him, because this is a detailed point and I suspect he may wish to have something in black and white that sets out exactly our position on this. We recognise—he alluded to this—that there is a need for a degree of flexibility in some circumstances. He talked about people moving between roles, secondments and so on. I will turn to that in a moment before turning to the point about pay.
There is already a commitment in the ICS HR framework technical guidance that staff transferring into ICBs will transfer across on their current terms and conditions, in line with the “NHS Terms and Conditions of Service Handbook” requirements. The commitment states that NHS pension rights will be preserved, as the individual will continue to be employed within the NHS, ensuring that staff transferring into ICBs will benefit from that protection and will not see any change to their existing conditions. Furthermore, we would expect ICBs to use the nationally agreed pay and conditions framework for the overwhelming majority of the time.
The hon. Gentleman referred to some flexibility, and he was right to do so. There may be circumstances in which an ICB needs flexibility to recruit staff, to attract staff with very unusual or valuable skills, or to reflect local circumstances and the availability of certain staff. Therefore, an ICB may need to vary the terms and conditions in order to make a post attractive if the marketplace is very competitive. Equally, the Bill provides valuable flexibility—for example, in order to allow ICBs to employ on secondment staff who have previously been employed by a foundation trust or local authority. Given the emphasis that the Bill places on systems working collectively and sharing staff, that is a useful flexibility. I would argue that such flexibilities are not unique, because NHS foundation trusts also have a degree of discretion in adopting such conditions, although they overwhelmingly choose to honour and keep the existing terms and conditions.
If I recall correctly, the hon. Gentleman asked specifically about the view on the involvement of unions and staff where there was divergence or flexibility. I would hope that where there was any divergence or a need for flexibility, that would be addressed collaboratively. Ideally, there should be consent from those working in the organisation as well.
I turn to the proposals for very senior managers. I believe that procedures are already in place to ensure that the most senior staff within the NHS are appointed with fair and equitable salaries, and proposals to pay very senior staff more than £150,000 a year must follow benchmarks or be subject to ministerial oversight. Ministerial oversight of salaries higher than £150,000 a year has been effective in managing the risk of salary escalations, and it provides for a national outlook across the public sector.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire, who is now the Minister for the Cabinet Office. I do not think there is any inconsistency in what my right hon. Friend envisaged with the review. That should not be interpreted as a criticism or an attack on hard-working staff, but given the amount of money that is spent in our NHS on salaries at all levels, it is right that from time to time the Government look at that, review it and reassure themselves that the appropriate balance is being struck between fair remuneration for the work that is being done and value for taxpayers. I do not think I would read any more than that into it; it is simply the Government and Treasury being responsible with public money.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston will be aware that the Government are in the process of finalising the system for pay oversight that will apply to ICBs. Although the specifics may differ, the effect and intention will be the same: to afford ICBs a degree of agency and flexibility, so that we can continue to attract the most senior and experienced leaders, while also ensuring that we put adequate checks and balances in place to ensure that public money is well spent. Therefore, I would argue that the amendment is unnecessary. Once again, I gently encourage the hon. Gentleman to consider not pressing the amendment to a Division.
Justin Madders
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, but I fear that I will disappoint him on this occasion. He mentioned the flexibilities that already exist, which we do not seek to change. I do not see anything in the amendment that would alter those. We have had a very clear commitment, and he has mentioned the guidance. Indeed, he may write to me—
Justin Madders
As he does regularly. I write to him regularly, too. He mentioned the importance of having this in black and white, and that is where we agree. We do need this in black and white, and the place for that to be is in the Bill, so we will press the amendment to a Division. I understand what he has said about ministerial oversight of ICB salaries, but if these bodies are to be locally run and accountable, we think the amendment would be entirely consistent with that aim.
Question proposed, That the amendment be made.
Karin Smyth
I beg to move amendment 17, in schedule 2, page 124, line 14, at end insert—
“(7) An integrated care board may enter into an externally financed development agreement in respect of any Local Improvement Finance Trust relevant to the area for which it has responsibility and receive the income related to that agreement.
(8) An integrated care board may enter into an externally financed development agreement in respect of any proposed Local Improvement Finance Trust relevant to the area for which it has responsibility.”
This amendment would enable integrated care boards to participate in existing and future LIFT schemes and to receive the income that would come to the local area from the local investment in such schemes.
I assure the Minister that this as a probing amendment, and I will not seek to divide the Committee, but it is an important issue. The local infrastructure finance trust transformed the primary and community based services in large parts of the country, and certainly in Bristol, over the noughties. In my constituency, there is a very large general practice community base, as well as South Bristol Community Hospital with the long-campaigned for urgent care centre and several rehabilitation and prevention beds used by the community trust out-patients. However, they have all hit problems in the last decade and have not really fulfilled their potential within the system, largely because many of them came on stream at the time of the Lansley Act and the abolition of primary care trusts.
The management of estates generally is something I have spent a lot of time unravelling. There is nobody locally spearheading them, really understanding the different, sometimes complicated, relationships within them and making them fulfil their potential, in terms of both delivering services locally and the financial model. There has been a lot of buck-passing locally about who is responsible for developing those things, and that is particularly true of my local community hospital.
My concern is that the wording in the Bill around “externally financed development agreements” is the same as was applied to clinical commissioning groups after the Lansley Act. The Bill also does not deal with NHS Property Services or community health partnerships, which are outwith the Bill. I wonder how these local ICBs are going to manage capital and estates development with the inherited part of that architecture. We will come later to the management of capital to develop the estate.
My concern is around how we get capital investment into primary and community care. In our evidence session, we asked the new chief executive how she saw this happening. I appreciate that we talked about large hospitals, even though we do not seem to know what a hospital is these days, but my point was really about community services. Ms Pritchard said that development would happen 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.”––[Official Report, Health and Care Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 21, Q25.]
We will have some discussions around further clauses about the treatment of capital, but they do not really allow for the principles around the Local Improvement Finance Trust and primary care to develop. How do we get this investment into primary and community care? What is the Government’s view on the LIFT model?
Justin Madders
Particularly in light of the changes that have been made with covid, one thing that has cropped up locally is that a lot of GP practices—they are basically converted houses—simply are not designed with the ventilation or space to ensure there is a safe distance between people. That points to the importance of this issue and the need for clarity on how we get these estates into a state that is fit to deal with covid.
Karin Smyth
I agree, and we will probably all have examples through the primary care networks of practices that were not in old houses but that had perhaps had a LIFT scheme or another new development. In my constituency, the Bridge View Medical practice was able to have a flow through the building and move patients downstairs because it had a large, fairly new building. The pandemic has shown that in an emergency we need to make sure that the community-based estate is brought together in some way. Actually, that applies not just to the health service, but to ex-local authority or even Ministry of Defence or other Government Department estates. The place-based aspect of the Bill should be encouraging people to do that locally. Because estates are not part of it, they will struggle to deliver on the service intent of the Bill.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on amendment 17 and the insight that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South brings from her long period of working in the NHS. What is at the crux of this point is quite important. We have spoken quite a lot about integrated care and revenue, but the capital component is as important, so I am glad we have the opportunity to discuss it.
I have great affection for the Bulwell Riverside facility in my community, which co-locates two GP surgeries, community services and pharmacy services with local authority neighbourhood services, the local library and youth services. Pre-covid, I and the local councillors would be there every week for an event. Every year, my annual jobs fair is there—it is today, but we are not inside because of covid, so it is out in the marketplace. If any of my constituents are watching, we are there until 2.30 pm.
That joint service centre has driven a culture of integration and collaboration, exactly in the spirit of everything we have been discussing on the Bill. It is a very practical example of integration in practice. It was funded on the LIFT model because, at that point, more than a decade ago, that was the way to get money into the system. The logical consequences on the ground of the legislative direction that we are told is intended here will be more need for this sort of joint service centre model. We need to give that proper consideration.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South said, this element is one of the few bits of the 2012 Act that is not being removed to take us back to pre-2012 status. Then, primary care trusts could enter into these arrangements locally, whereas their successors, clinical commissioning groups, could not and, at the moment, the successor ICBs cannot either. The amendment would remedy that.
Why is that provision not being added back in? It looks a bit like a wheeze. Originally, PCTs would have had a 40% stake in the arrangements and would have benefited exactly as my hon. Friend said. Now, that stake is owned by community health partnerships. Who owns 100% of community health partnerships? That is the Department of Health and Social Care. It is not that nobody benefits from these arrangements—it is that the Department does, rather than local communities. We are told this Bill is about localisation and devolving resources and powers to local communities, so why on earth is this bit not going back in? It is definitely a point of interest, particularly with existing LIFT models.
On LIFT models, it may be that the Government do not think that they are in vogue now or that they are the right model. I would be interested to hear what other methods the Minister might prefer.
How to get capital back into the system is a significant point. The NHS backlog is now £17 billion, as the bill for austerity becomes due, so we will have to address it by one means or another. If that is not to be done through this system, I am keen to hear from the Minister how it is to be addressed.
Edward Argar
It is right that we discuss this point today, because while the focus of the media is often on the 40 new hospitals being built—a very clear and understandable definition; I am sure any reasonable person could recognise a new hospital—we do not talk as often as we should in this place about primary care. It is often neglected in discussions, debates and headlines. It is right that we are talking about it today.
On the shadow Minister’s point about CHPs and similar, the Department exists to further the health of the population and to support local communities. There is a wonderful synergy in those objectives and outcomes.
I will turn to the substance of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Bristol South who, on this as on many things, knows of what she speaks, with her depth of experience in this space—I always tread slightly warily when responding to her challenges. As she alluded to, the amendment would allow an integrated care board to enter into an externally financed development agreement in respect of any Local Improvement Finance Trust relevant to the area for which it has responsibility, and to receive the income from that agreement.
We believe that the amendment is unnecessary, as the ability to enter into an externally funded development agreement is already covered by provisions in paragraph 20 of schedule 2. The provisions allow an ICB, which would take the local view of estates and other health matters,
“to enter into externally financed development agreements”
if the agreements are
“certified as such in writing by the Secretary of State.”
Such certification will be considered if
“the purpose or main purpose of the agreement is the provision of services or facilities in connection with the exercise by an ICB of any of its functions, and…a person proposes to make a loan to, or provide any other form of finance for, another party in connection with the agreement.”
We are clear that the wording of the provision would encompass a development agreement entered into with a LIFT company. If included separately in the Bill, as the amendment proposes, there is a risk that the interpretation of paragraph 20 of schedule 2 is that the Bill’s intention is to restrict the use of externally financed development agreements to those that involve taking a shareholding in LIFT companies, which is just one type of project company model that could be used to access private finance. That is why we believe that the amendment introduces a degree of ambiguity that is not currently there.
On the broader points raised by the hon. Lady about who has responsibility for the primary care estate and for investing in and upgrading it, she will be aware that it is a complex picture because of the nature of some GP surgeries—some own their own buildings, others will be in a health hub. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds—we remain ministerial colleagues in the same Department for the moment, but who knows what the future may bring—has done a huge amount of work with primary care to look at those challenges.
The hon. Member for Bristol South talked about hubs, or integration. One of the models being looked at—all the credit must go to my hon. Friend for this work—is the so-called Cavell centres that hon. Members will have read about, which are about looking at how we could have health hubs in town centres, bringing together a whole range of services. They are at an early stage of development, but it would be remiss of me to pass over that point without paying tribute to my hon. Friend for her work in that space.
On LIFTS more broadly, we are not envisaging any changes to existing LIFT company arrangements. They can still be used for the purposes for which they were originally set up. The hon. Lady has kindly indicated that she does not intend to press the amendment to a vote, but I hope that I have given her some clarity, particularly on why we think the provisions in paragraph 20 of schedule 2 will cover and continue to allow the arrangements to which she alluded.
Karin Smyth
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, which I will read and understand carefully. We would still like our dividend back; it is an important principle of localism and, dare I say, accountability. We promised people that that is what they were getting. I will continue to pursue the matter in this place, but I am grateful to the Minister for his comments and, as I said, I will not seek to divide the Committee. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the schedule be the Second schedule to the Bill.
Edward Argar
The schedule details essential information about how we expect statutory ICBs to function and about the essential criteria that ICB constitutions must fulfil. It sets out that ICB membership must, at a minimum, include a chair, a chief executive, representatives from local NHS trusts and foundation trusts, primary medical service providers and local authorities, known as “ordinary members”.
The chair must be appointed by NHS England and approved by the Secretary of State. The constitution must not provide for anyone other than NHS England to remove the chair from office. The power for NHS England to remove the chair from office must be subject to the Secretary of State’s approval. The chief executive must be appointed by the chair and approved by NHS England.
The ordinary members of the ICB must, at a minimum, include one member jointly nominated by NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts that, as I have alluded to, require services in the area; one member jointly nominated by persons who provide primary medical services within that area; and one member jointly nominated by the local authorities within the ICB area.
Justin Madders
We will not divide the Committee on the schedule but as we have batted quite a lot of this about for a couple of days, it is worth reiterating some of our concerns in relation to how ICBs will actually work in practice.
Taking the Committee through the schedule, in paragraph 4 we have concerns about the chair having to be approved by the Secretary of State and, indeed, under paragraph 5 the chair can be removed by the Secretary of State, which could create tensions and speaks to the reality of how much autonomy these bodies will have. Paragraph 6(2) states:
“constitution must provide that a person is eligible to become or remain the chief executive only if the person is an employee of the integrated care board.”
That stands to reason, but the interim guidance on ICBs for the position of chief executive says that they must be employed or seconded to the ICB. Indeed, the chief finance officer, the director of nursing and the medical director can all be employed or seconded to the ICB, according to that guidance. We think that potentially represents a conflict of interest. It needs clarification, because what is in the Bill does not necessarily sit well with what is in the interim guidance. I wonder whether the Minister can clarify that.
Paragraph 7(1)(a) of the schedule talks about the constitution specifying who should be appointed as ordinary members. Again, the interim guidance helps in providing a list of suggestions regarding ordinary members. It is worth pointing out that, when we totted up all the people the guidance says are the minimum requirement for a board, it comes to 10 people. Although the Bill may say three, the reality is that the guidance says many more. Again, that speaks to the amendment that we tabled on Tuesday about the numbers on the board. The idea that the Bill is permissive is slightly betrayed by the detailed guidance. It depends on what is meant by “permissive”.
One particular mystery is in paragraph 7(3), which says:
“The constitution must set out the process for nominating the ordinary members”.
We know that ICBs will be able to set their own constitutions, approved by NHS England, but how the particular individuals on the boards will emerge still feels rather opaque. Of course, we hope that such things can be done by consensus and agreement. No doubt in the majority of cases they will be, but given the size of some of the areas it will be very difficult sometimes to get a geographical spread that represents the whole area and the various interest groups that constitute an ICB. Of course, diversity may also struggle to be accommodated within that. Such things are all fine and good in the Bill and in the guidance, but I think delivery on the ground will be slightly more difficult to achieve.
Paragraph 8 talks about qualification and tenure for membership of the board. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on whether there is an optimal period of membership of a board. I think I saw two years somewhere in the guidance. I may be mistaken on that, but that seems a little short to me. I wonder whether he has a particular view on that. Paragraph 9 talks about constitutions being required to comply with any regulations that may come forward. Of course, the Bill has a lot of such clauses, where regulations will be produced in due course. I know this is slightly out of his control, but the Bill may not come back to us until much later in the year, if at all this year, depending on how the other place views it. That may mean that we are really down to the wire in terms of any enabling regulations that are needed under the Bill.
Paragraph 10 deals with the terms and conditions—a point that we discussed this morning. Paragraph 14 is quite interesting, because it talks about variation of the constitution, and how that should be done in consultation with NHS England. Indeed, NHS England will retain its own power to vary the constitution. It is important to put on the record that if such steps are taken to change the constitution, it is really important to involve stakeholders, the public, patients and workforce representatives. I hope that the Minister can fill me in on some of the details.
Edward Argar
I will try to address each of the shadow Minister’s points one by one, perhaps not in an entirely fluent way.
The hon. Gentleman asked about what he perceived to be an inconsistency between interim guidance and what is proposed in terms of secondees in similar employment. Actually, under paragraph 18(4) of schedule 2, the legislation allows for secondments to continue for those employed as chief executives. It specifies particular organisations, such as secondments from trusts, other parts of the NHS, such as NHS England, or indeed from the civil service. Given that specification, I do not believe that there is an inconsistency.
The hon. Gentleman touched on interim guidance and how that fits with what the Bill will look like once it is, as I hope, enacted. I would gently remind him that it is interim guidance—the key word being “interim”—to allow the continued evolution of ICSs at the moment, without pre-judging what the House may or may not do in terms of making them statutory. That guidance is there to allow them to continue on their path without having to sit and wait for the deliberations of the House on something that they are empowered to do and are already doing. I do not necessarily see the opacity to which the hon. Gentleman alludes but he may disagree.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about geography and the number of local authorities and other organisations involved. I suspect that he has got in mind his own particular geography of Cheshire and Merseyside and the size of the ICS there. That goes to the heart of why we are being permissive: we are setting out a minimum level, and therefore there is nothing to stop an ICS of that size, if it so chose, at ICB level to have a broader range of people sitting on it and a larger number. Each organisation will be able to judge what it thinks is the appropriate number of people to sit on its board to reflect the need for effective decision-making and effective local and organisational representation to reflect the broad geography of its remit.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the optimal length of service on a board. I have to say in my experience, and I suspect in his from his days in local government, one sees a multitude of approaches in different public bodies. Some tenures are for two years or three years, or two years with a renewal presumed for another two years. I am not sure that there is a clear one size fits all, but there should be principles underpinning it, namely that one does not have someone who joins and never leaves the board, and one has to have the ability to refresh the board to bring in new skills. From my experience of sitting on various boards, including charity boards as a trustee or as a non-executive director, effective organisations need to conduct regular skills audits of their boards, to ask what has changed and what the organisation is lacking in the modern world. As time goes by, one needs different skills and different mixes of people. I would expect ICBs and ICPs to continue to look at what is needed to be at their most effective.
I hope that I have broadly addressed the main thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s points. The other points were those that he has quite rightly come back to, and which we debated at length when we considered his other amendments and those tabled by the hon. Member for Bristol South. On that basis, I encourage members of the Committee to support the schedule.
Question put and agreed to.
Schedule 2 accordingly agreed to.
Clause 14
People for whom integrated care boards have responsibility
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
The clause requires NHS England to publish rules setting out which people each ICB is responsible for. We intend to recreate as closely as possible the arrangements that currently exist for clinical commissioning groups. However, CCG responsibility is based on a model of GP membership that will no longer exist under the new ICB arrangements.
The clause places a duty on NHS England to publish rules determining the responsibility of each ICB, subject to certain exceptions that may be created by secondary legislation. This is intended to replicate the ability to make exceptions to the responsibilities of CCGs by regulations in section 3(1D) of the National Health Service Act 2006. As with the existing regulations, the new regulations would be subject to the affirmative procedure of the House, which I hope offers some reassurance to the Opposition Front Bench in respect of the regulation-making powers. Therefore, there would continue to be strong parliamentary oversight of regulations under the clause.
Proposed new section 14Z31 ensures that no one slips through any gaps. The rules set by NHS England must ensure that everyone who accesses primary medical services, as well as anyone who is not registered with a GP but is resident in England, is allocated to a group of people for which an ICB is responsible. In practice, we expect NHS England’s rules to be framed in such a way that ICBs will be associated with certain GP practices, and responsible for patients registered with those specified GP practices. They will also be responsible for people who are not registered but are resident in the ICB geographical footprint.
Taking that approach is intended to ensure universality of coverage and to minimise the disruption of transitioning from CCGs to ICBs. The clause also provides a power to replace the duty on NHS England to publish rules dealing with ICB responsibility, with an alternative approach based simply on residency. If it is considered appropriate in the future, those new arrangements would mean that ICBs were responsible for those who usually reside within their specified geographical footprint. Regulations would be required in order to change that approach.
The clause provides the necessary certainty about which ICB is responsible for which people. Without it, there could be significant confusion about ICB responsibilities, difficulty in calculating financial allocations to ICBs based on those they are responsible for and uncertainty for providers about which people they are contracted to provide services to. The clause seeks to provide fluent continuity with the arrangements under CCGs, and explicitly does not allow people to fall through gaps. Ultimately, everyone will be the responsibility of an ICB and will be able to access care when they need it. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Justin Madders
I will make some comments on clause 14. I think the Minister has anticipated to some extent what I might say. I may well drift into clause 15 as well, but I promise the Committee that I will not repeat those comments in the discussion on clause 15. There is clearly an overlap here. It really is about the issue that the Minister referred to: who is entitled to what within the comprehensive NHS? For some, this is a formality, repeating the language used before and the principles on which the NHS was founded. For others, every word change and new clause that appears in the legislation is an attempt to restrict access and allow an opening for cuts to services to be made in a time of immense financial pressure. We want, and I think the Minister has opened the door to this, to ensure that that is not what the Bill is about.
To be fair, there is a history of commissioners trying on occasions to restrict access. There was the Croydon list of some 20 years ago. Primary care trusts set out lists of services and said that the treatments had little or no value and should not be provided on the NHS. Of course, that led to huge debates between trusts and medical practitioners. It could be argued that people were defending their own particular practices and specialties, or they could be said to be champions of the NHS. Patients looked at it from both perspectives, but for the patients who relied on those services it was a very real debate and a very real source of anxiety.
A more recent argument on this came from the various attempts to apply NHS charges to certain people who it was argued were not eligible for free treatment. There is a very sinister echo of the phrase “no access to benefits”. The long-held consensus appeared to be under threat—the principle that emergency NHS care is open to all. When American tourists come over here and have to seek emergency treatment they are pleasantly surprised, and somewhat bemused, that they do not have to produce a credit card at the point of use. This is where the arguments begin to arise.
If a patient is moved from an emergency bed for elective care, they can be charged if they are ineligible for free NHS care. The usual test is whether they are ordinarily resident in the country. On principle, if someone qualifies for NHS treatment, they can get it anywhere in the country, while on holiday. Most of us have taken our breaks this year somewhere in this country. We do not have to go back to our own local A&E to get treatment. We could, in theory, get our elective operations anywhere in the country, should we wish. Pre-Lansley this did not matter as much, because it was always payment by results. Ambulances crossing borders may occasionally result in a cross-organisational internal charge. Maybe we will see an end to that kind of bureaucracy.
The other argument that emerged during the Lansley period was around who the responsible commissioner within a particular area or population was. That market approach required tying people to a GP practice. The GP register has been a central base from which decisions were made. Did that really affect things on the ground? It certainly caused a lot of debate. It would be helpful if the Minister provided clarity.
The issue of access is important, and clause 14 sets it out in subsections (1), (2)(a) and (2)(b) of proposed new section 14Z31 of the National Health Service Act 2006. According to the NHS, access is universal, but depending on their immigration status within the UK, a person may be charged for accessing certain services. However, certain services are free to everyone: treatment given in an A&E department, though this does not include further treatment following admission to hospital; treatment for certain infectious diseases, but for HIV/AIDS only the first diagnosis and counselling that follow are free; compulsory psychiatric treatment; and family planning services, but this does not include termination of pregnancy or infertility treatments. People ordinarily resident in the UK or who have an exemption from charging will not be charged for NHS treatment. I could go into what ordinarily resident means, but I will not detain the Committee by going through all of that. However, it is fairly clear that it can be a British citizen or someone naturalised or settled in the UK, usually known as having indefinite leave to remain.
The Bill does not cover any of this, but there is a point about it not necessarily being the same person paying for and receiving the treatment. There are questions about those seeking asylum and those who might be denied care because there are questions about where they live. There was the image of a paramedic stepping out of an ambulance and asking someone suffering a cardiac arrest whether they had some kind of identification to prove that they were ordinarily resident. The images are not common ones, but they raise concerns. When the 2012 Act was debated, these issues were discussed at great length. I do not think the fears that were expressed at the time have manifested themselves. Does the Minister believe that using “usually resident” is better than “ordinarily resident”? I also wonder whether under proposed new section 14Z31, the NHS will publish rules as referred to. Could we have clarification on that?
Edward Argar
I will respond very briefly. The shadow Minister raises two key bundles of points. I hope that I can reassure him that the approach adopted here is far from restricting access. It is designed to ensure that everyone has an ICB covering them, ensuring universality of coverage. Similarly, the clause does not alter in any way the ability of anyone to access emergency care when they need it, nor those ordinarily resident in the UK to use the NHS as they do.
The second bundle of points he made related to charging regulations and those who are eligible to be charged under current regulations. While he highlighted a number of points, I genuinely believe that the charging regulations in place are appropriately and reasonably framed and strike the right balance in ensuring that people can access NHS care, while rightly making a contribution to the services they are accessing—obviously with certain things exempt from charging for public health and other reasons. I do believe they strike the appropriate balance. There is nothing in what we are proposing today that fundamentally changes people’s ability to access healthcare, nor indeed changes those charging regulations. On that basis, I commend clause 14 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Maggie Throup.)
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Eighth sitting)
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 9 / Noes: 5 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
My partner works at the University of Hull on the degree apprenticeship programme.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
My wife works at a higher education firm.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I am an honorary fellow at Birkbeck.
The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 3, line 27, after “providers” insert “and their constituent institutions”.
This amendment is consequential on NC1.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 2 to 26.
Government new clause 1—Duties of constituent institutions.
Michelle Donelan
Government amendments 1 to 26 and new clause 1 concern the position of certain colleges of universities such as the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. The amendments will ensure that, in these collegiate universities, colleges are subject to the new strengthened freedom of speech and academic freedom duties in the same way as the registered higher education providers themselves. The amendments will restore a legislative position similar to the one in place before August 2019, when constituent colleges of collegiate universities in England were directly responsible for meeting the duties set out in section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure freedom of speech for their students, speakers, members and visiting speakers.
The Bill sets out new and strengthened duties; in particular, it introduces direct routes for individuals to seek redress when they believe they have suffered loss as a result of a breach of the duties, so it is vital that action can be taken directly against the body that is responsible, including when that is a college. As the types of college in scope of the amendments may enjoy a large degree of legal independence from their parent provider, it is possible that, without these amendments, a registered provider could demonstrate that they have met their duty in new section A1 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to take steps that are reasonably practicable for it to take to secure freedom of speech, but a college could still act in such a way as to restrict someone’s lawful freedom of speech.
My officials have held discussions with some of the main institutions that will be affected by the amendments, in particular the Universities of Cambridge and of Durham, and they have indicated that they would welcome the amendments. They do not think that they will result in a burdensome change in practice for their colleges, since in general their colleges have continued to maintain the codes of practice relating to the freedom of speech duties that they were subject to until 2019.
The wording used for the definition of “constituent institution” in new clause 1, in proposed new section A3A(4) of the 2017 Act, reflects the wording that applies to those bodies subject to the Prevent duty and the coverage of the complaints scheme operated by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. A college that is required to comply with the Prevent duty will, therefore, also be subject to the freedom of speech duties, which is clearly sensible, and the coverage of the higher education complaints schemes will be consistent.
In addition, amendment 3 makes it clear that student unions at approved fee cap providers that are subject to the new duties in clause 2 do not include student unions at colleges. Colleges fund their junior and middle common rooms and, to that extent, can exert a lot of control over their activities. Those groups do not own or occupy their own premises or run the booking the systems, so imposing a freedom of speech duty on them seems to be unnecessary and overly bureaucratic. We do not believe that including them in the provision is necessary, as the freedom of speech duties on the colleges will apply to the activities of their student unions. I hope it is clear that the amendments are necessary for the Bill to work as intended, to ensure that all key bodies in our universities play their part in securing freedom of speech on campus, and to ensure that where they do not, those who suffer detriment can seek redress from whomever is responsible, whether that is a university or one of its colleges or student unions.
Matt Western
It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Mrs Cummins. Overall, I have to say that I am really delighted—I think all the Opposition Members are—that the Minister has listened intently to what we have been calling for in our speeches on Second Reading, in Committee and during the witness sessions. We have been calling for clarity. It was clear that the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 made a similar mistake by omitting the likes of Oxbridge colleges and constituent institutions.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I am sorry to be sarky, but this is therefore the second time in major legislation that the Department for Education has discovered that it does not understand the structure of higher education in this country. Does my hon. Friend find that a bit worrying?
Matt Western
The lack of corporate knowledge or rock of collective experience that legislation should be based on is really surprising. I would have thought that such errors would be corrected and noted, and always and forever be related to anything in the higher education realm. I would have also thought that there were many in this place—there may be more of them on the Government Benches—who have been to the likes of Oxbridge or Durham and who would be more familiar with them. I do not mean that lightly; I think it is factually true. Personally, I did not attend them, so I am not so familiar with how those institutions work in terms of their governance. It is a simple point, but the error should not have been repeated.
On Second Reading, the shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), forcefully made the point that numerous collegiate institutions affiliated to a central university would be outside the scope of the legislation in its current form. It is easy to think about existing Oxbridge-type institutions, but what about future-proofing the higher education sector and the changes that may affect affiliate and collegiate associations between higher education providers? That important point was picked up by Members on both sides of the House, and rightly so. It is good to see the Minister taking the feedback on board, and I hope that we will see some further evidence of that arising from yesterday’s sittings.
I have a small point to raise in relation to amendment 3 and an apparent exemption. The Minister spoke about the MCRs and JCRs at the likes of Oxford, but I do not know why they should be exempt. Any groups associated with a university or a higher education provider, whatever its size or shape, should be covered. If the legislation is honest in its intent, why should any be excluded from it? What justification could there be for preventing a student body at an Oxbridge college from being covered by the Bill?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Is it not in fact troubling? The JCR system is operational at only a few universities, so a few universities will end up being exempt, or have student bodies that are exempt, while the vast majority will not. There is clear inequity there. Will it not prompt other bodies to be unnecessarily created, or reconfirm the unfair and often undeserved privileged status that some so-called elite universities have in this country?
Matt Western
I thank my hon. Friend for his well made point. It could indeed reinforce those existing privileges, or lead to a complete breakdown of the SU structures and change to institutional structures too, with disaffiliations and so on. We must be careful about the message that that sends out.
John McDonnell
I can understand why some organisations or bodies that associate with universities—the Bullingdon club, or whatever—are excluded, but what is the rationale for the exclusion of JCRs?
Matt Western
I thank my right hon. Friend for posing that question. It is question that I think we Opposition Members would like to hear the Minister give a more explicit answer. It was not clear to me in her remarks, and it seems that it was not clear to my right hon. Friend either. It seems a bizarre exemption that they should not be covered.
Think of the outrage of the former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), when Magdalen College middle common room—not that I am familiar with that establishment or its make-up—did something shocking by taking down a picture of the Queen. Were it the Lucian Freud version, I could perhaps understand it. The MRC members chose to do that, and it was their expression of free speech. Had they done something of greater significance though, it would not come under the remit of the Bill. I hope the Minister will address that important point.
Overall, I am pleased that the Government have been listening and have proposed this change to the legislation, because it is important. However, I ask the Minister to specifically, explicitly address why it is that middle and junior common rooms should be excluded.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I very much welcome this amendment and addition to the Bill. Perhaps colleagues will permit me a moment of reflection on a personal experience that makes me feel so strongly about this.
In 2016, I was invited to speak at an Oxbridge college. I will not name it, because I think that the situation is somewhat embarrassing for it. I was asked, as chair of the all-party parliamentary pro-life group, to speak to Oxford Students for Life. As I began speaking to around 100 people in a room of a similar size to this one, with large glass windows at the back, an official rushed in and said “This meeting must stop. You are causing offence to students in the social room on the other side of the quad.” The chair of Oxford Students for Life said “But they can’t hear us,” and the official replied, “Well, I have been told that I must stop the meeting.” In the end, we came to a resolution whereby, if all the curtains were closed on those large ceiling-to-floor windows, the students in the social club would allow us to carry on. The whole situation was just ridiculous.
Michelle Donelan
We did indeed listen to the sector and Members after the Bill was first published, and we identified a gap. These technical amendments will close that gap, which could otherwise have meant that some individual colleges would not be in scope. Since the Bill introduces new routes of redress for individuals who believe that their lawful freedom of speech or academic freedom has been improperly restricted, it is vital that the right institutions are held responsible.
To reiterate the points that I made in my opening speech, colleges fund their junior and middle common rooms. To that extent, they can assert a lot of control over their activities. Such groups do not own or occupy their own premises or run the room-booking systems, so imposing the freedom of speech duties on them seems quite unnecessary and overly bureaucratic. The amendments are necessary to ensure that the new duties apply to all appropriate bodies on campus and that the routes of redress in the Bill are available for all who need them.
Matt Western
The Minister is being generous in giving way. Essentially, what the Bill saying is that the colleges can exert pressure on their middle and junior common rooms and somehow influence behaviour and how free speech is permitted and managed within those forums. It is a delegation to the colleges to do that. But what the rest of the Bill is saying is that all other student unions, bodies, clubs and affiliates are responsible to the university and have to comply. Are we saying that there will essentially be a two-tier system for how the legislation will work?
Michelle Donelan
What we are saying is that the junior and middle common rooms are very different from student unions, and we have to ensure that the legislation strikes the right balance—a point made by the hon. Gentleman when we debated the last amendment on bureaucratic burden.
To conclude, colleges have a vital role in the protection of freedom of speech.
Michelle Donelan
I really am going to conclude now, as we must move on. Colleges have a vital role in the protection of freedom of speech, which is a fundamental value for all of society, but especially in our world-leading higher education providers, as I am sure hon. Members agree.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Matt Western
I beg to move amendment 44, in clause 1, page 3, line 28, after “education” insert—
“and in the conduct of research”
This amendment would ensure that higher education providers must promote the importance of academic freedom in the conduct of academic research as well as teaching.
This is another example of a small detail that we wish to amend. As we said throughout yesterday’s proceedings, we want to keep to a minimum any damage that the legislation might cause to our institutions, the viability of student unions and, indeed, the entire sector. The amendment equates protecting freedom of speech and academic freedom, not just for teaching, but for the conduct of research as well.
The point that we want to stress and to have reflected in the Bill is that all too often, observers of the higher education sector think purely about education in the form of instruction, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown said. Teaching can be instruction, of course, but in the realm of higher education institutions in particular, there is differentiation when it comes to research.
Research is so important; it is the fundamental differentiator in institutions’ success and reputations. The amendment would add the words
“and in the conduct of research”
because research is important not just to society but to the development of our understanding of humanity and more. Dr Ahmed said that academics should be allowed to pursue
“lines of research that they think might be fruitful”.––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 13, Q22.]
That is why we want to ensure that, as we heard in evidence, research is at the core of the sector. It needs to be included where possible, to remind everyone of just how central it is to the debate.
Emma Hardy
This discussion follows on quite well from debate on amendment 59, tabled by the hon. Member for Congleton, in that it seeks to close a loophole for masters and PhD students. That is what amendment 44 is intended to resolve. Our discussion about academic freedom and freedom of speech applied to those involved in teaching. The amendment nips off that loophole so that the provisions can apply to masters and PhD students.
Matt Western
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. In response to a point by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings about the detransitioning of research at the University of Bath, Professor Whittle said in evidence that
“had Bath addressed it properly, they could have done more to say, ‘This needs sorting and this does before we will consider it.’”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 41, Q75.]
The amendment would incorporate innovative research under the academic freedom duty, and that would push the likes of the University of Bath towards further exploring how such research proposals could be encouraged. It is a very simple amendment, but we hope that, in the spirit of how we have tried to co-operate, the Government will accept it.
Michelle Donelan
This amendment seeks to extend the duty of higher education providers to promote the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom so that it specifically applies in the conduct of research, as well as in the provision of higher education more generally. The duty set out in proposed new section A3 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, created by clause 1 of the Bill, is a new one. It requires a provider to promote the importance of free speech within the law and academic freedom throughout its provision of higher education. This is a general duty that intends to drive a positive tone on campuses across the country, promoting a culture in which everyone on campus can express their lawful views, and in which academics feel safe to question and test received wisdoms and put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions.
Emma Hardy
The amendment is specifically meant to address cases in which an individual is sometimes a student and sometimes a teacher. As a PhD researcher their activity falls under academic freedom, but as a student it falls under freedom of speech. An individual can hold two different roles at two different times depending on what they are doing, and that problem is what we were trying to resolve with this amendment.
Michelle Donelan
I think that the next part of my comments will address the hon. Member’s concerns. A key element of this duty is to promote academic freedom for academic staff. It is widely understood and set out in international case law that academics should expect that their academic freedom is protected for any research they seek to undertake, as well as in the design and delivery of their teaching and wider comments or writings that they issue. The duty to promote the importance of academic freedom in the provision of higher education will therefore cover research undertaken in that context, noting the high-level nature of the duty. However, I have listened to hon. Members today, and while this will be made clear in the guidance, I shall commit to take this issue away and see whether further clarity would be of assistance.
Matt Western
I have heard what the Minister has to say. I take her at her word and look forward to having further conversations and discussions on this issue. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 33, in clause 1, page 3, line 28, at end insert—
“(2) For the purposes of this section, ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘academic freedom’ do not extend to any statement that amounts to the denial of genocide.”—(Matt Western.)
This amendment ensures that the objective of securing freedom of speech and academic freedom do not cover those who make statements that amount to a denial of genocide.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Emma Hardy
I beg to move amendment 83, in clause 2, page 4, line 3, after the first “the” insert “sole”.
This amendment, with Amendment 84, relates to use of the premises of a registered student union, stating that they can be provided and will not be denied on the basis of the grounds referred to in subsection (4).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 84, in clause 2, page 4, leave out lines 6 and 7.
This amendment is linked to Amendment 83.
Emma Hardy
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Mrs Cummins. The amendments were linked to other amendments, but unfortunately they were not tabled in time, so I will try to make as much sense of this as I possibly can.
The amendments are a reaction to the written evidence we received from the Free Churches Group of England and Wales. For those who are not familiar with it, it is a group of academics and it includes the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Churches in Communities International, the Methodist Church and various other Christian groups that work together in higher education. I do not know whether I should declare an interest, but as a Christian Methodist I think very highly of this group and take very seriously its written evidence and its concerns about the Bill.
The group’s written evidence addresses the question of premises and where people are able to debate free speech. We have said many times that we all support free speech; we all accept that people have different views and that those views can be heard in different places. The amendments seek to address the issue of premises, and I would summarise them as being about respect. While we can hold a different view, sometimes we need to think very carefully about the place in which we choose to express it.
I will quote directly from the group’s evidence:
“One problem is that it is not clear which groups might claim use of premises under what circumstances under this clause. Even the Government is unclear whether it will mean universities are required to provide premises for holocaust deniers. What seems equally unclear is whether the clause means that groups opposed to views or activities a space is designated for will be allowed to enter that space to express their views. Arguably not to allow such access would be to deny those wishing entry use of premises, and freedom to speak there, on the basis of their views, beliefs etc. Thus the Bill may be taken to provide for a group opposed to religion to enter an Islamic prayer room to exercise their freedom to speak their views on religion, or, indeed to enter a room booked by, say, a Christian Union or a Jewish Society for similar reasons. Does the Bill provide for holocaust deniers to have entry to a room booked by the Jewish society, or can holocaust deniers be denied entry on the basis of their beliefs?”
The written evidence from the Free Churches Group of higher education institutions does not say that people should not be allowed to express such opinions or to be given space to express them, but it does say that thought needs to be given to the need for respect for the place in which those opinions are expressed.
The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington has mentioned the idea of consulting people when permission is sought to hold an event. For example, we would not expect an event that denies the existence of God to be held in a Christian Union building, out of respect.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Obviously, I sympathise with the hon. Lady’s sentiment because there is a need for privacy in different circumstances—she talked about churches and mosques and so on. However, the Bill does not confer on anyone the right to demand the opportunity to speak when and where they want. Perhaps it is being cast in that way by some—I do not think by her, but by others outside this place—but it does not give that right to anyone. We are talking about invitation and privacy, are we not? Those things pertain, regardless.
John McDonnell
That is an interesting point. I have been in situations where an individual has joined an organisation as an agent provocateur and has undertaken activities in the name of the organisation deliberately to bring about bad odour and destroy its reputation. I do not see any protections in this Bill against someone joining the Muslim society, or whatever, within the organisation, then demanding that an invitation be put out to a fascist, and then the organisation getting caught. It is very difficult to prove that there was some form of vexatious participation. I remember—this is partly related —when the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) joined the Labour party to infiltrate it and bring bad odour. It happens. I congratulated him on it as a tactic eventually. These things do happen, and my worry is that there is no defence against that in this Bill.
Emma Hardy
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point: there is not that protection. I again refer hon. Members to the written evidence. This is not written evidence from some small organisation that does nothing; it is the Free Churches Group of England and Wales. It is a group of higher education institutions.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I am thinking not about invitations to external speakers but about students—students’ unions, where there are students of opposing views. The Bill says:
“the use of any premises occupied by the students’ union is not denied to any individual or body on grounds specified in subsection (4)”—
belief and so on. We need to be clear—perhaps the Minister can come back and clarify this on the record, which would help—that when we say “any premises”, we do not mean that the students’ union cannot decide which rooms are used. It is not that someone has the right to say, “I want to meet in the Christian prayer room,” or, “I want to meet in the Muslim prayer room to talk about things that would be inappropriate for those spaces.” Students’ unions must have the right to say, “Yes, we give you a free speech platform, but we decide where within our premises we do that.” Or sometimes they might say, “Not those premises, but we have other premises down the road that you can meet in.” The phrase “any premises” gives that indication. Often, chaplaincies use university premises.
Emma Hardy
That is exactly right. I refer again to the written evidence, which says:
“We are concerned about the drafting of Points (3) and (4) in section A1 of the Bill, repeated later in connection with Students’ Unions. These clauses have to do with the provision or denial of premises and appear to prohibit both the making and the denial of such provision on the basis of ‘ideas, beliefs or views.’…Our advice is that these clauses are ripe for a variety of interpretations or misinterpretations, with unhelpful unintended consequences possible and even likely.”
The Free Churches Group goes on to say:
“Clause 3 (a) as explicated by clause 4 is similar to Section 43 of the Education (No.2) Act 1986, but in a new context.”
That is the point it is making. The submission continues:
“The clause says use of premises cannot be denied on the basis of ideas, beliefs etc. It has, as far as we know, led to no problems so far and that may continue to be the case. However, inserting it into this Bill, with its strengthened requirements, lack of clarity, and temperature-raising highlighting of a very few cases as justification for the Bill, may affect its previously benign record.”
I accept that I was rushed in putting together these amendments—the Clerks were very helpful—and this might not be the exact wording that the Minister wishes to use, but the question of premises and when something can be allowed or not needs to be addressed. We need that reassurance. As I say, these amendments are meant to be not about denying opposition or other people’s point of view, but about just having some respect about where they are held.
That goes back to the point made so eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington about some events needing to be done in consultation with other groups and people within the student union body and the higher education system to ensure that such things do not happen.
I do not believe for one moment that any hon. Member in Committee would think it acceptable to hold an anti-Islamic debate in an Islamic prayer room and I do not believe for a moment that the Minister or the Government intended that when drafting the Bill. I am saying, with the helpful intervention of my right hon. Friend, that people could join those groups, they could invite someone to be provocative and they could insist on the debate taking place in particular premises, which would cause incredible upset for many people.
John McDonnell
I fear to tread into this, but there are schisms within individual organisations. Anyone who has had any dealings in recent years with the gurdwaras in this country knows that we have had real issues, as we have had in the Christian religion. There have been disputes, debates and so on within different groups in a particular religion, some denying premises to individual groups and that becoming a matter of contest. We are treading into some extremely dangerous territory, if we are not careful. We could be dragged into disputes that result, eventually, in claims in court.
Emma Hardy
Absolutely. I state again, referring to the written evidence of the Free Church Group, that it
“affirms the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom.”
I would not wish this to be interpreted in any way as the group being against free speech—it is not. It is saying that, for the purposes of the Bill, we need to have a look at the question of premises and whether some premises, or some individual rooms within premises, should be in some cases denied to certain groups, out of respect for what those premises are meant to be used for.
When the Minister replies, I hope that she takes the amendment in the spirit in which it is intended, although it is perhaps not perfectly drafted, as I have explained. However, we need to resolve that problem, because we should be mindful of the fact that people have different beliefs and opinions, and we have to show tolerance and respect at all times. All of us in this debate on free speech have said that we want to encourage a climate in which ideas are challenged, but that they should be challenged in a respectful way.
Matt Western
I thank my hon. Friend for the amendments, the clarity with which she presented them and the debate that they provoked—if I may use “provoked”. When we start to delve into this, it is interesting just how far-reaching the unintended consequences become. As has been examined, that is not just between external groups or about mischievousness between one group and another—whether religious or whatever—but about infiltration of groups, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington mentioned. Factions within different societies or groups might have challenges or issues of power, leading to problems on campus. Many will have views that are sacrosanct, for example, on the denial of the holocaust, and we have to respect that some places on campus should also be sacrosanct.
That can be reduced to a simple point: there is a time and a place for vigorous debate, and universities are good places for that, but we have to provide protections. That is what we have been seeking to do throughout, to ensure that individuals have protections and, here, to protect against an anti-religious group who might want to occupy a prayer room, for example. That is a conflict of duties, which would skew the balance too far in favour of freedom of speech, without referencing any of the competing freedoms to which Danny Stone referred in his evidence.
Emma Hardy
Referring again to the written evidence, the Free Churches Group is asking for urgent clarification and redrafting of this clause. It says:
“Whether the clause means no premises can be provided on the basis of beliefs etc is unclear and needs clarifying. If it does, the consequences for prayer rooms, chapels, chaplaincies, kitchens designed with sensitivity to religious beliefs, amongst other facilities, could be dire.”
That is the point that my hon. Friend makes. The problems with the way in which the Bill is drafted mean it is open to vexatious and disrespectful abuse.
Matt Western
I agree. Whether it is, for example, an Islamic or Christian prayer room, or a space for the Jewish Society, we have to be very careful about the implications. I concur with what my hon. Friend just said.
John McDonnell
The word “any” is key. To give one other concrete example, I have a large Muslim community in my constituency and an Ahmadiyya Muslim community. The majority Muslim community do not recognise Ahmadiyyas as Muslims. The word “any” means that we could have a situation where one group is insisting on using a particular room, invited by an individual, which then offends others. There is then a situation of conflict and even litigation.
The word “any” has to come out. It is a provocation for the future, if we are not careful. This is a simple amendment to ensure that we forestall a potential problem in the future.
Matt Western
My right hon. Friend is right: this is yet another example of how things are well managed by students’ unions up and down the country. They see challenges day in, day out, week in, week out. They manage the various, sometimes conflicting, interests of different groups.
My right hon. Friend has given a simple example of an Islamic prayer room and how that can play out between the Ahmadiyya and other Muslim groups. I urge the Minister to take on board our points and make the changes set out in the amendments. The word “any” is problematic and the Government would do well to remove it.
Michelle Donelan
The amendments would narrow the application of the freedom of speech duty in proposed new section A4 on students’ unions so that it only applies, as regards premises, to the “sole” use of those premises and does not apply to the terms of the use of those premises.
Proposed new section A4(1) in clause 2 requires students’ unions to take “reasonably practicable” steps to secure lawful freedom of speech. Proposed new sections A4(3) and A4(4) set out how this duty will work in relation to the use of the premises. The students’ union must take “reasonably practicable” steps so as not to deny the use of their premises because of
“the ideas, beliefs or views”
of an individual body when inviting speakers. That was an excellent point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.
A key part of the Bill is the emphasis on “reasonably practicable” steps. On the point that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown made, if a range of rooms was available and some rooms were not suitable, for example because of religious beliefs, it would be “reasonably practicable” not to choose certain rooms. However, I have heard the concerns raised in the debate and the evidence that has been provided, so I will commit to take this important point away.
Fiona Bruce
I thank my hon. Friend for her encouraging words. Could she reflect on whether the code of practice is a vehicle that could be used to respect freedom of religion or belief in this context?
Michelle Donelan
An important aspect of the Bill is that it does not place freedom of speech above other duties, such as freedom of religion. It is down to the university or students’ union to balance those competing duties and make a reasonable assessment. We think that freedom of speech duties should apply to the terms of use of premises. It would not be right if a students’ union decided, for example, to charge one group more for room hire than another group. In any event, proposed new section A4(3) is clear that the freedom of speech duties include the stated provision on premises, so the exact wording of the amendment would not be likely to have any effect in practice. However, I am happy to reconsider how we could make it clearer in the Bill.
Emma Hardy
On the basis of the Minister’s promise to go away and have a look to ensure that we can offer the clarity and reassurance needed, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 34, in clause 2, page 4, line 13, at end insert—
“(4B) The objective under subsection (2) does not apply to any person or body that—
(a) has made any statement in public that amounts to the denial of genocide; or
(b) intends to make any statement that amounts to the denial of genocide within the premises of the students’ union or to any members of the students’ union.”.—(Matt Western.)
This amendment ensures that the duty on students’ unions to secure freedom of speech within the law does not cover those who make statements that amount to a denial of genocide.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 4—Other student bodies—
“After section A4 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (inserted by section 2) insert—
‘A4A Application of students’ union provisions to other student bodies
(1) In this Part, where a provision applies to a students’ union, it should also be taken to apply to any other student body.
(2) For the purposes of this section “other student body” means—
(a) any Junior Common Room or Middle Common Room of a constituent institution; and
(b) any club or society made up of students at a higher education institution, whether or not the club or society is affiliated to the students’ union.’”
This amendment would expand the definition of a student body to include any Junior Common room or Middle Common room of a constituent institution or any club or society at a higher education institution, regardless of whether student union affiliation requirements have been complied with.
Matt Western
I rise to speak to new clause 4. Our points on the new clause amplify the points that we made not half an hour ago, about the importance of how the Bill is applied to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 and the need to include the junior and middle common rooms of a constituent institution. As we have said many times, there is a wide diversity of student bodies out there, on all sorts of different campuses and institutions. We have to make sure that the expansion of free speech duties that are being placed on student unions extend to other relevant bodies as well.
The scale of the sector in this country means there is a very complex mix of student bodies, many with very different relationships from those that we may be more familiar with from our personal experiences or from those we work with in our constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown raised this issue during the evidence sessions, putting the point that some of the public debate has been about debating societies—the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union, Durham and so on—and other informal societies. He asked whether we were right in that, because they have no funding relationship with the university and they would not be covered by the legislation. He asked whether that defeated the point.
That question was put to the only lawyer we heard from who is currently working in legal practice, Smita Jamdar at Shakespeare Martineau. Her response was very clear. She said:
“Absolutely. It only applies to universities and student unions as defined, so it would not apply to the Oxford Union or the Cambridge equivalent.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 56, Q107.]
That response comes from a lawyer who is very experienced and knowledgeable in the sector. It exposes an anomaly and a clear difference across the sector. She went on to say:
“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.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 56, Q107.]
Smita Jamdar is the only practising lawyer we heard from.
That underlines just how complicated it is going to become, particularly given the different organisations and bodies that may relate to universities and higher education providers but are not necessarily covered by the Bill. That is why the extension to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 is important. The amendment would have the effect of explicitly including all student bodies in the duties to uphold freedom of speech, but it would have a dual effect. It would prevent student bodies from explicitly deciding to not affiliate with a student union, simply to escape the duties. That is really important. I have, as do my colleagues, a real concern that this will see a lot of bodies or groups disaffiliating from student unions. Ultimately, the viability of that student union will then be called into question.
Emma Hardy
I want to keep making one point. When we are talking about student unions and organisations, we are not just talking about Oxford and Cambridge; we are talking about all the small universities and colleges as well. It seems fairly ludicrous to me that every aspect of the Bill would apply to the very small higher education provision at Hull College, but would not apply to the junior common room. That does not seem equitable or fair.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To that we can add all sorts of institutions—Warwickshire College Group in my constituency and many others up and down the country. That is the concern. We have this absolutely bizarre situation where we will have a two-tier system operating. For some reason, those groups that are viewed by many as being more privileged and, some would say, elite—though I would not necessarily describe them as such—are somehow being protected and insulated from the legislation in a way that others are not. It seems to be an extraordinary contradiction of the legislation when they are perhaps in need of this legislation more than, or as much as, others.
That was the first point in terms of the dual effect: preventing student bodies from explicitly deciding not to affiliate. That is a real concern about the future of student union bodies. The second point was the effect of including outside student bodies, such as JCRs and MCRs. I mentioned the point about removing the picture of the Queen from Magdalen College in Oxford. JCRs and MCRs are just as lively forums as any affiliated student union. I therefore struggle as to why the Minister would not wish to support this proposal. All we are seeking is consistency and a level playing field. There should be one rule for all, not one rule for some.
Sir John Hayes
I heard what the hon. Gentleman said about trade union. Like many in the Committee, I imagine, I served as an officer of the students union when I was at Nottingham. My son was the faith and belief officer at Newcastle University students’ union last year. We understand the significance of student unions, but they must be subject to the same democratic accountability that the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington championed a moment ago. The provisions of the Bill in respect of freedom must apply liberally—I hesitate to use that word except pejoratively, but I will—in that way. I am concerned that student unions should not be elevated to a status that prevents them from being subject to the same expectations and disciplines in democratic terms that the right hon. Gentleman is championing.
Matt Western
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am not seeking for them to be elevated in any way. I just believe there should be direct relevancy to the MCRs and JCRs as well. I want to add that groups that may be beyond the thoughts of the Committee, but that do exist, should also be covered—groups that may be more familiar to certain members of this Government, such as the Bullingdon club or the Piers Gaveston society. If societies affiliated with student unions are subject to the new duties, why should other student groups not be subject to those same duties?
John McDonnell
There is an absurdity at the heart of this legislation as a result of all of this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton—[Hon. Members: “ Kemptown!”] Of course, it is. A wonderful racecourse. In practical terms, the absurdity is that if I want to ensure an organisation is outside the ambit of this legislation, I simply name it “junior” or “common room”. That cannot be right. There is an absurdity here somewhere. It is the point that was made earlier. I have only just grasped how easily that can be done. There have been a number of times in the past when organisations have not wanted to have a full light thrown on their real role and activities. We have seen that. That is exactly what is going to happen here. We are either all in or all out with these institutions; otherwise the legislation becomes unworkable.
Matt Western
My right hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. It is an absurdity and, as I keep saying, an inconsistency. All legislation should be fair and consistent, and the public and, in this case, organisations will see it as disadvantageous or favouring some rather than others. That is really problematic for the sector, and it is one of the unintended consequences that the legislation will lead to. As my right hon. Friend says, we will see what, as I said a moment ago, I fear is a disaffiliation. I see groups being spawned on university campuses that are outside the student union—they will have the moniker “JCR”, or whatever it may be—that will seek to circumvent any responsibilities under the legislation.
Emma Hardy
Some organisations, and some student organisations, will have the ability, resources and staff power to work out how to disaffiliate, and that will happen, but many will not. It comes back to equity. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington put it perfectly, we are either all in or all out. Liverpool Hope University, which is one of the smaller universities in Liverpool, has only three full-time members of staff at its student union. It simply does not have the same resources as many other organisations to put to working out how to circumnavigate the loophole that the Minister seems intent on leaving in the Bill. Again, we have this system of inequality and unfairness in the legislation as it is written at the moment.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is right: there is an issue about how this will work across diverse organisations in the sector. It is problematic because it means that yet again there is one rule for some and another rule for others. When we are discussing, debating and writing legislation, we cannot allow that difference to be compounded in it. It seems absolutely wrong.
I listened with real interest to the conversation that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and his counterpart the hon. Member for North West Durham had about some of the issues that they face on a local campus regarding certain organisations. My right hon. Friend cited particular problems with some of the Chinese-based societies and how they might be acting. This is nothing specific about China—it includes other groups as well—but to amplify that point, if we are not careful such groups will ensure that they are extracted from the remit of the legislation so that they are able to act freely and beyond this law. I urge the Government to take on board this very straightforward, sensible, consistent and pragmatic new clause and include it in the legislation. It is really important, and I am sure that we will hear more from my colleagues.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The reason the new clause is important is that it would include all bodies that students might interact with in their role as students, to ensure that the promotion of freedom of speech happens. I will come on to rebut some points that I think the Minister incorrectly made about JCRs, but I first want to talk about the chilling effect. We have heard a lot about it, but if we are to believe what we hear about the chilling effect, it is because a culture has set in—particularly in the student body—in which it is allowed to run rife.
As we know, large parts of student activity are not necessarily in the classroom or lecture theatre; in fact, many students complain that they do not have enough lecture and seminar time. That is a regular complaint of students nowadays because fees are so high. We could have an interesting argument around what the purpose of university is—whether it is instruction, or to enable students to have a wider experience of intellectual endeavour—but I will put that to one side.
However, if the effect is to exclude a swathe of student life and to allow that chilling effect to continue to circulate, the whole point of the student part of the Bill is defeated. The education part or university part? Okay, that is fine. But with the student part, what will still happen, of course, is that students will still be afraid to speak up in lecture theatres, because in the non-regulated part of their student experience they will still not have the culture of free speech and they will be shunned if they do speak up. They will not speak up and feel like they can have their own views, because in one part of their life the chilling effect is not because of formal institutions, but partly because of informal cultures. And if we are not tackling those cultures in all aspects, then we will not deal with this issue. That is why, for example, this measure should extend to JCRs and MCRs.
Earlier, the Minister said that JCRs do not run their own booking systems. That is not correct for all JCRs. St Mary’s College at Durham University runs its own booking system for its JCR. When a student wants to make a booking, they go on to the JCR website and fill in a JCR form, and the JCR allocates a booking. With some of the Oxford colleges, students have to go into the Oxford system, for the whole university, and I have just found that out after 10 minutes of Google research into how the booking systems work. I am sure that a fuller analysis would show that the picture is more complicated, which is why we need to include JCRs and similar facilities explicitly in this measure, so that it is clear.
David Simmonds
It may be that there is a degree of misunderstanding. When I was a student at a college that had a structure with a JCR, MCR and senior common room, the president of the JCR was someone who would become a future Labour Member for Corby.
David Simmonds
He was a very good man, and is a good friend of mine. However, a key point about that organisation is that it is not autonomous. So although the JCR has its own bar, the JCR, the MCR and the SCR—the three academic components of the college—are all supervised by, and under the control of, the college’s governing body. So they are not autonomous.
Therefore, although it is the case that a student could book a room, rent a tennis court or something like that, if it is in the ownership of that JCR, the college—as a constituent part of a university—supervises and controls the JCR’s activities. So the JCR is directly accountable, as a part of the college and a part of the university, and it is not autonomous in its own right.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Neither are student unions. The Education Act 1994, which I am probably the only Member of Parliament to bang on about, because most MPs will talk about previous Education Acts, requires universities to supervise all student unions, just as they would JCRs. It requires universities to ensure that the finances of student unions are conducted fairly and to oversee the policy of the student unions, so that the universities fulfil their duties under other Education Acts, such as ensuring freedom of speech. So what the hon. Gentleman just said is the case with all student unions.
However, this Bill sees fit to mention student unions specifically, even though they are regulated—in terms of their policies, their funding, their use and their terms regarding discrimination—by the university and by the Charity Commission.
Emma Hardy
On the point about the regulation of student unions, it is worth pointing out that one of the criticisms of the Bill is that it introduces new and varied ways of regulating student unions, which, as we know, are also regulated by the Charity Commission. So some of the issues that we will seek to address as we get further through the Bill are about exactly which layer of regulation student unions are meant to follow first, because, as the Bill is drafted, the situation seems to be incredibly confusing.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
That is quite right. One of the problems with the Bill, as my hon. Friend suggests, would be where there was an activity run by a student union, and someone felt that something had been denied and wanted to seek redress. But the student union is funded by the university, which most student unions are now—most do not rely on commercial income for the bulk of their income, because of the changing nature of students. The money is not gathered from bars that make a big profit. Gone are the days of NUS Services Ltd being the biggest beer purchaser in the country. My uncle, who used to be the director of Whitbread, used to love going to the NUSSL conferences and flogging cheap beer. Those days are just gone. The students union gets money and it uses the facilities of the university, but despite that we will now have a situation where someone could complain to the student union and complain to the university. That is very confusing, but it is not quite the point of this new clause, so I must redirect back to that.
David Simmonds
Without wishing to labour the point, I think the Minister is absolutely correct in the position she has taken. The junior common room is a component part of the college, so all its complaints processes and its supervision are inherent in its nature as a component part of the college. There is not a requirement to bring it within the purview of the legislation in the same way as there is for a student union, which is a separate institution with its own governance. It is already covered by its very nature.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
That may be, but the Minister said that JCRs do not have control of their own bookings, their own policies or their own finances, and that is not quite true, if we compare them with student unions. I do take the hon. Gentleman’s point that junior common rooms are not automatically registered with the Charities Commission, for example, but I am not sure that, legally, there is anything preventing them from registering. That would be an interesting legal point.
Each junior common room, again, is slightly separate. We had a quasi-junior common room system set up at Lancaster University when that was created, to model the Oxford system, but it was significantly different, because the system of Lancaster University was different and was based in halls and housing, much of which is now run by private institutions based at the university campus because of the private finance initiative systems and so on that we have in many universities. Again, for those junior common rooms that are now often in private student halls because they had a residential-based junior common room system, how is it regulated? They are on campus, but they are private blocks now, run by private service providers. It would be clearer if we included everyone.
Emma Hardy
This debate highlights the wildly differing amount of resource that many of these different student unions and organisations have. It seems ludicrous that we would not directly include a JCR or MCR, with the resources and finances it has, but we probably will include, as I have mentioned before, my beloved Hull College higher education institution. It comes down to an issue of fairness. I respect the point the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner makes, but if we are going to directly regulate one form of student activity within organisations, why not simply regulate and direct them all?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I will move away from the JCR, where we will maybe not seek agreement. I must admit I am not as au fait with the Oxford-Cambridge-Durham JCR system as maybe I should be, because I am a child of 1960s-based universities—quite literally; I went to a crèche in one—but there were, and are, equivalent JCRs run in different forms that do not follow the Oxford and Cambridge form, which therefore might not be included in this.
I come on to what I would call not a JCR, but a student space—student facilities provided alongside accommodation. Accommodation, even when it is on university campuses, which for the larger part it is not, is mostly run by private providers. The university will recommend that provider; it might even have a contract with that provider to provide a certain number of student halls. The facilities for those students—sometimes including the bar, and often including meeting spaces and recreational activities—are all provided by that private provider. Bookings are done by that private provider. The private provider might well organise a student committee of the residents to help to run that and facilitate it—in a way that is similar, I guess, to how a JCR committee would run those facilities. But they are not a student union; they are not a JCR in the Oxford-Cambridge sense. They are running a common room for students who live in those halls, but they would not be regulated by this provision, and the danger is that those spaces more and more often are being used to invite speakers, because students are self-organising, and of course people will go through all this stuff again—the ridiculousness of having to close curtains or shut down meetings which would seem totally legitimate. From a student point of view, they are using a student space that is designed only for their educational use.
Emma Hardy
Listening carefully, as I am, to my hon. Friend leads me to think, which I had not done before, about purpose-built student accommodation and the common spaces there. When I shadowed this brief, we had huge issues about students paying rent for things that they could not use, and that deepened my understanding that purpose-built student halls of residence are often provided by private providers. The question is whether this Bill would apply to their common room space as well. I would seek clarity from the—[Interruption.] The Whip just shouted something over to me that I missed. Perhaps the Minister could clarify the matter when she comes to make her remarks.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
It might well be that the Minister can—[Interruption.] I am not sure that I am allowed to ask the Whip to speak, but he was muttering something under his breath that I did not quite hear. Let us say that we had another amendment, with slightly different wording, which was specific to, for example, student halls, places that are focused on students, places that the university authorises for students to be exclusively at—like student halls but also other student clubs. For example, I have known universities that, rather than having a student union-run bar, will make an arrangement with a commercial bar provider to provide a student-specific bar with student-specific meeting rooms. It might well be that an amendment that just ensures that the duty is extended to commercial providers would be better than this amendment. I am open to that, but we need something; otherwise there is a real danger, particularly with universities moving more and more to commercial partnerships.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I give way to John—my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington.
John McDonnell
I have never known him to be so affectionate. [Interruption.] I can’t help myself. The complexities of this are amazing. The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner and I are both ex-Birkbeck. If someone joins the Birkbeck student union, they are then a member of the junior common room at the School of Oriental and African Studies and therefore have access to the SOAS junior common room bar, and can book it for meetings, invite speakers and so on. Again, I am not sure of the status or the independence of the student union at Birkbeck, or the status of the relationship with the SOAS junior common room, and therefore of the line of accountability for control of the premises. Unless the Bill is all-encompassing, it will introduce myriad problems.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
We had the equivalent discussion with regard to academics; we talked about what would happen with a visiting academic. Yes, they would be protected in their own institution, but they would not necessarily be protected as a visitor, so that is why we put forward amendments. We have the same issues about, in effect, visiting students. This applies particularly to London. London University, as a federal university, will have overlapping student unions. Unfortunately, we have seen the demise of the University of London union, which is a great shame for the University of London. I think that, bizarrely, was done for political purposes. I am convinced that the last few presidents and leaders of the University of London union were too-left-wing rabble-rousers. It was fed up with it, and fed up with the London Student newspaper being too much of a pain, and it shut it down, so that is an example. Would this Bill prevent the shutting down of the University of London union, which was shut down in my—
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury (Michael Tomlinson)
On a point of order, Mrs Cummins. I wonder about the relevance of this. The hon. Gentleman will forgive me for having interrupted him earlier by muttering from a sedentary position, which I do not do now; I rise to make it perfectly clear. Is this at all relevant to the amendment or clause?
The Chair
I am sure that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown heard that point of order, and that he will bring his remarks, which will be directed at the amendment, to a conclusion.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The point here is other student bodies. It is about when they are not directly a student union, which is what we are debating now. Our amendment would extend to all student bodies, whether or not they are directly part of the institution. That is why it is relevant to this clause. It seeks to cover an exclusively student body––not a general pub down the road––that has a relation just with students from that institution or from other institutions and that should also have some of these basic duties. If it does not have them, there is a real danger of loopholes here.
I will move on from talking about the type of provider, but there are other areas where this is relevant and important, such as non-affiliated societies. According to the lawyer we heard in evidence, the Bill would extend to the day-to-day activities of each individual society. I can understand saying to the student union, “You must allow the society to meet.” That is fine. This is about allowing societies to do that. But our understanding is that that society must fulfil the principles of the Bill. That would mean that there were two different legal frameworks for a non-affiliated society that was for all other purposes a student society in that university, and for an affiliated society.
If we go back to the essence of the chilling effect with an external speaker, a student does not necessarily know whether it is an affiliated or non-affiliated society. When an event is cancelled or a speaker is no-platformed or whatever we are worried about happening––again, I am not sure that the Bill is necessary, but these are the accusations and evidence that we heard––the danger is that the chilling effect still happens. The speaker is cancelled, the event is postponed, the society is shut down and students say, “I cannot talk about those things,” even though it might have happened in a non-affiliated space. It is important to extend that duty to all exclusively student bodies.
Emma Hardy
I hope that the Minister is listening, because we are trying to be as helpful as possible. Affiliated societies tend to rely on the assurance offered by being affiliated directly to the student union, and are therefore less likely to have huge sources of their own income. Non-affiliated student societies tend to have external financial support, from other countries or organisations. It comes down to equity and fairness, which is the point my hon. Friend is making about non-affiliated organisations with external support. I cannot see how the Bill would be relevant to them if they are not part of the student union, even though as my right hon. Friend––my hon. Friend rather––keeps saying, they are comprised almost entirely of students.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Exactly. We know that a number of these non-affiliated societies already exist. There is a particularly large network of Chinese student unions or Chinese student societies that receive large amounts of funding from the Chinese Communist party. Of course, their role is to be beacons of a chilling effect around campuses. They will have a property on the edge of the campus that might not be affiliated to the campus but will be open exclusively to students at that institution, and that institution will often advertise that society as the place for students to go. There are a number of ways around this. Again, I am not saying that the wording of the new clause is perfect, but we could say that the institutions would have to make it clear that such societies are not to be recommended unless they fulfil the general duties in the guidelines. We could say that institutions cannot recommend organisations that have not fulfilled the basic guidelines. That would include housing providers, but it would also mean that Chinese student societies that do not fulfil the duty could not be recommended as places for students to go locally. All of these are options that I urge the Minister to look at; otherwise, we have inequality, and there needs to be some balance.
Emma Hardy
As my hon. Friend keeps saying, we accept that the wording of the new clause might not be perfect, but I hope the Minister will go away and have a look at it. With regards to purpose-built student accommodation and the relationship that its providers have with some universities, it could be a condition of that relationship that they follow the procedures and guidelines in the Bill. I hope the Minister will not just dismiss our many points on this issue, because we are talking about whether we want a fair and equitable system that applies to every student in all the higher education institutions in the country. That is ultimately what the amendment is designed to achieve.
The Chair
Before I call Lloyd Russell-Moyle again, although we want as wide and inclusive a debate as possible, I ask Members to ensure that interventions are interventions.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
This is a significant new clause, and it is the only new clause relating to this matter. As people will know, I am particularly passionate about student unions and student representation, so I hope the Committee will forgive me for my detail and enthusiasm in this area.
There is another way that this issue could be dealt with by the Minister, if she does not want to accept the new clause but will accept something else. That would be to say that, although there is a general duty on student unions to ensure that all who wish to have access can do so, it does not regulate the detailed workings of student societies. In my view, that would be preferable. However, I am not sure it would necessarily fulfil the desires of some of the Members on the Government side. For example, it would mean that the UN women’s society at Oxford, which disinvited Amber Rudd and got the wrath of the national papers, would still be entitled to do that. We have to make a choice: either we want to allow societies to be bloody rude—I think it is extremely rude to invite someone and then disinvite them, and I have no truck with that—
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I am terribly sorry. I did try to reconsider my language. It was a very rude thing to do. “Bloody” should be used only in the sense of the blood that runs through our veins, and nothing else.
It is very rude to invite someone and then disinvite them, and I do not condone anyone who does that, but we have to have equity. We either have to have all societies able to invite and disinvite people, and to be as rude as they want, or we have to say that it is not acceptable in an academic space because it creates a chilling effect, and then we have to say that no society can do that. We cannot have a two-tier system whereby we say, “If you happen to have affiliated to a student union or institution, you get it, but if you set up shop outside and everyone thinks that you’re that society, it is acceptable.” There lies the real danger, but there are options here.
Finally, I want to touch on the role of such unions as the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union and the Durham Union. They have been real bastions of free speech, and I do not suspect that they would have any problems with the duties covering them, too. We all know that often they have been the ones that have continued to say, “We want all different people to come, debate and talk.” But we cannot create a law based on the long-standing position of the Oxford, Cambridge and Durham unions—to name the most famous but not necessarily best student debating societies in the country—because they have had an historical foundation, whereas almost every other debating union and society in our country is regulated because it forms an affiliated part of an institution. I do not think it is fair that a few ancient universities get different privileges from the newer universities. That is a dangerous division.
We need to ask whether a debating club made up exclusively of students is regulated or not. The Minister needs to make a decision. I hope that she will say that she has accepted the point. She may not agree with the detailed wording, but I hope she says that she will go away and make sure that the provision applies to either all student societies or none, and either all student spaces or none. That should also cover the commercial sector—bodies with whom an institution may have commercial relationships.
Michelle Donelan
Any transgression of freedom of speech and academic freedom goes against the fundamental principles of the higher education sector in England. It is therefore essential that our universities are places where freedom of speech can thrive for all staff, students and visiting speakers, so they can contribute to a culture of open and robust intellectual debate. Student unions provide support and services to their members and their universities. It is therefore appropriate and essential that the legislative framework is extended to cover student unions directly.
The extension of the duties imposed only on higher education providers will ensure that freedom of speech is protected to the fullest extent. This will ensure our universities can continue their long and proud history of being a place where views may be freely expressed and debated. Clause 2 will provide the legislative framework to extend these important duties to student unions at approved fee cap providers—a category of registered higher education providers. It will insert two new provisions into the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. Proposed new section A4 provides that student unions will be required to take reasonably practicable steps to secure lawful freedom of speech for their members and staff; for students, members and the staff of the provider; and for visiting speakers.
Michelle Donelan
Opposition Members have spoken at great length on this clause, so I will give way only once.
Emma Hardy
Thank you. I want clarification about non-affiliated student societies—student societies that are not directly affiliated to the student unions.
Michelle Donelan
If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will come on to student societies.
In deciding what is reasonably practicable, student unions must have particular regard to the importance of freedom of speech. This will allow those involved in all aspects of university life to contribute to a culture of open and robust intellectual debate, without fear of repercussion. Those are new duties, providing new protections and ensuring coverage across campus. Proposed new section A5 will require student unions to maintain a code of practice, which will act as an aid for compliance with the new duty in proposed new section A4.
The code of practice must set out the procedures to be followed when organising meetings and activities, as well as the conduct required in connection with them. That is in addition to the criteria for making decisions about student union support and funding, and who can use premises. The clause sets out the new duties on student unions that are vital for ensuring that freedom of speech is protected to the fullest extent within higher education in England. It is therefore an important and necessary part of this Bill.
New clause 4 would extend the duties on student unions at approved fee cap providers so that they also apply to junior and middle common rooms at colleges and student societies. Taking student bodies at constituent colleges first, the colleges fund their junior and middle common rooms and can exert a high level of control over their activities. We do not believe that imposing the duty on junior and middle common rooms would be appropriate, as they are autonomous, as has been said. Freedom of speech duties would be unnecessary and bureaucratic if applied to junior and middle common rooms. A point was made about booking systems, but even given that junior and common rooms may book rooms, those rooms are owned by colleges and the JCRs have no actual control over them. Given that, we do not believe that including them is necessary as the freedom of speech duties on the colleges will apply to the activities of their student unions. It is important to note that student unions at constituent colleges are not classified as student unions under the Education Act 1994. In addition, the administrative burden on providers to give the Office for Students details of the student unions of their constituent colleges in addition to their own student unions, with the OfS then under a duty to maintain a list of them, monitor their compliance with their duties and deal with them in regulatory terms, as well as under the complaints scheme, would be resource intensive and disproportionate. That point has been made many times by Opposition Members in relation to other issues that have been raised today.
As for student clubs and societies, if they are affiliated to the student union, they will be covered by the student union’s code of practice. If they are not affiliated, they will still be subject to their provider’s code of practice, a point that I think has been missed in today’s debate. For similar reasons to those I have already set out in relation to JCRs and MCRs, we therefore do not think it would be appropriate to extend the duties to cover those clubs and societies directly. I hope that this clarifies the points made, and that we can agree not to accept new clause 4 and to move forward with the rest of the Bill.
Matt Western
The debate on these particular points has been really healthy and robust, and my Labour colleagues’ contributions have been extremely important—I particularly note those of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown. What we have been saying for the last hour or hour and a half is that all we are seeking is consistency in this Bill, and that we cannot afford to have a two-tier higher education system. The words “iniquitous” and “unfair” have been used, but the problem is that either we recognise there is a need for coverage for all bodies and all groups that are exclusively student, as was rightly said, or there is not. The Minister has just said that it would be unnecessary and bureaucratic for this provision to be applied to middle and junior common rooms. We would say that it is unnecessary and bureaucratic for all institutions, irrespective of what they are or their heritage and history, and particularly for the smaller organisations that we keep speaking up for. As is well understood by many of us in this room, the whole higher education sector is incredibly diverse. Many smaller bodies—further education colleges and so on—will not be geared up to sustain these changes.
Emma Hardy
Maybe the Minister cannot provide the evidence for this, or maybe I am making a mistake, but I do not understand how non-affiliated student societies that are privately funded will be covered under the Bill as it is written.
Matt Western
That is my real concern, which I was just about to come on to. There is real fear about these well-funded bodies; I mentioned the Chinese groups specifically because that point was raised by both sides, by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and by, I think, the hon. Member for North West Durham. There is increasing evidence that these groups are seeking to influence our campuses from beyond, and that those groups will not be affiliated to those institutions.
The Chair
May I just remind the hon. Member that we are summing up here, rather than making a brand new speech, because time is pressing.
Matt Western
Mrs Cummins, I am sorry if it was not clear that I was trying to sum up the points that were put so well by my colleagues. The Minister has said that these non-affiliated groups would be covered by these duties, but it is not clear to me or to my colleagues how that will be the case.
Michelle Donelan
To clarify, if a non-affiliated group were having an event on a university campus, it would of course be covered under the university’s code of practice.
Matt Western
I thank the Minister for her intervention. I do not mean to try her patience; the points we are trying to make are simply an attempt to explore absolutely all eventualities. We have talked about PBSA—purpose-built student accommodation—and the increasing amount of private sector premises on campus and elsewhere that are being used by universities. I can speak from local experience. In Leamington, we have private accommodation that is being used by the student union.
Sir John Hayes
I am going to be careful what I say, because I have other responsibilities in the House on a different Committee, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point about external organisations that includes consideration of the Confucius Institutes, which are now located on campuses across the country. Perhaps he might use this opportunity—or perhaps I might use it through him—to ask the Minister to look at that matter again. These are highly questionable, in terms of what they do, where they are located, how they are funded and who is behind them.
Matt Western
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for illustrating and articulating the point that I was alluding to, but was not being specific about. I am sure the Minister will have listened to the important point he makes.
I understand the Minister’s point about these groups being covered on campuses, on premises that the university may control, but how would that apply to, for instance, the private properties in Leamington that are used by Warwick University?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The Minister said in her useful intervention that if it is a university property, it will be regulated, but we are talking about private property that the university does not run but just directs students to. The university has a big signpost saying, “This is our accommodation,” but as soon as students step over the threshold, the university has no regulatory role, no delivery role—no anything role. What is provided in that property is student space, meeting rooms and accommodation. That is the nub of what we are trying to get to.
Matt Western
It is exactly that. I will not spin the wheels and repeat exactly what my hon. Friend has said, but perhaps the Minister would like to respond.
Michelle Donelan
I appreciate the point that hon. Members are trying to make, but I think it is time to step back and reflect on the consequences of what they are arguing. They are effectively arguing that if a group of students were in their homes, or if they organised an event in a pub, we would have to regulate that. We have to be reasonable about what we are asking universities to regulate and what is in their control.
Matt Western
That is the issue, perhaps in part, with the Bill. The Government are trying impose, top down, a series of responsibilities and duties on universities to oversee and implement this legislation. The points we are making are about how many loopholes there are and how groups, particularly well-funded groups and private societies, will disaffiliate from the union and seek other premises in which to practise this sort of speech.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Quite clearly, some parts of an institution come through a university—its student union, properly affiliated to it; student bodies; its faculty—but this provision also includes individual students, and when those individuals come together, they are not representing the university. It is not top down. All the Government are trying to do is to ensure that anything that comes down through the institution is covered, whereas things that essentially come from groups of students getting together in a non-formal setting are different. I can see the difference, and I am sure that the shadow team could also reflect on the clear difference between those two things.
Matt Western
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. My colleague wants to make a short related point, and I will respond to both together.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
This is the nub of the contradiction. That is why some of us suggested that the Minister could, to be consistent, remove student societies from the regulation. If students come together and organise a club that just happens to affiliate to the student union—even if they are totally autonomous and there is no role for the institution—the Bill regulates them. If they decide not to affiliate to the institution, but do everything else the same, the Bill does not regulate them. All I am saying is that it needs either to regulate them or to say that it regulates the student union but does not go down further to regulate the constituent parts—for example, a speech at the student Conservative club should not require monitoring by the office of diktats.
Matt Western
It is about affiliation, or the decision of groups to disaffiliate from the student union, as well as how private property will come into play. We have simply said that it should be all or none. We cannot have a two-tier system for this regulation.
The new clause is very simple and straightforward. It is pragmatic and would bring about sensible changes and protections, which is what I thought the Government were trying to do. At the end of the day, without such changes the whole legislation is exposed for what it is and will not deliver the protections that the Government believe they are going to introduce.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Michael Tomlinson.)
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Seventh sitting)
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before I call Sir John Hayes, I think everyone would wish to join me in congratulating the Minister on having her responsibilities extended to further areas, including being able to attend the Cabinet. Many congratulations.
Clause 1
Duties of registered higher education providers
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 72, in clause 1, page 2, line 36, at end insert—
“(11) The governing body of a registered Higher Education Provider must present to the OfS, at least once a quarter, a report detailing the steps their organisation has undertaken to fulfil its positive duties under subsection (2).”
You anticipated my opening remarks, Sir Christopher, although of course your seniority in all we do permits that and makes it entirely agreeable to me, so I echo your sentiments about the Minister. We are delighted to have her with us today, and she will be delighted with the amendment in my name.
The amendment is entirely in tune with the purposes of the Bill. We have had a useful debate so far during our scrutiny, and I have been reminded of Dickens:
“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”
The ideas that have been spoken to a little during our deliberations have affirmed in the minds not only of the members of the Committee, but more widely, the significance of free speech and, in particular, the importance in higher education of open discussion and debate as a means to explore new ideas—to explore and discover, one might say.
We have also established that the argument that this is not a problem—that, in the words of Professor Biggar, who was also one of our witnesses,
“Concern about threats to free speech…in universities is sometimes dismissed as a manufactured distraction”—
does not stand up to close scrutiny. He and other witnesses made it clear that, in his words,
“There is empirical evidence that freedom to speak and research of significant minorities of university students and teachers in the UK are being inhibited.”
He went on to write:
“For every individual who finds himself censored, ostracised, made ill, or bulldozed, there are hundreds of others who look on aghast and resolve to keep their mouths shut, lest they attract trouble.”
We could have a debate—though I do not think that it would be helpful to do so this morning, and I am not sure you would permit it anyway, Sir Christopher—about the true extent of that problem, but clearly there is a problem to be addressed. The Minister and the Government have recognised that—thus the Bill.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman said that we will not discuss this, but is not one of the main arguments put by people who support the Bill that self-censoring is going on? In a lot of the evidence that we have taken so far, everyone has said that they cannot actually say what the scale of the issue is. If we are to use that as a central plank of the reason why the legislation is needed, is it not important for someone to come up with the evidence to support it?
Sir John Hayes
I will take that as a helpful remark in support of my amendment, for reasons that I will explain in a second. I have spent a great deal of time with the right hon. Gentleman in discourse of all kinds. In fact, I sometimes think that I spend more time with him than I do with my family, given the Committees that we serve on together, and the onerous nature of the business. We both take that seriously, and we feel that it is a worthwhile thing to do. I always listen to him carefully, because he is a former Minister and a distinguished Member of this House. The point that he is making is that, in order to gauge and to respond to the real extent, we need information. My amendment provides the mechanism by which that information can be brought forward.
In my amendment, I argue simply that universities should provide evidence quarterly, at least, of how they are coping with and responding to the legal demands that the Bill, which I presume will become an Act, enshrines. This is about really getting to the root of the problem and the root of the solutions to the problem.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I understand the motivation behind the amendment. However, resources are not endless. The Office for Students has many other duties and responsibilities. This amendment gives preference and priority to quarterly reporting on this issue above all others.
The OfS’s remit is incredibly wide: it is meant to ensure that students have a high-quality education. In terms of the past year, and the number of online lessons that students have had and the difficulties with the quality of their education, this amendment would have meant the Office for Students devoting more time to looking at freedom of speech than at those other issues. On the question of resourcing, is this amendment practical?
