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Oral Answers to Questions
(3 years ago)
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Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
The “Life Sciences Vision” outlined our bold ambition to bring scientific excellence and the dynamism of industry together to solve the most pressing health challenges. I am delighted to say that since the strategy was published we have already launched a £200 million life sciences investment programme and established the life sciences scale-up taskforce.
Stephen Metcalfe
I welcome the record research and development settlement for my right hon. Friend’s Department that was delivered during the spending review, a good chunk of which will, I hope, support investment in health and life sciences. Does he agree that our world-class life sciences base has been and will be our defence against future pandemics? Will he comment on his Department’s plans to locate more life sciences manufacturing facilities in the UK, so that we are less reliant on a global supply chain?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I fully agree with my hon. Friend that world-class life sciences are vital, and I am pleased to confirm that we have already allocated £354 million in the spending review to strengthen the UK’s life sciences manufacturing base, with particular emphasis on preparing for future pandemics.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
It has been reported that the Prime Minister is minded to split up the Secretary of State’s Department so that he can better deliver on the Department’s priorities. Does the Secretary of State agree on that?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I think it is absolutely vital that the net zero agenda—the climate change action agenda—is situated firmly in a Business Department, and I am delighted to head that Department.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
I have two questions for the Secretary of State. What role can life sciences play in the Advanced Research and Invention Agency? What role can Bolton play in ARIA?
Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend smuggled a leading question into his first question. He knows that ARIA is a key part of our strategy to become a science superpower, and he and I can discuss the role that Bolton will play in that exciting future.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The “Life Sciences Vision” has dementia as its first mission. The Conservative manifesto committed to doubling research funding in a dementia moonshot, but the Budget ignored it. The UK Dementia Research Institute called this
“a major blow to UK neuroscientists racing to find cures for these devastating diseases”.
Alzheimer’s Research UK said that this
“lets down the nearly one million people in the UK affected by this devastating condition.”
So will the Secretary of State now set out a clear timetable for doubling dementia research funding, as Labour has? Or is the “Life Sciences Vision”, like the R&D road map, the industrial strategy, the innovation strategy, the grand challenges and Northern Powerhouse Rail, all talk and no action?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I completely refute the hon. Lady’s allegation that those things are all words. The innovation strategy is the first of its kind. It has been broadly welcomed across the sector, and she will know that dementia is one of the seven technologies in engineering and biology that we are pursuing in the innovation strategy.
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
The Government recently announced £380 million for our world-leading offshore wind sector, which is boosting jobs and investment across the UK. My hon. Friend will know that the allocation round 4 opens in December, and we are very much looking forward to the bids in that round.
Ian Levy
The House has often heard me talk about Blyth Valley being at the heart of the green industrial revolution. Catapult, in the Port of Blyth, has tested the largest windmill blades in the world for years. We need to continue to be at the forefront of blade testing, to hold our No. 1 position on the global stage. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me and the management team from Catapult to make sure that we continue to lead in the race to a greener future?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I would be delighted to see my hon. Friend and the great people who are working on the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult in Blyth. It is a fantastic development and the people working there will surely allow us to hit the 40 GW target for offshore wind in 2030.
Lia Nici
As the Secretary of State knows, Great Grimsby is the UK’s largest centre for offshore wind operations and maintenance. The £160 million announcement for floating offshore wind was very welcome. Does he believe that the time is right to increase our ambitions for that power supply to above 1 GW, which would increase investors’ confidence?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am delighted to see my hon. Friend, who I accompanied in her constituency shortly after her stunning victory in 2019. She will know that I and the Department are fully committed to ensuring that we have increased ambitions. We are always looking to increase our ambitions.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I welcome what the Secretary of State says about wind power—we are proud in Cumbria to be at the heart of offshore wind—but does that not contrast negatively with the Government still sitting on the fence about commissioning a new coalmine in west Cumbria? Given the incredibly disappointing outcome on coal from COP26, is this not a moment for the UK Government to take a lead and say that the coalmine will not open?
Kwasi Kwarteng
First, the hon. Gentleman will understand that the coalmine is a matter of an independent planning decision. Secondly, I completely deny his assertion that somehow COP26 was a failure. It was not. It was a great success, thanks to the COP26 President, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). Huge commitments were made, which everyone is supporting.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Tapadh leibh. Scotland’s offshore islands could produce as much energy each day as some EU countries are sending to the United Kingdom. When will we see contract for difference levels match interconnector requirements? The Secretary of State knows about this subject. Will that come soon, especially for the Hebrides? I say gently to him that, as he knows, probably no other country in Europe would be squandering this opportunity.
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman knows that I am fully committed to remote island wind. In fact, when I was Energy Minister, I spearheaded the move to have a separate pot for renewable island wind. He lobbied successfully, and I am happy to speak to him about that at any time of his choosing.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the recent comprehensive spending review and Budget announcement shows that the Government are delivering an historic increase in R&D investment to build back better with a high skill and wage economy for all of the UK? That is very much reflected in NETPark in Sedgefield, which he had the pleasure of visiting recently.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I was delighted to see my hon. Friend in his constituency and to see the wonderful businesses that he is promoting. He will know that the CSR is fully committed to driving our science superpower status through unprecedented investment.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The Government are committed to a strong, vibrant and diverse manufacturing sector in the United Kingdom. The west midlands—and the UK as a whole—is already a great place to do business. The Government will continue to focus on encouraging businesses, improving the long-term competitiveness and productivity of manufacturing via initiatives such as Help to Grow, the Made Smarter programme, the Catapult programme and others.
Jack Dromey
For this country’s manufacturing base to prosper and succeed, it requires a firm commitment from Government to support the making and buying of goods manufactured in Britain. The Minister will be familiar with the shameful decision by Melrose to shut a factory in Chester Road, Erdington with 70 years of history; those manufacturing jobs were instead exported to Poland. What steps will he take to recoup the £67 million of taxpayers’ money given to Melrose to export jobs to Poland? Will he send an unmistakeable message to Melrose that it will get not one penny more of taxpayers’ support unless it works with the workforce and all the key stakeholders to find an alternative manufacturing use for its site in one of the most deprived communities in Britain?
Lee Rowley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the question. We were disappointed, as he was, by GKN Melrose’s decision. Ultimately, such decisions are for individual companies, but we realise the significant impact on his community and are working with the local community to try to find alternative ways to support employees in the area.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister knows that one of the best ways to promote the onshoring of manufacturing jobs and production to the UK is to shape regulation to support enterprise. What steps has his Department made to take forward the recommendations of the Prime Minister’s taskforce on innovation, growth and regulatory reform?
Lee Rowley
We know regulation has a critical part to play in ensuring that we get the frameworks right for long-term investment and support. My hon. Friend will know that one of my colleagues who was appointed alongside me was an author of that report, and the Secretary of State and I, and all Ministers, will continue to review what we can do to improve regulation over the long term.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
When it comes to manufacturing, the first thought on the mind of all Scotland fans this morning is quite how Steve Clarke and his team continue to manufacture so many brilliant wins.
Notwithstanding my necessary gloating, I have a serious question for the Minister. Does he agree and accept that to harness, safeguard and expand manufacturing jobs in Scotland’s tidal energy sector, his Government must deliver the £71 million that the industry has asked for?
Lee Rowley
We know there is a substantial amount of work to do to decarbonise the UK economy, including the energy sector. We are doing that in a range of ways, and I will continue to co-ordinate with the Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), to support that activity.
Stephen Flynn
I am afraid that answer simply does not cut it. This is a world-leading industry based in Scotland, and it has the capacity to provide 11% of the entire UK’s electricity. The Minister will be aware that the likes of Canada, France and Japan have put in place financial mechanisms to capitalise on tidal energy. Is he seriously saying that his Government would rather see jobs offshored to those countries than see them in Scotland?
Lee Rowley
I apologise if the hon. Gentleman did not hear my first answer. I said that the Department will continue to look at all opportunities to decarbonise the electricity grid and to ensure that, over the long term, energy can support that decarbonisation. We will continue to look at tidal, and we will bring forward the opportunities that we are able to bring forward.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Chancellor’s capital investment tax relief of 130% is leading to a sharp increase in manufacturing investment, demonstrated by Alpro at its superb manufacturing site in Burton Latimer in the Kettering constituency?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend gives a brilliant example of where the support that is being provided by the Treasury and the Chancellor can, over the long term, ensure investment in plant and machinery and improvement in productivity across the country.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The Government continue to work with the UK steel sector, through the UK Steel Council, regular meetings and constant dialogue, to understand its decarbonisation plans, whether through electric arc, industrial carbon capture equipment or other emerging technologies such as hydrogen.
Richard Thomson
In contrast to Germany’s €3 billion hydrogen plan, there was no new funding announced in the recent Budget for clean steel projects. As 2023 is far too late, with primary steel plants accounting for 15% of UK CO2 emissions, will the Government now commit funding to clean steel projects similar to the ones we see in Germany and Sweden, or will steel communities be left standing by once again while European competitors get on with levelling up their industries?
Lee Rowley
I caution against the hon. Gentleman’s comparison. We have a similar ambition to countries such as Germany on things like hydrogen, and we have already published our hydrogen strategy. I have had extensive engagement with the steel sector in my two months as Minister for steel, including another visit yesterday, and we continue to want to support the industry on its decarbonisation journey. We know it is challenging, but there are already examples and we will continue to work with the industry to ensure it happens.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Years of Tory neglect and inaction mean the UK is falling further behind in the race to win the future of green steel production. Governments around the world are committing to their steel industries with long-term investment, but the Minister, the Budget and, indeed, the hydrogen strategy have failed to deliver any timetable for how the Clean Steel Fund will be implemented. There appears to be no urgency and no plan.
Will the Secretary of State tell us today whether he will back Labour’s plan for a £3 billion steel renewal fund to achieve near-zero-emissions steel production by 2035 to secure UK steel’s future? If not, why is he so content to see British industries lose out, more British businesses go under and more British jobs lost?
Lee Rowley
That is neither an accurate reflection of the situation nor an accurate reflection of the historical support that has been given to the steel industry. Since 2013, there has been £600 million-worth of support for electricity price relief. The industrial energy transformation fund was opened last year and steel companies had the opportunity to apply for it, and we have published the steel procurement pipeline and the steel safeguards. We will continue to work with this important sector to ensure that it can decarbonise and has long-term support for its future.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
Question 5, Mr Speaker.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Hands)
The Government’s energy price cap will ensure that millions of households are protected from an instant wave of bill increases this winter. We also have well-established schemes in place for those businesses that are most exposed to energy prices.
Neil Parish
Apologies, Mr Speaker—some of us are very slow learners.
With global energy markets in a state of flux, Tiverton and Honiton constituents, particularly elderly and vulnerable residents, are concerned about the sharp increases in household bills. With Christmas just around the corner, will my right hon. Friend assure me that the Government will do all they can to stabilise the UK energy sector and ensure that those who experience fuel insecurity have the support they need this winter? Many rural households are off grid, so oil and electricity prices are also of great concern.
Greg Hands
I assure my hon. Friend that protecting consumers is our No. 1 priority. The Secretary of State and I engage with Ofgem very often and with energy suppliers constantly, to monitor the health of the energy market. The Government’s warm homes discount, winter fuel payment and cold weather payment schemes will support low-income and vulnerable households throughout the winter.
Shabana Mahmood
Nothing that the Minister has said today will provide immediate relief to enough of the people who are struggling throughout the country. I have had constituents tell me that they are sitting in the cold to try to save money, yet the Government rejected Labour’s call to cut VAT on energy bills. Such a cut would have provided immediate relief to people in my constituency. What on earth does the Minister expect my constituents to do as they face a long, difficult and cold winter, with rising prices and rising energy prices in particular?
Greg Hands
Of course, I share the hon. Lady’s concern for vulnerable people who face potential rises in energy prices. She will know that VAT is a matter for the Treasury but, of course, a VAT cut would be very untargeted towards vulnerable people. That is why we have schemes in place, such as the warm home discount, winter fuel payments and cold weather payments, to help vulnerable and elderly people. The Government have got the policy right.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
On energy security, UK natural gas production has come down from around two thirds of UK demand in 2015 to less than half in the first quarter of this year—with, by the way, around 25% coming ashore at St Fergus in my constituency. Does my right hon. Friend agree that although we see a welcome increase in UK renewable capacity, it is far preferable, while a reducing demand for gas still exists, to source that gas domestically rather than to depend on foreign imports?
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we will always prefer British gas production to foreign imports. Some 50% of the gas we currently consume comes from the UK continental shelf, with an additional 30% from Norway. My hon. Friend is right to mention the transition; I know how much he fights for his constituency’s huge extent and variety of energy producers. Earlier this year, we were delighted to agree the North sea sector transition deal, which will offer a fantastic future for my hon. Friend’s constituents and those right across north-east Scotland.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I think the technically correct answer to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) is (a) none and (b) none.
The Secretary of State claimed that he was in talks with the Treasury about assistance for energy-intensive industries a month ago; it turns out that he was not, and nothing has happened since. Meanwhile, wholesale gas prices remain at around 200p per therm, compared with 39p per therm a year ago. Industry is suffering grievously and 40% of energy companies have now gone bust, leaving more than 2 million customers without a supplier and forced to take on new suppliers, often at great cost to their bills. Even with the price cap, bills are likely to rise by a further £200 in the spring. This is a train wreck, so what is the Minister doing now to rescue passengers from the carriages and put the rolling stock back on the lines? Or will he just continue to act the part of a disinterested bystander?
Greg Hands
That allegation is rather unfair. We are engaging continuously with the Treasury on these matters. We have already put in place £2 billion of funds to help with the cost of electricity and to protect jobs. We have the £350 million Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, and the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), meets regularly—and has done so very recently—with the Energy Intensive Users Group.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Hands)
Our most recent contract for difference allocation round is the biggest ever. Tidal stream will be eligible to compete in pot 2 of the round. With regards to nuclear power, this Government see a vital role for new nuclear. We have just started considering the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill in Committee and, of course, we understand that net zero needs nuclear.
Bob Seely
I congratulate the Secretary of State and his team on putting in place a long-term energy strategy, because we have seen from Germany’s example how disastrous it is not to have that long-term strategy. Very quickly, on tidal, is the financing generous enough, because I understand that some tidal producers are saying that it is not? Secondly, on nuclear, will the £210 million for small-scale reactors—a brilliant thing to do—get us to a position where we are actually producing those reactors, or is this just an initial round of research?
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend has dextrously managed to get in two supplementary questions there. On tidal, of course we set the allocation round in September. That round will open on 13 December. Project developers can declare an intention to bid. May I commend his Perpetuus Tidal Energy Centre on the Isle of Wight for its brilliant work on tidal energy?
With regard to small modular reactors, the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his visit last week made it absolutely clear that there is strong support for British technology and British SMR design, and we want to see that move forward and make the UK a world leader in small modular reactors.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
In the Budget, £1.7 billion was allocated just to develop Sizewell C to a final investment decision. The Government are putting through the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill to enter into a 60-year contract for that project, and yet, in terms of tidal stream, there was no Government support whatsoever. Without a ringfenced pot of money, tidal stream will not be able to compete in pot 2, so will the Government urgently reconsider the request for a £71 million pot of ringfenced money?
Greg Hands
Since 2003 successive Governments have provided innovation funding of £175 million to wave and tidal sectors, and there has been £80 million since 2010. We are strong supporters of tidal stream. The Prime Minister was explicit from the Dispatch Box yesterday, reiterating his support. What we now need to do is work with the sector to demonstrate cost reductions and the potential for this technology.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
Like nuclear, tidal range has the capacity to deliver predictable large-scale generation with none of the problems of intermittence associated with other renewable technologies. The proposed Colwyn Bay tidal lagoon would have a generating capacity of more than 2 GW. There is considerable local support for the project, and the proposed developers are anxious to proceed. Is my right hon. Friend willing to meet with me and my hon. Friends the Members for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) and for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies), who also have an interest in the project, to discuss a way of taking it forward?
Greg Hands
I would be delighted to have the opportunity to meet my right hon. Friend and his colleagues. I am always delighted to see so much energy in north Wales when it comes to questions of energy. I remind him that, when I say that we need to demonstrate cost reductions, the most recent reckoning on prices is that tidal stream is around £220 per MWh, wave is about £280 per MWh, and offshore wind is only about £40 per MWh. With scaling up and investment in the technology, we would expect those costs to come down, but I stress the current disparity between those sectors.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
In order to get those costs to come down, though, we first have to have the ringfenced pot for tidal stream energy. At the Dispatch Box on 3 November—in column 926 of Hansard—the Prime Minister undertook in response to me that he would look again at this question. There is a hard deadline approaching at the end of the month with the contract for difference. When will we hear the outcome of the Prime Minister’s further look again at this question?
Greg Hands
The right hon. Gentleman will have heard the Prime Minister’s words on this matter yesterday from the Dispatch Box, when he was asked about it in relation to his COP statement. I have nothing new to say on the allocation round. We announced the parameters for allocation round 4, which will open in just a few weeks’ time, on 13 December. Project developers will be able to declare their intention to bid, and the round very much includes technologies such as tidal and wave, and other pot 2 emerging technologies.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government have committed to changing the law to ensure that individuals signing non-disclosure agreements are able to make disclosures to the police and regulated health and legal professionals. We will also ensure that the limitations of each non-disclosure agreement are clear.
Mrs Miller
I thank the Minister for all the work that he is doing on this issue. Will he be bringing forward legislation to ensure that it is clear to all employers that non-disclosure agreements should never be used to buy the silence of victims, because that has no place in British society?
Paul Scully
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the campaign that she is running alongside Zelda Perkins and others. She rightly highlights the Government’s commitment to the issue, as well as the previous Women and Equalities Committee’s excellent work in this area. The Government are committed to implementing legislation when parliamentary time allows, but I reassure her that we will crack down on the use of non-disclosure agreements.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Will the Minister assure us that he will have discussions with his colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that organisations and businesses that rely on public money, such as the BBC, do not use non-disclosure agreements to silence people who complain about bullying in the workplace?
Paul Scully
We have regular conversations with colleagues in DCMS. Some non-disclosure agreements have a commercial benefit, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that inappropriate non-disclosure agreements must be stamped out.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The Jet Zero Council, which is jointly chaired by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Business and for Transport, brings together industry leaders and the Government to discuss how best to reduce the impact of aviation on our environment. The recently published net zero strategy provides the framework, and the commitment made in the Budget to extend funding for the Aerospace Technology Institute to 2031 demonstrates the importance that the Government attach to making progress on this issue.
Huw Merriman
The issue with sustainable aviation fuel is not how to produce it—we can do that—but how to bring the price down so that there is a return on capital and an investment case for it, as there is for renewables. What more can the Government do to support sustainable aviation fuels, and does the Minister agree that we need a global approach to the solution?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the challenges of bringing the cost down, as is the case in so many areas of the net zero strategy, but progress is being made. We are keen to support the development of new technology solutions. He will know that we have set out an ambition for 10% of the UK’s aviation fuel to be SAF by 2030. We recognise the challenge of the cost, but I know that my hon. Friend, in his capacity as Chair of the Transport Committee, has announced an inquiry into the matter; I look forward to working with him and understanding the conclusions and proposals that he puts forward.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It has just been revealed that the Transport Secretary is spending departmental money to lobby against the development of private airfields. This includes lobbying against plans to build a battery gigafactory at Coventry airport. What hope do we have of decarbonising transport when the very Cabinet member responsible for that brief is more interested in having somewhere to land his private jet? What conversations is BEIS having with the Department for Transport to ensure that it takes this matter seriously?
Lee Rowley
I am not sure that this is Transport questions, but it is a question in that spirit. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State absolutely disputes the description that has just been given by the hon. Lady. On her question, there is a huge amount of work under way to try to decarbonise aviation, as demonstrated in the announcements last week at COP and the work that the Government have been doing for a number of years. We will continue to do that to ensure that we hit the net zero target by 2050.
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
We are holding the largest ever contracts for difference round next month, as my hon. Friend is aware, and only last month we confirmed up to £160 million to support investment in the floating offshore wind industry.
Darren Henry
The Government have quite rightly taken action to accelerate uptake of electric vehicles by both subsidising those purchasing a new electric car and banning the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030. However, in my capacity as co-chair of the all-party midlands engine group, I recognise that vast areas of the midlands are insufficiently served with charging infrastructure. The Midlands Engine’s 10-point plan for green growth looks to tackle this issue. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can support the Midlands Engine Partnership, deliver greener transport, create jobs, and cut emissions?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend and the Midlands Engine Partnership to discuss how we can decarbonise our economy. I know he does a fabulous jobs as co-chair of the APPG. I have always enjoyed my engagement not only with him but with the Midlands Engine Partnership.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State at least accept that immediate environmental damage is being caused by the pursuit of renewable energy, with 13 million trees cut down in Scotland for wind farms, forests devastated across the world to produce ethanol for petrol, and Drax power station importing millions of tonnes of wood from America each year? Does he not accept that in an attempt to control the world’s climate, we are actually damaging the environment right now?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The right hon. Gentleman and I have exchanged differing views on this subject over many years now. What I do accept is that our drive—our push—for renewables is leading the world in pursuing a decarbonised economy.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
The Secretary of State is well aware that Teesside is the centre of the green industrial revolution. In building new renewable energy capacity, can he confirm that he is happy to visit Teesside to see our plans for linking that renewable energy with green hydrogen production to power our homes in Teesside?
Kwasi Kwarteng
Perhaps to the surprise of the House, I can confirm that I am always delighted to visit my hon. Friend. I have done so on many occasions and I look forward to doing so whenever he wants and whenever my diary permits.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
In a speech last month to the Energy UK conference, the Secretary of State made the case for a decisive shift towards clean energy and away from what he termed “volatile fossil fuels”, on which he said
“we are still very dependent, perhaps too dependent”.
Will he therefore explain how a decision by the Government to permit Cambo, an oilfield whose anticipated lifespan would see it still producing oil four years before we are legally bound to reach net zero, would be anything other than fundamentally at odds with that vision?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will understand that the licences under which Cambo was permitted were actually granted when his own party was in government. He will also appreciate that I have always said that there will be a transition. He and his Labour associates want to shut down the industry and cause mass unemployment among the 250,000 people in this country who work in the sector.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Hands)
This Government are doubling down on our plan to deploy more home-grown, affordable clean energy in this country, and we are putting new nuclear at the heart of that plan. In the past four weeks alone, we have announced £1.7 billion allocated for a new large-scale nuclear power station, a new nuclear Bill to boost private capital and cut build costs, £210 million to back Rolls-Royce’s small modular reactor plan, and £120 million for future nuclear projects—new nuclear made and manufactured here in Britain.
Paul Bristow
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to increasing the generation of renewable energy in the UK and attracting investment in our renewable energy sector, especially the nuclear energy industry. The green industrial revolution is well under way in Peterborough. Will he join me in congratulating Peter Brotherhood, a manufacturer of 150 years standing, whose modular steam turbine offering, manufactured in the heart of my city of Peterborough, can promote further innovation in the nuclear energy sector?