Sir John Hayes
Of course, in the amendment I do not specify the character of the report. I assume it will not be a thesis. I am not expecting disproportionate resource to be allocated to the provision of this quarterly report. In my mind, it would be a summary of the steps that had been taken to meet the positive duties. Frankly, I would not have thought that that was a very bureaucratic exercise, if the universities are doing the job.
The hon. Lady is right that it would be onerous if they were not doing the job and were struggling to comprehend or respond to those duties, because they would presumably be having to find explanations to legitimise why they had not done what they ought to have done. If they are doing the job as the Bill instructs them, a short summary to explain that would not be difficult to deliver.
Emma Hardy
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for being generous and allowing me to come back. The point is not just that it is onerous and that it involves quarterly reporting, but that it is a question of priority and statement. Under the amendment, the OfS would be saying, “We will give priority to looking at the Bill above all our other duties, because we will have to have quarterly reports,” as opposed to the annual reports they have for most other duties. After the difficult year that students have had, saying that this should be given to the Office for Students every quarter as their main priority is not the message that the Office for Students should be sending to their students.
Sir John Hayes
With respect to the hon. Lady, the amendment is very simple, as she will see detailed in the papers before us. It simply adds to clause 1, line 36, a requirement that the governing body
“present to the OfS, at least once a quarter, a report detailing the steps their organisation has undertaken to fulfil its positive duties under subsection (2).”It does not say that all else in the university must be brought to a halt, or that this is the overweening or overwhelming priority of the university.
Universities have many statutory duties, as other bodies do. It is not uncommon for legislation to require bodies to report on their statutory obligations, so this is not in any way unprecedented or irregular. I agree with the hon. Lady that universities will have many priorities, and some of those will be fundamental to their purpose.
Good teaching and learning and good-quality research are at the very heart of the business of the university, but we have said repeatedly in this Committee, and it has been emphasised by Members across the Committee, that free speech, the free exchange of ideas and the formulation of innovative thinking are central—critical—to good higher education. If we think it is vital, and the Government must do, or they would not have brought the Bill forward in the first place, and if we think there is a problem, which again the Government must do, or else there would be no need for further requirements of this kind, then why on earth would we not want to hear from the frontline—in the spirit of the intervention made by the right hon. Member for North Durham—what the university was doing, which would, by its nature, reveal the character and extent of the problems we have discussed?
The spirit that has emerged across the Committee—the point was well made by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington—is that we are trying to make this legislation as effective as it can be. That must involve communication between universities and the new body that is being established to ensure that the legislation has its effect. My amendment quite simply does that. I do not think it is in any way unhelpful to the Government’s intention. I do not think that any university that is ready and willing to do its job will resent it. I do not think that it necessarily involves great bureaucracy, although I take the point of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle that if it were to, we would need to review that. If a university said, “We cannot do this, because we have produced 10 pages, but the person who fulfils the new role wants a thesis or a book,” it would clearly have to be looked again. However, I am thinking a summary describing what the university is doing to meet its positive duties, as the amendment suggests.
I cannot see a reason in the world why, when the Minister rises to respond, no doubt preceded by the Opposition spokesman giving the amendment a warm welcome, she would not—I do not want to put words in her mouth, particularly given her new, elevated status—say, “John, we should have thought of this ourselves.” When she does, needless to say, I will immediately say it was simply a probing amendment intended to be helpful and supportive. In that spirit, I will leave further discussion to wiser heads than mine.
Mr Jones
I add my congratulations to the Minister on her promotion, although she tells me she does not receive any more remuneration for her extra work. We should possibly be arguing that she should join a trade union to argue for more, but I wish her well in her new role.
I look back nostalgically to a day when I knew where the Conservative party stood. It was the party of deregulation and cutting red tape, and at any Conservative party conference, attacking the monster of red tape that was strangling business and our public institutions would get a huge cheer. I find the world we live in today rather confusing because we have a Government who, in this Bill, seem to be intervening very clearly in universities and bringing in more regulation. The amendment from the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings adds more burdensome red tape for our academic institutions. It makes me wonder where the planets are aligning in the modern Conservative party, because the amendment would be onerous for academic institutions.
The problem is that this is a one-size-fits-all approach for all academic institutions, but we know they range hugely, from large universities to some very small further education colleges, whose capacity to take on this burden even annually would be limited, let alone quarterly. The party that used to pride itself on setting organisations free seems to want to restrain them, which is strange.
Emma Hardy
I am so pleased my right hon. Friend mentioned that, because when we think about higher education institutions we tend to think about those in the Russell Group such as Oxford or Cambridge, and not Hull College’s further education department, which has only a few hundred students and yet would be bound by everything in the Bill.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are many such institutions up and down the country. The Minister now has responsibility for the FE sector, which—this always annoys me—is treated as the poor relation in education by Governments. When we were in government, we did not do enough in that sector, but we know from my own constituency and others that many people would not get access to life chances and qualifications if it did not exist. More importantly, the colleges are community-based and have a good reputation as providers. Anything that adds to their burden is wrong.
Another problem is that there is no detail on what will be in the report. We would surely have to have a standardised, meaningful report. Somebody will have to come up with a matrix or form for it to be equal across all institutions. It will be pretty meaningless if it is left to institutions to decide.
Sir John Hayes
That is sensible. One reason why I tabled the amendment was to ensure a degree of consistency across universities. because everyone has to produce the report, and all universities will be expected to behave consistently. The right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion is a good one, and a straightforward means of achieving that consistency could be provided by the new office.
Mr Jones
It could but, again, there is a problem because that detail is not in the amendment. There is a difference between a huge academic institution and a small FE college, and I do not know how we get one standard format to deal with that.
There is another issue, which was mentioned in the evidence. The amendment says:
“a report detailing the steps their organisation has undertaken to fulfil its positive duties under subsection (2)”.
That is about freedom of information. It comes back to the problem with this legislation and what we define as freedom of speech. Not only would we need a form or standardised format across all the institutions, but we would need to try and get a definition of what that freedom of speech is. We struggled with that with all the witnesses. It is a bit like motherhood and apple pie: we are all in favour of freedom of speech, but trying to define it is very difficult, especially if we want to ensure that all institutions promote the same thing, because there might be very different interpretations of what the duties would be, and I can see practical difficulties in that.
The right hon. Gentleman, who I have great affection for and have worked closely with, said that the Government must think there is a problem. Well, that is the problem with the entire piece of legislation—it is legislation looking for a problem, rather than solving an existing problem. The onus it will put on universities and the higher education sector is impractical.
Also, what is the sanction if, for example, an institution does not submit its report? What happens if it does not do something? We need criteria in the reporting that says, “You have to do X, Y and Z to meet this threshold” or whatever it is we are trying to achieve. Again, what is the sanction? What happens if an institution says, “I am just not bothering to do this”, or, “I do not have time”? Some might take a principled stand and say, “We are not going to do it.” What is the sanction and where does it say in the Bill, “You have to do it”? So there is a problem there. Are we suggesting that funding or other things should be withdrawn?
That comes back to my big concern about the Bill. I have said it before and I will say it again: it is a very un-Conservative approach to this sector, for the state to interfere directly in organisations that should have the ability to self-govern. What they want to achieve is ensuring that young people have a fulfilling and rich academic education, as we all do. It comes back to the issue of where the legislation lies; as well-intentioned as it may be, there are huge problems with it. It would be not only burdensome, but practically impossible to implement.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister, although, having sat in the shadow Cabinet, I am not completely sure that she will enjoy sitting in the full Cabinet. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings said that he did not want to put words in the Minister’s mouth and then went on to put words in my mouth. I want to be absolutely clear, on every occasion, that I think the Bill is an unwarranted intervention. It is completely unnecessary and on the edge of being crackers. However, we will try to make the best of a bad job.
I understand where the right hon. Gentleman is coming from: there has to be a line of accountability. It should be public, open and transparent, and doing the reports is one way. However, my problem is that it is heavy on regulation. I thought that there was a rule in the Government: one regulation in, one regulation out. I look forward to hearing which regulation is coming out to accommodate this going in.
I have worked in local government, both elected and as a civil servant. We know what will happen to this requirement if it is on a quarterly basis. It will either be a simple checklist and that is it—almost meaningless—or it will become a burden that some institutions will fail to fulfil effectively. Therefore, I think it is best left to the annual reports undertaken by the universities and colleges, rather than quarterly reports.
Sir John Hayes
I take careful note of the point made about regulating bureaucracy. However, the risk of not doing it this way is that the new office and, in particular, the individual will become more intrusive. The mission of that office and individual will be to ensure that the Act, as it will then be, is being implemented, and no doubt that inquiries, questions, complaints and all kinds of things will be made to that office. Contrary to his suggestion, I believe that my amendment would simplify the system, in a curious kind of way. It may well leave universities in a rather better place than they would otherwise be.
John McDonnell
The problem is that it will either simplify it to the extent that it becomes meaningless—just a tick-box exercise—or it will become a voluminous burden placed on colleges, when some do not have the resources to respond in that way. I offer this suggestion in the spirit of compromise: it would be best left to the Office for Students, along with the new director, which is already charged with the overview of the operation of the legislation. It would be best for them to consult with the relevant authorities and the colleges themselves, and in due course come back with an appropriate procedure. I would not want to fetter their discretion with an amendment like this at this stage.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I add my personal congratulations to the Minister on her expanded responsibilities. After yesterday’s sitting, I hope that she will have a lot of time to apply to the guidance that we discussed, in addition to all her new responsibilities. I am sure she will, and that she will have many more staff to support her. I wish her well.
I understand where the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is coming from with the amendment. As we have heard throughout our proceedings, this piece of legislation is not only burdensome—and, we argue, not necessary—but has not been fully thought through. It seems to have been rushed. The 90-odd—whatever number—amendments we may be up to now seem to suggest that there is a lot wrong with the Bill.
My concern, as has been articulated by my right hon. Friends the Members for North Durham and for Hayes and Harlington and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, is about the additional work that the Bill will lead to for students, student unions and universities, as was well said. I think back to the days of 2010 and what might be described as the Cameron Government, and there was a great blaze of “We are going to rip up legislation”, or, “We are going to reduce all the red tape and burden on business and organisations”, and yet here we are with a Government who seem to be acting in quite the reverse way. They seem to be putting more and more constraints on businesses and the public sector.
Mr Jones
I remember those days with affection, because at least we knew where the Tory party was. The Tories said that they would have a “bonfire of red tape”. Now, not only do we have an Administration for which that is smouldering embers, but we have the Government putting fuel on to that fire, rather than putting it out.
Matt Western
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. I am just not sure where this reporting will end. Will we end up with universities having to report about whether people are tweeting from a particular political persuasion, or the political leanings and make-up of those on the governing board, and so on? I think that is an alarming direction to be going in.
Emma Hardy
As we recall, the previous Secretary of State for Education wrote two letters to the OfS. In both those letters, he demanded that it reduce the amount of regulation given to universities, so I am not sure how the amendment stands with the directions of the now previous Secretary of State.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is right, and her experience is appreciated and valued. I think we have a problem, in that the OfS is a bit of a misnomer. I am not entirely sure that its interests are aimed at students, or whether its responsibilities are more towards the institutions or, increasingly, about being an office for Government, as opposed to an Office for Students.
Do we have reporting on the number of incidents of violence against women? Do we have reporting data on mental health incidents and issues? There are so many important and pressing issues among our student communities across the country, but those are not being listened to by the OfS. I would have thought that, given it is a few years since its inception and it has a new chair, surely those are the sorts of issues that its chair would want to get into—to understand what is of concern to the student body, as opposed to what is of concern to the Government.
With the idea of having the report—we have debated what it might look like—I think back to the days of my previous role in business and, in a subsidiary organisation, of the reporting that would go to head office. How should it look, or was it just something we knew would just sit on a shelf and never really get looked at? It helped those in head office that they had those reports.
The crucial thing, I would say, is that with any move by the OfS, it has to look at systems of standardising the data that comes in on the areas that I have been discussing—mental health, violence against women, accommodation and so on—before it starts to introduce the burdens. As was said in the Government’s own impact assessment, the costs will already be something like £48 million over 10 years—the burden of this legislation, even before we get into quarterly submissions as well. At a time when universities and higher education institutions are under huge pressure, that is an unnecessary additional request.
Sir John Hayes
This has been a useful discussion. We have to be clear about what the director for freedom of speech and academic freedom within the Office for Students will do. Will he be driven by queries and complaints, which is perfectly possible? Is he there to monitor, to have a proactive monitoring role? Will he be a mentor and guide, and advise? Indications so far are that guidance will be issued and be sufficient to ensure the consistency I called for earlier, but to streamline the process rather than to complicate it, having a bottom-up rather than top-down approach—in other words, asking the universities themselves to make it clear how they will interpret and enact the duty—would seem to be a simpler process than many of the other things that I have described?
Matt Western
That could be the case—I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The concern overall is about the number of reports. It could well be that guidance can assist in the delivery of that, but we will see. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mentioned, the criteria and what leads to sanction are important to establish.
Finally, we have to be careful about the number of demands on the universities, and we have to be consistent about how frequently we want those reports to be provided. Looking at the other amendments in which we ask for reporting from universities or from the OfS, there is some inconsistency—amendment 73 tabled by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings and our amendments 54 and 79. We have to have consistency. It would have much more weight if there were an annual report, which everyone knew they were working towards. With the introduction of the REF and the TEF—the research and teaching excellence frameworks—and so on, there are huge demands on the institutions.
Dr Greg Walker of MillionPlus made it absolutely clear—he was one of many to be quite outspoken—in saying that the Bill should
“avoid adding unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on universities which would risk diverting resources away from the frontline education of students.”
That is what the university institutions, and the NUS and the student unions want as well. That is not to defer, delay or prevaricate about understanding the need for reporting. Let us ensure that the reporting that is required, or requested, by the OfS is consistent and useable, as opposed to being about the sorts of issues that many on the Opposition Benches have suggested.
The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)
Thank you, Sir Christopher, and thank you for your kind words and those of other Committee members.
The amendment seeks to require providers to report quarterly to the Office for Students on how they are meeting their freedom of speech duties. The duties in the Bill, including those relating to the OfS, sit alongside duties already set out in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.
The OfS regulates higher education through a register of higher education providers. It imposes initial and ongoing conditions of registration on providers, and monitors and enforces their compliance. There are already clear requirements for registered providers to give information to the OfS. Under the existing registration conditions, providers must provide the OfS with such information as it may require for the purposes of performing its functions. Providers must also take steps to co-operate with reasonable requests made by the OfS in its monitoring or investigation work. That may include providing explanations or making documents available.
The information requirements form part of a mandatory registration condition under section 8 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, and have been implemented by the OfS via registration condition F3. There are also mandatory registration conditions relating to governance, which ensure that providers have the necessary governing documents and management systems in place to comply with their registration conditions, including those concerning freedom of speech.
In addition to those existing requirements, clause 5 of the Bill will provide for new mandatory registration conditions relating to freedom of speech. The creation of the role of director for freedom of speech and academic freedom under clause 8 will mean that there is an ongoing focus on this area.
In light of that, I hope that the Committee shares my concern that the amendment would create an unnecessary bureaucratic burden on higher education providers. I will, however, reflect on the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings and other members of the Committee. Nevertheless, I believe that there are already sufficient powers in existing legislation to enable the OfS to request information and to monitor and enforce providers’ duties effectively.
Matt Western
I hope that the Minister will agree with me—with us, perhaps. The evidence that the Free Speech Union provided included a whole list of what it described as “incidents”. It recorded a plethora of them, but they were clearly very diverse. How those might be categorised into some sort of report would be extremely difficult. Also, something we picked up from the vice-president of the NUS was how she believed that this reporting, this burden, and much of the legislation, will have the reverse effect, impacting on so many of the smaller institutions. That reverse chilling effect might lead to less free speech on our campuses, whatever shape and size they might be.
Michelle Donelan
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the reverse effect. A key part of the legislation is that it will place a duty on providers to promote free speech. If the opposite were happening, they would contravene the Bill and the director would step in.
Another concern with the amendment is that it would be out of kilter with the approach taken to other registration conditions. As Opposition Members have said, so many things could be asked of the OfS on reporting and our providers. There is a balance to strike. I remind Members that, a year ago, the Government made a commitment to reduce bureaucracy for our higher education providers. A further information requirement, in addition to what is already in place, would increase bureaucracy and the burden on providers. I am not convinced that there is a clear need.
I trust that the Committee will agree that we do not wish to impose a further burden and that the amendment is not necessary. However, I will continue to reflect on the points made in the debate.
Sir John Hayes
I do not agree with the Minister on this. The risk is that the new director for freedom of speech and academic freedom will be driven, as I implied earlier, by queries and complaints. The Minister emphasised in her response the investigative role of that individual. That risks inconsistency, rather than consistency. The amendment I tabled might be imperfect in its detail—I am always prepared to concede that point, because Government have at their disposal all sorts of clever people who can draw up amendments far more carefully than I can—but I think that creating openness and a degree of consistency and transparency in the process is important.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I am listening to what my right hon. Friend said, and I heard what the Minister said, but is not the mischief that my right hon. Friend is seeking to address the fact that in universities, challenges to freedom of speech are so widespread—so entrenched, in many cases—that there needs to be real impetus to engender change? That is what this positive obligation would impose, so that we do not see again—as in the King’s study—that 25% of students, or half a million people, say that they feel inhibited from speaking freely. If, over time, there are much healthier reports, the frequency of the report that he has suggested could perhaps be reduced, but initially we need this energy and impetus urgently.
Sir John Hayes
Yes, I did not emphasise that point in my opening remarks, or just now, so it is important to say how serious we are about this, and to send that signal to universities; my hon. Friend is right. However, from the Government’s point of view, my suggestion would create more clarity about the role of the new director. It is important that during the passage of the legislation, we learn a bit more about how his office will work within the Office for Students. At the very least, I hope that the Minister will agree to be clearer about that, because we do not quite know how proactive or reactive that individual will be. As the legislation progresses, universities deserve that clarity, as do Members of this House and parliamentarians in the other place.
Matt Western
I actually agree. What is the new role? What is the remit of the director of free speech and academic freedom? It is not clear just how powerful that individual will be, what size the department will be, and how far-reaching those powers will be. The right hon. Gentleman’s point is extremely well made and very important. One of the Opposition’s amendments relates to how that person should be appointed and what reporting back there should be from them and that department. The key thing will be to appoint that person in the light of a set of criteria that set out the intention for that role.
Sir John Hayes
I will, but shall I answer that intervention first. I do not want to build up a catalogue of interventions; I will not know which one to deal with in which order.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington is right; creating some structure around that role is important. I suppose that, in part, is what the amendment does: try to create more certainty. There is a balance between the proactive and the reactive. There is the balance between what is expected of universities, and what they feed into the process, and what is fed to them from the centre. This is a complex matter, because it is new territory for universities and for Government. It will be important to create more understanding of the role, as he suggests. I give way to the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington.
John McDonnell
I think we are getting there. The spirit of the matter that the right hon. Gentleman is laying before us is right. However, for some of us, there is anxiety about quarterly reports and their onerous nature; they will become like Soviet tractor production records if we are not careful. That is why amendment 79, tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, refers to an annual report. In that way it becomes manageable. That is all we are suggesting; we agree with the spirit of the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion.
Sir John Hayes
I had always assumed that the right hon. Gentleman was fonder of five-year plans than me.
John McDonnell
We need to have a discussion about the different tendencies of socialism, because actually Stalin—no, we had better not go there.
Sir John Hayes
I tell you what: I will make the right hon. Gentleman an offer. I think we should have lunch or dinner.
Sir John Hayes
I happily give way to the hon. Gentleman, and then I will wrap up, because I know the Minister want to make progress. Did he want to intervene? Was it about Marxist-Leninism?
Matt Western
Not entirely, but on the point about tractor production—this is serious—if we think about the number of students arriving on campus this autumn, if there was some understanding or plan, that might have been more helpful than the slight chaos that many universities will face as a result of the A-level results.
Sir John Hayes
I start with the assumption that we will have to engender some good will towards the process, because the aim is for universities to be co-operative. I certainly would not want to make this an attack on the sector—that is not how I see it—but it is a requirement on the sector. Not all obligations are by their nature antagonistic. My aim in proposing the amendment is to say to universities, “Look, describe what you are doing and how you are doing it, pertinently, briefly and coherently.”
It may well be that once the new director is in place, he finds some other means—not this quarterly report—of eliciting this information from universities, but my purpose in putting the amendment forward was to create greater certainty and clarity in the minds of universities and those who are profoundly concerned about free speech and its absence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton and I are, and, moreover, to send a signal about how serious the duties are. I re-emphasise that all the witness statements we received said that the Bill was significant, and many regarded it as essential.
Matt Western
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham about criteria and sanction? We have to be very careful, because there are real concerns that an appointment could be political and that, if we do not have the criteria clearly established and laid out, where there are those in the OFS who are incredibly political, and who have certain institutions in their crosshairs, they will be gunning for those institutions.
Sir John Hayes
Yes, that is a fair point. Obligations necessitate some kind of sanction when people fail to meet them, do they not? That will also need to emerge in the course of our deliberations, either here, at a later stage, or in the other place. Maybe it will come in the guidance that we are promised from the new director.
The right hon. Member for North Durham was, as I was, a Minister in many Government Departments over a considerable time. Most of the people I dealt with in all those Departments would say to me—I would not be surprised if he found the same—“If you are clear about what you expect of us, we will build our plans around those expectations. If we know what we are obliged to do, we will develop a business plan to do it.” It is not always about what a Minister demands. It is about how clear they are about those demands. That is what I found with the various agencies and organisations I worked with as a Minister in different spheres of Government.
I hear what the Minister says. She has been very generous in saying she will reflect on the point. I respect that and thank her. I think we will return to this matter of being absolutely certain about what universities will do next, the signal that is sent to them and the role of the new director. I have no doubt that that will continue to be debated before the Bill becomes an Act. I hear what the Minister says. I was probing, as she knows. I am grateful for the way she has dealt with the matter. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Matt Western
I beg to move amendment 75, in clause 1, page 3, line 9, at end insert—
“(e) the procedures to be adopted for consulting by ballot staff and students of the provider in making decision about whether to allow the use of premises, and on what terms, for events.”.
This amendment would provide the governing body with a democratic procedure for inviting or withholding invitations to speakers.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 76, in clause 1, page 3, line 9, at end insert—
“(2A) The provider must have particular regard to the result of a consultative ballot of its staff and students in making decisions about whether to allow the use of premises and on what terms.”.
This amendment would provide the governing body with a democratic procedure for inviting or withholding invitations to speakers.
Amendment 74, in clause 1, page 3, line 20, at end insert—
“(6) The Code of Practice shall include procedures to be followed to ensure the right of peaceful protest by staff, students and other interested parties.
(7) The Code of Practice shall include procedures for consulting recognised staff unions and student unions on amendments to the code of practice.”.
This amendment would ensure that university authorities set out procedures to facilitate peaceful protest on campus, and to engage with campus stakeholders on amendments to the code.
Matt Western
I will address these amendments in turn. While I appreciate the three of them being grouped together, the essence of the amendments is about ensuring the retention of democracy within our institutions, whether that be among staff, students or the entire body. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, who inputted the content of these amendments and is keen to speak to them.
It was interesting to hear from Danny Stone from the Antisemitism Policy Trust, who referenced the Manchester principles, which he worked hard on back in the day. Under those principles, an event was first advertised, in order to allow students to object if they thought it necessary. That is important. Amendments 75 and 76 echo the sentiment of the Manchester principles. We also heard in the evidence sessions from Professor Jonathan Grant from King’s College London about the work that KCL and other institutions have done. He said,
“What we did at King’s was work with our student union in developing a joint statement modelled on the Chicago principles and signed by both the president of the student union and the president of King’s College London. On the back of that, we developed a committee that reviewed all so-called high-risk events. That committee was made up of equal numbers of university staff, academics and professional staff, and students. It made recommendations to the senior vice-principal for operations and, potentially, to the principal. In my mind, creating a sort of co-production and co-creation process around managing those events was deeply beneficial because”,
as Professor Layzell had said,
“both sides started having conversations about the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable. Both groups then owned the process and the mitigations thereafter.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 13 September 2021; c. 123, Q268.]
The approach of KCL, University College London and many other institutions has been to establish these sorts of co-production and co-operative processes to ensure the rights to free speech are heard, but within an understanding and responsibility to the Equality Act 2010. That shows changes could have been put in place across the sector if the Government had consulted and engaged more openly with the sector, and looked at the likes of KCL, UCL and others to see best practice, what can be done, and what could be developed.
In response to the comments made by Professor Grant, Professor Layzell said that Universities UK would absolutely support that approach, and that what Professor Grant was saying was right. This can be achieved and it could have been achieved. That underlines the belief right across the sector that this legislation is unnecessary. Their process and these amendments seek to ensure the inclusion of all voices and all relevant parties interested in free speech on campus, and to achieve the cultural effect the Government are trying to achieve. We believe that, through a democratic process and through the engagement of all parties, that could have been, and could still be, achieved. As many have said, the legislation is a real sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut.
I turn to amendment 74 on the countervailing right to peaceful protest by staff, students and other interested parties. We seem to be losing some sort of perspective on how important protest is. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, there is a move by the Government to suppress freedom of speech and people’s right to protest on whatever it may be, whether they be on the right, the left or anywhere in between. People have different views, and they should be allowed to express them. Protest is just one simple form of freedom of speech. I am sure, Sir Christopher, that you will appreciate that. Back in your days as a student, you would have wanted to exercise that right just as much as anyone else.
Emma Hardy
One of the contradictions that I find with the Bill is that it gives the right to freedom of speech anywhere at any time within a university; however, under the Government’s new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, they wish to ban protest in Parliament Square. It seems slightly muddled.
Matt Western
We could be slightly cynical. I would not personally suggest this, but some might suggest that it is about freedom of speech as long as your speech is the sort of speech that the Government want to hear, as opposed to a genuine desire to have freedom of speech. You have to look at the legislation in the context of not just the PCSC Bill but what is going on with our museums. Sir Charles Dunstone, who I thought was once upon a time a Conservative donor, has resigned from the Royal Museums Greenwich because of the interference coming from the Government.
That echoes the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham that there is meddling, interference, and an authoritarian chill going on from No. 10. I do not necessarily believe that the Minister thinks or behaves like that, but an incredibly centralising force is coming through from the Government. Trevor Phillips, in his evidence, said:
“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.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 7 September 2021; c. 26, Q50.]
We have that right presently, but it is being challenged by the Government. We need to remind ourselves how important freedom of speech is, and how important protest is to it.
Professor Whittle, who I had heard of and read about, gave quite moving evidence. He said:
“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.’”
It is really important that wherever we may be coming from we have the opportunity to protest and to put across our point of view, exercising our freedom of speech. He added:
“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…having no way of expressing that without appearing to challenge somebody’s right to free speech.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 7 September 2021; c. 38, Q71.]
That was picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, who said to him:
“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.”
He replied:
“Absolutely. Legitimate protest within universities is an absolute must.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 7 September 2021; c. 44, Q81.]
What would universities be without protest? What would they be without true free speech? Amendment 74 serves to provide that protection of protest—a physical manifestation of freedom of speech and academic freedom.
John McDonnell
Picking up from where my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington left off, for absolute clarity, this section deals with the code of practice, which is one of the most significant elements of the Bill. That is why we need to be more explicit about the range of factors it takes into account.
I am trying to envisage how this legislation will be implemented. We need to look at the most difficult scenarios, not the easiest ones where we have laws that would prevent certain speakers from being hosted at universities because of the nature of the organisations they are associated with or the views they express. My anxieties are about the cases that are not clear cut but that can have a real impact on a community. The best way of dealing with that is to ensure that there is a process of engagement with the communities involved––the students and staff and so on. To democratise that as much as possible, I have suggested in one amendment a balloting procedure, but it does not have to be that; it could be other forms of consultation.
Full involvement is the best way of resolving those difficult issues that are not absolutely clear cut, because that way people are brought along. In addition, we need to establish a process whereby people can engage in expressing a view against a decision with which they disagree. That could be about preventing a speaker from coming on––Sir Christopher, you have had that experience in the past, although I am not sure about the level of riotous behaviour––or allowing a speaker with whom people fundamentally disagree. We have to engage and enable that process to take place or it will spill out in other forms.
The other day, someone explained to me what an arc of narrative is, so I am going to try an arc of narrative. If I start with a story that seems completely unrelated, I promise that we will get there in the end. It is a serious matter drawn from my experience in my own community 40 years ago. A young Asian man was racially murdered in Southall. I live in Hayes, literally half an hour down the road. Community concern was expressed about the lack of policing and the investigation. It was a contentious issue in the community that got national coverage. Then far right groups seized on it.
Hon. Members will remember that in the late 1970s, we had the National Front in its worst forms, and it decided to march through Southall. I had not been elected to any position at that time so I was not heavily engaged, but in my view as a community activist and local resident, the lack of community engagement meant that the authorities did not fully understand the scale of anxiety, insecurity and anger in the local community. The march took place and there was a riot. The interesting thing was that it was not just a riot of protesters: the police lost control, so it was a police riot, too. A young man called Blair Peach was killed. We went on a commemorative walk the following week. It was an appalling story that took place in the heart of our local community.
The lesson to learn from that was to ask whether the community, liaising with the police and all the other authorities, should have allowed that march to go through. The unrest, the violence that took place and the complete lack of control from all angles was almost inevitable. We learned from that, so now judgments are made about whether a particular provocative act, such as a march or something like it, is allowed to take place in certain communities.
What the police have found—I resent what is happening in the new police Bill, which is going through Parliament, because I think it is inappropriate and unnecessary—is that if an action was thought to be provocative in that way, there would be widespread consultation in the community. The police would make a judgment, working with the local authority, local councillors, community groups and others, about whether that march should be allowed to go ahead. We are working on that in my local community now. My worry is that if we do not have in this Bill some process and procedure of engagement with all interested parties, including the students and the staff, the enforcement of the legislation could become heavy-handed and provoke a unintended reaction. We need to think that through.
Some Members have been here longer than me and have dealt with these things for longer than I have, but when considering legislation, is it not always best to take the worst scenario and to legislate for that? That does not undermine the process overall, but it builds in safeguards. The amendment, which is not provocative in any way, would build in the safeguard of ensuring, first, that we had a consultative procedure with staff and students; perhaps elements in the local community will want to engage, as well. Building in a consultative procedure that would enable the university authorities to make a wiser decision. They might completely ignore the consultations, and that is their right, but they should at least have regard to them.
Secondly, I want to go a bit further because I am fundamentally a democrat, despite allegations of Stalinism from certain sides. I fundamentally believe that the best form of consultation is a ballot. People do not necessarily have to abide by it, but a ballot does test the strength of feeling and balance of judgment of the participants—the staff and the students themselves.
Let us consider a belt-and-braces approach. A consultation should be undertaken, and it might include a ballot, depending on what amendment we consider appropriate. We know that, even though views have been listened to, the decision may not suit some people and they might still be anxious or angry about it, so we need to build in the ability and the right for people to protest as well. That is a pragmatic way to deal with issues that are as contentious as this. If we do not build in such procedures, what do we get? We get late 1970s Southall, where people are angry and say, “No one has listened to us. They have allowed this to happen.” People pour on to the streets, the police overreact, and a young man is killed.
I do not want to exaggerate the situation. I am just saying let us at least build into the legislation the possibility that these things might go wrong or go awry. Sometimes things will go awry anyway, but at least we would know we had done our best to undermine the chances of the legislation resulting in unforeseen events that damage the protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom, rather than enhance it.
That is why we tabled the amendments. There might be drafting issues that the Minister and the Committee might like to look at, but that is the spirit in which the amendments were tabled. I cannot see why anyone would disagree with it. The Bill is completely inappropriate and unnecessary, and it will cause more problems than it tackles, but at least let us try to minimise one potential problem, by a democratic process that we are trying to enhance as we sit in Committee today. That is the narrative arc. Thank you, Sir Christopher, for having patience with me. I nearly got there in the end, but perhaps not completely.
Matt Western
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, and for how he has articulated his argument. I remember the Blair Peach death and the events that led to it. I mentioned the Red Lion Square disorders during our evidence sessions. At the time, I did not recall that it involved a student from the University of Warwick, who was also killed while protesting against the rise of the fascist National Front. He was the first person to be killed in a protest for 55 years.
When I asked Professor Kaufmann about this, he said that the Bill
“is not really a public order Bill”.––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 13 September 2021; c. 90, Q183.]
I appreciate that it is not a public order Bill, but there are serious consequences, and we have talked about unintended consequences throughout. The kind of behaviours that can result from the lack of engagement and consultation, as my right hon. Friend described, could be very disturbing.
John McDonnell
That is my point. In legislation such as this, it is important to ensure that we identify the unintended consequences. That is what the amendments are all about. As I said, the best way of overcoming them is through maximum involvement and engagement with all those who are implicated in or affected by the Bill’s provisions.
We had a commemoration for Blair Peach only 18 months ago. I was with his widow. We had another commemoration, only a couple of months ago, because, as happens in some of our local communities, someone had stolen the plaque—but, never mind, it came back eventually. That reminded me of how, on contentious issues like this, where there is a distinction to be made between what someone says or does that is clearly illegal and what someone says or does that is just unacceptable—and dangerous in certain communities—there must be some mechanism by which judgment is made by the authorities involved. One of the best ways of informing that decision is through consultation, engagement, and, for me, a bit of democratic decision making too. That is all that the amendments do.
Sir John Hayes
The right hon. Gentleman is making a case about events. Public events, of course, include speakers, meetings, and so on. I presume that he is not extending that to the area of academic enquiry. There could not be such a debate about a research project or a piece of academic work, because, on that basis, he would be trying to democratise scientific thinking. I assume that he is speaking about one particular aspect of the Bill.
John McDonnell
That is a good point. I am trying to look pragmatically at what is happening on the ground, what would happen in practice, and the problems that could cause. This is almost certainly uniquely about specific events that will take place. They are the ones that are the most difficult, where we can see that protests can get out of hand if we do not accommodate for them.
Protests can also be provoked if we do not allow voices to be heard in some part of the process of decision making. It is a valid point to make. I am trying to look practically at how this legislation will roll out. The last thing we want is to be returning in a few years’ time with some form of event on our hands that provoked that scale of anger and protest because people did not have the right to have their say or participate in the decision making process.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend reminds me that one of the first acts of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) in 2010 when she became Home Secretary was to ban a march of the English Defence League in Bradford, not because she was a dangerous person undermining free speech, but because only nine years earlier, we had devastating race riots in Bradford that left a long scar on the community. I do not say that because I think there is a danger that the English Defence League will march through university campuses—although I do not rule it out. Because it was a public space, the Secretary of State had the ability in that instance to make a ruling that, even though what the English Defence League was marching about was legal in that it was not directly inciting hatred—many people say that it was doing so indirectly—there was a public order issue that she was concerned about. We need the ability in the code of practice for universities to look at that balance of ensuring public order and safety on their campuses.
Emma Hardy
I refer the Committee again to Sunder Katwala’s evidence. He said:
“I feel that an event at a student union, ‘No blacks in the England team—keep our team white,’ does not seem to be the kind of event that we want to protect, and yet that is lawful but reprehensible speech, which we want to stigmatise, even though it is free speech within the law.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 13 September 2021; c. 130, Q213.]
Unless we build some protection—some ability to consult—into the law, such events could take place. As our right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, they would be likely to lead to confrontation.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I agree. I am sure that the Minister will point to clause 1 and proposed new section A2(2) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which provides that universities must create a code of practice that considers the conduct required of people speaking at the university. She may say that that is sufficient, but given that the Bill provides for a code of practice, it is a perfect time to consider how it is drawn up. It is not the Opposition saying that there should be a code of practice or that there should be limits on how people behave in public meetings or even in academic practice; the Government have included the provision. The Government are saying that universities must have a system to determine and delineate.
However, we have heard that what management thinks is acceptable is often very different from what the academic community and students find acceptable. Management might be motivated by thinking about good PR and what looks good in their recruitment, whereas academics might consider what is important for academic rigour, creating new debate and so on. The amendments are important because they propose including students and staff in the discussion about and creation of the code, and therefore the voting to approve it. Without including them, there is a danger that the code of conduct will be written up and created by universities and do everything that some people do not want it to do.
John McDonnell
The point of including in amendment 74 a consultation process on amendments is that things change over time. There are bound to be amendments to the code over time, so is not it better to ensure that a consultation process is built into the drafting? We talked in previous sittings about how attitudes to LGBT issues have changed. That sort of thing has to be reflected in any codes in future. That is just a pragmatic approach to how we develop.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Amendment 75 allows for consultation on the uses of premises, and would ensure the issue was covered by the code. As he mentions, amendment 74 is about future amendments to the code.
The Education Act 1994, introduced by a Conservative Government, regulated how student unions affiliate and who can affiliate with them, and created a democratic element to that. The Act requires a certain threshold of student turnout, and regular student polling to ensure that student unions do not affiliate with organisations that the student body might no longer feel it appropriate to affiliate with. That is why, up and down the country, student unions must have regular ballots on whether they should continue to affiliate with the National Union of Students. Some student unions—very few—choose not to affiliate with it. Southampton was one in my day, although it might have affiliated since; I cannot keep up with these things. Those requirements are quite right.
The procedures introduced by the Bill, particularly about a code of conduct that will regulate who can speak on campus and how, need to have that democratic aim. I would be more than happy if the Minister said, “This isn’t quite the wording. We want to incorporate some of the wording from the 1994 Act, as there are some parallels.” That would be great. However, there needs to be an appreciation of how students and staff will be balloted on both the use of premises and, more broadly, on the creation of the code of conduct and any amendment of it. Otherwise, there is real danger that the code will be written for a university’s public relations purposes, rather than to ensure a university’s academic rigour.
Fiona Bruce
I have listened to the debate, and I am troubled by amendments 75 and 76. I believe I heard the the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington say that the best form of consultation is ballot. I would normally construe that to mean a secret ballot. I am happy to be corrected if I misinterpreted his words. The whole aim of the Bill is to promote and secure freedom of speech—to open up dialogue at universities. We could end up with the almost bizarre situation in which people could vote in a secret ballot for what witnesses described as the monoculture, or even vote a certain way because of prejudice against a particular speaker, without having to give any reason why. I strongly believe that if the decision is made not to allow a speaker, or not allow the use of premises, those making that decision should publicly justify it; that goes to the heart of the Bill.
Michelle Donelan
I will try to be brief and not take interventions, given the time. Amendment 74 seeks to ensure that university authorities set out procedures to facilitate peaceful protest on campus and to engage with campus stakeholders on amendments to the code of practice. Amendments 75 and 76 would require the governing body to have a democratic procedure for decisions taken on use of their premises, and a provider would have to have particular regard to that procedure.
Proposed new section A2 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 will require registered higher education providers to maintain a code of practice, as they are already required to under section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. Providers will, of course, need to revisit their existing codes after Royal Assent to ensure that they are fit for purpose and comply with the new duties of the Bill.
To help providers to update their codes, the Office for Students will in due course issue comprehensive guidance about what should be included in a code of practice. As well as setting out the provider’s values relating to freedom of speech and how those values uphold freedom of speech, the code of practice must set out the procedures to be followed when organising meetings and activities, as well as the conduct required in connection with them, and the criteria for decision making on the use of premises. This will ensure that individuals on campus are aware of the ways in which freedom of speech and academic freedom are effectively secured by the provider, and will provide guidance on how individuals can go about exercising their freedom of speech.
Although we encourage providers to work with their university community to ensure these values are upheld in a transparent way, we do not think there is a need to consult on subsequent changes to the code, as would be required under amendment 74. As for the right to peaceful protest, which is also covered by amendment 74, this is a fundamental tool of civic expression. It is in itself an aspect of freedom of speech, and so it is protected by the Bill. For example, if there is a protest against an academic because they have said something controversial but lawful, providers will need to decide what they can do that is reasonably practical to ensure that that academic can speak freely, but without limiting the peaceful protest surrounding them. Proposed new section A2(3) allows providers to include in their code such other matters as they think appropriate. That could include provision on the right to protest as a key part of freedom of speech.
Turning to amendments 75 and 76, it is intended that the code of practice should facilitate the discharge of the freedom of speech duty. A provider could choose to include a procedure for a ballot to assist with selecting speakers in the first place, but to insist on one would be overly bureaucratic. More significantly, one of the aims of the Bill is to secure the freedom of speech of everybody on campus, including those with minority viewpoints. It would not, therefore, be right to mandate a process that would give the majority a right that might act as an effective veto over decision making on events and, in effect, the free speech of minorities.
I hope that Members are reassured that nothing in this Bill restricts the right to protest, and that the requirements for the content of a provider’s code of practice are appropriate as drafted.
Matt Western
I do not have any points to add. I simply wish to push all three amendments to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Building Safety Bill (Sixth sitting)
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members that it is only in order to debate the specific group of amendments or clauses before the Committee. It is not in order to have a general debate on the Bill as per Second Reading or Third Reading.
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
Welcome to the Chair, Mr Davies; it is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship.
After that brief hiatus, I am pleased to return to consideration of the Opposition’s amendment 11. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and his colleagues for raising the important issue of climate change and the role of the new Building Safety Regulator. Because of the issues that we have with the amendment, I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept it, but I appreciate the opportunity that it affords us to set out the regulator’s new role in this area and the wider action that the Government are taking. I will focus on three areas of concern: the existing powers that the regulator will be able to utilise; the levers available elsewhere in Government; and the confusion that the amendment would, I am sure unintentionally, cause.
I can assure the Committee that the objectives of the Building Safety Regulator and its functions already give the regulator the remit it needs to focus on ensuring that our building regulatory regime takes the appropriate steps to mitigate the effects of climate change. The existing statutory objective around securing safety would cover safety issues resulting from climate change, including risks of overheating. I also draw the Committee’s attention to the regulator’s objective to improve the standard of buildings. Standards are defined broadly by clause 29, which we shall come to in due course.
Standards will include all the matters that can be dealt with by the building regulations. Section 1 to the Building Act 1984 ensures that building regulations can cover sustainable development, the protection or enhancement of the environment, and furthering the conservation of fuel and power. Paragraph 8(5A) of schedule 1 to the Building Act also allows for building regulations to cover flood resistance and flood resilience.
The Building Safety Regulator will be under a duty, under clause 5, to keep the safety and standards of buildings under review, including safety issues relating to the building, such as overheating or flooding. The regulator will be able to recommend to Ministers or to industry changes needed to buildings and building standards to mitigate those issues. Therefore, the regulator will already have an important remit to provide independent advice to Ministers and industry on ensuring that building standards are appropriate and mitigate the effects of climate change.
It is also important that the role of the Building Safety Regulator is seen alongside action that the Government are already taking to ensure that building standards are improved to tackle the challenge of climate change and ensure that homes are built more energy-efficiently and in a way that is better for our environment, as my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud and for West Bromwich West alluded to. The Government’s new future homes standard will mean that from 2025 homes built to that standard will produce at least 75% fewer CO2 emissions compared with those built to current standards. To pave the way to 2025, we are making changes now to part L of the approved documents to ensure that new buildings, both domestic and non-domestic, produce meaningfully fewer CO2 emissions.
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that clause 5 already deals with the issues set out in the amendment and that it is better to allow the Building Safety Regulator to lead on this work on building safety?
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, which I will come to later in my remarks. We want to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator has a clear remit and that its responsibilities are not confused or occluded by too much unnecessary verbiage.
The future homes standard will mean that homes in this country are fit for the future, better for the environment and affordable for consumers to heat, with low-carbon heating and very high fabric standards. We will be introducing a future building standard that will ensure that buildings that we use every day—cafés, shops, cinemas—will also be better built to ensure that they are more energy-efficient and produce fewer CO2 emissions.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for assuring us that the building regulations will be amended to take account of climate change. He mentioned addressing the issue of the heating of buildings in the future being low carbon. Many of the flats built in the last 20 years in my constituency suffer from the opposite problem and are impossible to cool. Will the building regulations also take into account the cooling of residential accommodation and buildings for other uses to ensure that they stay within a reasonable temperature for human use?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for introducing that matter. She will know that we look frequently at issues such as the heating and overheating of properties, the sizes of windows and ventilation. These are matters for building regulation, but they are not specifically matters for this Bill or for the Building Safety Regulator.
The Committee should also consider the risk involved in giving the Building Safety Regulator an explicit objective focused on coastal erosion and flooding. That approach risks confusing the role of the regulator by giving it an objective to tackle issues where other Government bodies have been given the lead. The Building Safety Regulator does not have the levers that other Government bodies and agencies have to deliver that objective.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with the interventions he is taking. He has made a good point about the Building Safety Regulator not necessarily having the levers, but does he agree that it will be imperative for the BSR to ensure that it engages proactively with all the different Government stakeholders that do have the levers to pull, to ensure that, irrespective of the limitations it may have as a stand-alone organisation, it can still achieve the broader objective that this amendment seeks to articulate?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, we want the Building Safety Regulator to consult with its peers across the sector, including with other Government agencies. As we work our way through the Bill, my hon. Friend will see that that is an objective.
The location of buildings is primarily an issue for the planning system. The Building Safety Regulator will have responsibility for the construction materials and the design, construction and occupation of buildings. My Department is responsible for planning, and I take that responsibility very seriously, hence our consultation on a planning reform Bill—
Christopher Pincher
The Committee will see the bones of it—the hon. Member for Weaver Vale may be about to ask me about that—very soon.
Mike Amesbury
For the sake clarity on gateway 1, what responsibilities will the Building Safety Regulator have in that journey?
Christopher Pincher
We want the Building Safety Regulator to have responsibilities with respect to gateway 1, and that will become clear to the hon. Gentleman as we address further clauses. I beg him to have patience, and he will see that there is a clear responsibility and involvement of the BSR.
We work closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on planning issues around flooding. However, the Building Safety Regulator is not designed to replicate or oversee the planning system. The planning system already ensures that the risks outlined in the hon. Gentleman’s amendment are considered in the decision-making process. Specifically, the national planning policy framework sets out that development plans should take a proactive approach to mitigating and adapting to climate change, taking into account the long-term implications for flood risk, coastal change and the risk of overheating from rising temperatures.
Tackling flooding and coastal erosion are also critical issues, as the hon. Gentleman rightly acknowledges. The Environment Agency supervises and works with other organisations to manage the risk of flooding and coastal erosion in England. It also directly manages flood risk from main rivers, the sea and reservoirs. It would therefore not be right for the Building Safety Regulator to replicate that important role. Tackling flooding and erosion is a priority for DEFRA and the EA, and the Government are investing £5.2 billion to build 2,000 new flood defences across the country over the next six years. That investment will better protect 336,000 properties from flooding and coastal erosion.
I welcome the opportunity to debate the action the Government are taking to mitigate the effects of climate change. That includes—as part of clause 3—creating a new Building Safety Regulator that will provide independent advice to Ministers on how building standards need to change to effectively mitigate climate change. I do not believe, however, that the amendment would have the effect that the hon. Gentleman wishes. It would confuse the role of the Building Safety Regulator, giving it an objective that would be hard to deliver when other bodies lead on crucial elements and are actually responsible for that objective. It would give the Building Safety Regulator responsibility without power, and I do not think that that is a sensible way to build agencies and undertake good governance.
The Building Safety Regulator will have the best chance of success with two clear objectives around the safety and standards of buildings, on which it has clear levers to deliver. In the light of those points and of the reassurances that I have provided, I hope that the Committee will recognise that the powers and objectives that we have set out for the Building Safety Regulator are sufficient to undertake the law as required, with respect to climate change. Other Government agencies, such as the Environment Agency, are also undertaking that important work. I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Mike Amesbury
I am not going to force the matter to a Division, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mike Amesbury
I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 3, page 2, line 33, at end insert—
“(6) In this Part, ‘safety’ means risk of harm arising from the location, construction or operation of buildings which may injure the health and wellbeing of the individual.”
This amendment defines safety within this part of the Bill.
Mike Amesbury
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. For many of us in this room our homes have been a place of sanctuary and safety, but for far too many that has not been the case. We have remained in our homes to protect the NHS and save lives, but too many have been housed in cramped, damp, poorly designed and shoddily constructed homes. Their immediate environment has been polluted by the air they breathe, and they have lacked space, whether communal or recreational. We have an opportunity to apply the lessons of the pandemic, which we are all familiar with, particularly our constituents, to create safe and healthy homes and communities.
By broadening the definition of safety in this part of the Bill, the amendment provides an opportunity to speak about risks beyond high-rise buildings and fire, and would address housing health and safety issues the Bill’s title claims to address. The Town and Country Planning Association’s written evidence points out that health risks and harms such as air pollution, overheating and noise pollution, as well as more indirect issues, such as poor accessibility or walkability, insecurity, lack of access to green space and cramped living conditions, are not covered by the Bill but undermine people’s wellbeing and health and ultimately their safety. I therefore hope that the Minister will consider the amendment.
Shaun Bailey
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Again, I find myself being slightly repetitive. I do not disagree with the sentiments of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. On this point, he and I will probably find a lot of common ground. However, the amendment strays slightly into the planning space—I almost get the impression that the hon. Gentleman is perhaps trying to tease the Minister to give us a sneak peak of what might be in the planning Bill in the Queen’s Speech. Our local planning authorities should consider these matters when they determine planning, and I know from the local councils I deal with that they do. They do have conversations when they look at the design of a particular development. They consider what impact it will have, whether there will be space to live, and whether people will feel they can live there meaningfully.
Ruth Cadbury
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s belief that the amendment strays into planning, but it talks about the
“risk of harm arising from the location, construction or operation of buildings which may injure the health and wellbeing of the individual.”
Where, particularly in the construction or operation of buildings, are the planning issues? If a building is operating unsafely or the construction is unsafe, irrespective of the height or what the building is used for, the lack of safety is not a planning issue, but a construction issue.
Shaun Bailey
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I see her point, but I maintain the point that I made: we are slightly straying here. I see what she says, because if a building is fundamentally unsafe, of course the new Building Safety Regulator would need to intervene. I question whether we need the amendment to say that, though. I am concerned that perhaps these conversations are happening before time. Broadly speaking, although I agree with the sentiments behind the amendment, I just think that operationally—
Mike Amesbury
We are all in agreement—including, very importantly, many of the witnesses who gave evidence—that the regulator sits correctly in the Health and Safety Executive. Health and safety are paramount under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. When I think about how buildings are constructed, including some buildings that we are all very familiar with—thousands of buildings up and down the country—I see that the impact on our constituents, residents and leaseholders’ mental health is tremendous. That is because of the built environment. The interplay between health, homes and communities is crystal clear.
The Chair
Order. Interventions should be brief. The hon. Gentleman seems to be reverting back to a speech. Can I ask him to get to the punch of his intervention?
Shaun Bailey
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. One point that I would make, now that I have been able to gather my notes, is that clause 5 kind of addresses the issue. It says:
“The regulator must keep under review—
(a) the safety of people in or about buildings in relation to risks as regards buildings, and
(b) the standard of buildings.”
To pick up on the point that the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth made, the Bill already does that.
On the points that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale articulated very well on wellbeing and the need for homes that are placed so that people can live and thrive, from my experience those conversations are had at the planning stage and the determination stage. On the safety element, again I do not disagree with the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth. She is right that the regulator needs to look at that. From my reading of the Bill, clause 5 address that. Although the sentiments behind the amendment are absolutely right, clause 5 half deals with that, and we have a planning process that deals with the other half. From that perspective, we are already doing this within the structures in which we are already operating. Again, I agree with the sentiments, but operationally there are ways in which we are already doing it.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I have been struck by the outbreak of cross-party consensus on the content of this and the previous amendment. The dispute is about where it sits. If Government Members do not wish to see it in the Bill and we do not yet have a planning Bill to look at, I wonder whether the Minister might be able to provide some assurances that he would be willing to consider setting up an alternative mechanism that would be in between planning and housing, to look at precisely these kinds of issues that come up, as a form of horizon scanning.
On a slightly different note, which is slightly tangential to the amendment, we took evidence in our hearings, particularly from the Fire Brigades Union, on the need for a mechanism to do horizon scanning. I wonder whether that might be the place to take up these kinds of issues, and whether the Minister might be willing to provide assurances that he would consider such a proposal.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I do not think I was articulate enough when discussing the previous amendment, when we talked about the process of adding amendments. I feel strongly that legislation needs to be functional and clear, and that it should be implemented as swiftly and simply as possible. It has to be understood by lay people, even if they are reading it in a rush, as we have seen with the amazing witnesses who have come forward, having become building experts because they have had to look into issues in their own buildings.
I fear that giving the regulator a role and an objective to prevent the injury of the health and wellbeing of an individual is a recipe for challenge and confusion, even though it may be well meaning.
Mike Amesbury
I will keep my intervention brief; you, Mr Davies, are seasoned in keeping them as such. The regulator is what it says on the tin: it is a health and safety executive, covering health and wellbeing and certainly safety. I actually disagree with the point that the hon. Member is making, quite eloquently and powerfully.
Siobhan Baillie
I will come to that intervention shortly, but I was just about to say that a quick google of the definition of the word “wellbeing” is quite telling. The top result notes that it is
“a state of being comfortable, healthy or happy.”
As Members know, one man or woman’s happiness and comfort is another man or woman’s woe. A quick search of “wellbeing” hashtags across Instagram is even more illuminating as to what makes people healthy, happy, and feeling that the “wellbeing” box is ticked. My overarching view is that we do not want to be too prescriptive to the regulator.
Shaun Bailey
I relayed this point to my right hon. Friend the Minister earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important that the regulator should not be siloed in its approach to building safety? While I agree with the point that she is articulating about the broad definition of welfare, does she agree that it is going to be important to ensure that the regulator is looping in with different agencies and organisations, so that it can take a holistic approach to its objectives?
Siobhan Baillie
I absolutely agree with that point.
As I said regarding an earlier amendment, the definition of the requirements and the core functions as set out to the Building Safety Regulator will require it to go out to a range of different agencies. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale made a point about the Health and Safety Executive. I am a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions. The Health and Safety Executive is world-leading in many ways, and is going in and out of businesses looking at, for example, issues surrounding covid. It is very much people-focused, and I believe that giving the regulator the absolute ability to determine safety is important. I do not think that the amendment is necessary; I think it could end up creating more confusion and issues, particularly surrounding what health and wellbeing means to individuals. As such, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Ruth Cadbury
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. The Minister has said that this Bill will bring in a new era for building safety, but will it? I agree that it is better than nothing—it is definitely an improvement on the legislative framework that we have had until now—but I am concerned about all of the gaps where people are working in, living in and occupying the many buildings that are outwith the scope of the Bill as currently drafted. That is why amendment 10, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale, needs to be in the Bill. As many witnesses have told us, the safety of a building depends on a range of factors, including its location and what it is used for. If a tower block is located underneath the arrival path of an airport, for instance, that is a safety issue as well as a planning issue. As we will see in later clauses, so many occupants and so many types of buildings are excluded from this Bill. It is called the Building Safety Bill and, in my view, a building safety Bill should be about making all buildings safe.
It is not clear whether the Bill will protect students in student accommodation. We all remember when fire ripped up the sides of The Cube in Bolton, so are student residences protected? Are care home residents covered by the scope of this Bill; will they be protected if a fire rips through their building or up its sides? Of course, care home residents are, almost by definition, among the least mobile in our communities, perhaps superseded only by occupants of hospital beds. They cannot move quickly in the case of a fire, and my understanding is that they are excluded from the scope of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West that I should not be led down the path of discussing the planning Bill, for two reasons: first, that feast is yet to be enjoyed by the Committee and other Members of the House; and secondly, Mr Davies, I am sure that you would quickly draw me back to the path of procedural righteousness. However, I can say that in terms of the design of buildings, their space requirements, the infrastructure and the built environment that is there to support them, there are means to ensure that the wellbeing of residents is supported and enhanced. We will, I am sure, say more about that specifically when the planning Bill comes before us.
The hon. Member for St Albans raised the question of the Building Safety Regulator or some other body having responsibility for horizon scanning. I can assure her that the Committee will see when we get to clause 5 that the Building Safety Regulator does have a responsibility to horizon scan. I will say more about that in a moment. She also asked whether I would consider another body or agency to do the work of identifying and enhancing wellbeing. I am always happy to receive proposals, but they have to be sensible, coherent and worked through, and of course they also have to pass the test of Her Majesty’s Treasury, which is generally called upon to pay for these things. However, if she makes a proposition, I will look at it.
I am grateful to Opposition Members for raising the Building Safety Regulator’s statutory objective focused on securing people’s safety, and for ensuring that the Committee has had an opportunity to debate the meaning of safety in that context, but I cannot accept the amendment. It is unnecessary.
The existing objectives of the Building Safety Regulator are broad enough to cover the key aspects of wellbeing and safety. Further, the proposed change could have the unintended effect of undermining the focus of the Building Safety Regulator on preventing another tragedy like Grenfell—a goal I am sure the whole Committee shares.
On wellbeing, I draw the Committee’s attention to the regulator’s objective to improve the standard of buildings. This is a broad objective and it sits alongside a crucial new oversight function which we will consider in greater detail when we reach clause 5, as I said to the hon. Member for St Albans. The oversight role means that the Building Safety Regulator will monitor the safety and standards of buildings and make recommendations to Ministers and to industry on changes to building standards.
Building standards are defined broadly in the Bill and would include building regulations. Section 1 of the Building Act 1984 allows building regulations to address “welfare and convenience” as well as health and safety, so the Building Safety Regulator can already consider issues such as access, damp—an issue raised by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale—and heating, which affect welfare and go beyond simple physical safety.
I further reassure the Committee that the Building Safety Regulator’s objective on safety already covers all types of risks to safety that flow from the building, whether they relate to its location, construction or management. Therefore, the amendment is not necessary to ensure that the regulator’s objectives cover building standards relevant to wellbeing, and safety issues resulting from a whole range of matters linked to the building are already properly covered. The amendment could also have unfortunate unintended consequences by seeking to redefine safety to include wellbeing.
Setting up a new Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive is critical for delivering the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review and for taking the action necessary to prevent a tragedy like Grenfell Tower from ever happening again. The Government believe that Parliament should give the new Building Safety Regulator a clear objective on safety. The Government consulted on including a statutory objective focused on safety, and it received overwhelming support, including from the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government and stakeholders. The amendment would add a definition of safety to the regulator’s statutory objective and other clauses in part 2 of the Bill that is broader than the word’s meaning in everyday language.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud googled “wellbeing” and gave us its meaning. She also mentioned its meaning on Instagram. I am not on Instagram, but I am prepared to believe my hon. Friend’s confirmation of the broad meaning of the word. The amendment expands the definition of “safety” to a degree to which I do not think we can accept.
Our assessment is that introducing the concept of wellbeing into the safety objective of the Building Safety Regulator’s function to facilitate safety in high-risk buildings makes the provisions less clear. The Building Safety Regulator should have a clear priority to secure physical safety and take the actions necessary to prevent another tragedy like Grenfell, and we are concerned that broadening the focus to include wellbeing would risk undermining the clarity of the statutory objective and dilute the regulator’s clarity of mission.
It would also risk confusion, because the regulator’s objective in clause 3 and its broad function in clause 4 to facilitate safety in high-risk buildings would define safety with wellbeing, while other critical provisions of the Bill, such as those in part 4, would not. That would make the Bill less coherent. It would make the regulator’s role less clear if it were to seek to fulfil its safety objective and role under clause 4 while implementing a part 4 regime looking at safety in a different way. If the Building Safety Regulator’s role were unclear, that would make its challenge even harder and could risk the development of a new system that is less proportionate and adds unnecessary costs and inconvenience for leaseholders and residents. The Government do not want to confuse or extend the Building Safety Regulator’s role at the risk of imposing extra costs and extra works on residents and leaseholders. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale will agree to withdraw amendment 10.
Turning to clause 3, legislation to create arm’s length bodies typically provides for a small number of clear objectives for the new body to give clarity on its purpose and mission—hence our concern about amendments 11 and 10. Such legislation often provides guidance on the principles to follow when regulating. The Government believe that it would be valuable for Parliament to set the new Building Safety Regulator clear objectives so that it knows what it is aiming to achieve in undertaking its functions and the principles under which it will deliver its operational work.
The clause proposes two crucial objectives for the new regulator. As I and other hon. Members have said, we must learn the lessons of the Grenfell fire and the independent review on safety that followed it. Our reformed building safety regime needs to ensure that residents are safe, and feel safe, in their homes. The first objective, therefore, is that the Building Safety Regulator must exercise its functions in a way that secures the safety of people in and about buildings in relation to the risks arising from those buildings. That objective covers the safety of people either in a building or in the immediate vicinity of a building who could, for example, be struck by falling masonry. We consulted on including a statutory safety objective, and there was overwhelming support.
The Building Safety Regulator’s second objective is about improving building standards. The regulator’s role will not be limited to safety; it will, as I indicated, become the Government’s key independent adviser on setting building standards. The regulator will improve competence levels and accountability in the building control sector by leading the creation of a unified professional and regulatory structure for building control. The regulator will work with industry to drive up the competence of those working on buildings.
Mike Amesbury
I have a very brief point about risk aversion. The advice note proves to be contentious. What conversations has the Minister had with the shadow regulator about EWS1? What is the progress?
Christopher Pincher
The conversations we have had about EWS1 relate specifically to the users—the lending sector—that use the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors EWS1 form, which of course is not a Government form, to determine whether a building requires external wall system works or remediation. I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that we have had very good conversations with the lending sector and the risk sector, which recognise that the use of EWS1 has got out of proportion, and that it really should not be used in the way it has been used on a very large number of buildings. I do not think that issue is specific to the clause at hand, so I will say that and leave it there.
These building functions are the functions given to the regulator under this Bill, the Building Act 1984 and regulations made under the two pieces of legislation. The building functions cover an additional Health and Safety Executive function, which future regulations define as building functions and certain related functions under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The building functions can also be added to by regulation. For example, regulations under planning regulation making the Health and Safety Executive a statutory consultee at planning gateway 1—that answers one of the Committee members’ questions—could be added to the building functions.
This clause ensures that the Building Safety Regulator will focus on resident safety and improving building standards, while acting in a targeted and proportionate way, and I commend it to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Duty to facilitate building safety: higher-risk buildings
Christopher Pincher
I beg to move Government amendment 6, in clause 4, page 3, line 7, at end insert—
“(aa) owners of residential units in such buildings,”
This amendment provides that owners of residential units are “relevant persons” for the purposes of subsection (1) of the clause (duty to provide assistance etc).
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss amendment 6, which is a minor and technical amendment that will ensure clause 4 works as intended.
Clause 4 places a duty on the Building Safety Regulator to assist and encourage those responsible for the safe construction and management of high-rise residential and other in scope buildings, as well as residents, to secure the safety of people in or around those buildings. The intention of clause 4 is to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator proactively engages with those with duties around the safety of high-rise residential and other buildings in scope, to encourage them to do the right thing.
The purpose of this amendment is to ensure the list of classes of “relevant persons” that the Building Safety Regulator should encourage is complete. The current list of “relevant persons” includes residents. However, the key duties on residents of high-rise residential buildings at clause 95 of the Bill also apply to owners of residential units, even if they are not resident at the time.
Amendment 6 adds owners of residential units to the list of “relevant persons”, bringing this clause into line with the approach to residents’ duties elsewhere in the Bill. The effect of this amendment is that the Building Safety Regulator will be under a duty to assist and encourage owners of residential units in higher-risk buildings to do the right thing, for example through guidance and communications.
I turn now to clause 4. At the heart of our proposals to transform the building safety environment is the implementation of a more stringent regulatory regime for high-rise residential and other in scope buildings. This new regime will be implemented and enforced by the Building Safety Regulator. The details of the new regulatory regime for high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings will be set out when the Committee deliberates over parts 3 and 4 of the Bill, so I will not detain the Committee on those matters now. These create powerful enforcement tools for the Building Safety Regulator to hold duty holders to account.
However, a good regulator does not rely on enforcing breaches in the law after they have occurred. A good regulator proactively supports and encourages those it regulates to comply. This principle is reflected in the regulator’s code, which highlights that:
“Regulators should provide advice and guidance that is focused on assisting those they regulate to understand and meet their responsibilities.”
To ensure that this best practice approach to regulation is taken by the Building Safety Regulator when regulating the safety of high-rise residential and other in scope buildings, clause 4 places a specific statutory duty on the Building Safety Regulator to take this approach.
Clause 4 places a duty on the Building Safety Regulator to assist and encourage those responsible for the safe construction and management of high-rise residential and other in scope buildings, as well as residents, to secure the safety of people in or around those buildings. It will require the regulator to take proactive steps to enhance the safety of people in high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings. The regulator could fulfil this duty by developing and publishing best-practice guidance, setting up information services to advise duty holders, or running workshops for those responsible for developing and managing such buildings. The regulator could also test materials aimed at residents of such buildings with a residents panel, to help ensure that its communications are well targeted, effective, digestible and understandable. The shadow Building Safety Regulator is already liaising closely with stakeholders and will be releasing a series of guidance documents over the next 18 months to help duty holders understand what is needed of them in order to meet their new duties.
Once the regime is in place, the Building Safety Regulator will encourage, but ultimately will be able to force, duty holders to do the right thing in a proportionate way. Requiring the regulator to take proactive steps to encourage the construction and management of safe high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings is a vital part of creating the culture change we need, to which Committee members have referred. I commend this short clause, and the short amendment to it, to the Committee.
Ruth Cadbury
We do not have an issue with the amendment, because it seems logical to bring leaseholders within the scope of the clause so that it is consistent with other references to leaseholders elsewhere in the Bill, but I will take this opportunity to probe the definition of “resident”. The Minister talks about high-rise—another definition that we will talk about later—residential and other in-scope buildings. Who is a resident? I understand that resident leaseholders, assured shorthold tenants who are leaseholders, and social rent tenants are all obviously residents, but what about residential licensees in other forms of tenancy; guardians; students in student accommodation, particularly if that is their sole home; residents of care homes, for some of whom that is their only home; hotel guests; hospital patients; people renting holiday lets? Those are just the ones I can think of, off the top of my head. Is one a resident if one puts one’s head to sleep overnight in a building, or is there only a limited form of occupancy status in order to fall into scope of the Bill?
Shaun Bailey
I will be brief, because I think this clause and the amendment to it are relatively straightforward. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth makes an interesting point. I will explain my understanding of how that will work—forgive my ignorance if I get this wrong. For some of the scenarios that she highlighted, such as student accommodation and holiday lets, I imagine that a structure will be in place so that someone above that will manage the building that falls in scope of the clause, but we would also hope that within that there would be a responsible landlord, whoever that might be, who has that relationship and can articulate those messages. I do not disagree with her scepticism about those groups engaging in the way that we would expect them to.
Shaun Bailey
Absolutely, and the hon. Lady made a really interesting point that allows us to think about how that would operate. We talk quite abstractly about things, and the clause in particular sounds very nice, but when we consider the detail of its operational function, we realise that a lot of people caught by the provision will have someone above them in the ownership chain. How can we ensure that those obligations are met?
Broadly speaking, I agree with the clause. It is absolutely right to ensure proactive engagement between the regulator and the relevant persons. As my right hon. Friend the Minister touched on in his contribution, the regulator should not be there just to slam down when things go wrong; it should be proactive in ensuring that things are done correctly in the first place. I will listen very intently to his response to the hon. Lady’s interesting points. From an operational perspective, it is important to remember that there will be people between those relevant persons, and that the regulator, as it carries out its engagement practices under the clause, will encourage best practice from those people as well.
Daisy Cooper
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.
I always welcome the idea of regulators having proactive powers, and it is good to see that the regulator can provide proactive assistance and encouragement, but how can a regulator provide assistance and encouragement to absent freeholders? That point was raised by the National Housing Federation in evidence. An idea that I mooted then was that it might be possible for a regulator to favour pursuing remediation if a freeholder repeatedly fails to respond to requests. Has the Minister reflected on that suggestion, and does he think that the clause, as it stands, would give the regulator enough powers to deal with the situation of absent freeholders in particular?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions. With respect to the question from the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth, we have been careful to define in-scope buildings. In-scope buildings are those over 18 metres or seven storeys that contain two or more dwelling places. Other in-scope buildings include, for example, care homes and hospitals that meet the criteria. We have also been careful to draft the clause in such a way that we are confident that student accommodation, for example, as well as the other examples that she gave, are properly covered.
On the suggestion from the hon. Member for St Albans, I am clear that we want the regulator to have the responsibility to encourage, to nudge and to cajole, but ultimately, as I said in my remarks, to enforce good and best practice. I will certainly consider both what she said and the oral evidence from witnesses, but I will certainly not make any commitments until we have thought through how those things can work effectively and what the possible unintended consequences may be. We want the Building Safety Regulator to have a clear and proportionate role that does not have unintended and unforeseen negative consequences for residents. That is quite a broad definition of “residents”, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth outlined.
I thank the Committee for its consideration of the clause. In summary, I remind the Committee that the clause places a duty on the regulator to assist and encourage those responsible for the safe construction and management of high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings, as well as residents, to secure the safety of people in or around those buildings. That duty is a vital part of creating the cultural change that we need and that we will see. Amendment 6 is a minor and technical amendment that corrects an omission in the list of “relevant persons” so that we have a fuller and more complete list. I hope that, having heard those final remarks, the Committee will agree both to our technical amendment and to the clause.
Government amendment 6 agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Duty to keep safety and standard of buildings under review
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review recommended the establishment of a new system oversight structure, which should include oversight of the performance of the built environment. In our public consultation, the Government sought views on what statutory objectives are needed to guide the regulator’s broader regulatory remit, which included promoting building safety and the safety of people in and around buildings.
To meet that objective, we proposed that the Building Safety Regulator should have a function to oversee the building safety system. That would include activities such as monitoring and driving improved performance across the building safety and wider regulatory system; advising on and preparing proposals for changes to building regulations, as needed; overseeing the development of appropriate technical guidance, either preparing guidance directly for approval by the Secretary of State or validating and quality assuring technical guidance for the construction industry; advising industry and Government on research into new or emerging risks; and working with other regulators and enforcement bodies to achieve safety and other outcomes for buildings.
Clause 5 gives effect to that function and places a legal duty on the Building Safety Regulator to keep the safety and standards of buildings under review. As proposed in our consultation, the Building Safety Regulator will work with the construction industry, any interested parties such as the British Standards Institute, technical experts and committees to make recommendations to Government on changes to guidance and regulations. It will also work with industry to identify and share best practice, to drive cultural change and improve standards.
The regulator will review standards and collect data from building control bodies and other information sources such as residents panels, research and any other forms of sector intelligence from other national regulators or enforcement bodies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud suggested. That information will be used to analyse current and emerging risks to building safety and performance.
An important element of the oversight structure is the new building advisory committee, which will be established in the Building Safety Regulator to provide expert advice. The Building Safety Regulator will work with its building advisory committee to review the safety of buildings constructed using specific methods or materials following incidents of structural failure. Following the review, if the Building Safety Regulator considers that an amendment to building regulations is needed, it will make that recommendation to the Secretary of State following a public consultation.
We will discuss the building advisory committee in more detail when we consider clause 9, but overall these activities, taken together, will be an important function of the regulator. They will enable the regulator to review and monitor the safety and standards of buildings, and propose changes when they are needed. This function is an important one and I commend the clause to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury
Clause 5 gives building safety regulators the flexibility to monitor the safety of buildings and the standard of builders, thereby allowing the building advisory committee, which the Minister referred to, and essentially the regulator to respond quickly to emerging systematic failures in the industry, which certainly has not been the case in the past, with external wall systems and cladding systems for example, rather than there just being a drip-drip of evidence. We therefore welcome the clause and it will certainly add transparency to the system.
I have one question for the Minister. Beyond the consultation with residents that he mentioned and a recommendation to the Secretary of State, what engagement will there be with parliamentarians?
Shaun Bailey
I, too, welcome the clause. I think it is representative of the broad intention in the Bill for there to be collaboration, because collaboration will be a really important part of this story as we move forward. I know how it complements the building advisory committee, which we will talk about more broadly later.
It is really positive that there will be this ongoing review. That is absolutely what is needed and it is right that it will be done in a way that brings together all of the stakeholders who are qualified to review the safety of buildings and review these regulations, and ensure—this is a point I touched on in an earlier contribution—that with the pace of change as we move forward, we ensure that the homes we build in the future are indeed safe and indeed places that people can live in without fear.
We heard in the evidence sessions—it was a point made by all the witnesses we spoke to—about the importance of collaboration, conversation and talking. To echo some of the comments by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, it will be important to ensure that within the building advisory committee there is breadth of expertise. That is the one point that I will press on my right hon. Friend the Minister. As this process continues, we need to ensure that there is a true breadth of expertise, from fire specialists, surveyors, members of local authorities and, to some degree, parliamentarians too, as well as from residents, to ensure that we bring in the full range of the landscape and ensure that the Bill is as comprehensive as it can be, because there is a real opportunity here to do something that I do not think we do very often, which is to review these landscapes regularly and ensure that they meet the needs of the people who know this situation through their lived experience.
This is a really positive clause that will provide real opportunities, so I wholeheartedly support it. However, as with many measures in the Bill, we must ensure that when it comes to the operation of this measure, it works.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the Committee for its consideration and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West for making it clear that we want the Building Safety Regulator to have a wide ambit, and the opportunity to consult with a variety of players and reflect upon their advice.
I hope that the hon. Member for St Albans sees the opportunity that this measure provides to the regulator to horizon-scan and consult, and reflect upon information received, and thereby give the Secretary of State, or indeed the sector, sensible advice.
The hon. Member for Weaver Vale asked a question—possibly a leading one—about what the engagement and involvement of Parliament will be. That rather reflects an amendment that I think the hon. Member for St Albans tabled today about parliamentary consultation, and it may have some bearing on clause 7, which we will come to eventually.
Let me tell the hon. Member for Weaver Vale that Parliament has a variety of means—as you know more than many of our colleagues, Mr Davies—to ensure that the Executive is held to account, that questions can be asked and that answers will be given. I am sure that Parliament, if it feels that it does not have a way, will find a way of engaging effectively with the Building Safety Regulator.
This is an important clause, which everyone can and should support. It places a legal duty on the regulator to keep the safety and standard of buildings under review. It will enable the regulator to review and monitor the safety and standard of those buildings, and to propose changes to the appropriate authorities when needed. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Facilitating improvement in competence of industry and building inspectors
Christopher Pincher
Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review identified that competence needed to improve across the built environment sector. It challenged the industry to show leadership and take responsibility for raising competence. The Building Safety Regulator will play a key role in supporting the industry to raise its competence levels. One of the regulator’s core functions will be to assist and encourage those in the built environment industry and the building control profession to drive improvements in competence.
For industry, the regulator is expected to do this by working with the industry competence committee to oversee and support the industry’s work to raise competence. The regulator will set the strategic direction of the committee, to ensure that its work supports the regulator’s plans and priorities and the needs of the sector. It will also carry out importantThe regulator, with advice from the committee, may propose changes to building regulations and/or regulations under part 4 of the Bill to the Secretary of State on industry competence matters. The regulator’s role will also be to increase building safety by improving compliance with building regulations and raising standards in the building control profession.
Through the clause, the regulator can demonstrate leadership of the profession, developing a strategy to increase the competence of registered building inspectors. Exactly how that will be done is a matter for the regulator, but it might produce advice or guidance, or identify areas where it can develop training to upskill registered building inspectors. It may also convene working groups or advisory committees, or commission research and analysis to further inform areas for improving competence.
The provisions will help position the Building Safety Regulator at the heart of industry and the building control profession.
Siobhan Baillie
I was struck by the evidence from the industry experts we heard over the past week or so in their desire to improve and to see improvements, and in their recognition of the fact that Governments of all colours had not brought about a Bill such as this, which is very welcome. Yes, things can be improved, but we will be debating changes as we go along. Does the Minister agree that the regulator may be pushing at an open door when seeking to improve the clause?
Christopher Pincher
I, too, heard the evidence provided to the Committee by a range of experts and industry players. In Parliament and beyond, we have heard from the development sector. If there is an open door, I trust that the Building Safety Regulator will make sure that it stays wide open, and should it ever close, I trust that the regulator will play a role in pushing it back open. It is important that the regulator monitors emerging risks or gaps in competence, surveys the landscape, as we have already identified and agreed, and considers carefully whether further action is warranted or appropriate. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that the regulator works with the sector and the industry and, where appropriate, takes action to make sure that the competence that we require across the sector is complied with.
The clause creates a key and influential role for the regulator to help drive up collective standards. We believe that it is an important clause as we embed the regulator in the Health and Safety Executive and define its role and responsibilities. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury
Throughout our evidence sessions, we heard a consistent call to improve the culture referred to by hon. Members today in inspections of the built environment. From the Fire Brigades Union to the Local Government Association and the evidence emerging from the Grenfell inquiry, it is clear that a step change is needed in that culture, so clause 6 is welcome.
Concerns have been highlighted, however, about the choice-based competitive environment for inspectors of buildings below the threshold of 18 metres. The LGA recently spoke to me about that, as did Matt Wrack from the FBU. We could still have a situation, which has led to a number of safety concerns and shoddily built buildings, where a developer appoints someone as a building inspector for what is not, seemingly, an at-risk building according to the current definition, who inappropriately gives sign-off to something that should never have been signed off. I seek the Minister’s assurance that that will be reviewed and tackled.
Shaun Bailey
I welcome the aims of the clause, in combination with other clauses. It is right that the regulator is able to review competences. As we heard in the evidence sessions, the one thing we are trying to fight here is the race to the bottom in standards and in how people behave in the industry more broadly.
On the point that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale made, we heard interesting evidence about building inspectors and what they are doing. I found that interesting because my training and background is as a lawyer, and we were always taught that, irrespective of the client that instructed us, we still had an ultimate responsibility for the administration of justice. It was slightly concerning to hear that evidence, because it felt at times that there was not that overarching responsibility. I am hopeful that we can perhaps re-embed that through clause 6.
Irrespective of the debate that we might have about building inspectors and how they operate, and whether the local authority model or the private model works, there is a broader discussion here about where the fiduciary duty will go. Hopefully, clause 6, in establishing that review—that committee—and allowing the BSR to do that can start those discussions again and really look the industry in the eye and say, “What are you doing?” As I say, the evidence we heard was, at times, quite shocking. I am hopeful that clause 6, combined with other clauses, will enable us to have that broad-brush conversation and to review the industry, in order to ensure we have something that works for the safety of residents living in these developments and a gloves-off discussion about how that operates. I welcome this clause, Mr Davies, and it has my full support.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. The National Fire Chiefs Council talked about the need for building control independence. We know that things have gone wrong in the past and that there is scope for that to happen in the future with the private sector being involved, as highlighted in Dame Judith Hackitt’s report. In its written evidence, the NFCC wrote:
“While there is ample evidence that private sector participation in building control can bring efficiencies, if not implemented correctly such a delegation of regulatory mandate can come with significant unintended consequences.”
I do not believe it is intended to have those consequences but that is what has been said. It continued:
“A 2018 report by the World Bank found private sector participation in construction regulation in 93 out of 190 economies. The report concluded that, for such an arrangement to work as intended, the public sector should regulate private third-party professionals and firms and reported that in 76% of economies that make use of third-party inspectors, regulations explicitly require the independence of third-party inspectors; they should have no financial interests in the project and should not be related to the investor or builder.
The report concluded that private sector participation should be accompanied by appropriate safeguards that favour the public interest over private profits.”
That is the nub of this. The evidence goes on:
“We believe that the change to remove the ability for clients to choose their own regulator, is necessary to apply to the whole of the built environment.”
And that point was made by the World Bank.
I ask the Minister to consider these points.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the Committee for its consideration. The point of this clause and of the Building Safety Regulator in it is to drive up competence standards across the building control sector, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West said. We want to see that happen and we believe it can happen. Taken as a whole, we believe that that is exactly what the Bill will achieve. Dame Judith Hackitt was right to recognise some of the problems that the building control system faces, spread as it is, in particular the lack of a level playing field between the different statutory and non-statutory processes, which can lead to a degree of complexity in the system.
As a result of the Bill and its clauses, not just clause 6, we believe we address that problem. We have worked with the whole building control sector to draw up these proposals, both public and private, which have widespread support. I call on the Committee to support the clause in order to help the position of the Building Safety Regulator, and to put that regulator at the heart of the industry and the building control profession competence, to be a key influencer and driver for better competence, regulation and standards. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7
Proposals and consultation relating to regulations
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
I should, by way of preamble, say that this is a rather technical clause. It sets out to specific Departments how regulations will be made in respect of parts 2 and 4. Schedule 5 inserts the equivalent provision into the Building Act 1984. These procedures therefore apply to all regulations relating to building regulation in England and the new regulatory regime in occupation.
Mike Amesbury
We welcome the provisions in this clause—certainly the extensive consultations. I note that the residents’ panel is mentioned. I have a couple of questions. Who will the residents’ panel be made up of? Will it be genuinely representative, with a broad field of representatives?
On the discretionary nature of the consultation, whether it is about the Secretary of State or recommendations from the regulator to the Secretary of State, the clause refers to relevant Departments and Parliament, and it would be good to see something firmed up there. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on those matters.
The Chair
I urge the Minister not to focus too extensively on residents’ panels, as that issue comes up in clause 11.
Daisy Cooper
I want to pick up on clause 7(4)(b), which says that the Secretary of State must consult other persons as he or she “considers appropriate.”
The evidence the Committee received was divided. Those in the industry praised the Government for their extensive consultation, with the draft Bill being improved as a result. We also heard pleas and cries of anguish from residents and the Fire Brigades Union, who said that for many decades they have been shouting into the wilderness, hoping that someone would listen. Might the Minister reflect on that? Although it may be appropriate for the Secretary of State to choose who he or she wishes to consult, there may be others who also need to be consulted and who need to be heard. I hope that is reflected in the clause or elsewhere as the Bill continues its passage.
Christopher Pincher
I will not dwell overmuch on the residents’ panel, because you are quite right, Mr Davies, we address the panel in clause 11. Suffice to say that, be it relevant Government Departments or the members and composition of residents’ and other panels, we do not want to be prescriptive in the Bill.
We have to recognise that as time passes compositions of groups or committees may become redundant and—I will use this word again later on in my remarks—they may even ossify. It is right that the Secretary of State should have the flexibility, like the Building Safety Regulator, to react to and reflect on the scenarios of the future, whatever they may be, which is why we want the clause to retain its flexibility. The key objective of the clause is to ensure that the view of the expert, independent Building Safety Regulator, with all of the inputs that the regulator may collect, is provided and is always taken, before the regulations reach Parliament. Therefore, there is always an appropriate level of consultation before regulations are made by Ministers.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Duty to establish system for giving of building safety information
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
Clause 8 relates to the establishment and operation of a voluntary occurrence reporting system about building safety.
The Government recognise the success of voluntary occurrence reporting systems in improving the safety of industry the world over, including in the UK built environment. We agree with recommendation 1.4 (c) of the independent review, which asks that such a system be in existence under the new building safety regime. The clause contributes to its implementation.