Greg Hands
A previous question referred to Teesside as the centre of the green industrial revolution, but Peterborough is also one of the great centres in this country of the green industrial revolution, and there is no better champion of that than my hon. Friend, who is right at the centre of it. He is right that the £120 million nuclear innovation fund will create options for future nuclear capability, including the recent Rolls-Royce small modular reactors, which have £210 million of funding. There are plenty of opportunities there for his constituents to get into, and I thank him for his championing of the green industrial revolution.
Mark Menzies
I welcome the Government’s commitment to a new generation of nuclear power plants, representing a big step in our move towards net zero. Fylde, as the home of Springfields, the UK’s only civil nuclear manufacturing plant, will be playing its part in this transition, but following the recent announcements of the £210 million in new Government funding for Roll-Royce SMRs, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the fuel for the next generation of nuclear power will be manufactured in the UK, and in Lancashire?
Greg Hands
There is plenty of interest in Lancashire, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend knows that I am well aware of how important Springfields is. In fact, we had meetings in the Department about it, as it is the only civil nuclear fuel manufacturing plant, as he rightly points out. It will play an important role as we further develop our new nuclear capability. I am looking forward to working very closely with my hon. Friend, who is a consistent champion of nuclear in this country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Northern Ireland does not have any nuclear power generation possibilities, but can the Minister outline how Northern Ireland can benefit from nuclear power, because we want to have the opportunity, the same as the rest of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Greg Hands
We are a Government for the whole United Kingdom. The hon. Member will know that Northern Ireland is importantly different from Great Britain in its electricity generation, grid and network. Overall, the UK’s nuclear capability will offer fantastic job opportunities—high-skill, high-tech jobs—for people from right the way across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
We are decarbonising heat through the renewable heat incentive, with an estimated £1 billion this year, and we have announced the boiler upgrade scheme, the green heat network fund and the launch of the green gas support scheme later this month.
Munira Wilson
Zero carbon homes was a Liberal Democrat policy that the Tories scrapped after the coalition. That means we now need to retrofit a million new homes. Will the Secretary of State commit to a zero carbon homes standard once again for all new homes built in this country?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am pleased to inform the hon. Lady that we have a heat and building strategy that sets out clear plans and clear ambitions for decarbonising heat, particularly sources of heat in buildings and in homes.
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
We have continued to engage extensively with energy-intensive companies, including by visits from me as recently as yesterday. We want to understand their concerns and help secure a competitive and viable future for industries, which support so many high-skilled, high-wage jobs across the UK.
Robert Largan
High Peak is home to the UK’s largest quarries and much of our lime production industry. Those lime producers are essential for construction, engineering and infrastructure, but they are being hit by a double whammy of soaring global energy prices and an outdated UK emissions trading system, which is still benchmarked at the old EU level, geared towards European plants operating to a significantly lower standard and also in receipt of generous state subsidy. The UK’s lime producers are committed to doing their bit to tackle climate change, but the current benchmark is unachievable given their production chemistry. I urge the Minister to urgently review the UK’s emissions trading system benchmark for lime producers.
Lee Rowley
As a fellow Derbyshire MP, I know how much of a loud, independent and big voice my hon. Friend gives to High Peak since his election in 2019. I am proud to work with him. On this specific subject, we know there are long-term challenges for industries and individual sectors, and we are grateful for his comments. I am happy to meet him to talk more about this, if that would be helpful.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of driving down the cost of transition to tread more lightly on the Earth over the long term. Significant progress has already been made in the cost of technologies such as solar panels, and the recently published net zero strategy commits to working with business to realise further economic opportunities.
Gordon Henderson
While I welcome that answer, does the Minister agree that achieving net zero emissions will depend on individual householders? Many people in my constituency are finding it difficult to afford their fuel bills, even without the cost involved in installing new heating systems such as heat pumps. What can the Government do to help those people?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is right that we must work with householders and businesses on a longer-term basis so that we can deliver the net zero ambitions we set ourselves by 2050. As the Minister for Business, Energy and Corporate Responsibility has highlighted a number of times, we are trying to drive down the cost of technology over the long term. A number of firms have come forward on some of the technologies we hope to use, such as heat pumps, and have indicated it should be possible to do that.
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
First, I congratulate the COP26 President, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), on his adept handling of the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow. My Department’s priority now is to turn all that ambition into concrete action. We will continue to attract private investment into green projects, and I am happy to announce that in recent weeks we have seen nearly £10 billion of new commitments at the Global Investment Summit, with £1 billion from SABIC on Teesside, and £230 million announced by Ford on Merseyside. We are getting on with the job of delivering a stronger economy for the UK.
Robert Largan
I have recently been contacted by Prisma Colour, another fantastic local business in High Peak that does really important work. Unfortunately, it has been hit by a more than doubling of its energy bills in recent months, which is simply not sustainable. I welcome what the Government are trying to do in the long run to ease supply pressures and help energy-intensive industries to bring down bills, but what can be done in the short term to help fantastic employers such as Prisma Colour?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the excellent work he has done in a short time, representing his constituency. He knows that across Government we have regular conversations about how to help energy-intensive industries, and I would be happy to meet him and his constituents to discuss what we are doing.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I join the Secretary of State in commending the COP26 President on the progress made at COP26, but we know much greater action is required, and it is the Secretary of State’s job to ensure that every part of our Government acts. There is an immediate test with the UK-Australia trade deal: yesterday, the Australian Government reaffirmed their 2030 target, which is consistent only with 4° of warming, and there are reports that our Government have allowed the watering down of temperature targets in that deal. Surely, if we are serious after Glasgow about not letting big emitters off the hook, the deal must be rewritten to enshrine in it a proper plan for Australia as well as the UK, including for 2030, to keep 1.5° alive.
Kwasi Kwarteng
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we have a duty to ensure that we put net zero at the centre in treaties and in our international obligations. Where I dispute with him is that the Australian deal does mention Paris climate ambitions and does commit to decarbonisation. Lastly, for the first time ever, the Australian Government have committed to net zero. That is a huge achievement, which I wish he would support and endorse.
Edward Miliband
The Secretary of State should not be defending the Australian Government’s 2030 target. It is he who said about the negotiations:
“There may have been an issue about specifically putting the 1.5° on the face of the negotiating mandate.”
It is time for the Government not only to talk tough, but to act tough, because we must put pressure on countries such as Australia. There is a clear pattern of behaviour here on climate. Too often, this Government face both ways: the Cumbria coal mine, the Cambo oil field, cutting overseas aid for the most vulnerable countries, cutting air passenger duty for domestic flights and failing to invest in green recovery at home. He is the man supposed to be in charge of ensuring the Government speak with one voice. Why does he think he is failing to do so? Is that the reason why people are calling for the COP26 President to take back control of energy and climate change?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The COP26 President did a marvellous job, and the person speaking with two voices is the right hon. Gentleman. On the one hand, he says COP was a great success, and then on the other hand, he is saying the Government have failed. It is inconsistent and it is implausible.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have made huge progress so far or we have made a good start in trying to achieve decarbonised flight, and we will continue to do that. It is examples such as the fantastic work demonstrated over the summer, which I know he was present for, at Exeter airport, supported by the Department for Business, that will allow us to meet our long-term ambitions in this sector.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will know, from his long experience in this House, that many of these issues relate to financial disclosure, which is obviously in the remit of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I am particularly interested in this deal. I think he is absolutely right that people who are shareholders and people who are customers have every right to transparent data, and I would very much support that.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Lee Rowley
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he does in Ashfield and for his incredible voice in this regard. He is right to highlight how technology will take much of the weight of the transition over the next 30 years, and the importance therefore of companies supporting such technology development. We are engaging with businesses, and we will continue to do so, through programmes such as boosting access for SMEs on energy efficiency. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend about that if it helps.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. The Office for Product Safety and Standards, over the period since the campaign was launched in April, has taken 10,000 unsafe products off the market, and it continues to work to identify products available online that pose a serious risk. We are reviewing the UK’s product safety framework in this area, but I will happily meet the hon. Gentleman.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Hands)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his long-standing interest in this question. He will certainly know that, although nuclear is 16% of our current electricity generation, 12 of the 13 current nuclear power plants will be decommissioned or will no longer be producing by 2030. It is absolutely vital that we renew our nuclear capability, and I look forward to my right hon. Friend helping and supporting us in that effort.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Greg Hands
Mr Speaker—[Interruption.] I will answer that question, because the Secretary of State is due to make a decision on the application by 21 January 2022, and the Secretary of State of course has a quasi-judicial role in determining this live planning application so it would not be appropriate to comment on specific matters regarding the proposals as that might be seen as prejudicing the decision-making process.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Paul Scully
As Minister for London, every time I go and see a business or business representative organisation my hon. Friend has been there before to champion the Cities of London and Westminster and the central activity zone in London which is so important for the culture and ecosystem of our great city. We want to build a high-wage, high-skill economy, and the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors are at the heart of that. The strategy will include the reopening and we will build resilience through increased staff supply.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
Kwasi Kwarteng
I remind the hon. Lady that this Government are the first UK Government to commit to a North sea transition deal. That deal is a world first; it is leading the world and showing how we can decarbonise a historically very productive sector to drive new technology and new economic opportunity.
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con)
Greg Hands
I welcome Infinite’s work supporting renewable projects and my hon. Friend’s engagement in this. PPAs can improve the financial viability of renewables built without Government support. We anticipate that PPAs will complement Government mechanisms such as the contracts for difference scheme. Officials are investigating whether Government can play a role in encouraging further growth in the PPA market, and of course I am happy to meet my hon. Friend on this at any time.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
As my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) said, Scotland’s world-leading carbon capture and storage project at St Fergus was snubbed by the Government in favour of their pork-barrel interests in the red wall. Will the Secretary of State guarantee the Acorn team funding in the next round, or should we conclude that Scotland can only decarbonise with independence?
Kwasi Kwarteng
Again, I have to completely refute what the hon. and learned Lady says. The position is absolutely clear: Acorn was an excellent project and is on the reserve list, and I am looking forward to working with her constructively to make sure we land this very exciting project.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
The sooner the offshore transmission network is constructed in the southern North sea, the better. It will save money for consumers and limit the damage to local communities and the environment. So will the Minister commit to restarting the previously planned consultation on a regulated asset base finance model for renewables and low-carbon energy-generating assets as soon as possible?
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his continual engagement on this issue. He will know that I met his colleagues in the OffSET group of MPs—the Off Shore Electricity Grid Task Force—very recently. On the offshore transmission network review, Ofgem has consulted on options for delivery models for offshore connections, including a regulated asset base approach. There continues to be ongoing work, and I am looking forward to meeting my hon. Friend at the next meeting of OffSET, or individually.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Under this Government, the gig economy workforce has trebled in the last five years, fire and rehire is accepted, zero-hours contracts are supported, inadequate sick pay is ignored, and sanctions for non-payment of the minimum wage are absolutely pitiful. Why, then, did the Government ditch their own employment Bill and block the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)?
Paul Scully
The UK has one of the best employment rights records in the world. We have made good progress in bringing forward measures that add flexibility for workers while ensuring the protection of employment rights, such as banning the use of exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts and legislating to extend the right to a written statement of core terms of employment to all workers. We will continue to make sure that we consider options to improve clarity on employment status, and we will bring forward an employment Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
In Suffolk and Norfolk, investment in research and development is vital to making the most of the opportunities emerging in such sectors as low carbon and life sciences, as well as to tackling pockets of deprivation, particularly in coastal areas. It is thus concerning that, in the Budget Red Book, the east of England is coupled with London and the south-east as an area from which spending on R&D will be diverted and in which it will be discouraged. Will my right hon. Friend work with his colleagues across Government to ensure that this discrimination against Suffolk and Norfolk is removed and is not included in the levelling-up White Paper?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I pay tribute to the fantastic work that my hon. Friend has done representing his constituents over 11 and a half years. He will know that I personally, as a Minister, have always been committed to the east of England. I have visited him in Lowestoft, I have visited offshore wind projects, and I would be very happy to speak to him about how we can drive the R&D programme and how East Anglia and his constituents can benefit from the UK’s science superpower status.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Is it not the case that the most exciting industrial development in the UK at present is hydrogen production? Does the Secretary of State welcome the pioneering work by JCB, under Lord Bamford’s direction, along with the partnership with Queen’s University Belfast, to produce the first working hydrogen combustion engine, which has made the past the future? What support will the Secretary of State give to capitalise on that engineering excellence to ensure that British jobs and British tech flow from it?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that I am fully conscious and fully supportive of the great work that Mr Bamford and his colleagues are doing driving Wrightbus and driving the hydrogen economy. The hon. Gentleman may know that I am very shortly to visit to Northern Ireland to see that great work on the ground.
Terrorist Incident at Liverpool Women’s Hospital
(3 years ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on Sunday’s incident at Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
The explosion outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital just before 11 o’clock on Sunday was a shocking incident, and my thoughts are with all those affected and the people of Liverpool, the city of my birth. I would like to thank the emergency services for their typically quick response and professionalism, and the police for their work on the investigation, which continues at pace.
The House will understand that I cannot comment on the details of this case as there is an ongoing live investigation. We are, of course, monitoring it closely. The police have stated that the motivation for this incident is yet to be understood. However, this is a further stark reminder about the threat we all face from terrorism. Our world-class security and intelligence agencies and counter-terror police work night and day to keep us safe.
Yesterday, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre took the decision independently of Ministers to raise the UK national threat level from substantial, meaning an attack is likely, to severe, meaning an attack is highly likely. JTAC, which operates independently of Ministers, considers all relevant intelligence and information to produce an agreed assessment of the threat from terrorism.
The public should remain alert but not alarmed. I know that hon. Members will want to avoid speculation about the case. I would urge the public and the media similarly to avoid speculation at this stage. Public safety is one of our chief priorities. We will continue to work with the police, alongside our world-class intelligence and security agencies, to confront and combat the threat from terrorism.
Kim Johnson
Mr Speaker, I am grateful to you for granting this urgent question, but I am very surprised that the Secretary of State is not here, given the seriousness of the matter.
I would like to start by taking this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to the police, our emergency services and staff at Liverpool City Council for responding in such a quick and professional manner; and to the heroic staff, patients and families at Liverpool Women’s Hospital for remaining calm and continuing to provide vital services. The work and resilience they have all shown at this difficult time showcase the very best of my great city.
The explosion in my constituency on Sunday rocked our great city. Like everyone, I was horrified to learn what had happened and grateful it was not worse, thanks to the actions of taxi driver David Perry. Liverpool has always been a diverse and welcoming city, and we pride ourselves on being a city of sanctuary. Now more than ever, we need to work together to support our communities and show that we remain united against the attempts to divide us.
Incidents such as these, while extremely rare, always provoke a spike in race hate, particularly against the Muslim community. My team have been hearing of incidents where women wearing the hijab are facing abuse. I am aware that funding is available through the places of worship scheme to help to provide security against hate crimes, and that the Government provide Community Security Trust Jewish communities with £14 million of funding every year. I also note that the Muslim Council of Britain has repeatedly raised the funding they receive as not proportionate to the risks they face, especially since the Government’s latest figures show that they are the target of 45% of all religious hate crimes—this is the greatest percentage of any faith group and double that of the second highest group. Will the Minister take the opportunity to review the amount of funding all faith communities receive every year to ensure that adequate and proportional resources are allocated to protect communities, including at times of heightened risk such as these?
We must take this opportunity to learn lessons from this tragic affair and take steps towards a more effective asylum system and immigration system. I hope the Minister will consider that ahead of the upcoming Nationality and Borders Bill and reconsider its inhumane approach.
As we continue to search for the truth behind this appalling incident, we must remain alert but not alarmed. We must stay calm, look after each other, pull together as the great diverse city we are, and not allow anyone to exploit this situation to divide us. At times like these, we must stand in solidarity, renew our resolve and remember we have far more that unites us than divides us.
Kit Malthouse
I applaud the hon. Lady’s final sentiment that we are more united than divided, particularly in the face of terrorism.
The Home Secretary could not be here, but I can reassure the hon. Lady that this has been given the highest importance in the Home Office and that the Home Secretary has been in touch with the investigators, as has the Prime Minister, right since the incident itself. In fact, the reason the Minister for Security and Borders, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), is not here to give a statement is that he is arriving in Liverpool as we speak to understand what the frontline responders have done and the stage of the investigation, and to stand with the community, as she says, as they bind themselves together.
This is a part of Liverpool I know extremely well. I was born and brought up there. I walked those streets and played in nearby Sefton Park as a child. As the hon. Lady says, it is a part of the city which is inclusive and welcoming and which I know will stand together to recover from this dreadful event.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on securing this urgent question, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it should not really have been necessary for her to seek it? Inevitably, there are going to be speculations in the media about an incident as serious as this. No one appreciates the pressures on Home Office Ministers in particular more than the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, but can he please take the message back that, when something like this happens, even if there is not much to be said, it ought to be said to this House in the first instance, at the first available opportunity?
Kit Malthouse
I understand my right hon. Friend’s sentiments. As he will know, particularly with regard to the threat level, a written ministerial statement was issued yesterday. We understand the need to keep the House informed and to provide reassurance, but the issue with statements to the House is that they have to be timed at such a stage where we believe that the balance is right between the information that we can give and the likelihood of further speculation about a case emanating from a statement, and that is sometimes difficult. But I take his point about the implications and will certainly think more carefully about the timing in future.
Mr Speaker
Just from my point of view, a written ministerial statement to the House is not good enough. It should be a statement to Members. They expect it, so please let us not hide behind that in terms of what we think is right or wrong. We all know what is right and wrong.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
One always feels a sense of responsibility and sadness on occasions such as this, but I feel it particularly today as a Merseyside MP. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) said about the emergency services and the victim of the attack, and I thank her for the leadership that she has shown locally over the past number of days.
The criminal investigation of the events in Liverpool is moving quickly. An individual who counter-terrorism police believe is the strong suspect and perpetrator has been named, although many questions remain. It is understandable, after the second incident in a matter of weeks, that the current terror threat level has been raised to severe. As the Minister said, it is critical that people should be not alarmed, but alert. Will he ensure that agencies have the resources to reinforce that message?
There are reports that a home-made explosive device was used in this appalling attack. After the 2017 series of attacks, the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is chaired so well by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), published a report that included recommendations on the use of and construction of such devices—namely, regulation around the ingredients or chemicals used to make them. Why have none of those recommendations been implemented after four years? Will the Minister look at that again?
We need to look at how another perpetrator was radicalised. The Government’s counter-extremism body came forward with several recommendations that, again, have not been implemented. We know that Ministers are taking funding away from key counter-extremism projects. Why is that, and will the Minister look at that again?
We must also look at information sharing between intelligence agencies, our police and public bodies. They need the fullest possible picture of individuals of concern to take the necessary action. Does the Minister agree, and will he look at that again?
We know that the Government have had a report on dealing with self-initiated and self-radicalised so-called “lone actors”. What is happening with that report? What is being done? The Minister will know that the Opposition have called for a judge-led review.
Finally, Liverpool people, in my experience, are resilient, but never, never harsh. Liverpool will continue, I am sure, to be the welcoming and warm place famed the world over for its hospitality.
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his questions. As he knows, significant resources are available to our counter-terrorism policing colleagues and there have been significant extra resources over the past couple of years for Merseyside police, which I know and believe they will put into action in this case.
The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions that invited me to speculate on some of the lessons that we may learn from this incident with regard to, for example, materials or, indeed, the motivation of the alleged attacker. At the moment, the police have said that none of that is yet clear. Once the investigations are complete, and we have the full picture of the individual’s activities online and offline and of his lifestyle and possible associates—we do not know yet—we will be able to learn some of the lessons for the future. And I join the hon. Gentleman in knowing that Liverpool will bind itself together, as the city has done so many times and will again.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
What action is the Home Office taking in its area of competence to review all the policies that could have a bearing on this and similar attacks? We would like reassurance that more could be done, as those are unacceptable.
Kit Malthouse
As hon. Members will know, the phenomenon of terrorism in the modern world is fast-moving and dynamic, so we must be, too. I reassure my right hon. Friend and the House that constant attention is paid to our ability to prevent these kinds of attacks, where we possibly can. He will know that, since 2017, counter-terrorism policing in its wider sense has prevented, I think, 31 attacks. We constantly learn lessons from incidents not just here in the UK, but around the world, so that we try to stay one step ahead in our preventive efforts. I can reassure him that constant attention is paid to refining what we do and getting better and better at it.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
The SNP unequivocally condemns this dreadful crime, particularly as it came when the people of this country were preparing to remember those who died to defend our freedoms. We send our thoughts and best wishes to the people of the great city of Liverpool, and our sincere thanks to Dave Perry, whose courage and presence of mind almost certainly prevented a greater loss of life. We wish him a full and speedy recovery. We echo the calls for people with any information whatever about the attack to come forward, to ensure that everyone involved is caught and held to account for their actions.
I understand that the suspect was not known either to the security services or to the police. Could the Minister say something about what is being done to address the radicalisation of such lone attackers? What strategy is being pursued to reduce the risk of such attacks in the future?
Finally, I share the concern of the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) that there is a belief that the device used was similar to that used in Manchester four years ago. Whether or not that proves to be the case, how confident is the Minister that the current controls on access to such chemicals are robust and strong enough to prevent something like this from happening in future?
Kit Malthouse
While I understand the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments—I, too, offer my good wishes to the driver of the car for a full recovery—he is inviting me to speculate on the possible motivation of the individual by indicating that there may have been some radicalism. As I said earlier, we are not yet clear about the motivation of that individual.
Obviously the hon. Gentleman will understand that investigations, not least digital forensic investigations, are under way. As for the materials used in the incident, there is ongoing, extensive forensic examination of premises that have been occupied and of the vehicle on site. Until we know exactly what the circumstances are, it is hard to draw any conclusions, as the hon. Gentleman asks me to, but when we do, I am sure that we will be able to find a way to let the House know.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
I extend my thanks to the emergency services in Liverpool and Merseyside and the security services for the incredible work that they do, and to Mr Perry for what appears to be considerable bravery on his part.
As my right hon. Friend says, it would not be right to speculate on the motivations of the individual involved, but it is true that we have a significant problem in this country with extremism and extremist ideologies—a problem that we need to confront with renewed seriousness. He and the Home Secretary are equipped with a number of major reports, including Baroness Casey’s on integration and Sara Khan’s on potential changes to the law, and they either already have or will shortly have William Shawcross’s report on the effectiveness and potential reform of the Prevent programme. When will my right hon. Friend respond to those reports and set out the Government’s strategy?
Kit Malthouse
I understand that my right hon. Friend is not necessarily associating this particular case with the strand of work that he is looking at, but he is quite right that there have been a number of reports over the past few years that have looked into the very difficult job of combating radicalism, not least in an internet age. I know that he is impatient for change. My right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Minister for Security and Borders are applying themselves with some enthusiasm to that area of business, because although we can do a lot on prevention from an organisational and a policing point of view, in the end it is critical that we get to the root cause: the radicalisation, often self-radicalisation, of individuals, which often happens online.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
This was a truly awful attack, which it appears could have been much worse. I join other hon. Members in thanking the emergency services and in sending our support to David Perry and his family and to the staff and patients at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, who will have faced such great shock as a result of this awful incident.