The clause requires the Building Safety Regulator to make arrangements for a person to establish and operate a voluntary occurrence reporting system about building safety. Under the system, structural or fire-safety related information that is seen by the reporter as an actual or potential risk to building or life safety will be reported through an online portal. We expect the person operating the system to then receive, anonymise, analyse and publish those reports online. In doing so, the system will allow important lessons learned to be shared across industry, prompting stakeholders to proactively identify and resolve issues before they escalate. To give an example, if a contractor were to report safety issues with a fire door, that intelligence could be shared across industry, allowing others to identify and resolve any issue at their own sites. The person working on the incident can report it through the voluntary occurrence reporting system, where it is then analysed and published by the person operating that system.
I stress that the objective of voluntary reporting is the prevention of accidents and incidents, not to attribute blame or liability, or for it to be used as a tool for enforcement. It is about surfacing issues as quickly and transparently as possible. To ensure that that happens, the system will be operated by a person other than the Building Safety Regulator. Voluntary occurrence reporting will ensure that occurrences not serious enough to be captured by the mandatory occurrence reporting system are still reported, recorded and shared. Those two reporting systems, along with whistleblowing, will complement one another to instil a safety-conscious, just culture in industry. By voluntarily reporting an issue, important details and lessons learned are shared with industry. This release of intelligence will increase industry awareness of issues and enable workers to better identify and resolve them should they occur elsewhere, averting dangers that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Ruth Cadbury
This sounds like a very sensible proposal. I am only surprised that it does not already exist in the construction industry—but, then, so many of us are ceasing to be surprised given the sheer mess that has been going on. Under the proposals in the Bill, will the reporting be made public such that users, leaseholders and residents of a building are aware of the reports, in case the building owners do not themselves make the residents or leaseholders aware?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. We want information to be as transparent and as available as possible. That is one reason for it going through a filter—for it to be properly analysed and assessed before it might be reported on. Whistleblowing is a tried and tested—almost traditionally British—way of doing things when it comes to surfacing unpalatable matters in business, as well as in the public sector. We want to find as many effective means as possible of identifying issues and raising them quickly so that they can be addressed, creating an airline-industry approach to issues, in which we are looking not to blame or point the finger but simply to identify and almost—I use this word advisedly—celebrate errors and issues, so that when people identify an issue it is second nature for them to raise it so it can be fixed as rapidly as possible.
Christopher Pincher
I will give way once more to the hon. Lady, and then I should probably make a bit of progress.
Ruth Cadbury
I recognise that. Let us say that a building owner recognises and realises, for instance, that the Pincher Weaver fire door is not safe—for the record, this is an imaginary scenario; there is no such thing as the Pincher Weaver fire door. If residents in another building realise or suspect that the fire doors in their block may be the Pincher Weaver ones, but their building owners or managers do not highlight this, will they have ways of finding out that the Pincher Weaver fire door that appears to be in their block is dangerous, and that they need to highlight it? That is why I am asking whether this information will be in the public domain.
Christopher Pincher
We will work closely with the Building Safety Regulator to ensure that such information is properly identified, assessed and made public. It may be that the Pincher-Weaver fire door—I have never seen one, but I look forward to accruing the royalties if one exists—is assessed such that there is not a problem with it. Clearly we do not want information to be made public as if the voluntary occurrence reporting system is Twitter, but I will make it my business to ensure that it is as properly public as possible within the usual constraints.
Mike Amesbury
This system is a welcome and essential step, and was recommended, as the Minister said, by the independent review. My only question is, how will it be closely monitored? To take one example—it is not from this country—residents in Florida spoke about the concrete system and evidence of cracks and creaking. The proposed system would pick that up, so that is a welcome step forward, but we must closely monitor it going forward.
Shaun Bailey
I will keep my comments brief. Like other hon. Members, I support the clause. The key thing for me is that the Building Safety Regulator will sit within the HSE, which already has structures and competences to deal with these issues, particularly in terms of whistleblowing and sharing information. I completely agree with the sentiment that information must be accessible so people can make informed decisions off the back of it, and that it is used in the right way to mitigate and head off any issues that may present.
The underlying structures developed through the Bill enable the clause to be operationally sound. We have the competence and experience to enable the systems to be put in place. We need to see what those systems will look like. I hope that they will be robust and can be used as envisaged by my right hon. Friend the Minister. The sharing of information and the ability to access it are at the core of these issues, and will be vital to ensuring that the delivery of the clause’s aspirations is sound.
Christopher Pincher
I thank the Committee for its consideration of the clause. The Government want to ensure that information that is relevant to concerns is properly captured, properly assessed and properly communicated. We also want to ensure that there is an effective monitoring regime for such a voluntary occurrence reporting system, and we will work closely with the Building Safety Regulator to enable that monitoring system to be put in place. I do not want to prescribe in Committee how the system will work; it will be for the regulator, in consultation with the Department and other experts, to define how that should be done most effectively.
As I am sure the Committee understands, in driving a culture change towards more transparency, we must be careful about how this information is used. We would not want an unintended consequence to develop whereby people at the coalface are disinclined to report something because the reporting becomes so very public that they may think it will become a big issue for them. We must therefore keep the reporting in proportion. We also have to make sure it is appropriately shared so that those who need to know do know and can take action or can check their own systems to make sure that they are also somehow not inoperative. I have used too many double negatives, so I shall stop there and commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Building Advisory Committee
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
I will speak first to clause 9. The independent review recommended that the Government should create a new structure to validate and assure guidance, oversee the performance of the built environment sector and provide expert advice. The Bill makes provision for the creation of a new building advisory committee to implement that recommendation.
The clause requires the Building Safety Regulator to use its powers under new subsection 11A(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to set up and maintain the new building advisory committee. The committee will provide independent expert advice on matters across the built environment and support the regulator in its role to keep the safety and standard of buildings under review, as we discussed on clause 5. It will also validate and assure technical guidance, such as approved documents, to ensure the guidance is fit for purpose. It will not advise on industry competence, which is the responsibility of the committee on industry competence, as the name implies. We will come to that committee and its functions in clause 10.
The Building Safety Regulator will appoint technical experts with a wide range of knowledge, skills and experience from across the built environment to provide it with advice. It may be helpful if I provide a short example of how the provision of advice may work. In carrying out its functions, the Building Safety Regulator may identify an emerging issue relating to buildings in part B of the guidance to the building regulations. That issue may need consideration and potentially some form of action. In assessing the issue, the Building Safety Regulator would ask the building advisory committee for advice on the matter. The building advisory committee would then consider the issue and provide the Building Safety Regulator with advice. The regulator can then assess that and use it to help make a recommendation for change, which could, for example, include amendments to guidance on part B of the building regulations.
The committee will also advise on other work that the Building Safety Regulator may from time to time ask it to carry out in support of the regulator’s functions. Clause 9(3) abolishes the Building Regulations Advisory Committee for England, which was established under section 14 of the Building Act 1984. The Government’s intent is that the building advisory committee will build on the work done previously by the Building Regulations Advisory Committee by having a wider remit with the strategic oversight to advise the Building Safety Regulatoron matters across the entire built environment.
The building advisory committee will be resourced by a range of independent and impartial members with a wide purview of the construction process, with technical knowledge and with demonstrable independence. The clause will play an important part in ensuring that the Building Safety Regulator has access to the support and expert advice required to enable it to deliver its crucial work.
I now turn to clause 10. The Government are committed to supporting the built environment industry to improve its competence, as the Committee has begun to hear. Dame Judith’s independent review challenged industry to show leadership and take responsibility for raising competence. It identified the need for a shift both in culture and in mindset. It found that the landscape for ensuring competence was fragmented and inconsistent—different disciplines have various routes for assessing competence, and they are not always clear or consistent. For culture change to be meaningful and lasting, the change needs to be led by industry, as only then will change be embedded in the industry’s culture.
Industry has been leading work to develop proposals for a competence oversight system. Those include an industry-led committee within the Building Safety Regulator to oversee improvements in competence and to ensure consistency across the industry. To implement that, clause 10(1) requires the Building Safety Regulator to establish the industry competence committee, to which I alluded earlier, and to provide support as necessary. Subsection (2) sets out the mandatory functions of the industry competence committee. Those include monitoring industry competence and facilitating its improvement, advising the Building Safety Regulator and others, providing guidance, and carrying out analysis and research on industry competence. Examples of how that will work in practice could include the committee convening stakeholders to enhance competence, providing a forum for industry to work collaboratively to monitor, refresh and review competence frameworks, and to drive competence more widely; or carrying out research and analysis to assess the effectiveness of the competence schemes operated in various sectors, and to see whether there are gaps that need to be addressed.
Under clause 10, the Building Safety Regulator may also set up sub-committees to consider specific issues or areas of interest, as it sees necessary. The clause will be instrumental in helping to drive up standards across the entire industry.
I now turn to clause 11. The independent review highlighted the importance of residents having a powerful voice, and the need to rebuild residents’ trust. To that end, the Bill includes major provisions in part 4 to give residents of high-rise residential buildings a much stronger voice in the safety of the buildings in which they live. The Government, however, believe that the voice of residents also needs to be heard by the Building Safety Regulator as it develops policies and systems that affect the lives and safety of residents of high-rise residential buildings.
Clause 11 is a vital step to ensuring that residents are able to have their voices heard and to influence policy at the national level. It mandates that the Building Safety Regulator must establish a residents’ panel. It is crucial that the residents’ panel brings the lived experience of residents into the heart of the regulator. That message came through quite clearly in the witness session evidence we heard in the last two sittings.
The Bill therefore requires that the residents’ panel must contain actual residents of high-rise residential buildings. The panel may also include organisations that support and represent residents, and owners of flats in high-rise residential buildings who may not live there at the time. The Building Safety Regulator will be able to seek the advice and support of the residents’ panel on a wide range of issues.
Shaun Bailey
I am sure we all agree that the inclusion of residents’ panels is absolutely vital. Does the Minister agree that the panels should be composed of the broadest possible range of residents? That would ensure that we do not have very small groups of residents who are not necessarily representative of the broader spectrum of those affected.
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I entirely agree. We want to be as broad and as inclusive as possible. We also want to ensure that residents and the groups to which they belong—expert groups and support groups—all have the opportunity to be represented on such a panel so that it is really broad and inclusive, and can provide sensible and coherent advice to the Building Safety Regulator.
The Health and Safety Executive recognises the importance of resident engagement—as we heard in Sarah Albon’s evidence a week ago today—and the challenge involved in ensuring a diverse membership that secures resident confidence, which is the point my hon. Friend just made. The Health and Safety Executive has already brought together a group, including residents, to plan for and advise on the setting up of the residents’ panel. Building on that, the Health and Safety Executive intends to bring together a residents’ panel on an interim basis ahead of legislation, so that it can benefit from residents’ advice on its shadow Building Safety Regulator work.
The Government believe it crucial that residents have a voice in the work of the Building Safety Regulator, and that the Building Safety Regulator is able to call on the insight and expertise of residents and their associated groups. The residents’ panel is an important step to ensuring that strong resident voice. In our consideration of clause 20, we will turn to further provision for wider resident engagement by the Building Safety Regulator. Having a residents’ panel in place will make certain that residents are able to contribute to key policy changes made by the Building Safety Regulator that relate to them and their homes. That will also empower the regulator to call on the expertise of the panel for insight and support wherever it deems that necessary.
I may have been a little premature in claiming that clause 11 was my final gambit in this particular outing, because I have to speak to clause 12. The Government believe that it is vital that the work of the Building Safety Regulator is supported by strong input from technical experts and residents, and that the regulator works closely with industry to support improved competence. We have just discussed clauses creating three committees that are intended to support those objectives: the building advisory committee, the committee on industry competence, and the residents’ panel.
Given the importance of engagement in those areas, it is right that the Bill does not rely simply on the Building Safety Regulator’s general power to set up committees. Instead, we have placed those committees in the Bill, giving an opportunity for them to be debated. However, placing the detail of a regulator’s committee structure in the Bill, as opposed to the committees themselves, carries considerable risks. We want the Bill to embed and last. Over a period of time, the committees could become ossified, to use the word I used previously. Their membership might become out of date. Their purposes might no longer be focused on the key building regulatory issues of the day.
In other words, we might end up with the right committees for the early 2020s, but the wrong committees to support the Building Safety Regulator to deliver expertly, sensitively and effectively in the early 2030s. By that point, the scope of the high-rise regime might be different, as might the types of people affected by the high-risk regime. Industry might have tackled the competence issues identified in the independent review, and be ready to fully take the lead on competence, with more responsibility.
The strong advice from the Health and Safety Executive, as an experienced and expert independent regulator, is that the Bill should include some flexibility to adapt the Building Safety Regulator’s committee structure over time. The names remain in the Bill, but the structure allows the regulator some flexibility. Clause 12 allows the Secretary of State to bring forward regulations to amend or repeal the provisions setting up the three statutory committees by regulations.
It is not unusual for Ministers to be involved in setting the strategic direction for a regulatory body. The Health and Safety Executive already works to a plan agreed by Ministers under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The 1974 Act, like the Building Safety Bill, gives the Health and Safety Executive a formal ability to propose changes to Ministers that would require regulations. HSE has more than 40 years’ experience delivering as an independent regulator, while advising Ministers on matters that could require changes made through regulations.
The power in clause 12 is a particularly important regulation-making power. It is crucial that the power is always used to adapt and improve the building safety framework. Therefore, the Bill provides substantial safeguards for its use.
Under Clause 7, no regulations can be brought forward unless they are proposed by the independent regulator or the independent regulator’s expert advice has been taken. There must also be appropriate consultation on proposed changes. Any regulations brought forward by the Secretary of State must then be approved by both Houses using the affirmative procedure, which will ensure that Parliament maintains oversight over the committee structure.
These substantial safeguards ensure that clause 12 will be used only as intended, to provide flexibility so that the Building Safety Regulator can learn from experience, ensure that the way in which it engages stakeholders reflects regulatory best practice, and improve, and for other purposes. The approach reflects more than 40 years of Health and Safety Executive experience. Since 1974, HSE has witnessed major changes in the profile of British industry. When it was formed, we had a significant steel industry and coal industry. Things have of course changed since then, as has the governance of industry, and we must recognise that the challenges that face high-rise residential dwellers at this time may also change, and the Building Safety Regulator must have the flexibility to accommodate those.
The committees on which the Health and Safety Executive can now call represent a rich mix of advisory and stakeholder-led bodies, each geared to the needs of the respective industries. Clause 12 creates an important flexibility to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator can refresh and improve the way in which it engages stakeholders, always reflecting best regulatory practice. Any material changes must receive the active support of both Houses of Parliament.
I believe that all these clauses, taken together, represent a very significant step forward in expert engagement with the Building Safety Regulator, and give proper facilities and flexibility for it within the usual and proper safeguards of Parliament. I commend them to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury
Again, we broadly accept and welcome clauses 9, 10, 11 and 12. On clause 9, my main question to the Minister is about the panel of the building advisory committee. Who makes up that committee? What checks and balances will ensure that those in the industry responsible for this mess—the toxic landscape of the building safety scandal—do not have a chair at the top table, so to speak? I seek clarity on that point. On the interrelation between the residents’ voice, which we will come to when we debate later clauses, and the building advisory panel, it may be that some residents are experts in the building and construction industry.
On clause 10, which relates to industry competence, I was struck by the evidence of a broad array of stakeholders, who spoke about the cultural shift to professionalise the industry. I was particularly struck by the comments from Justin Bates, who was right to argue that it is difficult to legislate for a cultural shift; it will take time—a generation. The leadership, the drive, the regulation and, importantly, the accountability will prove to be a nudge factor, so I again welcome those aspects of the Bill.
Clause 11 speaks of the residents’ voice, which is a good thing. Grenfell United has been an incredibly strong advocate of the legacy of that tragedy. That is essential. If we look at the ITV and ITN work of Dan Hewitt, we see that there are big issues relating to the residents’ voice in the social sector and the private sector, so that is a welcome development. I ask the Minister, if it is possible today—it may not be—to expand on who will make up that residents’ panel. Will it truly be grassroots to the top table of all sectors? I take the point of the hon. Member for West Bromwich West that there could be some who are experts in the field. There are also training issues that would help to bring that voice to life.
The one concern that I have about clause 12—I think the Minister has answered this—is that a large amount of power is being given to the Secretary of State in relation to the nature of these committees, regardless of political persuasion in the future. Sometimes there could be a conflict of interest—there could be conflicting personalities. The Minister seemed to suggest that checks and balances would be hardwired into the system, in terms of accountability, in both Houses of Parliament.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his, I think, warm welcome of these clauses and proposals. He asked me a number of questions. With respect to clause 9, he asked who would form the building advisory committee. That committee will be appointed by the Building Safety Regulator itself. It will be formed of independent and impartial players, so it will not be a group of hand-picked ministerial appointments.
Christopher Pincher
Indeed: the Opposition are there to quiz, question and probe. The responsibilities that the Secretary of State has with regard to the composition of the committees, the Building Safety Regulator, and HSE in general differ in no way from the existing responsibilities that Ministers have, so we are not trying to create a new beast. What we do want to do, of course, is to make sure that Parliament has appropriate oversight. That is why, as I said in my remarks, any changes to the structure of committees will be made through the affirmative procedure, so both Houses will be able to have their say on any material changes to the committees we have identified and put on the face of the Bill.
In conclusion, I thank the Committee for its consideration of these clauses. I think they are very important clauses for the Building Safety Regulator to have at its disposal, so I am grateful, and I commend them to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 10 to 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Local Authorities and Fire and Rescue Authorities: Assistance Etc To Regulator
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
First, let me speak to clause 13, the first clause in this grouping. Dame Judith’s independent review recommended that the Health and Safety Executive, local authority building control, and fire and rescue authorities work together to deliver the new regulatory regime for high-rise residential buildings. This clause will support that independent review vision, enabling the Building Safety Regulator to secure support from local authorities and fire and rescue authorities when regulating high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings.
As shadow Building Safety Regulator, the Health and Safety Executive is developing an operational model in which key regulatory decisions on high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings are taken through a multidisciplinary team approach. Those teams will bring together the right specialists to take critical regulatory decisions on high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings, and will typically include staff from local authorities and fire and rescue services. That approach reflects the fact that fire and rescue services have expert fire protection teams, experienced in regulating fire safety issues through the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Local authority building control teams contain crucial expertise in inspecting and enforcing against building regulations requirements under the Building Act 1984.
Taking that multidisciplinary team approach has three advantages. First, drawing on the expertise in local regulators will be more efficient and effective than a national regulator employing and training all inspectors nationally. Secondly, this approach will avoid the best inspectors in local authorities and in fire and rescue authorities moving to the national inspectorate. Retaining expertise at the local level is critical to ensuring that the full range of buildings are properly regulated locally. Thirdly, the teams will support co-operation and co-ordination. That is crucial when the Building Safety Regulator, local authorities and fire and rescue authorities are all likely to have legal responsibilities in relation to a high-rise residential building. Under its general powers in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Building Safety Regulator will also be able to secure expertise from the private sector, where appropriate, to support the work of the multi-disciplinary team.
The clause sets out the process by which the Building Safety Regulator can secure support from local authorities and fire and rescue authorities, and gives local authorities and fire and rescue authorities the legal powers to provide support. The Government want support to be typically provided through co-operation and agreement. That approach respects the fact that local authorities and fire and rescue authorities are subject to local democratic accountability. The new regulator is also committed to a co-operative approach.
Ruth Cadbury
It is welcome that elements of local authority building control are being taken out of the competitive relationship in which they find themselves. I think that the head of building control who came to the Committee said that this is the only regulatory regime where there is competition between regulators—between the public and the private sector. Has the Minister done an impact assessment that shows that the fire authorities and local authority building control currently have the capacity to do the work that the Bill requires for buildings over 18 metres?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady will know that we have spent a considerable amount of public money as a result of our efforts to recruit more experts and more fire and risk assessors over the past 18 months. We have recruited, and are training, a considerable number of experts to ensure that the resources are sufficient for buildings over a certain height to be properly assessed and, therefore, to be effectively remediated. I am confident that we have done, and will continue to do, the work to support the sector.
The hon. Lady was also right to say that it is sensible that we develop a co-operative rather than a competitive approach. That is what we are trying to do, because it is crucial that when the Building Safety Regulator and local authorities work together they do so sensibly and coherently. As I said, the Government want that support to be typically provided through co-operation and agreement, and the new regulator is committed to a co-operative approach.
The Chief Inspector of Buildings chairs the joint regulators group, which brings together the Local Government Association, the National Fire Chiefs Council and local authority building control. Schedule 3 provides for legal duties for co-operation between the Building Safety Regulator and local authorities and fire and rescue services respectively.
In most cases, the Building Safety Regulator will request support under this clause, and local authorities and fire and rescue authorities will respond positively to such a request. Where an authority has a genuine reason not to provide support on a specific occasion, such as when it needs to focus on a serious public safety risk elsewhere, the Building Safety Regulator would seek to accommodate that.
However, it is essential that this new regulatory regime works to secure the safety of residents of high-rise residential buildings, so there must be a backstop enabling the Building Safety Regulator to get the support it needs if all attempts at persuasion are insufficient. Therefore, the clause includes a power to direct local authorities and fire and rescue authorities to provide support. The power to direct is intended to be used only as a last resort—I must stress that to the Committee—so there are significant safeguards to ensure that it is not used lightly.
The power to direct can be used only following a written request from the Building Safety Regulator. The authority must have the opportunity to give reasons why it should not be required to provide assistance, and the Building Safety Regulator must consider any reasons given by the authority not to provide support. Crucially, the Secretary of State has to give consent to any direction.
Finally, I want to reassure the Committee that we will turn to funding arrangements when we consider clause 15. The Government intend that local authorities and fire and rescue authorities will be properly funded for their work in supporting the Building Safety Regulator. Clause 13 is crucial to ensuring that the regulator can call on the expertise it needs to regulate high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings.
On clause 14, the Government intend that the Bill should enable the Building Safety Regulator to work closely with other regulatory experts, bringing together the right specialists to regulate high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings. We have just considered clause 13, and we may consider it a little more in a moment, with other members of the Committee contributing. As I have said, it enables the Building Safety Regulator to secure support from local authorities and fire and rescue services.
The Crown application of the new regime, as set out in clause 141, is, in summary, a more stringent regulatory regime in occupation for high-rise residential buildings and will apply to buildings owned or managed by the Crown, with appropriate modifications. Where the Building Safety Regulator is regulating high-rise residential buildings owned or managed by the Crown, it is appropriate that the Building Safety Regulator can call on the support of inspectors authorised to enforce the fire safety order specifically for these Crown premises. Therefore, clause 15 allows the Building Safety Regulator to request support from inspectors in the Crown premises fire safety inspectorate and to give those inspectors the appropriate legal powers to provide support. So, they are covered, too.
We expect those requested to support the work of the Building Safety Regulator to form part of a multidisciplinary team looking at crucial regulatory decisions, such as assessing the safety case for a high-rise residential building. The clause is intended to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator can bring together the right experts when regulating Crown premises, as opposed to other premises, and is an important addition to the Bill with regard to the work of the Building Safety Regulator and its regime of oversight of buildings owned or managed by the Crown, of which there are a lot.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the Minister for his thorough explanation of each of clauses 13, 14, 15 and 16. Importantly, witnesses welcomed the clauses—I refer to the Local Government Association, the Chief Fire Officers Association and the Fire Brigades Union.
Some concern was expressed about the potential for a two-tier system. It is right that the landscape for those classed as “at risk”—with the definition being for those in buildings 18 metres and above—is co-operative. The concern expressed in Committee, however, is that a competitive environment still exists for those in buildings below 18 metres—the choice-based system. I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on that.
The Bill also refers to the Secretary of State giving appropriate funds to local authorities or fire and rescue services—I think that is in clause 16, but I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. What assurances can he give to put that on a firm footing? As he said, it is vital to making the provisions work that local authorities, and indeed partners such as fire and rescue services, are adequately resourced to carry them out.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale for his support for these clauses and for pointing out the support that has been expressed for them by witnesses and other stakeholders. I think, again, that we can agree that these are important mechanisms of ensuring that the Building Safety Regulator is effectively resourced to do its work.
The hon. Gentleman asks about the consideration of buildings below 18 metres. He will know that the scope of the Bill is focused primarily on buildings that are taller than 18 metres or seven storeys and have more than two dwelling places. We have taken that decision based on advice and guidance, and because we want to focus our efforts and the efforts of the Building Safety Regulator on those buildings that are most at risk. That is not to say that in years to come the role and scope of the Building Safety Regulator cannot and will not change—I have outlined that in my previous remarks—but we are focused here on the safety from fire or structural risk of buildings primarily over that height and with those characteristics.
The hon. Gentleman also asks about resourcing. Resourcing is always a matter for the spending review and discussions between Departments and the Treasury. We want to make it clear that we believe one of the financing mechanisms for this important work is through Government grant—that is why I have said so to the Committee, and I will continue to say so through the course of the debate on the Bill—but we also want to make sure that the regulator is able to charge sensible fees to ensure that fire and rescue services and local government are able to obtain sensible remuneration for the efforts that they employ, working with the Building Safety Regulator.
We believe that these four clauses are important contributors to the role of a strong, efficient and effective Building Safety Regulator, calling on the services that it needs to do the work that we are setting out for it in the Bill. I commend the clauses to the committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 14 to 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Strategic plan
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Christopher Pincher
It is my intention to speak to all four clauses in this grouping. I will speak first to clause 17. The new Building Safety Regulator will deliver critical functions concerning the safety of people in and around buildings. With the regulator set to play such a central role in making buildings safer, the Government understand that residents, the public and Parliament—Members of this House and the other place—will expect a high degree of transparency in how the regulator delivers its functions, what its priorities are and how to judge whether it is performing well. To that end, we believe it is appropriate that, to ensure transparency and public confidence, the clause requires the Building Safety Regulator to put in place a published strategic plan setting out how it will deliver its critical building functions.
Mike Amesbury
We support clause 17 on establishing the strategic plans, clause 18 on potential revisions and review, clause 19 on the annual report, and clause 20. My only question is about the journey of the plan. How do we ensure that, beyond the once-a-year publication, there is a check—almost a health MOT—particularly for residents and the residents’ voice that the Minister referred to?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman asks a good question. We will work closely with the regulator to make sure that it has in its strategic plan a sensible plan to engage with a wide variety of residents. The fact that it has to report publicly on that plan ought to focus its mind on making sure that the engagement, the checkpoints along the way and the journey of the plan, as he puts it, is undertaken. Parliament will be able to effectively scrutinise the process.
I am sure that if there are problems with the strategic plan—if the Building Safety Regulator appears not to be properly engaged, or if constituents of individual Members of Parliament believe that their voices are not being heard—we will have an opportunity to debate it in this House. I am confident that the approach we have taken is sensible and proportionate in developing a strategic plan for the Building Safety Regulator that engages a whole variety of stakeholders and residents, ensuring that their voices can be heard and that the plan commands their support, as well as ours.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 18 to 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Scott Mann.)
Health and Care Bill (Eighth sitting)
Thursday 16th September 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Health and Care Act 2022 View all Health and Care Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 September 2021 - (16 Sep 2021)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 15, page 13, line 22, at end insert—
“(ba) medical services other than primary medical services (for primary medical services, see Part 4),”.
This amendment makes it clear that integrated boards have a duty to commission secondary medical services (replicating the current position for clinical commissioning groups). Although secondary medical services would appear to fall within new section 3(1)(f) and (g), in the existing legislation they are mentioned specifically so the amendment would continue that approach.
Edward Argar
It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. Government amendments 12 and 13 are both technical amendments that clarify the commissioning responsibilities of integrated care boards. Clause 15 introduces proposed new section 3 of the National Health Service Act 2006, which places a duty on integrated care boards to commission a range of non-primary health services. The duty to arrange for the provision of primary care is dealt with elsewhere in the Bill.
In the Bill as introduced, there was no specific reference to medical services. Instead, non-primary medical services were considered to be covered by the broad provisions of new section 3(1)(f) and (g), and primary medical services were dealt with elsewhere in the Bill. Similarly, there was no specific reference to ophthalmic services. Instead, non-primary ophthalmic services were considered to be covered by the broad provisions of new section 3(1)(f) and (g), and primary ophthalmic services were dealt with elsewhere in the Bill.
However, the equivalent duties for clinical commissioning groups specifically reference these medical services and ophthalmic services, so the removal of an express reference to non-primary medical services and ophthalmic services generated some concern, which I hope to reassure the Committee is misplaced. There is no change of policy in this area, but to avoid any potential confusion these amendments put beyond doubt the fact that integrated care boards are responsible for these services, and replicate the current language.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
We will not oppose the amendments or, indeed, clause 15. I think it is important, as the Minister said, to make it very clear that the relevant provision in clause 15, proposed new section 3(1), on ICBs providing services that they consider necessary, does not mean that they can unilaterally withdraw services. That is the concern that has been raised, and I think it is important that it is on the record that that is not what is intended.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I seek some clarification. With demand for palliative care set to soar because of our ageing population, I would be very grateful for any assurances that my hon. Friend the Minister can give that the reference in clause 15, in line 30 on page 13, to “after-care” includes palliative care and end-of-life care services.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
In supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, I also ask our hon. Friend the Minister to clarify this matter. As we all know, the voluntary sector is hugely important for palliative care. So many people at the end of life want to go home. We also know, in relation to discharge from hospital, that we need to get people into the right place, with the right care, so it is hugely important that we do everything we can to support that sector and to relate it to end-of-life care and palliative care.
From a personal and local perspective, I will also say, on the care that is provided, that my constituency has an excellent hospice—St Ann’s hospice. It is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and lots of events are taking place. The hospice relies on funding from donations from local people and the wider public. It does an enormous amount of work.
If we are to provide the personalised care that we want to achieve, and if we are to enable people to be at home and to be cared for in different settings at the end of their life, it is really important that we consider this matter in relation to the Bill, so I welcome this change to clause 15.
Edward Argar
A number of the points raised by hon. Members, while touching on the amendments, will be addressed substantively in the clause stand part debate that is just about to take place. I do not think that there is anything further to add on the amendments.
Amendment 12 agreed to.
Amendment made: 13, in clause 15, page 13, line 24, at end insert—
“(ca) ophthalmic services other than primary ophthalmic services (for primary ophthalmic services, see Part 6),”.—(Edward Argar.)
This amendment makes it clear that integrated boards have a duty to commission secondary ophthalmic services (replicating the current position for clinical commissioning groups). Although secondary ophthalmic services would appear to fall within new section 3(1)(f) and (g), in the existing legislation they are mentioned specifically so the amendment would continue that approach.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
In opening the debate on this clause, I highlight the contributions made by my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central and for Cheadle. I suspect that, in my winding-up speech, I may be responding to further questions on this. They are absolutely right to highlight the amazing work that is done by hospices and various charities and organisations in providing end-of-life and palliative care. When I come to my conclusions, I hope to be able to offer further reassurances to my hon. Friends, who I know take a very close interest in this area, and, quite rightly, have championed it in the Committee today.
Clause 15 substitutes a new section 3 into the National Health Service Act 2006, which replaces the clinical commissioning group equivalent with one that requires integrated care boards to commission hospital and other health services for those persons for whom the ICB is responsible. The clause lists those things that the ICB must arrange for the provision of, which includes, but is not limited to, hospital accommodation, nursing and ambulance services, dental services, diagnosis, care, treatment and aftercare of people suffering illness, injury or disability. In proposed new section 3A, the clause also provides a power for ICBs to arrange for other services or facilities that they consider appropriate to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of people for whom they are responsible.
The clause makes it clear that the duty on an ICB to arrange services does not apply if NHS England has a duty to arrange for their provision. The clause gives ICBs a clear purpose, without which it would not be obvious which bodies in the system are responsible for commissioning which parts of the comprehensive health service that we all want to see.
I should note that ICBs will not be the sole commissioner in the system. As I have just alluded to, NHS England will remain a commissioner for some services best commissioned nationally, such as specialised services. The clause also allows us to very clearly divide responsibilities between NHS England and ICBs. Between NHS England and the ICBs, the NHS will continue to commission a comprehensive health service free at the point of delivery for all who need it. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I rise to support the comments that were made earlier. I had indicated to the Minister that I would raise the issue about stating very clearly that the terms “care” and “after-care” in proposed new section 3(1)(f) include palliative care and services at the end of life. We have had a 36% rise in the number of people dying at home during the pandemic. That may be a result of choice, but, as someone who has supported someone at the end of their life at home, it is only possible through end-of-life services, including GP services and the Marie Curie overnight nurse. I do worry desperately about the percentage of people who are dying at home. It will be a huge issue for these organisations in the future to manage that positively. The Minister’s assurance that palliative care and end-of-life services are very much the responsibility of these boards would be most welcome.
Edward Argar
I will respond only briefly, because the only outstanding point that the hon. Lady rightly made was about paragraph (f). My understanding is that palliative care services and similar, as she has alluded to, would be captured under that paragraph. She is right, as are other Members, to highlight just how important those services are as continuing care or aftercare for patients. I give her the reassurance that my understanding of paragraph (f) is that it would encompass the services to which she has alluded.
Karin Smyth
Thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Commissioning primary care services etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 28, in schedule 3, page 126, line 28, leave out “person” and insert
“general practitioner, GP partnership or social enterprise providing primary medical services”.
This amendment would prevent an integrated care board from entering into or renewing any Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract.
Amendment 29, page 126, line 32, leave out “person” and insert
“general practitioner, GP partnership or social enterprise providing primary medical services”.
This amendment would prevent NHS England from entering into or renewing any Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract.
That schedule 3 be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Clause 17 stand part.
Edward Argar
With your permission, Ms Elliott, I will first turn to clause 16 and schedule 3, and then discuss amendments 28 and 29, before concluding with clause 17.
Clause 16 gives effect to schedule 3, which makes provision for integrated care boards to take on responsibility for primary care services. The schedule allows for the conferral of functions relating to the commissioning of primary medical, dental and ophthalmic services on ICBs and contains related amendments. NHS England is currently responsible for arranging these services, but in future, once ICBs are fully established and ready to take on these functions, we intend for ICBs to hold the majority of them. This approach will ensure that decisions about services are made closer to the patient and in line with local population needs.
The schedule introduces a number of provisions to enable the transfer of these functions. The schedule includes equivalent provisions relating to primary medical, dental and ophthalmic services. That is to ensure flexibility, as it allows the different services to be conferred on ICBs over a period of time if that is deemed the most effective and efficient approach. The Bill is designed for the future, and we want to work with the system to support it to move at the right pace and offer patients the best care at all times.
The schedule provides for regulations to define which services should be regarded as primary medical, dental and ophthalmic services for the purposes of the Bill. The services that are classed as primary care services may vary over time and so these powers allow the Secretary of State to react to any such changes. The powers restate similar powers that are currently found in the National Health Service Act 2006. This provision places a duty on ICBs to provide primary medical, dental and ophthalmic services for those people for whom the ICB is responsible and allows ICBs to enter into the necessary arrangements in order to do so. To date, NHS England has always been responsible for dental and ophthalmic services, but the commissioning of primary medical services has been successfully delegated to clinical commissioning groups for some time. These provisions will ensure that primary care continues to be at the centre of delivering joined-up care to local communities—many members of the Committee have highlighted that—in partnership with wider health and care services in the area.
The schedule requires each ICB and NHS England to publish any information that may be prescribed in regulations concerning the provision of primary medical, dental and ophthalmic services. To ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place once these responsibilities are transferred, NHS England will have powers to direct ICBs as to how they should exercise their primary medical, dental and ophthalmic care functions.
In addition to primary care services, the Secretary of State will have powers to require NHS England to exercise pharmaceutical services, which can, in turn, be delegated to the integrated care boards. NHS pharmaceutical services are generally not directly commissioned, and the schedule continues to allow for that consistent approach to be followed.
The schedule makes provision for the necessary technical and consequential amendments to reflect the new provisions within it relating to primary care services. It is crucial for establishing ICBs as the key commissioners for the NHS in England in the future.
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate amendments 28 and 29. I will address what I read into them at this stage and if I have misrepresented them, I will of course seek at the end, as appropriate, to address any misapprehensions I may have set out. I fear that the amendments would prevent an ICB from entering or renewing a contract with some private and third-sector organisations for the provision of primary medical services. Although the explanatory note for the amendment says this will
“prevent an integrated care board from entering into or renewing any Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract”,
I have been advised that it would actually go much further than that limited objective, as limited companies can currently also hold general medical services and personal medical services contracts. The amendment would bar some of those companies from doing so, which would have a potentially devastating effect on primary care at a moment when the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds, is working flat out to build capacity in primary care.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Elliott. I wish to speak to amendments 28 and 29, and will also briefly address a couple of brief points relating to the clause.
I am grateful for the Minister’s response—it is handy to know in advance the likely arguments against the amendments. I referred to the amendments late on Tuesday afternoon, with regard to private company involvement in integrated care boards. We are heartened to hear what the Minister said about that and look forward to having those conversations. My original notes said that the amendments go a little further and might be a little rich for the Committee’s blood, and that may well be the case, but they are nevertheless important.
As I said the other day, the vast majority—around 70% —of GP services are provided on the general medical services contracting model, between local and national commissioners and a GP or GPs and their practice. A little more than a quarter of services are on the personal medical services terms, which allow greater local flexibility, although I understand that the intention is to phase them out. There is a small but growing number of APMSs, which we are debating. APMSs allow bespoke contracting with private companies, with no obligation for a GP behind them. The Minister mentioned their being time-limited as an asset; I am not sure that that is necessarily true. Of course, there has to be flexibility for commissioners to meet need, but my argument is that this is being misused and is operating as a loophole for private companies to enter the market and cream off profits in a way that I do not think is generally the direction that service users in the NHS want. Colleagues should not think that, because the model currently provides just over 2.5% of contracts, this is in some way small beer. The largest provider of GP services in this country is wholly owned by a US megacorporation and has 500,000 patients on its books. I do not think that is what our constituents want from their national health service in England, and I do not think that is what they expect it to look like either.
Therefore, it is reasonable to use the Bill to try to do something about it, because this will be the model. It will grow at pace unless it is checked, and there are many reasons to tackle the issue. It is not just because I find the model distasteful, which I do. First, such contracts are poor value for money. For a registered patient, the mean payment to an APMS provider is 11% greater than that to a GMS provider. Of course, the Minister made the argument on Tuesday that such practices often serve the hardest cohorts, so perhaps that could account for the difference, but that is not the case either. When patients are weighted according to need, the mean payment is actually 16% greater on APMS contracts—it gets worse. If we read that across the entire patient list across the country, it would be the equivalent of £1.5 billion. That is the risk, if this grows to be the dominant model. Such contracts also provide less satisfactory care, with a 2017 survey of nearly 1 million patients finding that APMS services generated lower levels of satisfaction.
Finally, the contracts are easier to walk away from. Within the NHS, we already know that when it stops working for private providers corporately, they are willing to just walk away from contracts and hand them straight back. I strongly say to the Minister that such arrangements are a distortion of the health service’s founding principles. They are costly, they are of lesser quality and they are less reliable.
Amendment 28 is designed to stop integrated care boards entering or renewing such contacts, and amendment 29 would do the same for NHS England. I fear that the Minister may have slightly catastrophised the impact of that, because if this was accepted today, there would be GP services that could no longer operate tomorrow. For a start, the Bill has an awful long way to go, and I gently say that if there is anxiety about health organisations working in advance and presupposing that this will become law at some point and will be operational in April, I am afraid that the Government started that a very long time ago and have already started to fill places in shadow. I do not think there should be any anxiety about getting prepared in this way, so that there would not be a cliff edge.
I am willing to take the argument that perhaps there is a better and more elegant way of drafting this, and I would happily accept an amendment in lieu, but what I cannot accept is nothing at all. Again, the Minister’s point on Tuesday was very good, because sometimes there will need to be a way to provide flexibility for very bespoke services. I think the example he used was services for street homeless people. Of course, that might be a very different model from that of the GPs on my estate. I would accept that as a principle, but the corporation that has the biggest patient list, at 500,000, is a bricks-and-mortar primary care service in my community. That is not a use of flexibility; it is using that as a loophole.
I do not think that can be right, and I do not think the answer can be that the provision needs to exist and therefore we must open this space for that sort of distortion. We are either saying, “There needs to be flexibility, and here is the best way of having a flexible system. Don’t worry—we’ll make sure it is not misused,” or we are saying that we are happy with such organisations entering the market. The Government need to say which one is their preference.
I will make a point about primary care networks before I move on to clause stand part. Obviously, primary care networks are not in the Bill, but I put quite a lot of stock in them. I think that, locally, they will be a very important unit of organisation of care services in our community. I want them to work, and I am playing an active role in the primary care network in my constituency. I think they have real potential. However, who will lead them if we lose our GP practices to those who do not have an interest in our community? The model will become much more distant and uninterested, based on finances rather than the local population. I believe that would be a very, very bad thing indeed. As I say, the amendments may not offer the best way to close that loophole, but I have not heard a better one, or indeed a desire to close it, so I wish to press the amendments to a Division.
Finally, a couple of quick points on schedule 3, which we do not intend to press to a Division. We have had quite a lot of discussion—the Minister touched on this in the previous stand part debate—about the arrangement of integrated care systems, such as they exist. At the moment, we know that NHS England holds certain responsibilities, the regional teams hold certain responsibilities and CCGs hold certain responsibilities at a local level. It is possible, after these reforms, that CCGs will be replaced by ICBs and the previous arrangements and responsibilities will remain unchanged, with NHS England nationally doing the same things, the regional teams doing the same things and ICBs picking up the responsibilities of their predecessors. I suspect, however, that that is not the intention, so I want to press the Minister a little bit on that.
The explanatory notes, on page 59, paragraph 286, state that the functions relating to medical, dental and ophthalmic primary care sit with NHS England, but that
“The intention is that Integrated Care Boards will hold the majority of these functions…in the future.”
Will the Minister expand on that? Does a “majority” mean two out of the three in a different area? Does he intend—again, we touched on this the other day—that this should all be devolved to the 42 ICBs at the same time, or will there be a sense of when each system is ready to pick up those important services? If so, what criteria will that be based on?
Finally, in case we do not come back to this topic—I do not expect the Minister to have an exhaustive list to hand—what is the thinking on other NHS England national and regional functions? Are they likely to be devolved to ICBs? Can he give an example of what sorts of things might be retained? He mentioned that we would want to retain specialist commissioning at a national level. The final question is this: is it ICB by default unless there is a very good reason why it cannot and therefore it has to be done at a national level, or is it at a national level unless it is proven that ICBs are competent to take it on? The answer may be a bit of a mixed economy, but if that is the case, I am keen to know what criteria he will use, or the Secretary of State will use, to make those decisions.
Karin Smyth
I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North, who made an excellent case for amendments 28 and 29. While on a primary care trust board, I commissioned APMS contracts under a previous magnificent Government—I am not saying this one’s not magnificent, but—because they offered flexibility. Then, as now, they were a sign of a failure of the system and the model of primary care contracting to deliver, particularly in areas of high deprivation. To provide flexibility in Bristol, for example, we had an 8 am to 8 pm service in the city centre to allow better access for people in the city centre, partly to drive down demand on emergency care services, which is a circle that we just keep on going round. Whether they worked or not is a bit of moot point, but it is a model and it is clear that something is needed—I would certainly concede that—so I understand the Government’s difficulty here with having something that is flexible.
I was slightly concerned when the Minister said that the APMS model would be developed further. I wonder if he wants to come back on that. We have to accept that they are problematic at the moment and we would like to see them go because of that. They are now being used as a back door, a very unfortunate one, for large private companies to start hoovering up general practices, which is, yet again, a sign of failure as to why they cannot survive in their environment. If they are going to be developed further, that is something we would like to hear more about. If not now, perhaps the Minister responsible could come back to us on that. Patients are always surprised when they find out that their GP is a private contractor. I accept that this is a difficult area to be completely black and white on. We are certainly in favour of flexibility in developing services in areas of high demand where, for reasons around capital or the type of contract, a GP might enter into partnerships. We know that the workforce is changing rapidly and the model of partnerships is not as attractive and is not recruiting people into the service. It is—not to overuse the word—a crisis.
I am sure we have all been contacted by various bodies representing GPs in our own constituencies. They are fearful not just about the current pressures, but the future attractiveness of primary care. We are not going to get into the future model of the contract today, but I always pity the poor Minister who has to negotiate the contract.
Karin Smyth
It is not a negotiation that anyone looks forward to with relish, but we need to take a good, strong look at the model now. This policy is not the route, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North has described perfectly why it is not. It is of deep concern. These large organisations are not part of the local community. It is completely against the thrust of this Bill, which is about place-based, locally accountable systems. The Government would be wise to take his advice and perhaps come back with something else. We seek assurance that this policy is not being developed further, because that would be of even greater concern.
Edward Argar
I can reassure the hon. Member for Bristol South. I fear she misheard me when I was saying that we were encouraging primary care commissioners to go further in developing primary care provision—that was not necessarily this model. Forgive me if I was unclear on that, and I hope that gives her a little reassurance on that point.
To address a number of the other points that the shadow Minister primarily made, I suspect his fears are not borne out in reality. I suspect he will none the less, as we cannot accept his amendment, press it to a vote to highlight the issue, and that is his prerogative. I come back to the point that flexibility in this space is hugely important. The examples given by the hon. Member for Bristol South about the challenges in primary care provision are a good argument for why we need this flexibility. We know that some practices, which are GPs’ private businesses contracted to the NHS, on occasion will collapse or a partner will retire and a surgery will cease to operate, especially if no one wishes to take it over. Therefore it is important that these flexibilities are available to commissioners to ensure GP practice coverage.
Karin Smyth
Just to be clear—my apologies for mishearing the Minister previously—such closures are a sign of failure. The answer is to negotiate the contract better and to modernise a clear contract, not to use this vehicle. That was my very clear point.
Edward Argar
I take the hon. Lady’s point, but it would be a sign of failure not to build flexibility for all eventualities into the arrangements we have at the disposal of commissioners and into what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds is trying to do to build resilience into the system. I very much hope that she will continue to do so, or will ascend in the next few hours to something else. That is why flexibility is at the heart of this measure and why we cannot support the amendment of the hon. Member for Nottingham North.
I will try to address a couple of points that the hon. Gentleman made. We envisage PCNs continuing to play a hugely important role locally in the provision of primary care services. My GP is actively involved in the local PCN in Leicestershire. I know, whenever I speak to him, just how much it has done, particularly in the past 18 months, to build resilience into the system and make sure it works. I know the value of those PCNs more broadly in, for want of a better way of putting it, more normal times.
The final thing the hon. Gentleman asked about was the delegation of currently nationally commissioned functions down to ICBs. The short answer is that he was right in his supposition that this is not a binary, one-size-fits-all measure. The reality is that NHS England will be looking at which ICBs and ICS areas are sufficiently developed that they can take on additional commissioning responsibilities. If he and I sat down, we would probably have a fair sense of which ones were already well advanced. It may be some where there is a mayoralty and there is already a significant amount of devolution in one or two areas. It may be others. We heard from Dame Gill Morgan in Gloucestershire, who clearly has a highly developed ICS in that area. I would be reticent about setting a black-and-white thing on meeting some criteria. There is a degree of subjectivity, which is why we will be reliant on the expert advice of our colleagues in NHS England, and they will make these decisions in the appropriate way.
I hope that gives the hon. Gentleman some reassurance on the broader clauses and schedule stand part. I fear I have not persuaded him in respect of his amendments, but it was worth a try.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 3
Conferral of primary care functions on integrated care boards etc
Amendment proposed: 28, in schedule 3, page 126, line 28, leave out “person” and insert
“general practitioner, GP partnership or social enterprise providing primary medical services”.—(Alex Norris.)
This amendment would prevent an integrated care board from entering into or renewing any Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract.
Edward Argar
Clause 18 amends section 12ZA of the NHS Act 2006, which currently relates to commissioning arrangements by the board and the CCG. Elsewhere in the Bill, this has been updated to refer to newly merged NHS England and ICBs instead. The purpose of the clause is to allow those arrangements to be efficient and work smoothly so that ultimately patients are provided with the best service.
In essence, the clause would allow NHS England and integrated care boards to choose to enter more flexible arrangements with providers of NHS services, allowing flexibility for providers to tailor services to best meet the health needs of the population. For example, the management of long-term conditions such as diabetes can have complex care pathways. An integrated care board, through its commissioning arrangements, could allow a local trust to determine the range of services that will meet these needs in the local area. This includes the trust subcontracting services to other providers where they are best placed to provide some of those services.
The flexibilities provided by this clause will add to the ability of commissioners and providers to work together, using each other’s expertise to get the best outcomes for the entire system. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
We now come to clause 19, to which 15 amendments have been tabled. Although amendments 77 to 79, 4, 56, and 80 to 82 have not been selected for debate as no member of the Committee has signed them, if any Member wants to move those amendments, would they please indicate?
Clause 19
General Functions
Justin Madders
I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 19, page 16, line 2, at end insert—
“(c) make arrangements to ensure that patients can access services within maximum waiting times in accordance with their rights in the NHS Constitution.”
This amendment places a duty on each integrated care board, in the exercise of its functions, to meet maximum waiting time standards.
The amendment would insert in clause 19 a new requirement on integrated care boards, in addition to the many requirements set out in the clause, to ensure that patients could access services within the maximum waiting times as set out in the NHS constitution. I expect the Minister will tell us that those requirements are already set out in the constitution and that the amendment is therefore unnecessary, but if the answer is that that is an effective tool for ensuring compliance, by any account it has failed.
In every aspect of performance, the NHS has gone backwards in recent years and there can be no doubting the strength of connection between that going backwards and the decade of austerity that the NHS has endured. It is more than five years since the 18-week standard has been met, and that has led to the record waiting lists we see now. In case there is any doubt about this, let me put it on the record that waiting lists were already at record levels before the pandemic, and despite all the fanfare from the Prime Minister following the national insurance rise, we still do not have a guarantee that they will go down during this Parliament.
Let us not forget why the last Labour Government introduced the standards. Years of underfunding under the 1979 to 1997 Conservative Government led us to a dark place. People were waiting months—sometimes years—to access treatment, and that was rightly identified as a priority to fix by the last Labour Government, who wanted to let record investment into the NHS, but also wanted to ensure that that investment was targeted and effective so that the NHS could be judged on its performance. As a result, the targets were introduced.
Targets and funding combined proved to be effective, which is why, by the time the Labour party left office, the NHS had record satisfaction levels and waiting times that today’s Secretary of State can only dream of. Little wonder the rhetoric in recent months has increasingly been that of scepticism about the benefit of such targets, culminating in the Secretary of State’s words at the weekend that the targets are, in fact, “nonsense”. Well, I think we can see what is going on. Targets have got hopelessly out of reach and there is no real plan for to how to change that, so the Government seek to undermine and ultimately change—or remove altogether—the targets, so that poor performance is disguised or played down.
That does a disservice to the patients who are waiting months—in some cases, sadly, years—for the treatment that they are entitled to. Most of those people will be in significant pain. All will be unable to live their lives to the extent that they would like. Some may be unable to work or undertake other physical activities. We do not need to go through the full list; we can all understand the impact that waiting for treatment can have on individuals. In many cases, their lives are effectively put on hold. They deserve better. The amendment would make it clear that their rights as patients under the constitution meant something and that the ICBs should be expected to focus on delivering those standards.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for tabling the amendment and giving us the opportunity to debate it. Of course we understand the importance of reducing waiting times. The Government are committed to increasing activity, tackling backlogs and ensuring that patients can access timely healthcare, backed up by the record investment announced by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor—indeed, some might agree, to a degree copying what the Labour Government did in putting up national insurance.
For instance, to tackle backlogs and drive up activity, the Government are providing £2 billion of elective recovery funding, which is double our previous commitment, and we are working to encourage innovation to help patients to get the care they need. In his remarks, the shadow Minister highlighted funding. I would point out to him the fact that, despite inheriting a note saying “Sorry, there is no more money,” we have continued to increase spending on the NHS.
Justin Madders
I am grateful for the Minister’s vain attempt to persuade me to withdraw the amendment, although he rather missed the central thrust of its purpose, which is, of course, to point out that this is not just about funding; it is about focusing that funding. That is why the targets were introduced in the first place.
We believe it is important that ICBs are also given that focus; we could call it an incentive or a prioritisation. They should be keen to be seen to be delivering that. This is such an important part of the NHS—how are we to judge each ICB’s performance if we do not know how they are performing on waiting lists? This is an important area. We think the general tone and the rhetoric from the Government are that waiting targets are not of significance, so this is an opportunity for them to put right some of the stories that go around in respect of that by supporting the amendment. We will press the amendment to a vote in any case because we believe that this is an important matter, and it should be put on the record.
Karin Smyth
I will not repeat my comments of the other day with respect to an amendment that suddenly disappeared from the amendment paper without my noticing. The point I was making was that targets do drive behaviour, and we learnt something in that magnificent drive down from the Conservative Government’s target of 18 months to wait on a list, which seemed acceptable to them at the time. The wait is beyond that now for many services, which seems acceptable to the Government now, although it is completely unacceptable to everyone in my constituency.
We must consider the managerial and clinical effort involved in focusing on those waiting lists, which, as I have said previously, is about making contact with all those patients, assessing their condition and seeing how it has ordinarily deteriorated once on the waiting list. Sadly, many people have died while on those waiting lists. That effort is huge, and it will require focus.
The Government are asking us all to pay a bit more towards the health service, and most of us are conscious of the fact that that is needed. We can debate how it is being done, but we should know what it will get us. We should absolutely be clear to our constituents—given that they have suffered so much, particularly during the pandemic—that the previous standards were not acceptable, and were not being met, and that it is completely unacceptable to ask people to pay more without their having any idea of what that will bring, or indeed of the Government’s intent with regard to how long they think it is acceptable for people to be on a waiting list.
It is also hugely onerous on the clinical managerial staff to manage these waiting lists in the way that they are, which is hugely inefficient. This is a really bad sign of the flow through the system; we have bottlenecks throughout. It will come back to haunt the Government and whoever is speaking on their behalf at this time—I have no doubt about that. I say that with sorrow because it is miserable all round. The Government would be wise to make some kind of assessment of what they think is an acceptable time to wait for various treatments, so that would be clear to people. Supporting our amendment would give some indication of good faith, at the very least.
Justin Madders
My hon. Friend has described the amendment very well, and it would be good to know the Government’s intentions in respect of waiting lists, because we consider the rhetoric a distraction and a nuisance. It is politically convenient for them to have such headlines. We want to put the amendment to the vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
On a point of order, Ms Elliott. I apologise for interrupting the flow of the sitting, but it will not have escaped your notice that my amendments 55 and 54 to clause 20 are coming up soon. As luck would have it, the debate will coincide precisely with the time at which I am due in Westminster Hall to discuss the progress of the Government’s implementation of the recommendations of the Timpson review. It is very difficult for me to avoid being present in Westminster Hall. As luck would further have it, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd is happy to move the amendments on my behalf, as well as speak to them. I hope that is acceptable, and I apologise for having to absent myself for a short period in order to fulfil my duties in another part of the House.
The Chair
That is absolutely fine. I thank the hon. Member for advising the Committee of that.
Justin Madders
I beg to move amendment 58, in clause 19, page 17, line 4, at end insert
“through working with innovation and life sciences ecosystems, facilitated by Academic Health Science Networks, to ensure patients and the public have timely access to transformative innovation.”
This amendment would mandate Trusts to work with AHSNs to promote innovation in health services.
Innovation has allowed us to conquer certain diseases and come up with better and more effective treatments for others. It is integral to societal progress and is a major source of inspiration, new opportunities and, indeed, new financial burdens for the NHS. Most importantly, it means improved outcomes for patients. Innovation needs to reach patients if we are to get the full benefit of the many incredibly talented people who make up our academic and research community.
Academic health science networks have an informal role in the NHS, and there is no obligation on any CCG to work with them to ensure that new, innovative medicines are available. There are 15 academic health science networks across England, which were established by NHS England in 2013 to spread innovation at pace and scale, improving health and generating economic growth. Each network has a distinct geography, covering a specific population in each region—it almost sounds like an integrated care system, but there are not quite as many. They are the only bodies that connect to the NHS and the academic organisations, and are catalysts that create the right conditions to facilitate change across health and social care communities with a clear focus, as we believe should be the case, on improving outcomes for patients. We think they are uniquely placed to underline and spread innovation at pace and scale, driving the adoption and spread of innovative ideas and technologies across large populations, but their effectiveness rests on their ability to bring people, resources and organisations together quickly, delivering benefits that could not be achieved if they operated in isolation.
Everything those bodies do is driven by two imperatives: improving health and generating economic growth in our regions. They are the only partnership bodies that bring together all partners across a regional hub economy to improve the health of local communities. They have a remit from NHS England to occupy what is effectively a unique space outside the usual NHS service contracts and performance management structures, enabling them to collaborate to foster important solutions.
Those bodies use local knowledge to harness the influence of partners to drive change and integrate research within health improvements. They are interested in seeing healthcare businesses thrive and grow, creating jobs, bringing investment and seeing the system improve. They have a different focus, but they share the following priorities: promoting economic growth; fostering opportunities for industry to work effectively with the NHS; diffusing innovation; creating the right environment; and supporting collaboration across boundaries to adopt and spread innovation at pace and scale. They improve patient safety by using knowledge, expertise and networks to bring together patients, healthcare staff and partners to determine priorities and to develop and implement solutions. They optimise medicine use—[Interruption.] Perhaps I have predicted what the Minister was about to say?
Edward Argar
I am envying the shadow Minister’s breath control as he runs through his list.
Justin Madders
I am merely trying to ensure we make good progress today.
Those bodies ensure medication is used to maximum benefit, including safety and making efficient use of NHS resources. They improve quality and reduce variation by spreading best practice—we often talk about the variation among outcomes across different parts of the country. They put research into practice, collaborate on national programmes, and have a unified focus on various initiatives, including the NHS innovation accelerator and patient safety collaborative programme.
The amendment would bake in that good work, some of which I have outlined, by including those bodies within the scope of proposed new section 14Z39 of the National Health Service Act 2006 regarding innovation.
Karin Smyth
I rise to support my hon. Friend. We have rightly criticised much of what has happened in the last few years, but we should also remember that some amazing partnerships and networks have developed, including in my area—Bristol, north Somerset and south Gloucestershire—with the universities and others in both primary and secondary care, bringing together clinicians, researchers and so on. They stumbled initially as things were difficult at the beginning, but they have come together very well. They are well regarded—variable but well regarded—and are a useful source of innovation coming together, so I fully echo my hon. Friend’s comments.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, for facilitating the debate on this matter, and, as I said, I admire his ability at pace and fluently to rattle through a long list of examples.
As the shadow minister said, the amendment relates to the role of ICBs and ICPs in relation to innovation. First, I want to reassure the Committee that I share his view on the vital importance of research to the NHS and the UK more widely. We are committed to being a research superpower and fully support research and innovation in the NHS and the public being given timely access to transformative medicines and treatments resulting from that innovation.
The example we would all use at the moment is vaccine development. That is a phenomenal example, and it is at the forefront of many of our minds. That is why we have replicated the research duty on CCGs for ICBs to continue a system that has been working well. We are fully supportive of research and ensuring that effective health, public health and social care services are delivered, but we cannot support the amendment.
Justin Madders
I am grateful for the Minister’s comments. The Opposition would not want to be accused of being over-prescriptive—that is certainly not what we intend. I appreciate what the Minister said about not wanting to limit the role of ICBs and he made a good point about the vaccine roll-out being a pertinent example of how innovation can be of huge benefit. That may be at the forefront of his mind because there is now a vacancy in the Department in the role of Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment; the Minister may be looking to add to his already extensive portfolio.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 19, page 17, line 7, leave out from beginning to end of line 9 and insert—
“(a) support the conduct of research on matters relevant to the health and care system,
(b) work with universities and other research settings to support the development of the health research workforce and careers, and
(c) promote the use in the health and care system of evidence obtained from research.”
This amendment would require Integrated Care Boards to work with universities to support research in their local health and care systems.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 8, in clause 19, page 17, line 13, after “1F(1)”, insert “and work with universities and colleges”.
This amendment would require Integrated Care Boards to work with universities and other education providers to promote education and training in their local health and care systems.
Chris Skidmore
The amendments would place a legal duty on integrated care boards to support and promote the use and development of research in their local health and care systems. The existing legislation talks about the health system; this is the Health and Care Bill, so it makes sense that the duty to promote research should also promote research in care settings.
Importantly, amendment 7 would promote and support the conduct of research alongside universities, which drive research outputs and innovation in healthcare. We would all agree that that has been highlighted throughout the pandemic: if it was not for our universities, we would not have all received a vaccine, in respect of which the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of research and innovation.
In the specific context of the Bill, it is important to require ICBs to engage with universities and other research settings on the development of the healthcare research workforce. ICBs will have a vital role in ensuring that we have sufficient numbers in not only the health workforce but the healthcare academic workforce, which is key to overall healthcare workforce sustainability. That is particularly important for the development of the clinical academic workforce. Clinical academics work in higher education institutions, conducting cutting-edge research and educating the future workforce while also providing clinical expertise to health and social care services. Because they remain clinically active, their research is grounded in clinical practice and questions that matter to services and patients.
Data from the Medical Schools Council staffing survey shows that although the total number of NHS medical consultants and GPs has risen by 40% over the past 15 years, the numbers of clinical academic have simply not kept up to pace—in fact, they have decreased, from 7.5% to 4.2% of the workforce. The proportion of clinical academic GPs has remained stable, but at just 0.4% of the GP workforce. Furthermore, less than 0.1% of the workforce in nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions are clinical academics. Increasing clinical academic capacity is essential to advancing evidence-informed practice and innovation in healthcare in the future. The point here is that expansion of the healthcare programme of student numbers on the UK Government’s intended scale also requires an expansion of the number of healthcare academic staff.
The 2019 academic staffing centres of the Council of Deans of Health identify challenges for universities in recruiting staff and an ageing academic workforce in healthcare subjects. In England, 36% of academic staff are over the age of 50, and 9% are over the age of 60. That suggests that the academic workforce is significantly older than the healthcare workforce as a whole. It suggests that, within the next 15 years, almost half of the academic staff will be at or near retiring age, with many already likely to have retired. Without significant renewal of the academic healthcare workforce, not enough staff will be left to keep up with the number of students.
It is key that senior leaders in both the higher education and the healthcare sectors cultivate a culture of support for clinical academics. ICBs, health and social care providers and universities need to work in partnership to support clinical academics and clinical staff interested in secondments or joint appointments to universities. There should be opportunities for clinical staff to obtain experience and skills in teaching and also in research.
Amendment 7 ensures that ICBs remember their responsibilities to research, to local research priorities and to developing a local clinical academic research workforce, and universities are vitally involved in that important work. I think I am the only Member of this House who has been both a Health Minister and a Universities Minister twice. When I went into the Department of Health and Social Care, we were talking about integration between healthcare settings and social care settings. We have a similar problem with integration when it comes to looking at the medical workforce and ensuring that the education settings and the healthcare settings also integrate better together.
Amendment 8 returns to this point. It would require integrated health and care boards to work with universities to promote education and training in their local health and care systems. Universities are committed to co-creating healthcare services through working with practice partners, further education colleges and other stakeholders to plan and deliver the future workforce. I know that, when we come to clause 33, we will be talking about workforce planning at length, but this amendment would help to enable us to plan in advance to mitigate some of the problems that come with workforce planning for the future.
Universities are rooted in their local and regional communities and focus on improving healthcare outcomes and driving up economic and social wellbeing through providing programmes to meet skills gaps in those local areas. This is highlighted through the work of the universities during the pandemic, including the University of the West of England in my own locality hosting a Nightingale hospital, and the deployment of thousands of healthcare and medical students and some academic staff within clinical practice to expand the NHS workforce at the height of the pandemic. We all want to pay tribute to those medical students who, with no extra salary, gave up their time to volunteer to help staff on some of those covid wards at the time.
In England, universities currently sit on local workforce action boards and on sustainability and transformation partnerships to ensure that education is central to local healthcare planning. The amendment ensures that universities and colleges continue to be actively engaged by ICBs to plan and deliver on local workforce needs and priorities to ensure a sustainable workforce. This should take place alongside continued work with Health Education England.
Healthcare programmes are holistic and necessarily constituted of theory and practice components. For example, a registered nursing programme consists of 4,600 hours of education across three years—2,300 hours of academic learning and 2,300 hours of theory learning. Universities and their practice placement partners need to be involved in national and local workforce planning to ensure that there is adequate placement capacity in the system. As I saw when I was a Health Minister, placement capacity has long been recognised as a constraint to sector growth. Even if the hospitals wanted to expand, they did not have the placements to be able to deliver on the demand that was there.
ICBs must be involved in developing placement capacity and innovation and work with partners to increase placement opportunities outside the NHS, including in private healthcare, the third sector, social care, research and teaching, and international exchange. ICBs also need to work with education providers to think about developing education placements to support digital innovation and online and blended delivery, particularly considering the learning we have from the pandemic. That will help to support higher education institutions to manage the continued challenges posed by placement capacity problems, considering health service pressures.
Requiring ICBs to work with universities and colleges is also key to ensuring the success of healthcare apprenticeships and new technical qualifications such as T-levels. Universities work in close collaboration with local employers to develop and deliver healthcare apprenticeships. They are also committed to ensuring smooth articulation between further education and higher education, and universities are working with colleges to ensure that the healthcare T-levels and the new higher technical qualifications are rolled out successfully.
The amendment would ensure that the planning of future workforce numbers and sufficient placement capacity for all learner routes must be developed in partnership with education providers. That is crucial.
Alex Norris
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his amendments and the case he made for them. I hope that he remembers with fondness his visit to the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University when he was Universities Minister. He will have seen then the significant role that they play in our community, and I think they provide a good model for some of the things that we are talking about. I hope the Minister will address the points about clinical academics in particular. They were very well made, and I thought the right hon. Member for Kingswood also provided the basis for what will be a really interesting discussion on clause 33.
What attracts me to amendment 7 is that it is really important to send a signal to the leaders of integrated care boards that we want research to be central to their mission, as NHS Providers said in its evidence, and that we do not see them solely as administrators of health and care spending on a day-to-day basis, who every winter have to engage in collective crisis management to keep the lights on. We have much broader horizons in mind for them. If this is about new and enhanced models of more integrated care, we have to harness the expertise of academia. Hopefully, if this was effective and worked as a two-way process, with academics learning from inside the system and the systems learning from best practice from around the different footprints, that would be really powerful.
That relates neatly to the point about inequalities, from the beginning of our line-by-line consideration. The argument in favour of making that a priority was not about some sort of quixotic search for solutions or saying that something must be done, so let us just do something; rather, it is about taking evidence-based, high-quality interventions that work and putting them to work elsewhere. The sort of insights that amendment 7 proposes would certainly do that.
When I read amendment 8, my first instinct was, “I wish I had tabled it,” because I think it is great. We want to foster a culture where we invest in and develop our people. That is true whatever someone’s role is in the health and care service. Of course, that is really important in the NHS, and we all have a clear picture of what that looks like, but it is even more important in social care. We undervalue the role of social care in so many aspects, obviously and most tangibly in pay and conditions, but we also do not invest in people. Imagine how much more attractive a career in care would become if someone’s training prospects went beyond the limited ones offered by whoever their employer happens to be and instead a wealth of other opportunities and courses backed by top higher education providers in their community was opened up.
My family’s life was transformed by the impact that night school had on my mum’s skills. She progressed from being an unqualified person working in childcare and turned that from a job into a career. That was completely transformative, not just for her life but for mine and my sister’s. How terrific would that sort of picture be for people entering the care profession. It would be a wonderful thing. So there is a lot to go at here, and I am very interested in hearing the Minister’s views on how we can try to foster that culture, if not through amendments 7 and 8.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of the agenda raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood in his amendments 7 and 8 and the need for integrated care systems to ensure that NHS organisations for which they are responsible conduct and resource clinical research.
I think all would agree that the UK life sciences sector is world-leading. That was evidenced during the pandemic by the way in which early PCR testing was brought forward for covid, by the recovery trial and by vaccine development and so on. In this country, however, the location of existing activity is all too often limited. We have world-renowned centres of excellence, often associated with teaching hospitals. I would do nothing to weaken that. The Government’s levelling-up agenda needs to extend involvement in such activity across the country. But at the same time, it can strengthen what Britain has to offer to patients and the world as a whole, bringing economic benefit to the country as well as to the NHS through increased income.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood for tabling his amendments and allowing us to have this debate. As has been mentioned, he was both my distinguished predecessor in this role and a very distinguished Minister for universities and research.
Amendments 7 and 8 relate to requiring ICBs to work together with higher education institutions and to their research duty. With the consent of the Committee, and with yours, Ms Elliott, I will start with amendment 8 and revert to amendment 7. Amendment 8 would alter the statutory duty placed on ICBs to promote education and training when exercising their functions to assist the Secretary of State and Health Education England in the discharge of their statutory duties. The Government believe that integrated care boards should promote education and training for people who are employed or considering becoming employed in the provision of NHS services, and that is what proposed new section 14Z41 of the National Health Service Act 2006, in clause 19, achieves that. This provision mirrors the duty currently imposed on clinical commissioning groups. In discharging the duty, ICBs will invariably work with higher education institutions as well as other educational providers as they consider appropriate.
At this point, the Department does not think that it necessary to mandate specific details of how ICBs should discharge that duty under proposed new section 14Z41, particularly as NHS England will have a power to issue guidance to ICBs on the discharge of their functions, which should serve to clarify the system. The draft guidance published by NHS England and NHS Improvement in August 2021 states that the delivery of ICBs’ responsibilities will include working with educational institutions to develop the local future workforce across the health and care system. We believe that that guidance sends a strong signal to the system of the importance of the issue, reinforcing the statutory duty that ICBs will be under to promote education and training. Furthermore, it is worth noting in that context that ICBs will not be the only place in the system where engagement with higher education institutions will be taken forward.
HEE works extremely closely with higher education institutions and other education providers both nationally and through non-statutory regional people boards, jointly with NHS England, to ensure that the education and health systems are producing the right number of people with the right skills for our NHS. For example, Health Education England has already offered to support ICBs through the provision of workforce development support.
I will now turn to amendment 7, before wrapping both amendments together. I start by reassuring my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members who have spoken in this debate that the Government remain fully committed to supporting research as part of our NHS. Currently, clinical commissioning groups are under a duty to promote research; the Bill places the same duty on integrated care boards. That duty is discharged in a variety of ways—for example, with some CCGs having research strategies or research offices, providing details on how people can participate in research locally, or being partners in research organisations. Rather than being direct funders or directly conducting research themselves, the role of integrated care boards is to facilitate and enable research.
A duty to promote research gives greater flexibility for integrated care boards to determine how best and most effectively to engage with and encourage research in their local system. For example, NHS Liverpool CCG is the host organisation for the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast, while NHS Norfolk and Waveney CCG has a dedicated primary and community care research office, which works with a range of stakeholders, including academics, to develop and support the delivery of healthcare research across the area.
The amendment would modify the research duty on integrated care boards by replacing a requirement to promote research on relevant health service matters with one to “support the conduct” of that research. It also contains an additional requirement for ICBs to work with universities and other research settings to support the development of the health research workforce and careers.
We believe that there would be relatively little practical impact from changing the duty to one of supporting the conduct of research, and that there would be the potential to cause some confusion to staff moving from CCGs to ICBs as to what was expected of them. On the question of developing the health research workforce and careers by working with universities and other research settings, there is a risk in highlighting universities in particular, as that might imply an exclusion of other education facilities, although I know that that is not the intent. Furthermore, I have already highlighted the effectiveness of the proposed education and training duty, which includes the research workforce. Finally, the duty in relation to promoting the use of evidence and research is already part of the existing ICB duties.
I hope that, given those reassurances, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood will not feel that he has to press his amendments to a vote. I look forward to continuing to speak with him as proceedings on the Bill continue, to ensure that when it becomes law, we end up with something that accurately reflects what we need in order to carry on being a powerhouse of innovation and research.
Chris Skidmore
I thank the Minister for his considered comments on these amendments. They are probing amendments, and I do not intend to press them to a vote. I hope, however, that the Department will consider not only the discussion that we have had in Committee today, but a letter that was sent to the Minister’s office on 14 September from Universities UK, the Medical Schools Council and the Council of Deans of Health, which have all signalled their support for a form of words in an amendment that recognises the potential difficulties about placement planning and the opportunities represented by putting measures in the Bill about ICBs demonstrating integrated working.
I have been in Bill Committees before—I am now legislating to take out a lot of what I legislated for 10 years ago, when I was dealing with what became the Health and Social Care Act 2012. These Bills do not come around very often, so we have a fantastic opportunity, as the oral evidence sessions demonstrated, and I fully appreciate it. I have removed and re-tabled one of my amendments, to clause 33, as a result of the feedback from the oral evidence sessions.
There is a tension about how prescriptive we should be when the very culture of the Bill is about locally led practice and delivery and ensuring that we give health service managers and clinicians the opportunity to decide what is best for their local areas, so I do appreciate that prescription here may be unnecessary, but I felt it was important that I raised this as an opportunity to make a change in the Bill.
When it comes to clause stand part, I would like to speak more generally on clause 19 about the value of research, which my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd has spoken about. I think we have an opportunity—it is one that I do not want to miss—when it comes to embedding research within the future of the NHS. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Alex Norris
I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 19, page 25, line 37, at end insert—
“14Z58A Power of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner to obtain information
(1) The Domestic Abuse Commissioner may require an integrated care board to provide the Domestic Abuse Commissioner with information.
(2) The information must be provided in such form, and at such time or within such period, as the Domestic Abuse Commissioner may require.”
This amendment places a requirement on Integrated Care Boards to share information with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner at their request.
This is the first of a couple of amendments relating to domestic abuse. I hope it is not necessary, but it is my best avenue for establishing a point. I am really hoping for a one-word answer from the Minister—in my experience, a one-word answer is better than a two-word answer—and I hope that we can make quick progress with the amendment.
In England and Wales, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created the post of Domestic Abuse Commissioner, who is in the vanguard of holding to account authorities and agencies to ensure that their process and plans promote our national attempts to tackle domestic abuse. Currently, the post is filled by the excellent Nicole Jacobs. She has the power to obtain information from public bodies such as the local police, the local council and the Care Quality Commission, so that she can express her views as to whether those organisations are acting in line with well-evidenced best practice in the decisions that they take. That is an important way in which we can be assured that public policy decisions on the ground from day to day reflect the national consensus on what we are trying to achieve.
Currently, NHS bodies are in scope of the commissioner’s powers, and I want to clarify that ICBs and any relevant sub-committee would also be in scope. The composition of the boards will not matter, and there will be no shielding behind commercial confidentiality. The body will sit consistently with other, similar bodies, and the commissioner will be able to get the information she needs to do the job that we have asked of her.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I share his view that it is crucial that integrated care boards co-operate with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. I think I speak for the whole Committee when I say that we agree that the health and social care system has a crucial role in preventing and tackling domestic abuse, and in supporting victims who experience this horrendous crime. Indeed, before the last reshuffle, when I moved from Justice to Health, I was one of the Ministers working with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), on the genesis of what is now the Domestic Abuse Act. Therefore, we wholeheartedly welcome the introduction of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s role in the Act.
The commissioner has a vital role to play in monitoring the response to domestic abuse, sharing best practice and challenging bodies, including in health and social care, to go further and to do more. The commissioner will require information, support and co-operation from integrated care boards as well as a range of other public bodies. That is why the Domestic Abuse Act contains a duty to co-operate with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and we have made it clear that that will apply to integrated care boards and their component parts. It will also apply to requests for information from the commissioner. That is a little more than one word, but I hope I have reassured the hon. Member for Nottingham North that there is already such provision, as there should be. I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
More broadly, the Department for Health and Social Care will be taking steps to ensure that integrated care boards also have the right guidance and support to ensure that they fulfil their duties in relation to domestic abuse, as well as violence against women and girls, and sexual violence more broadly. We will be following the Government’s recent violence against women and girls strategy by engaging with current ICSs, the wider sector and the commissioner, so that we identify best practice and share that guidance across the system to ensure that all parts of the system play their part.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for that answer and clarification. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
This clause inserts 31 new sections into the NHS Act 2006. It is the cornerstone of the integrated care board provisions, as it sets out the functions and duties that ICBs are required by legislation to fulfil. Clause 19 contains a number of provisions and duties in respect of ICBs. Given the importance of these provisions in the Bill, I will take Members through them, if they will forgive me, in a little detail.
Justin Madders
I am grateful to the Minister for that herculean effort in listing all the powers and responsibilities of ICBs. For a permissive Bill, the fact that it sets out 12 duties suggests that the pendulum has swung a little bit further than the Minister was perhaps prepared to admit on Tuesday. Of course, the number would have been even higher had our amendment been accepted, but there we go; a dozen is still an impressive amount. However, it is really about what that means in practice.
The Minister referred to the duty whereby ICBs are required to promote awareness of the NHS constitution. In the context of the debate that we have just had on NHS waiting lists, it strikes me as similar to the scene—it might be familiar to many Members—at the end of each “Bullseye” episode, when the speedboat that the unlucky contestant had not succeeded in getting was brought out, so as to say, “Look what you could have won!” In this case, it is, “Look what the NHS constitution says about waiting times. By the way, we are not delivering on that for you.” That is the nub of some of the duties—how will they be enforced in practice? The Minister referred to mechanisms for NHS England intervention, although we would have liked that to be further strengthened with specific reference to waiting lists.
I note that in proposed new section 14Z59(4), NHS England has retained the ability to terminate the appointment of an ICB chief executive, but also to direct the chair of the board as to which individual to appoint as their replacement and on what terms. That is quite a strong power. The way I read that, if NHS England decides to get rid of someone, it, and it alone, will decide who will replace them. That really goes against the spirit of what we have been discussing for the last couple of days. Would the Minister be able to allay my fears in that respect, or at least put into context the circumstances in which that clause might operate?
I was interested to hear what the Minister said about proposed new section 14Z47 and ICBs’ ability to offer grants and loans on whatever terms they see fit. It now seems that the “B” in ICB stands for bank, or possibly building society. Obviously, at the moment these bodies do not exist in law and so have no capital resources to draw on to create such grants or loans, but of course that will change in due course. Again, will the Minister advise the Committee in what kind of situations that might be a possibility?
Finally, I draw the Committee’s attention to the powers and responsibilities in proposed new section 14Z52, on health and wellbeing boards’ comments about forward plans. Like much of this, it is a process-driven, tick-box exercise where people have to “take regard” and explain why they are not doing something that everyone else has asked them to do. A whole lot of this raises the question: in a disagreement, what are the levers to get proper accountability and change that the whole of the system, apart from the ICB, wants to see?
Chris Skidmore
Although I entirely support clause 19 as an essential ingredient of the Bill that will provide certainty and legal confidence to ICBs, I wish to draw the Minister’s attention again to the duty to promote research. The past year has demonstrated the increased engagement, across all healthcare settings, in research and those activities relating to the pandemic.
Research demonstrates the enormous benefits not only to patients, but to organisations that see improved outcomes, lower mortality rates and increased confidence in care as a result of being research-led organisations. It also shows the staggering gross value added that is produced within the NHS—£2.7 billion in 2018-19, through the National Institute for Health Research clinical research network that supports clinical research activities. For every patient recruited on to a commercial trial between 2016 and 2018, the NHS in England received more than £9,000. When a drug is replaced by a new one—a trial drug—there is another saving of nearly £6,000.
Research not only improves lives; we know it saves lives. I am a passionate advocate for expanding our research and development capacity across society if we are to succeed as global Britain. That is one reason we have that cross-Government target of raising the amount spent on R&D, both public and private, to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.
I want to come back to this idea of the duty to promote research. I recall serving on the Bill Committee for what became the Health and Social Care Act 2012, when the duty to promote research was first written into legislation, with the duty on CCGs. That has now been transferred across in the text for ICBs, in proposed new sections 14Z39 and 14Z40 to the National Health Service Act 2006.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd mentioned, the duty to promote may not be strong enough. I do not have an amendment to hand, but I wanted to raise this point more generally so that the Minister and his Bill team might give it some consideration. Given that ICSs are established as the strategic system leaders for the NHS and partner organisations to deliver integrated care and take that whole-systems approach, research will have to be a core element of ICSs’ regional plans if we are to maximise the strengths of the NHS, our world-leading science capability and the opportunities I have spoken about.
I therefore urge the Government to consider whether there might be an opportunity to change the duty to promote into a duty to conduct and resource clinical research during the passage of the Bill. It is important to stress that a duty to promote has to be accompanied by the necessary infrastructure: staffing levels, research capability, digital resources, access to services, efficient trial approval processes, the ability to reliably recruit patients, guidance and dedicated staff time for research. The whole idea of “promotion” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. There might be an opportunity for us to be more detailed in creating a duty to conduct and resource clinical research.
Such a duty—this has been raised with me—would present the opportunity that research brings to highlight clinical inequalities within the NHS. We need to be able to measure research activity; we cannot manage or even promote research activity unless we are able to measure it effectively. With that comes the whole question of clinical auditing—making sure that there is an effective auditing process in place to ensure that research-led activities are able to be effectively measured and therefore effectively managed. I am sure that that will be raised in the other place during the passage of the Bill. I act as a canary in the coalmine to provide the Minister with due warning that I am sure these debates will come up during the passage of the Bill in the other place.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott.
I have some questions for the Minister about the cross-border joint committees. I would, of course, be happy if he could answer them this afternoon, but he if wishes to have a period of further consideration I would be content for him to write to the Committee with the answers.
Clause 19 sets down the prescribed functions of an integrated care board that can be exercised jointly with the local health board in Wales. This is to be the responsibility of joint committees. The clause replaces the regulations in the National Health Service Act 2006, which provide that any prescribed functions of a clinical commissioning group can be exercised jointly with local health boards. The immediate questions for me are quite obvious—the who, what, why and how sort of questions—and I have not seen any details on this matter as yet, although I might have missed something.
As to my questions to the Minister, first, the why is quite clear: people from Wales access specialist services in England, as I am sure the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd would point out if I did not. People from border areas, but also from the far north-west of Wales where I live, access services in Manchester and are very glad to do so. Indeed, people from England access services in Wales as well, although that is less remarked on. Cross-border traffic is usually couched in terms of dependency from Wales, but it might interest the Committee to know that in 2019, 13,500 people from Wales accessed GP services in England, while at the same time, 21,000 people from England accessed GP services in Wales. That might, of course, be something to do with the free prescriptions provided by the Labour Government in Wales—I could not possibly comment.
To be clear, as a Plaid Cymru Member and a nationalist, I think co-operation is not just desirable but essential to ensure that fair and effective cross-border arrangements are in place. There will, no doubt, be opportunities to compare and contrast and to learn from each other. As I said, however, I would like the Minister to address some of my questions. This is not an exhaustive list.
First, to what degree have the Welsh Government played a part in drawing up the arrangements for joint committees? I am sure there have been discussions. For example, how will the membership of joint committees be decided? There has been a good deal of concern in debates in this Committee about private providers having seats on ICBs, as we have already heard. Pertinently to this matter, the private sector has a lesser role in the provision of health and social care in Wales. We are not talking about identical services here. The private sector might have a greater prominence on the other side of the border. Has it been agreed with the Welsh Government that private providers are to have seats on joint committees or not? If so, what safeguards will be in place to prevent the conflicts of interest that were referred to on Tuesday?