There has also been an increase in the terror threat level. Previously, when the terror threat level has been increased, Ministers have come to this House to make a statement; rightly, there were also statements after Streatham, Reading and other terror attacks, and of course after the awful murder of our colleague. I urge the Minister to take that point back, because I think this was a bad misjudgment.
How far does raising the terror threat reflect concerns among security services about the increase in online radicalisation during the pandemic?
Kit Malthouse
I am sure that the House will have heard loud and clear both your implication, Mr Speaker, and that of the Chair of the Committee about our coming to the House in a timely fashion. I understand that, notwithstanding yesterday’s written statement, an oral statement was preferable in your view.
As for the raising of the threat level, the right hon. Lady will know that a number of data points are pulled in for that independent assessment, but this decision was made in the light of the two recent incidents—the death, sadly, the awful killing, of Sir David Amess, and this incident—combined in the round with other information gathered by JTAC. The online world of radicalisation is of course one of the areas that JTAC examines, but I think that it takes into account a more rounded picture of the overall threat.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Notwithstanding the reason that the Minister has just given for the raising of the threat level, both the incidents to which he has referred involved, effectively, lone wolves. Is he in a position to share with us some of the rationale for raising the threat level nationally?
Kit Malthouse
I understand my right hon. Friend’s desire for more information, but he will know that we do not, as a rule, discuss the reasoning behind our security levels, just as we do not discuss specific security arrangements or, indeed, specific security tactics or capabilities. While there are mechanisms in the House to oversee what we do, not least the Intelligence and Security Committee, I hope my right hon. Friend understands that it might not be helpful to our general security for me to discuss these matters in public.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Let me first pay tribute to Chief Constable Serena Kennedy, her officers at Merseyside Police, Counter Terrorism Policing North West, Phil Garrigan, the chief fire officer of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, and all the other emergency responders for their rapid response in reassuring our people and communities including those in Kensington, in my constituency, which still has a heavy police presence. My thanks also go to the incredible staff at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, and I wish David Perry a very speedy recovery.
Given that the picture is still unclear in respect of the wider investigation, may I ask what additional resources will be allocated to Liverpool via Merseyside Police and Counter Terrorism Policing North West, to help them to conclude their investigation at the earliest opportunity?
Kit Malthouse
As I said earlier, we believe that Merseyside Police and the regional counter-terrorism police have adequate resources. Obviously, national resources have also been devoted to this investigation. At present I am not aware that we have received any request for further assistance, but I am sure that if there is such a request, we will be able to look at it.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
While I appreciate that this is a live investigation and we clearly cannot speculate on all the details, reports in the media that the suspect was an asylum seeker have understandably raised considerable concern among my constituents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that effective border controls are vital to maintaining public confidence in public security?
Kit Malthouse
As my hon. Friend says, there has been a great deal of speculation in the media and elsewhere, and he will forgive me if I refrain from speculating on the background and therefore the possible motivations of the individual concerned. However, on a separate issue, he is right to suggest that all nations need compassionate, fair and swift border controls that deliver on their duty to those fleeing persecution around the world, while at the same time ensuring that there is an orderly way in which to enter the country.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I want to express, across the River Mersey, the solidarity of the people of the Wirral with the communities in Liverpool who have had to deal with this issue. Will the Minister tell us a bit more about his views on how we can counter self-radicalisation and on the fact that the security services are particularly worried that it may have been turbocharged during lockdowns, and his views on how a strategy to counter that might be being developed?
Kit Malthouse
Given that, in strict terms, this is obviously not my portfolio—I am here today because the Security Minister is in Liverpool himself—I am not sure that my views would necessarily be the most helpful thing to give today. It is the case, however, that in respect of both crime generally and possible radicalisation online, we are working through the implications of the lockdowns and the impact of covid on particular individuals who may be susceptible as a result of having spent time in confinement and been exposed to material to which they would not otherwise have been exposed. Those lessons are being learnt as we speak, and I am sure that in time my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Minister for Security and Borders will come forward with their proposals.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
I have been contacted by many constituents wanting to stand in solidarity with Liverpool and pay tribute to the emergency services. I do not wish to speculate on the motivations of this lone actor, but I wonder whether the Minister has had time to read a report on the “tipping point” into extremism that I produced with the Home Affairs Committee. It contains a large number of recommendations on working with social media platforms to ensure that they do not promote, or engage young minds in, delivering lone acts of violence such as this may have been. Will the Minister update us on what we are doing about social media companies that do not remove those platforms?
Kit Malthouse
I know that the hon. Lady has done a vast amount of work in this area, and we congratulate her and thank her for it. She is right: while we entrust a huge amount of our safety to our police forces—and, in particular, to our counter-terrorism police and those who promote the Prevent programme and other radicalisation prevention strategies—we all have a role to play in our collective safety, including the executives and others of social media companies, who need to think about the role that they play in shaping young minds for the future. That is not, as I have said, to speculate on the motivation in this case. I speak in general terms, as a father with children, and I know that there are young minds out there to be shaped. Those companies are part of the shaping, and they need to step up to that responsibility.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
I commend Mr Perry for his bravery, and I commend all the emergency services that came to the rescue. I wholly and unreservedly condemn the terrorist act that took place. It was a premature act in that the fuse probably went off earlier than it was intended to, and it could have been far more devastating to the city of Liverpool and indeed to all of us.
For too long—for the last 20 years—we have spoken of addressing radicalisation and extremism. We do not appear to be making headway. I agree with what was said earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), the shadow security Minister: we should be looking far more closely at this issue, and providing support and resources not only for the security services but for the local police to enable them to be more active.
Kit Malthouse
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration, and I apologise to the House for not being able to say more about this case at the moment, but I must reiterate that we are not yet clear—and the police have stated in terms that they are not yet clear—about the motivation for the attack. The time will come for us to draw lessons from it, and indeed from other attacks, and apply them to the further work we can do to protect ourselves, both in dealing with those who may be radicalised and, more practically, in dealing with the groups who may be organising the attacks. However, this is a difficult and complex area of work. I hope the House will give the police the space that they need to complete the investigation and learn those lessons, from this incident and, as I have said, from the previous incident.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
We are fortunate in this country to have superb counter-terrorism forces. They face myriad different threats, but in the light of recent attacks, will there be a pivot among the security services and the police towards concentrating on lone actors, who are in many ways the most difficult to identify and prevent?
Kit Malthouse
As my hon. Friend rightly points out, this is one of the most difficult areas of investigation. While I cannot speculate on whether or not there will be such a pivot, I hope my hon. Friend knows that—as I said earlier—we are constantly paying attention to where we believe the threat is coming from, and refining our ability both to identify it and to prevent it from emerging in the first place.There have been a number of different styles and natures of attack over the years. For example, he will remember what became known as the “Mumbai-style” attack, which took place some time ago and had implications for our resilience. We did extensive work to protect ourselves from that style of attack. Similarly, work will be ongoing as we see this phenomenon increase, and I can reassure him that significant attention and resources will be being paid to it.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
May I put on record my thanks to everyone at Liverpool Women’s Hospital and everyone involved in the emergency service response? Liverpool is a welcoming city and a city of sanctuary, and the Minister grew up there. However, we are not immune from minority communities feeling vulnerable at times like this, so I invite him to reassure those communities that the Government are working with local leaders to ensure their security and safety in the weeks and months ahead.
Kit Malthouse
I agree with the hon. Gentleman; I know the city well and it has always been welcoming, certainly in the latter decades, when community harmony has been very good and high. I hope that this will not have an impact on that. The Security Minister is there today to talk to the authorities and the police about what more we can do to help and to understand more about the circumstances, but I know that the two mayors, the police and crime commissioner and all those engaged in the welfare of Liverpool will be doing their best to reassure the community and bind it together after such a devastating event.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on securing this urgent question and join her in thanking the security services and the members of the emergency services who were involved. It has been widely reported that TATP was used in this attack. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) said from the Front Bench, in 2018 the Intelligence and Security Committee, on which I serve, produced a report on the 2017 terrorist attacks. It made four recommendations on this, with recommendation N calling for the outdated system of regulation of these chemicals to be updated. In response to the Committee’s report, the Government simply noted the conclusion and said that they were committed to developing a system of regulation. The Minister says that things are unclear and he cannot comment on them, but what is clear is the fact that none of those recommendations have been taken on board since 2018. Why?
Kit Malthouse
As the right hon. Gentleman points out, I cannot comment on this. I know that there has been a lot of speculation about the nature of the explosion, but, as I understand it from a briefing just this morning, the forensic examination is yet to be completed. Once it is, we will be able to draw some lessons about the particular combustion and the explosive chemicals that may or may not have been used, and then we can take action accordingly.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
As somebody who was nearby, at Liverpool’s Remembrance Day service at the Anglican cathedral, at the time of the explosion, along with 2,000 to 3,000 other people, I want to join in commending Merseyside police and the fire and rescue services in particular for their swift and effective action to keep the city and its citizens safe.
Liverpool is a city that believes in solidarity and helping others, as we have seen in my constituency, where hundreds of recently arrived Afghan people, themselves fleeing terror, are staying as they adjust to new lives in the UK. What more will the Government do to ensure that any threats to community cohesion and safety that arise out of these circumstances—there are people out there, not necessarily from the city, who want to cause trouble—are minimised and that no one is allowed to use the events to stoke community tensions?
Kit Malthouse
I join the hon. Lady in congratulating Merseyside police, which is one of our highest-performing police forces across the country, having had a series of great leaders as chief constables, not least the current one. Andy Cooke, who led it before, was also an outstanding leader of that force, which has achieved amazing results. The fact it was able to deal with this incident so swiftly, at the same time as dealing with a major public event not very far away, is a great testament to its skill.
On the community work, the hon. Lady will be reassured to know that colleagues in the community arm of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities are engaging with the local authorities in Liverpool to make sure that we do what we can to reassure the local community and keep it as united as it has hitherto been.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, I echo your concerns and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) that an urgent question should not have been necessary. I also want to echo the tributes to the emergency services’ response. As a former chair of Merseyside fire and rescue service, I particularly wish to focus on its response and on the measured response from the people of Liverpool and Merseyside more broadly. It is chilling to think that this incident occurred as we stood in silence to remember the fallen—how ironic. I send my thanks and best wishes to David Perry, the driver of the taxi involved in the explosion, for his bravery.
Understandably, this dreadful incident will have unsettled staff in local hospitals, particularly in the Women’s Hospital, where my two granddaughters were born. So will the Minister speak to the Health Secretary to initiate a full review of security at hospitals in the light of this incident, to reassure patients, staff and visitors?
Kit Malthouse
As I say, Mr Speaker, the lack of a statement came from a desire to come to the House at the moment when we could give the maximum information and reassurance, but we hear the message loud and clear. Obviously, following this incident there will be review of security arrangements at a variety of premises. The hon. Gentleman will understand that I do not want to discuss exactly what those may be, but the raising of the threat level brings with it an implication and an obligation on a number of organisations to review their security arrangements. The British public will see a greater police presence, particularly in areas of public use, to make sure that there is both reassurance and prevention in place.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I serve on the ISC, and I have incredibly impressed by the thoroughness of the information that the Committee has available to it, the reports that are produced and the recommendations that are made. What has concerned me today has been listening to both our Front Bencher and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) explain that recommendations that have been public for quite a while have not been responded to by the Government. Might the Minister be willing to undertake a review of all the recent recommendations that the Committee has put forward, to see what more can be done to make sure that we keep ourselves as safe as possible?
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that and I thank her for her work on that important Committee. I understand the House’s frustration that the discussion of specific security arrangements on the Floor of the House is not necessarily helpful to our overall security. We do have a tried and tested route to look at these things, through the Committee of which she is a member. I am more than happy to go away and discuss with my colleagues what the status is of the various recommendations coming out of that Committee, and, if required, we can put some boosters on to implementing them.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and you, Mr Speaker, for this urgent question, which is very important to the people of Merseyside. I associate myself with all the remarks, including those of the Minister, the shadow Minister and others, about those who served the people of Merseyside on Sunday to make them safe.
The Women’s is a fantastic hospital. Although we have no idea whether the location had anything to do with the incident, I am prompted to ask the Minister about the toxic ideology of misogyny and global evidence that it seems to be behind more and more devastating incidents around the world. May I ask the Minister to say, on behalf of the Home Office, what research it has commissioned on misogyny and how we can make sure we undermine this ideology at source, to keep people safe?
Kit Malthouse
I join the hon. Lady in celebrating the Women’s Hospital in Liverpool, which has been used by members of my family on a number of occasions. I was born at Broadgreen, not at the Women’s Hospital, but there are some fantastic facilities in that city.
Obviously, I understand that the hon. Lady is not intending to speculate on the motivation of the individuals, but she is right to say that there have been a number of incidents internationally and closer to home where ideologies such as incel or people driven by misogyny and therefore targeting women have been a cause of concern, both publicly and privately. I know that there is an examination of this phenomenon ongoing within the Home Office.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
May I pay tribute to the extraordinary resilience and determination of the staff at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, who provide such exceptional support to women and newborns from across Merseyside? I also commend Mr Perry for his bravery.
Sunday’s appalling attack has caused understandable concerns about the health service. Last night, health service trusts in England were urged to review their security measures. Will the Minister assure the House that trusts will not be expected to pay for any security upgrades from their already overstretched budgets and that such costs will be met with additional funding from central Government?
Kit Malthouse
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments. It is obviously not for me to discuss what the security arrangements should or should not be—as I have said before, it is not helpful to speculate—but I am sure that whatever resource will help those organisations to become safe will be available either from within their own budgets or from elsewhere.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I want to express my solidarity with the people of Liverpool, where I studied and worked for many years. I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) is right that some will use the event to peddle their message of hate and division. Without prejudicing this case, how many asylum seekers will be waiting for more than two years for a decision on their applications? Of those, how many will receive mental health support?
Kit Malthouse
I am afraid that the hon. Lady is once again inviting me to speculate on the background, nature and motivation of the individual. I hope she will forgive me if I refrain from doing so. I am happy to take that question in other circumstances and, if she wants to table it as a written question, I will make sure that there is a swift reply on the numbers.
On the hon. Lady’s sentiment, I am reassured about the possible community implications because I know that Liverpool is not a city filled with hate. It is a city where people put their arms around each other and stand together in adversity, as sadly they have had to do too often. I know that they will this time, too.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Will the Minister outline what can be done to ensure that the taxi driver, David Perry, who looked into the face of evil and acted courageously—eerily reminiscent of those heroes who gave their lives and were honoured on the day when this terrorist sought to murder, take life and disrespect our great nation and democracy—will be able to put food on the table, return to work after his recovery and have a vehicle to earn his living?
Kit Malthouse
It is typical of the hon. Gentleman that he would focus on the welfare of that individual. I will personally ensure that he is getting all the support that he needs to recover properly.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I thank the emergency services on the scene on Sunday for their extraordinary response to a terrifying situation and send solidarity to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and the people of Liverpool.
Remembrance Sunday is a time to commemorate the lives lost in two world wars and subsequent conflicts. It is an emotional time for many, not least veterans in our armed forces. What support are the Government offering to veterans who may have had post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health conditions triggered by Sunday’s news?
Kit Malthouse
We will have to examine the wider community impacts of the incident once the lessons are learned. As the hon. Lady knows, significant work is being done through our work on the military covenant around welfare and wellbeing for veterans. I hope and believe that the resources available as part of that may be employed in this effort.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
I must advise Members that the deferred Division scheduled for tomorrow in respect of the draft Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021, which was deferred from Monday 8 November, will not take place because the Department for Transport has withdrawn the regulations in question. The Department expects the regulations to be re-laid shortly, after which they will have to be considered and approved in the usual way.
Points of Order
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I rise as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on trailer and towing safety in reference to what you just said about the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021. The regulations, which abolish a safety test with no safety assessment—this has already happened—were debated in the Chamber last week and are opposed by many, including the Association of British Insurers and the Road Haulage Association. We talk a lot about the Government bypassing this place, and it seems extraordinary that an action of such magnitude for road safety has happened without legislation and we do not know when it will happen. Can you advise me on when the Secretary of State might come to the House with said legislation, and on the legality of the Government’s position on such tests and how I might pursue the matter further?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me notice of the point of order. As I said in my statement, the regulations in question have been withdrawn. I understand that the Department intends to bring forward revised regulations, which will be considered by the House in the usual way. If she requires more procedural guidance, I recommend that she raises the matter with the Clerks and the Journal Office, who will advise her on the best way forward.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last week Lord Frost made a statement in the other place regarding our relationship with the European Union, negotiations following Brexit and, in particular, the Northern Ireland protocol. He promised my noble Friend Baroness Chapman of Darlington that there would be a subsequent statement in the House of Commons. Today, a written ministerial statement has been placed before the House, which I am sure you agree is not acceptable or appropriate and follows a pattern of behaviour by the Government of excluding elected representatives—not least those from Northern Ireland—from negotiations and updates on the protocol. I would be grateful for your advice on how we can ensure that Ministers are brought to the House to update us on the protocol so that elected representatives can have their say.
Mr Speaker
First, I will certainly look into the matter. It is normally the case that major Government statements are made in both Houses. What I find appalling is that this is the elected House that represents constituents across the country, and yet somehow it seems fit for their lordships to hear a statement that has been denied to this House. My best suggestion would be to try an urgent question in the morning. I am not promising, but I would certainly look at it.
Flooding (Prevention and Insurance)
Tuesday 16th November 2021
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Flooding (Prevention and Insurance) Bill 2021-22 View all Flooding (Prevention and Insurance) Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to set national minimum requirements for flood mitigation and protection measures in new build public and private properties enforced by local planning authorities; to place reporting requirements on local and national government in relation to flood prevention measures; to establish a certification scheme for improvements to domestic and commercial properties for flood prevention and mitigation purposes and an accreditation scheme for installers of such improvements; to require insurers to take account of such improvements and any existing flood prevention and mitigation measures that were planning permission requirements when determining premiums; to extend eligibility to the Flood Reinsurance scheme under section 64 of the Water Act 2014 to small and medium-sized enterprises and homes built after 2009; and for connected purposes.
Last Sunday in Glasgow, we saw potentially the most consequential gathering in world history—I refer, of course, to COP26. The Prime Minister opened that conference by acknowledging that, unless we act soon, we would see savage changes in our climate that could have destructive effects on life as we know it. An inevitable consequence of climate change is a change in weather patterns. In 2020, the UN’s environment programme highlighted that increased flooding is likely to be one of the early visible signs of climate change. In Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire—indeed in Yorkshire, the midlands, the south-west and the south-east—we understand that because it is already happening. We remember Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis. In Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, we remember the devastation of the 2007 floods to homes, schools and businesses. We also remember the tidal surge of 2013 and the city being cut off from the M62 by a flooded A63 in 2019.
There have been some positive advancements in our response to the increasing problems of flooding over the last 15 years, with the Flood Re scheme one good example, but there is still more to do. My recent survey of residents in Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle highlighted their continuing concerns about flood protection and readiness. My Bill seeks to address some of those concerns and to put all future building developments on a sustainable footing.
The long title of the Bill, which I have just read out, sets out five requirements that can be summarised under three areas. First, to set out binding planning requirements for properties, enforced by local authorities. Secondly, to create a scheme, binding on the insurance industry, to recognise flood resilience measures in their premiums. And thirdly, to extend the Flood Re scheme further.
Provided that they are within the scope of current planning law, the property flood resilience measures required in new build properties are currently set by local planning authorities in pre-commencement conditions. That results in adjacent local authorities having different requirements in flood zones with the same rating, which is not only inconsistent but hampers collaboration by allowing local authorities to export their flood-related problems to other areas.
My Bill would create a level playing field by setting minimum standards nationwide. I hope these minimum standards would be along the lines of the highly successful measures put in place by Hull City Council and those supported by the Association of British Insurers, which is calling for the Government to enact schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and align planning policy related to sustainable drainage systems, as recommended by the Climate Change Committee. This common-sense move is supported by both the insurance industry and Flood Re in its most recent review, and it can be supported by Members on both sides of the House. It is about prevention not cure, and it is about building homes that are fit for a changing future.
At present there is no mandatory requirement for insurers to lower premiums for homes where flood risk is mitigated by flood resilience or protection measures. That is largely due to lack of evidence, both at a landscape scale and at the level of individual properties. The only information that insurers currently use in setting premiums with regard to flood risk is commercially available mapping data. As data from national and local government bodies on flood mitigation infrastructure such as lagoons, barriers and sustainable drainage systems is not readily available, it is not used. There is no requirement on the industry to request information at the level of individual properties. That situation must change.
On landscape and infrastructure, the relevant Government agencies must make readily available the information on all flood prevention and mitigation measures in place regionally and locally. The information already exists; it is a matter of collation and access. Once the information is available, insurers must make use of it and incorporate it into their premium calculations. At the individual property level, discounted insurance premiums should be offered for properties with flood resistance measures installed. Indeed, that was a recommendation of Flood Re in its recent five-yearly review.
The ABI’s position is that insurers lack reliable data on the relative effectiveness of measures and lack confidence in their correct installation. Some measures, such as the raising of electrical cabling and plug points above ground level, seem self-evidently beneficial and I have heard conflicting accounts of whether sufficient data on the effectiveness of such measures already exists. However, it would be helpful to everyone concerned to have agreement and clarity on the range of effective measures on which insurers will offer discounts. As well as confidence in the competency of installers, consumers need assurance that putting these protection measures in their home will not only increase resilience to flooding but lower premiums, which is why my Bill proposes a statutory certification scheme. There would need to be funding available to set the standards, and I believe it would be a good idea to make funding available to our universities and industry for the creation and production of new technologies that would lower the risk further.
Let me be clear: Flood Re is a good scheme and is one that I support—I also support many of the recommendations in the latest five-yearly review—but it has two major flaws. First, it does not cover homes built after 2009. I can see the logic, as this discourages building in flood zones, and it was imagined that such homes would be built to be flood resilient, but the truth is that in too many cases this has simply not happened. As a result people find themselves, through no fault of their own, living in flood-prone areas with no flood resilience measures and without cover by the scheme.
I hope my Bill would make it impossible to build a house without adequate flood protections, but in the meantime we need to move Flood Re eligibility forward to a suitable date so that people who are not covered as a result of the current planning system are not left without cover or facing very high premiums.
Secondly, Flood Re needs to cover small and medium-sized enterprises. I appreciate that commercial insurance is different from residential insurance, and I appreciate that commercial insurance effectively has two aspects: the aspect covering a business’s building and the aspect covering its stock and other business needs. I also appreciate that Flood Re may not be suitable to cover stock and business needs, but why can it not be extended to cover the building aspect? Is covering the structural aspect of a residential building not the same as covering the structural aspect of a commercial building? My Bill would extend Flood Re to offer that very protection. It would allow businesses affected by flooding to be in a position to be back on their feet and trading more quickly.
This is not a party political issue, nor should it be a subject of party political point scoring. It is an issue that affects people and businesses in constituencies right across the nation, represented by Members from all parties. It is an issue that will continue to affect those people and businesses and, as the effects of climate change become more acute, it will become deeper and wider.
Many of the proposals in this Bill have the support of the insurance industry and of Flood Re. A survey carried out in my constituency over the summer shows the proposals are supported by many members of the public, too. In many ways, it is common sense to pass this Bill. When it comes to supporting these measures today, we should remember that the tide is rising, both literally and metaphorically, and the time to act is now.
I thank Members on both sides of the House. Unfortunately I was able to choose only 11 Members of Parliament to present the Bill, but I have had a huge wealth of support from Members right across the House, which shows the amount of concern about flooding and flood prevention.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Emma Hardy, Debbie Abrahams, Hilary Benn, Tracey Crouch, Philip Davies, Dan Jarvis, Dame Diana Johnson, Rachael Maskell, Jim Shannon, Karl Turner and Valerie Vaz present the Bill.
Emma Hardy accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 14 January 2022, and to be printed (Bill 191).
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (Today)
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg relating to the Committee on Standards not later than one hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, until any hour, and may be entered upon after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
Committee on Standards
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I beg to move,
That, notwithstanding the practice of this House relating to questions already decided in the same Session, this House:
(1) rescinds the resolution and order of 3 November 2021 relating to the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797) and the appointment of a new select committee;
(2) approves the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797); and
(3) notes that Mr Owen Paterson is no longer a Member of this House.
I have listened carefully to the views expressed since the debate and decision on 3 November, and I make it clear that Members of Parliament must uphold the highest standards in public life. We expect all Members to abide by the prevailing rules of conduct. Paid lobbying is wrong and Members found guilty of it should pay the necessary penalties. Our standards system must function robustly and fairly to support this so that it commands the confidence of Members and the general public.
The Government support the principle of an additional right to appeal in the standards system in the House of Commons and for that potential reform to be explored on a cross-party basis.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
What happened a couple of weeks ago was an extraordinary failure of moral leadership and, for the first time, it has given rise in the minds of many to serious questions about the character of this Government. With hindsight, why did the Leader of the House and his right hon. Friends not recognise the brazen wrongdoing of their colleague?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think the simple answer—[Interruption.] No, I think the heckle from the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) is unfair and unkind. It was simply that the tragedy that afflicted Mr Paterson coloured and clouded our judgment, and my judgment, incorrectly. It is as simple and as sad as that.
The Back-Bench amendment that we supported was intended to facilitate the exploration, on a cross-party basis, of the standards system, with a time-limited, ad hoc Committee. However, I regret that the amendment conflated an individual case with more general concerns. That was a mistake. Crucially, the amendment did not carry cross-party support, which is why we have changed our approach.
The Government fully recognise the role of the Committee on Standards in ensuring that the code of conduct reflects and fosters the highest standards of public life. I would like to thank all the Committee members and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for their service. We await the Committee’s report on the code of conduct with interest. The Committee performs an important role in identifying opportunities to improve the standards system, and I note that the Chairman, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), has made a recent, and helpful, commitment to commission a senior judicial figure to advise on possible changes to the process.
I assure all right hon. and hon. Members that I am always willing to discuss this matter further, and I hope to work with Opposition Members constructively on this issue. We all have the best interests of the House at heart and I hope that, setting aside the previous debate, we will work well together in the weeks ahead.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for facilitating this debate. [Laughter.] On 3 November, he said that the concerns expressed about the individual case in question included:
“the lack of examination of witnesses”—
of whom there were 17—
“the interpretation of the rules relating to whistleblowing…the application of aggravating factors; and the absence of the right of appeal.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2021; Vol. 702, c. 939.]
With regard to the first three of those, what is my right hon. Friend’s current view in relation to that particular case?
Mr Rees-Mogg
First, the House will always have a debate when it wants to have a debate; that is how our procedures work. They are extremely straightforward and ensure that right hon. and hon. Members can come to this House and make objections, if they so wish, to have subjects debated on the Floor of the House—
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give way?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I will not give way, because I am trying to answer my hon. Friend. I have already covered his point about last week’s debate: we made the mistake of conflating the two issues of the individual case with the general system, and that did not have cross-party support. That is why the Government have committed to working on a cross-party basis to find and grasp opportunities to improve the system. I will be listening carefully to the insights of Members during this debate. I commend the motion to the House.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Where to start, Mr Speaker? There must be many a Government MP scratching their head today and asking—with reference to the greatest popstar and songwriter of all time after Schubert—“How did I get here?” I am afraid the Leader of the House still seems to have no answer to David Byrne’s eternal question; allow me to assist. I could suggest a few good books on parliamentary process, or maybe a trip to the Table Office—the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister and perhaps even the Government Chief Whip could do with a bit of revision. I could point them towards some party planners in Bristol who could perhaps help them to learn the basics of how to turn some beer and some crisps into a festivity in a brewery.
When the Leader of the House opened the debate some 13 days ago on what should have been a straightforward motion to approve a Standards Committee report, like the one we now have before us, he used his lengthy speech from the Dispatch Box not really to move the motion but instead to propose a Back-Bench amendment that tore through his own motion and, more importantly, tore through the standards process right in the middle of a live case. The Leader of the House talks of conflation; as he sat down, was he fatigued? Were his fingers in his ears? I do not think so. Had he mastered the art of dozing off while appearing conscious? What explanation can there be for his plaintive lament the very next day, in the days after, and even today in his podcast, that it was a pity that the issues of changing the standards process and the live case had become conflated? It was literally him doing the conflating.
I understand that the Leader of the House might not hang on my every word, but why did he not heed the wise counsel of the Chair of the Standards Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); of his own former Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper); of the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley); and of any number of others? We all warned the Leader of the House against the dangers of conflation. He was warned, yet conflate he did. He heeded none of the warnings as he led the Prime Minister’s men and women up to the top of the hill and then left them there.
Then came the Government’s screeching U-turn, which the Leader of the House announced the next day at business questions. What followed was yet more chaos. The amended motion is still in place. The motion before us today should have gone through last night but was blocked by a single voice, for reasons that remain a mystery to me but that we may hear shortly. Now, here we are, debating this motion.
When the Leader of the House was asked at business questions how the sham Committee that was included in the messed-up motion, with a named Chair—quite inappropriate—would operate with no funding or cross-party support, I seem to recall that he waved his hands at me and tried to imply that we had not been listening to his words. But we had, and answer came there none.
Absurdly, the Government then resisted the motion suggested by my hon. Friend the Chair of the Standards Committee, as they resisted the urging from me and, no doubt, from others. They could have laid that motion there and then, last Monday, to rectify the mess that they had not just made but quite improperly whipped for, given that this is a House matter.
The motion finally appeared among the remaining orders last night, on a “nod or nothing” basis. I confess, Mr Speaker, that even I was surprised by the chaos last night, as it descended into Chamber farce. I really thought that the Government, having admitted their mistake and squirrelled away the remedy in a late-night, no-debate motion, would surely have made sure that no one was going to mess it up for them again. But oh how wrong I was. To continue the Talking Heads references, this is not my beautiful House. This Government cannot sweep this under the rug. The Leader of the House has now apologised in his podcast, but will he also apologise to the House for the damage that has been done to the reputation of Parliament by this sorry affair?
Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy rightly sent an apology to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards—the independent standards commissioner—for his outrageous comments when sent out on the morning media round to be the Government apologist for bad behaviour. Which hapless Minister are they going to send out next time? Will it once again be the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who was also sent out to describe all this as a
“Westminster storm in a teacup”?
If it is a Westminster storm in a teacup, it must be a very big teacup, because here we are—
Thangam Debbonaire
Yes, 13 days.
Mr Speaker, standards matter. Scrutiny matters. An independent system to hold everyone in public life to account matters. Standards should not be seen or treated as an irksome bother that you get your mates to change when you are found out. Standards should not be seen as something to be feared, or something to be treated with such distain, incompetence and total absence of leadership, as we have seen from this sorry Government over this sorry affair. To anyone who really loves democracy, standards are the bedrock of everything we do—everything. Once more, it seems I have to remind the Leader of the House that the Nolan principles are selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and, finally, leadership.
For democracy to work—for it to be trusted—those values have to be not only integrated into our political system but celebrated and welcomed. No MP must be for hire—not one. Standards should be the guiding light of every day in this place; a frame around what we do; a filter to sift out what must not be done from what must be done; something we demand from ourselves and each other; and something we expect our staff to work to and to hold us to. When our constituents challenge us to live up to these standards, we should be proud that our democracy is working so well that they can do that. How have we got to the point where the Prime Minister has to clarify that the UK is not a corrupt country? How did we get here? How did we get here?!
Let us keep the upward trajectory, started in 1695—I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman might have appreciated that, or that he did appreciate that—making our standards stronger, our systems of accountability more effective, not weakening them as the Government tried to do with, I am afraid to say, the assistance of the Leader of the House. I am glad that the Leader of the House recognises that it was a mistake, but I ask him again if he will apologise to this House.
I also ask the Leader of the House: when will the Government bring forward, or respond to, the 2018 recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on MPs’ outside interests? If he has read that report, which I am sure he has, will he be backing Labour’s motion tomorrow? That motion is based on the part of the standards report on banning MPs from taking political strategy, analyst and consultancy jobs—I got the wording slightly wrong there, but, basically, we are talking about paid directorships and lobbying jobs that MPs should not be doing. The Government must accept the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which was set up after a different Tory scandal, to strengthen the system. They must support the current inquiry into the MPs’ code of conduct, which our Standards Committee is in the middle of and, in fact, shortly to report on. The Government should only ever be in the business of updating and strengthening our system. We should never be content for the public to look at us wearily and conclude, thanks to the cynical actions of a very few, that we do not have standards, when we do.
Finally, we should never have been put in this position, but we were by those on the Government Benches, and now they cannot even clear up after themselves. We can now, today—and I hope that we do—end this particular sorry mess of a motion and take it off the books by voting through the one in front of us, mercifully unamended, as it should have been 13 days ago, if only the Leader of the House had been listening.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I hope that this will be the last opportunity for this House to do the right thing and accept the report of the Committee on Standards on Owen Paterson. I trust that no Member of this House is thinking of doing anything other than supporting the motion that has been moved by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. Passing this motion will be a step in the right direction, but it will not undo the damage that has been done by the vote of 3 November. Let us be clear: this is not a party political issue. Damage has been done to all Members of Parliament and to Parliament as a whole.
I read the report of the Committee on Standards into Owen Paterson. I believe that the conclusion was clear and fair: Owen Paterson broke the rules on paid advocacy. The attempt by right hon. and hon. Members of this House, aided and abetted by the Government under cover of reform of the process, effectively to clear his name was misplaced, ill-judged and just plain wrong.
Mrs May
I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I take no interventions. I wish to make my limited points.
In this place, we set rules for people through the laws that we pass. We expect people to obey those rules. We also set rules for our own behaviour as Members of Parliament and we have a right to expect that each and every one of us obey those rules. Sometimes mistakes will be made inadvertently, but the process of independent investigation and a Committee set up by this House with lay members should be able to differentiate those cases and to deal with them.
It has been suggested that, as a result of what happened on 3 November, the rules need to change. I do hope that the Government will be looking urgently and seriously at the 2018 proposals from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I do not think that they quite reflect the motion that the Opposition are putting to the House tomorrow, but they do suggest a clarification and a tightening up of the rules on MPs’ outside interests. It would be a mistake to think that, because someone broke the rules, the rules were wrong. The rule on paid advocacy is a long-standing one. The problem came because there was an attempt to effectively let off a then Member of the House, and that flew in the face of the rules on paid advocacy and in the face of the processes established by this House.
It has also been suggested, as a result of what happened on 3 November, that there are questions about the role of MPs. We should not conflate or confuse those two issues. The first is about ensuring that no company or individual can gain an unfair advantage by paying a Member of Parliament to advocate on their behalf. That is a matter for the code of conduct of Members of this House and the rules of this House. The second is an issue of the service that MPs give to their constituents, and that is a matter for their electorate. Damage has been done to this House. We can start to repair that damage by accepting the report of the Committee on Standards, and I urge every Member of this House to support that motion.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Well, that worked out well, didn’t it? What an absolute and utter disaster. We have seen the Leader of the House standing there, with no apology, no contrition, and no ability to let it sink in just how bad things are. The last place that he wanted to be today was at the Dispatch Box doing exactly the opposite of what he did two weeks ago and saying everything that he did not say when he presented that motion. The Government were doing everything possible yesterday to get to 10 o’clock so that this debate would not be had, only to be holed by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) with the word “object”—best laid plans and all that. What we have is another day of this, another day of headlines, and another day of examining Tory sleaze.
What has happened in those 13 days since the Leader of the House was last at the Dispatch Box? We know that public trust in this Government is now at an all-time low. Their inboxes have been swamped by messages from furious constituents demanding to know what they are going to do about all of this. Day after day, we have been waking up to endless Tory sleaze stories in the national newspapers. Companies are now dispensing with the services of Tory MPs in these lucrative second jobs because of the stink that has been created by all of this, and the Tories have lost their lead in the opinion polls. Things could not actually be worse for them. They would face losing their seats if a general election were called tomorrow, and they have the Leader of the House to thank for their current sorry predicament.
This little plan to save their pal was hatched between the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip, and backed enthusiastically by the Prime Minister. The Leader of the House is supposed to be the clever one. It is he who has the Eton education and the millions in the Cayman Islands. This is all on him, and he is responsible for this mess. Let us remind ourselves of what he said 13 days ago. He was so passionate in his defence of his good friend Owen Paterson that he even invoked one of his favourite Latin phrases. “Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” he extolled in this House in an almost Atticus Finch-like defence of his good friend—his good friend unfairly maligned and maltreated by this House—who had just pocketed a cool half a million pounds and been found to have broken our rules in a consistent and egregious manner. Now the Leader of the House is here doing the exact opposite. If he had even any sense of dignity, if he had a smidgeon of self-respect, he would be long gone. People do not usually survive something like this. They do not survive a story lasting 13 days. He has defied the laws of political science and it is amazing that we find him at the Dispatch Box today.
Let us remind ourselves what we are actually doing today. We are rescinding a Committee that the Government whipped in order to achieve a kangaroo court Committee of corruption that had a Tory majority and a Tory Chair. They did not like the result of our existing Standards Committee, so not only did they set aside its finding, they actually decided to replace the Committee itself. They are so arrogant and have such a sense of entitlement that they thought they would get away with it, and they would have got away with it if it was not for those pesky constituents.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
The public have made very clear over the last two weeks their demands for high standards. To be consistent with the new, more respectable position of the Government, does the hon. Member agree that they must revisit and resile from clauses in the Elections Bill that would allow them, through strategic policy statements, to impose their will on the Electoral Commission and to block outcomes from it that they do not like? Does he also agree that proceeding with those aspects of the Elections Bill would make it clear that they have not learnt the lesson that messing with the independent oversight of politicians—in this case, over donations and spending—is really off limits?
Pete Wishart
I utterly agree. I would have thought that today might just be a watershed moment for the Government—that they would look at the whole package of measures that they have proposed to decrease the legitimacy of this House and electoral processes, and that they would then do the right thing on the back of that. But knowing them the way that I do, I doubt whether that will happen.
Mr Dhesi
The hon. Member is being gracious in giving way. I extend my sympathies to the Leader of the House for having been sent out to bat on this very sticky wicket. Does the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) agree that rather than the highly respected independent Commissioner for Standards resigning—as was mooted by Ministers when they felt invincible—it should be the Prime Minister who is considering his position, given that he forced his Conservative MPs to vote to protect his paid lobbyist friend, rather than doing what was right; and that, in doing so, the Prime Minister has egregiously eroded our democracy?
Pete Wishart
Absolutely. The hon. Member brings me to the malicious, malign and utterly disgraceful attempt to undermine and smear our Standards Commissioner. We heard the Business Secretary say last week that the commissioner should consider her position. She should not be considering her position. The Leader of the House should be considering his position, as should the Prime Minister. They needed to undermine the Standards Commissioner in order for their silly, stupid plan to work for them—and, of course, it has not worked at all. So what now? The Government have failed properly to apologise or recognise what they have to done, or to show any sort of contrition—
Pete Wishart
Or shame, as the hon. Member says. That failure means that this issue will not go away; it is going to go on. We are now in the 13th day, but I suspect that this is going to rumble through until just about Christmas. I am afraid that, until the Government get up and show the House and the country that they are truly sorry about what they have done, and will make every effort to ensure that this House is cleaned up, it is not going to get any better for the Leader of the House and his colleagues.
Even the most loyal of Conservative Back Benchers are actually talking about replacing the Prime Minister, ensuring that these out-of-touch Brexiteers who seem to be running the Conservative party get no place near making decisions like this again. There is a new generation of Conservatives. Some of them are actually quite good! I say to them: take control of this away from the Government. The Government cannot do it; they do not know what they are doing. They have got you into this mess, and it is up to you to clean them out and make sure that they are replaced—because, can I tell you something? They are not working in your interests and they are doing everything possible to ensure that you do not get elected. I believe that the days of faux buffoonery are coming to an end on the back of all this.
Let me turn to the position of the Leader of the House. I say to him—somebody who I respect very dearly—that his position is totally and utterly untenable. He cannot come to this House and say one thing passionately and with great concern, and take up nearly all the time to do so, and then come back nearly two weeks later and say the exact opposite. That just does not happen in politics. Even to think that he would get away with it is beyond reason, and certainly nothing like I have ever seen in my 20 years in this House. What he has done defies political gravity. He has opened a Pandora’s box of Tory sleaze; it was he who took the lid off and we can all see what is inside. They think this is all over, but it is not over yet; it has barely just begun.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The motion before the House should be viewed, as I have said in several debates over the last few days, from a fundamental perspective that affects all Members from all parts of the House. It is essential to review the workings of the fair trial system—the investigatory panel—created under the Labour Government in 2003 on the recommendation of the Committee on Standards itself, which consisted of six Labour members, two Liberal Democrats and only three Conservatives. This was to ensure fairness for MPs accused of misconduct in serious cases, as insisted upon by a series of high-level reports, which the House then accepted.
All those high-level reports—including the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in 1999, the Wicks report, and the 2003 Committee on Standards report, especially paragraphs 39 to 42, which set up the fair trial investigatory panel—made it clear that the fair trial requirements would only be applied in seriously contested cases, where the facts were in dispute in relation to alleged misconduct by a Member.
Appendix 2 of the third report shows that the particular case of the former Member for North Shropshire fell squarely within Standing Order No. 150(5). The Standing Order clearly states:
“The Commissioner may at any time in the course of investigating a complaint, and if so requested by the Committee on Standards shall”—
I repeat “shall”—
“appoint an Investigatory Panel to assist”
the Commissioner “in establishing the facts”.
This was not done. I am astonished by how few people seem either to have read or understood this point, but it lies at the heart of the issue. No one in this House or elsewhere could say that a person was guilty or innocent, unless that panel had been set up, completed its work and reported, and that was not done in this case. Not to request, and thereby to require, the setting up of such a panel in seriously contested cases seriously impairs the principles of natural justice specifically referred to in Standing Order No. 150, affecting MPs accused of serious misconduct.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend. Will he set out for the House perhaps just one example of a fact that is contested? Mr Paterson contested the interpretation of his behaviour, but I read the report in full and I did not find a single contested fact. Will he set one out for the House, please?
Sir William Cash
I will give my right hon. Friend one example: the question raised by Professor Elliott on the matter of public safety in relation to carcinogenic elements in ham or bacon. As I said in the previous debate on this matter, Professor Elliott recognised that in 35 years, he had never come across such a case. That is one example, but there are others.
Not to request the setting up of a panel also impairs the fundamental rules laid down by article 6—known as the fair trial provisions—of the European convention on human rights, drafted in accordance with British principles of justice in all civil and criminal cases. The failure to implement the requirement of the panel under Standing Order No. 150(5) impairs the report. The door to fairness is opened by the setting up of the panel, and for the sake of all Members of the House it was a mistake not to have done so in this case.
The failure to adhere to the clearly defined six principles of fairness for accused MPs as set out by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in 1999 and article 6 of the European convention—including the examination of witnesses and the cross-examination of other witnesses—has adverse consequences as a precedent for Parliament itself. Not a single citizen in the land, even terrorists and criminals, is denied a fair trial under these principles of natural justice, and has the right of appeal in every court and every disciplinary tribunal. The Member in question should have been afforded the procedures under the fair trial arrangements laid down by Standing Orders because we, as Members, are exceptionally excluded from judicial review by article 9 of the Bill of Rights.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who is a member of the Committee, argued convincingly that the Standing Orders must be reviewed to avoid conflicts of interest. The procedural reforms that will inevitably now have to be made need proper and full examination by the whole House, not only by the Committee on Standards, but it will be tragically too late for the former Member for North Shropshire when new reforms are properly introduced in the near future.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
They say that a week is a long time in politics, but, as others have pointed out, it has been almost two weeks and it is hard to believe it has taken this long for the Government to sort this out. Something deeply serious has now, frankly, become a farce. First, the Government whipped on the amendment, then they U-turned, then they refused to apologise, then they took a week to decide what to do to sort out what was their own creation, and last night that was toppled by one of their own Members.
It is obviously right that the motion be rescinded. I see a lot of agreement across this House on that— I think the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is in a minority of one—but that does not solve many of the issues that we have seen in the past two weeks. The Government have not yet properly explained why they chose to whip the first vote and whether they plan to intervene in House business again. I have already said, as have many colleagues, that standards proceedings belong to this House. The Government have authority through their majority, but they do not have the power to make changes to our rules. At the end of the day, members of the Government, like it or not, are Members of this House, equal to those of us who sit on the Back Benches in that regard.
The Government have not yet apologised or explained why they wanted rule changes. Vague regrets for conflating proceedings against an individual and the process more generally are not an apology. I know, as does any parent, that my children often regret doing something wrong when they get in trouble, but that is not the same as an apology for the action itself. As for why members of this Government want to make our standards processes less independent—well, without a full explanation, and with the media stories of wrongdoing over the past week, I think we can leave it to the public to draw their own conclusions.
The Government have not explained why Members with an interest in changes to the voting system, and indeed Mr Paterson himself, were able to vote in the first process. I would argue that this is not due process. That is why I have tabled an early-day motion asking the Government to bring forward a motion for consideration by this House to amend the Standing Orders to prevent it from happening in the future. I ask the Leader of the House whether he supports bringing in such a motion, and if he does not, to explain why.
We only maintain our authority in this House, and reject accusations of corruption, by upholding our democratic ideals. Rescinding the order from 3 November is a vital start, but we need more, and the public need more.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Rescinding a motion of the House when it has already been passed earlier in the Session—and particularly in this case when it was passed fewer than two weeks earlier—is a major constitutional decision for this House, and it is absolutely right that we should be having this debate today, rather than the motion going through on the nod yesterday. I am delighted that the hon. Members for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) have enjoyed participating in this debate, having resisted the opportunity last night to insist on there being such a debate. They would have been quite happy for this issue to be swept under the carpet, but I think it is important for this House’s democracy to debate it openly. That is why last night I used the power, as an individual Back Bencher, to ensure that we had this debate today, and I have no regrets about that whatsoever.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I recognise that my hon. Friend is keen to make sure that Parliament has time to have its say, but we have had almost four and a half hours of debate on this issue already. Our constituents deserve a focus on delivering the promises we made to them on things that matter to them, rather than our spending time here trying to deny things, which would have the same outcome no matter what. How much time does he want to give—10 hours, five hours, 15 hours? When will it be enough?