What structures will be in place to ensure that there is national Welsh consistency in decision making between the joint committees along the border? Will there be a national framework, although perhaps that is the responsibility of the Welsh Government rather than the Government here in Westminster, for coming to agreements on the delivery of services, or will it be up to the local joint committees, with the danger of a postcode lottery? As I said, I think this might be a matter for the Welsh Government rather than the Government here in Westminster. It has been agreed, I hope, so I would like to know what was agreed.
Lastly, in respect of the detailed points, to whom will the joint committees be accountable: to their respective ICBs or health boards, to the Government, or to the ICB on one side and the Welsh Government on the other? How will that be done? Indeed, when consultation—wide consultation, I hope—is undertaken, will it happen across the border as well? Will Welsh patients be able to have their say? There are more questions that I will pursue, and more will surely arise as the joint committees begin their work. I hope the Minister appreciates that these matters need further explanation.
Finally, I have three broader points. Perhaps the Minister can clarify whether there have been discussions on these points and what has been decided about the services provided over the border. First, I am worried about divergence in health policy between Wales and England. There is a wellbeing approach to health in Wales, as I said in the debates on Tuesday. Might any difficulties arise from that? There might be some difference between what is available in Wales and what is available over the border.
Secondly—this is a particularly important matter where I live—has there been any discussion on whether services provided from England into Wales are consistent with the Welsh language requirements of the Welsh health service? I think there is a problem here, and some services provided into Wales from England are really aware of this. I think of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, which has Welsh-language services for people coming in from Wales. The hospital is just outside Oswestry, not far from the border. That is an issue to be examined, and perhaps to be answered by the Minister today or in a letter.
Lastly—this is more of a point in law, or possibly a philosophical point—can ICBs, which are ultimately the responsibility of the Government here in Westminster, be accountable to the Welsh Government, who have their power devolved from London? To put it more directly, can the Welsh Government peck up the pecking order towards bodies over in England? That has been a real question for services provided from outside Wales by Government bodies or agencies. Over many years, there has been quite a debate about bilingualism in the services provided into Wales by the Department for Work and Pensions. Again, that might not be a problem, but I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on this issue and on the other questions that I have raised.
Edward Argar
I am grateful, as ever, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood for his comments. I hope I can reassure him that the issues he raised, and the issues that he has aired in the Committee today, will continue to be reflected on carefully by officials and Ministers during the passage of the Bill.
I will try to address the specific points raised by the hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for Arfon. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston touched on the appointment of chief executives and the termination of appointments. That power is broadly akin to the current power that CCGs have, and we are simply moving across the power that NHS England has over CCGs to reflect the new environment of integrated care boards.
Justin Madders
I am grateful for the clarification from the Minister, but does that not expose our fear that, really, ICBs are just bigger CCGs?
Edward Argar
No, because at the heart of ICBs is an enhanced integration and partnership-working model, which will be a significant step forward to facilitate improved patient care in our constituencies and localities.
The power to make loans is analogous to the power that exists for CCGs.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston touched on forward plans and health and wellbeing boards. The ICB will have an obligation to consult the health and wellbeing board, including in respect of whether it takes into account the latest joint health and wellbeing strategy and provides the HWB with a copy of its plan.
On Wales, I fear that I may have to write to the hon. Member for Arfon with some of the answers, but I shall try to give some now so that he has at least something today. We are seeking not to make a policy change or anything like that but to carry the existing situation for CCGs across into the new arrangement. We have been consulting and working closely with the Welsh Government. I suspect that, as we heard from the witnesses, some in the Welsh Government may suggest that we should consult more closely, while others will say the consultation is adequate. I believe I have a good relationship with the Health Minister in the Welsh Government—I spoke to her only yesterday about a number of aspects of the Bill—and at official level conversations are constantly ongoing.
The hon. Member for Arfon touched on joint committees, which will involve ICBs and their Welsh equivalents. We would not expect private providers to serve on them because they will in effect exercise an ICB function. On Tuesday, I made it clear to the Committee that it is not our intention that private providers should serve on ICBs, so they should not serve on joint committees either. We will have further discussions with the Opposition Front-Bench team and others as to whether we can find a way to make that clearer in the legislation.
Finally, accountability remains essentially unchanged. The NHS in Wales is accountable to the Welsh Government and ICBs will be accountable to NHS England and, therefore, to the Secretary of State. The hon. Member for Arfon touched on the challenge of divergence or disparity of provision. I suspect that, in a sense, it comes baked into a devolution settlement that when power is devolved down there is sometimes a divergence of approach or there are different services. That is in the nature of any devolution settlement where specific services or functions are devolved. For example, as we have seen in our exiting from coronavirus regulations, the devolved Administrations have the right, under the settlement, to pursue the approach that they deem to be most effective.
I hope that I have addressed a number of the points made by the hon. Member for Arfon. I see my officials frantically scribbling down his other questions; we will endeavour to check Hansard and write to him with anything we have missed.
I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Integrated care partnerships and strategies
Dr James Davies
I beg to move amendment 55, in clause 20, page 29, line 7, at end insert—
“(2A) When appointing members to the integrated care partnership, the integrated care partnership must pay particular attention to the range of services used by children and young people aged 0-25.”
This amendment would require integrated care partnerships to consider representation from the full spectrum of services used by babies, children and young people, including education settings.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 54, in clause 20, page 29, line 32, at end insert—
“(c) include specific consideration of how it will meet the needs of children and young people aged 0-25.”
This amendment would require an integrated care partnership to specifically consider the needs of babies, children and young people when developing its strategy.
Dr Davies
I move the amendment on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury.
These probing amendments would require integrated care partnerships to involve in their joint committee the key partners—including schools and colleges—responsible for meeting the needs of babies, children and young people. The intention is to understand how we can best ensure that children’s needs are given equal priority at ICS level. The Bill provides a genuine opportunity to reduce child health inequalities and improve children’s health outcomes, which is all the more pressing following many children’s severe adverse experiences over the past 18 months.
The Government’s drive towards integrated services and greater collaboration, both within and beyond the health and care system, is very much to be welcomed, but if ICSs are to achieve their aims of improving population health and reducing inequalities, they must give equal weight to the needs of children when they plan and commission services. Why? Because children are a distinct population with their own workforce, infrastructure, developmental needs and legislation. Children’s health is affected by a complex ecosystem of factors, with many interrelated systems encircling the child. Their health is determined not only by primary and secondary health services, but by their nursery or school, children’s social care teams, the local authority SEND workforce, school nursing, health visitors and many other partners.
Alex Norris
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Eddisbury for tabling the amendments and to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd for stepping in to give the Committee a chance to discuss them. I agree completely with what he said about the Bill being a real opportunity on child health in this country and I hope that we can take it.
We should be saddened by what Barnardo’s said in its written evidence:
“Children growing up in England…face some of the worst health outcomes in Europe”—
particularly those growing up in poverty. That is really saddening, not least because even prior to the pandemic, according to Action for Children, over 4 million children were living in poverty, including a staggering, breathtakingly sad 46% of children in black and minority ethnic groups. We must seek to do better. These things should stop us in our tracks, given the wealth that we as a country have, the technologies we have, the schooling we have and the assets we have, yet we cannot give our young people, particularly the poorest children, the best start in life. That is really sad.
The only enhancement that I would make to the amendments is that, rather than making them about ages nought to 25, I would extend the range to include the six months prior to birth, because we know how important those services are. I hope, in that spirit, that we may hear some enthusiasm from the Minister and his Government about implementing all the recommendations of the Leadsom review. I know that it will be hard, because it will involve acknowledging some dreadful decisions over the past decade, such as the reduction in Sure Start but, nevertheless, that report has real potential to be the bedrock for a return to something much closer to proper early intervention in this country. We might not have the saddening and completely avoidable outcomes that we have, so I hope that we hear some good news from the Minister on that.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member—I cannot pronounce that—and to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury, on whose behalf my hon. Friend for Vale of Clwyd spoke. I also wish to put on the record my gratitude to Lord Farmer and his team for the work that they have been doing in this space. I have had the pleasure of meeting them, and—to reassure the shadow Minister—I have already met once, or possibly twice, with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) to discuss her review. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds has also worked with her on it, and we continue to work together to try to find ways to move that forward.
I hope that all Members agree that the creation of integrated care boards and ICPs represents a significant opportunity to support and improve the planning and provision of services to make sure that they are more joined up and better meet the needs of infants, children and young people. We acknowledge that these amendments understandably intend to ensure that the needs of children and young people aged 0 to 25 are represented on the ICP and are considered by the ICP when developing its strategy. While we entirely agree with the intentions behind the amendments, we come back to the point that we wish to provide local areas with the flexibility to determine what will work best for their systems, their priorities and how they develop their plans and membership. Overly prescriptive approaches in the Bill would risk making it harder for systems to design the approaches that will work best in their area.
Turning to amendment 54, we would not want ICPs to create plans for children disconnected from the wider healthcare system. We know that the very best systems consider how their health systems are meeting everyone’s need, including where there are transitions between different stages of life. However, I do hope that I can provide some further comfort for my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd. We are working on bespoke guidance for babies, children and young people, which will set out clearly how ICBs and ICPs are obliged to deliver for them. This will cover the importance of the ICB forward plan and the ICP strategy and how they can set clear objectives for babies, children and young people. The Department is working closely on the drafting of this guidance with NHS England, the Department for Education and, indeed the relevant Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford)—I presume that she is still the relevant Minister as we speak. We will also be working with all stakeholders, including the National Children’s Bureau, in the coming months. I suspect that this is a theme and an issue that we will return to at various points both in Committee and indeed in the further passage of this legislation.
I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd on this matter. I entirely understand where he is coming from, but ask that, on this occasion, he does not press his amendment—or the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury—to a vote.
Dr Davies
I thank the Minister for that response. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury is particularly keen that these matters are covered within statutory guidance, but, with the leave of the Committee, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Justin Madders
I beg to move amendment 47, in clause 20, page 31, line 31, at end insert—
“(3) The Secretary of State must make regulations which set out the procedure to be followed should an integrated care partnership believe that an integrated care board has failed in its duty under this section.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to establish a procedure for the resolution of any dispute between an integrated care partnership and an integrated care board concerning the implementation of a strategy produced by the integrated care partnership.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 83, in clause 20, page 31, line 31, at end insert—
“(3) Where—
(a) in exercising its functions a responsible local authority or integrated care board diverges from an assessment or strategy mentioned in subsection (1), or
(b) in exercising any functions in arranging for the provision of health services in relation to the area of a responsible local authority NHS England diverges from an assessment or strategy mentioned in subsection (2),
that local authority, that integrated care board or (as the case may be) NHS England must—
(a) (i) within 30 days, make a public statement of its divergence from the assessment or strategy, and
(ii) within 60 days, publish its reasons for the divergence, together with any supporting evidence.”
Justin Madders
I will talk briefly about amendment 83 which has been grouped with amendment 47.
Amendment 47 focuses on the whole discussion that we have had, and that we will continue to have, around integrated partnerships and what they will be able to do to deliver for their communities. I do not know if “Marmotisation” is a word; if it is, this could be seen as the first step towards that, but we will see how it works in practice. We must be clear, however, that this is a first step. The names of the partners being bandied about shows that this Bill is about the integration of not just health and social care but the whole wider public sector and other partners, and shows, too, that health issues permeate almost every walk of life. This certainly does not, as evidenced by the Prime Minister’s comments last week, constitute a solution to the integration of health and social care.
Putting that aside, there is an opportunity here to do something different. However, for all the froth and grand statements about partnership working we fear we may be looking at giant CCGs with less GP involvement—we have made this point a number of times so I will not labour it. What we are presented with is a reorganisation of the NHS, not a panacea for integration. We have tried a couple of times already to elicit from the Minister what is missing from the Bill in terms of the integration that the Prime Minister believes necessitates a White Paper. I think the Minister might struggle sometimes to understand what exactly is going on in the Prime Minister’s head in relation to this—or indeed anything else that is going on in his head—but we await his response on that with interest.
I would like to make some general points on the relationship between the NHS and local authorities, because that is important. The Bill acknowledges that greater interaction is needed, but the big question is whether it actually delivers that solution. If there is to be a genuine generational shift from thinking of the NHS as dealing with sickness to contributing to overall wellbeing, that will be welcome, although if our amendment on patient outcomes had been accepted that would have been a better start. There have been some discussions around SDPs and ICSs in the Bill, and that gives us hope that there might be something here we can work with.
The need to bring services together and integrate is blindingly obvious, but it is also very hard to do as the following example demonstrates. A patient with a long-term condition such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and with both healthcare and social care needs, has an acute episode and is admitted to hospital and is then discharged back into their home, which unfortunately suffers from a chronic damp problem—something many Members will know about from their constituency casework. The housing provider—a local authority, perhaps, or an arm’s length management organisation or registered social landlord—is doing its best, but it does not have enough resources to get to the root of the problem, so there is a liaison meeting where this case is discussed between the NHS and local councillors. The councillor for the area where the individual is located asks the chief executive of the trust whether it would be a good idea for some of the health budget to be invested in social housing so that people such as this individual would not be readmitted for a problem that is essentially caused by the property they are living in. The chief executive responds by asking why they would throw money away on something like that, even though a more holistic view shows that would be of benefit for everyone in the long run.
That illustrates why we need to work harder on integration, and it is not an isolated incident. As any councillor who has been in post for any number of years will know—if the Minister and I totted up between us how many years we have served, it would probably be quite a lot—sometimes it is difficult to have the level of interaction with the NHS that we would like. As an aside, I might add that children in care meetings or care around the child meetings are incredibly important, but often the GP does not attend because they have many other priorities.
We have talked about this many times, but the vaccine roll-out has been an exemplar of how local government and the NHS can work together. That was a specific task at the time of the national crisis. It is clearly more difficult to repeat that kind of synergy on a day-to-day basis, but it does show what can be done.
In Wales, the Government have a far-reaching strategy around the wellbeing of future generations. They have made a big leap, moving the NHS away from market thinking and focusing on the way it delivers its service to the public. Both Scotland and Wales have accepted the need for that approach, and their integrated joint boards, joint integration boards, health boards and local authorities have all been talking about integration for some time. Of course, they have the sense to make their health boards coterminous with local authority areas. That would have been a very wise move. We have already had some chat about devolved involvement and I am sure that we will return to that.
Alex Norris
Amendment 83 builds on my hon. Friend’s argument about creating some balance between the integrated care partnership and the integrated care board, so I will not repeat it. I simply underscore the fact that the ICPs have the money, power and accountability at the moment, but there is a risk that they become a closed shop and not bodies about integration at all.
We are told that integrated care partnerships will be the way in which the broader health and care family and the community will come together as they lead and play a pivotal role. We need a safeguard in the Bill to ensure what we would do if the relationship breaks down. The amendment is a version of what Sir Robert Francis from Healthwatch said about one possible way in an evidence session. I am not prescriptive about this, but I am keen to hear what the Minister might suggest to give us comfort on this. If the ICPs are to function as promised, their plans ought to have some sort of status, so that if the integrated care board chooses to diverge, it must make a public statement that it is going to within 30 days and then publish its reasons with evidence within 60 days.
There is an equivalent provision in NHS England for responsibilities held at a national level. If nothing else, this is basic accountability. It does not restrict any activity, so there is no risk in it. Even if a partnership does not like the decision made or value the reasons given, it cannot remove the chair of the board. Although the constitution has already prevented that, at least we will know what has happened, so the safeguard is quite modest. There is a blizzard of different ways to do it, but I hope that we can have some comfort on ensuring a balance between the partnership and the board, if not at this stage, then by the time we come back on Report.
Karin Smyth
Will the Minister share with us what he thinks the difference is between ICPs and health and wellbeing boards?
Edward Argar
I will confine my comments to amendments 47 and 83, because we will address the wider themes when we have the clause stand part debate.
Amendments 47 and 83 stand in the names of Opposition Members. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, has asked a number of questions, which I will try to address before turning to the substance of those amendments. I am not personally aware of any analytical piece about the impact and effectiveness of health and wellbeing boards, but anecdotally from my background in local Government before I came to this place—and, indeed, as a Member—I certainly see the value that they bring to their communities through their work. The shadow Minister is perhaps being a little inadvertently unfair to the legal profession in suggesting that the phrase “have regard to” is weasel words, because my understanding is that “have regard to” is a well-known, much-used legal phrase in drafting, and it carries with it an obligation to do exactly what it says: to have regard, and to show that.
Finally, the hon. Member has pressed me again, and I fear I will give him the same answer—he and I have done this before—as I have given the other shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, in various delegated legislation Committees over the past year relating to our exit from the EU. I think the Prime Minister has been entirely clear in what he has set out: this legislation lays important foundations for the closer integration of local authority and NHS-provided care, on which we will of course build, because we are an ambitious Government with a clear agenda to further improve our health and care systems.
With those points made, I will turn to the detail of the amendments, which address the relationship between ICPs and ICBs—as certain Opposition Members have touched on—and address divergence from health and wellbeing board and ICB assessments and strategies. Amendment 47 would require the Secretary of State to establish a procedure to resolve any disputes between the ICP and the ICB, while amendment 83 would add an additional requirement on NHS England, integrated care boards, and local authorities to make a public statement and publish their reasons when they deviate from the integrated care strategy prepared by the proposed integrated care partnership, and the joint strategic needs assessment and joint local health and wellbeing strategies prepared by health and wellbeing boards.
I do appreciate the concern—the genuine concern, I think—from Opposition Members about the need to ensure that ICPs and local authorities are genuinely closely aligned to both the ICP and the health and wellbeing board plans. We do intend for these assessments and strategies to be a central part of the decision making of these bodies: that is why, as I say, we are introducing a duty for those bodies to have regard to them. However, we do not think the additional conditions suggested by these amendments are necessary, as we believe there are already means in place to avoid such disputes. First, the ICB will be a required part of the ICP. It will be intimately involved in pulling together the integrated care strategy, so it should be fully signed up to the elements of the plan that fall within its area of responsibility, as it will be partly drafting that plan. As a result, we consider the likelihood of disputes in that context to be low.
Secondly, there are already duties on both ICBs and local authorities to have regard to the strategy in discharging their functions. The duty to have regard means that to diverge from the plan, they must be able to reasonably explain and justify why they have done so. If they cannot, they would be open to challenge, and in the case of an ICB, they could be open to direct intervention from NHS England for having failed to discharge their functions to have due regard properly. Thirdly, we would also expect that both health and wellbeing boards and ICPs would consider how their strategies and assessments are applied in the system, and would want to keep progress under regular review. Those committees themselves provide an appropriate framework for regularly assessing and considering how to address any divergence.
We are also concerned that it would be difficult to rigidly determine if and when NHS England, an integrated care board, or a local authority had diverged from these strategies and assessments in the exercise of their functions, especially if plans were high-level and strategic. By creating this specific requirement and setting a specified timeframe, I fear we would risk creating a great deal of bureaucracy as these bodies attempt to determine if, when, and to what extent they may have diverged. Instead, we believe it is more appropriate to leave it to ICPs working with the ICB and local authorities to develop and design mechanisms to review progress locally.
As a further safeguard, NHS England has the general power to issue guidance to ICBs on the discharge of their functions, which could be used to set out how an ICB should consider the integrated care strategy, joint strategic needs assessment and joint health and wellbeing strategy in exercising its functions. Guidance may also suggest ways of resolving any issues that arise in the ICB in the exercise of these functions. We would expect NHS England to consider doing so, if that was necessary.
Justin Madders
The Minister has made some interesting points. I will have to come back on the reference to “weasel words”. I was a lawyer for a number of years, and when it comes to their use, I think that lawyers are probably second only to Members of Parliament in being able to use them.
There were many occasions when we were negotiating and drafting documents. Once, I wanted something to happen and another person said, “Well, we don’t want to actually make that an absolute commitment, but we intend to do it.” We always ended up with the compromise of reasonable endeavours. Best endeavours was another one. Often that led to one side being slightly disappointed, but that was usually the point of compromise. But that, I would suggest, is actually going further than what is in the current legislation, which is to “have regard”. That really is the nub of this, because we do not think that is enough to give the ICPs the teeth that they need and the strength and leverage that they might need if they are to be truly effective.
The Minister said that if there was a divergence, he would expect an ICB to put forward reasonable explanations as to why it was not going to follow a particular strategy. But that would then lead to the conclusion that if it was not able to do that, it was acting unreasonably, which of course could give rise to judicial review. That, I am sure, is a road that the Minister does not want ICBs and ICPs to go down. I do not think that would be in anyone’s interest, so we are actually, once again, trying to help the Minister out by coming up with a solution that avoids litigation and dispute and gives us confidence that we will not see a repeat of the lack of genuine engagement that we have seen in some areas in the past, but will see a real force, in legislation, to encourage the wider public sector to have real influence on the modelling of health policies and strategies in the future. Therefore we will—with your permission, Ms Elliott —press amendment 47 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Edward Argar
The clause introduces the integrated care partnership known as an ICP, as a joint committee of the integrated care board and local authorities in its geography. It gives the partnership its core function of preparing the integrated care strategy. The ICP was developed with the Local Government Association and NHS partners in recognition of the fact that the system has been calling for two different and important types of integration: integration within and across the NHS to deliver healthcare services within a defined locality, and integration between the NHS and local government and wider partners.
The ICP is intended to bring together health, social care and public health to develop a strategy to address the needs of the area also covered by the integrated care board. If the ICP wants to go further, it can also involve representatives from the wider system where appropriate, such as voluntary and community groups, and social care or housing providers. That will be up to the ICP, and we will welcome locally driven innovation to reflect local circumstances.
When preparing the strategy, the integrated care partnership must take into account the NHS mandate, any guidance from the Secretary of State and any relevant local joint strategic needs assessment. The ICP must also involve the local Healthwatch, as well people who live and work in the area. The strategy will need to look at how local authorities and NHS bodies can work together using arrangements under section 75 of the National Health Service Act 2006.
Local authorities, integrated care boards and NHS England, when providing services in the area, must have regard to the relevant integrated care strategy when exercising their functions, as well as, more locally, any joint strategic needs assessment or joint local health and wellbeing strategies. This will enable more joined-up planning and provision, both within the NHS and in local authorities. As a result, we would expect to see more integration of the services people receive, more efficient and effective commissioning, and closer working between local authorities and the local NHS.
The clause makes it a legal requirement for all ICBs and local authorities to establish an ICP for their area. These partnerships will promote and facilitate integration across health and care throughout England, thereby contributing to delivering on the ambitious aims put forward in the Bill to further integrate health and care systems.
Justin Madders
I will not detain the Committee as I have already said most of what I wanted to say. The Minister just talked about the ambitious aims to achieve integration. Obviously, they were not that ambitious; if they had been, we would not need another White Paper.
Justin Madders
We can never be too ambitious, can we? I will be interested to see those working practices. As hon. Members can probably gather, we are somewhat sceptical that the ICPs will really be the transformative and influential bodies that we want them to be. I will keep a close eye on what kind of partners end up on them. If we started involving every potential body in the Cheshire and Merseyside one, we would probably need to hire out Anfield to fit everyone in. It might be more entertaining than the football fare on there—we could have a Division on that. We will probably revisit this in future days, weeks and months. We will not oppose the clause but we wish to put on the record where we think its shortcomings are.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
NHS England’s financial responsibilities
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
The clause provides for a number of financial responsibilities of NHS England and provides powers for the Secretary of State to direct NHS England in relation to those responsibilities. Clause 22 provides the ability to amend the provision in clause 21 that imposes a duty on NHS England to ensure that its expenditure, together with that of integrated care boards, does not exceed the sums received in a year.
On clause 21, proposed new section 223C of the National Health Service Act 2006 places a duty on NHS England to ensure that in each financial year, the expenditure of NHS England and integrated care boards does not exceed the aggregate amount received by them. It should be noted that that is in the context of the historic settlement for the NHS reached in 2018, which will see its budget rise by £33.9 billion by 2023-24. Proposed new section 223CA simply replicates a provision in the 2006 Act, which enables the Secretary of State to specify the banking facilities that NHS England may use.
Proposed new section 233D of the 2006 Act enables the Secretary of State to give directions to NHS England concerning resource use. Any directions given by the Secretary of State under that proposed new section must be published and laid before Parliament. Proposed new section 223E empowers the Secretary of State to direct that the capital and revenue resource used by NHS England and ICBs for specified matters does not exceed a limit set.
Clause 22 could be commenced at a later date than clause 21. It would expand the duty on NHS England to ensure its own expenditure, as well as that of ICBs and English NHS trusts and foundation trusts, did not exceed the sums received by those bodies in a year. The clause is essential to ensure that achieving financial balance is inclusive of the finance of NHS trusts and foundation trusts. It recognises that NHS England must be mindful of the need to ensure that public money is spent as effectively as possible and in the best interests of the public we serve. However, we recognise that the NHS is moving out of an unprecedented period, so we will not commence the clause until it is ready. The provisions will help to ensure that there is clear accountability for public spending and that the NHS lives within its means.
Justin Madders
I will talk briefly about clauses 21 and 22, although with your indulgence, Ms Elliott, I will step over into clauses 23 and 24, because we cannot really look at these points without having some regard to those clauses. I promise I will not repeat the same points when we get to them.
We know that ICBs and NHS trusts will have spending limits, and that in theory they cannot go into deficit in any year, but the combined deficits of trusts before the pandemic was several billion pounds. Foundation trusts are in a slightly different position. Monitor is going—clause 26, which I suspect we will not get to today, goes into that, and it reads quite brutally in isolation—so it needs to be clear in the Bill how performance management and financial oversight will work in its absence. We still have questions about that, particularly how accountability will work with those new systems.
We see in these clauses a basic tension that NHS England will apply totals to systems, but individuals within the systems all have their own duties and responsibilities. We might think it is the ICB plus all the providers that deliver the services required, which are paid for by the ICB, but I am not sure that is how it will work in practice.
If I am correct, an integrated system is not defined in the Bill, so how do we control something that does not exist in law? Where accountability lies is very vague. The terminology used in proposed new section 233M, which is where the Bill tries to constrain aggregate financial spending each year, is:
“Each integrated care board and its partner NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts”.
That suggests some kind of joint responsibility, but where community health services are provided by Virgin Care, that does not appear within that wording. GPs and their spend are considered outside, even though they are commissioned by the ICBs, so how do their costs fit into this system? There have to be some answers on that.
Karin Smyth
I echo my hon. Friend’s words. The Minister is going to have to go back to the drawing board on this, although I can see what the clauses are trying to do. Financial directors I have spoken to commend the idea of working together under some sort of shared control. We have had controls before, but clauses 21 to 24 —I may be straying beyond my knowledge of the writing of Bills and financial movements—come under the heading, “Integrated care system: financial controls”, and the entire section is about controlling ICBs and NHS trusts.
We have not had a system defined. We know that control totals are difficult and that autonomous trusts have regulatory rules. We would be here all weekend if we started to talk about foundation trust controls, and what those trusts can and cannot do with their budget. Clauses 21 to 24 test out the definitions of roles and responsibilities, and the tensions throughout the Bill over trying to apply a systems view to disparate organisations with different duties and responsibilities. The Minister has been trying valiantly to say that there is clear accountability through NHS England, but all of us here as Members of Parliament, and as I keep repeating, understand what local accountability is in a system and this is not it.
We do not know what an ICS is, and we have all agreed that that might be okay—we are kind of in favour of permissiveness—but what divides the Committee and, I suspect, people farther afield is that the Government view is that permissiveness is okay, and it is up to the NHS England regions and the Secretary of State. We would like to impose some greater local accountability earlier.
The terminology in proposed new section 223M, on page 34 of the Bill, is clear, and refers to:
“Each integrated care board and its partner NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts”.
That part of the Bill deals with aggregated spending on revenue and capital. I do not want to overload people’s brains at this time of the evening, but the Bill really is a mess in respect of capital. Our buildings are crumbling and the backlog is huge. We have talked about NHS properties in community health partnerships. The architecture still exists, but it is not clear how that system works. I think poor old Sir Robert Naylor’s edicts and pieces of wisdom are just propping open doors in offices in the Department of Health and Social Care, because they are certainly not being developed and they are not being developed in the Bill.
Will a trust finance director have to seek permission from the ICB to spend their capital, or even to know what it is? If that is the case, it makes a nonsense of the good financial management of some very large institutions. We would all like a bit of financial rigour in the system, but I am not sure the Bill allows us to have any. It is as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said: for community services, we have the Virgin Cares, but even a community interest company would sit outwith the NHS trust definition. Such companies are regulated by the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies, which is separate from some of this. The regulation for some of these bodies is problematic, and GPs are obviously outside it, even if ICBs start to commission them.
The aim is to allow NHS England to control aggregate spending, but to do that there has to be some direction. Lo and behold, on page 35 of the Bill there are more direction powers for NHS England. We have alluded to the fact that provider expenditure gets divvied up, and some ICBs also commission specialist services; there will have to be some NHS England-defined calculation of how on earth all that fits together. Someone somewhere will need a very large spreadsheet and will have to try to balance the flows of money around the system.
I have asked a lot people, including experts, whether anybody starts to understand financial flows. That is obviously important because we are talking about our taxes and we need to know how they are being spent, who is spending them and who is moving the money between each of these organisations. What about when these bodies cross different boundaries? Will the Minister say whether the trust or the foundation trust gets to argue about which part of its base is allocated to which ICB and vice versa? I am certainly glad—I often am—that I do not live in London and am not trying to work that out for some of the large teaching hospitals that cross many boundaries. There used to be a role for strategic health authorities to try to match what providers said was in their accounts with what commissioners said they thought they had given them. I do not think they matched that often, and the structure in the Bill is much more complicated than that. How it will work in practice matters.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston has already asked some of the questions. This issue is very complex and involves big sums of money, and ultimately it is about patient care, so who is going to hold it all together? Where is the collective leadership and who will be the top people in these ICSs? The advert for the ICS chairs has gone out, and the pay is £50,000 to £80,000 for three days a week. The requirement on those people is clear; let us see how many of them are not already well known to NHS England. That is deeply problematic, if they are going to work—and we all agree that we would quite like them to work.
In the new system, can commissioners and providers both be blamed for the same things? As my hon. Friend said, can they be put into special measures? Where are the levers? What is going to happen, other than NHS England commissioning expensive consultants to say to people, “You know what? It’s looking a bit complicated and some of you haven’t got the right bits of money in the right places,” and trying to bash some heads together? All that will be done behind closed doors.
When we get down to the money, permissiveness becomes a bit of a work of fiction. This part of the Bill needs to be looked at again, between its leaving this place and arriving in the other place, to get a bit more sense into it. As we all know, the guidance is going out there. This has been worked on by NHS England, so it could come back in fitter form. As I said to the witness from Oxfordshire last week, joint work and integration often fall apart ultimately because of the money. Any local authority financial director, any foundation trust financial director, any good hospital financial director and any community interest financial director will be looking, quite rightly, at their own bottom line at the end of the day, as that is their job.
It is entirely up to NHS England how it navigates this. It looks like clever financial leverage work, and I really do not think that it will work and it all needs to be looked at again. I return to my theme that this is why we need somebody independent and highly skilled working on behalf of the local community to make the ICS work, and not to have it, as a result, an NHS England outpost deciding how it moves money around the system. We need to understand the financial flows, and ensure that they work much better than is laid out in the clauses.
Edward Argar
I will be relatively brief because I am conscious of the fact that we have agreed to get through quite a few more clauses today, although I will try to address the points that hon. Members have made. One of the key issues at the heart of what I think the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, was saying is around what happens if an ICB or a foundation trust spends beyond its limit. How does that work? What is the process? I am pleased that this brings some welcome clarity, rather than the fragmentation we sometimes see in accounting cashflow, following the cash processes at the moment.
First and foremost, local systems will be informed of their resource envelope at the start of the year and will be required to agree a plan that matches, or is within, that envelope. Therefore, all will start the year with a plan that sets out what is being delivered and how much funding they will receive to deliver those services. However, if overspends emerge within year, that should initially be resolved within the system by the individual organisation either finding offsetting savings or securing savings elsewhere within that system envelope. Through the financial duties imposed by the Bill, the system is encouraged to be collectively responsible for managing its funding envelope, moving away from what we often see at the moment, which is fragmentation in understanding how the money flows, and each organisation considering itself to a degree in isolation.
If the overspend cannot be managed within the system, NHS England and NHS Improvement can use the powers in the Bill to hold the system to account through mechanisms such as the system oversight framework and providing support via the recovery support programme, as well as more informal support from the local region. Additionally, individual trusts or FTs that are not working collaboratively within the system can be held to account using the provider licence and enforcement options available for breaches. Finally, of course, in extremis the Department of Health and Social Care can provide cash support to NHS trusts and FTs to ensure that services continue to be delivered.
The second concomitant part of the shadow Minister’s question was what action NHS England or the ICB can take in response to financial difficulties. Financial performance will be monitored by both of them, and in the first instance any difficulties will be resolved locally. However, as I have set out, tougher mechanisms or sanctions can be imposed on trusts that are not meeting their reporting and financial accounting obligations under the clauses.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Financial responsibilities of integrated care boards and their partners
Justin Madders
I beg to move amendment 53, in clause 23, page 35, line 14, at end insert—
“(5) NHS England must publish guidance on the means by which an integrated care board, NHS trust or NHS foundation trust which believes its capital resource limit or revenue resource limit risks compromising patient safety may object to the limit set.”
This amendment would introduce an objection mechanism when an Integrated Care Board, Trust or Foundation Trust believes its capital resource limit or revenue resource limit risks compromising patient safety.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 24 stand part.
Justin Madders
With this amendment, we are probably having another bash at the debate we have just had to some extent, but we are also making an important point about patient safety.
Edward Argar
Clause 23 provides for NHS England to set overall system financial objectives for ICBs, NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts, which must operate with a view to achieving these objectives. This includes the ability to set limits on local capital resource use and local revenue resource use for ICBs, NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts.
Clause 23 removes the sections in the National Health Service Act 2006 relating to financial duties of CCGs and replaces them with new sections setting out the financial responsibilities of ICBs and their partners. Improving population health requires the breaking down of silos. Traditional financial control focused on individual providers and organisations artificially creates barriers and fragmentation that get in the way of high-quality care.
The new approach will help to break down those barriers by enabling NHS England to set joint system financial objectives for ICBs and partner NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts, which must operate with a view to achieving these objectives. This includes the ability to set limits on local capital resource use and local revenue resource use for ICBs, and for partner NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts. NHS England can also give directions to ICBs, NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts on resource apportionment.
I turn to amendment 53, tabled by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston. I am grateful to him for tabling it as it gives us an opportunity to air a number of issues. It would require NHS England to produce guidance to set out a process whereby ICBs, NHS trusts or NHS foundation trusts could object to their capital and revenue resource limits. Although I understand the motivation behind the amendment, which is about ensuring that the NHS has sufficient funds to deliver services safely, I do not believe that it is needed. The ability for NHS England to set system limits is important to enable systems to effectively plan their services and it enables NHS England to meet its obligation on delivering system balance and its broader obligation to taxpayers.
The decision to allocate revenue funding to systems is based on a weighted capitation formula, which produces a target allocation or “fair share” for each area, based on a complex assessment of factors such as demography, morbidity, deprivation and the unavoidable cost of providing services in different areas, meaning that systems will get funding linked to their individual needs. NHS trusts and foundation trusts will be represented on ICBs, so they will play a role in deciding how resources will be allocated within the system. They can raise concerns about proposals, including with regard to patient safety, as part of the decision-making process, although we do not consider that these clauses would put patient safety at risk. Capital allocations already include a funding element to address emergency or patient safety needs, based on planning information from systems. The funding element is intended to be used to address any issues that could arise, including in the context of patient safety.
Furthermore, clause 24 futureproofs the ICB financial duties provisions. It provides for some of the provisions in clause 23 to be replaced and is designed to be commenced at a later date. Once ICBs and their partner trusts are deemed ready to take on greater financial accountability, clause 24 can be used to replace clause 23 with a new joint expenditure limit duty on the ICB and its partner trusts. At a time when it is considered appropriate, the clause will require ICBs and their partner NHS trusts and foundation trusts to exercise their functions in a way that ensures their expenditure when taken together does not exceed their income. The intended effect is that each local area is mutually invested in achieving financial control at a system level, meaning that public funds can be spent in a more sustainable, joined-up and effective way. This should enable a nimbler approach to expenditure where needs across the system can be addressed more flexibly and holistically.
Should unexpected needs for funding arise, there is another safeguard in place to allow NHS services to continue operating safely, as the Department can issue cash to NHS trusts and foundation trusts. For example, if emergency support is needed to address patient safety issues, trusts can apply for additional cash funding to safeguard delivery of care. It is for those reasons that I invite the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston to withdraw his amendment. I commend clauses 23 and 24 to the Committee.
Justin Madders
I do not know whether it is too late on a Thursday afternoon, but I did feel like I had wandered into an episode of “Yes Minister” there. I will not press the amendment to a vote, but I will read the transcript of what the Minister has said with some care over the next few days. I am not entirely clear that he has addressed the central points that were made, but we will no doubt return to this at some point anyway. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 23 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Jo Churchill.)
Westminster Hall
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Backbench Business
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UK Maritime Sector
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
Before we begin, can I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking? This is line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering or leaving the room.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK’s maritime sector.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir George. May I first draw the House’s attention to my declaration of interests? I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group for shipbuilding and ship repair. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for the debate, and the 16 Members from across all parties in the House who supported the application.
It is right that we meet today, in London International Shipping Week 2021. This is an opportunity to discuss the maritime sector, which is worth some £46 billion to the UK economy, ranging from shipbuilding and ship repair to ship brokerage in insurance, in which we are world leaders. It is an opportunity to speak up for the sector, which we need to do. I am a passionate believer in a bright future for this country, and the sector supports 1 million more jobs than air and rail. Further, 95% of UK imports and exports are transported by ship.
During the pandemic, we took it for granted that we could order on Amazon or similar sites, and that the package would arrive, but few people consider how that package actually comes to their doorstep. I know Mrs Jones certainly does not give much thought to that. However, it is important, and other aspects are in play—48% of our food supplies come through the maritime sector, as does 25% of our energy needs.
The sector is vital to the resilience of our economy and is also a wide-ranging industry. Ports, for example, generate £600 million in private sector capital each year. It is a source of highly skilled, well-paid jobs. There is an important issue here across the industry, which is mentioned in the briefing note I received from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers: we must invest in those skills and ensure that we have not only individuals with the right set of skills, but the right numbers of workers. As the RMT quite rightly points out, its membership is an ageing population. It is important that we focus on that and make the sector attractive to young people as an industry to come into.
Internationally, the sector will be worth around £3 trillion by 2030 and it is a great source of exports from the UK. Indeed, many businesses throughout the UK are providing not only products for the marine sector around the world, but services. My own region, the north-east, has a long tradition of service industries working around the world. When the Dubai flight from Newcastle recommences at the end of November, marine engineers will be flying all round the world to service ships, but their companies are based in the north-east. It is important that we recognise that fact.
The sector’s problem, certainly in shipbuilding and in other areas, is that there is a view among the public that this is a smokestack industry—an industry of yesteryear. It is quaint that we are involved, but the sector is not the future. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I do not know how we can do this—the debate obviously allows Members to highlight the issues—but we must promote the sector and say that it is not only important to our economy in the present but can be more important in growing our economy in the future. That is where the Government come in; they have a key role to play in.
Let me turn to the shipbuilding and ship repair sector, where there have been welcome moves by the Government, such as the national shipbuilding programme. We have a shipbuilding tsar—the Defence Secretary—and to be fair to him, I think he is committed to this, but does he actually believe that we can be a world-leading shipbuilding nation again? I think we can, with the right support.
It is a mistake to think that there is any shipbuilding industry around the world that is not reliant on the state—either directly owned by the state or provided with huge subsidies. We should not get into the mindset that if we have to put money into the shipbuilding and ship repair industry or help it with finance, that is somehow a bad thing. It is a good thing if we can grow the industry. The Koreans do not bat an eyelid at putting in huge amounts of money, nor do our European neighbours—the Norwegians, the French, the Germans or anyone else.
The other key issues are port infrastructure, which will be important, and skills. I will talk later about research and development, because the next thing that will change radically in this area is the green agenda. This country has an opportunity to get ahead and be world leaders there.
I welcome the national shipbuilding strategy, but we are still waiting for the refresh, which was promised in August. Its main emphasis—this is self-evident to anybody who knows the industry—is that the industry needs a drumbeat of work running through it. The strategy committed to a 30-year drumbeat of work, but we must ensure that that is a reality, and the Ministry of Defence, which is obviously constrained by the Treasury, is still not laying out that clear pathway for the industry. We saw that with fleet solid support ships, which I will refer to later.
There have been some welcome moves in defence and elsewhere, whereby people are looking at how the UK shipbuilding industry underpins prosperity. The Royal United Services Institute study of aircraft carriers said that 36% of the money that went in came directly back to the UK taxpayer in tax and national insurance, and that is not counting the knock-on effect of the local economic boost generated in those areas. We should not just look at the top line when we are considering contracts; we should look not just at the price, but at how that money comes directly back to the Exchequer.
We need a whole-Government approach to ensure that, when we procure ships, we look to the UK. There was an announcement last week or the week before about Border Force’s new cutters. The existing ones were built in Holland, and I think one was built in Finland or Estonia. That is a £200 million contract, and the default mechanism should be to get them built in the UK. If 30-odd per cent. comes straight back to the Exchequer, that is an opportunity.
A throughput of work is important because that allows industry and business to invest. It is a way to draw in capital to the industry. The problem is that the Ministry of Defence is still in competition mode, which no other country in the world is into, so we have a farcical situation with a fake competition going on between four consortia for the FSS contract. We had a great example of how to do it when we procured the aircraft carriers. Yes, there was a shotgun marriage between various UK yards to provide them, but it worked.
Let us look at those contracts. There was a lot of controversy about the cost, but the build was on time, on budget and world beating. There is nothing like it. We should be proud of that. That was an opportunity to get a consortium of companies together to produce world-beating ships, but what did we do? We broke up the alliance afterwards, which was absolutely shocking. It should have continued.
From the point of view of the taxpayer, should we give out contracts to various companies no questions asked? No, we should not, but we should have a partnership approach rather than competition. The partnership approach should ensure that we have a skills agenda and that we get value for money. Also, the partners put their own shareholder capital into the business. I was speaking to businesses this week at DSEI, the defence and security equipment international exhibition. They do that, but they want certainty. We have the strategy in a nice glossy document, but there is an old mindset of false competition. If we can get that drumbeat of work running through the industry, we will be world beating not only in providing great first-rate ships for our Royal Navy, but in being able to compete for work regarding other vessels. That will be key.
I am not talking about only the bigger yards. The Wight Shipyard Company, which recently won a Queen’s award for international trade, is a small company on the Isle of Wight that produces great vessels. Companies such as that should be the first call, rather than throwing contracts open to international competition, because no other country would do that. There is certainly an opportunity to look at that sector for Border Force ships. Again, that would give security to individuals.
We need some joined-up thinking. We need to ensure that the Treasury not only looks at every single contract, but that the work is there for the long term. The easiest thing in terms of the build programme would be to get on and order the FSS vessels. If we did that, we would have a throughput of work in Rosyth and other places, and we would retain skills. An important thing in the shipbuilding report is that if we are to retain skills or get an influx of new skills into the industry, we need a continuation of work. What we do not want is stopgap areas where we are not employing new apprentices and the workforce get older and older. That point was made by the RMT about its members who work on ships. Oversight is needed. What other skills do we need and in what areas? That is a role for Government as well.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt. The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the skills that we need to create a workforce who can work in the sector. I am interested in his thoughts on retrofitting, because a lot of merchant vessels out there need to be retrofitted with modern technology that allows us to meet our green ambitions. That goes hand in hand with the way in which we want to train a new generation of skilled workers, especially on tackling climate change.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Gentleman speaks with a great deal of knowledge, and he raises an interesting point. I think the understanding is that we cannot ever compete with the Koreans or others in the far east, because they will do the work cheaper. He knows as well as I do that the country that is doing more retrofitting than anywhere else is Norway. Let us be honest: Norway is not paying poverty wages to its workforce, and it has different overheads from other countries, so if Norway can do it, we can do it, but we need a strategy for that. I will come to green shipping in a minute, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a huge market. New green technology will come in, but a lot of it will be retrofitted to existing vessels.
That brings me to research and development. What we need from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is an R&D fund that is ringfenced for the industry, because that would ensure that we got the innovation we need. One area that I have spoken to several Members about is hydrogen, which will need a large amount of R&D. Some good companies are already doing that type of work, but we perhaps need to provide them with Government assistance and access to capital.
We have some great brains thinking about green technology in shipping, but I fear that we will get foreign investment coming in to buy out some of those companies and to provide the capital, but they will then take all that abroad. What we need to do—it can be done by the Government—is give support to the new technology here in the UK, so that we can retain not just the technology, but the jobs that will be done now and in the future in a host of areas in green shipping, as well as the new technologies that will come through. I accept that some of those might not work, but we should be brave enough to invest. It is not a great scandal if, at the end of the day, something does not work. It is important that that is done, which is why marine research and innovation need to be at the forefront of any initiative we undertake.
We have the maritime enterprise working group, but it remains on a non-permanent basis. I do not wish to criticise the Minister, because he is passionate about the sector, and about aviation as well. If I remember correctly, he is a bit of a plane spotter when it comes to knowing different types of aircraft. He announced the £20 million investment in the clean maritime demonstration competition, which he described as a turning point. That was welcome, and it is great that he did it, but he must get more money out of the Treasury for the sector. If we do not get more money to the sector, we will be at a disadvantage.
The opportunities are there. We talk about the carbon targets that we want to meet, which are good. If we do this right, however, we can get jobs out of it as well, so it is important that we invest now and that we ensure that the talk about net zero and so forth has some real teeth. It would be sad if we had new and innovative companies working in the sector, but the technology went abroad, and we ended up importing it or allowing other countries to develop it. That technology will be very important.
Within this new agenda, we must take a legislative stance as well. We are a world leader in working with the International Maritime Organisation and others on standards and regulations for the future. Those will be new concepts, so ensuring that we have regulations and international governance that are in our favour, not that of the Chinese and others, will be important. I do not underestimate the Chinese in particular, in terms of their wanting to have international rules that favour their industries rather than ours, so it is important that we play a key part in that process.
I will finish where I started. This is an industry of the future. We need to talk more about it, and we need to invest in it. Yes, the private sector involvement is hugely important, but if Government money and strategies can be put in place at the key point, they could be huge levers, not only to lever in more private sector capital, but to grow the sector. Perhaps we just need to say to people, “Just think when you are ordering things—how do they get to your doorstep?” That is the basis of it.
I am a passionate advocate for the sector. It is not yesterday’s industry; this is the industry of tomorrow. What it needs is a direct and clear strategy, and money behind it. Now is the time to provide those things.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you back in your place, Sir George. I congratulate both the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on listening to his passionate request for it.
Notwithstanding the UK’s rich and proud maritime history, there is a concern at times that the sector is overlooked and that the lead role that it can play in delivering the Government’s key objectives of levelling up, building back better and decarbonisation is not as centre stage as it should be.
This debate provides the opportunity to showcase the sector and its various facets, such as ports all around the UK, including, in my own area, Lowestoft, the UK’s most easterly port. It serves the southern North sea, which includes one of the largest clusters of offshore windfarms in the world, rich fishing grounds and gas fields in which to store carbon.
Lowestoft has an illustrious maritime past, being the former fishing capital of the southern North sea—a title that it wishes to regain—and the home of two great shipbuilders, Richards and Brooke Marine, although both are sadly long gone. That said, Lowestoft’s dry dock, which is run by SMS Marine, is increasingly busy. In fact, it got the contract for the refurbishment of the UK Border Force vessels. That in itself was welcome, but the point that the right hon. Gentleman made—namely that we really want the actual building of the boats in the first place, which is the important bit—was correct.
New businesses are moving into Lowestoft, such as SSE and ScottishPower Renewables, with operations and maintenance bases in the port. Associated British Ports has exciting plans for the future, and it is vital that national Government provide the right policy framework so that those plans can be realised.
ABP’s plans are focused on the Lowestoft Eastern Energy Facility, or LEEF, which over the next five years should bring significant upgrades to facilities in the outer harbour, creating key capabilities to support the UK’s journey towards achieving net zero. This project will deliver infrastructure that will ensure the port can accommodate the next generation of offshore support vessels. The facility will provide a site that is suitable for operations and maintenance activities, in addition to a quayside suitable for construction support. This is an investment estimated at around £25 million, which will enable the port of Lowestoft to add to the £30 million per annum that it already contributes to the local economy. In doing so, the project will help us to reach net zero, and it complements well the Government’s levelling-up ambitions.
From LEEF, it is appropriate for me to move on to REAF, which is the Renaissance of East Anglian Fisheries. In 2018, the local fishing industry came together with local councils, the New Anglia local enterprise partnership and Seafish to produce a report on how to revive the local fishing industry as the UK left the European Union. The report was launched here in the House of Commons in October 2019.
Following the trade and co-operation agreement reached with the European Union at the turn of the year, which, frankly, was a let-down for so many, the strategy has been revised to take into account the setting and policies within which the fishing industry now has to work. Initial funding has been secured to implement the strategy and, while I will not go through the 11 recommendations in full, I will highlight the following features, which complement the aspirations of other maritime sectors and fit in well with the Government’s levelling-up and decarbonisation agendas.
The first is the need to embrace the industry’s whole supply chain, from the net to the plate. The second is the importance of ensuring that it is local communities, local people and local businesses that benefit from a revived industry. The third is the importance of reducing CO2 emissions. The report recommends that all offshore demersal vessels fishing in the southern North sea part of the UK’s exclusive economic zone should, in due course, be restricted to 500 hp. The fourth is the need to invest in supporting port, marketing and processing infrastructure. Finally, there is the importance of attracting and training new entrants to the industry, which East Coast College in Lowestoft will be doing. It has set up a new course.
As I go on about fishing, I see the Minister’s eyes may be glazing over because he is saying, “What has this got to do with me? This is for the fisheries Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.” That highlights the particular challenge that the maritime sector faces, in that it touches on the work of a large number of Departments. The Minister himself is from the Department for Transport. We also have the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is overseeing the levelling-up agenda, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with the fisheries Minister and, as we have heard, the Ministry of Defence when it comes to contracts for the Navy. That is five. That emphasises the need for joined-up and co-ordinated Government, and I hope that in his summing up the Minister will confirm that that is happening.
I welcome the freeport initiative, which I sense the Minister will refer to in his summing up and, in particular, I welcome Freeport East at Felixstowe and Harwich, which is 50 miles down the coast from Lowestoft. However, I express a note of caution and emphasise the importance for Government of not jumping from one intervention to the next catchy initiative, but continuing to see through proven strategies that are already up and running. Like other enterprise zones around the country, the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth enterprise zone, which was set up in 2012, has been very successful. It has an energy focus and is firmly in line with the levelling-up and net zero strategies. It now needs reigniting and that can be done by reallocating the existing footprint of the enterprise zone around Lowestoft port and the adjoining PowerPark. That could create more than 300 jobs, support 40 new businesses and generate between £1 million and £3 million of retained rates.
Earlier in my speech, I mentioned the need for the Government to provide the right policy framework for the maritime sector to realise its full potential. The framework that I would urge the Government to adopt is broadly Maritime UK’s spending review bid. Time does not permit me to go through that in detail, but I believe it is compelling. It will create a large number of well paid, exciting and innovative new jobs right through the supply chain. Those jobs will be in coastal communities where they are much needed and will fuel the levelling-up agenda. Moreover, the strategy will set the UK firmly on a course to meeting its net zero maritime obligation.
In conclusion, it is important to re-emphasise the lead role that the maritime sector can play in the post-Brexit economy, particularly in terms of levelling up and decarbonisation. There is, as I have mentioned, a requirement for joined-up Government and also, I sense a need for maritime-proofing of economic policy. I say that having just read the Salvation Army’s report on the levelling-up agenda, which concludes that coastal communities have not been properly recognised in the place prioritisation that has accompanied both the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund. I hope the Minister will allay any concerns I have in this respect in his summing-up.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Sir George. I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing the debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it.
Such debates are all too rare. That, in itself, is an illustration of what the briefing from Nautilus calls “sea blindness”. One of the biggest difficulties the maritime industry faces is getting the political attention it needs in just about every respect—whether for its own development, for health and safety on vessels, or for minimum wage implementation. It all happens far from sight at sea. This debate is a welcome opportunity for those of us with an interest in the maritime industry to put some of those concerns on the record.
It has been a difficult couple of years for those working in our maritime industry. During lockdown, many seafarers found themselves in difficult situations, caught between different lockdown regulations—testing, tracing, self-isolating—in different countries. In its briefing, Nautilus highlights its survey, which shows that about 11,000 maritime professionals fell through all the gaps in the safety nets; none was able to get assistance from the job retention scheme or the self-employment income support scheme. That statistic illustrates the different way in which the maritime industries work compared to those based onshore.
Both the right hon. Member for North Durham and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) believe that this is an industry with a future, and I endorse that sentiment. However, I would say that there is nothing inevitable about the UK maritime sector having a bright future; it will require a determined and driven strategic agenda from the Government to ensure that that actually happens.
We have seen the issue at different times over the years. Going back 15 or 20 years, the Blair Government introduced the tonnage tax—a really good, welcome initiative. However, it never really achieved its full potential, beyond getting tonnage to flag under the red ensign, because it was difficult for the Government to get the conditionality attached to it: getting the number of officers trained under the tonnage tax, and then getting the shipping companies that had trained them to keep them on. There was a commitment to train officers in order to qualify under the tonnage tax. After that box was ticked, there was a commitment to retain them for a year, but after that, there was a cliff edge. There was a glut of one-year post-qualification officers.
That is the challenge facing the Government, and I do not envy them. It is difficult for any individual country to take on companies operating in an effectively global environment. This is probably the best working definition of a global industry. In its briefing, the RMT illustrates some of the challenges affecting the enforcement of minimum wage legislation. This was something of particular concern a few years ago, when I discovered that many of those working on the freight ships going from Aberdeen to Shetland, in my constituency, were deemed by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs not to be in its remit for enforcing the minimum wage because the boats operated in international waters. Its definition of international water is being outside the 12-mile limit.
I give credit to HMRC and the Government for having closed some of the loopholes, but we know that many of the jobs advertised will come nowhere near the level of minimum wage protection. The RMT briefing for today quotes some examples of that:
“The expansion of Irish Ferries into Dover is a case in point. Irish ferries pay below the National Minimum Wage to its Cypriot registered ships”.
That is Irish Ferries coming into Dover in Cypriot registered ships—seeing that, one begins to understand the complexity of international shipping. It continues:
“as revealed by recent inspection of the WB Yeats by the Inspector for International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) in France (Irish Ferries have blocked ITF access in UK and Irish ports)”.
It then quotes the pay rates on the W. B. Yeats, Rosslare to Cherbourg, in June 2021. A bar and galley steward gets an hourly rate of £6.47; an able seafarer has an hourly rate of £6.89; both a cook and a plumber had an hourly rate of £7.42; a receptionist earned £7.69; and a bosun earned £9.39. In fact, going back a few years, some of the ships that were operating in the North sea were paying figures that were less than half the lowest figures in the RMT briefing. It shows that, because of the way the industry is structured and operates, enforcement of conditions is a game of regulatory whack-a-mole.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I am grateful to my good friend for giving way. I congratulate him on the work that he has done in the last couple of years to ensure that national minimum wage rates are paid to seafarers. Does he agree that what we would like to hear about from the Minister is a proactive approach to ensuring the enforcement of the national minimum wage?
Mr Carmichael
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is characteristically generous. Others in the House, him included, have been working on the issue as well. It comes back to the first point I made: as a former Prime Minister used to say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. People like us, talking about issues like that, on occasions like this, do allow pressure to be brought bear, which ultimately leads to progress being made.
The right hon. Member for North Durham spoke about the need for a more proactive, and less competition based, approach to the awarding of contracts. In principle I agree with him, and I understand what he is saying when offering comparators from Europe and around the world.
To sound one note of caution, as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) knows, we have a difficult recent history of this north of the border. Two ferries are being procured from a shipyard owned by the Scottish Government: the replacement for the Glen Sannox and Hull 802—so called because, although it is now heading towards five years overdue, it still does not have a name. Partnership between Government and industry of the sort that the right hon. Member for North Durham is talking about worked very effectively with the procurement of the aircraft carriers and is something we should be taking seriously. However, the rigours of private sector involvement are needed to ensure that these ferries are obtained on time and give value to the taxpayer, as well as giving longer-term security for the workforce in the domestic shipyards we have left.
We saw this week that, in the tender for the construction of the two ferries to serve Islay and Jura, two of the shipyards tendering are in Turkey, one is Romanian, and one is in Poland. Not a single shipyard in Scotland or anywhere else in the United Kingdom is now being invited to tender by the Scottish Government. That shows that we need to have the strategy that everyone else has spoken about. If we have a gesture here on a difficult news day there, we do not do any favours for the people who work in these shipyards, never mind island communities such as Islay and Jura.
Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
Order. I will call the Front Benchers at 2.30. The right hon. Gentleman has already taken up more time than will be allowed to a Front-Bench spokesman, and there are other speakers trying to get in. There is no time limit, but I would ask him to bear that in mind.
Mr Carmichael
I have effectively, Sir George, covered the material that I intended to cover. With your restrictions in mind, I am happy to conclude.
Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
I now feel obliged to impose a time limit of seven minutes on Back-Bench speeches. That should enable everybody who wants to speak to get in.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is good to see you in your place, Sir George. I will endeavour to meet your time limit, although as hon. Members know I can talk about the maritime sector till the cows come home.
I would very much like to associate myself with the remarks made by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has set out as good an exposition as any of why we need to prioritise shipbuilding and the maritime sector. I agree that we often do not celebrate the sector enough. It is very telling that, through the horrendous couple of years of the pandemic, the supermarket shelves stayed full. That is because our maritime sector kept going. I suspect that it is only when things start to go wrong that people start to realise its importance. In that respect, we had something of a stay of execution when there was a slight difficulty in the Suez canal; I do feel that we are perhaps still yet to see the out-turn of the difficulties created by that.
It is great pleasure to contribute to this debate as chairman of the all-party parliamentary maritime and ports group and during London International Shipping Week. We have had a lot to celebrate in the ports sector this week: only yesterday, we heard confirmation from DP World that it is investing a further £400 million in a new berth at London Gateway, and Forth Ports are due to invest a further £1.2 billion in new port facilities at Tilbury3, following hot on the heels of Tilbury2, which I can tell the House took just under a year between planning permission and the ships arriving. That shows how dynamic the sector is. If only our public sector procurement could deliver things as quickly.
That success is very rarely celebrated. I know that I am preaching to the converted when I address all this to the Minister, who has taken on the brief with characteristic ambition and gusto; he is much respected in the sector, and we hope he continues to do the job for quite some time. Could I just ask him to switch his phone off, perhaps?
The right hon. Member for North Durham referred to the fact that maritime is seen as a smokestack industry. When it comes to how public policy makers see the sector, I could agree with him more. They generally do not see it as part of the future, yet it is an intrinsic part of our present. We cannot talk about global Britain or the importance of trade if we do not actually value the means by which we secure that trade. We really do need to make sure that we champion the sector more.
I lose the will to live when I have meetings with public policy makers in my constituency, which is, as I often call it, the port capital of the UK. It is the fastest growing port in the country, yet I still have to tell them that the ports are our future and ask why they are wasting time prattling on about spending money on creative industries, which frankly are never going to contribute as much to the wealth of this country as the maritime sector does.
As Great Britain, it is part of our DNA that we are a maritime nation, but sometimes we say these things and then realise there is not very much to back them up at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) put it very well when he talked about how the sector touches on various Departments, because one of the tragedies in how we get things wrong in government and policy making is that so many of these things are siloed. We plonk maritime in the Department for Transport, which has to deal with providing infrastructure for how we get around the country, but maritime is at the heart of how our economy functions in an international way, as well as of employment. We need to get better at making sure that we deal with all those things.
I will make just a couple of final points. First, I totally endorse what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said about seafarers. I also say gently to the Government that we are very good at lecturing other countries around the world about poor working conditions, but we look the other way when they exist in our sphere of influence; there are many complex reasons why that might be the case, but we must value seafaring and make sure it is adequately compensated. I give my personal thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for finally getting the cruise sector moving, a sector that has obviously been hit very badly during the pandemic.
I have one final ask before I sit down. I endorse the comments made by the right hon. Member for North Durham about the need to foster investment in new technologies, particularly if net zero is going to mean anything, so I particularly encourage the Minister to look at Windship Technology, which I am hugely excited about. I think it could offer such a big future to this industry, but that technology and innovation is in every danger of going elsewhere if we do not do our bit to support it. I could go on for much longer, but I will sit down now.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to add a Northern Irish perspective to the contributions that have already been made. First, I thank my friend the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for his contribution, and for setting the scene for us so very well.
Northern Ireland can be proud of its maritime heritage and excited about its maritime future: from the construction of ocean-going liners to fighting ships for our armed forces, facilities to build offshore wind farms, cutting-edge technologies designed to secure carbon-neutral status for the United Kingdom’s maritime sector, and the tradition in my own constituency of Strangford of a sustainable fishing industry, providing fresh, healthy seafood and, importantly, good jobs.
Companies such as Harland & Wolff are synonymous with the maritime sector in Northern Ireland. The shipyard’s huge cranes continue to dominate the Belfast skyline as the company celebrates 160 years of marine manufacturing. I well remember, as an 18-year-old in the mid-1970s, guarding Samson and Goliath as a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. That was one of the roles we had to do, because it was so important to ensure that there was no terrorist attack on those cranes. It is superb to see Harland & Wolff exhibiting at this week’s Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition here in London. I very much look forward to the Ministry of Defence rewarding that shipyard and its partners with future contracts for new ships for the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which as well as delivering the finest ships for the nation would help achieve the Government’s goal of levelling up the UK’s economy, as the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) mentioned. It is very important to remember that this would provide a much-needed boost to the entire economy of Northern Ireland.
In many ways, Northern Ireland and Belfast share a special bond with Scotland and the shipyards of the Clyde, but surely—I say this very gently to my colleague and friend the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens)—there is something not quite right when the latest HMS Belfast is being built in Glasgow. Artemis Technologies is a relatively new company on the maritime scene in Northern Ireland, but last year it was awarded a significant UK grant to research and develop zero-emission ferries that will revolutionise the future of maritime transport, so we need to be efficient in moving forward and be visionary in what we foresee for the future.
Artemis leads a Belfast maritime consortium that brings together the best in Northern Ireland’s academia and other partners, including Belfast Harbour port authority. This kind of consortium is not unique to Northern Ireland. The Kilkeel Harbour network works collaboratively, based—as the name suggests—around Kilkeel harbour in my neighbouring constituency of South Down. That network brings together boat builders, marine engineers, ship painters and various other ancillary businesses. Over the past 18 months, it has created new employment against a background of what we know have been very challenging circumstances.
G. Smyth Boats is one of the companies in the network with an order book stretching for several years. It supplies small fishing vessels to customers throughout the UK, Ireland and beyond. The hon. Member for Waveney is absolutely right to say that the maritime sector stretches further than the big ships and container ships—it goes as far as local fishing communities, such as mine in Portavogie and Kilkeel, where this development will happen in a bigger way. Indeed, the latest new-build from G. Smyth Boats will be launched this week.
The network has the fishing industry at its core, and the fishing industry is at the core of my constituency of Strangford. In May, my party colleague and Northern Ireland Executive Minister Edwin Poots MLA published the “Fisheries and Seafood Development Programme”, which is probably the most extensive review of the sector carried out in the United Kingdom in recent times. It is very important to us. The Minister recognises the importance of it, and so do I. The FSDP does not hide the challenges facing the fishing industry: an ageing fishing fleet, and the need to build new ships and recruit fishing crew. Nevertheless, the opportunities more than outweigh the challenges. The report advocates investing £100 million in fishing harbour infrastructure to help create a place where we can build those boats, not only for Northern Ireland but for the United Kingdom, Ireland and far beyond. The predicted timeframe for the delivery of that infrastructure fits neatly with the future negotiations between the United Kingdom and the EU, whose stated aim is to secure enhancements to the UK’s share of fishing resources within UK waters.
Delivery of the FSDP’s recommendations needs support from central Government, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that. I suspect he does not have direct responsibility for it, but have the discussions that the hon. Member for Waveney referred to taken place? That is important, as there are different sections and Ministers have different roles to play.
The first part of the £100 million UK seafood fund was revealed last week, with £24 million of investment for cutting-edge science and fisheries research—the two together. It is important that those overseeing the fund and applicants to it consider the practical application of the projects to ensure we cover all the necessary maritime requirements. Too often, we see such funding being taken up by academic projects that might be important but have no practical application to the industry. They just have a visual impact on the maritime sector and the fishing sector in particular, for which they have allegedly been designed.
Competition in the marine space is growing. The maintenance of a sustainable and economically viable fishing industry is important to me, as it is to all my constituents. Marine protected areas and their highly protected cousins can also displace the fishing effort. Again, we are looking at the impact on the fishing sector of the central Government’s priority for more wind energy from offshore sites.
Recent headlines about a national shortage of haulage drivers struck a chord with me, as I have lobbied the Government over many years on recruitment and retention. I asked a question at business questions today and, to be fair, I was fairly encouraged by the Leader of the House’s response on what the Government are doing on that.
As an island nation, we depend on the sea for trade. It would be remiss of me not to refer briefly to the United Kingdom’s vital maritime trade lines—namely between Northern Ireland, Scotland and England—and the impact on them of the protocol that the Government negotiated with the EU as part of the Brexit deal. Much has been promised to resolve the issues relating to the sea border created by the protocol, but actions speak louder than words. I was encouraged by the Prime Minister’s answer yesterday to the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), but I would like to see actions, not just words. There should be no restriction on maritime trade on any trade between the islands of this great nation.
Our maritime heritage is important. We have much to look forward to, be proud of and learn from. It provides us with a tremendous foundation to ensure that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can once again resume a role at the pinnacle of the global maritime community, where we were in the past and can be in the future.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing the debate. It is curiously unique that we have not had many of these debates, but, going back through Hansard, we find that, all too often during London International Shipping Week, the topic is ignored. As a former shipbroker who worked in Singapore, then London and Nigeria, I really do believe I have seen some of the finer sides of the UK shipping industry and what it means to our economy.
I must start by saying what a fantastic opportunity this is to get together in this Chamber and see the common-sense agreement across the House about the value of the maritime sector—in coastal communities, ports, infrastructure and pay—and what needs to be done across the country to see it thrive.
I pay particular tribute and attention to the shipping services of this country. Although a significant proportion are based in London, I hope that colleagues will also reflect that across all four corners of the UK there are burgeoning businesses benefiting from the UK’s leading shipping services, whether that be in accountancy, arbitration, classification, consultancy, education, finance, insurance or legal—it is all based here. Be it in Singapore, Nigeria, Geneva or the middle east, people always talk of the UK as the capital of the shipping industry. This is something that we need to protect, not be complacent about; we must reflect on that and recognise that if we do not compete, if we do not challenge those around the world, we will lose our status.
I hope my hon. Friend the Minister recognises that this is a debate not for us to have a go at him, but for us to encourage him. We know him to be a highly energetic Minister to whom we offer a great deal of support to take this issue up. We also have what I believe to be a very ambitious maritime strategy, the 2050 strategy, which touches on several of the right points that have been raised in the debate. The third or fourth point in that report states that if we are not turbocharged and are not active in supporting and securing businesses in the UK, they will move abroad. Singapore and Geneva are competing every day to take businesses away from this country to be based in theirs.
Therefore, we must recognise the need to point out our failures, where necessary, to support our successes where available, and to look for opportunities that Government policy can support. The right hon. Member for North Durham talked about research and development, and I am so pleased that he did. We have rightly committed 2.4% of GDP to research and development in our manifesto, as Government policy. We talk about the invention of the telephone; I think now about the inventions we can put hand in hand into shipping services to allow us to tackle climate change, to look at the new inventions that will help us create a truly 21st century and green maritime sector that can be traded not just across the UK and our coastal communities, but across the world to be used by others.
I am particularly delighted that the right hon. Gentleman also talked about Norway. We are not necessarily expecting the UK to be building oil tankers and container ships, but we must look to try to retrofit vessels with new, high-end technology that allows us to capitalise on the work of the International Maritime Organisation and its ambitions for carbon neutrality by 2040. It is eminently possible and should go hand in hand with our levelling-up agenda.
We are home to companies such as Lloyd’s, the Baltic Exchange, Platts and numerous brokerages, two of which I have served with. I think they were probably rather pleased to see the back of me. However, there is a sense that this is an industry that is open to people from all walks of life. In some cases, there is no requirement for a degree, it can be entered into at any stage. When we talk about the levelling-up agenda, it is something that we must recognise as eminently achievable and that allows us to attract more people.
I have a few pleas to the Minister. We need to look at tax regulation and incentive schemes. We need to look at how our maritime flag is used both in the UK and abroad. We need to look at how we can champion maritime security. We need to talk more about supply chain resilience. We also need to think about how to get more people into maritime colleges. I am very pleased to say—and there will be an invitation to follow—that Noss on Dart in my constituency is setting up a maritime college within South Devon College, with the express purpose of getting people into the maritime sector at every level. There are opportunities coming up, and I would say there is broad thinking in further education colleges about how we can support this sector.
We have the history of being a very strong, globally leading trading nation with an extraordinary maritime history. We must return to that thinking, because it will help us in our ambitions of global Britain. It will help us in our ambitions as we join new organisations like the comprehensive and progressive agreement for transpacific partnership, which I hope we will be doing next year. It is perfectly fair to think of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) as Helen of Troy—she could launch a thousand ships. That is what we should be aspiring to do in the years to come.
The motto of the Baltic Exchange is, “Dictum meum pactum”—my word is my bond—and we must be very conscious that there is huge opportunity for us to develop the sector, to support it, to grow it and to encourage people to enter it. We can, once again, rule the waves.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
As always, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir George. I think you are the first Chair in a Westminster Hall debate taking place during a reshuffle who is not of the governing party, so I do not need to send you good wishes for the reshuffle. I see that the Minister is still in his place, which I think we will take as good news for now.
I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and everyone who has contributed to this excellent debate. It has been very enjoyable listening to everyone. Of course, a debate such as this would not be the same if I did not mention that I am still proud to represent the Govan shipyards and the workers there, who are the undisputed greatest shipbuilders in the world. I am pleased that BAE Systems is now looking at shipyard investment and at ensuring that it can build ships more efficiently at the Govan site. That is something that I hope the Minister will take cognisance of, because many of us believe that the Government have a role to play in providing finance and helping companies to invest in their shipyards so that they can compete—not just for defence contracts, but for contracts elsewhere.
I very much agree with the right hon. Member for North Durham about the fleet solid support ship contracts. A number of us in the APPG have been chipping away at the issue for a while. I have always found it quite fascinating that we were told they were not defence ships, because I have tabled parliamentary questions to ask what weaponry there would be on fleet solid support ships. I have received a long list, so I am bewildered as to why they are not designated as defence ships, but it seems that progress is being made.
I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for his charitable interpretation of the CalMac ferries situation, because my personal view on that is probably not repeatable in Hansard. Those of us who advocated remaining in the EU, such as the right hon. Member and me, have always felt—I certainly have, as someone from a public sector background —that one of the weaknesses of the case was the EU public procurement rules. It would help if the Minister outlined whether the Government are looking at the procurement rules and perhaps making it easier for local authorities and public bodies to provide contracts to local suppliers in various situations.
I want to associate myself with the comments made about seafarers, because it really is important that the national minimum wage is now enforced. Many of us were grateful that the Government changed the rules so that the national minimum wage would apply. It is now important that that is enforced, because the RMT, in its excellent briefing, has already given us examples of where it is not being enforced, and where seafarers are not being paid the national minimum wage. I recognise that the Government produce a list every year, and it certainly would not surprise me if some of the shipping companies appear on that, but perhaps the Minister could outline what work his Department and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are doing to ensure that there is real enforcement.
The maritime economy is very important both to the Scottish economy and that of these islands. It is estimated that the direct value of the maritime economy to the UK’s gross value added was £46.1 billion in 2017, supporting 200,000 jobs directly and 1 million jobs both directly and directly. Shipping alone contributed £6 billion to the economy in 2020, representing 19% of all transportation, and the UK’s shipping fleet is the 24th largest in the world. Some £9.9 billion of the GVA is added to Scotland, with 41,000 jobs directly supported. Apart from the seafarers’ situation, workers in the maritime sector are usually highly skilled and well paid. According to Maritime UK, they are 42% more productive than the average worker. Pre pandemic, the sector was predicted to grow by 15% between 2018 and 2023, but obviously that has been disrupted, and the true level of growth remains to be seen.
It is also important that we should recognise the value of Scotland’s maritime economy and marine environment, and protect the environment while growing that economy in a sustainable way. Scotland has 60% of the UK’s fishing waters and an abundance of marine resources. It is important to treat those as national assets, to be protected, developed and enhanced, not just for this generation but for future generations.
Scotland included shipping, defence and marine tourism in its previous national marine plan. That will be developed into a maritime strategy, and a dedicated agency will be established to put Scotland’s marine assets at the heart of the blue economy. The Scottish Government have pledged support for the growth of sustainable marine tourism to turnover of more than £0.5 billion by 2025.
There are great opportunities to explore greater maritime trade with the UK, and we should be ambitious to increase direct trade with the European Union. I want to see that 102% rise in direct shipping to France since the Brexit barriers were put in place, because the EU sees it as harder to ship through England to Scotland. Brexit has led to direct shipping and ferry routes to Spain and Calais.
We ask the UK Government to commit to serious and sufficient investment in the maritime sector. Historically, the UK Government have not included international aviation and shipping in their carbon budgeting—although they have changed that now, which is important, as I am sure the Minister agrees. It is important to include shipping emissions, as they can make up 3% of carbon emissions every year. Decarbonisation should be a key part of investment in the maritime sector going forward.
I congratulate all hon. Members on their fine contributions today on the maritime sector. As someone who represents a great shipyard community, I will support other hon. Members in ensuring that we have a thriving maritime sector going forward.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is terrific to see you in the Chair, Sir George. I am sure all hon. Members echo that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is one of the most effective operators in this Parliament at holding the Government to account, but he also always keeps his eyes on the horizon and has vision in what he talks about. The maritime industry does indeed have a very bright future for our country, and I congratulate him on leading the debate.
I was going to make some remarks about the reshuffle, but the hon. Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) have stolen all my lines. I will just say to Government Members, “Hope to God that your phone batteries last the day for you all.”
To be discussing the maritime sector in London International Shipping Week is a great honour. I pay tribute to everyone in the maritime sector, which played such a crucial role in getting this country through the pandemic and will continue to do so in the months ahead. We have had an inspiring and enjoyable debate—the House at its best.
The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) always sticks up for the people of Suffolk, for Lowestoft port, for fishing and for the technology to come. I wish his beloved Ipswich Town all the best—I think things will pick up for him this season.
For the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), Orcadians may be crofters who can fish, and Shetland Islanders may be fishermen who can croft, so he has a lot to say, and he says it well. However, I want to make the serious point, in relation to Nautilus, that we do not discuss the maritime sector enough in Parliament. As for the RMT and the Irish Ferries ship, the W. B. Yeats, I remind hon. Members that Yeats wrote a poem called “The Indian to his Love”:
“Here we will moor our lonely ship… how far away the unquiet lands”.
We will make unquiet lands for Irish Ferries while it pays its workers below the minimum wage. All of us in this House should agree on that and highlight it every time, as the RMT does. It is not right not to treat its workers with dignity and respect. The right hon. Gentleman will be happy to know that I have just booked my summer holiday in his village—I let him know so he can go on holiday, too.
The hon. Member for Thurrock is a proud champion of the all-party group and could launch a thousand ships from her constituency alone. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is not in his place, talked about Belfast and its maritime heritage, but also its future—zero emissions, ferries, ships, and the fishing industry in his constituency. I will put in a bid for the port of Foyle as well. It is underutilised, and we could see more cruise ships stopping there.
The hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) talked about education and the leaders of the future. We need the agglomeration in our ports, getting people into well-paid jobs that can be equivalent to level 5 without the debt of a degree. He used his experience in brokerage to highlight that really well.
Seafarers and the maritime industry have kept this nation fed, fuelled and supplied, often at great personal cost. I spoke to the industry this week. Mareel at Holyhead crews vessels across the world, and then there are Holyhead Towing crews as well. They have operatives across the planet who have not been able to get home. They have stood by their posts to make sure the British shipping industry works.
Revitalising our maritime sector would unlock tens of thousands of green jobs across the UK. That could be the stimulus to regenerating our often overlooked coastal communities and provide the opportunity to renew the many towns and villages dotted along the coastline. I speak frequently to those in the sector. They tell me how keen they are to make the changes needed to develop, innovate and change for the greener. However, the Government need to fund and support that radical transformation.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mentioned the £20 million for the competition—that is great, and we welcome it—but that must be a vanguard for what we need to do in future to ensure that we have good strategies to turn what we have got into what we need, to get what we want. That is what we have to do with the agglomeration of our maritime industry around our coasts and our component islands.
Another thing I call on the Government to do is turn the tide on, so to speak—if you will pardon the pun, Sir George—with financial backing for the shipbuilding industry. What all the biggest shipbuilding nations today have in common is either financial support for the industry or Government subsidies. We have heard some fantastic contributions, but why do the Government provide backing to the car industry and not the maritime sector, which had just £3 million committed this year, in one competition? Government must do more to attract investment by backing home shipbuilding credit guarantees and loans.
Decarbonisation and rebalancing of the economy are possible, and UK maritime, with its wealth of talent and expertise, has shown time and again its ability to generate enormous value. Shipping will be key to the journey to net zero by 2050. We cannot get there without decarbonising our shipping. The Government recognise that and have put maritime in their “Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution” as an industry difficult to decarbonise.
I am sure the Minister will make much of the clean maritime demonstration programme today, but while the investment is welcome, as I have said, we need more. This could be a fantastic opportunity for our country, as currently there is no clear global leader setting the pace to develop these technologies. If we are prepared to act fast and invest in the UK, we can become a scientific and green technological superpower—the hon. Member for Totnes said a 21st-century superpower—bringing jobs and prosperity to our neglected seaside communities and once again making our maritime industry world leading.
There is no time to lose. We have a moral duty and an environmental obligation to control pollution and reduce emissions. We must make a fair transition to green technology and to automation, but this must also be a just transition, ensuring that our seafarers and maritime professionals can avail themselves of the new opportunities. Government must do more to develop the sector, support the creation of new training and employment opportunities, and incentivise shipowners to commit to providing opportunities for employment for UK seafarers. I will always be an advocate for more investment in our maritime sector, which will enable us to become the vanguard of the green maritime industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)
It is very good to see you in the Chair, Sir George. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who always manages to quote poetry in his speeches and make me feel a very flat speaker in contrast.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on securing this truly timely debate on the UK maritime sector. He speaks with enormous enthusiasm, experience and expertise on the matter, and I am grateful to him for everything that he has put before us today. I entirely share his passionate enthusiasm for the sector and agree that it has a very bright future. I thank him for his comments. As it happens, I agree with a great deal of what he said—not quite everything, but a great deal.
Robert Courts
That is a good and timely point. The Government will be relieved to know that we do not agree on quite everything.
I can think of no better moment to discuss this issue than during London International Shipping Week. The right hon. Member is absolutely right that, to quote another of his phrases, the maritime sector is not some “quaint” industry that plays a historic role in our past. This is very much an issue of the present, as we see in London International Shipping Week, which is the second-biggest international gathering this year, I understand, after COP26. It is the highlight of the maritime year and shows that not just the capital but the whole of the UK is the best place in the world to do maritime business.
Maritime business is very varied. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) rightly pointed out, services are a major part of it as well. It is, of course, seafarers and shipbuilding, but it is also the much wider services side of things. He is quite right to draw attention to that.
I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) that he need not fear: the maritime sector is not overlooked and never will be, certainly for as long as I am in this position. I appreciate that I do not know how long that will be, as everyone would say. Perhaps the greater reassurance is that, for as long as the Prime Minister, for whom this is also a major priority, is here, the sector will not be overlooked.
I start with the issue of decarbonisation, which has clearly been a major part of the debate today. I would suggest that this country is leading the way on this. We have announced the winners of the clean maritime demonstration competition, a £20-million fund to develop novel zero-emission technologies. It is the biggest competition of its type that the Department for Transport has run, so I ask hon. Members to bear that in mind. The right hon. Member for North Durham mentioned hydrogen; my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) mentioned Windship. They have asked for demonstrators, essentially. That is what we are seeking to do: to decide and demonstrate what the likely technology is going to be.
We can disagree—we will have to agree to disagree—on whether this is turning point, but I suggest that it is a welcome way forward. I know that hon. Members all accept that, and London International Shipping Week is a great time to showcase the competition. It shows the innovation that is required and that exists, and it also the investment that we are putting into it from both industry and Government—it is key that it is a partnership. We hope that the demonstrators will be a springboard for bolder projects that are yet to come.
It is absolutely clear that there is no shortage of ambition in the sector with regards to greening the sector. That is important for the two reasons that hon. Members have stated: for emissions, clearly, but also, as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) said, for protecting the environment—cleaner in both senses. He is quite right to draw attention to that, and I am grateful to him for doing so.
I will spend a little bit longer talking about shipbuilding, which has been a major part of today’s debate. Shipbuilding will very much be a part of our next chapter. The UK has a long, illustrious shipbuilding heritage. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place, spoke movingly and vividly of Harland & Wolff, and the hon. Member for Glasgow South West spoke passionately for Govan, one of the great shipyards of the UK. Together, we have built some of the greatest, most iconic vessels that have ever graced the waves. Shipbuilding remains an integral part of our manufacturing sector, sustains thousands of jobs across the UK and brings millions into the economy, as we have heard.
Robert Courts
Once I have agreed with the right hon. Gentleman one more time, if I may. He asks whether we believe that we will become a world-leading shipbuilder. Yes, we will.
Mr Jones
Will the Minister inform the House whether he has any indication of when the refresh of the national shipbuilding strategy will be produced? I know that is in the hands of the Ministry of Defence, and the MOD’s idea of summer—or any season, frankly—bears no relevance to anything that we would think, but I would appreciate some indication because the industry is keen to get on with it.
Robert Courts
I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman the precision he would like, but it will be before the end of the year. I hope that provides some indication of going forward.
The industry has historically suffered around productivity and under-investment, and we need to become more competitive on the international stage. Government support is, of course, vital to achieving that aim. It is key that we work in partnership with the sector to reinvigorate its fortunes and those of the wider supply chain, which we have heard so much about today. With that in mind, the new post of shipbuilding tsar—who is, of course, the Secretary of State for Defence, as the right hon. Member for North Durham knows—has been created. That is to support UK industry to enable it to step up and become more productive and innovative. As part of that, a vital step forward has been announced this week: the creation of the National Shipbuilding Office.
The right hon. Member for North Durham spoke of the Carrier Alliance. He is quite right that it has been a fantastic project and that it showcases the best of the UK, but I would suggest that it is also slightly different, given that it is a once-in-a-generation major product. We are looking at something that requires ongoing, routine investment in shipyards and that leaves a legacy, because we need to build on the legacy of the shipyards to have that drumbeat of ships that we all wish to see and to provide that for the future.