Sir Christopher Chope
Should I express shock or outrage at what my hon. Friend has said, because clearly, in the time to which she refers, she did not apply her mind to the principal issue, which is that the Government encouraged everybody—including her, probably—to vote for a motion on 3 November, the motion was passed by resolution of this House, and the rescinding or changing of that motion is a matter for this House, rather than for the Executive and the Government? What happened on 4 November was that the Government used their power to usurp this House and basically said to it, “What you decided yesterday is no longer valid and of good effect.” This motion is so important because we cannot pass motions and then rescind them without proper debate, and that is what I am trying to concentrate on today. The process is absolutely fundamental to the issue of natural justice.
When I intervened on the Leader of the House, I referred to three of the issues that he had talked about in his introductory remarks on 3 November. He expressed concerns that had been raised with him about the lack of examination of witnesses in this case—and there were 17 such witnesses available to be examined. He also said that he was concerned about the interpretation of the rules relating to whistleblowing, which have been reinterpreted retrospectively and much more narrowly than many people would think was justified on the basis of the actual wording of those rules. Then there was the issue of the penalty that was recommended, because the Committee decided that it was an aggravating factor for our then right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire to have raised with it in evidence the impact that the inquiry and the commissioner’s behaviour had had on himself and his family. That was—
Sir Christopher Chope
No, I am not going to give way. [Interruption.] No, I am not going to give way.
Mr Speaker
Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to give way, he will give way. I think his slight indication was that he does not wish to give way to Mr Harper. [Interruption.] Well, whether he is right or wrong is totally different to the rules of the House.
Sir Christopher Chope
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I understand that some people find this rather an issue of sensitivity.
I raised a related aspect of this with the Leader of the House because a previous report of the Committee on Standards had decided, where colleagues had disputed the decision of the Commissioner for Standards, that that was, in itself, an aggravating factor in their penalty. That is completely at odds with the principles of natural justice in our country. In our country you can defend yourself in a forum—a court of law or an inquiry—and that cannot be regarded as an aggravating factor. If you admit your guilt, that can be a mitigating factor, but to defend yourself against charges cannot be regarded as an aggravating factor. The former right hon. Member for North Shropshire referred in his evidence to the Committee to the impact of the inquiry upon himself and his family. I cannot see how that could have been, in itself, an aggravating factor when it came to sentence. The Leader of the House referred to that issue on 3 November and I think it struck a chord with many of us.
It is so important that natural justice should be allowed to take its course and be applied in our proceedings, and that we should not allow ourselves to be pushed into positions of almost being subject to mob rule and mob justice. That is why I welcome this debate and the opportunity to hear people’s views about the—
Sir Christopher Chope
No. My right hon. Friend has plenty of time in which to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, and make his own points in his own way. I know that he has a different view from that which I have about these proceedings. He is entitled to that view; each of us is entitled to our own views. What we should be doing in this democracy is actually enabling those views to be heard, and I am delighted that this debate is facilitating just that.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I normally have to say that thing—there are all these things we have to say—“It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope)”. I am actually going to defend his position, and critique what he has said. My first critique is that I found the tone in which he spoke to one of his colleagues to be slightly unacceptable as a woman in these proceedings. However, as a woman in these proceedings, I have had call to find some of his tone problematic in the past, so nothing new there.
I love to turn up to these debates and have it out once again, but where I am going to defend the hon. Gentleman is that he is standing in this Chamber defending a position and being barracked for that position—I can understand why; I get it: people want this to go away and I can see why people in this House would want that—when it was the Government’s position 13 days ago. So it is slightly unusual, notwithstanding the fact that he would not take an intervention from the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) while saying that he liked debate. To be fair, it would never have been his position. It is all well and good barracking him and saying we should not be talking about it, but this was the Government’s position just weeks ago, and I think that is important to remember.
I want to go over a couple of things. The idea of natural justice seems to be incredibly in the eye of the beholder. As somebody who has worked in the justice sector for nearly two decades now, I find it something that is never ever said about victims. Victims are never asking for natural justice, one notes. Natural justice is terminology that always gets pulled out when people do not like the result of something that has happened, I find.
I feel that what happened in this case absolutely was natural justice. The right hon. Gentleman—sorry, Owen Paterson—was entitled all the way through to defend his case. The Leader of the House spoke earlier about his mind being clouded by the tragedy that had occurred. I have some sympathy for that, except that is not a mitigation ever offered to any of my constituents in immigration tribunals or welfare tribunals. Dreadful things that have happened to them would never be taken into account. It is difficult when the Government’s policy is to mitigate against only some people and to cloud their minds against only some people.
In this case, all the way through the Member was entitled to defend himself, and defend himself he did, considerably better than lots of Members in this House who do not have £100,000 contracts would have been able to do. Let’s not even get started on access to justice outside this House—welcome to almost every family court in the land, where people are defending themselves—but he was able to access legal representation all the way through. That is undeniable, and it was not just legal access. Let’s face it, Owen Paterson will have had considerably better access to law, silks and fancier lawyers than most people in this House, so let us not pretend that he was completely and utterly blindsided by this process and that it was not handled fairly, because it absolutely was.
I have some sympathy with the argument about appeals, and I am more than happy to take part in any debate about how that appeal system might work. My personal view is that the system used by the sexual harassment process that we set up, with judges sitting over it, is one that I would not mind seeing in place, although I have to say that people should be wary: the judges are very robust, they are very detailed and they cross-examine the evidence. In those cases, I have never once seen it come down on the side of the Member. In fact, there are former Members of the House who are no longer sitting here because of what the appeal said. Unfortunately, following the appeal in one of the cases, the Member still sits in here, regardless of the loss of members of staff from this place—that is the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts).
I want to say a tiny thing for the public about transparency and how these things work. I feel a little bit for the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom). The way that these things work in this House usually is that the Government find a Back Bencher who has credibility and make her take a measure through—it is often a “her”—on behalf of the Executive, and that is what happened last time. She has been totally sold down the river and her credibility, which was good on these issues, has unfortunately been damaged by the Executive.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I had not intended to speak in this debate, but since I did not get the opportunity to intervene on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), I will make a couple of very brief points. First, I fear he read a different report from the one I read. I read it in detail, and the Committee absolutely gave Mr Paterson the opportunity to present the evidence of his witnesses. That evidence was examined by the Committee and was in the report. The Committee decided for itself that it did not need to interview the witnesses, but it put their evidence transparently in the report.
The bit I really wanted to challenge my hon. Friend on was the personal tragedy and the impact on Mr Paterson, for which we all have sympathy. It is absolutely not true that the Committee did not consider it; it absolutely did. It is clearly in the report, and it was considered not as an aggravating factor, but as a mitigating factor when the Committee dealt with the punishment. The Chairman of the Committee has set out clearly the precedent for paid advocacy and the punishments meted out to former Members of this House. It was fairly clear to me, from what he set out, that Mr Paterson got a significant degree of leniency in the proposed penalty because of the personal tragedy. The Committee rightly reflected that in its deliberations. It tempered its punishment with mercy, which is a proper thing to do. I think this House would have accepted that, had Mr Paterson not taken the decision of his own accord to leave the House. That is all I wanted to say to put the record straight. I had not intended to do so, and I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
I had not intended to speak in the debate, but I was prompted by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), because it became incredibly apparent to me and, I suspect, to Members from all parts of the House that had she been in charge, this chaos would never have happened. This chaos is the making entirely of one person: the Prime Minister. When the Leader of the House comes to the Dispatch Box and says, “The reason we made this mistake was because we had sympathy for Mr Paterson”, it is not credible, because what happened the very next day is that Cabinet Ministers were instructed by the Chief Whip or the Prime Minister to go out on the TV and defend it. It would never have happened under the previous Prime Minister. It need not be said, but it became apparent to me that both the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip were struggling to look at the right hon. Member for Maidenhead or my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire).
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is three weeks since the Standards Committee produced our report on the conduct of Owen Paterson. It detailed a catalogue of bad behaviour. The evidence was stark and compelling. He repeatedly engaged in paid lobbying. He peddled influence for his paying clients. He repeatedly used his parliamentary office to run a commercial enterprise. Every single MP I have spoken to who has read the report tells me he was guilty, yet here we are. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.
I confess I am still mystified why the Prime Minister decided to move heaven and earth to prevent Owen Paterson from being sanctioned. Today’s motion, however, is in precisely the words that I gave the Leader of the House last Monday, as I think he will confirm, and it is necessary, I am afraid, for two reasons. First, the motion carried on Wednesday 3 November set up an alternative standards Committee, to be chaired by the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I am told that the Prime Minister told Conservative Members at the time that this had been “squared off” with the Opposition. That was not true. Since not even the right hon. Member for Maldon wants to sit on the Committee, we probably ought to get rid of it.
Secondly, the motion of 3 November parked the question of whether Mr Paterson was guilty, which suggests that the House is uncertain what it thinks about paid lobbying. I hope that that is not the case, and I hope, if we have a unanimous decision this afternoon without a Division, that will prove to be the case. In effect, without this motion, both the Committee and the report are in limbo. I am not an expert on the theology of the Catholic Church, but I understand that the Catholic Church now believes that limbo does not exist, so we really ought to put these two issues beyond doubt.
I wish this could have been otherwise. Mr Paterson and his family must have been through hell over the past year since Rose Paterson took her own life. It is a matter of deep regret to me that the parliamentary shenanigans of the past three weeks can only have added to that misery. This House has done Mr Paterson and his family no favours. We should be ashamed of what has happened here.
Sadly, Mr Paterson’s was not the only catalogue of bad behaviour. As countless Conservative MPs have said to me—incidentally, I praise a lot of the new Conservative MPs, who have shown far greater insight over the past three weeks than some of their more long-standing colleagues—the way the Government and the Prime Minister have handled this matter has been shameful and has brought the House into disrepute. It was just wrong to delay the original motion, wrong to change the rules at the last minute of a disciplinary process for a named individual, wrong to whip Members on a standards report, wrong to call for the commissioner to resign, wrong to refuse to table this motion last week, wrong to try to get away with just taking this motion last night without debate—just plain wrong, wrong, wrong, and the Government know it.
I will respond to one point from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). The real aggravating point was not anything he has mentioned, but the fact that Mr Paterson endlessly and repeatedly said he would do the same again tomorrow. That was bound to keep on bringing the House into further disrepute, and of course we had to bear that in mind as an aggravating factor.
I hope it will be helpful if I say a few words about appeals. We on the Committee have been grappling with this for some time, and I expect we will be able to say more when we report formally to the House before Christmas. We are in the process of appointing a senior judicial figure to help us to think through all these issues, as I told the House last week.
It is wrong, however, to say, as several hon. Members have, that there is no appeal process now. There is. A Member can appeal the commissioner’s decision that there has been a breach of the rules. The Committee on Standards hears that appeal, with seven independent lay members and seven Members of this House. Unlike most appeal bodies, we are remarkably generous. We do not specify grounds for appeal; we effectively allow not just an appeal, but a general rehashing of all the arguments. We can also hear an appeal in writing and in person, unlike most courts, and often a Member chooses to do both, as Mr Paterson did. We honestly give every single Member a fair hearing. We do not always agree with the commissioner.
There are, however, some blurred lines here. We could tighten up the grounds for appeal, but I warn colleagues that that might not go down too well. We could constitute ourselves as two panels, as the independent expert panel does: one to hear the original decision and determine a sanction, another to hear an appeal. We could engage an outside figure to hear that final appeal, or we could ask the independent expert panel to do that. But that is not as simple as some might suggest. The corollary might be that the House would then have to take the sanction motion without debate or amendment, as it is required to do in sexual harassment cases.
I am, however, extremely reluctant to move from an inquisitorial system to an adversarial one, and I urge the House to oppose that. That would require everyone to be legally represented, which would benefit wealthy MPs over poorer MPs—unless legal aid is provided for MPs, when it is not now available in many other places. It would dramatically increase the cost of the proceedings and significantly extend the process. It would be disproportionate. It would not be any fairer to the Member or the complainant.
Some final points: The Daily Telegraph today reported a Government source as dismissing the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the adviser on the Ministerial Code as “bureaucrats” who should be ignored. I am glad that the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) has apologised for calling for the commissioner to resign, though I suspect he was not freelancing at the time, but leadership in this field means backing the independent system, not seeking to undermine it.
As sure as eggs is eggs, there will be more cases before the commissioner and the Committee in the next few months, and I hope nobody will seek to undermine either of them. I pay tribute to both Kathryn Stone, the commissioner, and all of her team, who have worked tirelessly over these few weeks, despite some extreme bullying. That same source in The Daily Telegraph also said:
“Backroom talks between the parties over an MP appeals process have already begun”.
That is, I am afraid, completely untrue. There have been no approaches to the Opposition parties, to me as Chair of the Committee on Standards or to the Committee itself. It is untrue, and I hope that briefing will stop.
I hear talk of all sorts of proposals for how we should change the system, and I urge hon. Members to calm down a little. The past three weeks have been shameful for this House. We need a return to due process. The Committee will produce a report very soon, certainly before Christmas and hopefully even before Advent. All we have to do at Advent is wait a little.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, notwithstanding the practice of this House relating to questions already decided in the same Session, this House:
(1) rescinds the resolution and order of 3 November 2021 relating to the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797) and the appointment of a new select committee;
(2) approves the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797); and
(3) notes that Mr Owen Paterson is no longer a Member of this House.
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 16th November 2021
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Finance Act 2022 View all Finance Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:02 - The House divided: - Ayes: 238 / Noes: 310 - Question accordingly negatived.
17:16 - The House divided: - Ayes: 314 / Noes: 233 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I inform the House that the Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
On Sunday, MPs across the House remembered all those who died in conflict. It is now 76 years on from the time we started to rebuild our country from the devastation of world war two. The bombs that rained down during that war caused enormous loss of life. They tore our cities apart. In London, air raids wrecked or razed to the ground some 116,000 buildings, and in Liverpool and Bristol tens of thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed.
While the war left a mark on the nation that lasts to this day, those dark years were followed by a period of reconstruction and renewal. In 1951, the iconic Royal Festival Hall opened in London as the centrepiece and legacy of the Festival of Britain. In the 1960s, Liverpool built its extraordinary Metropolitan Cathedral, while the iconic Severn bridge was constructed near Bristol.
Today, we are living in very different times, and we have thankfully not experienced such devastation here again, but we share some parallels with our wartime predecessors. As we emerge from the pandemic, our cities’ buildings may remain intact, but jobs, families and livelihoods have been at risk, and some have been damaged by the worst economic shock in 300 years. It is right, therefore, that we too now rebuild and turn our attention to creating a better future for this country and its people. Last month, the Chancellor started that work. His Budget set out our plans for the stronger economy that will allow Britain to succeed: an economy of stronger growth, stronger employment and stronger public finances, with higher wages, high skills and rising productivity. This Finance Bill will achieve that.
Before I turn to the Bill’s main measures, I will talk about its context. Our economic situation has improved since the last Finance Bill. We have moved away from emergency support to focusing on our recovery, which is now well under way. In fact, the economy is expected to bounce back to its pre-covid levels by the turn of the year—earlier than was expected in March—while our economic plan to safeguard jobs, livelihoods and businesses has worked. As a result, we can now invest in better public services, in jobs and skills, and in levelling up the country so that we open opportunity to everyone everywhere.
However, we should not forget that debt is still at its highest level as a percentage of GDP since the early 1960s and is set to pass £1.3 trillion. While this level of borrowing is still affordable, it leaves us vulnerable if another crisis hits, so we must continue to create a stronger economy that can withstand financial shocks. That is why the Chancellor announced a new charter for budget responsibility, with two fiscal rules that will keep us on the right track.
I want to focus on three aspects of the Budget in this Finance Bill: support for people, support for businesses and growth, and some underlying aspects of fairness. This is a Government who put people first, and this Bill’s measures complement the wider action we took in the Budget to support individuals and working families right around the country. We have reduced the universal credit taper rate and increased the national living wage so that work really does pay. We have continued our fuel duty freeze, helping to lower the cost of everyday life. We have announced that public sector workers will receive fair and affordable pay rises across the whole spending review period.
This Bill will improve people’s lives by backing the businesses that generate jobs and growth. In March, we extended the temporary £1 million level of annual investment allowance on plant and machinery assets. The allowance was due to revert to its previous level of £200,000, but as the Chancellor said:
“Now is not the time to remove tax breaks on investment”.—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 283.]
This Bill extends the £1 million level until the end of March 2023, encouraging firms to invest more and invest earlier.
While the changes to business rates that we announced in the Budget will encourage more firms to grow and invest, the Bill will also help the UK’s financial services industry became even more successful. In the March Budget, we said we would increase the corporation tax rate to 25% from 2023, for which we have now legislated. However, to make sure that our banks stay internationally competitive while still paying their fair share of tax, this Bill sets the bank surcharge rate at 3%. In addition, we are increasing the bank surcharge annual allowance from £25 million to £100 million, a move that will help smaller, challenger banks.
The Bill also supports another important industry—shipping. It does this by making our tonnage tax regime simpler and more competitive, and by rewarding companies that adopt the UK red ensign.
Finally, we should not forget that our cultural industries also contribute to our economic success. This Bill therefore extends the tax relief on museum and gallery exhibitions for another two years until the end of March 2024, and it doubles the tax relief for theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries until April 2023, to revert to the normal rate only in April 2024. This tax relief for culture is worth a quarter of a billion pounds.
Tax is of course central to our economic health and to funding the public services that make people’s lives better, but the way we collect tax must be fair and simple too, and the measures in this Bill will help us to achieve that. As Members will be aware, we are tackling the social care crisis with a new UK-wide 1.25% levy on national insurance contributions. This Bill will increase the tax rate on dividends by the same amount, so that those receiving this income will also contribute in line with employees and the self-employed.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell the House just exactly how much of that national insurance increase is going to go to social care?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Member will know that this has been set out. First, the money will go to the NHS, and then afterwards it will be going to social care. It is absolutely essential that we do that. £12 billion will be collected and will be going through to our social care services, as well as to the NHS.
Lucy Frazer
I will just carry on to my next point, which is that there will be an increase in the social care budget in the spending review period.
A fairer tax system also means tackling those who avoid paying their share. A new economic crime levy will help to fund measures that will prevent criminals from laundering money in the UK. It will apply to about 4,000 businesses and bring in £100 million. The Bill also contains tougher measures to prevent promoters from marketing tax avoidance schemes. In addition, it includes sanctions to tackle tobacco duty evasion, which costs the Exchequer an estimated £2.3 billion a year. The Bill also clamps down on electronic sales suppression, a form of tax evasion in which a business deliberately manipulates its electronic sales records to reduce its recorded turnover and corresponding tax liabilities.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I am pleased to hear about the Government’s commitment to taking on those who make money by promoting tax avoidance schemes. One such scheme that has been on the go for a long time is the loan charge. Can the Minister give us an update on progress towards bringing to account not the thousands of small-time self-employed people who have been caught, but the big players in that scandal? How many people have actually been surcharged or prosecuted for promoting loan charge schemes?
Lucy Frazer
I am grateful to the hon. Member for that question because I appreciate, since being in this role, that the loan charge is an issue that has affected many people across the country and that many MPs feel very strongly about. I have spent quite a considerable amount of time already talking about this issue not to only the chief executive officer of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but to officials. I have also had the opportunity to meet HMRC officials who are dealing with the vulnerable people who may be subject to the loan charge and to ask questions about how they are treating them.
The hon. Member makes a really good point, because the real perpetrators in relation to the loan charge are those who offer these schemes and getting people on low pay into them. An issue I have raised directly with HMRC is how we can further prosecute and bring these people to justice. Unfortunately, I understand that many of them are located offshore, but we will be doing everything we can to ensure that those who are responsible for promoting this are brought to justice.
This Bill deals with those who try to get out of paying tax, but it also creates a simpler and easier system. Its measures make capital gains tax easier to navigate, doubling the window for reporting and for paying CGT on residential property from 30 days to 60 days. This will give people longer to work out what they owe and make it less likely that they will make a mistake. For businesses, we are creating a simpler tax system through reforms to basis periods, leading to a simpler, fairer and more transparent set of rules for the allocation of trading income to tax years.
There is no doubt that the pandemic has cast a long shadow over this country and our finances, but just as our wartime predecessors rebuilt from the blitz, now is the time to open a new chapter in our national story—one of economic growth and renewal, and with it, transformed lives.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The Minister mentioned fairness a few times, and also the challenges facing the country. Why have her Government decided to give banks a reduction in the surcharge taxes they pay, which will cost the taxpayer £1 billion a year, when increasing numbers of our constituents are going hungry because of the failure to support them in the challenges they have faced over the last 18 months?
Lucy Frazer
I am grateful for the opportunity to answer that question, because the hon. Lady talked about a reduction in the amount banks are paying but that is not accurate: the banks will actually be paying a higher rate than previously. The hon. Lady might have noted that I referenced in my speech the fact that corporation tax was going up to 25%, and banks will be paying a higher rate than everybody else, who will be paying 25%; the banks will now be paying 28%, not the 27% they are currently paying. We are also ensuring that we have a competitive operating environment for these banks, because the banking sector not only contributes to the economy but employs 1 million people.[Official Report, 19 November 2021, Vol. 703, c. 5MC.]
The hon. Lady also said people were going hungry, but it is important to recognise what this Finance Bill and Budget do for those on the lowest pay. I have talked about the universal credit taper rate, bringing in an additional £1,000 for those in work who will benefit from it. We have also increased the national living wage, which will benefit people by an average of £1,000. There are a number of other measures, too, that benefit people who are not in work.
Rushanara Ali
But the reality is that there has been a UC cut, and the taper rate reduction, which is welcome, will help only a third of the 6 million affected. What about the 4 million others? This is not a fair Budget and it is wrong for this Government to treat the British people in this way given what they have faced in the pandemic over the last 18 months.
Lucy Frazer
The UC taper sends out a message that it is important to get into work and that work pays. We on the Government side of the House believe that the way to help people is to get them into work and into good jobs so they can support themselves, and we have a number of schemes to help those on UC to get into work. It is also important that when they are in work, they are paid well for it.
The hon. Lady also asked about those who are not in work, and I remind her of all the measures we have put in place for them, because not everybody can work. Before the Budget the Chancellor announced half a billion pounds for the most vulnerable—millions of vulnerable people will benefit from that. There are also more than 2 million people benefiting from the warm home discount and all the people who benefit from the council tax rebates we help them with. So it is right that we support the most vulnerable, but the UC credit taper is about making work pay.
We will invest in people, in businesses and in public services, just as we are doing with the 40 new hospitals, the 20,000 new police officers and the extra money we are providing to schools.
Clive Efford
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again; she is being very generous. It is important that we nail down the issue of where the national insurance increase is going. The Minister said earlier that it was going to the NHS and then it was going into social care, but it cannot be spent twice, so when will that money be switched, and what level of cuts will the NHS face then in order to shift that money into social care?