That is what the National Shipbuilding Office is looking to do. It will be the strategic centre driving this change across Government and the industry. In other words, it will do precisely what my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney rightly asked for—as, indeed, did the hon. Member for Strangford—and avoid the siloing that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock rightly referred to.
That is what the National Shipbuilding Office is intended to do. It is to bring together all the Departments that hon. Members have referred to, but then add industry to ensure that it is a key team effort. That will, of course, support innovation—to ensure that skills are also aligned—and the supply chain. It will outline the vision for the UK’s shipbuilding enterprise, and the strategy that I referred to in answer to the intervention from the right hon. Member for North Durham.
A good example of the way the country can showcase its real innovation is the new national flagship, which is a sign of the Government’s determination to support prosperity, jobs and skills in the UK shipbuilding sector. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Wights, the shipyard company on the Isle of White. I was at the boat show in Southampton yesterday, and met with RS Sailing, which is developing a green, electrically powered, rigid inflatable boat, and with the marine division of Barrus and Bruntons Propellers—highly efficient propeller technology—to give a few examples. The Society of Maritime Industries event, earlier this week on HMS Albion, brought together all those industries, and others.
Companies such as that, with technology such as that, could be showcased in this new national flagship, which is a sign of the Government looking to provide a showcase for technology, and be part of the drumbeat of ships, so they would understand when the Government were procuring new vessels. A major part of that is the MOD’s Type 31s and Type 26s, all the way through to our naval support vessels. However, we also have civilian vessels—ice patrol, ocean surveillance, and, of course, research. The RRS Sir David Attenborough is the latest example of those very high-quality ships being produced by the UK. A new fleet of Home Office cutters is also being considered, should funding be confirmed, with the intention of securing UK value for that.
I will talk about the DFT’s fleet for a moment, too. That fleet is often overlooked, although it is one of the largest civilian fleets. It is operated by our general lighthouse authorities to ensure that navigational aids remain operational in all circumstances, and that seafarers are made aware of dangers such as wrecks. That role is often understated, but it is terribly important, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) might agree; I am sure it is important in his constituency. I will take the opportunity to thank everyone who works for Trinity House, the Northern Lighthouse Board, and Irish Lights, for their professionalism in extremely difficult times, and for keeping people safe. We are also commencing projects to build new vessels for Trinity House and the Northern Lighthouse Board. Both will go out to formal tender shortly.
A great deal of vessels, in terms of number and breadth, are available in the Government’s pipeline, and there is no reason for that not to include fishing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney rightly pointed out.
I will say a word or two about skills. Skills are clearly part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda and a massive part of the industry. Today, as we also heard from my hon. Friend, the Maritime UK coastal powerhouse event takes place. Coastal communities are very much part of levelling up and of the industry we are discussing today. We need to ensure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes rightly pointed out, that we have the skills we need not just to recover from covid-19, but to look to the future and to ensure we have the skills we need for the industry. That is a key part of the Maritime 2050 strategy, which the Department produced about two years ago. It brings together, in conjunction and consultation with industry, the plan for the future.
A key part of that plan is the Maritime Skills Commission. Professor Graham Baldwin was appointed as chair, alongside 18 commissioners, and it has £300,000 in funding. One of its recent focuses has been green skills, to which my hon. Friend also drew attention. The Seafarer Cadet Review was also published in June.
I am grateful that hon. Members mentioned East Coast College and South Devon College, which are looking at STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—skills in their own ways in their parts of the world. That is critically important work, close to all our hearts.
My comments must be slightly constrained by the fact that a spending review has been announced recently. The Government will announce how we will continue to invest in public services, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is working up a business case for a home shipbuilding credit guarantee, which is part of the spending review considerations. We continue to look at what other financial support might be available to work jointly with industry.
The hon. Member for Glasgow South West asked me about public procurement. There was a Green Paper, and those responses are being considered by the Cabinet Office. The DFT will continue to review the tonnage tax regime.
I am conscious that my speaking time is running out, although there are a great many other things I would like to talk about. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes rattled off a list of things, each of which could make for a great debate in its own right—flag, tax, supply chain. I would love to have debates on those subjects; maybe he will apply for some. I do not suppose it is my job to encourage the holding of debates, but I just have.
I should also give a plug to the debate on the cruise industry scheduled for next week, which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock will attend if she possibly can. I appreciate the support of and constructive criticism from all Members. We have had an interesting, helpful and constructive debate.
Mr Kevan Jones
I thank the Minister, who has a real passion for the sector and for aviation. We have had a good, well-informed debate. The main point is clear: this is about people and the skills we need for those people. We cannot take those for granted and we must invest in them. As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), we must ensure that people are not only well trained, but properly remunerated.
The other side of the issue is procurement, where the default position in the sector should be to procure and buy from UK yards—I make no bones about it. There is no excuse for not doing that; no other country in the world does not do it. The idea that we are considering buying ferries from Turkey is nonsensical.
That has to be the default position, and the Treasury should remember that the money comes back into the UK economy. We must ensure that the Treasury gets the fact that money spent in UK shipbuilding and in the UK maritime sector is money that will not only grow the sector, but procure jobs for the future.
I shall finish where I started, with a point on which I think we all agreed today: this is not an industry of yesterday; it is an industry of the future. We must make sure it is, and make sure it is attractive for young people to come in to, so that we not only get the well-paid jobs and skills, but benefit the broader UK economy.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the UK’s maritime sector.
Timpson Review of School Exclusion
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Before we begin, can I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking? This is line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the implementation of the recommendations of the Timpson Review of School Exclusion.
I am delighted to have secured the debate. This is the first time I have led a Westminster Hall debate and I am pleased it is on a topic that many hon. Members care about deeply. I am also delighted, and we are fortunate, that we have the opportunity to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) who conducted the review for Government. This vital review of the use of school exclusion found that more needed to be done to ensure exclusions are used fairly and consistently, so that every child has access to the high-quality education they deserve.
As a former trustee of an alternative provision multi-academy trust and a chair of governors at a pupil referral unit, I have seen how high-quality education within alternative provision can turn young people’s lives around. Indeed, as an employer leading a business in the creative sector, I worked with AP schools to find career opportunities for young people who thought differently but had creative flair. However, often, because of either an underlying special educational need or challenges in their home life, they had not quite managed to fit into mainstream schooling. With that in mind, I established the all-party parliamentary group for school exclusions and alternative provision when I came to the House to look at ways in which we could reduce the number of preventable exclusions and promote best-quality education for pupils who are excluded.
I thank all those working in the sector, particularly over recent months during the pandemic, who, because of the children, stayed open all the way through. I pay particular tribute to two individuals who have helped me to understand the sector: Seamus Oates, London regional director for the Ormiston Academies Trust, and Karen Thomson, my first head when I became a governor at a school in Warrington.
Through the APPG, we have met many pupils and parents, as well as teachers and local authority inclusion needs experts, all of whom work day in, day out with pupils excluded from school. They continue to urge the Government to implement the important recommendations of the Timpson review. While some progress has been made in implementing those proposals, a lot more still needs to be made, so I am delighted the Minister is in Westminster Hall today to give a progress update.
Our collective determination should be to ensure that every child being educated in alternative provision obtains better outcomes than they would have achieved in a mainstream school. With better models of AP working effectively with the sector, as well as more funding, we will be a few steps closer to making that aim a reality.
Therefore, these recommendations have never been more important, as pupils return to school from a year of immense disruption. Even prior to the pandemic, we were starting to see a dangerous uptick in the number of permanent and fixed-term exclusions. I say again that the most vulnerable children—those known to social services and those with special educational needs—are most likely to disappear from school rolls, and I am afraid the pandemic has only further entrenched what is a barrage of disadvantage.
One of the most worrying conversations I had during the summer recess was with a mainstream headteacher at a school in Warrington who highlighted the number of children now appearing on the local authority’s at-risk register. Those children were becoming involved with county lines drugs gangs and entering the criminal justice system owing to schools being closed, and they are now at risk of permanent exclusion from their mainstream school.
The Government have rightly been concerned about the learning that pupils have lost over the last year. We should also be concerned that that disruption to learning might well reverse progress that the Government have made since 2011 in closing the attainment gap. However, a growing cohort of pupils are not returning to school, and consequently they cannot access the support in which the Government have rightly invested.
As schools reopened, we found that pupils were disengaging from school at a frightening pace. Nearly 100,000 pupils were severely absent last year, missing more than half their education through non-attendance. We also face an increase in mental health issues in our classroom, with the rate of children with probable mental health disorders rising from one child in nine in 2017 to one child in six in 2020. All those factors point to an increased need for upstream support, by which I mean that if we are to avoid permanent exclusions, we need to intervene earlier.
Teachers and parents—those who have been through the exclusion process with their children—as well as inclusion leads told us during sessions held by the APPG that we need to invest in a system that offers both high standards and high support for our most vulnerable learners, securing every pupil’s right to high-quality education. One of the first steps to achieving that would be recognising the importance of alternative provision in the education landscape and enshrining the role of giving support to pupils at risk of exclusion.
As was found by the review undertaken by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury, the best AP across the country offers some of the greatest expertise in working with children who have challenging behaviours and additional needs. Those providers are seen not as a last-chance saloon, but as a place where life chances can be transformed. That is where we need to be with every alternative provision school in the country.
As the APPG has heard, the very best APs work along a continuum of support, offering outreach and advice to schools and pupils upstream to ensure that as many children as possible can stay in mainstream classes while accessing the support they need. They do not want children to go into AP; they want to support them in mainstream schools. That is what great AP schools are doing.
One brilliant example is the Pears Family School, an AP that not only supports pupils excluded from school but draws on its expertise as an AP with a reputation for exceptional parental engagement to build the capacity of mainstream teachers to support those learners in their classrooms. It does that by offering continuous professional development focused on parental engagement, supporting teachers with strategies to engage with parents. Its approach has been found to re-engage disaffected pupils, and it offers holistic support to vulnerable pupils and their families.
Although that is an admirable example of the potential of great AP, I am afraid that it is not yet the norm across the country. Far too many pupils can only to access the support of an AP if they have experienced a school exclusion; it is the last chance they get. As pupils return to school, we need to think about how we build this capacity to elevate the status of APs as respected experts in the education ecosystem.
We cannot, however, elevate the status of AP if we do not invest in it further. I am afraid it is unacceptable that schools for excluded pupils are often totally unsuitable buildings passed down by local authorities—schools that are no longer used for mainstream education. They have all the hallmarks of the last chance saloon. Before coming here, and more recently through the APPG, I have heard and, sadly, seen some horror stories about the buildings the schools are operating out of. I specifically recall visiting buildings on the Wirral when I was a governor in Warrington and seeing smashed windows, walls painted black, and furniture that was around 40 years old. That is not a suitable educational environment for children who have been excluded from mainstream schools.
Some alternative providers are offering education in neglected commercial premises and old converted houses that are simply unfit for purpose. Four in five respondents to the Centre for Social Justice’s AP capital survey said that the facilities in AP were simply not on a par with mainstream schools, and we have heard from parents who say that turning up to AP schools that look like dumping grounds, rather than schools, further raises anxiety about being placed in an AP, not just for parents but for children too. That only serves to reinforce the stigma and anxiety felt by pupils and their families following their AP referral. The review by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury suggested prioritising AP in any upcoming capital funding. Like many Members, I welcome the Government’s significant investment in improving the quality of the schools estate over the next 10 years, and I will take the opportunity to ask the Minister whether we can please prioritise these settings in the next round of capital funding, and invest significantly in expanding buildings and facilities for pupils who need AP.
I also ask the Minister for some clarity on when the special educational needs and disability review will be published. Although it is essential that the Government take the time to understand the scale and complexity of the changes needed, every delay extends the time in which those children and families are not getting the help they require. We also need some assurances that the SEND review will focus on AP reforms and how to create a system that enshrines APs as experts in the education landscape.
I am aware that the Government have made some progress in some areas, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments rightly recognise that many of the recommendations have been taken forward, but there are many on which we still need urgent action. As such, can the Minister tell us when she expects the AP workforce programme to be published, and what plans there are to establish a practice programme that embeds partnerships, allowing them to intervene earlier through the introduction of a practice improvement fund? Finally, can she tell us what steps have been taken to introduce more substantive training on behaviour issues into initial teacher training and the early career framework? I look forward to hearing her responses, and thank her in advance for addressing Members.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, for what I think is the first time—I apologise if we have crossed swords in this place before. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate to take place, as well as my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), who in the short time he has served in this place has already become a great champion for children who are at risk of school exclusion, highlighting the consequences of it. His chairmanship of the APPG is already reaping benefits for the profile of this important subject and the work and collaboration that are taking place on it, both inside and outside Parliament.
Despite my now being back in this place, the review I carried out was an independent review at the behest of the then Secretary of State, which was commissioned in March 2018 and published in May 2019. The last time we debated the review was on 2 March 2020: it was essentially an almost-one-year-on review of the review to check against progress. Of course, that was pre-pandemic, so we were still looking at the review through the lens of the world as it was then.
From memory, it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) who responded to that debate. I will take a moment to pay tribute to his incredibly long and fruitful service at the Department for Education as Minister for School Standards; I was there with him from 2012 until 2017, apart from a short period when he was allowed a breather. Many Members across the House recognise that he has shown a great deal of commitment, dedication and perseverance, to the benefit of many children in this country, and I wanted to put that on the record.
When we look at the response then and the position we are in now, we have to factor in that many children have had to endure a very different environment over the last 18 months. I want to explore how that may impact not only on the range of responses we have to the prevalence of school exclusion, but how it may bring about new opportunities to improve the way that we work more upstream, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South said, to prevent as much disruption to education as possible.
Although exclusion will have a severe impact on any child, the analysis in my review showed that it affects only 0.1% of all children. However, that is 40 children a day. We need to make sure that we make the best of that situation for every child. Similarly, there are around 2,000 suspensions every day—I believe that is what they are being called; we used to call them fixed term exclusions—so there is a lot of disruption in the education system daily.
When I conducted my review, I understandably had to encompass a whole spectrum of different views and senses of what is right and wrong in the management of behaviour in schools. That was sometimes quite tricky territory. However, the consensus I found was that everyone understood the need for the headteacher to have some autonomy and discretion to use exclusion where appropriate, and very much as a last resort where nothing else will do, and that there have to be high standards in schools around values of respect and good behaviour. However, people also recognised that there are children who, for whatever reason—from what I called “in-school” or “out-of-school” factors in the review—find it difficult to meet that level of behaviour and interaction in school. That gets to the nub of how we need to respond and intervene earlier when we recognise that there may be a problem in that child’s life.
I remain of the view that exclusion is an important tool in the headteacher’s toolbox. We should not be looking for some artificial figure of how many exclusions there should be—what we need are the right reasons for exclusions and, as a consequence, the right number at the right time. However, that would be less of a concern if we knew that was true in every case: one finding of my review was that there was not always an appropriate use of exclusion. That is particularly worrying as we know that vulnerable pupils are most likely to fall foul of exclusion, as we have heard already, in particular those who have been diagnosed with special educational needs or come into contact with social care.
We look at the impact that exclusion has on their life prospects: on their educational attainment, their employment, the aggravation of mental health issues and the correlation with the criminal justice system. All the evidence is there. We know that we can do much more for these children and young people if we work at a more preventative level and ensure a greater continuum of support through some difficult times by involving all those who work with children, not only in schools, but in the agencies that support schools, including pupil referral units and those working in alternative provision.
We are looking at the overlaying of the pandemic and still trying to come to terms with how that will manifest in the longer term. We are already seeing reports of heightened anxiety for some children, with social disconnection problems that have been bottled up at home. That has led to some disengagement from education for those who were not able to get online every day and to get into each lesson when they were at home. All that has an impact on their ability to progress and reach their potential.
Although we do not have any data beyond the autumn of 2019—before the pandemic—Cheshire West and Chester Council, the authority in which my Eddisbury constituency falls, has published a report with Social Finance. The report shows a rising level of pupil absence and a rising use of exclusion by schools in the first term after lockdown restrictions ended last year, in an area that has a lower-than-average exclusion rate. That finding may not be the same across the country, but it is certainly an indicator that there may be some fallout and additional issues for children who have gone through that experience.
Indeed, the number of suspensions in the Chester West and Chester area went up from 62 to 93, and the proportion of children being suspended for the first time rose from 40% to 54%. That is just one snapshot in one part of the country, but that is why it is important that we look at the matter carefully and consider, as more data comes out, whether it is an aberration or a deeper problem caused by the disruption over the last 18 months.
Unfortunately, that could also point to the risk of rising persistent absence and exclusion. The children most at risk of slipping out of education—and not only those who live in poverty, but those who may have a social worker because life outside school is unsafe—are more prone to exclusion. On the face of it, covid makes the risk of exclusion more likely rather than less, but at the same time, the conclusions of my review, and its recommendations, still hold water. In fact, in many respects, it is even more important to implement them in a timely manner.
I know you are a great fan of googling the word “Timpson”, Mr Stringer, so I am sure that you are aware of the Timpson tracker, which is on the IntegratED website. When I first saw it, I thought it was something that would track me doing the marathon a few weeks later, which was clearly not the case—it would have been a very long viewing period if it had been. The tracker sets out the progress on the recommendations in my review, from those that are still in progress to those on which we have not made any progress at all. At this juncture I want to thank the Minister, because I have had a number of opportunities to engage with her on that progress since the last time we debated the matter in Parliament. We had a discussion with officials on 25 May, and that provided me with some reassurance that further work was going on, although because of the pandemic, it had perhaps been done differently from how we had anticipated. None the less, the will and the determination to make progress were clearly there. In the time I have left, I will refer to just some of the recommendations, to push them forward again and ask the Minister what progress has been made in the intervening period.
Recommendation 8 is to establish a practice improvement fund. I have highlighted that on a regular basis because, although I fully accept that there is a spending review to come and that sometimes funds have to be found within existing budgets—or even within slightly smaller existing budgets after a spending review—that part of the overall package of recommendations is crucial because it homes in on what we know from the evidence our review collected on what actually works on the ground and which tools professionals need to have a strong response to any difficulties children have at school, so that exclusions can be avoided.
The recommendation considers the transition points from primary to secondary school, and in-school units, as well as how many children have attachment and trauma issues. In that respect, I pray in aid the Attachment Research Community, which, along with the National Association of Virtual School Heads, has produced a call to action to help raise awareness of attachment and trauma needs in schools across England. The recommendation also looks at teaching, learning and emotional wellbeing in schools, and really aims to complement and extend some of the existing Department for Education guidance on supporting mental health in schools.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell us more about the work on mental health in schools, particularly on having a trained lead in each school, and on how attachment and trauma could be fused into that work so that every school’s workforce has some basic knowledge of how attachment and trauma manifest, and how staff might be able to respond in a way that really helps to keep children on the right path.
There has also been interest in the behaviour hubs that have been announced by the Government. Twenty-two schools and trusts have signed up, including six that have a relationship with alternative and specialist provision, which is an important step forward. It would be good to hear from the Minister about how that is starting to have an influence on pushing out the good practice, and what steps will be taken in the future.
Recommendation 11 may, on the face of it, seem a synthetic recommendation compared with others, but I still see it as an important part of how we change the conversation around alternative provision, particularly pupil referral units. The recommendation deals with the stigma that is often attached to PRUs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South said, they can seem like a dead-end place where pupils are put to be kept out of sight. We know there are PRUs all over the country that are not like that at all. We have seen some tremendously impressive examples where they are turning lives around, working directly in mainstream schools, and helping with the work they do. Renaming PRUs in a way that reflects their role both as schools—places of learning—and as places that support children to overcome barriers to engaging with education seems to be one way of making people view their role within the system more positively and constructively.
Recommendation 10 draws on the excellent opening speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, particularly about alternative provision and the need to have a strong workforce. We are starting, particularly post-lockdown, to hear some APs report difficulties with recruiting subject specialist teachers. There are shortages in many professions at the moment, but fortunately for APs, there is a route to quality within their workforce. Recently, I was lucky to be able to thank the founding cohort of the Difference Leadership programme, led by Kiran Gill, who graduated after their first two-year placement programme in good and outstanding APs. They are already having a profound impact on the ground. Within the first months of the course, leaders reported a 65% reduction in internal and external exclusions, and an 80% improvement in de-escalation incidents. That is not just a single improvement; for example, the Pendlebury Centre pupil referral unit works on the continuum of need that we have heard about, and very closely with the mainstream schools around it. This work is starting to see a real culture change in the way that schools and PRUs are working together to resolve problems as soon as they possibly can.
I want to touch upon the illegal practice of off-rolling, which is in my report. Off the back of my recommendation —I do not have the number to hand, it may be recommendation 26—the Education Committee were looking at how Ofsted might make sure that where they have found off-rolling during an inspection, they make that clear on the face of the inspection report. The consequences of that, in my judgement and review, should be that the leadership and management aspect of the school’s inspection be deemed inadequate in all but exceptional circumstances. That still has some time to cement itself within the inspection regime, but it is important that we call out the extremely sharp practice of off-rolling, which is ultimately illegal, and squeeze it out of the school system.
I am realistic. Having been Children’s Minister, I know that there are often principles that one agrees with and accepts, as is the case with the Government’s response to this review, but that is not always then ad idem with one’s ability to bring them into practice. There may be some need to nuance them and fashion them slightly differently as circumstances shift, and of course the pandemic is one such circumstance.
I am clear that the will is still there in Government, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says at the two-year—it is over two years now—review point to establish how much progress we have made. We know there is a lot of knowledge and understanding in the school system, and a commitment to do better and learn from the best, and many of my recommendations point to achieving that, as well as having a much more cohesive and transparent system where we can track children more easily, we do not lose them to the system, and we can respond more efficiently and effectively in providing the support they need to make the best of their education.
We have some fantastic schools all over this country and children who want to learn. We just need to make sure we do not leave any of them behind, and this review provides a great opportunity to do just that.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I am grateful to speak in this important debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for his review, which I have studied at length. I concur with some of the recommendations and certainly with his speech today, but I think some of the recommendations need to go further.
What I have tried to do in preparation for today’s debate is to take a bigger view of what happens in the journey of a child and to look at how we can give a far better experience to that child. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for adoption and permanence, which this week published its report “Strengthening families”, and I thank the hon. Member for his part in that. I have also looked at children who experience extreme trauma and at the impact that has on then, and talked to parents, young people, agencies and schools in my constituency. Rather than looking just at the behaviour of a child, my conclusion is that a child does not reach the point where their school determines that exclusion is necessary, without first being on a trajectory that takes them to that place. Therefore, we have to look at the life course of a young person, identify early indicators and invest in the stability that that child needs to take them down a different path and to know they are secure, safe and have worth.
The work being doing in this place around 1,001 critical days is critical in ensuring we get the right foundations not only for the child, but for the whole family. Parenting is the most important role anyone plays in our society. Yet, the investment in parenting is scant. Of course, that starts before a child is born. We need to invest in the vital skills of a parent to build that security around the child. Also, as a state, we need to think about the instruments we need to put in place to help parents too. It is a difficult journey, but the more investment we put in, the greater the likelihood that we will see the fruits of that investment later on.
A child may have multiple challenges. They may be neurodiverse, have underlying heath conditions, have experienced trauma or not formed good attachments. At any point along the journey, the system, instead of pushing them away, must draw them close. That is perhaps why I do not fall in line with the hon. Member’s report—I believe that more needs to be done to draw children in rather than push them away. That is the experience of many of these children: they are pushed away from so many places, which escalates and spirals their lack of attachment and identity, and makes them so insecure.
Exclusion reinforces harm to many children and pushes them further into risk, as the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) so ably said in opening the debate. It destroys the threads of security that a child may have and is ultimately costly both to the child and financially over a lifetime.
Children who experience adoption are 20 times more likely to be permanently excluded, and five times more likely to be excluded for a fixed period. In fact, they are 16 times more likely to be suspended at key stage 1. Those children already have the challenge of processing their identity, security, trust and attachments. More often than not, they have layers of significant trauma, and are often excluded far earlier than other children. The trauma of exclusion builds on that trauma, and therefore does not achieve the outcome of security, which is why we have to make that early investment.
The all-party parliamentary group has looked at the value of the adoption support fund. We must ensure it is there at the right quantum to provide the services and support that are needed. If security and stability are wrapped around a child’s education, with continuous relationships, that can help build stability for them. The transition points, which hon. Members have referred to, can be very challenging and confusing for a child. It is therefore vital that we have relationships to bridge those transition points. A system in which everything changes in those relationships every year for a child can be very disruptive, so we need to look at continuums in a child’s life that can take them through their schooling.
If a child is taken to their safe place in a school—a place that is calming, caring and engaging and that invests in them—we will see different outcomes. It is therefore right that we build schools that have those spaces where children can go. As we have heard, and as we know from our constituencies, many children are experiencing real mental trauma at this time. Mental health challenges are starting in younger and younger children, and we are all experiencing from our constituencies children who are in a place of distress at such a young age. It is therefore important to create safe spaces that any child can go to when they are feeling insecure in class.
The challenge I want to set the Minister today is to create therapeutic schools. We should see schools not just as educational environments but as places that support the whole needs of a child. The rise in exclusion demands that. We need not isolation, but engagement; not exclusion, but inclusion. If an excluded child is pushed into rejection, they are pushed into further risk and harm. We have heard about county lines and people who prey on vulnerable children. They give children the rewards that they are seeking—not the right rewards, of course—and draw children into a different space that is unsafe for them. Ensuring that we have safe spaces is therefore absolutely crucial.
Children today are exposed to mental health challenges, trauma and harm—let us face it, none of us experienced this when we were younger—thanks to the scale and pace of social media and so many other things that they have to navigate their way through. We have to find a better space for our young people. As I have said many times in this place, many intergenerational challenges are replicated through children. We therefore need to break some of those cycles with a trauma-informed process. We must look at the child’s holistic needs—their home, their school environment—and understand them far better. If a child is not secure, they will not learn and attain, and inequality will grow. Therefore, that is absolutely crucial.
I have also said many times in this place that we need to look at what children are learning and the environment they are in. My sister, who works in early years with children with many challenges in their lives, last night pointed me to a YouTube clip by Prince EA, called “I Sued the School System”. I recommend it to all hon. Members; it is really worth six minutes of their time. I see hon. Members nodding—I do not know whether they have seen it. It talks about the way we need to develop a different kind of curriculum for children. Of course, it will be about inclusion. It will draw on children’s skills, and draw them into the system more and more. That is how we stop the rejection—the feeling of being pushed away—that so many children feel.
My city of York has a high standard of education and a high standard of caring for young people who are very challenged. It gives children an opportunity for a fresh start, so that if children find their school environment challenging, it will move them to a different school in the city. Many schools engage with that, so that children are kept within the school education system. Of course, alternative provision is also available for children. Within that, however, I note what is happening statistically. We saw a real drop in the number of permanently excluded children in the city—it is now about three or four children a year, which I would say is three or four children too many—but the number of suspensions and permanent exclusions has started going up. That was with the introduction of isolation units in schools, which are incredibly harmful for children.
Looking at the figures for 2018-19, 472 children in York were suspended for disruptive behaviour, 192 for threatening behaviour, and 123 for verbal behaviour. We must therefore find alternative solutions to keep those children in school, because many of them would have been pushed further into risk outside school. I also think that we have to take a safeguarding approach. I have raised this issue with the Minister in questions, and we are due to meet to discuss school-age children outside the school environment and the risks that they are exposed to. We therefore need to look at harm reduction in the school environment, where safeguarding is strong, but also outside. Of course, when children are suspended or excluded, they are outside that safe environment. We have to do a lot more on that.
In conclusion, I want to say to this to the Minister: let us draw children into safe places, and not push them away. Let us invest, not deprive a child of perhaps the only hope they have—the only safe place they go. I know that the Government have yet to get on this path, but the whole education system needs reform. With a refreshed Department, perhaps there is an opportunity to once again look at the curriculum, the environment and the purpose of education. Let us not escalate, but de-escalate, risk for these young people.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) for securing this important and timely debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for the work that he did on the review. I agree with the vast majority of the recommendations, and I think the Government should implement them fully at the next possible opportunity.
I could not agree more with the points made by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) about therapy and the importance of a therapeutic approach. I am very fortunate to be an associate governor at a special school for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs in my constituency. The school has only been going for just over a year, but it has done an absolutely fantastic job so far in supporting some of the most vulnerable young people in my constituency, who are slowly but surely turning their lives around—not long ago, many people had given up hope. They have got that hope back again because of the fantastic work going on at the school.
With regards to alternative provision and PRUs, I am in complete agreement with the points that have been made today. From the perspective of society, there should be nothing more noble and important than working in these institutions, which are often the last opportunity and the last hope that these young people have. They should not be places where people give up hope, both from a staff perspective and from the perspective of the people there. They should be good buildings—they should be our best buildings—and they should have our best teachers and our best educators. Frankly, the stakes could not be higher for society in terms of us getting it right at that point—often the last opportunity for us to make a positive intervention.
I also align myself strongly with the points made about the transition points between primary and secondary schools. It is often those with special educational needs who struggle with the transitions. Those transitions can be in relation to everything in life—transitions from education into the workplace, from primary school into secondary school, from A-levels into university. They will be made much harder by covid-19 and the destruction that that is introducing to education settings. I am talking about off-rolling, which I plan to come to later in my speech.
As the Minister knows, I am fortunate enough to sit on the Education Committee, and I have done so since I was elected to this place 20-odd months ago. I am a bit of a dead record when it comes to special educational needs. I always find a way of getting it in, at any sitting, whatever the subject, whether that is exam results, Ofsted or mental health. I always try to find a way of introducing the perspective of, and how it impacts, children with learning disabilities.
From the data provided, we know that those with special educational needs are very much at risk of being excluded. Some data I saw said. I think, that more than two out of five of those permanently excluded had special educational needs. The stakes could not be any higher when it comes to getting the provision right for those with special educational needs, so we need to get it right.
We have a number of remarkable people who are unconventional thinkers—creative thinkers—who do not think in the same way or process information in the same way. If we get the support right for those individuals, funding and organising it properly, so that it is not just about them treading water and being average achievers, they could be far from average achievers and be some of the most creative people in society. A lot of this is about not losing their talents to society. Yes, it is about them, their families and what is morally right, but it is also about not losing their talents, which is an incredibly important point to make.
There is a very fine line between a lot of those individuals getting the support that they need and flying, and not getting their needs met and turning against the system. Sadly, so often, they then end up in our criminal justice system, which we are seeing right now, as the Education Committee is conducting an inquiry into prison education. The fact is that more than 30% of those in prison have some kind of learning disability, although I think it is far higher than that. A lot of people, when they get into the criminal justice system, have their learning needs meeting, where they talk about the kind of support that they might get in prison. The Government have introduced some screening, but that is not the kind of intensive diagnosis that I would like. I would like each person who goes into prison to meet an educational psychologist to get diagnosed properly, so we have a clear picture of whether they have disabilities and, if they do, what kind of disabilities they have. Even at that late stage, we can hope to turn their lives around and to give them the educational support that they need.
Rachael Maskell
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Is it not right to have those diagnostic opportunities in schools? So many children in school, in particular the neurodiverse, wait years and years before they have a diagnosis.
Tom Hunt
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, which I was about to come on to. It is important that we get that intervention right, that we ensure that each person, when they go into prison, meets an educational psychologist for diagnosis, for two principal reasons.
First, yes, it is about the individuals and, even at that late stage, about hopefully being able to make positive interventions in the education provided. Secondly, I think we are a bit blind at the moment: we think that 30% of those in prison might have learning disabilities, but it might be as high as 50%. We just do not know, and we need to understand the scale of the problem. If it is 50%, not 30%, surely that just increases the argument for why the stakes are so high and why we need to fund special educational needs properly right from the start, as the hon. Member for York Central said—getting diagnosis as early as possible, putting the resources in and making these things possible. I could not agree more. I have dyslexia and dyspraxia. When I was 12, I had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old, and it was only when I was diagnosed at 12 that I got the package of support that I needed to turn it around from an academic point of view. I could not agree with the hon. Lady more on that point.
The stakes could not be higher. I speak as somebody who has been in that situation where I am in a large class, my eyes glazed over, not understanding why I cannot process information in the same way other people do, sometimes feeling as though I am thicker than other people, sometimes feeling that there is something wrong with me. The teachers in the classroom do not always have as full an understanding about different types of learning disability as possible, so of course we go back to teacher training, and why it is so important that every person going through teacher training has that as a fundamental part of their training, so they can understand the different needs: that not all young people think and process in the same way, and that not thinking in a conventional way does not mean that you are thicker than anybody else. Sometimes it can actually mean that you are more creative, and I have said to a bunch of autistic kids in my constituency, “Weaponise your disability. You think differently; you can be creative.”
However, the impact of covid—the disruption we have seen to the education system over the last 20 months —may make this harder, and may increase the likelihood that some young people with learning disabilities get excluded. It comes back to that point about transitions. It has not been easy for any young person over the last 20 months, because of the disruption—not knowing how they are going to be assessed, not knowing whether they are going to be at school or not—but we know that people with learning disabilities particularly need certainty and structure, and they have not had that for the last 20 months. My concern is that that could impact behaviour; my concern is that the disruption over the last 20 months might have particularly impacted those with special educational needs, and we might see more risk that a lot of these individuals could be excluded.
I want to make a final point before I sit down. I do think that exclusion needs to be an option. It needs to be there; we need to balance trying to do the right thing for all children with the disruption that can be caused by disruptive pupils to other pupils in the classroom. It can absolutely have a detrimental impact on the education of an entire school, but of course, we need funding into alternative provision; we need to have no stigma; and we need to have a good number of special schools, which as I have seen—and, as an associate governor, continue to see—can literally transform the lives of many young people.
However, when we come to this point about off-rolling and the sense that this may be happening, perhaps subtly, a lot of it comes back to Ofsted and the way that we assess schools and the framework. Sadly, from the conversations I have had with a number of teachers, they often feel that there is a conflict between doing what they believe to be morally right, in terms of the education that they are part of providing and supporting the most vulnerable children, and actually—not unreasonably—wanting to be professionally successful. If there is the sense that there is a conflict there, we need to work to take it away, and there is a new Ofsted framework in place, but what are school assessments ultimately about? Surely, they are about the positive difference made. That should be the key thing: to what extent has a school made a positive difference to the lives of the children that it works with, acknowledging that not all schools have the same proportion of those with learning disabilities and those without, and not all schools operate in the same area and some pupils can have more challenging backgrounds? We should not be in a situation where a school can sometimes feel that it is punished for being good when it comes to providing for special educational needs. We have got to have an Ofsted framework that encourages and incentivises schools to put the extra effort into supporting those with learning disabilities.
I guess it has been a slightly sprawling speech, but my point is that my concern about exclusions is that there are too many occasions where sadly, those with learning disabilities are at risk of exclusion because their behaviour can be unconventional, and often when they are excluded and go somewhere else, that final chance for them—whether it is alternative provision or something else—is not as good as it should be. There is this bigger point about how high the stakes are. Exclusion should be an option: it should be something that we consider, but we have got to have an Ofsted framework that encourages first-class SEND provision. I know I have only spoken about special educational needs today, but as I warned you, Mr Stringer, I can be a bit of a broken record when it comes to that topic, and I make no apologies for it. Thank you very much.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) on securing this crucial debate.
School exclusions have a negative impact on children’s lives and educational outcomes, and therefore have a negative effect on their adult lives and outcomes. It takes a lot of support and determination for a person who has been excluded from school, often many times, to decide that they do not want to be a victim of their negative school experience for the rest of their life, and it often takes a huge effort to turn that around.
Excluding children has an impact on a child’s mental health; a recent study found that exclusion can lead to new-onset mental health conditions. Research also suggests that better access to mental health support for pupils who struggle at school could prevent future mental disorders and exclusion from school. I know the Minister is very aware of that.
I spent many years as a magistrate before coming to this place, and I have witnessed a correlation between previous school exclusions and involvement in the criminal justice system. Early intervention and prevention and supporting parents in their parenting skills to break the cycle is key. Investment is much needed here, as in the family hubs that I know the Minister supports fully.
The Ministry of Justice has found that 85% of young offenders received at least one fixed-term exclusion, and a study looking at the background of adult prisoners found that 63% of prisoners had experienced a fixed-term exclusion at school, and 42% were permanently excluded. Government statistics show that the number of permanent exclusions has increased in the UK.
It is worth noting that exclusion rates vary widely between schools. A 2019 study by England’s Children’s Commissioner found that 88% of exclusions take place in only 10% of schools. That means that most schools do not exclude children, but try to help them and keep them in school. In the autumn term of 2019, the only term of 2019-20 for which we have comparable data, there were 3,200 permanent exclusions, up by 5% from 2018-19, and 178,400 fixed-term exclusions, up by 14%.
The Timpson review, which I absolutely commend, found that some cohorts of pupils are more likely to be permanently excluded, such as those with special educational needs and disabilities. Many Members today have discussed that. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) is right that more than two in five of all permanently excluded pupils have some form of special educational need. Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities have had a disproportionately high exclusion rate since records began. As a member of the APPG for SEND, I find that quite concerning.
Pupils supported by social care also have some of the highest chances of being excluded. Pupils with a child in need plan are around four times more likely to be permanently excluded compared with their peers; pupils with a child protection plan are 3.5 times more likely, and looked-after children 2.3 times more likely to be excluded. Pupils eligible for free school meals are four times more likely to be permanently excluded, and ethnicity also plays a role in school exclusions.
Many of our children who are persistently excluded are some of the most disadvantaged and often neglected children. We cannot allow these most vulnerable children to be overlooked by our education system. Giving every child the best start in life is a guiding principle of the Government’s approach to education here in England. We Conservatives believe that no matter the background of a child, the wealth of their parents, their race, their needs, their gender or sexual orientation, every child deserves a fantastic education or at the very least a suitable one, and the opportunity to build the foundations they need to thrive in the world of work and become functioning members of our communities. That must include those children who are failed by the system.
I pay tribute to Carole Dixon, chief executive of the Education Futures Trust, which supports vulnerable children, families and adults across Hastings, St Leonards and Rye by removing barriers, providing one-to-one support, developing their resilience and improving their life chances through education.
Many children have complex needs and struggle in mainstream school. Alternative provision must be considered a major part of a child’s education in those circumstances. It can provide for those children’s needs. Alternative provision should also be seen as an integral part of any local authority’s core offer. I am a member of the all-party group for school exclusions and alternative provision, and we have heard that alternative provision should be properly monitored and registered, and should focus on the child’s interests and needs, which help them build trust, confidence and resilience. I support the Timpson recommendations and commend them to the Minister, particularly those relevant to the upcoming SEND review.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Let me also pay tribute to the outgoing Minister for School Standards, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb). I have shadowed him since I took on this role and know him to be a decent, communicative and respectful opponent. I am grateful for that. Last night, I passed on my personal respects and gratitude to him, and I am happy to do so today on the record. He is also the Member of Parliament for the area I grew up and went to school in, which has been another great source of conversation between the two of us because I ended up going back to secondary school at the age of 25, so I had a lot to talk to him about.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter). He, with the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), not only triggered the debate and gave us the opportunity to have this conversation today, but set the tone in a thoughtful and wide-ranging way. For that, I think hon. Members across the House are grateful.
I will start my remarks in the way the hon. Member for Warrington South and the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) did, by paying tribute to the teaching profession and all those who support students in schools. As the hon. Lady pointed out, most schools successfully support students to make the right decisions on behaviour, learning and delivering outcomes that are successful for them, their families and our community. We should be entirely grateful for that. However, today’s debate focuses on the areas where we do not succeed, and we need to do much better overall.
Most teachers do a tremendous job. Despite the considerable challenges they face, they work tirelessly to deliver high-quality learning to all children, regardless of background. They face mounting workloads, coupled with cuts to real-terms budgets, and they have adapted to the unique circumstances of the pandemic. However, where teachers exclude too easily, honest conversations need to be had about why. They are working against a system with high incentives to exclude and too few incentives to include. Moreover, they face a Government who are reticent to address the vulnerabilities underlying exclusions, which their policies have sometimes fostered.
The impact of austerity fell directly on schools, but it also fell indirectly on young people. Cuts were made to children’s services and the wider network of partners designed to support children and to keep them healthy and safe. That has led to a rise in vulnerability. Between 2014 and 2018, the numbers of children being looked after, subject to child protection plans and becoming homeless or living in temporary accommodation, all increased. We know that vulnerability is a key driver of behaviour that leads to exclusions, so it is no wonder the rate of permanent and fixed exclusions rose dramatically over the same period.
Economic vulnerability is a key factor behind exclusions, but other characteristics matter too. According to analysis by the Centre for Social Justice, pupils eligible for free school meals are four times more likely to be permanently excluded than others and more than two in five of all permanently excluded pupils have some form of SEND, a matter particularly close to my heart. Concerningly, the rise in school exclusions shows no sign of ending and more and more pupils are getting stuck in a vicious cycle of exclusions, unsettling for them and unsettling for the school at large.
The historian and critic R.H. Tawney once said:
“What a wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children.”
I doubt that any parent would desire a system in which exclusion is used so readily, especially when we know the consequences of exclusion are so severe. They are felt in education, where only 7% of permanently excluded children receive GCSEs in maths and English. They are felt in work, where only 54% of pupils in alternative provision are in education, employment or training six months after leaving key stage 4. They are felt in the criminal justice system, with an NSPCC analysis of serious case reviews showing that 31% of serious violence victims had received a fixed-term exclusion.
Where no other options are available, exclusion should of course be open to schools, teachers and leaders. I have been involved in establishing two schools, both in areas of quite extreme deprivation. I became chair of governors of one of those schools at the very beginning. In the previous year, the predecessor school had permanently excluded 12 children. That was unacceptable to me. As chair of governors, at the beginning of the new school, I set the target of getting to zero in one year, while increasing student outcomes and attainment.
We managed to get it down to one. In that one case, the child had stabbed six other children with a hypodermic needle. In such circumstances, we cannot allow other students to feel so unsafe. The line cannot be crossed. In those circumstances, exclusion should of course be used, but with a very heavy heart.
We reduced permanent exclusions down to one. At the same time, in one year, we managed to achieve a 100% increase in children with five GCSEs including maths and English. The link between permanent exclusions and the use of exclusion and de facto increasing exam results is simply not there. By never writing off a young person and making sure that the right support is there at the right time, an atmosphere is created that sends a message to every student, whether they face challenges making the right choices in life or not, which ultimately fosters an environment that is conducive to learning for all students.
We must fix the underlying problems that drive problematic behaviour first. As schools balance the desire to keep children in schools with accountability for the performance of others, we must act to introduce sensible safeguards to prevent overuse, not least when—as I saw in my period as shadow Minister for youth justice—children are often excluded while being criminally exploited. That is utterly heartbreaking. Some are even trained by gangs in how to become excluded in the first place, to free up time for drug running and more.
A few years ago, with the serious violence epidemic reaching its peak, the Government seemed to recognise this. They commissioned the hon. Member for Eddisbury to lead a review into school exclusion, attempting to understand how the system could be sensibly rebalanced to allow more children to remain within mainstream provision.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on that report, as the Opposition did at the time. We welcomed his findings and recommendations. The Government did too, “in principle”. Two years on, only six out of 30 of the recommendations have been implemented. Like the Lammy review, when it comes to tough action to tackle unfairness in public systems, the Government must do better to walk the walk. It is not just rhetoric—it means something.
The recommendations ignored by the Government to date include a practice improvement fund to disseminate best ideas on tackling exclusions across the country, and empowering local authorities to lead on partnership working, thus ensuring a truly joined-up approach between all parties involved in the process. Critically, that includes making schools accountable for the results of excluded children. That would ensure that pupils were never dismissed as a problem to be got rid of but were subject to proper tailored interventions that gave them the education that they so sorely need.
The Prime Minister took office on a platform of cracking down on crime, yet his Administration have shown no interest in cutting off the pipeline into crime or tackling child criminal exploitation. I am afraid that Conservative Members were even whipped to vote against my amendments to the recent Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Without shutting off this pipeline, no amount of police action will succeed.
I close by asking the Minister the following questions. What is her rationale for failing to implement the remaining recommendations in the Timpson review? What plans does she have to evaluate the success of the exclusions process as part of the Department’s forthcoming review into the statutory guidance? Along with the hon. Member for Warrington South, I ask the Minister: when will the review into tackling racial and SEND disparities be published? Will she commit to making sure that new exclusions guidance provides specific protections for children subject to criminal exploitation?
There have been too many wasted opportunities. We need to act now to make sure that the school exclusion process is rigorous and fair. If we fail, it will not just be other people’s children who suffer; it will be us all.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
In calling the Minister, I ask her to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the Member who introduced the debate to make a winding-up speech.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) on securing this important debate. I apologise that I needed to step out for a couple of minutes earlier.
I also thank the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) and so many other Members for their kind and personal words about my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb). I saw how, as Minister of State for School Standards for so many years, he worked tirelessly to make sure that children all across our country had access to first-class education. He always put the most disadvantaged children first, and in the past 18 months I have learned a huge amount from him. I wish him the very best, and I join you all in sending him our thanks for everything that he has done for children.
The Timpson review was a very positive and comprehensive report that has influenced the Government’s approach to exclusions and behaviour. All children deserve the best start in life and, as the Timpson review states, every child has a right to
“a high-quality education that supports them to fulfil their potential.”
The review also recognises, however, the right of every headteacher
“to enable their staff to teach in a calm and safe school”
environment. The Timpson review shone a really important spotlight on how certain cohorts of children were more likely to become excluded than others and how that can affect their outcomes. We are really grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury both for his work on this really important report and for acting as an advocate on this issue more widely.
We are taking forward the vast majority of the report’s recommendations. I would like to reassure all those listening today or following this debate that the Government are pursuing an ambitious programme of work to improve our understanding of behaviour and wellbeing, as well as putting in place additional support for children who have been excluded or are at risk of exclusion.
That work is a combination of concrete actions that we have taken through the pandemic, the behaviour programme of the Department and the SEND review, which I have broadened to include reforms to alternative provision. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) spoke so passionately about special educational needs and disabilities. I reassure him and all those present that a key aim of the SEND review is to make it easier for children with special educational needs to access support in good time.
As we are all aware, children and young people have experienced substantial disruption in the past 18 months. Excluded children, and those at risk of exclusion, are some of the most vulnerable in the country, which is why it was so important that we not only kept schools open for vulnerable children, but kept our alternative provision open for all who attend such institutions.
We also provided AP with additional support. As part of our £3 billion education recovery package, we provided additional support of £1.7 billion for all schools, including AP. We also ran the really important AP transition fund, which provided targeted support to around 6,500 year 11s, to help them move on and remain engaged in post-16 education and training, including apprenticeships and FE courses. Last term, I visited an AP setting in Hyndburn, and I heard from the school that all bar one of the year 11s who had left in the summer term of 2020 were still in education, employment or training nearly a year later. The extra support for transition at the end of the summer of 2020 made a huge difference, which is why we are continuing it for that same cohort—the year 11s—into FE next year.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we set up an AP stakeholder group, which brings together some of the best leaders of alternative provision in the country. They have helped to guide us on the best way to support vulnerable children through the pandemic and beyond. They are helping us to shape the AP reforms through the SEND review. In line with the recommendations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury for a practice improvement fund, and as part of the AP reforms, we are looking to codify and boost the quality of AP, so that all children and young people can access the best in-class provision and all mainstream schools can draw on specialist support upstream, to get in the early intervention. That is part of the work that we are doing with our AP stakeholder group and will be bringing in through the SEND review.
We know that our engagement in education is a key protective factor against many harms. Vulnerable young people can be at risk of being drawn into crime or gangs, and they will benefit from specialist support if they can stay engaged with their education and out of harm. Therefore, we are not waiting for the SEND review before putting in more specialist support to help such children. We have recently launched two really exciting new projects, focusing on areas with serious violence hotspots.
From early next year, the DFE will be establishing 10 SAFE taskforces—SAFE stands for support, attend, fulfil and exceed. They will be led by mainstream schools in order to protect and re-engage children who are truanting, who are at risk of permanent exclusion or who are at risk of being involved in serious violence. That will include £30 million of new funding over three years and will enable additional support and interventions, to reduce the probability of such children and young people being excluded.
That will complement the pilot that we are doing in 21 alternative provision specialist taskforces, which is launching in November. It will draw specialists from across health, education, social care, youth services, youth justice and mental health, as well as family workers and speech and language workers. Where necessary, the pilot will enable the specialists to be co-located in the AP setting. That will help deliver targeted wraparound support to pupils in order to reduce truancy, improve rates of employment, education and training, reduce the NEET risk, and reduce the risk of involvement in serious violence. It will also improve mental health and wellbeing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South made a number of good points and spoke about the importance of capital. We are investing £300 million in this financial year to support local authorities to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities, or for those children who require alternative provision—almost four times as much as the Government provided to local authorities in the previous financial year. Spending for future years will be determined as part of the spending review.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke about the importance of really early support for families and parents when children are very young, and I so agree. That is why the Government have worked with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) on her review of those 1,001 days—the very early years—and how to give children the best start in life. It is also why I and the Government are so committed to championing the family hub approach.
I come back to the issue of exclusion. We know that exclusion is an essential tool for headteachers to use when a serious incident has occurred, for example, or when there is persistent disruption. However, we are very clear that it should be used only as a very last resort. Longer-term trends show that the rate of permanent exclusions across all schools followed a downward trajectory from 2006-07, when the rate was 0.12%, until 2012-13. It then rose a little, but has remained stable since 2016-17. Permanent exclusions remain a rare event; there are roughly six exclusions for every 10,000 pupils. As expected, the number of exclusions decreased during the pandemic, but according to the data that we receive from schools, in the last summer term there were only 40 permanent exclusions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich mentioned off-rolling. Let me be very clear: off-rolling is unlawful and is never acceptable. Ofsted will hold schools to account for how they use exclusions, under its behaviour and attitudes judgments, and its new revised education inspection framework considers the rates, patterns and reasons for exclusions: differences between different pupils; whether any types of pupils are repeatedly excluded; and any evidence of off-rolling. The revised framework in 2019 strengthened the focus on this issue. Of course, Ofsted needed to stop its inspections for some time during the pandemic, but where inspectors find off-rolling it will always be addressed in the inspection report and, where appropriate, it could lead to a school’s leadership being judged inadequate.
One of the Timpson recommendations was to update the guidance on suspensions and permanent exclusions. We have committed to revising our statutory guidance on exclusions so that headteachers are able to have further clarity when using exclusions, and we will be consulting on this guidance and the non-statutory guidance on behaviour and discipline later this year.
The Timpson report also recommended that the Government reviewed the number of days that a pupil could be suspended from school. Currently, the number is 45 days in an academic year, although it is rare for children to reach that limit. In 2019-20, just 27 pupils received that type of temporary exclusion from schools in England for 45 days in a single academic year. However, the Government are considering these arrangements and we will update our plans in due course.
The Timpson review also recognised that certain groups of children with particular characteristics were more likely to be excluded, which includes pupils who were eligible for free school meals, pupils with a child in need plan, and pupils with black Caribbean or Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) spoke about looked-after children and exclusions. However, there is good news. I am delighted to say that since we introduced the virtual school heads into local authorities, looked-after children now have some of the lowest rates of exclusion compared with their peers. The virtual school head role has been so successful that we are now expanding it so that virtual school heads can support all children who have a social worker.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South mentioned the need to upstream support for children’s mental health and wellbeing, which is so important. We are putting considerable investment into mental health in the education system. The additional £79 million announced by the NHS in May will support the roll-out of mental health support teams to an estimated 3 million children and young people, which is around 35% of pupils in England, by 2023.
We are also progressing with the training of a mental health lead in every state-funded school and college in England. Our £9.5 million investment this year is expected to train up to 7,808 mental health leads this year. That training will include how to support children with attachment problems and trauma. Our new relationships, sex and health education curriculum also plays a part here; I am thinking especially of the mental health and wellbeing modules. We rolled those out, advanced the roll-out of those, early on in the pandemic—in the summer term of that school year—alongside extra training for staff.
Rachael Maskell
We know that there is a real shortage of clinicians with expertise in paediatric mental health. I wonder, with the work that the Minister is doing, whether she is talking to the Department of Health and Social Care about the need to really increase the number. What we find is that although teachers, as mental health leads, can provide certain support, they do not have the clinical skills and experience to supply the expertise needed.
Vicky Ford
I thank the hon. Member for that very good point. It is true and it is one of the things that I have spoken about at length over the past year and a half with the former mental health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), who is now Culture Secretary.
Improving the paediatric mental health support for children in the health service is also a very important part of the Government investment here. The mental health support teams, which wrap around our schools and can bring together different levels of support, depending on what the child needs, have also been extremely helpful in different areas. That is why it is so good to see those being rolled out. We do not expect teachers to be mental health experts, but we do think that training a mental health lead in every school can help them to identify the children who need more support, and to promote wellbeing, which is so important. Goodness—I saw so many children having a great time with their wellbeing over the summer during our holiday activities and food project.
We have also talked about children and young people with autism. The Government have updated the autism strategy over the summer. For the first time, that includes specific references to supporting children and young people.
We want to better understand the link between wellbeing and behaviour, so we are developing a pilot for a pupil survey to understand their perception of wellbeing and behaviour in mainstream secondary schools. Behaviour does matter. We know that behaviour can have an impact on teacher wellbeing and retention and on young people’s life chances. The Government recognise that we need to understand the drivers of behaviour and what the barriers to learning, engagement and attendance are, so we are pursuing a programme of work to do more to improve behaviour and discipline in schools, in recognition that good behaviour and strong discipline are key parts of school improvement. The behaviour hubs programme will mean that schools with exemplary behaviour cultures can work one on one with schools that need to turn around their approach to behaviour management. We expect that to help at least 500 schools over the next three years.
This goes alongside a golden thread of high-quality support, training and development that will run through the entirety of a teacher’s career. It begins in initial teacher training and goes through the implementation of the early career reforms for early career teachers and on to the introduction of new and reformed national professional qualifications for more experienced teachers and leaders. Also, in April, we announced plans to launch a national behaviour survey. That survey will provide a more accurate, timely and authoritative picture of behaviour across all schools. It will cover topics ranging from low-level disruption, to bullying. That will also help us to understand what more needs to be done.
I am really grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South and for Eddisbury for raising their concerns on this issue. I would like to assure them that, throughout the pandemic and going forward, the Government have had and will have a laser focus on supporting vulnerable children, targeting support at those at risk of exclusion and improving support for those who have been excluded. I know that the hon. Members will all be looking forward to receiving the SEND review and the AP reforms in the months ahead.
Andy Carter
I thank the Minister for that very full response. I want to conclude by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), my hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), and the Opposition Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), for their comments.
I will finish by saying that the reason we are talking about exclusion is that it impacts the life prospects of young children. That is the purpose of this debate—what we can do to influence that—and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the implementation of the recommendations of the Timpson Review of School Exclusion.
Written Statements
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Supply Chain Finance in Government: Boardman Review
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)
On 12 April, the Government announced that the Prime Minister had asked Nigel Boardman to investigate the development and use of supply chain finance in Government, especially the role of Lex Greensill and Greensill Capital, including associated companies or companies in its group, and any related issues that Mr Boardman considered were in scope. In accordance with the terms of reference, Mr Boardman provided the Prime Minister with part 1 of his report which sets out Mr Boardman’s findings of fact. This was published on 22 July (paper reference DEP2021-0641).
The purpose of the review was to establish the facts and any lessons to be learned. Mr Boardman has now delivered the second part of his report, including making recommendations. These recommendations and wider suggestions, for institutions in public life to consider, are being published today.
As Mr. Boardman’s report recognises, the Government have already committed, through the declaration on Government reform, to continually reinforce high standards of conduct in public life through proper process and transparency so that the public can have trust and confidence in the operation of Government at all levels.
The Government note the work of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, Treasury and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committees, as well as the forthcoming “Standards Matter 2” report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. We will consider their work alongside Mr Boardman’s recommendations, and set out a substantive Government policy statement to Parliament in due course.
I am depositing a copy of the report in the Libraries of both Houses, and publishing it on gov.uk.
[HCWS293]
Motor Vehicle Driving Licences
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The haulage sector has been experiencing a shortage of HGV drivers worldwide for some time. The issue has been further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic as driver testing had to be suspended for much of last year, meaning the shortage increased further.
This country enjoys a robust and resilient supply chain. Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency and this Government are determined to do what they can to mitigate the effects as far as is possible. It is therefore vital that we expedite legislation that will expand and accelerate testing—while at the same time acknowledging that the road haulage industry must play its part in improving recruitment and training by offering better pay and conditions.
The Department for Transport and other Government Departments have worked closely with the haulage sector considering a range of options to improve the number of HGV drivers. As part of these measures a consultation closed on 7 September on change to streamline the HGV driving licence regime and removing a separate trailer test for car drivers. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has already taken administrative action to increase capacity and offer more practical HGV tests but more is needed.
The first of these measures will be addressed via a draft affirmative statutory instrument that will be laid before Parliament today and will mean that car drivers will no longer need to take another test to tow a trailer or caravan, freeing up some 30,000 test slots annually. This additional capacity can be used to reduce the backlog in HGV testing.
To make rapid progress on this, we are making use of the urgent procedure under paragraph 14(6) of schedule 8 to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. I am of the opinion that, by reason of urgency, the requirements for the statutory instrument to be published in draft 28 days before it is laid, and for a scrutiny statement to be made before laying, should not apply.
Accelerating the legislation by forgoing the 28-day publication period will allow earlier laying of the legislation than would have otherwise been possible and strengthen the steps we have already taken to increase testing capacity and ease supply chain issues as quickly as possible. Arrangements will be in place to ensure that the changes made by the legislation are operationally effective as soon as the legislation is in force.
Road safety continues to be of paramount importance. We will engage with training providers and insurers to test the response to this change and to explore how we can seek to ensure that any road safety concerns are addressed. We will also explore options for an industry led accreditation that could offer a standardised testing approach if that would be welcomed by the market, insurers and consumers.
[HCWS292]
House of Lords
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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England: Historic Counties
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure the preservation of England’s historic counties.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
The history and traditions of this country are very important and the tapestry of our historic counties is one of the bonds that draws the nation together. We support various initiatives to celebrate our historic counties and encourage local leaders across Great Britain to do the same.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, do our historic counties not enable us to recall many elements of our long and glorious past? Should they not appear on all maps, as a matter of course? Should they not be used on all ceremonial occasions rather than, as is sometimes the case, the more recent artificial creations?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend is right to raise this issue. The Government have taken steps to ensure it is easier to recognise historic counties. In 2014, planning rules were changed to allow councils to put up boundary signs marking traditional English counties. In 2015, the Government commissioned Ordnance Survey to produce historic and ceremonial county-boundary datasets, and we are open to other ideas.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, the national insurance hike last week skewed funding under the Barnett formula still further. If the historic county of Yorkshire, which has a population slightly larger than Scotland’s, had its own Barnett formula, it would receive an extra £12 billion. Would that not be levelling up?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I thought the supplementary questions might go in any direction, but I recognise that the noble Lord is a proud Yorkshireman and that he will do all he can to ensure the county gets the resources it needs.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, in preserving Britain’s historic counties, will the Government reassure your Lordships that they will not make more changes to the way they are governed?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I recognise that we need stability and point out that many areas have not seen significant change. The last reorganisation in London, where I was a local councillor, was in 1965 which, I have to say, was before I was born. I recognise that we need stability in our administrative structures.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, all surveys suggest that Yorkshire has one of the strongest senses of common identity of any region or county in England, historically as a single county but occasionally divided into three. The Government, nevertheless, seem determined to divide it into four, each with its own elected mayor, and have just forced a reorganisation on to North Yorkshire. Why have the Government insisted on disregarding very strong representations from almost all councils in Yorkshire, in the way they have pushed their version of “devolved” government?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I point out that Greenhalgh is a Lancastrian name, so I dispute Lancashire being second to Yorkshire, but that is a matter for debate. Devolution has required a degree of local consultation and decision-making. We are seeking to reflect functional and economic areas in our devolution programme, so it is important that it continues to be locally led.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, the maiming of our historic counties in the Heath years, with the destruction of some of the oldest political units in the world, was one of many lamentable acts emanating from that ministry. It may be a bit much to restore completely the administrative status quo ante, but will the Minister at least undertake to align ceremonial counties with the 92 historic counties that make up England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend has called for that realignment, but we do not have any plans, so I cannot reassure him. But things in government change and he is making his case strongly.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I am happy to emphasise the strong feeling about Yorkshire in this Chamber. As we have heard, Britain’s historic counties are central to local identities and Yorkshire is the perfect example of that. Unfortunately, the Government have resisted the locally led One Yorkshire devolution deal, supported by 20 out of 22 local authorities, which would celebrate our historic county by bringing power, resources and jobs to the region, allowing it to develop its full potential. Do the Government have any plans to reassess their policy on this and support the ambition of the Yorkshire leaders board and the One Yorkshire committee, which has cross-party support from Members of these Benches?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, we continue to look at devolution matters. As the noble Baroness knows, we considered One Yorkshire, but we are some way down the line in creating mayors in the different regions. We recognise the real, proud tradition in Yorkshire, which we should reflect in our national way of life.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
My Lords, I should declare that I am a vice-chairman of the Historic Counties All-Party Group and a proud son of Middlesex. Would my noble friend—and fellow Middle Saxon, I believe—agree that just changing the administrative boundaries should not in any way harm the importance of those historic counties? Perhaps he will agree to a meeting with the all-party group and our indomitable special adviser, Mr Russell Grant, so that we can discuss these matters.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend makes that very easy: I even have Russell Grant’s book on historic counties here. He has had a great impact on our department and I am very pleased to meet the all-party group and Mr Middlesex. Yes, I am a proud wearer of a Middlesex tie, admittedly from when I was younger, fitter and svelter. It is very important to consider these issues.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, as one of the Members of this House who was born, bred and still resides in the West Riding of Yorkshire, I assure my noble friend that the Government and the new Secretary of State would be immensely popular across the whole of Yorkshire if they were finally to overturn the vandalism of the early 1970s and restore the territorial integrity and names of the ancient ridings of God’s own county.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, there is a very strong Yorkshire theme today. The Government proudly flew the Yorkshire flag outside our headquarters to mark Yorkshire Day. That beautiful flag was part of the display in Parliament Square that flew for a week to mark Historic County Flags Day on 23 July. We recognise that people should take great pride in their local identities and we continue to do so, irrespective of the local administrative areas.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend agree that our historic counties have a critical role to play in the levelling-up agenda, with their proximity to the people and as an enabler of local identity? Has he ever had the opportunity to visit Worcestershire county cricket ground—surely one of the loveliest spots in the world to spend a sunny summer’s afternoon?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, my travel schedule is changing with every question. I have not been to Worcestershire; I am very happy to take in a visit to see the delights of that county ground, particularly over a delightful English summer. Of course, the Government recognise that historic counties are a very important part of our identity and need to be promoted wherever possible.
Lord Flight (Con)
I support my noble friend Lord Lexden’s request. County boundaries have been changed in the past, particularly by the Heath Government, but mercifully were restored subsequently. However, there can be some case to amend boundaries largely to accommodate urban population developments. I suggest that county boundaries might be reviewed every 25 years to check whether the growth in urban areas within them needs to be addressed.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
It sounds like someone is pre-empting my response. We need to recognise that historic counties are there and part of our fabric and history. We also need to realise functional economic areas, which do change with time. Obviously, we will reflect our administrative boundaries as the demography of the country changes.
Leasehold: Building and Fire Safety
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure leaseholders do not bear the costs of repairing building and fire safety defects for which they are not responsible.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I refer the House to my interests as set out in the register and say that I am from the wonderful borough of Southwark.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
I declare my interest in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The Government have invested more than £5 billion to remediate unsafe cladding in buildings over 18 metres. For the small number of 11 to 18-metre buildings with cladding remediation costs, our finance scheme will ensure that leaseholders pay no more than £50 per month towards this. A new levy and tax will ensure that industry contributes, and under the Building Safety Bill building owners must explore all reasonable ways to meet remediation costs before passing these on.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the action taken by the Government to date is just not good enough. Leaseholders feel abandoned by the Government. All the talk of levelling up and supporting communities means nothing. It is deeds not words that the victims need today. What will the noble Lord do today after this exchange to persuade his new Secretary of State that further action is needed? Will he come down with me to Parliament Square at 1 pm today to meet some of the victims and listen to their heartbreaking stories?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I am very happy to join the noble Lord in visiting the people who will be demonstrating today at 1 pm. This is continually a moving feast. I am happy to announce that we are increasing the amount of money we are putting in the waking watch relief fund, which has been a crippling cost for many leaseholders, by a further £5 million to the initial £30 million. That has helped around 20,000 leasehold dwellings and 264 buildings to date. We continue to ensure that we find ways to make sure that the original developer pays wherever possible.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, many people do not seem to realise that this is having a devastating effect on people of every social class. I was 10 minutes late coming in because I was hearing about a lawyer living in St Albans, where I live, who now faces bankruptcy and may no longer be able to practise if she is made bankrupt. If you buy a defective car it gets recalled and has to be sorted out. What attention and consideration are Her Majesty’s Government giving to the polluter pays principle, which we need to build into this issue if we are to address this devastating problem unfolding before our very eyes?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, we recognise that if you buy a defective dwelling you expect the person responsible for the building of it to do something about it. That is precisely why the Government, as part of the Building Safety Bill, are proposing to increase the Defective Premises Act redress period from six years to 15 years retrospectively, which will bring in a great number of buildings to be able to seek redress from developers. That is why we continue to work on measures that will ensure that the polluter does pay wherever possible, and we are looking very closely at proposals from Steve Day and his team around the polluter pays amendments.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the Government have provided substantial support to deal with the cladding crisis, which I welcome, but that support, together with the new tax on high-rise development the Minister mentioned, will be inadequate to avoid hardship and inequity for many innocent leaseholders. Further to what the right reverend Prelate just said, would it not be fair to bridge the gap by a levy on developers that built and sold these substandard homes?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend is right, which is why we are looking at a new levy and a developer tax to ensure that the industry contributes. At this stage we are in consultation. We need to ensure that it is set at a level that raises substantial funds precisely for that purpose.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a leaseholder whose freeholder is trying to persuade us to allow him to extend the building by three storeys, with the inducement that it will cover the cost of the cladding remedial work if we agree to that extension. What right do leaseholders have to apply for a government grant when the freeholder, who also owns the management company, does not want to do so himself?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
First of all, the duty to keep the building safe is on the building holder. There seem to be a small number of isolated cases in which the building owner is able to access funds and is not doing so. We would like to be apprised of that situation, so that we can see what we can do to encourage them to do the right thing.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
Earlier this month Dame Judith Hackitt, chair of the independent review of building regulations, urged homeowners to seek a second opinion on fire safety bills, warning that many are being “fleeced”. Do the Government support this advice?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, the Government support the principle that—in the same way you might go to a doctor and get an opinion, then seek a second opinion—we get the opportunity to have a second opinion on these matters, particularly where there are eye-watering costs. We do not want to see eye-watering costs levied when other mitigations provide a much more cost-effective solution.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is not only the developers that might be at fault. The manufacturers of the cladding and insulation also knew they had problems with materials but carried on marketing them anyway. Are the Government going to let them get away with murder?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
We recognise that many people are responsible and that the standard of construction products has not been at the level we expect. That is why we have brought in a construction products regulator, situated in the Office for Product Safety and Standards, to oversee that within BEIS. Obviously, we are looking at how best to ensure that this does not happen in future and that those responsible make a contribution.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is not present, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has just said that he is considering a further levy on developers to enable leaseholders not to have to pay huge bills. One leaseholder I know has a bill of £200,000 landing on their doormat to pay now. Why are the Government so willing to protect developers’ profits while throwing leaseholders to the wolves?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I do not recognise that as a sensible position to hold. Admittedly, this is a situation that has built up over many decades and leaseholders face those eye-watering costs, but we need to recognise that in the 18 months since I have been a Minister, the amount of money put up by the Government, recognising that we needed to step up and in many cases support the leaseholders, has increased from £0.6 billion to £5.1 billion. That is a staggering sum of money. You could always do more, of course, and that is why we are trying to bring forward measures in the Building Safety Bill to make sure that this failure of regulation and of construction quality never happens again. That is what this Government are trying to do.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I want to issue a trigger warning: the demonstration by thousands of leaseholders from all over the country at 1 pm today is likely to be very noisy. Luckily, they sneaked it in before the police and crime Bill could ban it. But seriously, I am delighted the Minister says he will come and meet the people affected. They have a range of creative solutions to offer and feel that their best ideas are being ignored and that they are treated like whingers. In addition, will the Minister do some internal lobbying of the incoming Secretary of State for Housing and explain the strength of feeling, frustration and fury across this House about the inadequacy of the solutions so far put forward? Leaseholders have ideas; listen to them.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I agree that it is really important to engage with the people affected. I have a considerable number of meetings with leaseholder groups and am in constant virtual contact with some of the people who I believe are doing their very best to see how we can creatively address this difficult issue. I am very happy to meet the people today. It is important that as politicians we step forward and meet those people affected.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that seeking redress retrospectively will not save hundreds of thousands of leaseholders from painful and mounting bills, as all noble Lords have said, causing enormous distress? Has he considered having proper discussions with housing associations and local authorities, which have also sold houses to leaseholders?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
We continue to have a number of discussions with members of the G15 housing associations, and particularly with local authorities. The hard yards of achieving a situation in which the same cladding as Grenfell—the aluminium composite material—has been got off around 96% of those buildings, much of that during this pandemic, have required work at every level of government. We will continue to engage with them to come up with practical steps to deal with other buildings with unsafe cladding.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked and we now move to the next Question.
Devolved Administrations
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Wilcox of Newport
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what protocol they follow for working constructively with the devolved administrations.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, the United Kingdom Government are ready to act in line with the new arrangements of the joint review of intergovernmental relations, which establishes an up-to-date and fit-for-purpose system that supports effective collaboration. All Administrations have been working hard to conclude this review, with significant progress made on streamlining processes and emphasising positive co-operation.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
The 2019 Tory manifesto contained an entire chapter on strengthening the union between the nations of the UK, but is it not the case that this Government’s internal market Act has made a mockery of that commitment by riding roughshod over the devolution settlements and rolling back the powers of the Senedd? Does the Minister accept that it undermines the devolution settlement when his Government bring forward initiatives such as levelling up and community renewal funds that have been drawn up without any consultation with the Welsh Government and are administered by UK government departments that have not operated in Wales for more than 20 years?
Lord True (Con)
No, my Lords, I do not agree, and I do not believe we should accentuate divisions within our United Kingdom. We are working with the devolved Administrations to develop an approach to how we consider the UKIM Act’s market access principles. For the union to thrive, we must respect devolved Administrations and their powers—but this Government will not abdicate their responsibility for the United Kingdom as a whole.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, since 2007 health spending in England has gone up by 25% in real terms. In Scotland it has gone up by 10.8%, because the Scottish Government have not spent the Barnett consequentials of health increases on health. At the same time, they are blaming Westminster for so-called cuts in health expenditure. How is it possible to have a constructive relationship with a Government who are so dishonest and are determined to destroy the United Kingdom?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, as a proud and passionate native of Scotland, my noble friend brings pertinent facts before your Lordships’ House. I cannot answer for the actions of the Scottish Government, but I say to them—and indeed to everybody—that now is the time not to stoke divisions but to focus on what unites the people of Scotland and all of us around the rest of the United Kingdom.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, setting aside the anti-British obsession of the SNP, do the Government not recognise that post-Brexit legislation has left all the devolved Administrations concerned that the Government are taking powers back from them and are seeking to take United Kingdom decisions using English Ministers as the final buttress? Does he recognise that that approach is not acceptable and not consistent with his opening remarks?
Lord True (Con)
No, my Lords. I do understand that there have been rhetoric and statements about this. I repeat what I said to the noble Baroness opposite: the Government are deeply committed to strengthening the union. Part of that, obviously, is showing full and appropriate respect to our partners in the devolved Administrations. I think that, when your Lordships come to see the outcome, it will be understood that the new intergovernment relations protocol and approaches will fully reflect that mutual respect.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Will my noble friend look very carefully at areas where co-operation and collaboration are perhaps not working as effectively as they might? On a ministerial call with regulators in Scotland—the Faculty of Advocates, of which I am a non-practising member, and the Law Society of Scotland—concern was expressed that regulations implementing the primary legislation of the Professional Qualifications Bill, once adopted, might be passed without consultation with either them or the devolved Administrations. Will my noble friend give the House an undertaking that no regulations will be passed without prior consultation and consent?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am not directly responsible for the professional qualifications legislation, so I am loath to give an incautious answer, but obviously I will refer my noble friend’s comments to those who are considering these matters.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, contrary to the Minister’s remarks, it sometimes seems that by their actions the Government are deliberately strengthening the case for independence in Scotland and Wales. Does he appreciate that Scotland is split 50/50 on the issue of independence, and that perhaps the only way to find common ground is to complete the unfinished business of devolution by starting discussions on how to build a federation of the regions and nations of the UK?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, there is a difference in philosophy, which is unfortunate, in that the United Kingdom Government, the party opposite—I believe—we ourselves and the other parties represented in this House believe in a United Kingdom. Sadly, the Administration in Scotland, now supported by the Greens, have a different view and wish to break up the United Kingdom. Despite that, this Government’s duty and responsibility are to govern in the interests of all the people of the United Kingdom, seeking the fullest co-operation and showing the greatest respect that we can. That will continue to guide us.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, we need much more clarity and agreement on crossings between the four nations. During the time of the pandemic, you would be wearing masks on the English side but you would be without masks on the Welsh side, so people crossing were uncertain what to do. If you took the railway train between Chester and Newport, you would be crossing into both England and Wales. It was complete chaos. I ask the Government at least to try to remove that uncertainty, while always respecting devolved power. Now is the time to sort this out: not when the next pandemic hits us but now, when we can do it—respecting of course the determination of the nations, in referendums in Scotland and Wales, to have more powers. Eventually, I imagine to myself—
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
Sorry. The question is this: eventually, the answer could be four separate nations co-operating in a federal system, each with equal status. What is the Government’s opinion of that?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, we seek co-operation between the elected authorities in the United Kingdom. That also involves co-operation with local authorities. But it is part of devolution that the decisions to which the noble Lord has referred are made by the devolved Administrations. That is the fact of the law.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, there were strong signals, which were to be welcomed, from the Prime Minister and Ministers earlier in the summer when the Prime Minister called a meeting with the First Ministers to discuss “build back better” and the economic recovery following the pandemic. That was followed by similar statements from the Chancellor, who I think on a visit to Scotland said that he was going to try to support an economic recovery for the whole of the United Kingdom and involve everybody in that approach. What have been the practical outcomes of those discussions, and will there be further discussions to ensure that, given the tax and economic powers that now exist at different levels of government in the United Kingdom, everybody is pointing in the same direction for economic recovery?
Lord True (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, as always, for his constructive question. At the Covid recovery meeting in June, which the Prime Minister instigated, all present agreed to finalise the new system for inter- governmental relations. We are now exceedingly close to that—we are in a position to conclude the work—and I tell the House that the Prime Minister has written regarding another such meeting in October.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, I very much welcome and endorse the Minister’s strong commitment to the United Kingdom, and I wish him well in all his efforts to strengthen our United Kingdom. However, since the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland in January 2020, there have been a number of instances where the Government have infringed on the devolved settlement and taken measures that override the responsibilities of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly in the 1998 Act. For the assistance of the House, can the Minister set out the circumstances and the criteria for the infringement of the Sewel convention?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, again I reiterate the importance of respect. The kind of authoritative statement that my noble friend asks for is not something that I am going to venture in five seconds at the Dispatch Box—but I undertake to write to him on the matter.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
Does the Minister agree that, in working constructively with the devolved Administrations, Westminster always needs to adopt a collaborative rather than a confrontational approach; that that approach to working constructively should be based not solely on the right to choose but on the right to an informed choice; and that that approach should be placed at the centre of new information-sharing protocols and never protocols built solely on the rhetoric of muscular unionism?
Lord True (Con)
Well, I do agree with that; indeed, it has been implicit and explicit in the answers that I have sought to give your Lordships. I believe profoundly that the peoples of these islands have benefited extraordinarily from centuries of co-operation within our United Kingdom, and I hope and pray that that will continue. That must go with mutual respect—and that goes both ways—between the centre and the devolved Administrations. I think that is the devout wish of the whole of your Lordships’ House.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Afghanistan: British Equipment and Training
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Robathan
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what military equipment provided by the United Kingdom to Afghanistan is now in the hands of the Taliban; and what estimate they have made of the number of soldiers fighting for the Taliban who were trained by British instructors.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)
My Lords, the fluid and uncertain situation on the ground across Afghanistan means that there is no complete assessment of the matériel and equipment that the UK provided to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, which are now in the hands of the Taliban. The vast majority of the equipment provided comprises non-lethal support. We estimate the current strength of the Taliban to be between 35,000 and 75,000. It is not possible to estimate whether any British-trained Afghan National Defense and Security Forces personnel have joined the Taliban.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, it is not the fault of Her Majesty’s Government that NATO has suffered a humiliating defeat and disaster in the retreat from Kabul. Is there any information about weapons being sold to hostile states or to non-state actors such as the Wagner Group, and does my noble friend have any idea of the value of the British kit that was gifted to the Afghans that has now been lost? Afghanistan and the surrounding area are absolutely awash with weaponry that is in the hands of terrorists, criminals and our enemies.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I do not have the precise information about the value of kit that over the years was handed to the Afghan national security forces. In so far as a limited amount of government equipment was left, some was handed over to our American allies, but no equipment of any military use has been left that may fall into other hands.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, this is but one of a number of very serious and regrettable consequences of a premature and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some of this weaponry, such as rifles and pistols, and equipment, such as trucks, is pretty easily used, mended and deployed. But there are also, thankfully, modern aircraft and armoured vehicles which tend to need more skilled operators and technical maintenance including regular software updates. This is a NATO problem, not just a UK problem, because this equipment will be sold to the highest bidder and not just possibly used but, more importantly, reverse engineered, which will create very difficult problems for our future deployment of it. What steps are we and our NATO allies taking to monitor and interdict such possibilities?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point that this is broader than the United Kingdom. As the Chamber will understand, the NATO alliance activity in Afghanistan—obviously by implication of what it was doing—raised an inevitable risk; do you help and try to support, which includes providing equipment? You cannot have a crystal ball to see into the future. As I said earlier, when it became clear the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan and an evacuation plan had to be conceived, careful thought was given to controlling what was under our control, and that was the equipment that we had. I have explained the situation in relation to that.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, Afghanistan, like many of the world’s poorest countries, is, as we have just heard, awash with sophisticated weaponry supplied by Britain, the West and other “friendly countries”. Does the Minister agree that the UK’s adding to this misery by hosting a cosy-sounding arms fair to boost income through the killing of innocents is both repugnant and immoral?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
With all respect to the noble Lord, I do not recognise what he describes. I think we are all united in support, admiration and respect for what our troops did, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, within the NATO operation in Afghanistan. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who served in Afghanistan—150,000 of them—in particular the 457 who lost their lives and those who sustained life-changing injuries. They have achieved improvements and change in Afghanistan that would not otherwise have been possible and I think we should celebrate that.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister accept the warning from the Times in its “remembering 9/11” leader on Saturday, which concluded:
“America’s wars helped to radicalise a generation of Islamists, whose poisonous ideology has spread across the Middle East to Africa, from where new terrorist franchises plot fresh attacks on the West”?
How are the Government planning to protect our country from the terrorist threat of this poisonous ideology?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I share my noble friend’s concern about the ideology, as I think everyone else will in this Chamber. Along with our allies and friends, significantly, the United States, we act to try to uphold values, protect freedoms and assist those who find themselves oppressed and isolated. We act to try to minimise threats to this country and our partners. That was one of the reasons we engaged in the NATO alliance in Afghanistan.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have overseen a series of chaotic failures and miscalculations in Afghanistan which have damaged our international reputation and weakened our security—including the confirmation that military equipment has been left behind. Does the Minister believe that the UK and US military equipment left in Afghanistan poses a direct threat to the UK? If the answer is yes, why was there not a better plan to ensure that did not happen?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I do not share the noble Lord’s analysis, and I do not share his conclusion based on his analysis. As I said earlier, a very small amount of equipment was left behind. Some of that was gifted to partner nations and therefore is under their control. Anything else that was left—and it was a very small amount—was of no military use whatsoever.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, the Question on the Order Paper refers to British-trained soldiers who might have defected to the Taliban. Can I ask the noble Baroness about those trained by the United Kingdom who might now be in hiding? Operation Pitting was very effective, but there are still many people in hiding. What is the MoD doing to expedite their extradition?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
The noble Baroness raises an important point. As she will be aware, we have made it clear that ARAP extends to all who worked with us. It is a scheme without a time limit, and we invite people to continue applying. In so far as British nationals are concerned, we have endeavoured to find where they are and maintain contact with them. We are doing our level best to support that. As the noble Baroness will understand, this is a difficult situation. The advice we have given to anyone wanting to try and get out who is either a British national or eligible under ARAP is to try and make their way to a neighbouring country. That is the best advice we can give. I reassure the House that we are supporting that advice by providing additional staff in neighbouring countries.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, in the wake of the desperate Afghan crisis, almost everybody agrees that we need stronger European defence co-operation, and I believe the Minister shares that view. Will she therefore have a word with the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who is sitting next to her, whose EU trade and co-operation agreement decimates our trade with other European countries, undermines our co-operation with them and is a terrible prelude to greater defence co-operation?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I am sure my noble friend sitting beside me has as acute hearing as I have, has listened carefully to the noble Lord and will find his own way of responding appropriately to the noble Lord’s concerns.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, why has there been no attempt at the United Nations to move a resolution to try and get a peacekeeping force so that embassies could remain open and the use of weapons, to some degree, could be policed?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Obviously, the situation is constantly under review by us and our international partners and friends, not least within the United Nations. But this is a very difficult situation on the ground and that is a reality we are having to deal with.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, how can the Minister be so sure that the kit left behind is of no military value? Can it not be converted for use, as the Taliban appear to be capable of doing? Does what she says apply to the American equipment left behind? Is the danger not that we have left a highly equipped Taliban army there—perhaps the best equipped army in the region?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I think there is little I can add, in response to the noble Lord, to what I have already said. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, astutely identified, this is a broader challenge than the United Kingdom; it is a NATO challenge. It is part of engaging in conflict that certain risks have to be taken; otherwise, we would never seek to intervene in any way whatsoever —and that is an unacceptable premise. What we have done in Afghanistan in co-operation with our NATO allies, we have done as responsibly as we can, and we have endeavoured to ensure as we left Afghanistan that we did not leave a legacy of equipment with military potential.
Imports from EU to GB: Business Preparation
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull
To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what steps Her Majesty’s Government are taking to prepare businesses for the introduction of new checks and controls on imports into Great Britain from the European Union on 1 October 2021 and 1 January 2022.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)
My Lords, on 14 September I announced a pragmatic new timetable for introducing certain controls for goods imported from the EU to the UK to give businesses more time to adjust. These controls will be introduced in two stages, on 1 January and 1 July. The Government continue to support all businesses trading with the EU in all sectors, including by putting in place additional staffing, comprehensive guidance for businesses and funding infrastructure to ease border processes.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
In February 2020, the Government indicated that full border controls on EU imports would commence on 1 January 2021. In June 2020, the Government announced that many controls would instead be phased in, with mixed deadlines, from April to July 2021. In March 2021, the Government delayed the introduction of this mix of controls further, with phases from October 2021 to March 2022. Earlier this week, just three weeks before the first part of the mix was due to be implemented, the Government announced yet another delay, with phases from January to July 2022. Three times now, businesses have spent time, and no doubt money, preparing for key deadlines, and three times they have seen the can kicked down the road. What steps will the Government take to restore business confidence in their timetable for import controls, and will they compensate businesses for their wasted efforts?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, it has of course been an extraordinary year to 18 months economically. We have been dealing with a pandemic of unpredictable quality, and it is very clear that there are global strains on supply chains and other aspects of the business environment. That is why we do not apologise for taking this series of pragmatic decisions to respond to the evolving situation. We have no plans to evolve these changes further, and the money that businesses have already spent in dealing with the situation will have been well spent.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
Experiences of déjà vu are becoming not uncommon in this Government’s implementation of their own EU plans, despite repeated assurances. This means that Britain will continue to face full checks and controls on its exports, as it did from day 1, while imports will continue with border-free access. Supply chain problems resolve around massive labour shortages. To keep Christmas dinner on the table, will the Government now introduce a 12-month emergency visa implementation? Can the Government give assurances that extending agreements on the provision of veterinary services and updating paper health certificates online will become part of the solution to guard against the potential risk of disease and infections?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we face a complex set of interacting economic facts at the moment, and the decision that we took responds to that. We maintain the controls that are right for us, and we now have the powers to control and manage our economy as we see fit. We do not have to do the same thing as the European Union, and indeed, after 1 July, we are unlikely to have exactly the same levels of physical checks as the EU. We monitor the situation in all its respects, and we will take the decisions that are necessary to support the British economy.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, on 21 July, the Government published their new border operating model, page 8 of which gives a commentary about how they have taken into consideration the impacts of Covid as the reason why they had made the delays already. So what has happened in the intervening seven weeks, between 21 July and now, that allows the Government to think that they are still not ready at their ports?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, it has been very evident over the early autumn that there are challenges with maintaining supply chains, and these are not limited to the UK. There are shortages of HGV drivers across Europe and beyond, and there has been a very significant increase in costs globally in the shipping of goods. These strains have become evident over the summer, and we have taken a pragmatic decision to respond to that and do what we can support British business in these circumstances.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this delay, and indeed I hope that it becomes permanent. EU goods are safe, and the food is wholesome; we have been using them and eating it for 40 years. Trade rules do not need to be reciprocal, and, if the European Union chooses stupidly to impose upon its consumers the penalties of protectionism, there is no need for us to reciprocate. Does my noble friend agree that it is about time that the British Government were setting a free trade example to the European Union, and indeed showing it that such an approach could be applied with benefit on the UK’s border with Ireland, in place of the undemocratic protocol?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I think our position on the protocol is well known, and we may come to it later. Of course, my noble friend is absolutely right to say that it makes sense for us to put in place the controls that are right for us. Of course, there are controls—customs controls came in on 1 January—but we do not have to replicate everything that the European Union does. We intend to have a world-class border by 2025, with proportionate checks based on risk. That is the right way to proceed.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, yesterday, my noble friend Lord Adonis shared with us a six year-old photograph of a very slimline David Frost saying that the whisky industry needed the “fewest possible barriers” in order to sell into European markets. That is what business still wants, but the Government do not seem to listen, despite the fact that surely they must be involved in the design of the procedures and not just told at the end, “This is what you must implement”. Next week, almost a year after the trade agreement was signed, the Minister’s consultation on engagement with business closes. Can he assure the House that he will respond rapidly to that and put in place a robust system of consultation with business, unions and consumers?
Lord Frost (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. She is of course correct that our consultation on involving industry and civil society more generally in the implementation of the trade and co-operation agreement closes shortly. We will of course respond soon: we need to get these bodies up and running before the end of the year, and it is absolutely our intention to do so. As a general principle, it is right that the fewest possible controls are always best—that is clear. Of course, we are not always in control of the controls that the European Union puts in place. We believe that the benefits of being outside the customs union and in control of our own trade policy very much outweigh any disadvantages.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Of course, the greatest free market was the single market, which we very sadly left. My noble friend negotiated very successfully the trade and co-operation agreement. Will he use his good offices to ensure that this world-class border, which we would all welcome, will lead to a single portal for documentation that will be largely online? If he finds that we have trained most of the EU drivers that have left and gone back to their respective countries, could we at least give them a short-term visa to come back and help us out over the Christmas period—the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, suggested that we might need this?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I agree of course with my noble friend that an aspiration for a world-class border is very important; that is where we intend to go. Indeed, we hope that the so-called single trade window —a single portal—will be a very significant part of that, as we take this forward. As regards HGV drivers, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has, on a couple of occasions, set out our plans to make it easier to increase the supply of drivers, and I am sure that that will bear fruit very soon.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
Last weekend, I left the United Kingdom for the first time since the end of transition period. I went to France, and I got in very easily: I showed my passport and my vaccine pass, and that was it. When I came back, it looked like a world-class border when I got to Stansted, where I just showed my electronic passport, but, to get there, I had to fill in numerous forms that the airline was expected to verify. Are the Government proposing to keep that sort of regulation going? Surely that is a deterrent to tourism and other people coming to the United Kingdom, which surely a world-class country would be wanting, not trying to discourage?
Lord Frost (Con)
I am sure that we all share the aspiration for borders that are as freely flowing as possible. Obviously, we are dealing with the consequences of a pandemic, and that requires controls and processes that, in an ideal world, we would not want to be in place. This matter is very much debated elsewhere. I repeat my point that we wish to see goods and people flow as freely as possible, consistent with maintaining responsible border controls of all kinds. That is what we intend to put in place.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and we now move to the next Question.
Imports from EU to UK: Grace Period
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what plans Her Majesty’s Government have to extend further the grace period on imports from the European Union to the United Kingdom.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)
My Lords, as I have noted, the Government have set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods imported from the EU to the UK. This revised timetable gives businesses more time to adjust to the new processes as they recover from the pandemic, which has impacted supply chains across Europe. As I have also noted, we have no plans to change this timetable further.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, as well as a damaging, dangerous shortage of HGV drivers and millions of pounds’ worth of food rotting in the fields around the United Kingdom, we now have this unbalanced situation where UK exports to the EU have full checks but there is this further, “pragmatic” delay in checks on imports, which will cause problems for our importers. Can the Minister remind the House who was responsible for negotiating this disastrous deal? Could he tell us the secret which might be of interest to some of his former colleagues: how did he get reappointed to the Cabinet?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, there are some things that are best not delved into, I think. I am sorry that the noble Lord feels that an agreement with the EU which restores democracy to this country and gives us power over our own rules is so disastrous. It was nevertheless what we were elected to achieve and have achieved. We are very confident that we will benefit from it.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, in his answer to my previous question, the Minister indicated that the appropriate comparison on trade figures would be with 2018, the last time that the economy was stable. The latest ONS figures, from July, show that trade with the EU is now down by 11%. What other pragmatic measures can the Government take to restore trade with the single market of the European Union?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, as I frequently note, there are obviously many things going on in the global economy and in global supply chains, including the pandemic, increased costs and so on, and it is very difficult to draw firm conclusions from trade figures. It is true that July’s figures show a small dip in exports to the EU but, nevertheless, since January, exports to the EU have been rising consistently. In June, they were higher than the pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit figures. We are confident that British business is rising to the challenge and will continue to do so.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that what he describes as a “pragmatic” policy is in fact a measure of discrimination by the British Government against non-EU imports at our borders, because they face controls in a way that EU imports do not? Does he accept that, as a result of that, we are potentially in breach of our WTO legal obligations as discriminating against different categories of people? Does he further accept that Covid is no excuse for these “pragmatic” delays? After all, the EU was able to impose its proper border controls in January 2021. Is this not yet a further example, of the many, of this Government’s incompetence in managing a very botched Brexit?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, obviously there is a distinction in how we manage goods imported from the rest of the world compared to those from the European Union. That is consistent with WTO law and is obviously dependent on the special circumstances of us leaving the customs union and the single market. It is our intention, of course, to have a single set of world-class rules by 2025—if possible, earlier—for all goods that will give us the best border in the world. The decisions that we have taken on import controls are consistent with that and on that trajectory.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I welcome my noble friend’s decision to prolong the grace periods, for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Moylan spelled out earlier, but will he confirm that experience of grace periods in Northern Ireland shows the wisdom of what he is doing: that refraining from introducing the additional controls that the EU wanted us to impose on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has not resulted in a flow of goods into the EU across the Irish border or undermined EU standards in any way, and that the only reason the EU is persisting in wanting us to apply those controls is to punish us and the people of Northern Ireland for Brexit?
Lord Frost (Con)
Of course, I agree very much with the thrust of my noble friend’s question. We believe that in the decisions we have taken, both in the context of the protocol and on trade more broadly, we are showing pragmatism in the way we are managing our borders, with a due focus on the real levels of risk involved. We hope that the European Union will do the same in the context of Northern Ireland and allow us to put in place arrangements, as set out in our Command Paper, that are consistent with those levels of risk.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, it is striking that none of the problems raised is anything to do with the Minister or with the Government; it is all about Covid, the French, the Irish or the EU, but the nation is starting to suss this out. The Food and Drink Federation said just this week that the Government are undermining trust and confidence, because responsible businesses prepare for changes that repeatedly do not happen. Frustration is growing. Food and drink is Britain’s biggest manufacturing sector, employing people in every region, and it needs certainty. Does the Minister accept that if we do not reach a lasting agreement soon, these stopgap solutions will cost jobs?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we have great food and drink industries in this country; some of them have imports in their supply chains as well as exports and the free flow of trade in both directions is very important. I have noted what the Food and Drink Federation has said on this subject. I could not help noting that, last week, it was worrying about the consequences of introducing these controls and fearing that the just-in-time system would not work, while, this week, it is concerned that we have delayed the controls, so I think we just have to take the best decisions we can in the interests of the whole economy and enable our businesses to prosper as a result.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Does the Minister realise that the grace period puts British industries at a substantial short-term disadvantage? Are there any upsides beyond those already described by my noble friend Lord Moylan? I am very glad to see that my noble friend Lord Frost is still a Minister. What diplomatic and other steps will he take to put this matter on to a more satisfactory long-term basis?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we are obviously in constant touch with the European Union through the institutions created in the trade and co-operation agreement and many others. We sought last year to negotiate more relaxed arrangements at the border in both directions, on food and drink and on other issues. Unfortunately, the EU was not open to that at that point, but if it were to become open to it in future, we would obviously wish to engage in that discussion. That is clear, and we will keep making that case, because we believe that it is in the interests of both parties.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that accusations are being made against him that he is of the view that sabre-rattling gets results from Brussels? What can he do improve our relationships both with Brussels and in particular with the Irish Government? Does he agree that our relations with those two are pretty poor at the moment?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I do not agree that relations with either Government or entity are poor, though relations can always be better, of course, and there are some significant differences between us at the moment. I am not sure that I agree with the suggestion that we are sabre-rattling; that is not the way we go about things. We are setting out our case and being clear about what changes would produce a better situation, whether as regards the protocol or anything else. It helps relations when countries are clear about what they think and others can respond.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, one of the things deterring people from becoming HGV drivers is the amount of time now spent going through the ports, with so many extra forms to deal with. The Minister has recognised this by extending yet again the date for implementation of the new rules, but of course they apply going into the EU. What is the Government’s estimate per average lorry of the additional time it now takes to transport goods to the EU? How many additional HGV drivers do we need for that alone?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we obviously keep the flow of HGVs, lorries and trade at all our ports under very close scrutiny. I do not have figures to hand on that subject, but I know that trade is now flowing freely, delays are minimal and I pay tribute to the customs authorities not only of our Government but of our closest trading neighbours—France, Belgium and others—who show a degree of pragmatism in enabling this to happen, so that whatever difficulties there were at the start of the year are no longer significant and trade is flowing freely.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.
Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Power-sharing
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hoey
To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what assessment Her Majesty’s Government have made of the operation of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland on power sharing in Northern Ireland and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s position on this matter is set out in the Command Paper we published on 21 July. In brief, the Government are indeed concerned that the operation of the protocol is causing political instability in Northern Ireland and risks undermining the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. That is why we wish to negotiate significant changes to its operation on the basis of the proposals in our Command Paper. We are, of course, discussing these issues with the EU.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
I welcome Her Majesty’s Government recognising that the east-west dimension of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement has been broken by the protocol, which has led to destabilisation of all the institutions in Northern Ireland. Does the Minister understand that many people in Northern Ireland are saying that Her Majesty’s Government must actually choose, very soon, between the protocol and making the devolved institutions carry on successfully?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the institutions in Northern Ireland are, of course, extremely important, including for delivery in a range of domestic policy areas—health, transport and so on—and it is important they are robust and continue. We absolutely recognise the frustration with the current situation, which is leading to the build-up of tensions and pressures on the institutions that we are seeing. That is why we need to find durable solutions to the protocol and the trading situation in Northern Ireland that will be a reasonable settlement consistent with the integrity of the UK and the UK’s internal market.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, given the rising political temperature in Belfast, does my noble friend agree that it would be a supreme and tragic irony if the EU’s implementation of a protocol that it insists is necessary to preserve the Belfast agreement actually became an instrument for the destruction of that agreement, which I would deeply deplore? Does he share my concern that if the institutions were to fall again at Stormont, it could take very many years for them to be restored, if at all?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I very much agree with the thrust of my noble friend’s question. Protecting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement is our top priority; it was the overriding purpose of the protocol and it is why we are so concerned about the destabilising character of the way it is being implemented. Actually, I recognise and welcome the signals that the EU is beginning to understand this and reflect on it, but we still need solutions based on the ideas for significant change that were in our Command Paper.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
There clearly is a general and continuing sense in Northern Ireland that its fate is still being decided over its head—that it is not being fully involved or consulted. That was presumably why Commission Vice-President Šefčovič said in Belfast last week,
“let’s see how to involve the people of Northern Ireland in our discussions on the implementation of the protocol.”
The noble Lord’s White Paper talks about the need to give Northern Ireland a greater role in discussions under the protocol, but we do not actually need to change the protocol to do that. Does he agree that when the joint committee considers future single-market laws on devolved subjects, members of the Northern Ireland Executive should play the leading role in the UK delegation?
Lord Frost (Con)
The noble Lord is correct, of course, that the issue of involving political opinion and institutions in Northern Ireland is for the UK Government. We do that, and the Northern Ireland Executive attend the joint committee when the Irish Government attend on the EU side, which is always the case. I think the EU should exercise caution in suggesting that Northern Ireland parties or political opinion should take part in the EU’s own institutions and decision-making procedures in this area: I do not think that would be consistent with the sort of arrangement we want in the future. The protocol is a treaty between two parties, the UK and the EU, and supporting arrangements need to be consistent with that.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, does the Minister now regret signing up to the Northern Ireland protocol without prior consultation of the political parties in Northern Ireland?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, as I think is well known, there was at the time in 2019 quite a degree of consultation as we developed our negotiating position but, unfortunately, the outcome of that process and the positions taken by different parties are well known. We did the right thing for the country in putting in place an agreement that delivered a full and fair Brexit but, unfortunately, that agreement has not been implemented in the way we hoped it would, and that is why it needs to change.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister was extremely frank in the debate on Monday afternoon about the origins of the Northern Ireland protocol. I for one was grateful for that and, dare I say, for his slight change of tone. In a previous life as chair of ACAS, I would advise the parties to say as little as possible, to maximise the possibility of agreement, so I am aware of the irony of asking him a question, and I will make it a full toss if that helps. Does he agree that the top priorities are peace in Northern Ireland, good relations with the Irish Republic, and assisting those very impressive businesspeople in Northern Ireland that the EU Select Committee and its successor have spent the last two years getting to know?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness is obviously correct that it can be helpful to say as little as possible when you are trying to find solutions. This is obviously a matter of considerable political interest on all sides and what we say has to reflect that. I very much agree that the top priority is peace—protecting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement—but the other aims she mentions are extremely important. It is our job as a Government to promote peace and prosperity for everybody in Northern Ireland.
Lord Robathan (Con)
If our friends, neighbours and allies across the channel, or indeed on the island of Ireland, are not willing to compromise and make changes to this agreement, is it not time to withdraw unilaterally from the protocol, before the political and trading chaos in that part of the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland—gets worse or, as we have heard, before the entire Belfast agreement collapses?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we have set out our position in the Command Paper. We are very clear that the conditions for Article 16 safeguards are met, but we think the right way forward is to see whether we can find a consensual solution with the EU. That is what we are trying very hard to do and will continue to do. Consensual solutions are likely to be the solutions that stick—but, if we cannot find a consensual solution, we will have to go down other routes, as my noble friend notes.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the protocol is a breach of the Belfast agreement, that it may undermine that agreement and bring about the closure of devolved government within weeks, and that it may even, worse still, lead to violence on the streets? Does the Minister recall that the Belfast agreement, signed by both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, stated that it would be wrong to make any change to the status of Northern Ireland, save with the consent of the majority of its people? Were the people of Northern Ireland consulted about this protocol? If not, was the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland advised in advance of its contents before Her Majesty’s Government agreed it with the European Union?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the question involves a lot of rather complex issues and I feel I cannot really do justice to it in the time available. The overriding purpose of the protocol is to support the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, and it is a matter of great regret to us that it is being implemented in a way that is undermining that agreement and causing many of the problems that the noble Lord mentions. The protocol is clear that nothing in it infringes the territorial integrity of the UK or its internal market, or our customs territory; the problem is that, in practice, those requirements are not necessarily being put in place as fully as we would wish. That is why we need to find solutions that deal with these problems definitively and consensually, if we can, so that we can move on.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, with apologies to those noble Lords still waiting to put their questions.
Business of the House
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Ashton of Hyde
That, in the event of the Health and Social Care Levy Bill having been brought from the House of Commons, Standing Order 44 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Monday 11 October to allow the Bill to be taken through its remaining stages that day.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.
Brexit Opportunities
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now make a Statement, which is also being made in the other place, on the opportunities this country has now that we have left the European Union.
While we were an EU member, some of the most difficult issues that Governments of both parties faced were over regulatory issues generated by the European Union—to take just some examples, the services directive, the REACH directive, reforms of agricultural policy, very many pieces of financial services legislation and so on. Very often such laws, which had effect in this country, reflected unsatisfactory compromises with other EU member states. We knew that if we did not rescue something from the legislative sausage machine, we would be voted down and risk getting nothing. The laws that resulted were designed to lock every country—no matter its strengths or weaknesses—into the same structures. They were very often overly detailed and prescriptive. Moreover, the results of those negotiations and laws usually either had direct legal effect in the UK or were passed into our law through secondary legislation—either way, with very limited genuine democratic scrutiny.
This Government were elected to get Brexit done and to change this situation, and that is what we intend to do. Much has already changed, even in the last few months, but, given the extent of EU influence over our political system over nearly 50 years, this is a mammoth task. To begin it, we asked my right honourable friend Sir Iain Duncan Smith to lead a team to examine our existing laws in this area and our future opportunities. That team reported back earlier this year, and since then my right honourable friend the Chancellor and I, and other colleagues, have been considering his so-called TIGRR report in some depth. I am writing today to Sir Iain with our formal response to his report and, more importantly, with our plans to act on the basis of it. I am sharing the Government’s response with committee chairs and will deposit it in the Libraries of both Houses. It will also be available very shortly on GOV.UK.
I will now highlight some of the most important elements of these plans. First, we will conduct a review of so-called retained EU law. By this, I mean the very many pieces of legislation which we took on to our own statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We must now revisit this huge, but for us anomalous, category of law. In doing so, we have two purposes in mind. First, we intend to remove the special status of retained EU law so that it is no longer a distinct category of UK domestic law but normalised within our law, with a clear legislative status. Unless we do this, we risk giving undue precedence to laws derived from EU legislation over laws made properly by this Parliament. This review also involves ensuring that all courts of this country should have the full ability to depart from EU case law, according to the normal rules. In so doing we will continue, and indeed finalise, the process of restoring this sovereign Parliament, and our courts, to their proper constitutional positions.
Our second goal is to review comprehensively the substantive content of retained EU law. Some of that is already under way—for example, our plans to reform the procurement rules we inherited from the EU, or the plan announced last autumn by my right honourable friend the Chancellor to review much financial services legislation. We will make this a comprehensive exercise. I want to be clear: our intention is eventually to amend, replace or repeal all retained EU law that is not right for the UK. That problem is obviously a legislative one. Accordingly, the solution is also likely to be legislative. We will consider all the options for taking this forward. In particular, we will look at developing a tailored mechanism for accelerating the repeal or amendment of this retained EU law in a way which reflects the fact that, as I have made clear, laws agreed elsewhere have intrinsically less democratic legitimacy than laws initiated by the Government of this country.
Secondly, we intend to begin a new series of reforms to the legislation we inherited on EU exit, in many cases as recommended by the TIGRR report. Let me give just a few examples. We intend to create a pro-growth, trusted data rights regime, more proportionate and less burdensome than the EU’s GDPR. My right honourable friend the previous Secretary of State for Culture announced on 10 September a consultation that is the first stage in putting new rules in place. We intend to review the inherited approach to genetically modified organisms, which in our view is too restrictive and not based on sound science. My right honourable friend the Environment Secretary will also shortly set out plans to reform the regulation of gene-edited organisms. We will use the provisions of the Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021 to overhaul our clinical trial frameworks, which are based on outdated EU legislation, giving a major boost to the UK’s world-class R&D sector and getting patients access to new life-saving medicines more quickly. The MHRA, which as we know is a world-class regulator, is already reforming the medical devices regulations to create a world-leading regime in this area.
We will unleash Britain’s potential as a world leader in the future of transport. My right honourable friend the Transport Secretary will shortly set out ambitious plans, which include modernising outdated EU vehicle standards and unlocking the full range of new transport technologies. We also intend to repeal the EU’s port services regulations—a very good example of a regulation which was geared heavily towards EU interests and never worked properly for the UK.
We will drive forward our work on artificial intelligence, where the UK is already at the forefront of driving global progress. We will shortly publish the UK’s first national AI strategy, which will set out our plans to supercharge the UK’s AI ecosystem and set standards which will lead the world.
Thirdly, as recommended by TIGRR and the Penrose review, and as promised in the current consultation on reforming the better regulation framework, we will put in place much more rigorous tests within government before we take decisions to regulate. Now that we have control over all our laws, not just a subset of them, we will consider the reintroduction of a one-in, two-out system, which has been shown internationally to make a significant difference to how regulation proceeds.
Finally, Brexit was about giving everybody in this country, once again, a say in how it is run. That is true in this area too. We aim to tap into everybody’s ideas. So we will create a new standing commission, under visible and energetic leadership, to receive ideas from any British citizen on how to repeal or improve regulation. The commission’s job will be to consider such ideas and make recommendations for change, but it will be able to make recommendations only in one direction,: the direction of reducing or eliminating burdens. I hope that, in this way, we will tap into the collective wisdom of the British people and begin to remove the dominance of the arbitrary rule, of unknown origin, over people’s day-to-day lives.
Let me finish by being clear that this is just the beginning of our ambitious plans. I will, of course, return to this House regularly to update your Lordships on our progress and, more importantly, to set out our further intentions.
Brexit was about taking back control—the ability to remove the distortions created by EU membership, to do things differently, in ways that work better for this country, and to promote growth, productivity and prosperity. That is what we intend to do. I recognise that Brexit was not a choice originally supported by all in the country, or even, it seems, by some in this House. But Brexit is now a fact. This country is now embarked on a great voyage. We each have the opportunity to make this new journey a success—to make us, as a country, more contented, more prosperous and more united. I hope everyone will join us in doing so.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for advance sight of the Statement. Having read it several times, I find myself underwhelmed. Eighteen months since the UK left the European Union— a moment which the Prime Minister referred to as
“a new act in our great national drama”—
I think we are all left asking the same question: is this it? Dealing with laws that the Government had already promised to address and a novelty engagement exercise is not the ambitious, outward-facing, world-leading plan for prosperity we need. The Government are suffering from a chronic lack of ambition.
While the Minister wants to talk about GM food, he needs to sort out the existing problems for growers in this country first. UK industry is currently dealing with supply chain chaos, a situation compounded by the Government’s mismanagement of our exit. The disruption is leaving business without goods and shoppers with gaps on supermarket shelves. We cannot divorce this from the new barriers at the border, or from driver shortages resulting from a lack of a workforce strategy and a failure to see the foreseeable. We need urgent action, leadership and direction from the Government. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government will now establish an urgent workforce plan to deal with the 90,000-strong shortage of HGV drivers? Have they yet appointed—maybe they have—a government Minister tasked with specific responsibility for tackling the supply chain crisis and co-ordinating across multiple government departments? When will they secure the veterinary agreement with the European Union to limit further disruption?
There is also, of course, the Northern Ireland protocol. Again, the problems were entirely foreseeable by everyone it seems, including the Government, and yet the technological solutions long promised by Ministers have still to materialise. As he was unable to clarify previously, can the Minister now confirm whether, when and in what circumstances he would commence Article 16 processes?
On agriculture, the Minister speaks of opportunities. If only the Government were not jumping from one crisis to another, perhaps they would be able to see the possibilities ahead of them. Just yesterday, on Back British Farming Day, the National Audit Office released a report finding that Ministers are failing to gain farmers’ trust. It is little wonder, given the problems with agriculture visas and worker shortages, but there is an opportunity here to reward British farmers and gain back their trust. The Government should take steps to help public bodies buy more British food all year round, including by passing legislation requiring them to report on how much they are buying from domestic sources with taxpayers’ money. Where was “Buy British” in his Statement? Across rural England, £255 million will be lost this year alone as a result of cuts in grants to farmers, with no certainty about what will replace them. This is putting 9,500 agricultural jobs at risk. The Government need to take notice of the problems facing UK agriculture before livelihoods are lost.
Now is the time for the Government to deliver on the promise of post-Brexit Britain, but if, 18 months in, all we have to celebrate is supply chain chaos and lost jobs, it would be fair to say that the Prime Minister’s “great national drama” is becoming a farce. On rules of origin, equivalence for financial services, creative industries and so much more, the Government are letting Britain down. Instead of sabre-rattling and blaming others, the Government need to stand up, find real solutions and deliver the opportunities we were promised.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I was slightly surprised by the Statement, which I thank the Minister for giving advance notice of. When I heard that there was going to be a Statement—and we were told only this morning that there would be one this lunchtime—I was quite excited, because I thought it would be on the much-awaited impact assessment showing the economic opportunities for the United Kingdom as a result of Brexit. The Minister’s colleague on the Government Bench, the noble Lord, Lord True, promised me in correspondence two years ago that this impact assessment would happen. But as we heard during Questions to the Minister, it is the fault of everybody other than the Government that this has not happened. Instead of an economic opportunities assessment, we have a shuffling of the legislative rulebook.
Apart from a bit of revisionist narrative from the Minister about some of these regulations that the UK helped design, and then added to when we put them into domestic legislation, there has also been an enormous increase in the bureaucracy and number of regulations as a result of the Brexit process itself. Even during the Questions we just asked the Minister, we saw that the Government have failed to prepare our borders, failed to prepare systems for businesses to be ready and failed to have a system where businesses will even label the goods that are manufactured in the UK. Why do the Government not tackle these urgent issues first?
The Government have indicated that they wanted to end the legislative sausage machine, but by the end of 2020, Ministers had laid around 960 Brexit SIs, with more this year and more to come. Three chairs of committees in this House condemned the use of broad delegated powers instead of policy detail. Will the Government now rationalise the delegated powers they had given themselves to do all of this, where they had indicated that they need new legislative powers to do so, or will the UK legislative sausage machine increase?
The Minister did not mention in his Statement that the EU now has proposals for higher standards on carbon emissions, chemicals, medical devices and copyright protections. Will we fall in line on those areas? Will we update our own legislation to ensure that we are consistent with these higher standards, or will we fall behind?
Why was there no mention in the Minister’s Statement of copyright protection, which is currently being put in place by the European Union? If we do not follow suit, for generated content the UK will have less protection for copyright than our competitors within Europe.
I understand that we will need to review and then replace continuity trade agreements; the Minister did not mention the fact that we have incorporated into many trade agreements the very areas that he said we now want to review. What is the status of all the trade agreements the Government have heralded that we have made up until now?
On the specific areas the Minister mentioned on GDPR, is it still the Government’s position that in the adequacy review from Europe for 2025 we will still seek to be considered to be adequate when it comes to data? Is that a consideration as far as the Government’s position is concerned?
On GMOs, can the Minister confirm that this is England only? There is no reference to the devolved powers. I think the Minister is listening, so can he state that this is England only or will this now be for Scotland too? On clinical trials, is that England only? There was no mention of Northern Ireland in his Statement, which I was curious about. As we heard in Questions and as we debated in Grand Committee, the Government indicated in their Statement today that
“laws agreed elsewhere have intrinsically less democratic legitimacy than laws initiated by the Government of this country.”
However, Northern Ireland will be continuing under many laws from a foreign entity, with no say over them. When I asked the Minister to set out proposals of how the democratic deficit would be addressed for Northern Ireland, he said to me that
“we have set out the issue without proposing a specific way forward”.—[Official Report, 13/9/21; col. GC 286.]
Finally, then, what is the specific way forward? There are many areas that are not present in the Minister’s Statement today, so when will there be a proper debate to allow us to have proper consideration of the Government’s legislative proposals?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I am encouraged by what I have heard from the noble Baroness and the noble Lord because it seems that they share our ambition to do more in this area and are disappointed by the fact that there seems to be less than they had hoped for. I encourage them to read the full reply to Sir Iain Duncan Smith, which I was not able to do justice to in my Statement.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord underplay what we have been doing. We left the transition period only a few months ago, and already we have a new immigration system; we have agricultural reform arrangements that are different from the common agricultural policy; we are putting in place a new subsidy regime; we are planning to reform procurement rules; and we have put in place an international sanctions regime. We have plans for free ports and, as I said, for data and gene editing, and for reforms of port services, HGVs, energy and much more. That is not a bad list for a few months. We note the ambition and will do our very best to keep driving it forward. I note only that it is self-evident that none of these things would be possible if we had remained in the European Union, and they would also largely not be possible if we had remained in a so-called soft Brexit or European Economic Area model of Brexit, which so many parties opposite recommended.
We are pushing forward change. A large number of issues were raised and I am quite pressed for time. We are setting out a plan to increase the supply of HGV drivers. As I have said, we are in constant touch with the EU about equivalence and SPS rules, and if we could make progress that would be excellent. We are taking steps to support our agricultural industry—my right honourable friend the Prime Minister touched on that yesterday. Labelling is certainly something that we are consulting on, and we are supporting our fishing industry after Brexit, and so on.
The question of the devolved Administrations was raised. I have written to my opposite numbers in all the devolved Administrations and obviously I can guarantee that we will work very closely with them where these reforms intersect with devolved competence, and we wish to work as closely with them as we possibly can.
On the question of the impact assessment and the effect on the economy, I note that the economy is the fastest-growing in the G7. We have 1 million vacancies in the economy in this country, and this economy and this country are already prospering vastly under the arrangements that we are putting in place.
I had better wrap up, but I just say that we stand for change as a country and as a party; that is what people voted for. We want to make us a high-wage, high-productivity economy with controlled migration. People have to invest in the skills of everyone in our country. We do not want to be a low-wage, low-skilled economy reliant on cheap labour and where parts of the economy are neglected. We are putting in place reforms, a process of constant change and improvement, and rules that suit this country and will make a big difference for us in the future.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome a number of the advantages that the noble Lord has identified of us being able to make our own laws again, but it might have been interesting or even entertaining if he had also listed the things that have not happened as a result of us leaving the European Union, which I have certainly listened to interminably over the last four years. At random, I say that we do not have the half a million unemployed that George Osborne said would occur; I seem to remember that it was said somewhere that the M20 would be a car park; and essential medicines were not going to be able to get into the country as a result of it all. It might be quite useful to have a list of that sort. However, the exhilarating thing in the Minister’s essential remarks is that if the Government make a mess of this, in two or three or maybe fewer years the British people will throw the Government out—they will have the capacity to do that. In contrast, when the EU has made laws via the Commission over so many years, many of them very bad, no one has been able to do that. That is at the heart of what has happened, and it is still exhilarating.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments. That is a very good suggestion; indeed, a lot of things have not happened that the gloom-mongers said would happen, and they are not going to happen. He is right that this is about bringing back democracy; if you do not like what we are doing, there are ways of dealing with that. We believe we are doing the right thing for the country and that it will prosper under the agenda we are setting out.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend give me some comfort? I thought that “take back control” meant an elevation of parliamentary sovereignty. Why are we therefore seeing so many government Bills stuffed with Henry VIII clauses? We had one on Tuesday this week. What we want is the sovereignty of Parliament—Parliament in control—not the sovereignty of the Executive.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I have a huge amount of sympathy with the thrust of my noble friend’s comment. It is about bringing back democracy and restoring the authority of this Parliament. I recognise the controversy about the Henry VIII clauses, as he describes them. They deal with a particular situation involving the inherited EU law and the complexities of managing the legal transformation out of the European Union, and I hope that they will be seen in that very specific context.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, the Minister now boasts on his Twitter feed profile:
“You don’t get something for nothing, you can’t have freedom for free.”
Apparently, it is from a Rush song from “2112”. I do not recall him carrying that message around as he was leading us into Brexit. Since we have heard what we are going to do with that new-found freedom, in the absence of an impact assessment, can he tell us at what cost this freedom has been bought?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I do not think it has been bought at any cost. I make no apology for standing up for freedom—free enterprise and freedom to think and debate—and that is what we did not have very much of in the final years of our EU membership until the referendum. It is axiomatic, in my view, that free debate, free enterprise, free economies and the ability to change your Government will always benefit the countries that have those things. There is a lot of empirical evidence around the world that that proposition is correct.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister’s predecessors in his position—the noble Lord, Lord True, who is sitting next to him, and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—gave us repeated promises during the passage of the Brexit Bills through Parliament that the Government had no intention to weaken in any way the social, environmental and consumer protections that were involved EU law. Will he repeat that commitment today? Moreover, if he is not prepared to repeat it in full, will he give us a guarantee, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that these issues will not be dealt with by some tailored mechanism to speed up legislative passage but will be put before this House for full debate?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we are a high-standards country. The manifesto on which we won the election in 2019 was very clear about our intention to maintain high standards in all those areas. That does not mean that we do not intend to change them. The world moves on; high standards need to reflect the context in which we are operating. I am sure there will be change, but I do not believe that those changes will result in regression of standards.
On the noble Lord’s second point, I come back to the point I made earlier: many of these laws were not subject to any form of meaningful scrutiny in this Parliament and may have been imposed against the will of the Government. The way we progress on them needs to reflect that fundamental reality.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Statement and the fact that my noble friend is here to give it. I very much welcome the report. I was astonished, when I was a new MEP 21 years ago, by how much big corporations lobbied for precisely these kinds of regulations, almost always because they saw an opportunity to disadvantage a rival by getting standards that they happened to follow anyway. Of course, they did not put it in that way— they would call it consumer rights or environmental protection—but that is almost always what it was, and it is wonderful that we are finally doing something about it.
Does my noble friend agree that the same principle should apply to our trade policy? Does he share my concern that the Trade Remedies Authority’s recommendation to remove some of the steel tariffs brought in by the European Union in retaliation against Trump was overturned? Does he see the same possibility of politics overriding economics, and does he believe that a global Britain should be an engaged, free-trading country where imports are cheap, costs are low and people have more money to spend on stimulating the entire economy?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I do believe those things. I have two points in response. On industry support for regulation, one reason that we intend to set up our standing commission is to make sure that we can listen not just to trade associations and big companies, important though they are, but to small and medium-sized enterprises, the people who gain from change and doing things differently, as well as those who gain from things being as they are. On free trade, of course I am a free trader. I believe that this country prospers by free trade; I think the whole Government believe that. On steel, obviously there is a particular situation in the global market in steel which has been discussed elsewhere, but, as a general proposition, we wish to reduce barriers, reduce tariffs, get in place free trade agreements and allow everyone to prosper.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Minister referred to medicines and the MHRA in his Statement. Can he give your Lordships’ House assurances that the issues around the delivery and supply of medicines to Northern Ireland will be resolved in an amicable manner with the European Union? When do the Government expect to bring forward legislation to deal with that issue?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we set out our view on that in the Command Paper. It is obviously right and essential that people in Northern Ireland have the same access to medicines as those anywhere else in the United Kingdom, and we intend to ensure that. We think the best way would be to remove medicines from the protocol entirely, and that is what we still hope to be able to agree consensually but, as we have made clear, the tests for using Article 16 are met, safeguards are justified and this is obviously an area where there is a matter of the state’s responsibility to all our citizens. The actions we take need to be seen in that context.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement from the Minister. It is one of the reasons millions of people all over the country voted to leave the European Union. I want to ask him about the timescale, because I worry that sometimes reviews get stuck at the bottom of some civil servant’s tray. I would like to make sure that this comes back to us very quickly and that we see the results of leaving the European Union as soon as possible. I ask him to say something about the timetable.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, there is a complex list of proposals, consultations, ideas for legislation, specific plans for legislation, and so on, so it is hard to generalise. However, I wish to be clear that we intend to pursue all this urgently. That is why it is my responsibility as a Cabinet Minister to make this happen, over and above the departmental responsibilities that other Secretaries of State have. We certainly intend to pursue the review of EU law extremely urgently so that we can deliver results and make a difference rapidly.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s Statement and, like him, I welcome the call from the Labour Front Bench for even more ambitious deregulation. It is healthy that there should be this competition between the two sides to improve and update our legislation, which we had no opportunity to do when we were in the European Union. I suggest that the way to move forward now, on top of the excellent TIGGR report, is to go back to the original briefs that Ministers were given when these directives were being negotiated. Invariably, they said, “Minister, we don’t really want this, but the best thing to do is to try to get it amended a bit here and a bit there”—and, if possible, a bit more than we actually got. If nothing else, there would be a guide to changes we can make just by going back to those briefs.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I very much welcome that suggestion from my noble friend. It is an extremely good one and a reminder that in many cases, Governments of both parties opposed proposals that have now become law and to which we are supposed to reconcile ourselves. I will certainly take that up and see what we can find—within the limits of Civil Service record-keeping capacity, which may impose some limits on what we are able to do.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the issue with the protocol in Northern Ireland is not necessarily its operation but its existence; that is the basic problem. Will he confirm that large swathes of the law that he proposes to amend and change will not be possible in Northern Ireland? We had evidence at our committee yesterday to that effect. The gap between the two parts of the United Kingdom will increase, not decrease, as this process goes on.
Lord Frost (Con)
This is obviously a very significant issue and why we put forward the proposals that we have in the Command Paper to try to deal with the problem. Our proposals for dual standards for goods circulating in Northern Ireland and a different way to manage the governance of the arrangements would, we hope, deal with the anomalies that exist, but, of course, they remain to be negotiated. It is a very significant difficulty which we have debated frequently and hope to resolve.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I am not used to this unarmed combat. Will the Minister update the House on the work of the Partnership Council? It held its first meeting on 9 June, since when we have heard nothing. This is despite the series of difficult issues that the council is meant to resolve following our departure from the EU, not least the recognition of professional qualifications. This body has the appearance of being the “long-grass council” where the issues that the Minister has failed to resolve will be left to fester.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I am certainly happy to update the House. The Partnership Council met before the summer, as the noble Lord noted. I would expect it to meet again before the end of the year. It is of course the supreme body of a complex substructure and the specialised committees have been meeting. Those that have not will meet over the rest of this month and in October, and will provide proposals and ideas to the council. So, although it may not be as visible as we would wish, there is a huge process under way that is designed to look at difficulties and, we hope, find ways of resolving them, including the question of qualifications that the noble Lord mentioned.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, the issue of taxation without representation is becoming a bigger problem every day for Northern Ireland. These suggestions and proposals by the Minister, which are very welcome in many respects, simply cannot be applied to Northern Ireland. He must recognise the urgency of this situation. The EU is trying to kick the can down the road until after the Assembly elections next year. Will he act within the very short timeframe that we now have if stability is to be restored and proper democratic accountability for laws made for Northern Ireland introduced?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, we certainly recognise the urgency of the situation and very much share the noble Lord’s anxiety on this question. The relative stability in Northern Ireland is because our Command Paper proposals are regarded as a good set of proposals that are capable of resolving the problem. Obviously, it is one thing to put them forward and another to see them implemented, so we absolutely need to have a meaningful negotiating process with the EU, which we do not quite have yet, to see whether we can resolve the issues centrally and to know that quickly. If we cannot do so, as I have said, other ways forward are possible.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Statement by my noble friend. Can he assure us that the Government will be able to respond quickly in certain areas when problems arise unexpectedly—not least on the issue of lorry drivers, which is perhaps a good example at the moment, and the requirements of the CPC regulations? For some lorry drivers who recently retired and are unable to go back into the industry because they do not have CPC regulation, would one of the solutions not be to allow them to operate within the United Kingdom without that regulation if they have a long record of driving safely?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has of course set out proposals in this area, and I am confident that they will deal with the situation over time. My noble friend’s general point is a good one. There is often a tendency to dismiss problems until they are evident, rather than get ahead of them. A degree of responsiveness, perhaps, via our standing commission—but not only through that—should help us to reap the benefits of the ability to move quickly, which we did not have in the European Union.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, what would the Minister regard as the essential benchmark of success for the reforms he set out today in a year’s time?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the purpose of these reforms is, in the long run, to improve the productivity of the UK by putting in place regulations that are tailored to our conditions, rather than the average. So the goal of this Government is to improve productivity, growth and prosperity for everybody after Brexit. That is obviously one of the metrics on which the British people will make their judgment when the time arises.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that the business community, which faces considerable pressures on costs and competitiveness, will be pleased to hear about the standing commission and the opportunity to address regulatory issues. However, will my noble friend add something about the Government’s quantified objectives in this regard? Last year, not including the effects of Covid, Brexit or Grenfell, regulation on business increased by £5.7 billion while the Government’s target was a net-zero increase. So what kind of objectives are the Government looking for in this regard, and will he and the Government confirm the importance of independent verification of that by the Regulatory Policy Committee?
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, the matters that my noble friend raised in his question are germane to the consultation on the regulatory framework, which I touched on and which obviously is still open—so I do not want to get ahead of that. I certainly very much agree with his general proposition that there is a kind of dead weight that tends to move in one direction, and it takes a lot of effort to push back against it and improve regulatory conditions overall. As I said, the possibility of “one in, x out” is one way of doing that, but there are other ways, and we are looking into how Governments around the world, including national sub-states and so on, have achieved this—so we will have more to say on that question.
Net-zero Carbon Emissions: Behaviour Change
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Blackstone
That this House takes note of the role of behaviour change in helping the United Kingdom to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as set out in the report by the Climate Change Committee Reducing emissions: 2021 Progress Report to Parliament, published on 26 June; and of the case for a public engagement strategy to facilitate this.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, I applaud the Government’s commitment to net-zero carbon by 2050 and appreciate that they are working to try to achieve a successful outcome to COP 26 in November. However, I am not confident that they have done enough yet to engage the public in order to facilitate the behaviour change necessary to reduce emissions. I want to set out the case for doing so, following the valuable report to Parliament of the Climate Change Committee at the end of June.
I begin by briefly summarising what the CCC said. It argued that 62% of measures needed to reach net zero required changes to public behaviour. However, there is currently no centrally led strategy. Although there is high public support for action on climate change, research suggests that there is a lack of understanding about the actions that need to be taken and the urgency required. I understand that the Government’s net-zero strategy is to be published imminently to precede COP 26. My first question to the Minister is whether it will definitely include a public engagement strategy, and, if so, whether it will be genuinely cross-departmental. People will need to change their lives in relation to transport, heating their homes, diet and more general problems of consumption.
There also needs to be a higher level of public understanding and involvement in shaping decision-making, without which success in reaching net zero is unlikely. There is, of course, a role for employers, and business in particular, as well as for local government, the print—and especially the broadcast—media, and the education system. However, the Government need to take the lead. They must also take on those who irresponsibly are purveying false information and scare stories about the negative impact of climate change measures on people’s lives.
It is often helpful to learn from what other countries are doing. For example, can the Minister tell the House whether the Government have assessed work on climate change assemblies undertaken in Scotland, as well as France and Denmark, which have involved their citizens in climate policy-making. What other international initiatives can he tell us about that we might draw on? Clearly the fight against global warming is international and no country is exempt from the challenges it poses.
Concern about climate change is higher in the UK than in many other countries, with 80% of the population recording such concern. However, at the same time, when asked about net zero in March this year in a BEIS survey, only 14% indicated that they knew a lot or a fair amount about it. It is worrying, too, that only 51% of the UK public think that climate change is either entirely or mainly caused by human activity. Moreover, they tend to pass the buck and seem to think that responsibility belongs to others rather than themselves.
Only 26% of those asked had made any change in their behaviour. Even when people want to act, there are worrying misconceptions about the most effective ways to do so. While around 50% of those surveyed were aware that saving on energy consumption at home was a step that they can take, far fewer were aware of the value of eating less meat and fewer dairy products—15% and 6%, respectively—nor of the size of the impact that this could have. Changing our diets is urgent in order to free up land to sequester carbon.
A recent report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change reinforced the importance of focusing on a relatively limited number of changes in behaviour that have the most impact. One of the three measures that it cited was eating less meat. The others were reducing our car travel and our flying. A common misunderstanding, not just in the UK but many other counties, is that recycling is very effective. Though there are of course good reasons why we should recycle, it comes some way down the list for reaching net zero.
If far too few of our citizens are well informed about the actions needed to counter climate change, what must the Government do? Above all, they must engage the population, including those who are hard to reach. They should find ways to bring people together to discuss the challenge that we face and how to address it. One small example, close to home, is the citizens’ assembly that was run last year by six House of Commons Select Committees. It showed that, when problems and solution are discussed with members of the public, for the most part they support making changes.
Starting with pupils at school, only this week research on young people’s attitudes showed how concerned they are about climate change and how anxious they are about the survival of the planet. Three-quarters said that they are frightened about their survival and their future. It is noteworthy that 80% of those participating in the parliamentary assembly that I just mentioned thought that climate should be a compulsory subject in all schools. Can the Minister tell us what the current position is on the national curriculum regarding coverage of climate?
We must build on the positive mindset of young people, giving them the tools to take the action needed to stop further rises in temperature. Little progress can be made unless teachers feel confident about their own competence and knowledge in this area. There is evidence that many of them want more training. In a survey this year of 7,500 teachers, 70% said that they had received none. Knowledge alone is not enough. They must learn about best practice in learning approaches and how to convey to young people a sense of their own potential to be part of the solutions, as well as how to be ambitious and resilient in responding to the challenges. What resources are being put into initial and in-service training to help teachers rise to this task?
The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill is an excellent opportunity to address behaviour change among college students. The same issues apply to them as to their parents, such as the forms of transport that they use in their daily travel, where there are choices available to them. In addition, there is a need for FE to provide courses that will create the skills needed in a green economy and to make their students aware of the job opportunities available to them if they acquire these skills. More attention must also be given to phasing out qualifications that make no contribution to the net- zero economy. Just as schoolteachers need improvements in their preparation for curriculum initiatives on climate issues, so too do college lecturers, especially in specific areas such as decarbonising heat in homes. Please can we have a skills strategy from the Government to power the transition to green technologies?
The work needed to put in place targeted public engagement costs money, especially to reach those groups who feel socially and economically excluded, who do not typically take part in discussions about public policy and indeed are rarely invited to do so. Back in June, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, asked the Minister about spending and when figures would be released. The reply was, “in due course”. Has due course been reached, and can the Minister tell the House what the budget is for public engagement? It is all very well accepting the Government’s words that
“Public engagement can help build awareness, acceptability, and uptake of sustainable technologies … over the long term and can also help improve the effectiveness of policies”,
but they must will the means to do this as well as aspiring to it. Would it be too much to ask the Government to create a national debate on the contribution that each and every one of us can make to countering climate change and reaching net zero? In every city, town and village, invitations might go out to join community discussions around a short paper setting out what the options are.
I hope that the Minister will respond positively and be willing to set in motion an approach of this kind, which might be announced at COP 26 in November. At the last global conference, the Paris Agreement stipulated that measures should be taken
“to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information”.
Having done far too little since then, we now have the opportunity to take the lead at COP and, in doing so, particular emphasis should be placed on public participation. This can be done in the context of the UN’s action for climate empowerment, which commits all nations to engaging their citizens on climate change. At present, Governments are not measured on their commitments and there is a lack of infrastructure and no monitoring or reporting process, according to the charity Climate Outreach. If the Government could take the lead by announcing a comprehensive and radical approach, and in doing so get public engagement with climate change much higher on the international agenda, that would be a triumph. Let us try to be a world leader in this area.
Within the UK, we must evaluate and monitor our progress in getting the public participation that the Climate Change Committee espouse. Can the Minister say what the Government propose to do in this respect? It is vital to understand the barriers that may emerge, to know what forms of communication work best, who the best people to promote public dialogue are and how to get people debating together about what they as individuals can do, avoiding the feeling that they are being talked at or just bombarded with information.
My last point is the value of trust. Increasingly, there is an absence of trust in Government and a denigration of politicians. There is a need to build trust in the messages that are sent. To do so, the messengers must be perceived to have integrity and must demonstrate that they themselves are committed to individual action on climate change. The upside of any debate on tackling climate change is that it is not largely about party politics. We can and should put political differences aside and unite to meet the expectations and hopes of young people, to save the planet and to engage the hearts and minds of our citizens in doing so. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness for bringing this topic to the Chamber this afternoon and for her excellent speech.
Up to now, most of the adaptations and changes required to reduce carbon emissions have been done to us, or for us, by the Government or have been as a result of business decisions. For example, all the changes in the means of production for energy have been done for us. We have hardly been aware of those changes—unless, of course, like me, noble Lords have solar panels on their roof. Only now are we starting to get to the more difficult bits, such as starting to change how we heat our homes.
There are exceptions. For example, we have adapted to paying for plastic bags; as a result, we use far fewer of them. Most of us could talk at length about local recycling schemes, the differences between them and the benefits of some of them. However, the lessons of those two examples are that it takes a long time to bed in change in our behaviour. We face a climate emergency. The big question is: is 2050 early enough for net zero? There is real doubt about that. The answer? Probably not. The longer it takes to start, the more radical the changes must be.
In the time I have, I will concentrate on transport because it is the single biggest sector for CO2 emissions. It is also the only sector where, in recent decades, emissions have not fallen despite technological improvements. Earlier this summer, the Government produced a welcome transport decarbonisation plan. Unfortunately, it started with a complete fallacy. It said that we can carry on doing everything we currently do and that technology will make the changes we need to reach net zero. This argument was even applied to aviation.
The problem with transport is that we all want to travel more, not less. The pandemic has given us pause for thought and demonstrated that a lot of our travel can be avoided. During the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about finding new, healthy and environmentally friendly ways in which to live and work. Now that the Government think the pandemic is over, their rhetoric has immediately pressed us to get back to the office despite the fact that we have demonstrated that we can do a great deal of work without being in the office. Fortunately, many employers and employees are resisting this, but trains, the Tube and buses are crowded again and our roads are very congested, with traffic volumes up to and beyond pre-pandemic levels because people are now reluctant to use public transport. We were beginning to see the switch to public transport, but that has regressed.
There is a saying: “Never waste a crisis.” The danger is that the Government will waste this one by not seizing the moment and not capitalising on the pause that the pandemic created. There is every reason to review, for example, business travel because Zoom can do much of it without the same waste of time or CO2. There are major opportunities for change, but we are also at a dangerous point because we are no longer bound to the EU where the rules have set world standards for so long. We must not allow ourselves to slide back from that.
Specifically, there is the problem of time lag. Vehicles manufactured today will still be on our roads in 20 years’ time. The time lag is even greater for buses, planes and ships. The Government need to influence what we buy and use now. We are buying enormous modern SUVs. The Government also need to influence how we drive them. We need information so that we understand all the implications of our behaviour. All social revolution needs this; it needed it for drink-driving, seatbelt-wearing and smoking. We must have government information backed up with regulations to give us a nudge. We need taxation to encourage us not to buy SUVs, to ensure that aviation tax is reformed and to discourage frequent flyers. We need regulation change; for example, to encourage us to drive more slowly.
We face an emergency, and emergencies require urgency. The rain is falling on the ice caps now. Belgium as well as Bangladesh face people dying in flash floods. It is not enough to plan for tomorrow. The Government need to plan for today, utilise the expertise of our universities, our scientists and throughout the Civil Service, and ensure that we have an effective public debate.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on the extreme timeliness of her Motion, amid the final preparations of the build-up to COP 26 in November. I declare my related interests in energy issues, as set out in the register.
Currently, I see two major public behavioural barriers to addressing successfully the dangers of climate change and extremism. One—noble Lords can read about it in this morning’s papers—is exemplified by Extinction Rebellion and its associates. Frankly, they have done untold damage to the climate cause here, hurting a lot of people quite unnecessarily along the way.
The second, more serious, barrier, or problem, is the ocean of wishful thinking that still surrounds the preparations for COP 26 and the UK’s own net-zero goal, as well as the priorities being urged by the Climate Change Committee. Our net-zero goal, if it can be achieved, will of course have no direct impact on rising world emissions; we are brave but too small for that. That is just a statistical fact. Furthermore, the “zero” applies only to the production of carbon and not to the swathes of carbon embedded in the CO2 we import and consume instead of generating it here, as authorities such as the excellent Professor Dieter Helm constantly remind us.
The theory, I know, is that, by going all out for UK net zero, which might be attainable in the UK at considerable cost and hardship, we will set an example, offer a model for others and gain moral standing. The fact is rather different. The fact is that global emissions are all set to resume a rapid rise anyway after the year’s pause of the pandemic because, for most of the major emitting nations and regions, while they may note—even admire—our efforts, development and the escape for millions from poverty are the absolute priorities. For China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Brazil, to name but a few, these are goals from which they deviate at their peril. Of course, that is why we can see that some of these countries have rejected the COP 26 wording for an end to coal generation.
As a consequence—this must be faced as a reality—world demand for oil, gas and coal will inevitably continue to grow in the years ahead, thanks mainly to the Asian and African utilities. For the advanced economies, the best path to curbing soaring emissions of carbon and of methane, which is an even worse greenhouse gas, lies in a different direction to the one we are currently being enjoined to pursue in this country.
The Climate Change Committee asserts that, for us, net zero is compatible with our climate interests and targets. That is definitely not so under present policies. As the emissions figures clock up—as they will—going flatly in the opposite direction of the Paris goals, which require not just levelling but falling numbers, there will be considerable frustration and anger. Talk of betrayal will come not only from the likes of Greta Thunberg.
Legally binding reduction targets, extracted with huge effort by COP 26, will be washed aside by reality, simply because Governments in the big emitting countries, although they may have serious carbon-reduction targets, have no choice but to press ahead with power supply expansion by the quickest and, in many areas, the cheapest available means, including by using the sunk capital in their present energy systems. If we can offer a useful model to assist them in escaping this trap and decarbonising their entire energy grids, it must be built around a massive technology input, showing how all the smoking chimneys of Asian and African electric power, and all the coal stations, current or planned, could be retrofitted or capped with carbon capture swiftly and affordably, allowing an expanding flow of plentiful cheap energy to continue. This is the essential ingredient of sustainable growth.
I note, finally, that many of our own green voices are actively against carbon capture from burning oil, coal and gas, just as they are actively against the search for cheaper nuclear power. That eliminates two of the main means of checking global emissions growth. This is not progress; it is going backwards towards certain failure. Demand for fossil fuels worldwide will grow further before it falls.
If we are truly serious about averting climate catastrophe, we should be looking in other directions. Time does not allow me to expand on those: they are available, possible and should be tackled honestly. The COP 26 planners should be looking at these areas, instead of trying to pull together the shaky bandwagon of net-zero commitments, which will not—indeed cannot—materialise without fundamental changes in our policy direction and in the whole of Asia. Nothing short of that will do. Perhaps it is time to be honest, change direction and thereby remove a big barrier of misunderstanding and misdirection for genuinely lasting success for the forthcoming COP 26 conference in Glasgow and our national contribution to the climate struggle ahead.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on securing this debate on such a vital topic and setting out the issues so comprehensively. It is increasingly recognised that the equation of human advancement with economic growth has been catastrophic in fuelling the climate crisis, and that tackling this crisis will require not just technological and scientific innovations, but considerable shifts in the way we behave. We must all consider the implications of our choices and actions on societies beyond our shores and lifetimes and put ourselves in the shoes of future generations when choosing how we act in the here and now.
Encouraging and maintaining these changes in behaviour will require much more than just a laying-out of the logic. Sustained behaviour change will involve calls on our imagination, compassion, creativity and ability to empathise. If ever there was a time to “only connect”, it must be now and on this issue. We will need to combine the prose and the passion, the heads and the hearts, if we are to achieve the change we need at the speed required.
The obvious place to start is with education, and yet the presence of climate change in primary and secondary school curricula is, at best, limited. Where it exists, teaching generally takes place within natural sciences, explaining the devastating impact of human activity and the potential consequences of rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and increasing sea levels. Yet climate change cannot be seen in isolation from the social, political, cultural and economic, all of which are absent from climate education. This is problematic, not least because this broader agenda would offer routes for young people to study potential solutions, rather than to focus on the catastrophic.
Research has found that this focus on fear and disaster can lead to a growing sense of hopelessness and panic in young people, with a poll last year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists revealing that 57% of child and adolescent psychiatrists have seen patients who are distressed about the climate crisis and the environment. While these responses are normal, to some degree, a balance needs to be struck in which education about the consequences of climate change is matched with a focus on solutions, empowering children to respond positively and with hope.
Julia Bentz, from the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes at the University of Lisbon, suggests that this is where the arts and humanities can play a critical role. Arts-based learning about climate offers space for experimentation, perspective taking and the co-creation of imaginative solutions. It can help to transform emotions away from fear and towards hope, responsibility, care and solidarity. Evidence shows that this kind of arts-based engagement, from an early age, has a greater chance of leading to pro-environmental behaviours and attitudes. Despite this potential, climate change is rarely integrated into the curricula of arts subjects.
This disconnect between arts and science extends beyond education into the ways we think about research and innovation, with a persistent dominant view that science alone will deliver solutions to our most pressing challenges. The current HMRC definition of research and development reflects this view; it specifically excludes the arts, humanities and social sciences, and therefore excludes them from associated tax relief too. This misses the important opportunity for scientific and technical advances to be informed by insights into human behaviour, social norms and culturally appropriate communication, which reduces the likelihood of new technologies being adopted at the rate or scale required.
The AHRC’s Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, backed by a wide range of sector bodies, has called on the Government to amend their definition of R&D to drop this explicit exclusion. Can the Minister say, in winding up, how the Government will respond to this call following their consultation on R&D tax credit schemes? Acknowledging that the definition of science includes the systematic study not just of the nature and behaviour of the physical and material universe, but of humankind, culture and society would be a valuable step towards the integration of technological and behavioural advances that will be vital, if the UK is to reach its target of net zero by 2050.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for the opportunity of this debate. I have just finished reading a book about wilding in the UK, and it is a classic story of how difficult it is to change a culture, attitudes and expectations from deeply embedded practices and convictions, in this case about how we manage our land—which was appropriate, with the Environment Bill this week. The same difficulty applies in this debate, which is less about government policy and more about how we, as citizens, choose to live.
My main point, in discussing the role behaviour change can play in helping us towards net-zero carbon emissions, is this: it is essential that our expectations are aspirational, but also realistic. They need to apply to all people. It is my fear that the poorest 10% will be left not just behind, but feeling that they are part of the problem, when they would rather be part of the solution.
So far, the behaviour changes we wish to see have been inaccessible to many on low incomes, simply because they cost much more. I believe cars that are powered without petrol or diesel are the future, and I hope to see a mix of financial incentives and legislation to encourage their uptake and so change our choices, but they remain considerably more expensive in outlay and then do not hold their value. A petrol car is cheaper and easier to sell on and, if I live in accommodation without a driveway, is considerably easier to fill with the required fuel. So it is for other goods, such as locally grown organic food, which remains more expensive than highly processed food grown out of season abroad. Similarly, I have complete sympathy with any working single parent who decides to shop for the cheapest school shirts money can buy, instead of those made of fair-trade cotton. Food, clothing, travel—all these remain prohibitively expensive for some. When we seek to change the behaviour of the whole population, we must consider how we might incentivise with price reductions or even subsidise these things to make them accessible to all.
Also, the industries that employ people on lower incomes must be those we seek to incentivise, and possibly most strongly penalise when they fail to make the necessary changes. Manufacturing, food production, aspects of the gig economy: these are all sectors that will have to put their greenhouses in order or presumably risk facing sanctions designed to force a change in behaviour. Wages could be pushed down and jobs could even be lost to pay for the necessary changes in production and carbon offsetting, and the burden will be borne by those at the bottom of the pay scale.
Finally, it feels that every time I am here I bring up the same matter. I follow the focus of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, which is that public transport in the north of the country remains inadequate, particularly between the big cities and most especially for those on low incomes who need it most. It is essential for the change of behaviour we seek, and for the sake of the climate, that funding per head on transport infra- structure is, to use Her Majesty’s Government’s phrase, levelled up.
One should not be surprised to find out that spending on transport infrastructure is higher in London than in any other part of the country, but that spending per head is so considerably higher in the capital than in the north of the country is less easy to comprehend. Indeed, I recently read that it is twice as much per head than in the north-west and more than three times as much as in Yorkshire and the Humber. How can people be expected to change their behaviour and choices if the opportunity is not given them to do so? Without proper and fair investment in greener ways to travel, reliance on road travel will only increase, especially after the pandemic, which still impacts the numbers who use our trains, trams and buses.
In summary, the blend of incentives and penalties I have heard suggested will be essential in helping us all change our behaviour, which is incredibly important and very possible as we seek to reach net-zero carbon emissions. However, we must do it in a way and a manner that does not leave any constituency behind. Lack of financial means should not prevent some sharing the journey to net zero. I mentioned the book I read just recently, in which the quote is given: you can’t be green if you’re in the red.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I commend him for reminding us how important it is to consider first those at the bottom of the pay scale; I thank him for that.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Blackstone and thank her for instituting and introducing this important debate on the role of behaviour change and the case for a public engagement strategy in helping us to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. She made an excellent and comprehensive speech, which has already been commended. I hope the Minister will respond positively to it, as she asked him to do.
I thank all the organisations that have circulated briefing papers to speakers and more broadly. They are all of value and, like the excellent Library and Peers for the Planet briefings, have increased my knowledge and contributed to our debate even before a word had been spoken in the Chamber. On that point, let me take just a few seconds to repeat a suggestion that I have made twice before in the context of debates in your Lordship’s House.
I cannot do justice to any of the briefings—I have no intention of going through the many proposals they suggest; we can all read them for ourselves—but they contain many good points and, as the focus of this debate is on public engagement, I ask again: can we not open a web-based portal for every debate, or at least some, which would allow people who wish to engage with us to post their briefings in real time and have them preserved with the official record of the debate, and would expand the debate out into society? It would create a much more inclusive context for our work and allow us a significant amount of outreach too, given that we are constantly seeking ways to make our deliberations more relevant to a wider audience.
According to the CCC report, three-fifths of the measures required to get to net-zero emissions will require at least some degree of behavioural and social change. However, as Lorraine Whitmarsh, professor of environmental psychology at the University of Bath, commented:
“But this only factors in changes in consumer behaviour, such as switching from petrol to electric cars, or gas boilers to heat pumps.”
The list is endless; it has already been covered substantially in contributions. She continued:
“This is a very narrow definition of behavioural and social change. People are not only consumers—they are citizens, parents, members of communities, employees, employers and political actors.”
I add to that that people are company directors, politicians and Ministers. One view is that the truth may be that all the measures required to get to net zero depend on behavioural change by people.
As I have already said, I cannot do justice to any or all of the briefings I received, but for the rest of what I am going to say I will concentrate on the issue of trust, because that is about our behaviour—not just that of Ministers but of parliamentarians. I was struck by the last bullet point in the Climate Outreach briefing I received, which says:
“The public takes strong cues from government action so policies and government spokespeople”—
I would add parliamentarians—
“need to be seen as being in tune with the action being asked of individuals.”
The heading that it gives is that the Government needs to be in step.
Regrettably, at a micro level the Government, and probably many of us, have recently had problems in this area. The sight of a Cabinet—at which there were at least 27 senior members of the Government sitting close together around a table without face masks—agreeing that a key message to deliver to the people is to wear a mask in crowded settings was not helpful, nor is the regular drumbeat we have of Ministers and others being embarrassed by being asked simple questions such as, “What sort of car do you drive?” This is really important, and all of it is very good fun at this level, but at the macro level there is an important issue. If people are to be persuaded to change their personal behaviours, Governments, leaders and we must inspire confidence that we are tackling the larger and more difficult challenges—and we are comprehensively failing to do that. We regularly say that the Government’s primary responsibility is their duty to protect citizens. We have to be really careful that asking individual citizens to bear the burden of a substantial share of global warming does not reverse that relationship, moving responsibility from the protectors to those who should be protected. Part of the public engagement strategy must be empowering citizens to hold their Governments to account for their responsibilities, first and foremost.
A relatively recent report from the Carbon Disclosure Project—now known as the CDP—found that just 100 companies were responsible for 71% of global emissions since 1988 and that a mere 25 corporations and state-owned entities were responsible for more than half of global emissions. Mostly these are fossil fuel companies, and China is responsible for a disproportionately large share of global greenhouse gas emissions due to its coal production and consumption. A few countries and companies are responsible for so much of global greenhouse gas emissions that our first response should be, at business and government level, to ensure that people take responsibility for curbing industrial emissions. That should be our priority.
This is not to say that individuals cannot do things. They can, of course: we have heard about them and there are lists of them. Every contribution helps, but we must be careful not to get to the point where these failings are considered morally blameworthy. In particular, individuals living in poor countries who have contributed almost nothing to climate change deserve the most support and the least guilt.
I repeat that the most effective change in behaviour will be to empower citizens to hold those who are responsible for climate change accountable for their actions. That is why a successful COP 26 is so crucial. Unfortunately, I am not very confident that it will deliver.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on this debate; I wish we could have this sort of debate every day. It is absolutely true, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, that our young people are terrified. We need to talk solutions. I try to offer solutions in this Chamber, but I am afraid that the Government simply do not understand the urgency. This is an emergency and a crisis, and the Government are not stepping up. For all their fine words, they do not measure up to the task.
Most of us here in this Chamber will die of old age; that is what I suspect we would all like. By contrast, many of the young people at school today will die from the consequences of climate change: flash floods, droughts, and conflicts brought about by shifting climatic conditions. It is going to be an unstable world—more than it is already.
I will deal with only one aspect of this crisis: sea level rises and their impacts. To some extent, of course, every single person has to do something—behaviour change has to be universal—but I am afraid that the Government have to take the lead on this. The Government can make it easy for people, and at the moment they mostly are not.
In 2007 the IPCC had a worst-case scenario of a 0.5-metre sea level rise in the next 100 years. It was a fairly reassuring analysis that did not include any figures from melting glaciers and ice sheets, because that was not going to happen in anyone’s lifetime. The evidence started to say otherwise, and has rapidly changed with each new report from a satellite or Arctic monitoring station. Every IPCC assessment in the last 14 years has shifted the worst-case scenario much closer to us. The most recent assessment has shifted everything upwards again, but the really terrifying bit is that, due to the IPCC’s rigorous process of analysis, consensus building and governmental oversight, those conclusions are already likely to be out of date.
Any debate we have in this place or the other place needs a new starting point. In the last year, a large section of the scientific community has realised that the models were wrong and that we have lost the 70- to 90-year buffer we thought we had to turn these things around. Things that were not meant to happen until 2100 are happening now. The poles are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet, as receding sea ice reduces the ability to reflect heat back upwards and melting permafrost releases methane that creates a warming cloud of local gases. The decline of the Greenland ice sheet is inevitable. That alone would lead to an estimated 7-metre rise in sea level. To put that into perspective, this House is 6 metres above sea level, so much of London will face regular flooding unless multi-billion-pound mitigation works are undertaken. Even then, it will not stop the flash floods.
When we discuss behavioural change, we are talking about more than switching off the lights when you leave an empty room, not leaving your TV on standby or even buying an electric car. As for all these technological advancements that are going to save our planet, they are not here yet. We cannot rely on something that could be five or 10 years in the future. We absolutely have to deal with what we have now.
We need wholesale change, which requires government to make the choices easy and more obvious for people. For example, the cost of travel by car has declined by 16% since 1997, but the cost of coaches and buses has gone up by a third. Why has the cost of domestic flights gone down by 16% but the cost of a train risen by a quarter? That is the Government sending signals in the wrong direction. When the Government finally put a charge on plastic bags, the result was a huge public switch. They have refused to put a deposit charge on plastic bottles or plastic-lined coffee cups, so the results have been completely different.
Plastic has been the one big growth area of the oil industry, and it nearly all goes in the waste-bin. The oil companies make money out of making it and the waste companies make money out of burning it. The consumers end up paying the long-term cost for something they did not ask for. We need the Government to make the alternatives cheaper and easier to use.
None of this can wait until 2050; we have lost that chance. The fundamental changes to our lifestyle have to be made now. Our biggest challenge is not stopping the Greenland ice sheet melting—that chance has gone—but stopping the massive glaciers of Antarctica slipping into the sea. If that happens, no walls will be high enough.
When our current Prime Minister was Mayor of London, in the first few weeks of his term I wrote him out three simple rules of sustainability, which I will list now in the hope that your Lordships can use them in future. I stood over him and made him read them, and kept them simple so that he could read them quickly. The first was that every single person has to do something. It is not enough to say that we will all do our personal bit; the Government have to do something as well. The second was that you have to make sure that there are no unintended consequences of something you do now; for example, that green airline fuel does not mean we cannot grow food in a certain area. The other thing is that there is no one answer. People always look for a big solution, but it is too big and too complex. Al Gore said there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I totally agree with her that we must have a sense of urgency in taking action now. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for introducing this debate and bringing it to us. It is so important, and I was very impressed with the way she introduced it.
It is self-evident that we will all have to start doing things differently if we are to stand any chance of keeping warming within the aspirant 1.5 degree target agreed at Paris. The Climate Change Committee’s report to Parliament in June this year said that profound changes in behaviour and high-impact action from consumers, workers, households, businesses and citizens are needed to reach the target. However, there is one other crucial sector that has to step up to the plate and change its behaviour if we are to have any success whatever in asking others to change theirs. I am speaking, of course, of Governments.
My remarks will concentrate on the importance of the Government leading by example. Time and again, they have demonstrated that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. All too often, they seem to be engaged in a tug of war. Government departments are pulling in opposite directions. They seem to be acting in a contradictory manner and sending mixed signals to all the other sectors.
Let me take policy on fossil fuels as a glaring example. In its sixth assessment report, published last month, the IPCC makes it crystal clear that fossil fuels must stay in the ground if we are to stay within the 1.5 degree warming limit. The International Energy Agency states in its report Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector that the necessary wide-scale transformation of the sector dictates that reliance on fossil fuels must cease almost completely by 2050.
The IPCC and the IEA are agencies whose reports are underpinned by rigorous scientific evidence, yet the Government appear to be in hock to the fossil fuel lobby. How else does one explain their willingness to toy with giving the go-ahead to the new Cumbrian coal mine and the expansion of the Cambo oilfield to the west of the Shetlands? How else does one explain the report in the Guardian six days ago that:
“Ministers, including the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, held only seven private meetings with renewable energy generators between July 2019 and March 2020 compared with 63 with fossil fuel producers”,
among them controversial biomass interests? When will the Government make it clear that the era of fossil fuels is over in the UK? When will we finally draw a line under the anachronistic MER policy, which says that the UK Government must maximise economic recovery of oil and gas in the North Sea?
Surely tidying up our policy on the extraction of fossil fuels will send a message to countries such as China and India that we mean what we say about being a world leader on climate action. What a fillip it would give to COP 26, which is just a few weeks away, if we were to signal our intent to phase out fossil fuels. The industrial economy based on fossil fuels started here. Let us end it here too.
I am going to give other examples of where behaviour change on the part of the Government is necessary, and where questionable policy changes that they have made ought to be reversed. Why is it that sectors that pollute receive far greater subsidies than sectors that do not pollute as much—for example, road tax and fuel duty freezes versus train and bus fare increases; subsidies that airlines receive on fuel versus train fares; and keeping gas prices low at the expense of cleaner electricity?
Subsidy reform would be a great tool, as a carrot and a stick, to push forward behaviour change. Businesses and consumers will change their behaviour when they see that the Government are also getting their house in order. Indeed, government actions signalling policy certainty are a prerequisite for business to change.
My noble friend Lady Randerson also impressed on us the importance of tackling transport emissions, and I shall end with a few words about a simple, proven, popular and cheap measure that the Government could take which would signal their willingness to encourage the behaviour change needed to get more people out of their cars and walking or cycling instead. Introducing 20 mph speed limits on roads where people live and work has been shown to do just that. Introducing such a limit in one fell swoop would reduce the number of vehicles on our roads, reduce fine particulate matter from brake and tyre wear, reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured and reduce demand on the national grid. Surely this is a measure that is a compelling candidate for encouraging people to embrace behaviour change.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, when we consider the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, the first priority is of course to examine ourselves and our actions before we reflect on the behaviour of others and the institutions and organisations that dictate to the population as a whole.
All of us here are no doubt seeking ways to reduce our own contribution to that pollution, although I admit to not being very good at it. When I recently decided to replace my car, I opted to buy a hybrid vehicle that can be plugged in to give it a greener and greater range. My journeys to London allowed me to feel just a bit better in my conscience—only to be somewhat disappointed on arrival when I found that within the Parliamentary Estate there are no real charging facilities for hybrid or electric vehicles. How can we lecture the country on the benefits of electric vehicles when not only are recharging points around the country currently rather uncertain and inadequate, but legislators do not themselves have such facilities?
In some people’s opinion, even purchasing a new car might be regarded as a negative act. You hear, “What about all the pollution and emissions that are produced in the manufacturing process?” Then there are those who refuse to make any changes in their behaviour and lifestyle because, as they say, “Why should the UK move to net zero, with all the costs and inconveniences, if other countries in the developing world are not?” In a way they have a point, but I happen to think that the situation with climate change and our contribution demands action and that leading the way is fully justifiable as long as we are also willing to help others to follow.
Large countries such as India and China, and even the USA, may well be behind some, but the speed with which they are moving technologically and scientifically ensures that they will catch up and even overtake us soon in this area of policy. Yes, there may still be coal-fired power stations in China, but its embrace of new and greener means of power generation and advanced technology in the field of electronics and electric transport, as well as its use of alternative energy such as solar, wind, wave and hydro power, is progressing at a very fast rate. The resources being committed by China and other developing nations to research, including into hydrogen power, are extensive, and the joint projects between our research institutions and universities and theirs are most likely to produce exciting innovation, all helping us to meet our targets.
I will not talk about COP 26 as there are others speaking today who know much more about the specific aims and programme, but I am proud that the UK is hosting that event.
My remarks so far have been reasonably positive, but even the most sincere declarations and aims of the UK and the international community are pretty pointless unless we gear up our progress. Time is not on our side, and those of us who are now of a certain age must ensure that our actions safeguard the futures of our children and grandchildren.
So where are the problems, and where are the actions after all the promises by government? Where, for instance, is the full heat and buildings strategy? Already, resistance is building up in the media to heat pumps replacing gas boilers and the like. Where is the strategy to get full public engagement and support, as has been referred to by other speakers? It is promised before the COP 26 conference, and we certainly need that to make progress. We also need the extra educational elements put in place for our young people.
Where is the evidence post Covid on the balance between emissions caused by more working from home and non-residential work? Have the Government assessed this, taking into account all aspects, including the inevitable pollution, referred to by a number of noble Lords, caused by attendant travel?
Where is the wholehearted support for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant for our Planet scheme? It is not quite “Dig for Victory”, but it is worthy of support. The campaign reminds us that one tree planted today will remove one tonne of carbon from the air over 40 years.
Where is the real action necessary to roll out effective carbon capture and storage? My region of Yorkshire is a perfect example of where and how such schemes could be used to great advantage, but we have been talking about this for years. When I was MP for Leeds back in the 1990s, a clear plan was provided by the then Conservative Government. It was pushed forward by the new Labour Government, but they did little more. There I was for 17 years, and EU money was available—but what did we actually do about it?
Frankly, there are many areas where we have been promised more and more but nothing has happened. However, I have lots of confidence that my noble friend the Minister, whom I know well, will now assume the role of a modern Action Man. COP 26 will be important, but we need to ensure that all the no doubt fine words that we are waiting to hear from my noble friend a little later, and the promises of Governments of all complexions, are followed up with real and meaningful outcomes.
Finally, I ask: is my noble friend confident that the international structures are now in place to monitor and enforce the outcomes? Is he confident, in the new role that I have given him of our Action Man on the environment, that he can take our citizens with him and with us? That is vital on this urgent mission.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for her introduction and for giving us this debate. I think we need to spend more time on this question because effecting behavioural change, as many of us know, is very difficult indeed.
The biggest change in my lifetime that affected most people was the Second World War, which brought great social changes but also took millions of people off the planet. The next big change that I remember was under Ted Heath’s Government, when we had a three-day week; for the first time in my life we were living without electricity and had candles in the house. That was major behavioural change. The winter of discontent in 1979, which emerged from my old background of the trade union movement, led to a very big change because we got Mrs Thatcher—and without doubt she effected change in the behaviour of the nation in quite a big way.
However, we have now just come out of the biggest change, in my experience, in our behaviour, through Covid. It would be worth while to reflect on what Covid was all about—what its purpose and meaning is. We have not had that debate. My view is that Covid is here to reduce the numbers on the planet. The numbers have gone down, but perhaps not on the scale that might have been anticipated if we had not had agility and the brains to find the vaccines and so on.
However, it gives us a chance to review what gross national product and growth are all about and whether we can continue to grow in the way that we have in the past—or whether this gives an opportunity to reflect and look for a different direction. We have to look at some of the papers that have been produced by the Government on the major issues: what we eat and how we live at home. Covid has left people working at home—should we have more people working at home? I think the party that produces a policy of allowing people to work at home will get a lot of support, which will grow. Factories have disappeared; offices will disappear. Technology is moving at pace. What the mobile phone has done within a short space of time is absolutely phenomenal, and it is getting faster and faster all the time. My faith is in the youth, not in our age group.
I live in an area where we can change nothing. Since 2015, I have been trying to get them to install charging points for electric cars, but we are still no further forward. People have been working from home, and we have roof spaces and attics that can be converted into rooms and used, but no one will permit anyone to have a window to let fresh air or light into these additional spaces. We need to change the tiles on the roofs so that we have solar panels everywhere—yet we have planning rules that completely prohibit that. This all needs to be reviewed, if we are going to start to move in a different direction.
We need to talk about the numbers on the planet as well. This is controversial. Bill Gates raised this some years ago and said that the easiest solution to the world’s problems is to take 3 billion people out. Of course, he quickly withdrew that, but we need to recognise that we cannot continue to grow at the current pace. We are heading for 10 billion people, and it is quite unsustainable. We have to start talking about policies in which people will limit the number of children that they have.
The Chinese are planning: they need a 5% increase in the Chinese population. This would be a phenomenal problem in terms of climate change, so we need to get people at COP talking about the world population and whether we can reduce it. We need free contraception in order to limit this. We also need the rules on abortion that have been introduced and changed during Covid to continue so that there is greater freedom for that from home.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, will be doing, we need to review the end-of-life issue. There was no mercy in watching some of those people die on machines in an awful state. There is nothing Christian about that. We should look for ways in which we can exercise true mercy. If people want to go, they should be permitted to go. We have the technology for it. Millions of people take a sleeping tablet every night because they cannot sleep, and, if people want to end their lives, they should have a right to have a tablet to come to an end, rather than face the awful lives that you can experience when we spend all our time trying to extend life, rather than focusing on the quality of it.
That is the kind of change that we need to try to make, in economic terms: moving more into quality than quantity. There are many areas in which we can do it that would be beneficial and that the people would be willing to embrace, if it was presented in an educational and sensible way. So I hope that we can have something more radical than we have experienced so far in the debate on climate change—because water and fire will take so many people out if we do not take it seriously and move quickly on it.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, I am very happy and glad to support this Motion, and I am equally glad to have listened to and learned from other noble Lords’ speeches on this crucial issue.
There is general agreement that a serious public engagement programme is necessary—every serious institution is urging this—for one simple reason: 62% of remaining emissions reductions will rely, to some extent, on individual choices and behaviour. The key issues of how we travel, what we eat and what we buy are made by not just institutions but individual people in and for their personal lives. They will need to be persuaded of this, brought to see that they have a personal responsibility to respond to it and motivated to do something about it.
So, first of all, people will need to be given accurate information about the challenge and clear guidance about what they, as an individual, might be able to do in response. The background picture that we have at the moment is highly unsatisfactory, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, brought out. People are generally aware about the impact of climate change but misinformed about the main causes of it, hazy about what should be done and confused about how to go about it. Concern about climate change is high: some 80% say that they are concerned and 63% think that changes affecting the UK will continue to do so. However, only 14% indicated that they knew a lot or a fair amount, and overall awareness has decreased, amazingly, over the last year. Only 26% of people asked had made any change in their own behaviour. Particularly concerning is the fact that, while young people are the age group most likely to be concerned about climate change, they are also the age group that is least likely to act upon it. So there is a huge gap between a general awareness of this issue and any kind of meaningful engagement with it by the majority of the population.
For people to be so engaged, the first requirement is clear and accurate information. Leaving aside the deliberate misinformation that is around, there are some basic misconceptions: as we know, many people think that recycling will be a key player in reductions, but, while it is vital for a whole range of reasons, it only accounts for 0.2 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year. Some 50% of people think that using less energy at home is crucial. This is important, but it is actually less significant than reducing the amount of meat eaten. Only 15% think that avoiding meat is a major factor, and only 6% think that eating fewer dairy products is—but the CCC had recommended a 35% reduction in meat and dairy by 2050 if the net-zero target is to be achieved. Few responding to the survey realised that the most important thing that they could do would actually be to have one fewer child, accounting for 58.6 tonnes a year, not own a car, accounting for 2.4 tonnes a year, and avoid one long-distance flight, accounting for 1.6 tonnes a year.
So the first essential thing is accurate information, clearly set out; then, we want people to respond. However, if someone actually wants to do something about it, confusion can quickly set in. For example, try looking up installing solar panels, or switching from a gas boiler to one that emits less carbon dioxide, on the internet, and it is very difficult to disentangle what help the Government might be offering and what a range of commercial organisations are trying to sell you. For a start, I would like to see a short pamphlet sent to every household in the UK with some basic agreed facts about the challenge of climate change, what an individual might do in response and what help the Government might give to help them to respond.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, rightly reminded us of the very serious problem of emissions in the Asian countries, but surely the two approaches—doing what we can in our own sphere and encouraging those Asian countries to move into carbon capture and storage or to alternative forms—are not mutually exclusive. Surely we have a responsibility to do what we can in our own immediate sphere of influence.