Lucy Frazer
I find it disappointing when people talk about cuts when actually there is significant investment—record amounts—going into the NHS. This Budget highlighted not just £5 billion for the diagnostic centres the Department of Health and Social Care will be operating around the country, but £9 billion for covid support, and the hon. Gentleman will know that £36 billion was put into the NHS before that—a significant sum. So it is dangerous when people talk inappropriately about cuts. There are not any cuts; this is investment going into the NHS.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
One concern many have about the national insurance increase is that there is an understanding about how much that will raise but no understanding whatsoever about how much will eventually make it through the NHS to social care in England. I am sorry to say that leads many of us to think the Government might not have much of a plan for how they are going to use it first in the NHS and then to benefit service users in the social care sector. Will the Minister have another go at helping those of us with that mindset to understand?
Lucy Frazer
The Government have been very clear that the money will first go to the NHS; there is a significant number of backlogs that we need to tackle and it is important that people can get to see their GP so therefore it is essential that that £13 billion is right now going to the NHS. But we have been clear about this: we are the first Government to tackle the issue of social care—the first Government to put it on the table and put in a plan to raise the money to tackle the social care issue.
As I said at the outset, a number of cities were devasted by the second world war, and I return to my analogy. In London, £65 million is going from the first round of the levelling-up fund to local infrastructure projects to improve everyday life; in Liverpool and the wider north-west, that figure stands at £232 million; separately, in Bristol and the west of England, we are providing £540 million over five years to transform local transport networks.
At the same time, we will never forget our responsibility to strengthen the public finances. The tax changes in this Bill will allow us to achieve all these things, and for those reasons I commend it to the House.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move the amendment in my name and those of hon. and right hon. Friends including the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves):
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Finance (No. 2) Bill because it does nothing to help people who are struggling with the rising costs of living, who are being hit by the cut to universal credit, or who are facing a rise in National Insurance Contributions and a freeze in the Income Tax Personal Allowance from next April, because it nonetheless cuts taxes for banking companies and derives from a Budget that will see the tax burden rise to its highest level in 70 years and announced cuts in air passenger duty for UK domestic flights, and because it fails to set out a plan to grow the UK’s economy, fundamentally reform business rates, and create better jobs for the future.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to set out the view of the Opposition on the Second Reading of the Bill, which comes at a time when people across the UK are seeing the cost of living, from electricity to food prices, going up and up; when businesses are trying to get back on their feet after 18 months of struggle; and when our country needs leadership to build a new net zero economy with jobs for the future. Yet let us look at what the Government are doing: putting up taxes on working people while cutting them for banks; giving up on fundamental reforms to business rates that would give our high streets the backing they need; and failing to invest in the new jobs of the future that would turn the challenge of net zero into an opportunity for our country’s economy to grow.
The truth is the Tories will never put working people first. I stood here two months ago arguing that the Government were wrong to hike up taxes on working people with their national insurance rise when those with the broadest shoulders should be paying more, and yet what we have before us today is a tax cut for banks. That tells us everything we need to know about the Tories when in power. They do not seem to care whether something is fair for people in this country, except of course when they think something is unfair to one of their own, and then they simply change the rules to suit themselves. The British people are seeing through the Government’s approach: people are seeing that this Government are more concerned with protecting themselves than with protecting the economy and people’s quality of life.
The foundation of any Government’s approach to the economy must be a plan for growth. With a growing economy, we have the chance to create new jobs with better wages and conditions in every part of the country, but without growth it gets ever harder to meet the challenges we face. Let us look at the record of this Government. As the shadow Chancellor my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West told the Chancellor right after the Budget, it is clear what direction we are going in under the Conservatives. In the first decade of this century, despite the financial crisis, Labour grew the economy by 2.3% a year. In the last decade to 2019, however, even before the pandemic, the Tories grew the economy at just 1.8% a year. In the future, things look even worse. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that by the end of this Parliament the UK economy will be growing by just 1.3% a year. This low growth is hitting people in their pockets: data from the Office for National Statistics show that average yearly wage growth has fallen from 1.6% in the decade to 2010 to 0.5% in the decade since 2010. We do not have much to look forward to, either, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying that over the next five years, real household disposable income is expected to grow by just 0.8% a year, well below the historical average.
Low growth is becoming a hallmark of the Tories in power. What they fail to realise is that with the right investment, the challenges we face can become opportunities for growth. In no part of our lives is that more evident than our response to climate change. Labour has said that we would invest an additional £28 billion every year for the rest of this decade in transforming our economy—from new jobs building batteries for electric vehicles, to manufacturing and maintaining wind turbines, and finally insulating our homes to get energy bills down. With investment on the scale we need, and with Labour’s pledge to buy, make and sell more in Britain, we would turn an urgent, critical response to the climate emergency into an opportunity for new jobs with decent pay and conditions in every part of our country.
In every part of our country, too, we see shops and high streets struggling to get back on their feet after the last 18 months. We should turn their urgent need for support into a chance to fundamentally overhaul the system of business rates, which has had its day. Business on high streets across the country know that the business rates system is broken and that fundamental change is long overdue. We know that, too, which is why we have pledged to scrap business rates and replace them with a new system of business taxation fit for the 21st century, which would incentivise investment, reward businesses moving into empty premises and encourage environmental improvements. Crucially, under our new system, no public services or local authorities would lose out, and online businesses would pay a fairer share.
We thought the Conservatives also knew that change on that scale was needed. We thought they might understand the need for an overhaul of the system, as their 2019 manifesto promised to reduce business rates through
“a fundamental review of the system.”
We thought they might even have meant it: in 2020, the Treasury began a consultation on what it said would be the fundamental review that its Ministers had promised. Yet in last month’s Budget, the Chancellor decided to ditch any prospect of fundamental reform under this Government.
Measures in the Budget for next year may be welcome, but no matter how the Chancellor tries to spin it, the promise of fundamental reform from this Government is over. As the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium put it, what the Government have offered
“falls far short of the truly fundamental reform that is needed and was promised”.
That manifesto promise of a fundamental reform of business rates has been broken, just as the promise not to raise national insurance was broken a month before.
We have a Government who are breaking their promises and failing to set out a plan to grow the UK’s economy and create better jobs for the future. Growing our economy would mean more jobs and higher tax revenues to invest in public services, but if the UK economy had grown at the same rate as other advanced economies over the last decade, we could have had £30 billion more to invest in public services without needing to raise taxes. Yet under the Tories, lower growth means that taxes need to go up. Last month’s Budget saw taxation rise to its highest level for 70 years.
Crucially, the decisions about who should shoulder the burden of tax rises tell us everything we need to know about the Tories when they are in power. The Tories are making life harder for half the population through their personal allowance freeze, for all working people through their national insurance tax rise, and for struggling families through their cut to universal credit, yet they are making life easier for bankers by cutting taxes on banking companies, and for frequent flyers by cutting air passenger duty on domestic flights. A banker flying between London and Leeds is getting a double tax cut, but someone working in the airport where that flight lands is getting a double tax rise.
Rushanara Ali
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is scandalous that the Government have only just agreed to restore schools expenditure to its 2010 level, despite a shortfall of £10 billion for catch-up notwithstanding requests from the former catch-up tsar? If we are serious about improving productivity in this country, we need to invest in our kids and in skills. Government expenditure falls far too short, and that will damage the future of our economy.
James Murray
As my hon. Friend rightly points out, investing in education is critical to the future of our country and the next generation. We heard the Minister say how uncomfortable she feels talking about cuts, but that is the reality of 11 years of Conservative government. No matter how they try to massage the announcements they are making now, the truth is that if we compare 2021 with 2010, we can see the impact that 11 years of the Tories has had on our public services.
At a time when working people are facing rising prices and flatlining wages, it shows the Tories’ true colours that they are prioritising a tax cut for bankers. To rub salt in the wound, as the IFS has pointed out, the cut in air passenger duty will flow through the UK emissions trading scheme and push up electricity prices at home. It was shocking to hear the Chancellor announce a cut in air passenger duty just days before COP26, and it is shocking that his tax cut for banks will cost the public finances £1 billion a year by the end of this Parliament.
That cut will see the corporation tax surcharge for banking companies slashed from 8% to 3%, with the allowance for the charge raised from £25 million to £100 million. It is worth reminding ourselves why that sector-specific tax was first introduced. As the policy paper published alongside the Budget—I am sure the Minister has read it—sets out clearly, the charge has been levied on banks to reflect
“the risks that they pose to the UK financial system and wider economy”
and to recognise
“the costs arising from the financial crisis.”
When the surcharge was introduced 10 years ago, in the wake of the financial crisis, the Government at the time seemed to recognise that banks had an implicit state guarantee due to their central position in the UK economy, and that that guarantee should be underpinned by greater tax contributions. Yet, as Tax Justice has pointed out, the Office for Budget Responsibility found in 2019 that £27 billion of Government expenditure on bailing out the banks was still outstanding. It seems that the Government are determined to push ahead with a cut to the surcharge, despite the fact that it will not even have fully repaid the public money spent on banks during the financial crisis, let alone provided any insurance against a future crash. We will question Ministers on that further in Committee.
We will also use that chance to press Ministers on other parts of the Bill, including those that introduce the residential property developer tax and measures relating to money laundering and tax avoidance. We support the principle behind the residential property developer tax, which will be levied on the largest developers in the residential property sector. It is right that those responsible for putting dangerous materials on buildings should pay towards the very significant costs of removing unsafe cladding, but it would be a mistake to assume that levying that tax alone will mean that the cladding scandal will in any way come to an end.
The tax is expected to raise £2 billion over 10 years, yet the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has estimated that addressing all fire safety defects in every high-rise or high-risk residential building could cost up to £15 billion. What is more, extreme pressures on labour and materials mean that the cost of fire safety works could rise significantly, all but wiping out the money raised from the new tax proposed in the Bill.
The bottom line is that leaseholders living in buildings with potential fire risks and facing huge remediation costs need to know how those costs will be met in full and that the necessary work will be done without delay. There are plenty of people involved in this scandal who should be paying to fix it, but leaseholders are absolutely not among them.
We also support the principle behind the economic crime levy to raise money from the anti-money laundering regulated sector to pay for measures in the economic crime plan to help tackle money laundering. As the director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies has said, a
“key challenge for the UK Government’s response to financial crime is a lack of investment in capabilities to respond to its policy ambition.”
We hope that the funding from the levy will go some way towards increasing the capacity in government to tackle economic crime, although we will press Ministers on whether it is enough.
Peter Grant
Does the shadow Minister agree that, as part of the drive to deal with money laundering, there is also a need for significantly greater transparency so that the people who buy up huge swathes of property in London, for example, are openly identified and any illegal money that has been laundered in that way is much harder to hide?
James Murray
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Alongside funding, of course, there are also changes to the law that would strengthen the UK’s ability to fight economic crime. Top of the list must be putting in place a public register of the beneficial owners of overseas entities that own UK property. Such a register would bring much needed transparency to the overseas ownership of UK property and help to stop the use of UK property for money laundering.
So, where is the register? In 2016, Prime Minister David Cameron first announced plans to make it a reality. In 2017, the “National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing” confirmed that property continued to be an attractive vehicle for criminal investment, particularly high-end money laundering. In 2018, a draft Bill to set up a register of overseas entities was published. In 2019, a Joint Committee of MPs and Lords published their pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and the Government published their response. In that response, published in July 2019, the Minister responsible, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), said:
“Knowing who ultimately owns and controls a company is an important part of the global fight against corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing.”
We agree. The Minister committed to
“turn this Bill into an Act, and to deliver an operational register in 2021.”
However, since that Government response was published in July 2019—and since, as it happens, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) became Prime Minister, at the end of that very month—the desire to see the register put into place seems to have lost its energy.
Ministers are legally required by the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 to report to Parliament annually on the progress that has been made toward putting such a register in place. In 2020, a ministerial statement was indeed published, but any commitment to the register being operational by 2021 had by then been dropped. This year’s ministerial statement, published on 2 November, barely mentioned the register, arguing:
“The overseas entities register is one of a number of proposed corporate transparency reforms”.
The statement focused mainly on other changes and, in fact, barely mentioned the register, ending with that dreaded phrase:
“The Government intends to introduce legislation to Parliament as soon as parliamentary time allows.”
It is astonishing that the Government feel that the need for the register is becoming less urgent. The Pandora papers confirmed how overseas shell companies secretly buy up luxury property in the UK, and how much transparency is needed to help to tackle money laundering.
What are we meant to conclude from the fact that the appointment of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) as Prime Minister in July 2019 coincided perfectly with a change in direction by the Conservatives away from a commitment to make transparent the ownership of overseas companies buying up UK property? What could possibly be the connection between overseas individuals investing in UK property through anonymous companies and the current occupant of 10 Downing Street? Why on earth would anyone in Government not want to introduce the transparency that their own colleagues have said in the past is crucial to tackling high-end money laundering?
I am sure that later in the consideration of the Bill, we will return to the matter of anti-money laundering. At later stages, we will also consider the effectiveness of measures in the Bill to tackle tax avoidance, as that is an important matter for us and the public. In the Opposition, we have long been pushing for the Government to do more to tackle tax avoidance, and while any action on that is welcome, including the measures in the Bill, we do not believe they go far enough. Crucially, as well as the regulations that are needed, the Government must invest in the resources that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs needs to tackle the problem effectively.
The Budget papers confirm that HMRC is set to receive a
“£0.9 billion cash increase over the Parliament”.
However, as TaxWatch has pointed out,
“the vast majority of this will not go towards tackling tax fraud, but rather to deal with the additional complexities surrounding the UK’s departure from the European Union.”
We know that effective investment in tackling tax avoidance can bring in much more than is spent, so it is crucial to make sure that that is not ignored by the Government. We will return to this important matter in later stages of the Bill. We will return to that point because the principle at the heart of our tax system must be that everyone plays by the rules and pays their fair share. That principle needs to be stated and supported, as under this Government, with this Budget and this Finance Bill, our country is moving further and further away from that ideal.
Labour’s vision of the economy is this: invest in good modern jobs with decent pay and conditions in every part of the country; support small businesses and high streets from being undercut by large multinationals who do not pay their fair share of tax; and buy, make and sell more in the UK to use every lever we have to support British industries to succeed. That is how we begin to rebuild and strengthen our economy after a decade of low growth, with no end in sight. That is how we make sure people have more money in their pockets for them and their families, and how we increase tax revenues to invest in public services.
But that is not what we are getting from this Government. The low growth they are responsible for means that taxes have had to go up. Faced with a choice of which taxes to raise, the Tories have shown the British people their true colours. Millions of families across the country are already being hit by the Tories’ decision to cut universal credit. From next April, working people across the country will pay more, as their income tax personal allowance is frozen and their national insurance contributions are hiked up. Yet from the April that follows, banks will see the tax they have paid since the financial crisis cut by £1 billion a year by the end of this Parliament. That is the choice the Tories have made: taxes on working people will go up, while taxes on banks will be cut. For people who are working hard but finding things tough, the Tories have nothing to offer except a tax rise.
Fairness is the one of most British values there is, yet it is one this Government just do not get. The Tories are spending all their time protecting themselves, when they should be looking out for the British people. Labour would grow the economy. We would invest in the future. We would make sure working people were never again the first to feel the brunt of tax rises that this Tory Government are forcing on their shoulders.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
In this place we often focus on things that can be measured. We talk about money and how it can change the quality of life of our constituents. All too often, however, we underestimate the value of the web of community ties that link us all together. After family, certainly in the communities I represent, it is the community bonds, the web of community ties linking us all together, that are so important in improving the quality of life of each and every one of us.
In Broadland, for example, the largely rural area I have the honour to represent—I know everyone here represents a different type of community—there are community ties such as the active village hall committee, the active church and other faith groups, and organisations such as gardening clubs and amateur dramatics societies. Very important among that list is also the local pub. Those organisations, taken together, are absolutely vital in bringing people together. It is how we create our support networks outside the house or flat in which we live. Covid presented really serious mental health challenges to societies and communities. In my communities, people supported each other, stepped up and got more involved. They got to know their neighbours and they came out of lockdown in a stronger place, not a weaker place.
I want to focus on those really meaningful ties that are not simply economic. I saw a very good example of that last Thursday night, when I was in the village of Rackheath. I had been to the community council meeting, which had finished—Members will be all too familiar with this—sometime after 9 o’clock. I had not had anything to eat, so I went into the Sole and Heel pub to see if I could be served a late supper. Unfortunately, the kitchen had closed at 9 o’clock—so, not a great example on that occasion—but what I noticed when I opened the door was that the pub was full. The pub was full of the local community, with neighbours talking to neighbours at the heart of their community, bringing people together. In Broadland, those kinds of pubs support 1,600 jobs and contribute £46 million to the local community.
It is in that context that I absolutely welcome the announcement in the Budget on draught relief. The proposal will reduce duty on draught beer by 5%. In cider terms, that would be the biggest reduction in duty since 1923. In terms of beer, I understand it is the biggest single reduction in duty for the past 50 years. What impact will that have? It will be a £100 million a year support per annum for our local pubs. For “local pubs”, I think we should read “our local communities”. That will go a long way towards helping to stop the really serious decline that we have seen over the past 20 years in the trade. Since 2000, there has been a 22% reduction in the number of pubs in this country. That is more than 14,000 establishments, and for that, I think of all the community interactions that no longer take place; of all the neighbours who are no longer being brought together in the convivial atmosphere of the village or town pub. That has resulted in real damage to the strength of our communities, and we are here to support our communities.
So without hesitation I welcome this Government’s support for communities in relation to pubs and to the other sectors that bring communities together, including museums and artistic establishments, which have already received some £850 million of support. That goes a long way towards supporting our communities and making them stronger for the future.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak on Second Reading of the second Finance Bill of the year. I welcome the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to her place, although I feel obliged to express my sadness that I will not spend the next few weeks in the company of the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who has just left the Chamber. I am sure that he will not miss my constant references to Scottish limited partnerships, but I put the new Minister on notice that I expect her to be the one to fix that issue once and for all.
We on the Scottish National party Benches will of course propose worthy amendments—that will get voted down and ignored—in trying to make the very best of this flawed Finance Bill process, as the UK’s horribly complex tax system obtains yet another layer. I call again for the Finance Bill Committee to be allowed to take evidence. It remains baffling to me that although all the other legislative Committees in this place take expert evidence, the one that will directly affect the lives of everyone and every business in the country does not. That must change.
If the Finance Bill Committee took evidence, perhaps the UK Government would make fewer mistakes. Parts of the Bill correct oversights and errors, such as clause 83 and schedule 11 concerning the plastic packaging tax, about which I raised concerns in the passage of the previous Finance Bill. That measure is due to come into force in April next year, but the explanatory notes state that the changes in this Bill are
“to ensure that the tax…meets”
previously “announced policy objectives” and “works as intended”—well, I hae ma doots. I note that there are also measures to deal finally with the issue of second-hand cars in Northern Ireland—another bit of Brexit red tape that was not written on the side of the bus.
There is no doubt that we are facing a cost-of-living crisis and this Finance Bill provided the biggest possible opportunity for the Government to improve the lives of people across the UK. Instead, however, we see in schedule 6 that the Chancellor has seized the opportunity not to redistribute wealth, but to cut taxes for his banker pals, paid for by slashing universal credit, increasing national insurance and scrapping the pensions triple lock.
Ministers are keen to try to claim that the minimum wage is, in some way, a living wage, but it is not. This week is Living Wage Week and the real living wage rate has risen from £9.50 to £9.90 and to £11.05 in the city of London from today, so the UK Government proposals do not even keep pace with the real living wage, based on the cost of living.
I am proud that I have lots of real living wage employers in my constituency, because they see the benefit to their employees of paying a fair wage—they retain staff better and those staff are happier in their work—and they are right across a full range of sectors. There are 2,400 living wage employers in Scotland, including, in my constituency, Bike for Good, Pure Spa, Thenue housing association and a club that has obtained legendary status in the past couple of weeks: Firewater, on Sauchiehall Street. All of them pay their staff a fair wage and do their bit. I encourage the Government to become a living wage employer with the real living wage, because it would help so many people if they took a lead on that, as the Scottish Government and local authorities in Scotland have done.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work on campaigning for a fair wage for all, regardless of age. Will she join me on calling on the Government to extend that pay equality to apprentices? We have seen that with such things as the business pledge in Scotland, but unfortunately, this Government continue to think that apprentices can be paid less than £4 an hour, which is absolutely shocking.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point that out. I do not know how the Government think that apprentices are supposed to live and pay their bills on the meagre wages set as their minimum wage. In fact, through the years of this Tory Government and since Labour brought in the minimum wage, the rate between the lowest-paid—those youngest workers entitled to the minimum wage—and those at the highest end of that age distribution has increased. That gap is growing wider and wider every single year, and it is a scandal, frankly, that people are being discriminated against solely on the basis of age. The Government should put that right.
It is a grim time for many people in this country and things are not optimistic for many businesses either. As the Minister mentioned, the March Budget gave notice on increasing corporation tax and extended the annual investment allowance until the end of March 2023. These measures, however, come in the context of a national insurance hike—a tax on jobs—that the Federation of Small Businesses estimates might have a 7% marginal rate for some. This should have been scrapped and the employment allowance increased, if the Chancellor was serious about helping business owners and employees.
Hospitality and tourism firms, having been hit the hardest during the pandemic, will not retain their 12.5% VAT rate beyond March. Many did not benefit at all from the reduced rate during the pandemic, because they were not able to trade, and to hike VAT back up to 20% just as the tourist season begins next year seems absolutely daft. The UK Government seem to be playing catch-up with Scotland. The Chancellor’s plan to cut hospitality and business rates next year is less than what they are offering now and far below the 100% relief that the Scottish Government are already offering to those businesses this financial year. That is in addition to the hugely successful small business bonus scheme, which takes many businesses out of business rates altogether.
The tax reliefs in clauses 16 to 22 for businesses in the culture and arts sector that have struggled so much in the past year are welcome, but keeping the VAT reduction could provide an incentive to get people back through the doors of our galleries, theatres, music venues and funfairs.
My SNP colleagues and I have long argued in this House that more should be done to tackle economic crime and I was interested to see some measures in the Finance Bill that deal with this area of policy. Part 3 provides a framework for the Government to issue a new tax to tackle economic crime. This UK Tory Government have failed time and again to tackle tax avoidance and economic crimes—that is not a matter entirely of inadequate legislation or resources, but of woefully poor enforcement.
Under the plans set out in the Bill, all undertakings that fall under money-laundering regulations and have a revenue of over £10.2 million will be subject to the new economic crime levy. Although I support the broad principles, I have some concerns about how this will work in practice, because placing more of a burden on businesses might not exactly have the desired effect. The Law Society of England and Wales has stated its opposition to the levy, stating that it is “an additional tax” on anti-money laundering regulators and against the “polluter pays” principle. The Association of British Insurers has concerns that insurance firms, a very low risk area for money laundering, may be disproportionately hit by the measure, which could result in reducing access to insurance for vulnerable consumers. This is another area where more evidence needs to be taken to be sure that the intended effect of the Government’s measures is actually what transpires.
The Treasury Committee, which I am proud to sit on, has taken a lot of evidence in our inquiry on financial crime and it would be wise of the Government to take heed of that before progressing further with this measure. It would also be useful to know the Government’s full timetable and resourcing plan for Companies House reform. By tightening up company registration, giving Companies House AML responsibilities—as they should have—increasing the comically low fee for company registration and actually enforcing their own laws, the Government could bring in much more money and lose less of it through the complex schemes that Companies House currently facilitates.