Questions to do with diet, use of energy at home, how we travel and what we consume affect us all. Every day, we make decisions in relation to them that will affect the kind of world that our grandchildren and their children will grow up in.
But there is also another area that is surprisingly absent from some of the briefing material that we have been receiving: the use of our savings, if we are lucky enough to have them. How we invest our money is of crucial significance, and I am glad to say that the Church of England actively engages in companies that it invests in, with a policy of disinvesting if certain rates of emissions reductions are not reached by certain dates.
What the Government should do is essential, but this by itself is not enough. As we know, the Government are much less trusted than a whole range of other organisations and people, and they must mobilise that whole range of other organisations and people. A good example of this was the recent joint statement by the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, with its theme, “Choose life”. This is a crucial issue and I very much look forward to the Government’s response.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to contribute to what has been an excellent debate and I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on leading the debate and choosing such a timely moment to do so. I am slightly confused, because I had the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, down as being the action man for the environment, so I hope we are not going to see interdepartmental strife as to who the true advocate for environmental measures in this context will be. But as my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate identified, we are looking to see joined-up government here.
A number of noble Lords have mentioned new boilers in new houses. We have been promised them, but just not yet—I think by 2030. That begs the question of what is going to happen to those new houses that do not have those boilers and at whose cost will refitting the boilers be.
What I took mostly from the introductory remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, was how to involve the public, not just through schools, universities and higher education, but each and every one of us as we lead our daily lives.
My noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate has bought a hybrid. I was foolish enough, 20 or 30 years ago, to buy my first diesel car because the then Government said that this was the way forward and we were all invited to drive not just SUVs but 4x4s. If you live in the rural part of North Yorkshire that I do and want to visit your family at Christmas, 40 minutes away, you often have six inches of snow to go through. With my first purchase of a diesel car, I was then faced with the fact that fuel duty was very high and the car tax had increased, so I am going to let others play guinea pig with the hybrid and electric cars until such a time that we have sufficient power points. I understand the Government are now thinking of turning off the power for powering up electric cars for nine hours overnight; I think that is going to cause enormous problems. I hope my noble friend will take the opportunity from the Front Bench to show that that is not the case.
I have been heavily involved with the issue of flooding, not just as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Water Group but as vice-chair of the Association of Drainage Authorities and, in my previous life, as chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and, before that, as shadow Minister, as well as MP for the Vale of York, which was prone to substantial flooding. I have followed the flooding events that my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, referred to and the impact that floods can have.
What hugely disappointed me this week was that water companies came up with a formula to stop surface water flooding going into the combined drains, foul drains and every form of drain in the event of a major surface water flood and, potentially—as we know happens on many occasions—coming into people’s homes and forcing them out for up to six months while the public health issue of sewage is removed. This was such a simple measure to make homes safer, more resilient and resistant to floods, but we could not even get agreement in the House. I think we have a long way to go in this regard.
I think it was under the Blair Government that there were three reviews: the Cave review on competition policy in water, the Pitt review on flooding and the Anna Walker review on water efficiency. We now have retail competition in water, particularly in Scotland, where it was led, and to a certain extent in England. We have more or less implemented nearly all the Pitt recommendations, apart from the most crucial one of ending the automatic right for water companies to have to connect. This means that, in times of flood, as I mentioned earlier, floodwater and sewage is taken not just into rivers but into people’s homes as well.
The often-overlooked recommendations of the Anna Walker review strike a chord with the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on how it will benefit the public. One of those was a very simple measure to, in a household of, say, four, heat up and use only the water that you need, rather than leaving the hot water on the whole time. I regret that the Walker review never really got any traction and I hope that we can revisit those recommendations.
I live in a deeply rural farming community. Farmers want to play their part and we can help by substituting imports for locally produced food. Here, I would like to give a shout out to Shepherds Purse Cheeses, the makers of which live just across the field from us and are doing a very good job of making sure we eat more Mrs Bell’s Blue rather than Roquefort. So there is a lot that each and every one of us can do.
I end with a plea to my noble friend for more joined-up government between the departments in question: BEIS, Defra and MHCLG. More especially, when we pass legislation such as the Agriculture Act, the Trade Act and eventually the Environment Bill and the planning Bill, we need to ensure that all the recommendations reflect the issues we have discussed this afternoon.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest in the register as chair of the advisory board of Weber Shandwick UK. I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for bringing this important debate and all noble Lords for their contributions to it. As other noble Lords have said, it is particularly timely as we look forward to COP 26 in November, when we as a country have a clear responsibility to show leadership. I also thank all the organisations that have briefed us. I very much endorse the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, for a portal on which all these things could easily be accessed by us—and perhaps more importantly, they could be on the register.
Sadly, on the issue of the public engagement that will be needed to achieve the behaviour change required to achieve net zero, our Government are failing to show leadership in the UK, let alone in the world. Worse, as my noble friend Lady Randerson said, the Government are promulgating the fantasy that we do not have to significantly change behaviour in, for example, transport, because technology will take care of it—the cake-and-eat-it approach. That just will not wash, given what we face.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned, Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement both set out responsibilities on the parties to take to engage their citizens and measures to enhance climate education and awareness. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, made a compelling point on the importance of education in this process.
At this point I want to take on some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. He made an attack on XR, which he said had done untold damage to the issue of the climate. I disagree with some of the tactics of XR, but I understand the reason for them. As I said in the debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill earlier this week, the reason XR and others are taking action on the streets is the reckless failure of this Parliament to take sufficiently urgent action to address the climate emergency, and the years of deniers and now delayers. I also reject his view that we cannot as a country have influence and that it is all somehow hopeless.
In 1940, when Britain stood almost alone against fascism, we did not say, “We cannot do this because it is too expensive, no one else is doing it and we will probably be defeated anyway.” Actually, some people did say that, but thankfully they were not heeded. Instead, we recognised that we faced an existential threat and had to do whatever was necessary to counter it, whatever the cost. We had to lead the world until others stepped forward to join us in the fight. Thank God that approach was taken.
As I have said, lack of public awareness of the scale of the challenge we face and the changes we have to make is a real problem, but there is also a lack of understanding of the benefits that can accrue to our economy and our quality of life. It really is the responsibility of all of us, but particularly of the Government, to take the lead in engaging the public.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
I agree with a lot of what the noble Lord says, but he has not quite understood my message—of course, that is my fault for not having the time or the clarity. The contribution this nation ought to be making is going to be very expensive and very extensive and could be very effective. What I am arguing is that the contribution we are making now—and putting the resources where we are, like removing gas boilers from 27 million homes—is not the way to do it. Vast resources are required to be transferred to the developing world from us—$100 billion has been mentioned and probably at least one nought should be added. It is not a question of not contributing; it is a question of making the right contribution.
Lord Oates (LD)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention and I take his point, but we have to do some of the things in regard to decarbonising our homes as well. We face a vast challenge and we cannot duck any of it. I hope that he therefore very much supports the position of my party and of many Peers in this House, which was absolutely against the cut in the 0.7% of GNI going to those economies that he mentions.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and other Peers have mentioned, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change argued in its excellent report on the role of behaviour change in delivering net zero that we need to focus very much on key measures that people need to take, and not to overwhelm them with all the measures it would be possible to take. Among those are reducing car and air travel and, as other noble Lords have mentioned, a cut in dairy and meat consumption, which is often not understood. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, shared some of the figures that were set out in that report—I think they were BEIS figures originally—on public attitudes and public understanding, and they show a great deal that needs to be done. I think his suggestion of a simple public information document to every household to start this process would be a good thing.
My noble friend Lady Sheehan referred to the Climate Change Committee report that argued that public engagement should be an absolutely key priority for government. According to that report, 62% of measures that are needed to reach net zero require change to public behaviours and we need a meaningful effort to engage across all areas of the country, particularly those dependent on high carbon-emitting industry. We need to ensure that there are a diverse range of messengers giving these messages. They have to be not just us as government or organisations talking down to people; they have to be about interactive communications and participatory engagement.
We all have a role in changing our behaviour—government do, business does and academia does. Perhaps most importantly or very significantly in the business world is the finance industry. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned what we can do, and what organisations such as the Church of England do, in terms of investments, but we really need the finance industry and the regulators to put in place measures to ensure that capital does not continue to be misallocated, as it is now, towards those industries that threaten our climate and instead is allocated to those industries that can help rescue us from the situation we find ourselves in.
The difficulty we have is that, given the importance of behaviour change and given its vital role in reaching the Government’s targets, which the Government acknowledge, it is deeply alarming that the Government appear to have no strategy at all. I reinforce the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone: can the Minister tell us whether such a strategy will be in the net-zero strategy, because it is clearly a priority? We also need to learn from international partners. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned some countries, including a domestic example in Scotland, but our COP 26 partner, Italy, is a leader in public engagement on this subject and we should learn from it. We should also learn from and work with local government, because it is a trusted partner that can help to deliver some of those measures on the ground.
As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn said, we cannot just expect people to change their behaviour if we do not give them the opportunity to do so. There are so many policies that need to change if the Government are to allow people to make the changes they often want to make. You might want to change your car to an EV but you do not have off-street parking and there are no chargers on your street, or if you use a commercial charger, it costs you six times as much as if it is from your domestic electricity supply. There are all sorts of things like that that need to be fixed as well.
We all know that climate change is not waiting on our procrastination; it is taking advantage of it. We also know that public engagement and awareness campaigns cannot be effective overnight, but more often take a period of years, which underscores the urgency of action now. The Government need to get on with this, to correct their lack of strategy and to do so now. They need to show a lead in this country and a lead in the world.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
Once again, this has been a very interesting and stimulating debate with many notable contributions right across the House. Overall, there has been repeated recognition that the achievement of net zero can be accomplished only if it is accompanied by the public embracing behaviour change in their everyday lives. Certainly, the necessity for action is ever more widely recognised and expressed through the ever more frequent reporting of extraordinary weather events all around the globe.
My noble friend Lady Blackstone introduced the debate by setting out the case for a centrally led strategy for engagement in facilitating behaviour change. Many contributions have drawn attention to the many reports from leading agencies. The International Energy Agency has said that behaviour change plays a role in almost two-thirds of emission reductions. The Energy Research Partnership points out that, with motivation through multiple channels, interventions will be required through education, incentives and affordable low-carbon alternatives to change deep-seated habits that become embedded as societal norms. There is no question that the British people, especially our developing young people, are alarmed by the climate crisis and wish to engage.
The Covid-19 pandemic has proved that decisive intervention by the Government, local authorities and agencies can achieve significant shifts in behaviour. By comparison to the pandemic, the effects of climate change have still largely to be felt to affect most people’s daily lives. Behaviour change to embrace a net-zero lifestyle will require a cultural revolution of information-driven decision-making; visible peer pressure equal to the effect experienced following the smoking ban; and strong, coherent government policies across all departments and services.
Various Climate Change Committee reports and commissions from research bodies and universities indicate that more than 40% of the abatement necessary involves some degree of consumer change, through their choices, to reduce demand and improve efficiencies. Many examples have been promoted today. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn is right in his analysis that people want to feel part of the solution and not the problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has identified mixed messages and confusing price signals, which can only bring delay and frustration with unintended consequences. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, spoke of the unco-ordinated right and left hands of government, with its encouragement and subsidy of fossil fuels. Indeed, all of us send signals through our own consumption patterns, as expressed correctly by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. For every pull forward, there arises a push back from another interest lobby.
Perhaps the hardest behavioural change to achieve is that of government itself. The biggest challenge no longer comes from climate deniers; it comes from climate dither and delay. It comes from a scattergun list of points in a plan, instead of a comprehensive set of strategies that sets out all the Government’s policies in a coherent framework. The Minister may claim to have undertaken to address quite a few of these acknowledged gaps, which I respect, from the difficult hydrogen strategy, published in the Recess, to the critically important decarbonisation of transport plan. However, the acceleration of climate change underlines every week the urgency of this decisive decade for change. With five weeks remaining before the opening of COP 26, the Government have yet to publish the equally important heat and buildings strategy, the Treasury’s finance plan and, most critically, the net-zero strategy, where the Minister identified in June that the Government would communicate their approach to public engagement and support the public to make green choices. The Public Accounts Committee identified that the Government have
“no coordinated … messaging about the changes and choices people will need to make”
and identified many critical areas where they needed to engage, from central governance to local authorities, to communicate effectively. The Government need to switch from targets without delivery and rhetoric without the reality that faces households and families in their everyday activity.
The Government can now be congratulated that, in 2019, they finally recognised that international aviation and shipping need to be included in the UK’s net-zero calculations. However, transport remains the biggest source of emissions where the least progress has been made across the country and the most attention by the wider public is needed. The Government have pulled forward the phase-out date for new diesel and petrol cars to 2030 and, in support, the Climate Change Committee has identified that 48% of cars sold by 2025 should be electric vehicles. However, we are currently way off that. In their decarbonisation of transport strategy, the Government reported that less than 15% of cars sold in July this year were EVs. The biggest challenge and barrier to change for an eager population comes from affordability and lack of infrastructure. The CMA has expressed concern about the unequal and patchy rollout of charge points. Policy needs to recognise these barriers, identify enablers and target interventions accordingly, such as tiered vehicle scrappage schemes weighted in favour of essential car users and the lower-paid. Behaviour change modelling needs to become embedded in departmental procedures and policies. What plans do the Government have to meet the issue of affordability to increase the uptake of EVs?
The need for as yet nascent technologies, such as hydrogen, has also been identified as essential for public transport such as buses and trains, and indeed aviation, and is already part of government plans. Hydrogen as a fuel also has applications to the decarbonisation of gas, with a link across to another key area of everyday life, the nation’s housing stock. As working from home has become a clear behavioural change for so many, the opportunity must not be lost from the many aspects of changing work patterns. As far back as 2018, the National Infrastructure Commission identified energy efficiency as a clear imperative in reducing demand and improving homes. It is easily said but, as many Administrations have identified, so difficult to attain. The green homes grant scheme, supposedly so obvious yet rushed in with limited finance and hopelessly short timetables, was doomed to failure. The National Audit Office revealed last week that just 20% of the inadequate £1.5 billion was spent. The total spend on home improvements is anticipated to be £314 million, but with a massive £50.5 million spent on administration. What lessons will the Government draw from this sorry experience? How do they propose to recalibrate their plans for home improvements, and will these be incorporated into and announced along with the heat and buildings strategy?
I have mentioned the hydrogen strategy as vital in the urgency to decarbonise gas in the heating of homes, where progressive regionalised introduction has been identified as the best transitional approach. In setting future dates for the compulsory introduction of hydrogen-ready boilers for all new installations, perhaps the pricing disadvantage inherent in this new option is a key area to be addressed. Will the Minister raise the public’s awareness of the urgency of this transition by mandating all quotations for new boilers to include the hydrogen-ready option alongside the conventional replacement cost?
The alternative of heat pumps is also identified as being more costly than conventional choices. The Government will need clearly to recognise that cost barriers remain high in the public’s mind when embracing renewables and sustainable long-term solutions. The rising cost of energy for this winter and the disruption of the interconnectors from France have received wide- spread notice. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, mentioned the finance industry. With interest rates on mortgages having fallen back to less than 1%, the cost of the net-zero challenge needs to meet this competitive threshold. Does the Minister expect the Treasury’s net-zero finance plans to be ready for COP 26 or more likely to be delayed until the autumn Statement?
The challenges to be faced remain substantive, yet everything is impossible until it happens. Can the Minister give the House an update on the Government’s objective to announce international investment commitments totalling £100 billion per year from developed countries at COP 26? Can he report a successful response from the US, and is China included in this designation? These two nations remain the biggest sources of climate change emissions. What investment in this fund is planned by the United Kingdom Government and how will it be spent, and with what priorities? This initiative would set a serious benchmark towards world- wide progress.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, I want first to express my appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for her excellent contribution and for securing this debate on this extremely important subject. There were some splendid contributions from all sides of the House, and I hope to address as many of the points raised as possible.
There is no doubt that achieving our net-zero target will be a shared endeavour, requiring action from everyone in society—from people, businesses and government. This Government absolutely accept this and are determined for the UK to play its part in upholding the Paris Agreement and our net-zero commitment, particularly in the run-up to COP 26. The Government agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, that net zero can be achieved only through engagement with the public and changing behaviours. As he observed, we are also publishing other world-leading strategies, such as the hydrogen strategy and the transport decarbonisation plan. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that the Government share her concern about the urgency of tackling climate change. I particularly liked her quote that there is no silver bullet and only silver buckshot—I know that she will be opposed to shooting, but I liked the analogy anyway.
In June 2021, the UK Government set the sixth carbon budget at 965 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent, which is a world-leading target which will see a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared to those in 1990. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, pointed out, this is how the Government intend to lead by example on climate change. This target is in line with the latest science, as the level recommended by our expert advisers at the Climate Change Committee, and consistent with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees centigrade. The target would achieve well over half of the required emissions reductions from now to 2050 in the next 15 years.
This is a huge commitment which the Government are working flat out to achieve. Already our emissions are down by almost 44% across the last 30 years, and our economy has grown by 78% in that same period. If the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, does not like the economic growth, perhaps she will like the emissions reductions we have managed to achieve at the same time. The net-zero strategy, which we will publish ahead of COP 26—a number of noble Lords asked me about that—will set out our vision for transitioning to a net-zero economy. This strategy will build on ambitious plans already published in the past 12 months across key sectors of the economy, including the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan, which mobilises £12 billion of government investment, the energy White Paper, the transport decarbonisation plan, the industrial decarbonisation strategy and the hydrogen strategy.
These strategies deliver on many of the recommendations made by Climate Assembly UK, which a number of noble Lords referred to. The assembly called for a green recovery; the 10-point plan is the Government’s plan for a green recovery, delivering high-skilled green jobs. The assembly called for more wind and solar power; we will quadruple the capacity of offshore wind to 40 gigawatts by 2030. The assembly called for a faster transition to net-zero emissions vehicles; we will end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. The assembly called for the Government to invest in low-carbon buses and trains; this plan commits to a £4.2 billion investment in city public transport and £5 billion on buses, cycling and walking. The assembly called for the Government to speed up progress on low-carbon aviation—I know this is of particular interest to my noble friend Lord Kirkhope; this plan commits to research projects for zero-emissions planes and sustainable aviation fuels. The assembly recommended maintaining and restoring our natural environment; our plan committed to £40 million for a second round of the green recovery challenge fund.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn referred to the importance of enabling everyone in society to contribute to achieving the net-zero target. I agree with him. We want to make it easier and more affordable for people to shift towards a more sustainable lifestyle while at the same time maintaining freedom of choice and fairness. These are two of the key principles also recommended by Climate Assembly UK. The Government are already taking steps to do exactly this.
For example, we are continuing to engage with key cycling and walking organisations to develop a behavioural change campaign aligned with our cycling and walking investment strategy action plan. We have funded digital tools that can support people in reducing their carbon footprint, including the Simple Energy Advice service, which can help people reduce energy use in their home, and the “Go Ultra Low” website, which provides information and advice on electric vehicles. We are supporting motorists buying electric vehicles through the plug-in car grant, which provides up to £2,500 for those making the switch to electric cars—I hope my noble friend Lord Kirkhope was able to take advantage of this Government’s generosity for his new purchase. As well as this, in partnership with industry we have supported the installation of nearly 25,000 publicly available charging devices in what is now one of the largest networks in Europe.
The forthcoming food strategy White Paper will build on existing work across government and identify new opportunities to make the food system healthier, more sustainable, more resilient and more accessible for those across the United Kingdom. Defra has also committed to a substantial update of the Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services, which provide a framework of mandatory and best practice standards for public sector procurers. This update will look to strengthen the emphasis on local procurement, SMEs, high procurement standards and sustainable, healthy produce.
Reaching net zero will require not only changes to our energy systems and substantial new low-carbon infrastructure but shifts, as individuals, in how we travel, what we buy and how we use energy in our homes. Given this, we will need to engage with the public on the changes required to deliver this ambition and listen very closely to their feedback. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked whether we could create a national debate on how everyone can contribute to the country achieving net zero, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, stressed the importance of informing people about it. To respond to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, in the net-zero strategy, which will be published ahead of COP 26, we will communicate our approach to public engagement and supporting the public to make green choices.
Many people from all over the UK are already doing their bit on climate change. With the Together for Our Planet campaign we aim to celebrate this and inspire more people to join them. The campaign is building momentum in the lead-up to COP 26 by showcasing how people across the United Kingdom are going one step greener to tackle climate change. We are working across government and with numerous commercial partners. Our 26 “One Step Greener” champions and campaign will show how taking one step can have a positive impact on the environment, encouraging the general public also to do their bit, however large or small. We are also working with small businesses across the UK to support their journey towards becoming greener and more sustainable. This aims to create a mass movement of small green steps across the country in the lead-up to COP 26 to raise awareness of climate issues and launch a powerful legacy campaign to drive long-term behavioural change.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, stressed the importance of empowering citizens to hold the Government to account and share their views. We have already increased our engagement with the public on policies for net zero. Since 2019, we have run deliberative dialogues on a range of net-zero topics, including net-zero societal change, homes and heating, hydrogen and the transport decarbonisation plan. I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that we will continue to monitor and evaluate public engagement to ensure effectiveness. We already track public views on climate change on a regular basis, for example through the BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker, which is published every quarter.
The noble Baroness also asked how we can engage with hard-to-reach citizens. BEIS has commissioned research from the Carbon Trust, with leading academics, which is exploring how the UK can reach net zero in a fair, socially inclusive way. I know this will also be of interest to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. A key part of this will be advice and recommendations on how we best ensure that vulnerable and underrepresented groups can have their voices heard. Furthermore, findings from Climate Assembly UK have formed a valuable addition to the Government’s evidence base on assessing the UK public’s understanding, attitudes and perceptions around net zero.
The noble Baroness also asked whether the Government have assessed work on climate change assemblies undertaken in countries such as Scotland and France. I can confirm that we have been closely monitoring national and local citizens’ assemblies and officials have met the organisers and facilitators of these initiatives. In September 2020, we invited the Climate Assembly UK expert leads to present the assembly’s findings to officials. Over 400 officials attended these briefings.
In the lead-up to COP 26, as I have said, we will publish a comprehensive net-zero strategy which sets out the Government’s vision for transitioning to a net-zero economy, making the most of the new growth and employment opportunities across the UK. My noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked whether the net-zero strategy will include a public engagement strategy. This also addresses the points of the noble Lord, Lord Oates. I confirm again that, through this strategy, we will communicate our approach on public engagement, supporting the public to make green choices. The strategy will mark an important moment, where our priority shifts towards setting out a clear plan for delivery, which will allow us to look beyond COP, outlining a sustained effort to tackle climate change in the longer term.
To address the points raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Bull, the national curriculum provides the knowledge that pupils need to help address climate change in the future, while schools have the autonomy to go into as much depth on these subjects as they see fit. In citizenship, pupils are taught about the wider world and the interdependence of communities within it. At primary school, pupils are taught about what improves and harms their local, natural and built environments. More detailed content on climate change is included in geography and science. Certainly I have been receiving in my postbag an increasing number of letters that children have written in their classrooms. DfE has established a Sustainability and Climate Change Unit, which is preparing a change strategy. This will likely look at topics such as education and skills for a changing world, taking into account net zero, resilience to climate change and how to create a better environment for future generations.
In addition, we established a Green Jobs Taskforce, working with industry, unions and skills providers to advise on how we can develop plans for new, long-term, good-quality green jobs, and support workers to transition from high-carbon sectors. Its independent report, published in July, will feed into and inform our net-zero strategy.
The Government are committed to publishing a heat and building strategy later this year; I think it was my noble friend Lord Kirkhope who asked me about that. The strategy will set a comprehensive set of actions that will set the way for net zero in heat and buildings by 2050, with a real focus on the action needed in this decade to reach our interim targets.
Moving on to transport—a topic raised particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others—we published the first plan in the world to set transport on a path to net zero by 2050: the transport decarbonisation plan. Enabling people to use public transport, to walk or to cycle is one of the plan’s six strategic priorities. Backed by a £2 billion package of investment, we are committed to establishing a world-class cycling and walking network in England by 2040, delivering on the Prime Minister’s bold vision that he announced last summer. This plan also commits that we will deliver a net-zero rail network by 2050, with sustained carbon reductions in rail along the way, by supporting new technologies such as hydrogen or battery trains and removing diesel-only trains. We also want to get more people on to trains, and we are building extra capacity on the network and working with industry to modernise fares, ticketing and retail to encourage a shift to rail.
To address the points raised by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford on international leadership, in addition to the action we are taking at home, we remain committed to demonstrating global leadership in tackling climate change. It is a global challenge and, of course, no country can tackle it alone. There is a clear need for countries across the world to do more. We have strong relationships with key emitters—including India and China—on climate, and we work closely with their Governments on a range of mutually beneficial programmes, with the aim of reducing emissions while also improving their resilience to climate change. Of course, we will continue to push for more ambition globally as the host of COP 26.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, for his views on the quality of life and how net zero will be beneficial for all. He referred to the importance of enabling youth to drive climate action, and I agree: it will be key to listen to their concerns. Therefore, we have a dedicated youth engagement team which is co-ordinating the UK Government’s strategy to ensure that youth voices are heard at COP 26 and in its legacy.
Inclusive public engagement that gives representation to different groups’ diverse needs and interests, as well as their meaningful participation in decision-making, is vital to inform the design and implementation of successful net-zero policies. Public engagement can help build awareness, acceptability and uptake of sustainable behaviours over the longer term. Therefore, we are increasing our work on public engagement on net zero, both in communicating the challenge and giving people a say in shaping our future policies.
I hope I have been able to provide at least some reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister very much for his reply to this debate. He has indeed answered many of the questions put to him. He did not answer one question—of course, there are always some you do not have the time or the information for. I would be grateful if he could write to me and to others who have participated in this debate on what the budget for public engagement in order to change behaviour is—and, if there is not one, when there will be. I asked about this some months ago and was told that in due course we would be given the figures, but we have not been. I would be really grateful for that.
Secondly, I thank everybody who has participated in this debate. I am very grateful to all the speakers, many of whom made excellent contributions to what I think we have agreed is an important subject. There has been consensus around the House for much more effort to be put into changing public behaviour through genuine public engagement. A number of important points were made about the importance of the UK leading the way, which the Minister said we will do. It has also been quite correctly stated by several speakers that time is not on our side and that there is a danger of promising a lot and then delivering too little.
I was particularly glad to hear the Minister state quite categorically that we will monitor and evaluate the contribution the Government are making to developing public engagement and changing public behaviour. I have no doubt that we will want to come back to what the results of such monitoring and evaluation are and will return to this important subject in the coming months.
Arrangement of Business
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, we come now to the next business, which involves a new acronym for us all to get used to: the repeat of a Statement made in the House of Commons today on AUKUS.
AUKUS
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)
My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place:
“Mr Speaker, with permission I will make a Statement about our friendship with Australia and the United States and the security of the Indo-Pacific.
Yesterday I joined President Biden and Prime Minister Morrison to create a new trilateral defence partnership between our countries, known as AUKUS. Australia has, for the first time, taken the momentous decision to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and has asked for our help in achieving this ambition. I am delighted to tell the House that we have agreed to this request and we shall place the UK’s expertise in this field, amassed over decades, at the assistance of our Australian friends.
The first task of AUKUS will now be an 18-month trilateral collaboration to determine the best way of delivering advanced nuclear submarines for Australia, emphasising, of course, that they will be powered by nuclear reactors, not armed with nuclear weapons, so the nuclear non-proliferation treaty places no prohibition on this work.
The House will understand how Australia’s future possession of this capability will help to safeguard the peace and security of the Indo-Pacific. Nuclear submarines are the capital ships of our age, propelled by an effectively inexhaustible source of energy, allowing them to circumnavigate the world without surfacing, and deriving oxygen and fresh water from the sea around them. While on patrol, they keep silent watch over vast expanses of ocean, protecting shipping, gathering intelligence, deterring adversaries, and guarding the trade routes on which our livelihoods depend.
To design, build, operate and then safely decommission a nuclear submarine ranks among the most complex and technically demanding enterprises yet devised. Only six nations possess nuclear-powered submarines, and to help another country join this tiny circle is a decision of the utmost gravity, requiring perhaps the closest relationship of trust that can exist between sovereign states.
I hope I speak for the House when I say that I have no hesitation about trusting Australia, a fellow maritime democracy, joined to us by blood and history, which stood by Britain through two world wars, at immense sacrifice. Today, the UK and Australia defend the same interests, promote the same values and face the same threats: we are as closely aligned in international policy as any two countries in the world, and one of the great prizes of this enterprise is that Australia, the UK and the United States will become inseparable partners in a project that will last for decades, creating opportunities for still greater defence and industrial co-operation.
The integrated review of foreign and defence policy described Britain’s renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific, a region that is fast becoming the geopolitical centre of the world—ever more important for British trade and therefore British jobs and British livelihoods. If there was ever any question about what global Britain’s tilt towards the Indo-Pacific would mean in reality, or what capabilities we might offer, this partnership with Australia and the United States provides the answer.
It amounts to a new pillar of our strategy, demonstrating Britain’s generational commitment to the security of the Indo-Pacific and showing exactly how we can help one of our oldest friends to preserve regional stability. It comes after the United Kingdom’s success in becoming a dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and our application to join the trans-Pacific free trade area.
At the same time, this project will create hundreds of highly skilled jobs across the UK, including in Scotland, the north of England and the Midlands, reinforcing our industrial base and our national scientific expertise, exemplified by the British companies participating in this week’s Defence and Security Equipment International event.
A nuclear submarine programme exists within a different realm of engineering from any other marine project, requiring a mastery of disciplines ranging from propulsion to acoustics. In these fields and many others, we will have a new opportunity to strengthen Britain’s position as a science and technology superpower, and, by generating economies of scale, this project could reduce the cost of the next generation of nuclear submarines for the Royal Navy, helping us to renew our own capabilities. While our partnership will begin with nuclear-powered submarines, now that we have created AUKUS, we expect to accelerate the development of other advanced defence systems, including in cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and undersea capabilities. This partnership will open a new chapter in Britain’s friendship with our closest allies, help to safeguard the security of the Indo-Pacific, create jobs at home and reinforce our country’s place at the leading edge of technology. I commend this Statement to the House.”
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement today. I am sure I am not alone in welcoming the fact that the Statement was actually repeated, rather than our just jumping into questions on it. In thanking her for being here—I know she has made considerable efforts to do so—perhaps I may say that it is disappointing that the noble Baroness the Leader was not able to be present for the prime ministerial Statement. In fairness to her, she said that she could be here for the end of today’s business, but I think it is much better that we have it earlier on, and I am grateful to the Minister that we can do so.
I have said many times at this Dispatch Box that the first duty of any Government is the security and safety of its citizens at home and abroad. International co-operation and strategy is essential to achieving that. Given that many on these Benches, and indeed across your Lordships’ House, have long called for closer co-operation with our democratic allies, we all hope that this presents an opportunity to put that principle into practice. By sharing information, intelligence and resources, we should have the capacity to enhance security.
In their integrated review, the Government identified the region as being at the
“centre of intensifying geopolitical competition with multiple potential flashpoints”.
Assuming that that is the driver for this partnership, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister more detail about what this agreement means in practice and how it fits with—and what is—the Government’s broader strategy. There are also implications for at least two other countries outside this partnership: the French, following what is now their previous submarine procurement arrangements with the Australian Government; and for our relationship with China, as illustrated not least by the comments of its Foreign Ministry this morning.
The Government have now termed China as a systemic competitor and have recognised its military assertiveness, but they also want the UK to maintain a strong commercial relationship with the country. As we need to work together on key global issues, such as climate change, and with COP 26 just six weeks away, this could not be more important. It is clear to everyone that, without a diplomatic strategy and enhanced diplomatic skills, those goals will come into conflict.
I do not know whether the Minister has yet had the opportunity to read the Lords’ International Relations and Defence Committee report from last week, but it gave us a clear warning that:
“Current levels of China expertise within Government and the civil service are insufficient when compared to the ambitious agenda and the tilt to the Indo-Pacific”.
What are the Government doing to change that? I am sure that the Government have also considered how they can ensure that the AUKUS partnership increases, rather than decreases, our ability to influence China. If there is any detail, or at least reassurance, the Minister can provide on that, it would be helpful.
There are still questions about exactly what our role will be in this partnership. According to the White House, the US sees the partnership as an opportunity to
“leverage expertise from the United States and the United Kingdom, building on the two countries’ submarine programs to bring an Australian capability into service at the earliest achievable date.”
The Minister alluded to this in the Statement, but is there anything more she can say about what UK expertise will be used in this programme? For those of us who are glued to Sunday night television, watching “Vigil”—for those who are not aware, it is about a murder on a nuclear-powered submarine—we just hope that life does not imitate fiction. As an immediate priority, the focus will be on delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. With the expectation to develop other defence systems, including cyber, AI and quantum computing, will this time be used to identify other areas where the UK can contribute?
The Prime Minister’s commitment that this pact will create hundreds of highly skilled jobs across the UK is welcome, but it would be helpful to understand exactly what those jobs will be. We need to know what jobs will be created and where they will be based, because we need to know what skills will be required. Whatever defence contracts result from the announcement, we need to make sure the UK gets its fair share of well-paid, highly skilled jobs within the defence sector. We need to be preparing now to ensure we take advantage of any opportunities available.
To get maximum benefit, we also need to secure our defence supply chains. The Minister will be aware that, recently, there have been a number of attempted takeovers of British defence companies by US organisations. The potential takeover of Ultra Electronics, which provides the control systems for Trident submarines, was referred by the Government to the CMA just last month. Can she explain how she thinks this new partnership will impact on such deals?
Finally, I just want to make the point that, with new international security partnerships, we should never forget or in any way diminish our long-standing relationship with our allies. NATO remains our most important strategic alliance. It has delivered peace and stability in Europe for more than 70 years. That stability in our immediate neighbourhood must always take precedence.
Can the Minister confirm whether any resources will be redirected from western Europe to the Pacific as a result of this new agreement? Can she also say something about what strategy the Government have to protect our bilateral relationships with allies who have raised concerns about the partnership? The Five Eyes sharing arrangements remain critical to our security, and I hope today she is able to confirm that we will act to ensure that AUKUS will not lead to a two-tier alliance or weaken our arrangements for intelligence-sharing capacity.
I hope the whole House will welcome this announcement and new partnership, but the agreement alone will not be enough to achieve the stated mission. The onus is now on the Government to ensure that the security pact allows us to better respond to emerging threats and better protect the existing alliances, but also ensure that we make the most of the economic opportunities for our defence industry.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, my welcome to the AUKUS announcement is possibly slightly more muted than that of the other noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Clearly, co-operation with the United States and Australia is important and, as the Statement said, clearly this is supposed to be part of global Britain and the tilt to the Indo-Pacific. However, could the Minister explain to the House how security concerns in the Indo-Pacific are more relevant and important to the United Kingdom than security concerns in our own region? We need to pay particular attention to the question of our relationship with our European partners, in particular with France. Could the Minister tell the House what conversations the Prime Minister might have had with President Macron, or what conversations the Foreign Secretary—if there was one in post at the right time—might have had with the French Foreign Minister ahead of this announcement?
Clearly, the response from the other side of the channel has been one of deep frustration. While on a business level it might be entirely appropriate for us to work with the Australians to deliver the nuclear-powered submarines that they apparently want, if that means that we are damaging our long-standing and vital relationship with France, that is somewhat unfortunate. We might have left the European Union and changed some of our relationships with our European partners, but that does not change our own fundamental security concerns and questions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said, our other traditional alliances are important. Did the Government take them into consideration when making this announcement?
Beyond that, clearly it is important to look at our defence industry. I realise that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, might raise her hands or look up in horror but I attended DSEI this week, where I had the opportunity to talk to some British businesses which are indeed absolutely passionate about being able to export. They are small and medium-sized enterprises for whom the opportunity to work with allies, whether from Europe, the USA and Australia, is important. I therefore pay tribute to those companies. In the original Statement the Prime Minister mentioned them; have the Government thought through how supply chain issues and working with SMEs might be supported by the initiative announced last night? Clearly, there are some areas where there are opportunities.
I have a final point of concern. The American approach to leaving Afghanistan left the United Kingdom unable to look after some of the people we might have wanted to repatriate. It seemed rather redolent of Suez, when we could not rely on the United States or the Commonwealth and we were closest to France. How has the world changed so that AUKUS is now the right answer to British security concerns?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses, Lady Smith, for their contributions—it is a pleasure to address both of them. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, that my noble friend Lady Evans is extremely sorry not to be here. She found it difficult to avoid an impossible diary conflict between times suitable for the usual channels and times suitable for the House. I realise that I am a very inadequate and poor substitute but I am pleased to be standing here with pride on behalf of the Government—or at least just now, which is the relevant phrase at the moment. I shall do my best to respond to the points raised.
First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, for her welcome of the development. I think that, universally, this has been regarded as a positive development, for the United Kingdom, for the Indo-Pacific area and for our relationships, particularly with Australia, the United States and, of course, our regional partners in the area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked me what this agreement means in practice, and I will do my best to slightly fill that out. It will strengthen our collective ability to ensure our security and defence interests. We will enhance the development of joint capabilities and technology sharing and will foster deeper integration of security and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains, which I know the noble Baroness was concerned about. I can say that it was also anticipated that AUKUS—as a Scot, I keep thinking of, “Och, it’s great—it’ll be fine” but I know that is somewhat unclear for this Chamber. I can say that it will promote a significant increase in other aspects of Australia-UK-US defence collaboration, with early focus on artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, quantum computing and additional undersea capabilities. This could create hundreds of additional highly skilled scientific and engineering roles across the UK and secure further investment in some of our most high-tech sectors. That was an area in which, rightly, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, expressed an interest.
The noble Baroness also raised our relationship with China and indicated that she felt there was a perception that there could be a conflict between our diplomatic and defence strategies. I humbly suggest that that is not the case, and it is important that we put all this in context. Yes, this is about the long-standing and deepening defence and security relationship between the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. Both are trusted allies that share our vision of the world and the international order in which free societies can flourish, and Australia has one of the largest maritime domains in the world. However, that is not exclusive of or inimical to a good or a positive relationship with China. We have been very clear that we want our relationship with China to be mature, positive and based on mutual respect and trust. I suggest to the Chamber that there is considerable scope for constructive engagement and co-operation but, importantly, as we strive for that positive relationship, we will not sacrifice either our values or our security. So, on the one hand we have a defence partnership that we are discussing this afternoon, which is positive and helpful to the geopolitical character of the Indo-Pacific but, on the other, we recognise that China is an important member of the international community. Its size, rising economic power and influence make it an important partner in tackling the biggest global challenges, and this provides enormous scope for positive, constructive engagement. However, as I say, where we have concerns, we raise them, and where we need to intervene, we will do so.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked how this will help us to influence affairs in the Indo-Pacific. I suggest that it is reflective of the strength of partnership we have. Our record in the Indo-Pacific area is already proven; we recently had the carrier strike group in the area, which was very well received, and we have carried out joint exercises with a number of countries, not least Australia. That is all part of reassuring south-east Asia that our interest in and commitment to the region and the area are real—not in some provocative, bellicose fashion but in a genuinely constructive fashion where we want to influence. Interestingly, I detect that that is exactly how our friends and partners in that region see the United Kingdom and our role. It is worth remembering that the genesis of what we are discussing this afternoon was Australia extending an invitation to the United Kingdom and the United States; it is interesting that it felt confident and impelled to do that. That is a very positive reflection on the United Kingdom and that is why the United States and the United Kingdom responded to that invitation. All this is therefore part of a holistic approach to the region, which is certainly about helping to create stability and support values.
The noble Baroness mentioned the Sunday night drama “Vigil”, which has certainly gripped my attention, although I emphasise that I regard it as a drama with a degree of dramatic licence. Nonetheless, it has good acting but we can all understand that the reality is somewhat different. The noble Baroness asked whether we were confident about the partnership and what we brought to it—what are our skills and experience in this? I observe simply that we have built and operated world-class nuclear-powered submarine capability for more than 60 years. So we bring deep expertise and experience to this partnership, not least, for example, through the work carried out by Rolls-Royce near Derby and BAE Systems in Barrow.
The noble Baroness also raised the specific issue of skills and jobs, to which I have alluded briefly. We anticipate that this partnership, particularly in phase 1—what is to happen in trilateral discussions over the next 18 months—will be an important contributor to skills and jobs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, also raised the role of NATO. That is a legitimate question. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, also asked: what about our regional partners in the area? These are important questions. I simply want to reaffirm that this is not about NATO operations but about enhancing the long-standing defence and security relationship between the UK, Australia and the US. NATO will continue to deploy and conduct operations as deemed appropriate by the organisation’s members.
Regional partners are important to us. I am pleased to say that we have strong relationships with a number of the countries within south-east Asia, not least Japan and the Republic of Korea. These relationships are cordial and constructive and those countries will see this partnership as an enhancement to what they all want—stability and an ability to trade effectively in that important part of the globe.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, asked about France. I reaffirm that France is an important friend and ally of the United Kingdom. We have a long-standing security and defence relationship with France that is underpinned by the Lancaster House treaty and is exemplified by our combined joint expeditionary force. We are close NATO allies and we have co-operated in areas from the Sahel to the Baltic. That is a measure of the strength of the relationship with France. We value and respect that relationship and would wish it to continue in a strong and sustainable fashion.
Lord Ricketts (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s Statement. This is clearly a major strategic development and it will take time to digest all the implications of it. In the first place, it builds on a 50-year defence partnership with Australia on nuclear-powered submarines, with the United States. That is welcome. However, there are implications for our other allies, most particularly the French. The Minister is right to point to UK-French defence co-operation through Lancaster House but this agreement has been a major blow to France and it is important that we now find ways in which to work with the French as a major Indo-Pacific power themselves, and to find other ways in which to show that this partnership is not an exclusive relationship between the US, the UK and Australia. NATO allies such as Canada are also important players. Are there plans for specific proposals to put to the French to show that the western interest in Indo-Pacific security goes beyond this important new security partnership?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
The noble Lord poses a pertinent question. I think I addressed his concerns partially in my response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Basildon and Lady Smith of Newnham.
Our relationship with France on defence is not some sort of sterile picking up of the phone now and again. We are committed to building on the achievements of the first 10 years of the Lancaster House accords in the decade to come. We will continue to consult each other daily and at all levels on key international defence and security matters. It is important to observe that, although we may no longer be in the EU, we cannot fractionalise security depending on where physical boundaries fall. The strength of security in the EU, and the strength of France’s ability to contribute to that security, matters to us in the UK, and vice versa. That is mutually understood and respected, so I assure the noble Lord that, yes, we anticipate continuing a very constructive relationship with France on defence matters.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I would like to say from these sparsely populated Benches how delighted I am with this Statement. However, I want to press my noble friend on one or two matters.
First, on the points made about France by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and the noble Lord who just spoke, is it inconceivable that, if there were a mutual desire, France could join this alliance? That would seem to make a good deal of logistic sense. Secondly, when will this alliance be operational? How long will it take for the nuclear submarines to be built? What plans are there for command? Will it rotate between the three countries? Will the United States always be in command? I hope not. If my noble friend could throw a little light on these points, I would be extremely grateful.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I say to my noble friend that we see this as a partnership among three important global players. It is a partnership with important and broad security objectives but its immediate raison d’être, as driven by Australia, is to seek help in being supplied with nuclear-powered submarines. That is the first focus of the partnership; it is therefore not something that it would be appropriate for France to be involved in.
On our broader relationship with France, I hope that my noble friend was assured by what I said in my earlier remarks. France is related to us and our defence relationships in a number of ways, not least on our bilateral front but also through NATO. There is a strong relationship there that we want to nurture and sustain.
My noble friend asked when the partnership will be operational. This is a technically challenging proposition. The first phrase will happen over the next 18 months and will involve a tripartite, or trilateral, discussion among the three parties to the agreement as they work out what is possible and how matters might be taken forward.
My noble friend also asked about command. This is not a military operation; it is an alliance, first of all, to help with the specific project of building and delivering nuclear-powered submarines. The submarines will be under the command of Australia, and it will have autonomy of operation over them.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, I have had insufficient time to get my head around the implications of what I consider to be quite a momentous announcement. I assume that the Government worried those implications to death before they agreed to join, so I have two questions.
First, assuming that the method of propulsion for these boats will use highly enriched uranium—a fissile, weapons-grade material—and the safeguarding of this material will be outside the IAEA structure, who will take responsibility for that safeguarding? What steps can we ensure are taken, and how will they be reported?
Secondly, this is the first time in history that a non-nuclear arms state will acquire a nuclear submarine. What assessment have the Government and their allies made of the sort of signal this sends to our adversaries that are nuclear arms states? Have we considered that this will be interpreted by them as permission to equip all their allies and friends with nuclear submarines? If so, this has momentous consequences for the proliferation of these materials and weapons in the world.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I thank the noble Lord. He used an interesting adjective in relation to this agreement; he described it as “momentous”, which I think is an accurate and apposite assessment. His concern about nuclear materials was basically whether we have asked our URENCO partners for permission. In the next 18 months, we will consider a wide range of technical, legal and practical issues for this project and do not want to pre-empt those findings. I reassure the noble Lord that the usual high standards of security will be maintained. The UK’s nuclear enterprise has more than 60 years of experience of delivering world-class, nuclear-powered submarine capabilities safely.
On the interesting issue of the IAEA, we have spoken to the IAEA director-general and will keep in close touch. As the noble Lord indicated, it does not have competence for nuclear defence issues, but we will engage with it as appropriate during the consultation period to ensure that we are fulfilling our obligations and to give absolute confidence that no HEU will be diverted for weapons purposes.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in the foreword to the integrated review, the Prime Minister says that the UK
“will make tackling climate change and biodiversity loss its number one international priority.”
The Climate Transparency Report on G20 countries ranked Australia in the bottom bracket of every climate action area, except one. The report says that the Morrison Government have no national plans to expand renewable energy, phase out coal, phase out fossil fuel vehicles, retrofit buildings or reduce deforestation. This Statement says that handing over nuclear submarines is
“a decision of the utmost gravity, requiring perhaps the closest relationship of trust”.
How can the UK trust such a criminally negligent, environmentally destructive state, given our stated top international priority and our position as the chair of COP?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
There is broad understanding that Australia is a responsible state, and that the United States and United Kingdom, in being asked to engage with Australia in producing nuclear-powered submarines, are contributing to improving the climate, because they are replacing polluting diesel electric submarines, which do not seem a particularly attractive environmental proposition to anyone. Where I suspect the noble Baroness and I diverge is that I take the view that, where we are possessed by a multifaceted threat around the world and are only too aware of the gravity and, at times, unpredictability of that threat, it is imperative upon responsible states throughout the globe that we take appropriate action to anticipate, resist and address that threat. That is exactly what we are trying to do in the Indo-Pacific area, which is why we are pleased and proud to be a partner of Australia, along with the United States, in this new proposition of AUKUS.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, since we are talking about relationships, it is important to remember that Australia and the United States have something of a special relationship because, at the request of Lyndon Johnson, Australia was willing to send Australian forces to Vietnam. I go back to France, as virtually every contributor has: it is perhaps not the substance of this announcement, but the grandiose and rather exclusive way in which it was made; it is hardly surprising that France feels somewhat alienated. Remember that France is not only our closest and largest European ally within NATO, but the other country that possesses a nuclear deterrent. The point I make is this: the relationship between France and the United Kingdom is rather delicate, at the moment, not assisted by the belligerent attitude of the Home Secretary.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Coming from Scotland, the noble Lord will empathise with what I have to say. I have a fondness for France. We have la vieille alliance, which was very important in our history when we were falling out with our near neighbours, with whom gladly we now get on far better. Traditionally, there is a cultural affinity with France. I have explained the degree of proximity that exists in our defence relationship with France. It is not a cosmetic proximity; it is under- pinned by reality and regular dialogue. We have an agenda underpinned by the Lancaster House treaties.
The noble Lord is absolutely right that France will have been disappointed to be informed by Australia that it was not proceeding with these diesel-electric submarines. One can sympathise with France’s disappointment on hearing that news but, at the same time Australia has made a decision because, to augment the point I made to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, we need to be absolutely vigilant about being on the front foot addressing the threats of the new age. That is what Australia has identified. There is not a shadow of a doubt about using nuclear-powered submarines in the Indo-Pacific area. As the noble Lord will be aware, they travel longer and silently, they are very much more difficult to detect and they do not need to come up for oxygen, as diesel-electric submarines do. We are not in any way indifferent to the importance of our relationship with France.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I too welcome this Statement, as long as it is not just an elaborate cover-up for snatching the contract away from France and is a genuine defence co-operation, which is much needed. However, if it is a genuine defensive co-operation—the noble Baroness spoke about our long-standing defence and security co-operation—why are New Zealand and Canada, the two other members of the Five Eyes, not included? I understand that Jacinda Ardern said that she was not approached in relation to it. Why were neither New Zealand nor Canada approached if it is a genuine defence co-operation?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I remind the noble Lord that the initium of this was an approach by Australia. Australia identified a need that it wished to address, which was to replace its diesel-electric submarines with nuclear-powered submarines. It was Australia that then decided to approach the UK and the United States to discuss this. Obviously, to go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, asked about the sensitivity and why it was so under wraps, the Chamber will understand that this is a matter of great sensitivity in terms of defence integrity but also commercial sensitivity. It is widely understood why it had to remain absolutely under wraps until it was appropriate, with the agreement of the other partners, to announce it.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that this is the initial phase to help to build these submarines. That is not something in which Australia felt either New Zealand or Canada could play a role but it felt that the United Kingdom and the United States could. As to the unfolding of a further relationship, we see that this will integrate with and enhance the Five Eyes relationship, and I guess to some extent the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which have powers other than the ones in Five Eyes. This is not simply borne out of some UK drive to get orders, it is the other way round: we received an invitation to get involved and we responded to it.
Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that this is a momentous agreement and I congratulate the Government. I am learning the disadvantage of intervening late, because the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, just asked my question and the Minister just answered it.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, it appears that there are no further questions for the Minister. If I am right about that we will move to the next business as soon as people have had a chance to change places.
Social Care Funding: Intergenerational Impact
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Greengross
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to address the intergenerational impact of proposed changes to social care funding.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the Lords register. I hope the Government will reflect further on this issue and commend them on bringing forward proposals to address the challenge of funding social care sustainably—something that has been ducked for far too long.
The Intergenerational Fairness Forum, which I am honoured to chair, in 2018-19 held a year-long inquiry that considered sustainable funding for social care and intergenerational fairness. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Watkins of Tavistock, Baroness Howe of Idlicote and the noble Lords, Lord Howarth of Newport and Lord Willetts, in particular, for the support they gave to that work.
Our inquiry report, Grasping the Nettle: Sustainable Funding for Social Care and Intergenerational Fairness, supported the Dilnot recommendations on a threshold below which people should not have to contribute to their care costs and a £35,000 cap on the total care costs that people should have to pay, which would rise in line with inflation. This lower cap than that planned by the Government would help more people with relatively modest total assets—for example, those whose homes are less valuable.
We recommended that the resources needed to fund social care should be raised by a distinct new, mandatory social care insurance contribution levy at a rate of 1%, which could rise to 2% for those aged 50-plus if additional resources are needed to meet rising care costs.
We also proposed that this new levy should apply only to adults over the age of 40 and that it should then be paid by all adults for as long as they continued to work. We proposed this age threshold because our aim was to develop a system for funding social care that met our test of intergenerational fairness—one in which all generations contribute, no one generation is impacted unduly and costs are not simply left for future generations to bear. Our recommendations would also ensure that the heaviest burden falls on those best placed to contribute.
We recognised that funding free social care through 1% social care insurance contributions on working adults over the age of 40 alone fails to meet the test of intergenerational fairness because the burden for paying for social care would then fall too heavily on these workers, while retired people would contribute little or nothing.
Like the Government, we rejected the use of income tax to fund better social care, because this is the system that has been tried, and has failed, in recent decades. Funding social care through income tax would mean that it continues to be at risk of suffering from rationing as a result of spending restrictions or when social care is not a high political priority in comparison with competing public services or tax cuts. A hypothecated, mandatory system of social care insurance is not exposed to this risk.
Apart from the absence of an age threshold for the Government’s new health and social care levy, my two major concerns about the Government’s proposals are that they will not deliver additional resources to the social care sector quickly enough and that, of the £36 billion that they expect to raise, only £5.4 billion is earmarked for social care. Yet again, the social care sector is playing second fiddle to the NHS, when its need for additional resources is at least as urgent.
Like many others, I also believe that, politically, it may be very difficult in the future for the Government to claw back from the NHS the money raised by their health and social care levy to allocate it to social care. Our recommendations also aimed to ensure that sufficient resources were raised to extend the provision of social care so that more of the people whose needs are currently unmet would be covered. So, in addition to a 1% social care insurance contribution levy, we recommended additional measures that would allow the Government to increase funding for social care significantly in the short term. These recommendations fell into two broad categories: those raising additional funds for the Government, which we wanted to be ring-fenced for social care, and those saving the Government money that we wanted to be redeployed to social care.
We recommended that people working beyond the age of 65 should pay national insurance contributions, albeit at a reduced rate of 6%. We recommended that the Government should replace higher-rate tax relief with a lower flat rate of tax relief. Some experts estimate that, if this were set at the rate of 20%, it could save up to £10 billion a year. We also recommended that the pensions triple lock be replaced by a double lock, whereby it rises in line with average earnings or inflation but not by at least 2.5% every year. We recommended rolling the value of the winter fuel payment up into a higher state pension, which would be taxable, making the system more progressive.
We also wanted the Government to incentivise people to save for their potential care costs—so we recommended that the Government should introduce a care ISA, with an annual contributions limit of £20,000 and a lifetime cap on contributions of £100,000. This would also have the benefit of raising awareness of the importance of saving for care costs—something that too many people fail to consider. To help people whose only savings—apart from their homes, if they own them—are their pensions, we also recommended that the Government should allow tax-free withdrawals from private pensions to fund the costs of care.
We did not recommend that employers should pay insurance contributions for social care because of the potential impact of this on jobs. We also did not recommend complicated new wealth taxes or increases in inheritance tax because we did not want to discourage people from saving for their retirement and possible later-life care costs. We also noted that the OECD estimates that, in 2017, the UK collected the second largest amount of property tax of any OECD country—more than double the average of OECD countries.
I hope that the Government will consider introducing an age threshold for their levy as soon as possible to mitigate the effect on young people. I hope that they will also make it a social care-only insurance contribution levy as soon as possible and that they will supplement their proposals with further measures to broaden the impact of their fundraising and to enable significantly more spending on social care much more quickly than under their current plans. The sector cannot afford to wait. If it does, a package of proposals will emerge for funding social care that better meet the test of inter- generational fairness, making it more politically and financially sustainable so that a change of Government will not see this work undone.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, with whom it has been a pleasure to work on this issue in the past, for tabling this Question for Short Debate and for setting forth her constructive proposals.
The failure of successive Governments over many years to reform the social care system has done as much as anything else to bring government and Parliament into disrepute. Now this Government have made a stab at the funding aspect of the problem. But the solution —though we cannot properly call it that—which they have come up with is enough to make one weep. Indeed, it will make many younger, lower-paid workers weep.
Of the various possible ways to raise money for social care, to increase national insurance contributions on their existing basis is the most regressive, unjust and destructive. The cynicism of the Government’s approach is chilling. They did some polling and found that the public think, wrongly, that national insurance pays for the National Health Service. They concluded that they could get away politically with raising national insurance contributions rather than raising income tax, which would have spread the burden fairly. Here the noble Baroness and I may disagree.
Presumably, those polled did not understand that employees’ national insurance contributions kick in at earnings of £184 per week, equivalent to £9,568 per year, far below the £12,570 per year at which income tax starts. Presumably, they also did not understand that national insurance contributions are levied at a higher rate on lower earners and that retired pensioners who are comfortably off do not pay national insurance contributions at all. Therefore, the policy means that miserably paid care workers will be more highly taxed, while affluent retirees will pay no more tax. The Government’s cunning plan is that young workers, struggling on low wages to save for a mortgage, will pay the new levy to enable pensioners who need social care to retain their homes and the bulk of their wealth through the cap on personal care costs of £86,000.
While it is far from certain that more than a derisory part of this national insurance increase will end up improving funding for social care, what we do know is that social care providers, paying higher employers’ national insurance contributions, will find it harder to employ staff and those staff will find it harder to make ends meet. In seeking to ingratiate themselves with elderly homeowners at the cost of the young and low-paid, the Government will not commend themselves to the country. A far cry from one nation conservatism, this politics of division exposes the fatuity of the Prime Minister’s levelling-up rhetoric. The policy drives a wedge between the generations, while it will fail to provide the resources required to address the social care crisis, by increasing the availability of social care to match actual need and developing the social care workforce.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on securing this important debate.
We live at a time when the notion of intergenerational fairness is under threat. The accepted post-war norm has been for successive generations to experience better lives than their parents. That is not true anymore for the younger generation, as they are experiencing worse outcomes in terms of pay, job security and housing.
While I welcome the fact that more money is being earmarked for health and social care—although in the first three years it will nearly all go to health rather than to social care—I am disappointed on a number of fronts. First, after so many years of inaction, we were presented with a quickly-hatched and suboptimal solution without the cross-party talks that we had been promised to secure consensus and a long-term sustainable solution. Secondly, the money will come from national insurance rather than through the broader-based and more progressive income tax, thereby hitting low earners and the young hardest. Thirdly, much of the debate has been couched in terms of preventing people from having to sell their houses at a time when so many young people are finding it impossible to get their foot on the first rung of the housing ladder. I have long argued that we should be looking for a solution through the prism of intergenerational fairness in which all generations contribute but no single generation is impacted unfairly. I think that is vital to ensure greater buy-in across the generations.
Despite the dividend taxation and the application of the new health and care levy to the earnings of working pensioners from April 2023, big intergenerational equity issues remain. Tax rises via national insurance, as we have heard, fall disproportionately on the working-age population. A typical 25 year-old today will pay an extra £12,600 over their working lives from the employee part of the tax rise alone, compared to nothing for most pensioners. Some workers earning under £10,000 a year will be affected, but only those earning £12,750 pay income tax.
The extension of the levy to the earnings of working pensioners is welcome, but only one in six pensioner households have earnings. In contrast, two-thirds have private pension income that is exempted from the levy. A levy focused on earnings leaves other sources of income undertaxed, including a lot of rental income, and the package increases the tax gap between the self-employed and employees, raising the incentive for firms to use self-employed labour rather than employees.
Looking to the future and intergenerational fairness, I still hope it may be possible to move to a fairer system, with the majority of money raised through income tax but with a top-up that comes from the over-40s. I always had considerable sympathy with the recommendation of the Barker commission in 2014 that an additional percentage point of employees’ national insurance contributions for those aged over 40, raising some £2 billion, could be earmarked for adult social care. I very much hope that that will be further considered.
Lord Lipsey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, rightly highlights one of the central features of the Government’s proposals—namely, the generational redistribution between poorer workers, who pay for the cap, and the older people who benefit from it. Actually, so far as I can see, in all the commentary the main redistribution that is going on here has not been noticed at all. It is not about generational redistribution; it is redistribution within the generations from the poor to the rich.
I shall try to explain this briefly. Half the recipients of care do not pay for it anyway; they have insufficient assets or income so are not affected by this measure either way. Of the remainder, half will be paying for care in a way that counts towards the cap. However, only costs that are strictly categorised as care count towards the cap—what are called hotel costs they will have to pay themselves—so it will take quite a while to reach that £86,000 cap; three years would probably be a generous estimate. On average, people are in care homes for less than three years, so most older people are not going to benefit from the cap at all. Of the rest, most will not benefit from it for long. Some people live in a care home for 10 years and good luck to them, but that is very unusual; sadly, most people will pass on soon after they reach the £86,000 threshold.
Let us think what this means. It is not these older people, for whom we probably have great deal of sympathy, who will benefit from this. There will not be a rash of cruises around the world or teas at the Ritz that they are going to enjoy: where the money actually ends up is in the pockets of their children, to whom they will bequeath it. The poor have to pay for their own homes; the better-off, because of this cap, will find it much easier to buy bigger, better homes, because they are being saved the cost of Mummy’s care by the Government with this measure. It is redistribution, yes, but it is from the poor to the better-off among the younger generations.
The Tories once described Labour’s plans to pay for care as a “death tax”. Now we have the Tory equivalent: an inheritance subsidy. That is why the case for paying for the cap through a tax on wealth—inheritance tax, capital gains tax, annual wealth tax—rather than through national insurance is so compelling.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for securing this debate.
First, a minute of history. In 1987 the NHS had more than 127,000 acute hospital beds and more than 52,000 geriatric beds. Some 20 years later, geriatric bed numbers had been cut by over 60% and acute beds by 20%. In 2010 the category of “geriatric beds” disappeared altogether. That followed a 1981 White Paper, Growing Older, and a DHSS consultation paper in the same year, Care in the Community, which both planned for transferring patients from hospital settings into the community. That meant handing over the frail elderly to be units of profit for the financial sector. For all the wonderful compassion of horribly underpaid, highly skilled care workers, that is their real status. Many care homes are loaded with unsustainable debt, owned by private equity and reliant on risky financial structures. A 12% return is expected, yet this should be, without the debt, an extremely low-risk financial sector, where a 5% rate of return is considered reasonable.
I look forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who I believe will be setting out further detail on this, but I want to look at the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. Where is the intergenerational problem here? We have a system problem: the exploitation of each generation in turn by the financial sector, and the exploitation of the workers whose caring humanity leads them to labour for utterly inadequate wages in poor conditions. The elderly today are being treated as cash cows, and the young are being expected, through national insurance, to pay in, before in their turn being forced into the same dysfunctional, exploitative system.
I saw some debate that insurance might fill this gap, but why do we not insure all generations, and all of our futures, as we do with a still inadequate and inequitable but basic state pension, by providing free social care to all who need it, funded—in another term, insured—by all of us through general, fair, progressive taxation; far more progressive taxation than we have now? That is society taking responsibility for all its members, sharing the responsibility for all who need care.
The Green Party calls for national insurance to be replaced with a single, unified income tax to reduce loopholes and raise £24 billion to fund social care. All income, including rental and investment income, would be taxed at the same rate, and this, of course, would remove the unjust loophole whereby earnings above £50,000 are charged only at the 2% national insurance rate. As with medicine, so with care: there should be no place for the profit motive in its provision.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as outlined in the register, particularly as chair of Look Ahead, a housing association that works with vulnerable and homeless people. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on securing the debate and on her excellent introduction. Together with other noble Lords, I am committed to ensuring that social care is put on a secure financial footing to protect vulnerable people who rely on these essential services.
Many have argued that the younger members of our society should not be expected to contribute towards the extra funds to be raised through the addition to NICs. I think this is partly because the Government’s presentation has dwelt on the funding challenges of older people when they experience the need for social care associated with frailty and dementia. However, a high proportion of social care budgets is spent on supporting younger people with long-term conditions, including, for example, multiple sclerosis, acquired brain injury and significant mental health and learning difficulties. Can the Minister explain how the proposed levy will be associated and allocated to improve the lives of these sections of society?
Crisis recently published an excellent report Home for All: the Case for Scaling Up Housing First in England. Rapid access to stable housing for young people, including care leavers and those already homeless, is demonstrably cost effective. Will the issue of housing for young people be a priority, together with developing supported-living housing for those over 65 years of age, which in turn can promote independence and reduce or delay the need for help with the activities of living?
Many young people cannot save the deposit to purchase a home, and access to social-rent accommodation is in very short supply, yet the future direction appears to be to enable older people to keep the value in their home if in need of significant social care, while, as other noble Lords have said, younger people are having difficulty getting on the housing ladder. The younger generations will become increasingly frustrated with making significant financial contributions towards health and social care, while also, in the case of recent graduates, paying student loan contributions, if they cannot see that their needs are taken into account in the provision of health and social care service development.
Can the Minister explain how intergenerational fairness in the provision of services will be made explicit in the strategy to fund social care from 2023? I believe we have time to resolve these issues before the full allocation of the levy goes to social care.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for initiating this important debate, albeit within the constraints of a three-minute speaking time limit. The noble Baroness has an unparalleled record of work and thought leadership on behalf of people in retirement. The report from the Intergenerational Fairness Forum, to which she has drawn our attention, is supported by distinguished Members of this House. It is an important contribution to the urgent debate we need to have about social care. It provides a helpful analysis of the problems we face. But—noble Lords may have sensed that my remarks were heading towards a “but”—I am afraid that, for all its virtues, I do not share the report’s conclusions. This includes, but is not limited to, the proposals on the triple lock.
Others will talk about how to address the problem of social care specifically. My basic problem arises from the more general issue of the way the question is being framed. It is widely understood that the way you frame arguments is crucial, and whenever I see the word “intergenerational” I become concerned. How policies will affect different generations is of course a valid field of study, but framing the question in terms of generations presupposes that that is the answer, and I have to say that I profoundly disagree. I do not believe that there is a divergence of interests between young and old and that they are in any way in conflict. I have mentioned this before. As I said in Grand Committee in January in a debate on the report from the former Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee:
“The problems we do face are real enough, but they are political in nature and looking at them within a framework of intergenerational fairness does not help in any way in finding a solution.”—[Official Report, 25/1/21; col. GC 138.]
Where I think there is a divergence of interests is between rich and poor. I believe that the inequalities that permeate our society are based not on one’s age but on the wide and—if I might use the word—immoral inequalities of wealth and income. Until we recognise this, we will continue to struggle with issues of social justice, not least in the field of social care.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I am very happy to follow that intervention. I recognise its accuracy and pointedness, but I cannot feel—yet anyway —that this is an either/or, although certainly the question of poverty runs through our society and needs to be addressed radically. However, “intergenerational” clearly means a lot more to me than it does to the noble Lord who preceded me. It raises a lot of questions that demand to be answered. I am most grateful for the report from the committee, which I found very helpful. I hope that the Minister can reassure all of us that it has been taken into consideration by the Government in reaching their conclusions.
Knowing that experts in this field were speaking in this debate, I decided to do something a little different. I had a little seminar with two young people, aged about 20, who are not far from entering the jobs market and are quite intelligent. They wanted to discuss how they face the future that is being posited by these rises in national insurance to pay for social care. Of course, I was the third participant in that seminar—the baby boomer, locked up three times in a prison cell and enjoying benefits that seem to be unchallengeable.
It was interesting that the two young men, Tim and Oliver, picked on a sentence that said, “We would argue that fully funded free social care through income tax or national insurance contributions in the near future, before a fund to help pay for it has been established, fails to meet the test of intergenerational fairness because the burden for paying for social care would then fall only on the working-age population, while retired people would contribute nothing.” A little later, another sentence they picked up on was: “We would argue that older people should also make a contribution to the cost of social care”—of course, we must all agree with this.
From other sources, they plucked out comments like: the proposals currently before us would lead to
“the breakdown of families and deter companies from hiring new staff and increasing wages”.
That source also quoted another leading figure as saying that the proposals would worsen social care by making private providers pay more national insurance. Finally, there was a newspaper editorial that said:
“Coming after a year of lockdown, with its catastrophic economic and psychological impact, to inflict yet more pain on the public is senseless and intolerable.
It said that the NHS has an intolerable backlog to clear and that
“We were … promised a once-in-a-generation fix of social care, but the sum earmarked … is paltry”.
Before the Minister comes to the conclusion that this is another rant from the Labour Party Benches, I will say that this was in fact from the Tory chair of the Local Government Association. This is the first time in my entire life that I have quoted from an editorial in the Daily Telegraph—from last Sunday. I hope that the Minister will answer these points seriously.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for this debate. Nearly 50% of social care expenditure is on working-age adults in this country, and every one of us is just one event away from the need for social care—so it is an issue not just for the elderly but for the whole society. With 18.4 million individuals on an annual income of less than £12,500 and median gross household savings in this country of only £11,000, hypothecated taxes, a higher basic rate of national insurance for the masses or insurance for the benefit of the rich property owners is not really the answer.
The best legacy that we can give future generations is a system in which social care is free at the point of delivery. Governments have bailed out banks, provided £895 billion of quantitative easing to speculators, thrown billions at contracts for cronies and continue to give billions in subsidies to railway, gas, oil and other companies. The Government can surely find resources to improve people’s welfare, too.
If the Government want to think in old-fashioned ways of tax and spend, they still have plenty of options without increasing the basic rate of income tax or national insurance contributions for the masses. Redistribution, as earlier speakers mentioned, is the key. Here are some things that the Government could do.
By taxing capital gains at the same marginal rates of tax as earned income, some £17 billion in tax, plus another £8 billion in national insurance, can be raised. Taxing dividends as earned income can raise £5 billion plus nearly £600 million in national insurance. By abolishing the current regime of tax reliefs on pension contributions, which mainly benefits the 40% and 45% taxpayers, and instead giving all pension savers a flat rate of 20% relief, another £10 billion can be raised. Currently, 12% national insurance is levied on earned income below £50,284, and only 2% is levied above that—a highly regressive practice. An additional £14 billion a year can be raised by extending the 12% rate to all income. However, the Government do not wish to inconvenience their rich friends.
Those proposals redistribute income and wealth by removing anomalies and tax perks for the few. They do not impose higher taxes on the young or most workers. There are no shortages of resources for free universal social care; there is only a shortage of political will to improve social welfare.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite her to speak.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adult Social Care. The quality of contributions from around the House demonstrates that this is a complex issue.
I agree with the IFF, the Resolution Foundation and my noble friend Lady Tyler that using national insurance is not equitable to those coming behind us baby boomers. That is why, on these Benches, we believe that income tax should be the mechanism, despite what the IFF says, given the combination that many people who retire after their retirement date pay tax up to that point, while many pensioners pay income tax because of the level of their private pensions, while the poorest pensioners do not. That is also progressive, as well as more generationally fair in terms of raising income.
By way of illustration, I want to make two brief comments about those affected badly by these proposals. The first is children who need to access social care and their families. If we think that the funding adult of social care is in crisis, social care provision for disabled children is much worse, with exhausted parents having to pick up the care 24/7. Can I ask the Minister, not for the first time, what plans there are to remedy that situation as a matter of urgency as such provision is excluded from these proposals?
My second point relates to those who care for our vulnerable elderly—the wonderful care home and domiciliary staff who will also be badly affected by the levy proposals. The 2020 Skills for Care workforce survey states that their average age is 44, average pay is £8.50 per hour and over a quarter are on zero-hours contracts. Worse, some are about to see £20 per week disappear from their universal credit at a time when energy and food bills have substantially increased in recent months. Now, they will also have to pay the increased national insurance contribution.
Worse, it appears that, unlike the NHS, social care providers will not get extra budget to cover the increased employer national insurance contributions, which means that there will be less funding available to increase the basic rate of pay of staff or spend on staff development and training.
However, the final unfairness for our younger staff and older people using social care is that it appears that, after the NHS has taken the bulk of the levy funding, virtually all the remaining levy will go towards the funding structures—as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, outlined—and not into care homes, meaning that funding for the essential front line of social care service just will not happen.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on securing this debate and on her timely reminder of the intergenerational fairness report on social care funding, which she so ably chaired.
This is the first, brief, opportunity we have had since the usual hyperbole and razzmatazz of the Prime Minister’s announcement last week to begin the step-by-step, detailed debate and analysis about what is actually in the proposals and their impact across the generations on the elderly, on working-age people, on younger people with disabilities and their families and on carers.
Reality is fast setting in, as noble Lords’ wide-ranging and thoughtful contributions in this debate have shown. After the way it was treated during the pandemic, the hope and expectation must surely have been for social care to have been an up-front and equal partner in any future health and social care funding plan, but it certainly is not in what the Government have set out.
The funding allocated to social care from the health and social care levy over the next three years amounts to only £1 in every £6 of the total £36 billion raised. Figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies clearly show that this is nowhere near enough to offset the £8 billion of cuts in per capita spending over the last decade. Local councils, social services leaders and providers are deeply concerned that the NHS will continue to absorb and swallow up the vast majority of the proceeds from the new tax, and there is no extra funding to deal with the crisis in social care now; a number of noble Lords pointed that out. As the National Care Forum put it:
“This is a recovery plan for the NHS … The funding pot being talked about for social care is not sufficient to even address the issues of today.”
Although we do not agree with the intergenerational report’s overall recommendations on funding, many of its findings nevertheless resonate with Labour’s key concerns about the impact that the Government’s proposals will have. Many of those concerns have been underlined today by noble Lords, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Howarth, Lord Davies and Lord Griffiths, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler.
We have made it clear that the plan is wrong on so many fronts. First, the national insurance increase will disproportionately affect younger and lower-income workers. It does nothing to tackle the chronic workforce shortages, which are getting worse by the day, and will mean care workers ending up £1,130 worse off as a result of this increase and the £20 cut in universal credit, which many rely on.
The cap will do nothing for a third of the users and half the budget for social care, which is for working-age adults with disabilities, as a number of noble Lords— including the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins and Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka—pointed out. The press stories of young disabled people having to stay in bed or sitting in a chair all day because their care hours and the other services they depend on stopped during the pandemic and still have not restarted are heartbreaking. Further, the cap will not kick in until 2023 and does not cover all costs. People will still need to sell their homes to fund their care and many people in care will never hit the cap, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed out.
Moreover, there is no commitment to addressing the urgent needs of the 1.5 million older people who are denied personal care for help with washing, dressing, toileting and other basic needs to help them to stay in their homes and be part of their local communities. Labour’s key principle of “home first” must form a key part of the plan for sustainable funding. We have made it clear that the social care plan must be fair across generations, and that those who can most afford it must be asked to contribute more. It must deal with both the immediate and long-term funding needs, and give social care the parity with the NHS that it both deserves and needs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, I say very sincerely that this was a powerful debate, very worthy of this Chamber. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for securing it and thank her for her thoughtful comments and the well-argued case she put before the House today. The noble Baroness brings an enormous wealth of experience on this subject. I pay tribute to her contribution to the House of Lords Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee, to which a number of noble Lords referred; to her role as a former commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission; to her previous role as director-general for Age Concern England; and to her current role as chief executive of the International Longevity Centre.
I also thank the noble Baroness for the work she has done with the Intergenerational Fairness Forum, in publishing its report on sustainable funding for social care and intergenerational fairness. This report is informed, thought-provoking and extremely influential. There were a series of insightful points in that report with which I completely agree. First, funding social care is a problem not just for those who need it, but for all of us. Secondly, there should be greater integration between health and social care services, as I have said from this Dispatch Box many times over the last 18 months. Thirdly, catastrophic care costs should be capped, with increased risk pooling across society. Fourthly, those who are able to contribute towards their care costs should continue to, even in retirement. The steps that we have taken following the announcement last week, in the Health and Care Bill, show our commitment to exactly those principles. We are in complete agreement about the need for generational fairness. I will say a few words of context about that.
The future of adult social care is at the heart of this debate. Our country’s adult social care system has never been under the pressure it is today, as the noble Baroness rightly pointed out. The coronavirus pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to the sector and only strengthened the case for urgent reform. That is why, earlier this month, the Prime Minister took the bold step of publishing Build Back Better: Our Plan for Health and Social Care. The reforms presented will make a real difference to the front line of adult social care, and they include care users and—as many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, rightly pointed out—the dedicated care workforce, who have been so brilliant during this pandemic.
Underpinning these reforms is a vital injection of funding over the next three years. This will end wholly unpredictable care costs and include at least £500 million to support the adult social care workforce. It also includes funding to enable all local authorities to move towards paying providers a fair rate for care, which should drive up the quality of adult social care services, improve workforce conditions and increase investment.
I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who gave a powerful case for a completely alternative approach, that the current system, while not perfect, has a high level of satisfaction among those who use it. We do not think the moment is right to abandon the benefits of the market economy or that that would improve satisfaction rates. Let me set out how the reforms I have described will benefit future generations.
Of the two principal pillars of our reforms, the first is a cap on care costs, funded by the health and social care levy. This means that, for the first time, everyone will be protected from unlimited care costs. People who have done the right thing and saved for their old age have previously been hit hard by the roulette wheel of health and social care needs. That means that one in seven faces care costs of over £100,000. It is right that society provides a backstop against that. Introducing a cap means that they can keep more of their savings in assets, so people can leave some of their savings to their loved ones. I remind noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who made a point on this, that this often includes many who provide unpaid care and fear for the loss of these assets.
Secondly, those who have limited or no savings will be protected by a much more generous means test. They and their loved ones will have the certainty of support when it is needed, and everyone will have more of their assets fully protected. I am very proud to be part of this, especially as the reforms this Government are bringing forward will increase the number of older adults receiving some state support by roughly two-thirds, up from about half at the moment.
The Intergenerational Fairness Forum report recommended a review of DPAs—deferred payment agreements—and the introduction of new equity release schemes. DPAs complement the reforms well, and I agree that equity release is a clear mechanism for protecting people from selling their homes within their lifetime. There are issues within the current system, including narrow eligibility criteria and low take-up, but I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, that as part of the announcement last week we are committed to working with partners to review the existing scheme in order to provide more flexibility for people to defer their care payments. I would very much welcome and hugely appreciate the noble Baroness’s insights into this area to inform that review.
These measures, which are being fully funded by a new, UK-wide health and social care levy, mean that we are not passing on the costs to future generations or increasing the public debt. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that by using national insurance contributions we are also ensuring that business contributes; it is not left just to the individual. It is progressive, in that those earning more will pay more, and has a clear UK-wide approach, meaning that everybody pays the same, wherever they live in the UK. Crucially, I remind noble Lords that we are tackling intergenerational fairness by extending the levy to all those over state pension age from April 2023, ensuring that individuals of all ages play their part.
I remind the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that the new levy is not just for social care. It will fund the full range of health priorities and support people of all ages. New spending on the NHS will not just benefit older individuals, with recent evidence suggesting that more than half of NHS spending goes to people in households below retirement age. In adult social care, currently more than half of all public spending goes towards under-65s. Working-age people will also benefit from limits on what they will have to pay if ever they need care later in life. It is entirely consistent with the contributory principle for national insurance, whereby working-age employees pay NICs, which gives them access to contributory benefits when out of work, including the state pension.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, that we know there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the social care system. I acknowledge that in 2019-20 we had more than 250,000 younger adults and more than 375,000 older adults receiving state support. These reforms will provide support to people of all ages. Younger and older adults will benefit from the same cap on care costs. Once they reach it, they will no longer pay for their personal care from their income or any assets. This will provide certainty and reassurance, help people plan for their future and ensure that more people are able to pass on more to their loved ones.
Finally, I assure noble Lords that this Government completely recognise the real need for intergenerational fairness, the subject at the heart of this debate. I will try to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who spoke with such characteristic learning on this subject, that we are making changes to that effect in many areas of policy. First, the Government’s new Environment Bill, which has taken up a lot of noble Lords’ time this week, looks to the future, focusing on creating a new governance framework for the environment, setting a new direction for resources and waste management, improving air quality, securing our water services, enhancing green spaces, updating laws on chemical use, and so on. Secondly, the Government are committed to strengthening their management of the public sector’s assets and liabilities to the benefit of future generations. Thirdly, our Kickstart scheme provides funding to employers to create jobs for 16 to 24 year-olds on universal credit.
I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that we are working hard to drive up provision of affordable housing, and the new mortgage guarantee scheme launched in April will help increase the supply of 5% deposit mortgages for creditworthy households. We will support lenders to offer products through a government-backed guarantee on new 95% mortgages until 31 December 2022. These are some of the ways this Government are ensuring that we are building back better for future generations.
I reassure the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Brinton, that we have made a bold step on the journey to reform, which will make a real difference to a great many people of all ages and backgrounds, including care users and the adult social care workforce, who have worked so brilliantly through the pandemic. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, that we will work with partners in the development of these policies.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who has been such an advocate for this important issue and secured such an interesting debate today. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part.
Government: Leadership Training
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Norton of Louth
To move that this House takes note of the case for enhancing the quality of government through the introduction of training in core leadership skills for (1) ministers, and (2) senior civil servants.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, when I joined your Lordships’ House 23 years ago, I was in the middle of research funded by the ESRC into the role of senior Ministers and their relationships with senior civil servants. Many of the problems I identified then remain today. Over the past 20 years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of training those who lead government, but the capacity to deliver that training has not kept pace with the aspirations.
My proposition is that those who head departments should have some training in how to lead. Leadership entails not just being able to manage an organisation in terms of ensuring that it runs efficiently but, crucially, creating a vision, getting others to buy into that vision—making them feel they have a stake in it and have contributed to it—and being able to turn that vision into action. Let me flesh out the two primary components of this proposition; the first covers who should be trained and the second what the training should—indeed, must—include.
We have a system of government where, historically, senior civil servants and Ministers have been generalists, lacking specialist knowledge and training in management. Although the importance of training civil servants has been variously recognised and led by bodies such as the Civil Service College, the National School of Government and Civil Service Learning, less attention has been accorded to the value of training Ministers, even though it is Ministers to whom we look for leadership and generating the vision—the goals—that civil servants are then expected to deliver.
Ministers matter. The doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility is important not so much for ascribing culpability when things go wrong but for ensuring that senior Ministers have line control of departments. Despite recurrent claims of prime ministerial or presidential government, the resources of No. 10 are limited and Prime Ministers are rarely interested in the whole gamut of public policy. They may determine high policy, but middle-level policy remains with senior Ministers. I have argued that the baronial model of government is as applicable in British government as that of prime ministerial government.
Some Ministers have their own fiefdoms. Legal powers are vested in senior Ministers—formally the Secretary of State—and not the Prime Minister or Cabinet. Ministers matter not only for what they may decide to do, but for what they decide not to do. They are important gatekeepers. As Heclo and Wildavsky noted many years ago in their seminal study, Cabinet Ministers are
“chief executives of their own departmental empires”.
Ministers matter, not just in terms of the powers vested in them but in how they seek to use them. I generated a typology of Ministers, comprising commanders, ideologues, managers, team players and agents. I distinguished purpose in office from the skills necessary to achieve it. Ministers may have a vision, but they may not have the ability to turn it into action. Some may be skilful politicians, but they may lack any clear vision.
New Ministers will typically come into office with no training or experience in running a department and often with no experience in leading others. They learn by observation as junior Ministers or by seeking to translate experience from a previous occupation, which may not always be apposite. At the time of my research, it was very apparent that Ministers got very little, if any, guidance from No. 10 as to what was expected of them. Providing guidance is clearly important, but Ministers need leadership skills to deliver their policies. The recent report of Policy Exchange’s Reform of Government Commission, entitled Government Reimagined, recognised that Ministers must develop skills to lead a department successfully.
I am delighted that the National Leadership Centre has been created and is designed, as the name demonstrates, to offer a leadership programme. I note that the evaluation report on the first year of the NLC states that
“one leader considered the engagement in training to improve their leadership capability and capacity as being a duty of all public service senior leaders”.
However, it does not reach all such leaders. It is designed for only 100 of them. The programme is selective and, as the evaluation noted, the recruitment process lacks transparency. It should encompass all senior civil servants—and Ministers.
I therefore very much welcome the Cabinet Office and Civil Service Declaration on Government Reform, published in June, which recognises the need for training Ministers as well as civil servants. It recognises that the training should encompass skills. There is a commitment not only to online provision but to a physical campus—in other words, a reversion to what existed before training was moved online for cost reasons.