When I asked the small business Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—in a written parliamentary question recently how much money has been raised by fines on Scottish limited partnerships that have not registered a person of significant control in the past three years, I received a response that stated that one fine had been levied in 2020-21. One fine—is that it? The last time I asked, in March last year, 948 SLPs had not filed PSC information by 31 January 2020. That figure was 2,019 in January 2019 and 7,078 in January 2018. Ministers may claim that this looks like an improving picture, but what is more likely to be happening is that people are moving those business around to similar structures in Ireland or into other vehicles such as trusts. To be clear, Companies House rules state:
“Anyone who does not respond to…notices within one calendar month, or gives false information, commits a criminal offence. They could receive a 2 year prison sentence, a fine or both.”
As far as I can establish, none of the firms that fell foul of the law was fined, apart from one, and no one got the jail. I ask again: how much money are the UK Government forgoing by not enforcing their own rules? What is the damage to our reputation, and to Scotland’s reputation, from being associated with money laundering and criminality that this UK Tory Government are failing to prevent?
The SNP is calling for a root-and-branch review of the tax system, which is much too complex and has too many places to hide and move things around. The UK Government have not confirmed whether any of the money raised by their proposed tax will be used to tackle tax avoidance. I would welcome some clarity on that point today.
Part 5 contains provisions to tackle tax avoidance, which is an issue that I have raised again and again, so I am pleased to see that some limited steps are being taken. The Bill will give HMRC powers to publish information on individuals who promote tax avoidance schemes. We support that approach in principle, but I note the concerns that the Chartered Institute of Taxation has raised about the drafting. HMRC says that it is targeting “the most egregious promoters” who flout the rules, but CIOT is concerned that the definitions of “promoter”, “relevant proposal”, “relevant arrangements” and “connected person” set a low bar.
The Bill’s wording also extends considerable latitude to HMRC officers: an authorised officer need only “suspect” that a scheme falls within the definition for people to be publicly named and shamed. I have constituents who have been named and shamed under minimum wage regulations and who have found it very difficult to challenge that and recover their reputation.
CIOT is also concerned that in future HMRC could use the measure more widely than is being proposed. I appreciate that the Bill makes provision for HMRC to retract and amend published information that has been shown to be incorrect, but it would be much better if we could have some assurances that it will get it right the first time, and some assurances about how the scheme will be resourced.
Lastly, I want to speak about an issue that has been literally close to home in the past few weeks. The eyes of the world have been on my constituency in Glasgow Central as it hosted the COP26 summit on climate change. The summit was an opportunity for the Government to show global leadership and grasp the opportunities that a green economy can provide, but the reality is that the only thing green about the Bill is the paper it is printed on. The Government’s ambivalence towards a just transition is writ right through it.
We need a comprehensive plan that understands the impact of our taxation choices on our emissions—a green OBR, perhaps, to hold this Government to account. The Government have given the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England responsibilities in that area, but are taking none themselves in the Bill. Nowhere is that clearer than in the cut to domestic air passenger duty, which the Red Book says will lose the Government £30 million to £35 million a year in revenue. People do not have many options when they fly long-haul—despite what the Proclaimers say, few people would walk 500 miles and walk 500 more—but within these islands they do have the choice between getting on a plane and getting on a train. It is already much, much cheaper to fly in many circumstances. Cutting APD while allowing train fares to rise again and again is absolutely no way to incentivise people to take more climate-friendly options.
The Bill makes provision for global shipping companies to receive tax breaks for flying the red ensign. Tonnage tax is a complicated scheme that allows companies to disregard profits for tax purposes, creating a very low-tax environment. Would it not have been better to link tax breaks to emissions rather than to waving the British flag, to incentivise the green technologies required to transform shipping, and to take a lead on the issue?
Scotland is delivering action to secure a net zero and climate-resilient future in a way that is fair and just for everyone. We are committed to a just transition to net zero by 2045, with an ambitious interim target of a 75% reduction by 2030. The Bill’s purpose allegedly covers delivery on the commitments made in the 2020 White Paper on energy and the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan, contributing to the Government meeting their legally binding obligations to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but in reality there is very little in it to help Scotland to achieve our climate change goals. Indeed, in many ways it holds us back.
There is no reversal of the decision to scrap investment in a carbon capture and storage facility in the north-east of Scotland; it looks as if that investment will instead go to Tory marginals in the red wall. That is the worst type of pork barrel politics. The Acorn project at St Fergus would have been a world-leading example of a just transition project, but once again the people of Scotland have been let down by the Tories at Westminster. Neither is there any commitment to help to develop emerging wave technologies, which might well move abroad without the correct support, and there are no measures in the Bill to reform the transmission charging scheme, which costs wind farms in Scotland to plug into the grid while it pays companies in the south-east of England to connect. When I asked the Chancellor about that recently, I got blank looks and blah blah blah in return.
The Bill makes clear once again the UK Government’s lack of interest in Scotland’s commitment to tackling climate change. Schedule 14 makes provision to change VAT rates for freeports; it is disappointing to see no commitment to the fair work conditions and net zero ambitions put forward by the Scottish Government for a green port scheme. Scottish Ministers have engaged in good faith to try to improve a UK Government policy while further progressing our climate change goals: the Scottish Government wanted to take the freeport policy and augment it to work in the best interests of workers and the environment. Who could argue with that, other than Government Members? The Scottish Government have been ignored and sidelined by this UK Government. It is just not good enough.
This UK Tory Government cannot be trusted to act in the interests of Scotland. I look forward to the day when there is a Government who can and will act in those interests, using the levers of taxation powers to benefit our people, make our businesses grow and protect our environment for the future. Only independence can give Scotland that Government.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The Bill and the Budget that it follows do little to respond to the scale of the challenges facing our country, many of which have been brought into sharp focus by how the coronavirus pandemic has hit our society, not to mention the long-term hit on our gross domestic product because of Brexit—a 4% hit to the economy, on top of a 2% hit from the pandemic, as forecast by the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility.
Nor does the Bill respond to the climate emergency, as hon. Members have pointed out. Despite the fact that the UK has just hosted the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the Government have no plan for growth. Growth would put more money in people’s pockets and increase tax revenues, but what we are seeing is a low-growth, high-taxes approach, meaning a greater burden on working people because of the Budget.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Does she agree that the lack of stimulus from the Government contrasts with what is happening in the US? The Government seem to be making the same mistakes as after the financial crash in 2008-09.
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The US has already returned to pre-pandemic levels of growth, as have a number of European countries, whereas the UK is still playing catch-up. We need to learn lessons from what happened after the global financial crisis so that we can get growth back up to the level that we need.
The UK faces the additional challenge of making up for the long-term hit on our economy as a result of the trade that we are losing because of our exit from the European Union. Given that we have exited the European Union, we need to know how the Government will make up for the 4% hit on our GDP in the long term, alongside the 2% hit that I mentioned.
Under this Government, taxes will reach their highest level since the Clement Attlee Government in the post-war era. Clement Attlee had a lot to show for the increase: the national health service, our education system and the welfare state, much of which we have benefited from for generations and continue to benefit from. This Government have poor living standards, a poor economic outlook and weak economic growth to show for their tax rises. While the pockets of working people are being hit, this Bill, shockingly, allows a tax cut for banks. It cuts the surcharge on their profits from 2023, which, as I mentioned earlier, will cost taxpayers £1 billion a year. Nowhere is it clearer where this Government’s priorities lie, and where they think the tax burden should lie: the Bill gives a tax rise to workers and tax cuts to the banks.
The Government have wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money by brazenly giving out PPE contracts to a number of people who are linked to the Conservative party. As the National Audit Office has pointed out, a significant amount of money has been wasted and a “high-priority” channel was provided for Government contracts linked to people in Government and they were 10 times more likely to be successful. Some estimates suggest that nearly £2 billion of contracts went to people with links to the Conservative party.
According to the Public Accounts Committee, the test and trace scheme, which cost billions of pounds, has not shown a benefit commensurate with the amount of money spent. If the Government had spent that money wisely, many billions would not have been wasted on crony contracts, and some of the money could have been spent on dealing with the loss of income that many have experienced and the poverty and inequality that people are facing in our country.
This Bill does nothing to improve our country’s bleak economic outlook. As the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed, the UK is suffering the slowest recovery in any major advanced economy. GDP in the UK at the end of this year is further below the 2019 level than it is in any other G7 country, and any future economic growth in the medium term is likely to be anaemic: the OBR forecasts an average growth rate of just 1.5% a year between 2024 and 2026. Meanwhile, our long-term growth rate fares little better. Brexit is forecast to reduce the UK’s GDP by a staggering 4%, and the OBR has drawn attention to a 2% hit as a result of the pandemic. If the Conservative Government had grown our economy at the same rate as other countries with advanced economies since 2010, the economy would have been £100 billion larger by 2019, leaving over £30 billion more to spend on public services without the need to raise taxes.
Given poor growth and high taxes, it is no wonder that the outlook for living standards is so dire. The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the outlook for living standards as “actually awful”, with the country facing
“five more years of stagnant living standards at best”—
and that is in the context of a decade of stagnant wages. How are people meant to cope with all that has happened over the last decade as well as the impact of the pandemic and the increase in fuel prices and the cost of food caused by disruptions in supply chains?
In-work poverty has reached record levels under the Conservative Government. There are now 2 million more people from working households living in poverty than there were in 2010. Of the 6 million families who were hit by the £20-a-week cut in universal credit, fewer than a third will benefit from the changes in the universal credit taper rate. While those changes are welcome, 4 million other people will not be given the help that they need. As the Minister herself admitted, many of those people have caring responsibilities or serious disabilities, and are not in a position to return to work. Their incomes will fall dramatically: they will lose £1,000 a year, and that will force more of them into severe poverty.
In my constituency the child poverty rate has increased over the years, and now stands at 60%. Nearly 20,000 households, which include 11,000 children, have been hit further by the universal credit cut. According to the Independent Food Aid Network, there has already been a 66% increase in demand at food banks across the country since the cut, after only a few weeks. As we approach Christmas, the food bank queues are growing longer and longer in constituencies such as mine, and food banks are struggling desperately to cope with the spike in demand. That is only set to become worse. It seems that the Government have learnt nothing from the lessons taught by campaigners such as Marcus Rashford; in fact, they have made matters worse for people who desperately need support.
The Government have also failed to deliver on their net zero promises. There has been plenty of rhetoric and little substance, and, indeed, a cut in domestic air passenger duty was announced in the run-up to COP26. We have a Government who are treating the climate emergency as an afterthought rather than something that is central to what we do in the future. We need a green jobs and a green investment revolution, and, as has already been said, we need a focus on a just transition. The Government do not seem to have the commitment or the ambition to deal with a climate emergency.
The Bill lands tax rises on working people while giving tax cuts to banks, and this feels like groundhog day because a decade ago, when the Government first came to power, their instincts were very similar. There were tax breaks for bankers and austerity for the rest of the country, and that has continued: the Government have reverted to their worst instincts. There is evidently no plan for economic growth, and we are facing a terrible future with low growth and high taxes. What we need is a Government who will stimulate growth, invest in improving people’s living standards, and ensure that there is more fairness in the distribution of income and opportunity across our country.
If the Government were serious about growth and improving our productivity, which has been poor for a very long time on their watch, they would invest significant sums in school catch-up, so that our economy can benefit from the investment in skills in creating an economic future that addresses the challenges we face now. We have a long way to go to catch up with other countries because of the twin hit on our economy from the pandemic and the long-term impact of leaving the EU. That is why we needed this Government to be creative and innovative in their policy announcements, and bold in terms of investment in our businesses, small, medium and large. They need to do that on a greater scale than we have seen if we are to recover from what has happened in recent years in our country.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
It is my great pleasure to contribute to this debate. Today, 16 November, we mark the feast of St Margaret Atheling, Queen of Scots, one of our two national patron saints and, like the rest of us, an adopted Fifer. For those not familiar with it, I recommend a read through her life story, because a surprising amount of it has lessons that are as relevant today as they were nearly 1,000 years ago, when she was alive. For example, Margaret was revered for her generosity to the poor. She is said to have regularly gone into the streets dressed in poor clothing and given food to the hungry and money to the poor. She clearly believed that earthly power has no legitimacy unless it is used in the interests of others. We might want to bear that in mind in the decisions we take later today, and indeed every day, in this place.
I wish to look at some aspects of the Finance Bill, and at who it benefits and who it damages. I go back to the question I raised with the Minister earlier about prosecutions and penalties against promoters of the loan charge. I was disappointed that the Minister did not answer the question as to how many such penalties had been applied. I would have thought that, if it was that important to the Government, they would have made sure that their officials put that information into the briefing for today. I have no issue with people who deliberately went into loan charge agreements knowing that they were wrong and that they were doing that only to dodge their rightful tax liabilities going through the full legal process. However, a lot of people who signed up to the loan charge did so because they did not understand it or because they were assured by paid tax advisers that it was all okay, and a lot of them did it because they would have lost their jobs if they had not. They get hounded to the ends of the earth—some of them literally get hounded to death—yet very few of the people who made millions out of these schemes have ever been brought to justice. The victims in my constituency have serious doubts as to whether any of the real villains of the piece will ever be brought to justice or indeed whether this Government have any intention of doing that.
When we look at the impact of this Finance Bill, and of the Budget statement it is based on, we must not let ourselves be hoodwinked by the massive impact of other announcements that have been flipped through by the Government in other ways over the past six months or so to try to make it look as though their Budget was not quite as savage as it was. We must recall the £1,000 a year cut in universal credit; the ending of the pensions triple lock, leaving our pensioners more at the mercy of rampant inflation than they were before; and the national insurance hike, which has been trumpeted as the saviour of the health and social care sector, whereas the reality is that, for several years at least, very little of it indeed will go into improving the availability of social care in England. It might be there in three or four years, but this is not a crisis that is going to be there in three or four years—it is a crisis that has been there and has been ignored for far too long.
Of course, sometimes when the Government want to increase taxes, they like to find sneaky ways to increase taxes on low-paid workers in a way that does not make it obvious what they are doing. All they have to do to achieve that is to do nothing. There is nothing in this year’s Finance Bill about the thresholds for the different rates of income tax. There is nothing in it about the level of income at which someone first becomes liable to pay income tax, because they have left it exactly as it was last year in cash terms. With people likely to face inflation of 4%, people on low incomes will either take a real-terms cut in wage of 4%, or if they get enough of an increase to match inflation the Chancellor will say, “Thank you very much. I’ll have a bigger cut of it for myself than I had before.” People on low earnings who are already struggling need an increase of 4% to stand still and to continue to struggle.
The 1.25% increase in the national insurance charge might not seem to be that much; 10p or 50p an hour below the proper living wage might not seem to be that much, but it soon adds up. Take, for example, someone working 40 hours a week on the Government’s new minimum wage of £9.50 an hour, and paying income tax and national insurance according to the rates and thresholds set out in the Bill. Those are exactly the people the Government say the Budget is designed to help. They are exactly the people for whom work is supposed to pay. Now, take the same person but this time getting the real living wage of £9.90 an hour, let their personal allowances and national insurance thresholds keep pace with inflation, and scrap the national insurance increase, leaving it at 12%, instead of 13.25%. The difference in their take-home pay is £800 a year. That does not seem much to those of us lucky enough to be on an MP’s salary, but for those who are just about managing to get through to the end of the week, another £800 a year in their pocket—or £800 taken out of their pocket by the Budget—makes a significant difference. The impact of this year’s Tory cuts alone—they are cuts, no matter what the Minister might say—is that those people are suffering a pay cut of almost 5% in real terms.
We have not even started to look at the more fundamental issues referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and why we need a complete rehash of the entire tax system. Why should somebody who, by an agreed definition, is earning only enough to live on pay income-based taxes at all? Why do we not set tax and national insurance thresholds to match the proper living wage so that the tax authorities have no claim whatsoever on the wages of those earning only just enough to keep them and their family alive?
The Government may well say that times are difficult, that tough choices must be made and that we cannot afford to inflation-proof tax allowances this year, but the tax allowances of some have been inflation-proofed and more—not individuals but businesses that are, for example, lucky enough to be able to afford to buy a casino. In clause 80, on page 63, we see changes to the thresholds for the various rates of gaming duty: the tax that casino operators pay in what is termed the gross gaming yield, which is the difference between the stakes that people pay in and the winnings they take out. It is in effect an income tax on casinos and similar places. Lo and behold, the tax thresholds for casinos are going up by 5.4%, which is higher than the rate of inflation that the Chancellor expects to see. That is on top of their inflation-busting increase last year. They have had an increase of 8.7% over just two years.
To put that into context, a casino with a gross gaming yield of £10 million a year will pay £100,000 less in tax next year than it would have last year, while the poor souls working their tails off in the casino kitchen keeping the clients fed and watered will be paying higher taxes. How can it be right that a casino owner pays £100,000 less in tax while the people whom they employ on low pay in their kitchens and catering departments have to pay increased tax? That is not a necessity; it is a deliberate political choice, and it is the wrong choice.
If only other businesses had as much to celebrate as the casino industry clearly does. Hospitality businesses are—quite rightly—being told to adapt their business models so that all their workers get paid a fair living wage. I have had some quite difficult conversations with hospitality businesses in my constituency that are not happy at that. But why on earth do the Government think it is also the right time to tell them that they must pay more tax on every single job that they create? Why on earth is it right to tell them that the rate of VAT that they will pay next year will be 60% higher than this year? It is ridiculous.
I am not saying that we should not take difficult decisions. The UK’s finances, like those of many western democracies, are in a seriously difficult place. The Minister said that levels of debt and borrowing are affordable. They are—just about—but they certainly are not sustainable. We must turn that around quickly. Difficult decisions need to be taken, but the problem is that, far too often, the Government are happy to take decisions that are difficult for other people but not at all difficult for their friends, chums and millionaire donors. The economic impact of the covid pandemic has almost certainly been made much worse because of their total lack of planning on the economic impact of the action needed. That means nearly all the Government’s support schemes had to be thrown together at almost no notice, which inevitably means they did not achieve what they were supposed to achieve. Very few of them achieved optimal results from day one. Too many people, several million of them, were excluded from support altogether, and almost all the schemes that were implemented turned out to carry levels of fraud risk that were far higher than they needed to be. Billions of pounds of public money has been lost to fraud that would have been avoided if the Government had prepared better in advance.
The economic damage of the pandemic could have been lessened, although we accept it almost certainly could not have been avoided completely, but the economic damage of Brexit could have been avoided completely if, in 2016, people had been told the truth of what it would involve. Let us not forget that the Government’s analysis is that the self-inflicted damage of Brexit is likely to be twice as bad as the economic damage of the covid pandemic.
To a much larger degree than the Government will admit, the tax rises on the poor contained in this Finance Bill are the price of a Brexit that, let us not forget, was rejected by almost two in three voters and every single local authority area in Scotland. If that is the price for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom, it is a price I do not believe the people of Scotland are willing to pay any longer.
Interestingly, a standard form of wording that I do not see in this Bill is, “Extent. This Bill shall apply to Scotland.” I do not expect it to be too much longer before those words are no longer part of any legislation passed by this House.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
You surprise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I am usually last.
I came to this debate solely to make a proposal on local government, but because the House is not packed I will respond to some of the previous comments. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) on his comprehensive analysis of the Government’s Budget, which revealed its lack of substance as much as anything. The purpose of having a Finance Bill after a Budget, and especially after a spending review, is that it is meant to embody the Government’s strategy and political analysis in line with their appraisal of the economy and the political situation.
It is difficult to discern from this Bill any form of overall Government strategy, and it is difficult to understand how the Bill relates to the many real-world issues we currently face—that is what is so surprising. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) made the critical point that, having come back from COP, we might have expected the Government to be fired up to mobilise the whole economy with the purpose of ensuring we tackle the existential threat of climate change, but there is very little in the Bill that relates to any of that major threat.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) explained the situation of many of our constituents who face deprivation, challenges, insecurity of income and issues with the delivery of public services. Not only is there nothing in this Finance Bill that will tackle those problems, but the reverse is true: benefits are being cut and austerity continues. That is quite remarkable.
On a side point, my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) always says when we have a Finance Bill before us that the Government, yet again, have not tabled an “amendment of the law” resolution. That is an arcane parliamentary point, but it is important because it limits our scrutiny of the Finance Bill.
If I were trying to identify the Government’s strategy on the basis of the Prime Minister’s words, the high-skilled, high-wage economy is meant to be based on high levels of investment. The Chancellor has referred to the ending of austerity on numerous occasion, and the Prime Minister has made reference to the importance of tackling climate change. I see none of that in the Bill.
I caution the Government. Let me put it in this context: we have had two weeks of report after report of corruption, in effect, on top of month after month of public amazement and now, increasingly, shock about what happened with the distribution of covid contracts. Confidence in not just the Prime Minister but the Government is now at an all-time low. At the weekend, I saw in one article that unless things change, the Prime Minister will be out by the summer—and that was Tory MPs speaking, not us. Lots of evidence now abounds that the Foreign Secretary’s and the Chancellor’s leadership election campaigns are up and running and that the structure is being put in place for that challenge, when it comes, but it is more serious than just the future of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). There is currently a loss of confidence not just in the Government but in governance overall, and more so this week: from what I heard on the news this morning, there are going to be announcements about transport investment this week that renege on the commitments to the funding of rail in the north, particularly in respect of the extension of High Speed 2. In that political context, the Bill takes on a greater significance than usual.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I wonder whether I can encourage my right hon. Friend to discuss the fact that the levelling-up agenda is nothing—it is absolutely meaningless. It does not tackle the issues that have led to the high and unequal covid death toll in areas in the north-east and north-west in particular, and it certainly does not cover the disparities in infrastructure investment, such as in transport, which my right hon. Friend mentioned. Would he like to say more about that?
John McDonnell
I raised in my Budget speech the lack of confidence in the Government’s commitment to levelling up overall and even to defining what it means, and I mentioned the importance of the need for a bit of levelling back because of the scale of the cuts that have been endured over the past 11 years.
I make the general point that there is currently a level of insecurity and uncertainty, and a questioning of politics overall and of whether the people can trust any politician. I thought that with a Budget and a comprehensive spending review the Government would at least be able to set out their plans and bring forward the measures in the Finance Bill so that we would at least know where they are going, which might give us some security or confidence that the Government at least have some sense of direction. I do not think it is there—it is certainly not in the Bill. We can take some humour from this situation. The Chancellor certainly led with his chin in respect of the proposals to cut the bankers’ levy and the tax on flights and champagne. No one could blame the shadow Front-Bench team coming forward and taking the rise out of what was quite obviously a bankers’ Budget.
Let me comment on a number of the key issues that have been raised in the debate so far. If the Budget was about the end of austerity, high skills, high wages and so on, the Bill flies in the face of all that. The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) talked about how people have been treated in respect of other announcements; how can the Government argue that the Bill is about high wages when they are freezing tax bands, introducing national insurance increases and cutting universal credit? All those things hit earners.