Commitment to training Ministers is a major step forward, but within the declaration the focus is very much on the Civil Service. Of the 30 concrete steps promised for implementation this year, only one refers explicitly to Ministers, namely number 9:
“Put in place a training programme for Ministers, including project and commercial skills.”
Training in skills should not be confined to project and commercial skills, but should encompass how to develop strategy, crisis management and understanding the environment in which one has to work to achieve goals. Ministers who are commanders and ideologues will have clear future goals, but knowing what you want to achieve is different from knowing how to get there. Engaging in strategic planning is crucial; so too is crisis management. Training in crisis management is best practice in leading companies and, I was very pleased to see, appears to be included in the NLC leadership programme. Key to handling a crisis is, first, being able to recognise that there is a crisis—which is not as simple as it may sound—and, secondly, knowing how to respond.
In terms of the political environment, it is crucial not to be insular. Both Ministers and civil servants need to appreciate the significance of Parliament. Senior civil servants should not see it as an irrelevance or an adversary, or something to be left to the Minister to handle. I achieved an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill in 2010, which became Section 3(6) of the Act. It requires the Minister for the Civil Service to have regard to the need to ensure that civil servants who advise Ministers are aware of the constitutional significance of Parliament and the conventions governing the relationship between Parliament and Her Majesty’s Government. Although this forms part of the Civil Service Code, no record is kept centrally of what departments have done to give effect to it, and answers to questions I have asked on the subject have been notably unforthcoming.
It is not just civil servants who need to be trained in the significance of Parliament. Ministers will benefit from it as well. The fact that a Minister is an MP or Peer does not mean necessarily that they have a clear understanding of the body of which they are a Member. Some Ministers are notably dismissive or defensive in the Chamber and in Committee. Ministers in the Commons frequently lack an understanding of the role and significance of this House. I fear we even have on occasion a Minister in this House who does not fully understand or appreciate its role. Parliamentarians are among those whom Ministers need to buy into their vision.
Acquiring or honing leadership skills will enable Ministers to deliver on their policy goals. It is not a case of creating identikit Ministers. There is more a danger of that in imposing specific processes and potentially producing a tick-box approach than in empowering Ministers with the skills to lead and achieve the outcomes they seek.
I can find nothing in the declaration and the list of actions that addresses skills necessary for effective leadership. There are some very welcome commitments in terms of recruitment to the Civil Service and ensuring closer engagement with Ministers, but the emphasis is on establishing frameworks and processes. I am not decrying what is proposed—I very much endorsed it—but, rather, am drawing attention to what is omitted.
The same applies to the report of the Commission for Smart Government, chaired by my noble friend Lord Herbert, who I am delighted to see is speaking in today’s debate. It recommends giving each Minister on appointment a formal and public “commission letter” stipulating what they are expected to accomplish and with public reporting on performance. As I read it, there are no recommendations on how Ministers are to be proficient, to provide leadership, in delivering what is expected of them. Checking that Ministers have delivered what is expected of them is important, but more important is ensuring that they are provided with the skills to do it.
I look forward to the contributions of other noble Lords—we have a quality line-up—and to my noble friend the Minister explaining the Government’s plans to deliver training, especially for Ministers. Given that the June declaration embodies commitments to be implemented this year, how far advanced are plans for a physical campus and what skills training will Ministers be expected—indeed, required—to undertake, and will such training apply to current Ministers and not just new Ministers on appointment? I very much support the proposal for a mandatory induction package for the senior Civil Service, but what training will be provided for all existing senior civil servants? In particular, what steps are being taken to ensure that the senior officials who advise Ministers are fully cognisant of the importance of Parliament and the relationship between Parliament and the Executive? Simply saying that the requirement is in the Civil Service Code is not an answer to the question.
My Motion calls attention to the case for enhancing the quality of government through the introduction of training in core leadership skills for Ministers and civil servants. It is surely a public good. I beg to move.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on this debate. I look forward to the quality of the answers the Minister will give to the questions he raised. Indeed, while he was speaking I recalled the preparations made in the 1990s for the then shadow Cabinet, and indeed the whole of the Front Bench. We were involved in seminars, training and away days at Templeton College; that was very good discipline and preparation, especially for a party that had so few people who had ever been in government before. I am not sure how long that approach lasted, and much of what the noble Lord said is an entirely timely reminder for everyone about what needs to happen.
I also recall that every time I became a Minister—several times—I was given a great deal of paperwork about my obligations and the way to behave, but I was also spoken to by the Permanent Secretary, and perhaps that was more important in outlining ministerial responsibilities. That approach might still exist, or exist in theory, but I am not sure how successful it is for Ministers’ obligations to Parliament. The noble Lord referred to that.
I will emphasise not the nature of the training that should take place but why it is so important that we have a new approach at this time. As I see it, the basic problem is the lack of respect for Parliament on the part of Ministers. We see that in the dismissive answers given to Parliamentary Questions and in announcements being made outside the House. The Speaker in the other place has tried to get the Government to behave more appropriately.
It is also a very significant problem in the way Ministers approach legislation. For the last number of years I have been a member of the Constitution Committee of this House. During that time, I have become increasingly concerned, and indeed alarmed, at the extremely unhealthy trends that I think are accelerating—trends in what government Ministers think they can get away with without properly consulting Parliament, in an attitude that I can describe only as cavalier. Time and again, the Constitution Committee has looked at Bills coming before the House and expressed very significant concerns at their skeletal nature and the vast number of Henry VIII clauses giving Ministers great delegated powers, allowing them to create offences and even to give effect to an international treaty by statutory instrument, as opposed to an Act of Parliament. Almost every time the committee examined a major Bill, we expressed serious concerns about the Government’s approach.
The more significant problem is not the issues in each individual Bill but the underlying trend we are seeing of moving away from Parliament making our laws and Ministers increasingly taking powers to change the rules, regulations and guidance. This has obvious dangers for a parliamentary democracy—the Government must be accountable to Parliament and Parliament must make our laws—but it is also dangerous for Ministers. Ministers are much more likely to get legislation that is right, workable and not open to legal challenge if there is appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. We have seen this time after time.
The situation has been made worse in recent years. During the Brexit negotiations, and subsequently, the Government’s brinkmanship meant that vital legislation had to be fast-tracked through Parliament. That was not inevitable. It was the Government’s choice in their tactics with the EU, and their tactics in handling Parliament and minimising parliamentary scrutiny. We have also seen with Covid that the Government have taken unprecedented extra powers, using statutory instruments to change rules, regulations and guidance frequently and often very late in the day.
I think there is a very real danger that Ministers, and indeed civil servants—and maybe even parliamentary counsel—will think that this is a new norm and that the Government can actually get away with anything; that bouncing Parliament and riding roughshod over important conventions is the way the Government can operate in the future. That is very dangerous and should be resisted by this House. It is also why this kind of training for Ministers, civil servants and everyone involved—including Members of Parliament, who do not always understand this House—is absolutely essential. People have got to learn not just the principles surrounding parliamentary democracy but how a functioning democracy actually works best. That is why I am very pleased to support the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Norton.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. I must say that I agree with a great deal of what she said in relation to the conduct of the Government towards Parliament and the need for that particular relationship to be scrupulously observed.
It is a long time since I was a Minister but, in those days, it was a terrific fault if, by any chance, some proposal leaked out before it was put before Parliament; a complete investigation would normally take place into why that had happened and to prevent it happening again. I think partly that was due to the attitude of the most senior Minister in the Government—in my case, for most of the time, it was Margaret Thatcher—but it was indeed a very important consideration.
I am interested in the idea of instructing Ministers in what they should be doing. I am not sure whether this instruction would be given before they become Ministers, in the hope that they may become Ministers, or once they are in office, after they become Ministers. Whatever, it is certainly very important.
I looked through the papers that are recorded in the back of the brief that the Library has prepared for us and I took out this phrase:
“We will also ensure Ministers receive training in how to assess evidence, monitor delivery, and work effectively with Civil Service colleagues.”
The best I can do is to say just a word or two about my own experience as a Minister in two departments—both a long time ago, but I think the principles remain.
The first principle is that the Minister and all the staff of the department, whether they are civil servants or other agents that are used in the particular office in question, are one team. The Minister is responsible for that team and must take responsibility for any errors that take place. We all make mistakes—I have not met anyone yet who has never made a mistake; I look forward to that possibility but, so far, it has not materialised—and it is absolutely essential that the Minister takes responsibility for his department and what it does in his name. It tends to be a very divisive matter if the Minister starts to make out that something or other has happened that he did not want.
The second point I want to make is that the Civil Service and the other advisers in various departments are there to assist. I think it is vital for the Minister to give time to these people to express to him or her what their view is of a particular matter.
When I became Lord Chancellor, a long time ago now, I was very interested to hear what the civil servants, staff and officials had to say about quite difficult decisions that from time to time we had to make. I was told by my private office a week after I came into the office that they had doubled the amount of time allowed in my diary for consultations with officials. I think that indicates that I felt that the only way to be really sure that you were doing what was right was to try to find out what the advice was and discuss why that advice was given. As I look back on it now, I think that most of the decisions I took were agreed between myself and the official responsible for looking into the matter.
The whole position of being a Minister is surely very responsible, and one of the things a Minister is responsible for, in the public interest, is having a relationship with the press. When I became the Lord Advocate, there was no connection between my office and the press: rather, it was thought of as a rather unworthy kind of connection. I did not agree with that and I was determined to try to raise it. Help was given by my Secretary of State, George Younger, from the Scottish Office. One of the officers there told me that, if you have a case, the thing to do is to say when you are going to make a statement on it, make a complete investigation and, when that has been given, say “That’s all”—otherwise, the thing drags on and becomes an impediment. These are just some little advices I got out of practice, and I suspect they are pretty good advices still.
Lord Judge (CB)
My Lords, it is not merely because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, recommended me for appointment to the High Court Bench in 1988 that I say that it is a privilege to be following him—noble Lords will discover why in a moment. It is also a privilege to be following the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, whose chairmanship of the Constitution Committee when I was on it was absolutely marvellous.
We all know that we do not know it all. Look at us: very modest, very humble, and we recognise our own limitations. But there is a very strange thing about humanity: we must recognise also a tendency, when people suggest that we do not quite know everything—particularly on something we think we do know about—to slightly resent it. If a group of us is being asked to examine whether we know it all, we think, “Well, who are these people questioning whether we know very much?” We do not like criticism, and I say that because it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, who was such a stalwart supporter of training for judges.
You may not believe this, but when I was a junior judge and went into court to sit as a judge—I had had quite a lot of years of experience prosecuting, defending, and seeing other judges, some good, some not so good—I just sat as a judge, trying two policemen on corruption judges. It was very small corruption: just taking bribes to stop people being prosecuted for speeding. But I had not had a day’s training. More importantly, very significantly impressive people with wonderful brains who worked in the commercial world were sent out on circuit to try murder and rape trials who had never spent a day in a criminal court.
When it was suggested—I was a very strong supporter of this, rather ahead of my time, I regret to say—that there should be judicial training, the judges largely—we are talking about the 1970s—thought that this was a bit of an insult. They thought it was not appropriate. I remember them saying to me, “This is an interference with judicial independence; the Government’s trying to tell us what to do.” This is where I particularly draw attention to the privilege of following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, because he gave the most astonishing support to the idea that we had got to go through a judicial training process. I think, as all his career has shown, that he put principle ahead of any fleeting unpopularity.
Listen to my own experiences when I was running part of it. There was the day a black civil servant came to tell us, when we were setting up a body to look into and train us in diversity and prejudice, that he had been stopped 38 times driving a good middle-class car in 37 years. He then asked us, “And how many of you have been stopped by the police driving your car?” There were about 40 of us there, and not one of us had been.
The other remarkable moment was with that extraordinarily brave young woman who was the victim in the “vicarage rape case”, which all noble Lords will remember. I asked her, and she agreed, to come and talk to judges about how she had steeled herself to give evidence that would not give the perpetrator a moment’s satisfaction that she was still upset by what he had done to her—which led the judge to say that there was no sign of great trauma. We learned from all sorts of people. It is not possible for a judge now to sit on the Bench and to try sex cases, family cases—any sorts of cases—without having been trained.
Junior Ministers are rather like I was in my first trial. You are a Minister, you follow more senior Ministers, you move up the ladder, you are picking up all the habits that your Ministers have—some good, hopefully, and some not so good, inevitably. By the time you are a Secretary of State, you are ultimately, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out, responsible for the legislation. If I were in charge of training—and I did do it for some time for judges—I would train Ministers in constitutionality. It is a funny word, that, but it embodies everything that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, were talking about.
Since 2005 we have not had a proper Lord Chancellor. The old Lord Chancellor would be sitting at the Cabinet table, occupying a different function from the other Members of the Cabinet, there to tell them, “This won’t do, this is not the rule of law”—or whatever it might be. Now Mr Raab has become the Lord Chancellor, and everybody regards it as a demotion. As for the Minister for the constitution—this is not at all a personal criticism of Chloe Smith—she is not in the Cabinet. The Minister for the constitution is not a member of the Cabinet. This is why I suggest constitutionality.
I would have a day’s course with the chairs of our three committees—the Constitution Committee, delegated legislation committee and the secondary legislation committee—going down to talk to Ministers. No doubt they would take them copies of their reports. Perhaps they could be reinforced by the opportunity of having their legal advisers there, too—not the whole lot of them, just those three people. If the Government of the day said, “Ah, well, they’re not in our party,” then have the previous one. That way we would alert Ministers to the reality of what is going on; they are not paying sufficient attention to our constitution.
I will just add this. This is not a particular party I am arguing against. They all do it. Power does tend to corrupt.
Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests in the register, particularly my chairmanship of FMA, which provides support to Governments outside the UK on public sector and efficiency reform.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton on securing this debate, which is very timely. What better day to be debating the need for training Ministers than when the reshuffle has just happened and a raft of new Ministers are taking up their posts? I recall, in the early days of the coalition Government, a Minister from our coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, describing how he felt that he had been parachuted deep behind enemy lines with no map, no compass and no one to give him support in how he should execute the quite senior office to which he had been appointed. I have believed for a long time in the need for Ministers to have support and training.
Before the 2010 election, when I was leading the work of preparing the Conservative Party for the possibility of being in government, we drew on the activity that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, described. We organised a number of sessions; we wheeled out some of the old warhorses, such as my noble friend Lord Heseltine, with a reputation for knowing how to get things done in government. Subsequently we organised, on a very informal basis, some induction sessions after each reshuffle for new Ministers—but it was voluntary and not as well organised or as rigorous as it should have been. I deeply believe that this is really important.
The Institute for Government—IfG—supported the work that we did before that election and afterwards, and it can play an important role in this area. I am delighted to say that the Major Projects Leadership Academy, based in the Saïd Business School at Oxford, which we set up in 2012, now has a programme for Ministers, where they spend eight one-hour sessions over an eight-week period learning about many of the things that my noble friend Lord Norton has described: the need to articulate a vision and knowing how to turn that vision into reality. That is a positive development, but again I think it is voluntary when it should not be so.
The second part of my noble friend’s Motion, civil servants, are something with which I have had a great deal to do. For five years in the coalition Government I had responsibility in the Cabinet for the Civil Service, and I have a few reflections coming out of that. The first is that in the Civil Service we still have a class divide. There is a white-collar class of policy mandarins, to use the word, who basically sit above the salt and essentially have a stranglehold on the top jobs, and then there are the blue-collar civil servants who are specialists in finance, procurement, IT and major projects but rarely get the top jobs. There is not parity of esteem, something that we must work towards. We need to have the scope for civil servants who have skills and much-needed capability beyond the ability to provide analysis and policy support, and they need to have at least as good a chance of securing those top jobs.
Some 53 years after the Fulton committee report, there is still too much of the cult of the gifted amateur. My noble friend referred to generalists; that is another way of putting it. It is not that they are not gifted; many of them are extremely gifted and many very professional, but we still appoint people into very responsible posts—Permanent Secretaries of departments with budgets of tens of billions of pounds—who are woefully underprepared, and then we complain when they fail.
I tried to address this issue by starting a programme where younger Permanent Secretaries with a period ahead of them would attend top leadership courses at the best business schools in the world, where they would mingle with people from other sectors, including the private sector. These courses at Stanford, Harvard, INSEAD and others are incredibly valuable. I was told by the then Cabinet Secretary that we could not justify the cost because they cost $70,000 or so. These are people who we are putting in charge of tens of billions of pounds a year, but I was told that the Daily Mail would not wear it. My response was, “If they want to have that argument, bring it on. I’m very happy to make the case for making this investment in the people we are asking to take on these roles.”
We eventually got agreement that this would happen about 18 months before the 2015 election. I was consistently told that it was happening and all under way. By the time the election happened and I moved on, instead of 10 Permanent Secretaries going through three months at Harvard, Stanford and INSEAD, one Permanent Secretary, my own, had done one week at IMD in Lausanne. He said, “Minister, it was good, it was fine, but it wasn’t what you had in mind.” I have never understood why there was such resistance to giving these people, on whom we make such important demands, the support and backing they need to be able to undertake these public responsibilities.
We owe my noble friend a serious debt for drawing attention to the need for us to step up a good deal on this subject.
Lord Lipsey (Lab)
My Lords, I think that, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, every Member of this House would be in favour of better training for Ministers, though I must say it would be a bit of a challenge to train Gavin Williamson. I have been involved in one or two attempts, and it is not always easy to get Ministers or people who expect to be Ministers to accept training. Tony Blair was very superstitious about it, because he thought that if he allowed his shadow Ministers, as they then were, to be trained, that would somehow put a jinx on the election and the gods would take their revenge on him. There are of course also some politicians —I certainly do not say many, but there are some—who think that they are omnicompetent without any training at all.
There are some difficult issues in training; it is not altogether straightforward. I want to draw attention to just one which is part of my experience—and, as it happens, of that of the Minister who is responding today. The appointment and use of special advisers is quite contentious. Some of the contention has revolved around appointments, most famously when the Government lost a very competent Chancellor because Dominic Cummings insisted that he, Cummings, should control the special advisers. What the role of special advisers should be relative to other advisers to Ministers is also contentious. I can say with complete confidence that there is no comparison between the job I was brought in to do for Tony Crosland in 1974 as a special adviser and the jobs that special advisers do today. They are much more powerful, and in Cummings’s sad case, he was for a brief period the second-most powerful person in the land.
Good special advisers still work with civil servants, but when you are training Ministers what doctrine are you to teach as to the role of special advisers? Who decides what is to be taught? It really is not easy, though I am sure there are ways forward.
I hope I am not being too frivolous in saying that there is one essential difference between training civil servants and training Ministers. Civil servants can be incentivised to do the right thing by training—the noble Lord, Lord Maude, has just told us some of the things he did to try to do it: they get promoted better and they get performance bonuses and so on. However, much of this does not apply to Ministers. They are paid by grade rather than performance; there is no scope for awarding them for good performance by giving them more cash. As for incentives for civil servants, number one in most Ministers’ lists is not making sure that the public get maximum value for money out of some big spending programme. Most Ministers want to rise, and the incentive on them is to do what helps them to rise: perform well in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, appeal to powerful factions in their parliamentary parties by saying what they think will please them, look good on TV, and, above all—we saw an example of that yesterday—please the Prime Minister. I do not want to be too pompous about all this—this is what Ministers do; it is part of politics, and I do not expect it just to go away—but we must remember that these are not incentives that lead to better government.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord Norton on his timely choice of subject and his speech. Yes, more should be done to train Ministers, but for some jobs there are no readily available courses. For Government Chief Whip, for example, you need a PhD in behavioural psychology, some time as a regimental sergeant major and a spell as director of adult services in a local authority in special measures.
More seriously, we all speak from our own experience. I started my ministerial career in 1979 and made many mistakes; it ended 40 years later in 2019, hopefully with fewer. I did 22 ministerial years in eight different departments under five different Prime Ministers. Like others, I had no formal training whatever. I bought Gerald Kaufman’s book How to be a Minister and learned by watching Ministers in the Chamber and in the media when we were in opposition. This can give one a basic grounding in some of the qualities needed to do the job, but it does not cover everything.
If I had to select one piece of advice, from many, for prospective Ministers—which may not be mentioned by anyone else in this debate—it would be to understand exactly how government accounting works. One of the most vital tasks of any Minister is negotiating your department’s budget, now under way in Whitehall. This can determine the success or otherwise of your department’s policies and sometimes your own future.
In the 1980s, that meant understanding the intricacies of the so-called Ryrie rules. Ten years ago, it meant knowing exactly what the DEL/AME switch was, DEL being departmental expenditure limits and AME being annual managed expenditure. Yes, one can rely on one’s civil servants for much of the briefing, but when it comes down to a bilateral with the Chief Secretary or a solo appearance before star chamber, or indeed an interview with a well-briefed journalist, you need to be right on top of your department’s finances. It may not be the most exciting part of the job, but it is crucial. If you are forced to make concessions, do not expect a Treasury Minister to appear on the “Today” programme to defend the cuts you are obliged to make.
Much of my party’s emphasis has been on getting the number of civil servants down, and when I became a Minister in 1979 there were certainly parts of government where sheep could safely graze. But I want to make the opposite point and argue that there are now too many Ministers in the Commons; Lords Ministers are overburdened. As a former Chief Whip, I understand the attraction of a large payroll and extensive patronage, but I believe the numbers are too high.
In 1979, when the Department of Transport was responsible for the nationalised airlines, railways and airports, it had two Ministers, my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. There are now six. In 1979 I was a Minister in the DHSS, which combined the responsibilities of the DWP and DHSC. There were five of us. There are now seven in DHSC and six in DWP. It may not make me popular with the Government, but I believe the numbers could usefully come down. It would enable us to reduce the cost of government and do away with the inequity of unpaid Ministers, not least in your Lordships’ House.
Related to that, Ministers are moved too soon and too often. In my first nine years as an MP there were two Housing Ministers, Reg Freeson and John Stanley. Between January 2015 and July 2019, there were six. I know from my own experience that it takes time to build up a relationship with social housing providers, local authorities, planners, architects and other stakeholders, and to understand the legislative and financial framework in which you operate. It took me two years before I was really confident in the job—and I was lucky; I did it on and off for nine years. There are too many other examples of swift turnovers. Between May 2015 and July 2019, there were five Lord Chancellors. Between March 2016 and September 2019, there were six Secretaries of State at the DWP.
I have a lot of respect for the Civil Service, but it is not only Ministers who move too quickly. Read my noble friend Lord Freud’s recently published book, Clashing Agendas: Inside the Welfare Trap, in which my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham stars. Of the introduction of universal credit, he writes: “In practice, I found that I was the only senior figure with an institutional memory for the totality of what we were trying to do … there were no fewer than six senior responsible owners and six programme directors in the first five years of building Universal Credit”. That is the other side of the coin, reversing the usual picture of transient Ministers and permanent civil servants.
He makes another point about the Civil Service with which I agree. The capacity of the Civil Service has been reduced by contracting out. My noble friend Lord Freud suggests bringing some of that capability back in-house. He says:
“Purely in terms of IT, the lessons learned imply bringing development capability back in-house; building big integrated teams to adopt agile technology”.
This debate is about becoming a Minister and I end, appropriately, with a wish that Ministers learn when to stop. More should resign when their behaviour is unacceptable or, as my noble friend Lady Sugg did, to her credit, when they disagree with government policy. Far from detracting from the authority and credibility of government, more resignations would actually enhance it.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on this very interesting debate. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is right about the importance of accountancy and the dangers of transience. I rise to speak because I was both in the senior Civil Service for 14 years—much of this at its heart in the Cabinet Office and No. 10 —and a government Minister for three years, at BEIS, DCMS and the Treasury. Today, I will emphasise the importance of education and experience as well as training, the need for apposite training and the importance of diversity of thought and cost-benefit analysis.
In my experience, what happens in early life and in your career before reaching senior positions is every bit as important as any training. Even William Pitt the Younger would have struggled as Prime Minister at such a young age without his elite education. Most good Ministers have had a number of government roles on the way up, learning from discussions on Bills, in debates, from crises and how to get departments to act effectively in the desired direction. They learn leadership on the job and from effective, and ineffective, Secretaries of State.
Most leading civil servants have strong academic credentials and many years of experience in different but related roles. Many serve Ministers extremely well. Many of us will have specific examples in mind. This was the Northcote-Trevelyan model, and it is a pity that it is being steadily undermined. Most of the best Ministers are bright and educated, and they bring wider experience—for example, in the services, the law, business and so on—and not just years as spads, good though some spads definitely are. Spads’ focus is usually on their Minister’s star, not on the longer term, and their value is limited accordingly.
How can training help? Here I draw on my 15 years of experience as an executive director of Tesco, at a time when we were a growing and global business. Many were from modest backgrounds, and all shared a laser-like focus on the end goals and an ability to lead, motivate people and get them to deliver—or go elsewhere. We had good training programmes, but they were sponsored and led by the key directors, not just by the training function. Every manager helped their staff to do better where they were weak or had potential, and training was designed to help with that. We gave our teams wide discretion. We were all taught not to spend time on doing things just because we liked doing them but to delegate wherever we could and to address training needs. We cut out needless layers of management so that everyone’s jobs were more challenging and satisfying. These are not skills that you can suddenly learn when you get to the top.
My observation of Civil Service training was that it is self-selecting and that those who needed it did not get it, although they might be attending other courses that they fancied, at public expense. Training should be directed at those who need it, not at those who want it. My only training in my ministerial capacity was in dementia, which was a rather good initiative of David Cameron’s, I have to say. I also learned some excellent Dispatch Box skills from my noble friends Lord Howe and Lady Noakes.
Another problem is the prevalence of fashion in politics, which has, in my lifetime, extended down into the Civil Service. Diversity is a good example. As a woman who started her career as often the only female fast-streamer or executive in the room, I welcome aspects of diversity and have tried to help others on the way up. However, diversity of thought seems to have gone out the window as a desirable characteristic. Unfortunately, this reflects the position in even our best universities, where holding certain political opinions seems to be almost a requirement for employment. The sooner the Civil Service and universities reverse this unwelcome trend, the better. Overall, a great deal of attention is given to diversity, without dealing with this area where it is lacking: diversity of thought.
Finally, I want to make a specific point. I am well known as an enthusiastic supporter of impact assessments. The principal reason for my enthusiasm is that they enable all of us to judge the cost benefit of the action that the Government propose to take. This is the most important area of decision-making in government. The academic side of the process is well developed, and all Ministers and senior civil servants, without exception, should be properly trained in its mysteries—another one for the list of my noble friend Lord Norton. A broad cost-benefit assessment, prepared while decisions are being taken, can help a Minister and a senior civil servant to identify the likely perverse effects of a policy—one that may even end a successful career—and reach a sound conclusion.
I do not have time to deal with all the ideas outlined in the helpful Library Note. Suffice it to say that some are more realistic than others. I look forward to a further discussion with my noble friend Lord Norton.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, is it not serendipitous that we are having this debate at the time of a reshuffle? The Institute for Government paper, Professional Development for Ministers, states:
“New ministers have to pick up their duties almost immediately and have a limited time to make a mark. From 1997 to 2015, secretaries of state stayed in post for an average of two years and two months, with junior ministers only getting one year and eight months in the job.”
George Freeman, a former Minister, is quoted as saying:
“There’s no training, no guidebook, no manual, no induction! You leave the Cabinet room with promotion ringing in your ears … and walk straight into the department and start doing the job.”
In fact, in a survey carried out by the institute, the most frequently mentioned negative factors determining ministerial effectiveness were “Rapid turnover of Ministers” and
“Lack of adequate preparation, induction or development”.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for initiating this timely debate. He said that Ministers matter. He said that Cabinet Ministers are the CEOs of their departmental empires. The noble Lord, Lord Maude, with all his experience, spoke about the tens of billions of pounds of expenditure and hundreds of thousands—millions, in the case of the Department of Health and Social Care—of employees that many Ministers have.
Yet it is a revolving door. The average tenure of a FTSE 100 chief executive is five and a half years. I am proud to be the chancellor of the University of Birmingham. Our vice-chancellor, Professor Sir David Eastwood, is about to retire after 13 years. Birmingham is among the top 100 universities in the world. He did not achieve that overnight; you need time to be able to do it. I served as the senior independent director of Booker. Charles Wilson, the chief executive, took Booker—including its board and its team—from being a £300-million, AIM-listed company, as it was when I joined in 2007, to merging with Tesco nine or 10 years later, with a value of £4 billion. It was not overnight; he needed the time to do it.
How many Ministers have genuine business experience? Look at people such as Nadhim Zahawi, who did such a fantastic job with the vaccination programme, or Sajid Javid, with his global experience working for American and German banks in east Asia, America and Europe. How many of them attended business school? The noble Lord, Lord Maude, talked about that. I have a degree from India and a law degree from Cambridge. I am a qualified chartered accountant. When I started Cobra Beer, I thought, “That’s it, I’ve done enough education for generations”. Then I realised the value of lifelong learning. I am now a proud alumnus of three business schools: the Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, of which I am proud to be a fellow, says that the concept of continual professional development is embedded in you from the time you start as a trainee accountant right through to now, when I have to certify to that. In 2019, the CBI, of which I am president, produced the report Great Job: Solving the Productivity Puzzle Through the Power of People. It states:
“Great people practices make business sense. A business’s most important source of value is its people … firms that attract and retain people by improving leadership and management, and the practices that develop and engage staff, do better. Even small improvements in firms’ people practices are associated with sizable productivity increases … UK businesses primarily invest in staff development through training”.
It makes sense to do this.
The Commission for Smart Government had a piece about learning from the pandemic’s successes. I was very privileged to learn so much from my late father, Lieutenant General Bilimoria, who was commander-in-chief of the central Indian army, with 350,000 troops. One of the things he always said was that the true test of leadership is not in the good times but in adversity—and, wow, have we had the chance to learn about leadership from adversity. The report quotes Dame Kate Bingham:
“The instruction I was given by the Prime Minister was to save lives as soon as possible, so we had a very clear goal.”
And she did it, thanks to that empowerment. In eight months, she created what we have had: one of the best, most impressive vaccination programmes. So, we have had great lessons over here, and I have learned as well about the collaboration with business that we have carried out with the CBI.
This document—the Declaration on Government Reform—co-signed by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary is excellent news. The recommendation it makes about people, performance and partnership is fantastic. That is just what we need to do. Michael Gove spoke at the Ditchley Foundation, where I am proud to be a governor, last year. He made a speech on the Declaration on Government Reform and called for more training for both Ministers and officials to meet present and future challenges. He was absolutely right on that. On this document that both the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, signed, it says:
“We have superb people at every level of public service”,
which I could not endorse more, but that:
“We will invest in training for civil servants and for Ministers”.
Could the Minister update us on that?
The document also said:
“We will set a new standard for diversity and inclusion”.
I am proud to have launched Change the Race Ratio at the CBI to promote diversity across all business. I give full credit to this Government for diversity: just look at the Cabinet table and the diversity around it. I have always said that we will have a member of the ethnic minorities as a Prime Minister of this country. I have been saying that for years, and that day is imminent.
We should be sending our Ministers to the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford, the Saïd Business School at Oxford, the Cambridge Judge Business School and the London Business School.
To conclude, I attended a virtual session with my fellow Harvard Business School alumnus, Prime Minister Mitsotakis of Greece. In this meeting last year, when Greece was doing very well with the pandemic, he said, “I am accused by my opponents of treating Greece like a company—and I take that as a compliment”.
Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton on securing this timely debate. We have heard many interesting speeches.
The challenges that face any Government are clear; any Government would have faced rapidly rising demand and a second digital revolution. But, of course, those challenges have been exacerbated by Covid, which has now produced an overhanging deficit. This Government already had a very bold levelling-up agenda before Covid arrived. As noble Lords have said, Covid revealed weaknesses in our system of government—particularly failures of preparation, delivery and execution—but it also revealed potential strengths and solutions. As the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, just referred to, the Vaccine Taskforce is one very good example of that, and of fusion government: the bringing together of talent from inside and outside government, real leadership being shown, real expertise deployed and, crucially, individuals being empowered with specific tasks and budgets and being held to account—and yet that appointment was very strongly attacked before it was revealed to have been so successful. I think we should reflect on that.
My own qualifications for speaking in this debate may be said to be limited, having been a Minister for a short period only. But I actually have a long-standing interest in government reform as the co-founder of the Reform think tank, of which our new Foreign Secretary is an alumna, and as the chair of the Commission for Smart Government—which the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Bilimoria, referred to—set up last year to look at how we could deliver more effective government.
I want to emphasise that this independent commission was cross-party and non-party. It consisted of former politicians, former Permanent Secretaries, senior advisers, very senior businesspeople and a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, who is of course a former Permanent Secretary, the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish of Little Venice, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who is the current government lead non-executive director, the previous government lead non-executive director, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston. Our commission concluded that, regrettably, our system of government is no longer world-class and we should be honest that in many respects it does very good things and in other respects it fails to deliver; that without transformative change, no Government will meet their policy goals; and that an understanding of that is absolutely crucial.
I want to put on record my strong view that we should not allow any sensible, objective and calm critique of our system of government to translate into an attack on the Civil Service. I am proud to be the Prime Minister’s special envoy on LGBT rights. As such, at the moment I am working with simply brilliant civil servants in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and in the Government Equalities Office; I see their commitment and passion, how hard they work and their abilities. It is not a criticism to say that we need to ensure that we have a system that is resolutely focused on better performance and on the capabilities of civil servants.
No other organisation would look at itself and consider how much more training it needs to give, the quality of that training, the quality of its people, whether it has the right people and whether they have the right skills and somehow make that an attack on itself or see it as an attack on its own people. Of course it is not. It is about instilling a high-performance culture in the organisation and ensuring that any organisation is equipped to meet today’s challenges. There is so much evidence that we are not. We must move on, and I believe we have moved on, from the idea that this is about Whitehall wars—an attack by politicians on civil servants. We must do so for two reasons. First, because that attack is not merited, and, secondly, because, frankly, politicians are part of the problem. It is our system of government which is not working properly and which we have to sort out. That is why the Declaration on Government Reform is so welcome.
Our report made a number of important recommendations in relation to civil servants, including setting up a
“world-leading MBA-style executive training programme … and … A rigorous test of knowledge and experience of technology”—
which all senior officials should have to undertake— and an
“in-house Crown headhunter to help bring in high calibre people from outside government”,
because we have seen that that can be so effective.
But crucially our report also focused on Ministers. We noted that, as has been said, Ministers begin their roles unprepared, suffer from a lack of clear directional mandate, feel that they do not have enough support, and feel that they can be held accountable for mistakes which others have made and which they are powerless to address. We therefore said that ministerial training should be a crucial new focus, and that Ministers and civil servants together should be trained in the new Queen Elizabeth II school of public service, which should be set up specifically for this task. We said that Ministers should be able to appoint outside advisers but that they should be held properly to account. We said that the commission letters that new Ministers will now be receiving, setting out their new role, should be made public, so that Ministers can be held properly to account.
In conclusion, we also said that the red box should be scrapped. If there is one obvious metaphor—one obvious exemplar of a system that is, frankly, completely antiquated—it is that papers are printed off, Ministers read them and then they are carried around in vehicles in wooden boxes. It is an absurdity and an anachronism, and it points to the fact that our system is simply not up to date. Let us introduce modern workforce management methods, proper training and proper accountability, and better performance will follow.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have never been a Minister, MP or civil servant, so the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will have to forgive me if I make my remarks as an erstwhile civilian. But I have worked in education and am familiar with the training world. I am afraid that, when I hear the words “advocacy of training” and “leadership skills”, my heart sinks. My dread is that it treats leadership as a technical matter, reduces virtues to techniques and can rip the heart out of what it means to lead. To be honest, if ever there was an example of our soulless technocratic era, it is the proliferation of leadership skills courses over recent years, comparable only to the ever-growing number of organisations that pay consultants to write their mission statements—always to me a worrying sign of an institution’s lack of mission.
Of course, I am all for reform, effective government and professionalising Whitehall. I want new Ministers and staff to be able to upgrade their technical skills, and to understand procedure and how to improve drafting legislation and so on. Any measures that make government more accountable and less opaque and arcane are admirable, but I query whether leadership skills training is the remedy, and worry it might turn leadership into performative competence with too little regard for content.
In introducing this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, talked of the need for Ministers to have the skills to sign up their teams to their vision. My worry is that they do not have a vision, not that they are not trained in how to share it. It reminds me of Debating Matters, a national debating competition for 16 to 18 year-olds that I set up over 15 years ago but is now a charity in its own right. It reminds me of that because its slogan is “substance over style”, and it was set up as an explicit antidote to traditional schools’ debating, which tends to emphasise clever rhetorical tricks and devices, even employing voice coaches and drama techniques. Pupils’ speeches can be stylistically elegant but, while beautifully delivered, can often be banal cliches; some of the Debating Matters pupils might have stuttered and stammered their way through their speeches, but they were content rich. Leadership requires us to give due regard to content.
This morning, I turned on Sky News to see a representative from Rights for Residents, who was eloquently and forcefully explaining the petition that she and others were handing into No. 10 today, in support of residents and their relatives in care homes, who have been denied visiting rights. The Rights for Residents campaign did not exist before this pandemic, but the awful, cruel treatment of residents forced it to exist. It is led—that is my point—by a group of brilliant women who had no experience of public life before this and who have never been on a media training course. They took a lead because it mattered, and they showed courage, integrity and principles. I sometimes think we do not talk about that enough when we talk about leadership skills.
I also feel anxious when I hear proposals about the creation of a physical campus—a school of public service—which we have heard about. This school would apparently be
“a world leading … executive training programme, equivalent to the leading business school offers”,
in which aspiring civil servants, public sector leaders and politicians would be trained together, based on a redefined set of leadership requirements. I immediately thought about the destructive impact that MBAs and managerialism have had on public life. I am sorry, but I do not think this is the solution: think of all the damage that has been done to our language by the gobbledegook and acronyms of managerialism, the performance management frameworks and so on. Then I noticed that a priority for this new school will be to lead high-quality research to develop better understanding of the relationship between leadership, well-being and productivity. I appeal to people not to waste money on that research, because it should be obvious that there is a connection between those things. If you need to be taught that, what kind of a leader are you?
I am also worried that setting up this kind of campus might end up aping other aspects of campus culture. Think of the debacle of the Valuing Everyone training. It was supposed to make us better leaders, but it was condescending and, if anything, did not make us value others and led to the cancelling of several of our Peers for not doing it, because of the rubric and rules. Then there are the endless stories of civil servants being forced to ape the worst of the divisive aspects of student identity politics, when they are sent on training courses on unconscious bias—which is, by the way, pseudoscience—and how to champion diversity, as defined by organisations such as Stonewall.
I make this point because, rather than just saying that what we need to do is to train Ministers and civil servants, we need sufficiently to scrutinise what that training consists of, because it can actually be dangerous. I was struck by the description of the problems at the heart of government given by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. I agree with her and the shocking examples that she gave of the contempt shown to parliamentary accountability of late and the broader disdain for democracy shown across both Houses for popular sovereignty in relation to the Brexit vote—not because they did not know what the mandate was but in defiance of our electors.
That seems to me not something you can train people out of. It is not a skills deficit, but a democratic political deficit. That should be our focus, and we should not get distracted by all going off on training courses.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Norton for this timely debate, which I fully support. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, by admitting that I come to it somewhat humbly, acknowledging my lack of experience as a Minister, an MP or a civil servant.
Over the past 18 months, we have become more aware than ever of the importance of effective government, which requires excellence in leadership. When the control of the state extends over our social lives, our access to workplaces, healthcare and leisure facilities and our ability to travel freely, it is terrifying to think that incompetence might hold sway for want of core leadership skills. Among those, I give pre-eminence to the ability to exercise courage and servant leadership, which are mutually interdependent, in pursuit of the common good. Political elites should always be focused on pursuing this, but their hypercompetitiveness and electoral short-termism make courage and servant leadership particularly elusive traits.
Moreover, “Gotcha!” politics has become supercharged by cancel culture: pitiless condemnation of what people say—let alone do—which makes it more difficult than ever to act with courage. Anonymous social media bullies seek to destroy through fear the man or woman who, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words,
“is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; … who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds”.
Good governance always requires taking risks, for the present incumbents to realise long-term rewards which may accrue to other political parties and leaders.
The implementation of my two reviews commissioned by the Ministry of Justice required political and civil service leaders to invest faith and money in the ability of healthy relationships with families and others to reap significant rehabilitation rewards. In the short term, this meant, for example: allowing access to iPads for video visits; home leaves on temporary licence; and enabling more women to stay with babies born during or shortly before their sentence. Retrospective research findings, such as reoffending being 39% less likely when prisoners had received family visits, suggest good outcomes will ensue from such measures, but prospective, longitudinal studies showing reductions in intergenerational crime and long-term desistance, are likely to take more than a decade to yield the irrefutable data that many leaders prefer to act on when making seemingly risky decisions.
Academic business studies expose the limits of such “vigilant” leadership. This is when decision-makers work
“to the best of their limited abilities, within the confines of available organizational resources, to exercise all the caution they can to avoid mistakes in the essential tasks of information search, deliberation, and planning.”
To me, this emphasis on caution, avoiding risks and bureaucratic decision-making can and does stifle initiative and innovation and quenches the spirit of adventure. It can eliminate the need for courage, whereas judging risk/reward ratios and courageously acting on them demands it.
Research on how senior leaders in the US federal Government made their most difficult decisions considered whether they employed this “vigilant” approach to decisions involving informational, technical or political complexity. Notably, leaders said that their most difficult decisions required courage. Those courageous decisions were made after personal reflection and/or consulting a small number of trusted advisers, rather than in ways that could be described as “vigilant”. The researchers concluded that complex decisions required leaders and their advisers to be “ambidextrous”—systematic and highly rigorous but also able, when courage was needed, to stick their heads above the parapet and take risks to reap potentially great rewards.
However, how does one train to develop a courageous risk-reward mindset? It has to be modelled from the top and is closely linked to servant leadership that focuses on the growth and well-being of those being led. I am a Christian and follow the most successful servant leader of all time, who was fundamentally characterised by humility, Jesus Christ, who described his heart as humble and lowly. He is not a bad model to look at even for those who are not Christians.
For the purposes of this debate, servant leadership includes demonstrating loyalty to those above and below oneself in the ministerial hierarchy or Civil Service grade structure and, of course, ultimately to the people of this country—again seeking their common good. Organisational culture experts describe how servant-led employees do not fear being punished for taking risks and trying to do the right thing, as long as their actions align with their organisation’s goals, mission and core values. This makes them perform at more of a risk-taking level. Imagine if the whole of government—politicians and the Civil Service—were infused throughout with courage and servant leadership, where responsibility lies where it should and subordinates are not sent over the top to take the flak.
I know that there is a view that those most senior should be protected where possible from the full force of opposition, but preparing for this debate put me in mind of the Battle of Waterloo, where my great-great-great-grandfather lost an arm. As many in this House will know, Waterloo was a slaughterhouse, the worst carnage in the Napoleonic wars, with huge pressure on British officers, a vast amount of whom were killed or badly wounded. In those days, officers led from the front, exposing themselves to great risk of loss, balanced with the reward of glory in service to their country. We need to see a revival of that courage and servant-mindedness in Whitehall and Westminster today.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I start by apologising to the House and the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that I am the only speaker from the Liberal Democrat Benches. There were four Liberal Democrat names down but, unfortunately, my three colleagues had to return to distant parts of this country—the Scottish Borders, the West Country and East Anglia. I have heard from a number of Conservative Peers over the past few months the suggestion that all the Liberal elite are metropolitan. That is not the case. I suspect that the illiberal financial elite is a good deal more metropolitan than we are.
I have some interests to declare. My wife was for some years a civil servant, including a period teaching at what was then the Civil Service College. A number of my other relations and former students are in the senior Civil Service. I taught in a number of Civil Service College courses in the 1970s and 1980s, in senior management courses in the 1990s and in executive courses at the London School of Economics provided by the Spanish Government and a number of multi- national corporations and banks.
The noble Lord, Lord Maude, reminds me of the embarrassing occasion some 25 years ago when I arrived at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to teach a series of seminars on British foreign policy and recognised among the students the newly-appointed Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. These things are not entirely new.
The noble Lord, Lord Herbert, also reminded me of the story of the Liberal Democrat Minister under the noble Lord, Lord Maude. The Minister’s private office explained that he could not have a car to take him back to his constituency. When he replied, “So I can take my red box on the train and work on it there?”, the answer was, “No, Minister, you can’t. The red box cannot be allowed on a train. It will be sent ahead by car.”
The Motion refers to the “introduction” of training for Ministers and senior civil servants. Civil servants have been trained, as I have suggested, for some time. Ministerial training presents an existential problem in a political system in which, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, and others suggested, Ministers are expected to answer in Parliament and to the media within a day or two of their appointment. There is a very strong case in general for a slower process of government formation.
I agree with the Commission for Smart Government’s proposals for a longer transition period between Governments—the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, suggested up to two weeks, on the Canadian model—and for
“an interval between announcement and taking up position, to enable incoming Ministers to read up and be … fully briefed before they start work.”
Effective use of junior ministerial appointments as training for senior roles would also help, although some Secretaries of State, in my experience, are remarkably uninterested in treating their junior Ministers as part of a team. Expert advisers—which is what spads were when first introduced—are also highly useful and desirable.
However, there is an underlying issue about political recruitment. Fewer lawyers now become MPs than 50 years ago, as do fewer with experience in local government or elsewhere managing within the public sector. The Commons offers a narrow talent pool. The emasculation of local democracy means that MPs now spend more and more of their time on local issues and less on national or international ones. A Commons Public Administration Committee report in 2015 recommended a parliamentary Civil Service scheme along the lines of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. That should be considered further.
However, more Ministers in the Lords, or even non-parliamentary Ministers, will not win support from MPs. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Young, that fewer Ministers must be part of the answer.
Training for civil servants, by contrast, has a long history, from the Fulton report to the Civil Service Department, then to the Civil Service College, which became the National School of Government. A Conservative Minister abolished the NSG in 2010 and sold off the campus. The PACAC report The Minister and the Official noted in 2018:
“It is now widely accepted that the closure of the National School of Government has left a gap”
in the training and professional development of civil servants that has not yet been closed.
What is now proposed is in many ways reinventing the wheel—which does not make it any less desirable. I have heard highly critical remarks from some civil servants about the contracted-out courses that have been provided since 2010 and I strongly support proposals to reconstruct a physical centre for Civil Service training, which would also bring together people with experience across the wider public sector and beyond—what the senior management course used to do.
Mutual trust between Ministers and officials is essential to effective government. Ministers too easily treat efforts to point out the complexities of policy changes as attempts to resist or undermine what they want to do. Many Labour Ministers in 1997 assumed when they came in that officials were naturally conservative and therefore unsympathetic to Labour proposals. Many Conservatives in 2010 believed that officials were pen-pushers and bureaucrats, who would be out making more money in the private sector if they were any good and were concerned primarily with defending their own jobs and privileges. Some still believe that today.
Attacks by Michael Gove and others on “the Blob”, which, for Simon Heffer in last Sunday’s Telegraph, covers the Civil Service, higher education, the Church of England, the BBC—of course—and the leadership of the NHS and the Metropolitan Police, do not help build confidence that this is a Government open to challenge and willing to listen to argument, and who value a well-trained and politically neutral public service. The quality of ministerial leadership in recent Governments has been, at best, mixed. Bad Ministers blame their officials, as bad workmen blame their tools. Ministers have to earn the respect of their officials and hold it. I have seen Conservative Ministers expressing their distrust of the Civil Service in front of senior officials—a leadership style that does not strike me as very effective. I have noted excellent senior officials with whom I worked in government leaving because they felt they could no longer work with Ministers who dismiss reasoned argument. That does not promote smart government either.
I felt there was an air of fantasy about the declaration on government reform this June and the speech by Michael Gove that accompanied it. It spoke of the success of the management of the pandemic, of rational policy-making without concern for tactical advantage, press presentation or partisan patronage. There was no mention of the fiasco and excessive cost of test and trace, of the smell of corruption in the way contracts were handled or the enormous profits that outsourcing companies have made by providing services that local authorities and local public health officers could have managed more cheaply and effectively.
The Commission for Smart Government report also has some fantastical elements. If departmental boards are really intended to provide vigorous challenge to ministerial and official groupthink, then recent appointments of non-executive directors have been extraordinarily ill chosen.
The government of England is dreadfully over- centralised. Ministers in Whitehall concern themselves with the details of issues that were entirely within the hands of local government 40 years ago. Sending bits of Whitehall departments to Middlesbrough or Manchester will not do much to bring citizens and government together. That requires a revival of effective and democratic local government, which would enable Westminster and Whitehall to reduce the numbers of central Ministers and officials, and even to shrink our bloated Cabinet to a size where it might again become an effective body. It is time for a careful review of the cost effectiveness of outsourcing of many public services after a pandemic in which the profits of outsourcing and consultancy companies have risen sharply, with the Government supporting far larger salaries for the flood of consultants than in-house experts would have cost.
If we are to be really smart about good government, we should attempt reforms that will last longer than the life of any one party in power. The Fulton report managed that. I encourage the rational reformers, such as the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, to resist the uber-partisans within the Conservative Party who want to push ahead without consulting anyone outside the Conservative Party, and try to create reforms with wider support that will outlast the next election or two. This is the sort of issue that might usefully have been covered by a constitutional commission, as promised in the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto. Sadly, the promise to establish such a commission has been broken.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, like other noble Lords I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for giving us the opportunity for what has been an extremely interesting and, as we have heard, timely debate. I doubt that I can do justice, in winding up, to the contributions that have been made. It just shows the breadth of experience in your Lordships’ House that, from different experiences, we come to debate and look at the same issue.
One of the interesting comments the noble Lord, Lord Norton, made at the beginning was about joint learning, in terms of management, for both civil servants and Ministers. I find it interesting, and perhaps worth developing more, how that would work. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, had a point when he said that the role of the Minister and of the civil servant is very different. Indeed, the role of a junior Minister is very different from that of a Secretary of State, who would rarely deal with legislation in Committee. So I think there are lessons to be learned, if there is to be training, about how we would do it better.
What this debate is really about is enhancing the quality of government. Part of that is recognising the partnerships that exist between Ministers, their civil servants, as we have heard from other noble Lords, Parliament and, indeed, stakeholders. I thought it was interesting that when the noble Lord, Lord Norton, referred to the training that was taking place, he said that what was in the spec, as it were, was project or commercial management. It would give me cause for concern if that were to be the extent of this, because it is so important, as we heard, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, that Ministers and civil servants understand Parliament and the role of Parliament and are able to develop their leadership skills. I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that these cannot be taught, but I would hope that if someone had got to be a Minister they have them latent within them somewhere so they can be brought out and improved. They need to understand the roles that each have and they need to develop the skills to manage their private office, their civil servants and, indeed, their own work. Gerald Kaufman’s book, which was referred to earlier, is quite a useful starting point for many a Minister just to learn some of the tricks of the trade. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord True, will say whether he has a copy—if not, we can send him one.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, talked about the kind of information available. Other noble Lords will know that, when you first arrive at your department, the induction package is paper—lots of it. It can be quite daunting on the first day, because it is not necessarily relevant to what you are doing but to what the whole department is doing.
On Ministers who come into office without having parliamentary experience, I always feel for noble Lords who come straight in and make their maiden speech from the Dispatch Box, because of their attitude to Parliament and how they manage. It is terrifying for them and unsatisfactory for many others.
Some very useful comments were made about the culture of Parliament by my noble friend Lady Taylor, the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. It seems that the culture of Parliament and of governance comes from the top. My noble friend Lady Taylor, from her experience on the Constitution Committee, gave examples of where Parliament appeared to be an inconvenience to the Government. I have to say that the acts of government, in passing legislation, do not necessarily mean good governance. The Government might get a law through, but, if there has not been good governance and the process has just been, “We’ve got the numbers, we can get this through”, the quality of that legislation so often has to be unpicked later.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, made an interesting point about the role of the Lord Chancellor. The situation is actually worse than he fears, because Dominic Raab, who has the roles of Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, is also the Deputy Prime Minister. That would never have happened in the past; it seems quite a conflict of interest to hold those positions.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, made some really important references to cultural changes. In last week’s debate on standards in public life—it seems to be the Thursday night entertainment for the noble Lord, Lord True, and I to be at the Dispatch Box—we looked at issues where, in the past, Ministers such as Lord Carrington and Hugh Dalton resigned over something that nobody now would bat an eyelid at, but the criteria at the time were that they had been disrespectful to Parliament, or they felt that they had shown bad judgment and they felt it was their duty to resign.
I will make a few personal observations. One of the things that I think is very important for a Minister in their private office when they first become a Minister is to establish what that relationship is and the expectations of the private office. One thing I would say to my private office and team of civil servants was, “I have multiple roles. To you, I am your Minister. That is the role you see for me. I am also a parliamentarian, and it is important that I am in Parliament every day that I am able to be. But I also have a constituency; I am a politician.” Those three roles sometimes come into conflict, but, if your private office understands the roles, they will help you manage that. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made a very strong point about teamwork between civil servants and Ministers to get the best results from decision-making.
The example from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on the value of training was quite an emotional one that did him huge credit. Obviously you cannot train somebody to have good judgment, but you can train them to understand the mechanics of how the process works, on what to look out for and on how to get the best out of the system. It is not like training a dog to sit or to beg; it is about training people to bring out the best of themselves.
My noble friend Lady Taylor and the noble Lord, Lord Maude, spoke about the training they had in opposition. Given that I was on the receiving end of most of the noble Lord’s Parliamentary Questions when he was in opposition and I was Minister at the Cabinet Office, I perhaps wished he spent more time doing the training than writing questions to me. I think they were about the census, which he was going to abolish when he came into government—but perhaps on the strength of my answers he decided not to. My impression is that training reduces over time when you are in government. With new Ministers always coming through, perhaps that should be a constant process for both Government and Opposition so that, as we move forward, the skills are always there and inherent in whoever takes office.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, reminded me of some personal examples. He made amusing reference to the kind of training that he had had, or not, and to how you learn on the job. One of my most formative times as a new Minister was going in to watch another Minister take an SI. I learned more about how not to do an SI on that occasion than how to do it—and, having seen how not to do it, I was able to tailor my approach very differently.
In 2002, I was in a school in my constituency and got a call to say, “We need you to go to Northern Ireland. The Assembly is going to be suspended. You don’t have to fly out now, but you need to go tomorrow.” I had been to Northern Ireland once in my entire life at that point. It was not public that the Assembly was going to be suspended. It was the Chief Whip who phoned me, because the Prime Minister was out of the country, and then the phone call ended and there were follow-up calls. I then became the next day the Minister responsible for three Northern Ireland departments—scary or what? I have to say that that was probably the steepest learning curve that I have ever had to navigate. However, it was the support I got from my other Ministers, particularly my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton, who is now in this House, and my Secretaries of State, my noble friend Lord Murphy and my noble friend Lord Reid, as well as from civil servants, that was so important. A civil servant wants to get the best out of their Minister and protect them. But I have to say that those first few weeks were daunting, and I suspect that I am not alone in saying that, as a new Minister, the hours I worked were beyond anything that any trade union would ever find acceptable.
My next experience was when I was at the then Department for Communities and Local Government. Having come from Northern Ireland and having had that workload, with a high turnover of letters and Questions, I was quite strict about how I liked my letters to be written and Parliamentary Questions to be answered, because they go out under your name. At one point, I was called in by the Perm Sec to be told in respect of the Questions I had sent back—I kid you not—“That’s very courageous for a new Minister.” I pointed out that neither was it courageous nor was I new, but it was his expectation that I would accept what was given to me and not question. The noble Lord, Lord Young, talked about how important engagement with stakeholders is to Ministers. I remember once defending a Minister who was being criticised for seeking information outside the Civil Service, which was quite extraordinary.
I also think that it is the job of a Minister to support and empower the Civil Service as well. I recall one occasion when a group of us Ministers had decided that we would independently lower the level at which we would be notified of consultants being employed to undertake certain business and asking the civil servants, “Why do you want a consultant to do this?” The reason was that they wanted to be protected from any criticism of the work they had done. My answer was, “Can you stand across the work you’ve done?” “Yes,” they said. I said, “If you give me a good case, I will defend that. It doesn’t need to go to consultants.” So when we look at the issue of consultants undertaking work, we have also to ensure that we empower civil servants to have the confidence in their work and that the Minister has their back.
I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Herbert of South Downs, on smarter government. I was reading that earlier today, and some of his comments about not apportioning blame but learning and moving forward were really important.
In conclusion, our democracy rests heavily on good governance. That means integrity, respect, hard work and a willingness to learn, share and make mistakes. We have not touched on the issue of risk, but we have to learn to manage that risk and see a mistake not as something to be criticised but something to be learned from. At the end of the day, we want to enhance our democracy, and we do that only by having the best governance possible.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for bringing us here again, as the noble Baroness opposite said, on a Thursday afternoon. I said just before the Summer Recess that I did not know what I had done to the Chief Whip for him to put me on to answer the last debate before the recess—and here I am again, so perhaps I should see that as a bit of useful training.
Of course, it has been an outstanding debate. I would think that a debate such as this ought to be read and considered in all the forums that we have mentioned and discussed in this debate. There is so much experience from which people can learn and so much wisdom that has been imparted, and I have felt it a privilege to listen to it.
Despite a couple of elements of mild criticism, no doubt justified in the eyes of the bestower of the criticism, I think all noble Lords who have had the honour of participating in a Government, an Administration or Parliament know that we strive for the best. I do not know anybody who does not strive to do their best in public service and in the performance of their duties. But I suppose it is a condition of man and a condition of this profession of politics that—as I think Enoch Powell expressed it in that famous dictum in his biography of Joseph Chamberlain—all careers in politics, unless interrupted by untimely death, end in failure. So, I suppose we do sometimes fail and fall short of the objectives that we set ourselves. That is a reason to seek to do better. I certainly hope to convince your Lordships that this Government are trying to do better and encourage better performance in the way that your Lordships would like.
I confess to being a bit of a beached whale. I suppose I am one of those old-fashioned generalists: I was educated in classics and history and have spent a life studying history. I learned my trade in the hard school of local government. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that it would be a fine thing to be desired if more of those in the political world cut their teeth in local government because it is public service at the coalface and at its most intimate.
It was a fascinating debate and there was a general trend of agreement. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as ever, made a stringent and an important red team style comment against falling into the complacent view that everything and every training course is either the whole answer or necessarily always the answer. That was an important advisory. My noble friend Lord Farmer, in his short speech about leadership also offered an important advisory.
I was struck by my noble friend Lord Herbert’s antipathy towards the red box. I wondered if one had fallen on one of his toes at some stage in his career. I have in fact never had a red box. It did not seem particularly necessary and one of my colleagues was rather more keen to have it than I was—wild horses will not draw that name from me. Frankly, methods of working have moved on, but paper-based work is none the less sometimes necessary.
Without disparaging training—which I do not, I am going to support it—it is worth noting that the best trained Prime Minister of the 20th century was probably Anthony Eden and the least trained was Tony Blair. I have little doubt which of those was the more effective in office.
I agreed with so much of what my noble friend Lord Norton and others have said. The remarkable speech made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for example, followed in the huge light of his experience. He gave us a fascinating and compelling example, along with the particulars of the importance of judicial training given to us by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge.
I was sad at the suggestion that Ministers do not respect the House, and that is not to be chippy or an individual worrying about the criticism of the general. I think that Ministers, if they do not respect this House or the other House, are exceedingly ill advised. Any Minister, whose first duty is to be accountable to Parliament, who comes to this place and the other place without a sense of respect and trepidation—perhaps even a scintilla of fear—is either arrogant or foolish. Parliament is the root of government and the strength of government. I agree with the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, made in that regard.
It is still the case that Ministers have inductions and meetings with the Permanent Secretary. I can say to those who asked that it is not just paper-based. The training now provided to new Ministers, and available to Ministers in situ, is also based on verbal and interactive training, not simply a folder of paper, though I have no doubt that somewhere in Whitehall—probably in my office—a file is being prepared. Covid-friendly files are all over Whitehall at the moment, ready to be perused.
We know that both Ministers and the Civil Service have had their skills greatly tested in the last 18 months. There have been exceptional circumstances—the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, referred to issues relating to Brexit—in Parliament in particular, from which I do not think we should draw generalities. The same goes for the exceptional powers taken in relation to the pandemic, which have been supported across your Lordships’ House. I agree, however, with the point that we must have a care that these particulars do not become generalities. Ministers and civil servants have been required to adapt quickly, work through immense ambiguities and solve unpredictable and unprecedented problems.
We all know, and this has been the underlying message of your Lordships’ debate, that, in order to achieve our ambition for our country to emerge from this pandemic stronger and more resilient, we must have the best people leading and working in government. That was set out, as many noble Lords have referred to, including by my noble friend Lord Norton in his opening and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, in the recent Declaration on Government Reform, and I welcome what noble Lords have said about that.
To deliver the Government’s priorities, public servants must be technically competent, bold and imaginative, and they must have both specialist and generalist knowledge, skills and networks. We therefore believe, and this is the sense of your Lordships’ debate today, that it is the time to invest further in the leadership capabilities and experience of Ministers and civil servants, ensuring that all are offered high-quality and relevant training and development. Perhaps the pandemic is an inflection point to push that further.
We are aware of weaknesses in the way in which we recruit, train, assess, retain—an important point made by many noble Lords—and develop our Civil Service and public sector leaders. The pandemic and, yes, the opportunities opened up by Brexit have been moments of recognition that while excellent training exists, there are gaps and missed opportunities. I have listened carefully to the advice and comments from noble Lords today.
We are placing particular emphasis on improving digital and data literacy and providing training on the vital skills of management: managing projects—as referred to by my noble friend Lord Maude—people and budgets. The last are a hugely important factor, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham pointed out. We recognise that we must move fast to fix things. UK Ministers and civil servants should be learning unrivalled management and leadership skills. We must not fall behind.
We also need leadership training to encompass broader themes than just leadership itself, preparing our leaders to deal with the biggest challenges through a precise, tangible, case-method approach. The recent Declaration on Government Reform emphasised the need to focus on knowing things, practising things and learning by doing, particularly in digital technologies and data use—things that all our leaders should understand at a basic level—making the most of the expertise that we have across government to achieve good outcomes for citizens.
The Declaration on Government Reform was agreed in June at the first joint meeting of Cabinet Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. It committed to immediate action on three fronts: people, performance and partnership. The declaration sets out 30 actions that will be taken in the first year to begin the process of modernisation and reform. Work is under way to implement those actions, with flagship projects already being delivered. The declaration has been warmly received and, from think tanks to trade unions, welcomed as a first step in the Government’s reform agenda.
We have been greatly assisted by the advice of others. In a compelling speech from my noble friend Lord Maude—it is 30 years ago that he and I worked together in some rather faltering steps in public service reform—we heard advice to the Government on improving effectiveness of functions, which was warmly welcomed by the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His recommendations are centred on a strong functional model, with those three essential elements of leadership, capability and mandate.
Strong progress is being made on this functional reform activity. An example of progress so far includes the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s publication in January of its mandate, which clearly sets out its responsibilities and those of departmental accounting officers for major government projects and programmes. This is critical to making sure that they are set up for success from the outset, supporting the Government to meet their ambitions.
Multiple functions are actively exploring how this should be achieved. Investment in professional expertise, recognising its importance, will be an integral part of this work. For example, the training and accreditation of contract managers across government is being led by the Government Commercial Function, which is critical to driving excellent value for money for taxpayers. The learnings from this exercise and the experience being acquired and invested are of great importance, and I pay tribute to my noble friend for the work that he has done and is doing in this area. As I said, I agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham on the importance of the knowledge of government finance. Having referred to local government, I must say that you might think that central government finance is important, but you should try local government finance.
I am also grateful for the work done by my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs, who also made a fascinating speech. We welcome the Commission for Smart Government’s contribution to the intellectual effort to reform government. This is indicative of the fact that the Government want to listen and learn from all those, on all sides, who have wisdom to bring to this discussion. The previous Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was present at the launch of the report, and he made it clear that the case that the commission makes overall is powerful. It strongly aligns with the Declaration on Government Reform in its focus on digital and data capability and accountability as priority areas for reform, emphasising the need for priority and leadership as vital to the success of government reform. We cannot just do this through changes to organisational structure; civil servants must engage teams and departments with this mission.
On the report’s specific recommendations, the call to establish a school of public service with a campus base is effectively covered by article 6 of the declaration, and we agree that the capability of civil servants is a critical issue. More specifically, the report calls attention to the importance of training senior civil servants in technology to improve efficiency and service delivery for the public. We are making progress with this, with the creation and rollout of an SCS data master class and, shortly, the creation of ministerial digital and data master classes. I look forward to this to ensure that all SCSs and Ministers have a core foundational understanding and can use digital and data expertise effectively.
We also agree with report’s recommendations that “digital transformation” of public services should be at the heart of government reform. This does not necessarily mean that there should be no red boxes, but we take the point. We have established the Central Digital and Data Office to ensure that digital services can be deployed across departmental boundaries.
The Government Skills and Curriculum Unit was established last September to address training issues directly. Its mission is to ensure that there are suitably qualified and experienced civil servants from entry to senior leadership and to create that properly resourced campus for training in government. The intent is also to equip Ministers, on whom many have focused, with the essential knowledge and skills that allow them to be effective in the fiendishly complicated context of modern government.
We have heard a lot of the theoretical construct, from which I do not demur, but it is all too difficult. It may be no excuse when the bullets fly, but in action it is not always possible to adhere to the theoretical constructs. A toolkit of critical insights to smooth the way for Ministers is important in those circumstances. The goal here is not to define or teach a single model of ministerial leadership, which would be counter- productive and unhelpful. I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. The induction and skills programme assembled for Ministers by my former colleague Minister Lopez is optional, but it does emphasise the first principles of working in government and will be available to new Ministers.
In the Declaration on Government Reform, we committed to investing in training for civil servants and Ministers. Consistent and pragmatic ministerial induction and training will help new Ministers navigate the Civil Service and all aspects of their new role, so that they can be as effective as possible as quickly as possible.
The ministerial induction programme focuses on three areas. The first, in response to overwhelming feedback over many years, is a better induction. We have heard from noble Lords with experience in government, including the noble Baroness opposite in her fascinating and entertaining speech, that Ministers need the most support in their initial days and weeks in understanding the machinery of government and Parliament and knowing how to be effective leaders in a department.
It will also offer clear and more accessible bite-size training relevant to their role and to their requests for more knowledge and skills to enhance their impact. There are also bespoke programmes, in partnership with others, to enhance Ministers’ networks and help them to be resilient leaders.
This induction programme will provide practical support in weeks 1 to 6, from how to work and manage a private office to understanding the Civil Service and, yes, the responsibilities of Ministers to Parliament: how legislation should be taken through and how Select Committees can inform and enhance and must always be respected. A series of master classes complements the induction and draws on the experience of other Ministers, in addition to experts sharing their knowledge on topics including data, digital finance, procurement processes and science. Like all good training and development, we will evaluate the impact of this offer.
As my noble friend Lord Maude said, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have set out their intention to initiate a significant long-term improvement—this is so vital; it has been true under successive Governments—in government delivery of major government projects. To support this, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority—my noble friend referred to this, or perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria—and the Oxford Saïd Business School have developed a short, modular training programme on major project delivery for Ministers, tailored to their role as client sponsors of strategic projects. To date, four cohorts of the programme have run, with 41 Ministers attending, three of whom are Cabinet Ministers. A fifth cohort is proposed for the autumn. The programme has been well received and strongly endorsed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
There is a lot more to say and a lot more listening. I will study Hansard enormously carefully. We know we continue to have a challenging road ahead, both to help the country build back better and to reform government. We owe it to citizens to be the very best public servants—and, as Ministers and civil servants, the very best partners in public service—that we can be. We know that the demands on us as Ministers and civil servants will continue. Through the implementation of training in core leadership skills for Ministers and civil servants and the establishment of a dedicated government campus, we can work together to provide the best possible service for our country. We can build back not only better but in the best way possible, Ministers and civil servants together, as our country deserves.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I said in opening that there was a quality line-up of speakers, and the debate has rather proved it; we have had some stellar speeches. One of the things that has been clear is the common theme about the sheer importance of this.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I say that it is not just a case of using external providers and a one-size-fits-all form of training. I distinguished between purpose in office—what Ministers seek to achieve—and the skills necessary to achieve it. You will get variety and different qualities of Minister. You cannot ensure you are necessarily getting all good Ministers, but you can ensure you are getting the best you can by giving them the skills to deliver. That is the key point.
It is not just using external providers; one of the things that I drew from my own research was the importance of best practice drawn on the experience of former Ministers. When I interviewed those who had held senior office, it was quite clear that when new Ministers come in they reinvent the wheel rather than draw on those who have already invented it. There is a lot of experience out there that we can draw on, from those who have the experience; that is absolutely vital.
In terms of providing training, as my noble friend Lord Maude has clearly indicated, and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has reinforced, there are the courses available. The supply is there, but a key problem, as my noble friend indicated, is that they tend to be optional—the danger there is that you end up preaching to the converted. The ones who want to do it are the ones who go and do it. It is the ones who are the most resistant who need to be reached.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said in his excellent contribution, there tends to be resistance to training when you first introduce it. Once it is in place, you start to wonder how you coped without it. It is about overcoming that resistance and getting it in there. It then becomes part and parcel of good government. That is absolutely the point that we must stress, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was saying. We are talking about good governance. This is such an important debate. What could be more important than ensuring the quality of government of the United Kingdom? This is a way of facilitating it.
I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his response demonstrating that we are making some progress. It is a case of building on that and particularly, as I was stressing, not only providing skills training for civil servants but really developing it for Ministers as well. That must be the driving force.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, was making the point about the distinction between Ministers and civil servants; there is no reason why they cannot both be engaged in order to understand the role of the other. That is particularly important to achieving what we seek to achieve.
The exemplar of what we seek to achieve is embodied in my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, because he demonstrated what a good Minister does, which is to work as part of a team, to bring people on board and to ensure that they feel that they are part of the process, because loyalty must be earned; it cannot be dictated. Ministers must have a vision to bring others within that vision, to ensure that they feel part of it. That is the way to deliver this.
We recognise what needs to be done and are moving in that direction. The more that we can do to achieve that, the better for the governance of the United Kingdom. I beg to move.
Safeguarding (Code of Practice) Measure
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
That this House do direct that, in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Safeguarding (Code of Practice) Measure be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, it has been a long day and we are on the cusp of a party conference recess. I do not want to detain your Lordships more than is necessary. I am somewhat anxious, and feel, to use the words of a noble Lord a moment ago, a scintilla of fear, standing here for the first time and hearing much of the previous debate about the importance of good leadership and of doing everything well. Perhaps I am a candidate for all that further training that was talked about. It is a great privilege to be allowed to spend this week as duty Bishop in this House and to lead Prayers each day.
I am grateful for your Lordships’ presence this evening, not least because the Measure before us is significant in its application and is about safeguarding. As noble Lords will know, the Church of England has been on a long journey of putting in place appropriate staff, policies and practices to make the Church a safe place for all people, especially children and vulnerable adults. That has been essential as a response to church often being unsafe and to stories—historic and current—of appalling cases of abuse by those in positions of power who should have known better and whom many were willing to trust.
This Measure updates the legislation concerned with the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults by the Church of England. In particular, it responds to a recommendation made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, known as IICSA. In 2019, the independent inquiry issued a report on case studies it had carried out into abuse committed by Peter Ball, a former Bishop of Gloucester, and on past abuse in the diocese of Chichester. The report recognised that steps had been taken by the Church to tackle abuse, including the passing of the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure 2016. But the independent inquiry considered that the way the 2016 Measure imposed obligations on individuals and Church organisations to follow correct safeguarding practice was less clear than it should be. This recommendation focused on the requirement in the 2016 Measure that a relevant person must have “due regard” to safeguarding guidance issued by the House of Bishops. The independent inquiry considered that the effect of a statutory requirement to have “due regard” to guidance was not well understood and should be replaced with a requirement that was more explicit in its terms.
The Archbishops’ Council accepted the recommendations contained in the report of the independent inquiry and has been taking steps to implement them. This Measure, passed by the General Synod in April this year, will implement the recommendation I have just described. It replaces the existing duty to have “due regard” to safeguarding guidance with the duty to “comply with” requirements imposed by a safeguarding code of practice. The concept of complying with a requirement should be more straightforward than having “due regard” to guidance.
The code of practice itself, and any subsequent amendments to it, will be subject to prior consultation, including with those who have suffered abuse, as well as with representative bodies of the clergy and the laity. The code will also be subject to scrutiny by the General Synod. The code of practice, and any amendment to it, will be sent to every member of the General Synod and published online. If 25 or more members of the synod give notice, a code will not come into force until the synod has debated and approved it.
The opportunity has also been taken in this Measure to update the list of “relevant persons”—that is, those individuals and bodies to whom the code of practice will be directed and who will be under a duty to comply with its requirements. Under the 2016 Measure, the list of relevant persons already includes clergy, licensed laypersons, church wardens and parochial church councils. Cathedral chapters will be added by the Cathedrals Measure 2021. This Measure will add diocesan boards of finance and diocesan boards of education to the list. It will also add staff working in the Church of England’s national safeguarding team, meaning that they too will be obliged to comply with relevant requirements contained in the code of practice.
During the passage of the Measure through the General Synod, the issue was raised as to how compliance with the requirements of the code of practice would be enforced, should that become necessary. So far as the clergy are concerned, non-compliance would potentially be a disciplinary matter, as it would be for licensed lay ministers. Bodies such as parochial church councils and diocesan boards are charities, and the Charity Commission takes the safeguarding responsibility of charity trustees very seriously and has statutory powers to intervene where they are not being properly carried out. Cathedrals are subject to visitation by the bishop and will shortly become subject to the jurisdiction of the Charity Commission.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I rise as one who has been a churchwarden—although no longer—for a total of 36 years in three different churches, who has served on the General Synod of the Church of England for 10 years between 1995 and 2005, and who is still actively involved in church affairs. I have also served on the Ecclesiastical Committee, whose report is what we are officially discussing tonight to approve it, for nearly 50 years. I therefore have a fairly long background.
I am so delighted to see my noble friend Lord Lexden here—I think we are the only two members of the committee here. I know that our chairman, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was very sorry not to be able to come, and I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, was also particularly sorry not to be able to come. I support the Measure, but I agreed with my colleagues on the committee that between us, we need to make some rather important points.
I support this Measure as being expedient but I hope it will also be effective and will not create some of the tragedies and difficulties that the ham-fisted handling of safeguarding has resulted in in recent years. I speak with some passion and some anger. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, a Member of your Lordships’ House, was suspended—the first time a bishop had been suspended in centuries; I believe the previous one was suspended for shooting his gamekeeper—for 20 months and was then allowed back with a mild rap on the knuckles. He had done nothing serious—he himself had done nothing of a criminal nature—but he was held not to have handled a case drawn to his attention with sufficient expedition. It was a difficult case; I do not know all the details, and it would be wrong to give just a few. However, this man, who served the Church for many years and who was installed as bishop in November 2011, the day before Remembrance Day, having had almost two years of his episcopate suspended, is now somewhat broken, and has announced that he is retiring at the end of this year. I am pleased to say that he has been able to take Prayers in your Lordships’ House on a couple of occasions; I hope that he will be able to do so again. This was a disproportionate handling.
It would not be so bad if this were an isolated case. But staying in Lincoln, the chancellor was suspended because he was facing a criminal charge; that is fair enough. He was acquitted unanimously by the jury and was then exonerated by the Church authorities, but it took 789 days. Again, it was said that some further accusations were trivial and unsubstantiated. We must be careful when dealing with public men and women who have contact with their parishioners, or with a wider congregation if they are in cathedrals and so on. We must have regard for them as people.
For instance, it was said in Committee—my noble friend Lord Lexden was there—regarding the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, that part of the delay was due to the fact that the police were investigating and had to report to the Church authorities. He suggested that the police had held this up for well over a year when they had not done so at all. Within a few months of the action taken in May 2019, the police said that they had no further interest in the case, and yet the Church dragged its feet.
Of course, there are many examples of clergymen— not of an exalted rank—who have had their lives completely wrecked by malice. There is recent example in the London diocese of a clergyman who committed suicide.
I am not for a moment suggesting that safeguarding is unimportant. As a Christian and an Anglican, I am deeply ashamed of some of the things that have happened historically. But I am also deeply ashamed of the way in which certain things have been handled, as I have indicated.
Let me make a historical reference. One of the saintliest bishops of the 20th century was, without doubt, Bishop Bell of Chichester, formerly the Dean of Canterbury. He was a man of great spirituality and is regarded as so important that he has a day devoted to him in the Church calendar. He stood up and spoke out against mass bombing. He did not always endear himself to our great Prime Minister of the day, Winston Churchill, or to others—although Churchill did say some very kind things about him, and meant them. This man, dead in 1958, was, a matter of just three of four years ago, suddenly traduced on the evidence of a woman in her late 70s, who alleged that she had been interfered with by the bishop as a girl of five. There was no corroborative evidence. An investigation was conducted with great forensic skill by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who delivered what can only be called a damning report on the way in which the Church of England had handled this.
I welcome the Measure before us tonight—not that the bit of paper that colleagues have been able to pick up tells them very much about it, and so I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for his concise but good explanation. I wish our colleagues had had a better piece of paper; they might then have been more tempted to come and take part in this debate. It is also a pity that this is a debate without a list of speakers, as I think we would have attracted more with one.
However, it would be wrong to let this debate take place without seeking to stress that this safeguarding business has not been handled well. It is important because any man or woman is innocent until proven guilty. It is important that if there are further cases they are handled with greater dispatch and compassion, and if the man or woman is guilty then of course they must be appropriately dealt with. If that means they must be unfrocked, as the term is when a priest loses holy orders, fine, but we have not got the balance right up to now.
I pray devoutly that this Measure will enable us to get the balance right but it is crucial for the reputation of the Church of England, which is going through a rough patch at the moment. I have not lost my faith, but I have come close to losing my faith in the Church of England from the experiences I have witnessed in the last few years. We have got to get the balance right. This Measure must work in a way that is fair to the accused as well, of course, as rooting out those who do evil. What we are talking about is that there are some people who do evil, but the vast majority of clergy men and women in the Church of England are honourable to their vocation. They deserve to be treated fairly and properly, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln recently has not been.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Cormack referred at the start of his powerful remarks to the passion and anger that he felt because of some recent events. I feel very deep passion and anger, as I shall explain.
I have had the honour of serving on the Ecclesiastical Committee for a few years, but I am afraid I cannot continue my membership of it. I can no longer support the Clergy Discipline Measure, in view of the harm it is capable of inflicting on innocent clergy caught up in sex abuse allegations. Doubts about the Church’s capacity to devise a fair and just system for dealing with accusations of sex abuse laid against its clergy have long been simmering in my mind, not least because of the terrible way in which the reputation of the great George Bell, to whom my noble friend referred, was damaged—and damaged so unfairly. But worry and concern have now given place to total despair; my faith in the Church’s institutional integrity has been completely broken.
Long ago I was briefly close, perhaps for no longer than a single summer, to a witty and clever Cambridge contemporary. He was a classicist who became a lecturer at Exeter University and later took holy orders. His name was Alan Griffin. In November last year, the Reverend Dr Alan Griffin committed suicide. After the end of the inquest into his death in early July this year, the coroner wrote a detailed report on the way that the Church had investigated his suspected sexual misconduct. She revealed that when he died, the Church’s investigation had been going on for over a year. The coroner stated that
“he could not cope with an investigation into his conduct, the detail of and the source for which he had never been told”—
I repeat, the detail and source for which he had never been told.
Worse, when the coroner probed the evidence against him, she found it was non-existent. There was, she said,
“no complainant, no witness and no accuser”.
The Church had acted on the basis of mere gossip and innuendo. Could there be a clearer example of the denial of natural justice?
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, I am grateful to the two noble Lords for their contributions in this debate and for speaking from their experience and their expertise and involvement not only in this House but in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and bringing that experience to this matter.
I would be the first to put my hand up and say that we have not been getting things right, and the national safeguarding team is seeking to improve its way of working. There are a number of cases that have been referred to which are inexcusable, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in particular, has expressed his deep regret over the 20-month suspension of the Bishop of Lincoln and has expressed that that should be something that is never, ever repeated. I am not aware of all the details of the other incidences that have been referred to, whether it is Bishop Bell or the Reverend Dr Alan Griffin, but there are obviously important lessons to be learned through those experiences and those stories that the Church of England needs to take on board and listen to very carefully.
There is a real sense in which it is important that there is a balance between the concern for safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults within the life of our Church, where terrible abuse has occurred, and for that to be dealt with firmly and rightly, but also a right case for compassion for those who are being accused of something and for that to be looked at both quickly, so that it does not drag on endlessly, and to be looked at quickly enough so that the evidence can be brought to light to see whether there is a case to answer or not. I am horrified to hear the stats just referred to about the Reverend Dr Alan Griffin, that he was never told what the accusation was and that, when it was looked at, it was found to be non-existent and it was all gossip and innuendo. That is not acceptable as a way for a Church to behave in trying to deal with safeguarding matters.
There is a real difference that needs to be drawn between the call to comply with guidance on safeguarding and dealing with those people differently from those who are subject to an allegation of some sexual abuse. There are cases where, sometimes, a person who has just not complied with a particular line of guidance has been treated as though they themselves are a safeguarding risk. That is an unacceptable comparison and there needs to be a distinction drawn between the two. My hope is that this Measure that talks about having to “comply with”, rather than having “due regard” for, will help sort some of that issue out in the days that lie ahead.
I am sorry to hear the stories that have been relayed. I hope that expressing them here in your Lordships’ House is helpful so that they are on the record and we know they have been told and heard by someone in the House of Bishops. I will do my part to relay something of this back to those who seek to carry out that safeguarding function for the Church of England and the national safeguarding team. I will undertake to report something of what I have heard today to them.
I will finish by saying that I and my colleagues commit to seeking to make the Church of England a place where it is safe for children, vulnerable adults and all people to be part of a church gathering and a church family, and for the Church not just to exercise good practice in those areas but to be a model to others of how to do this, because sometimes people have looked to the Church and said, “If the Church doesn’t do it, why should anybody else?” The Church has a call to model something to others in a way it has not done up to this moment. There is a challenge.
Although I am glad for the support for this change in the Measure to ensure good and better practice in the days that lie ahead, it is not the whole answer. We shall have much more to do. I will play my part in doing what I can to relay this back to others and encourage the House of Bishops to do the same.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Could the right reverend Prelate comment on the quotation from the coroner’s report that I read out at the end? The Church of England seeking to interfere with the content of a coroner’s report in order to diminish the extent of the criticism it would sustain: is that not utterly reprehensible?
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
It is reprehensible and unacceptable. One of the big issues has been the whole matter of cover-up and trying to silence voices. That is a very clear example and should never, ever be repeated. I will report that back to the national safeguarding team and others. We are in the business not of covering up but of being transparent and open, so that these things can be brought to light and people can learn from them. It is reprehensible and completely unacceptable.
Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) (No. 2) (High-Risk Countries) Regulations 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That the Regulations laid before the House on 12 July be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 September
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Agnew and with the leave of the House, I beg to move the two Motions standing in his name on the Order Paper en bloc.
Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 6 July be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 September
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Vere, I beg to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.