Something fundamental at the heart of this Bill—it was at the heart of the Budget, too—is the Government’s refusal to take on the imbalance between the taxation of wealth and the taxation of earnings. We have seen it in the Government’s setting out of proposals some time ago on reforming capital gains tax but their failure, yet again, to do it in this legislation. Given that the argument over the need to ensure that we tax on capital and wealth as well as on levels of earnings has been won, the proposal that I thought would be in this Bill was to ensure that taxation on earnings and on capital gains were brought into line. The amount that that would bring in to the Government was initially recalculated at £14 billion, but I see that the TUC’s figure is £17 billion. That could have resolved the issues in social care. That would have ended austerity for large numbers of our population.
The Government argue that, in the Bill, they are doing something about the taxation of earnings from dividends, but it is negligible in comparison with what is needed and it sends out a similar message that they are willing to penalise earners, but, at the same time, allow others who earn their money from wealth to walk away.
The reason that the bank levy offends is not just that it is going back to the days of the crash and the scurrilous role that the banks played in enabling that to happen—the profiteering at all our expenses; it is because what the banks have is the best insurance policy in the world. It is an insurance policy, backed up by the UK Government, that no matter what they do, no matter how much they fail, they will never be allowed to fail because the Government will always step in and bail them out. An additional levy was placed on the banks to make sure that they paid something back from the crash, and also that they paid something in return for the guarantee that they were given. What we find now is that the amount that they have paid so far does not even pay off some of the damaging costs that fell to taxpayers as a result of their wild speculation that brought about the crash.
One matter that has been raised in the debate—the Exchequer Secretary has also mentioned it—is that of tax reliefs and the extension of the annual investment allowance. I can understand why the Government have done that, but what I cannot understand is why they have done that as well as introduce the super deductions. The Government’s argument is that 99% of the business investment that is undertaken will be covered by the annual investment allowance, but to then go on and give a super tax deduction of 130% flies in the face of that argument. If we look at the record of tax reliefs, most of which, historically, have never been reviewed by the Treasury, we see that they mount up year after year, decade after decade. Some of them go back nearly a century, but they are never reviewed, and that is often with scandalous effect. On the entrepreneurs’ allowance, even the Government had to accept that that was an abuse of an allowance. People were walking away with large amounts of benefits without in any way demonstrating their entrepreneurial skills. It is the same with the patent box.
Let me now come to the tonnage tax. I have been lobbying on that now for nearly 15 years. The tonnage tax was introduced by John Prescott—by the way, I hope that all of us will send our best wishes to him in the hope that his recovery from the severe stroke that he had is going on apace—as part of a strategy to revive British shipping. The purpose of it was to give a tax allowance to shipping companies so that they would then employ more UK seafarers, and employ them on a decent wage as well. Year after year, we argued about it with the Government—the Labour Government got into this one as well. Large amounts of money were going to these shipping companies, but the jobs were not appearing. In fact, we were losing UK seafarer jobs. Seafarers were largely being recruited from abroad, and in some instances were not even being paid the minimum wage. The tonnage tax was linked to the training of officer cadets, not ratings, and a limited number of officer cadets were recruited by the shipping companies. As a result of lobbying—I was there in a meeting with the Minister—we did get a bit of flexibility, whereby if a company was not recruiting officers, it was able voluntarily to recruit ratings and still qualify for the tax.
Let me just explain to the House the tonnage tax figures. The tonnage tax was introduced in 2000-01. Its cost—£2.165 billion. How many jobs do hon. Members think have been created, that we know of, for £2.165 billion? Does anyone want to intervene with a figure? All we know about, on the record, is 75; that is £28 million a job.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Almost as good as they get!
John McDonnell
Don’t tempt me.
Those are the only figures that we have, but I thought that we should be generous and say that there were, on average, 25 jobs a year at least. We do not know, as all we have is the figure of 75. In the case that there were 25 jobs a year, we are still talking about, at best, £4 million to £5 million a job in subsidies for the British shipping companies. I do not know what other Members think, but there is an issue of productivity here, is there not? That is the sort of problem that we have when we get into relying on tax reliefs to stimulate the economy and jobs growth.
Let me make a final point on tax reliefs. As the hon. Member for Glasgow Central and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North have said, the failure to link these tax reliefs to the achievement of net zero means that we are undermining the ability of the Government to intervene effectively in the economy in order to ensure that we are all signed up to tackling climate change.
I also thought that the Government were going to come forward with amendments in legislation to prevent companies with any record of tax avoidance from being able to qualify for tax reliefs at all, but that is not in this legislation. We are therefore in a situation where we are giving tax reliefs to companies that we know have in the past engaged in tax avoidance. Of course we all welcome the tax avoidance measures that the Government have introduced, but this legislation is an incredibly slow, incremental development. We need to go so much further, with full transparency and enforcement.
When we are trying to enforce against tax avoidance, the one thing that we must not do is open up opportunities for new forms of tax avoidance, but the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK Trade Policy Observatory and the TUC have said that the introduction of freeports is the new opportunity for tax avoidance schemes, for the displacement of jobs from one area to another with no overall benefit, and—this is exactly what the TUC is saying—for the undermining of trade union rights; and we know what that will do for workers.
I have welcomed the Government’s investment in HMRC. I was sitting here years ago when the first major cuts to HMRC were introduced, and we saw the results. It was an undermining of the work to address tax avoidance and evasion. However, as other hon. Members have said, unfortunately the new jobs have gone into chasing compliance issues as a result of covid, and not into increasing the operation to address tax avoidance.
Those are the issues that I just wanted to comment on. I actually came here to make one specific point and put forward one proposal with regard to local government, but as there are not people rampaging to speak in the debate, I thought that I could at least comment on some wider points.
The point I wanted to make is about what is happening with regard to local authority finance. I thought that as part of the Budget, the comprehensive spending review and then this Bill, the Government would bring forward what has been promised for some time now—a fairly radical reappraisal of local government finance with the potential for reform that would provide local authorities with the resources, as well as a relatively independent source of income, that would then embody their ability to engage in genuine levelling up across our society, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). But the figures show that local government funding from central Government grant is about £16 billion a year lower today than it was in 2010. Cumulatively, that is a reduction over that 11-year period of £100 billion in central Government support for local government.
That means that before we can even talk about levelling up, we need levelling back. We need to give councils the power to invest in local services in their communities again. The hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), who is not in his place, raised the importance of the Budget for local communities, and I agree. This Bill should be doing that, but apart from the occasional grant to individual communities—on, unfortunately, a sort of pork barrel basis—there does not seem to be an overall strategy to enable it to happen. As I said during the Budget debate, we have seen the impact, with the cutting of funding for nearly 900 children’s centres, 940 youth centres, 738 libraries, and 1,200 bus routes. Local government was mentioned only once by the Chancellor in the Budget speech. There was no acknowledgement of what councils have endured over the past 10 years—that includes Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and SNP councils—or the debt crisis that is now engulfing many town halls in our country.
I was hoping that we would at least get the opportunity of some resolution of the debt problem of local councils within the Finance Bill, or would have the opportunity to prepare amendments to enable that to happen. Creatively, we will see whether we can bring amendments forward in that way, but that is made more difficult by the amendment to the law motion not being brought forward by the Government. Many councils across the country are in debt. In recent years, three section 114 notices have been issued, in the case of Tory as well as Labour councils, and dozens more have applied for and received emergency Government loans.
Some time ago, as part of their pushing local authorities to try to seek alternative local funding sources, but also as part of their commercialisation agenda, the Government forced councils into a position where many of them sought to compensate for the lack of Government funding by borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board to buy investments with revenue-producing potential. Some of those investments have proved to be risky misjudgments. Admittedly, this has happened across the board, with all political parties in control in different council areas, but the Government have to take some responsibility for the mess, because they have forced those local authorities into that sort of speculative behaviour, which is also beyond their levels of experience and expertise.
In addition, there has been a complete lack of oversight from both the Department for local government, under its various names over recent years, and the Public Works Loan Board, which has lent the money to those councils. The accounts of the Public Works Loan Board reveal that over £2.8 billion was lent last year and over £3 billion was generated in interest income. That is extraordinary: it is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Councils are under huge financial pressures, and they now owe £71 billion in debt to the Public Works Loan Board. I want to see whether we can amend this legislation to reduce the interest rates to councils. The Bank of England base rate is still 0.1%, so every pound spent on interest by councils—it is the same for central Government—is £1 less spent on social care, children’s services, street cleaning, bin collections or whatever. The average interest rate charged by the Public Works Loan Board is 3.57%. That is 36 times higher than the Bank of England base rate. What we need in the longer term is stronger oversight of loan applications and for the Public Works Loan Board to charge interest at the Bank of England base rate.
In the meantime—this is why I was hoping that the Government would move somewhat in this legislation—to deal with the high interest rates and the high levels of debt, we need some form of debt jubilee for local councils. That could be a zero rating on all existing loans before we move to the Bank of England base rate on all new loans. More expansively, it could recognise the failure in recent years from central Government to oversee and the impact of Government austerity cuts, which have led to the debt crisis in local government. The Treasury arguably should fund a partial debt write-off for councils. With more than £70 billion in principal debts, plus interest rates, even a 20% write-off could free up nearly £15 billion for local councils to spend in the coming years.
That is the proposal I wanted to argue for in this debate. It would be welcomed cross-party in local government and would relieve many local councillors from the appalling decisions they will have to make in the coming months between increasing local council taxes and, more importantly for many of them, another round of cuts in public services, because of the high interest rates they are having to pay and the interest charges that are falling upon them.
The final point I will make in this Budget debate is to return to the points that a number of Members have made. This Finance Bill does not seem to relate to the Government’s strategy overall, and it certainly does not relate to the needs of our communities. I worry that after the experience of covid, people are looking increasingly to the Government to provide leadership. This Budget, the comprehensive spending review and certainly this legislation do not provide that. The Bill will increase the levels of concern and insecurity that unfortunately are impacting on our communities. I find it a disappointing piece of legislation, and I hope that by way of amendment we might be able to improve it. In that way, we might at least meet some of the challenges our communities face, tackle some of the poverty and deprivations, end austerity and maybe give a bit more hope to the communities we represent.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I rise to my feet on behalf of the Liberal Democrats to say that we cannot support this Finance Bill, which derives from a Budget that missed a vital opportunity to help struggling families in this country. Instead, it hammers them with tax hikes, empty words and broken promises. It is completely out of touch and offers nothing to help them with the energy bills that they will face this winter. Worse than that for me, the Bill sends a clear message to children and their parents that they are worth less to this economy than investment bankers and banks. Far from providing the support that families needed when we are facing a cost of living crisis, this Finance Bill will provide less in extra catch-up funding for schools than it does in tax cuts for big banks. There will be just £1 of extra catch-up funding for each child, compared with £6 a day in tax cuts for each banker. That brings the £1.8 billion new catch-up money offered to just £5 billion, one third of what the Government’s own advisers said was necessary to allow our children to catch up on the many millions of hours that they have in total lost in their classrooms over the past 18 months, which threaten, according to official figures, to leave them losing anything up to £46,000 in income over the course of their lifetime. Putting bankers before children tells us everything we need to know about the priorities in this Bill.
People who have worked hard, paid their taxes and played by the rules are seeing their incomes squeezed through no fault of their own. They are being crippled by tax hikes and their benefits have been slashed—all in the face of skyrocketing bills. We should be demanding a fair deal for families and an investment in future generations: support for vulnerable families, more investment in our children’s education and more funding for tackling the climate emergency. Instead, we see an end to the £20 uplift to universal credit, nearly half the minimum wage rise clawed back through the increase in national insurance, no help with energy bills, the Chancellor’s announcement on universal credit taper giving back just one third of what he snatched away, and millions of families with no help at all.
When it comes to the climate, while COP26 was getting under way in Glasgow and we were all looking for something that would send a clear message that saving the planet was a major priority, what did we get? We got a reduction in air passenger duty, which will do nothing at all to help to reduce carbon emissions.
This Bill offers nothing of what we would like to see for the people of this country. It offers nothing, either, for the businesses, because it fails to deliver on the Government’s promise to reduce business rates through a fundamental review of the system, leaving companies with no long-term support as they cope with the impact of the pandemic and new international trade barriers. The business rates announcement will not abolish the skewed and complicated system, which only benefits property landlords and not the hard-working business owners who rent from them. Even the tax cuts for businesses investing in green energy for properties are only set to benefit commercial landlords, not our high street shops, whose owners will really pay the bill.
Businesses have been hit hard by endless Government disasters, the handling of the pandemic and a new mountain of red tape introduced post Brexit. However, I cannot agree with the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) that the answer to all that is an independent Scotland.
Christine Jardine
Not this time. On that point, I cannot agree, because there have been Governments in this place that have done wonderful things for Scotland, not least of which was to deliver devolution, and we have learned in Scotland over the past 14 years that moving the Government to Holyrood does not guarantee it will be any better. On behalf of my colleagues in the Liberal Democrats, we will not support the Finance Bill and we will support the Labour amendment.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I have a lot of sympathy for the last comments by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), and I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for bringing into the debate local government, its finance and the challenges it has faced over the past 10 years. Having come from local government to this place, I know that he speaks wise words on this issue.
I too rise to oppose the Government’s Finance Bill and to support the Labour amendments, and I will cover three aspects. The first is the cost of living. Over the recent weeks and months, I have heard from so many constituents about the hardship they face in seeing their energy bills spike and the cost of the weekly shop rise, and from families seeing their rent climb and climb. This Bill does nothing to support the millions struggling with the cost of living.
We should not forget that, even before the Budget, the Chancellor hit my constituents and those across the country with a double whammy. To plug gaps in the NHS and social care, he hiked up national insurance, a regressive tax payable by everyone in work. Other ways could have been found to find the funding needed than this regressive tax hike.
Then the Chancellor decided to cut £1,000 from universal credit for all those claimants. This is essential income that supports over 30,000 families in the Borough of Hounslow alone. About 40% of those claiming universal credit are in work, something that the cloth-eared Conservatives tried to deny for years whenever we raised the issue of universal credit in this House. At last, they have got it, but the changes they have made to taper relief still trap so many in poorly paid and irregular work—work, sadly, that is far too common in my constituency and across the country. The new taper rate only actually benefits about a third of working people on universal credit. The cut in universal credit is absolutely devastating. It is the choice between heating and eating, or between a winter coat and a pair of shoes for a child.
I recently visited the Hounslow Community FoodBox, which supports about 13,000 people in our local area. Demand for its services has skyrocketed locally over the last 18 months, and this is mirrored across the country. The Trussell Trust, the national food bank trust, distributed over 2.5 million food parcels last year, but it saw an increase of 33% over the previous year. How do the Government respond to this food poverty crisis? They ramp up taxes on families, while cutting the very support that is allowing them to barely stay afloat.
I have also recently visited Look Ahead, which is a national charity on contract to Hounslow council. It supports young people in supported accommodation—young people who, by definition, do not have family support. Look Ahead offers vital support services to these young people, and it and the young people warned me that the universal credit cut would be devastating for them. It is worth remembering that universal credit claimants already face a number of hurdles, such as the benefit cap, the two-child limit—the bedroom tax—and the cruel five-week wait, which makes people wait for five weeks to receive crucial support.
Secondly, I will be voting against the Finance Bill because it does nothing to support those already impacted by the loan charge and still being forced to sign illegal disguised remuneration schemes if they want to do the work in which they are skilled. The all-party parliamentary group on the loan charge and taxpayer fairness published a damning report earlier this year on the wild west supply chain of unregulated umbrella companies and rogue recruitment agencies that conspire to lure workers into tax avoidance schemes, often entirely unwittingly, yet the Government have so far done nothing but publish some guidance.
When will the Treasury take some ownership of the bullying and aggressive activities of HMRC in chasing down those who have signed these disguised remuneration schemes? These schemes are still being openly sold and have been targeted at many lower-paid workers, including, shamefully, NHS staff being recruited to help with the nation’s response to the pandemic. Too many ordinary workers advised to use these schemes have been hammered to the point of suicide, while promoters with known links to the Conservative party have not yet been asked to pay a penny. This is an all-too-common theme with this Government, who continue to ignore the reality and the evidence.
The reality is that if HMRC enforces the loan charge on the thousands of people who now face it, there will be many more bankruptcies, more mental anguish and potentially more suicides, as well as more people losing their homes and more unable to continue to work. The fact is that there is considerable new evidence—evidence not known at the time of the last review—showing that the conclusion of the Morse review was flawed. It seems clear that this important evidence was not shared with Sir Amyas, now Lord Morse. Indeed he was not given an accurate or complete picture by HMRC and the Treasury, and having in the past spoken to Treasury Ministers I sometimes wonder how much control the Treasury has over HMRC or whether it has become a rogue agency.
The clause in the Finance Bill mentioned by the Treasury Minister does nothing to stop the ongoing mis-selling. To stamp that out legislation on umbrella companies is needed. Fining the promoters and freezing their assets is all well and good, but it is much easier to legislate to make agencies responsible, as the APPG proposed, and that would stop the schemes overnight. Without legislation to clean up the supply chain there will be ongoing skimming of contractors’ pay, misappropriation of holiday pay, and backhanders between agencies and umbrella companies. Action is needed to actually stop the schemes rather than pursue the scam after it has happened.
We know that HMRC has not been able to find legal precedent for the loan charge and that it itself used contractors on loan schemes while claiming at the same time that it was clear that that was wrong. We now know that all along it knew that many people would not be able to pay while claiming they could and would do so. Common sense, if not compassion, dictates that effective legislation and a fresh and genuinely independent review is needed to come up with a resolution to the loan charge issue, avoiding devastating consequences for thousands of families and going after the right people for a change. We have new Treasury Ministers now and I hope they will approach the issues of the loan charge and disguised renumeration with an open mind and agree to carry out this much-needed review, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) has urged.
Finally, I want to address the air passenger duty changes. This Government repeatedly say one thing and do another on climate change. If I wanted to buy tickets to go to Glasgow in three weeks I would pay £65 to fly with easyJet from London, yet a train ticket to Glasgow on the same day would cost me £69, and that is before the cut in APD on domestic flights is introduced. The fact that it is still cheaper to fly than to travel by train is a key reason why we are not seeing the reduction in carbon emissions we so desperately need. One way to reduce the number of short-haul flights is to improve train travel, but whether in the choice of routes, the length of journey, the cost of tickets or the experience on board other European countries are miles ahead of the UK and have been for many years. It is no surprise that short-haul domestic flights contribute so heavily to our carbon emissions when this Government have absolutely failed to fix rail travel. And this week we hear they are going to cut the proposed rail services to Leeds and Manchester. This Government are not only failing communities across the country but are failing our climate. The Government should impose the polluter pays principle to their transport policies and the fiscal policies that support them.
In conclusion, I will oppose the Bill because it punishes low-income households but does nothing to relieve the nightmare for current and future loan charge victims and it treats the climate emergency as an afterthought.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), whose speech was punctuated throughout by the sound of many nails being hit on the head.
The Budget and this Bill needed to address three key issues: the cost of living crisis; the supply crisis with the resulting inflationary crunch from that; and of course the environmental crisis. With regret, I have to say there is little cheer in the Budget or the Bill for anyone other than a bank shareholder or those who profit from the lack of urgency from this Government to tackle financial criminality and the lack of financial transparency as London rapidly gains the unenviable reputation of the washing machine for the dirty money of the world.
Let me deal first with the cost of living. Many Members have spoken at length, in the Budget debate and today, about the Conservatives having broken their manifesto pledge on increasing national insurance. We all know by now—I hope it is incontestable—that that increase hits the lowest earners the hardest. It bakes in generational and geographical inequalities, which will be a feature of our social and economic outlook for many years to come.
I intervened on the Financial Secretary to the Treasury—she was gracious enough to accept that intervention—to try to get some clarity on how the money raised by that increase will make its way through to the social care sector. We all understand that it will go into the health service, and we all appreciate that it can do much good in dealing with the crisis there, but I am sorry to say that until some answers start to be forthcoming about what impact it will have in the social care sector—and, importantly, how—the UK Government will be left looking very much as if they lack a plan.
The UK Government have barely even started to get to grips with the nature of the whole-system problems that we are facing in health and social care, and the need to integrate them. That was the case even before the covid crisis. We require a whole-system approach to many of the problems that we are seeing in health services, and I get absolutely no sense that the UK Government have thought that through. They are doing what they have routinely criticised many other Governments for doing and focusing on the inputs without having any reasonable or intelligent focus on the outputs.
It is not just direct taxes that affect the cost of living crisis; indirect taxes have a massive impact too. My colleagues and I have called for a continuation of the VAT reduction for hospitality. It seems unconscionable and unexplainable that that should be withdrawn in the early part of next year. It is often said that a banker is somebody who will offer you an umbrella when it is not raining and then take it back the instant that some dark clouds appear on the horizon, and many hospitality businesses will feel that that analogy applies to them with the VAT reduction. With lower footfall and cash flow, they did not get the chance to benefit throughout this year, and just as they come into what will be a crucial summer season for many of them, that financial boost is to be taken away. I strongly urge the Government to reconsider that and to allow those businesses to trade their way back to health.
Of course, VAT is intended to be a tax on non-essential goods, yet it is still levied on a wide range of goods that we simply cannot do without, such as domestic energy. It is a tax that can influence behaviour, but it can also be used to stimulate growth and the kind of recovery we need.
I would like to pick up one anomaly in the way that VAT is applied currently, and that relates to school uniforms. I have to say that I was not a particularly enthusiastic wearer of the school uniform when I was at school, unless I had to wear it when I was representing the school, in which case I did not have any quarrel with it. Nevertheless, I accept the arguments on the importance of school uniforms. They are an enormous leveller. The uniform instils a sense of pride and belonging, and it means that everybody is the same. It can also be a boost to household incomes not to have to compete when it comes to the clothes that children wear to school.
School uniforms are often compulsory, yet we still charge VAT on them, at the full 20% rate, for children over the age of 14, and even for children who are under that age yet have grown beyond the size that HMRC stipulates for certain school uniform items. That is hitting hard-working families really hard in the pocket at a time when a whole range of other factors are conspiring to squeeze their incomes. I do not believe that that can be right.
The British Educational Suppliers Association estimates that the cost of waiving VAT on school uniform items in Scotland would be about £1 million. To do it right across the whole UK would not cost a great deal more than £10 million. That is not a sum that is going to trouble the Treasury unduly. Some Conservative Members might not even get out of bed for a consultancy if they were earning less than that. Nevertheless, removing 20% VAT on what are essential purchases in anyone’s estimation could really make a big difference to individual families. We will look to return to that in Committee. I hope the Government will listen very carefully on that because it could benefit family incomes the length and breadth of the UK.
There have been many other hits to household finances in recent times. There is the removal of the £20 universal credit uplift. There is a Government commitment to a real living wage which seems to be at a rate running one year in arrears. No sooner do the Government expect plaudits and hurrahs for hitting the target, than a month later the rate is revised and the Government wait another 11 months to play catch-up. We are also seeing the removal of the pensions triple lock. All those matters will conspire to squeeze family incomes at a time when families can least afford it.
In the remainder of my contribution, I would like to concentrate on the impact of the failure to get to grips with the supply and environmental crises, particularly in the north-east of Scotland. An enormous series of problems is being caused by shortages of labour. That applies in the haulage sector and, in particular, in the food and drink, hospitality and agriculture sectors. We have seen crops rotting in the field because there are not enough people to harvest them. We are seeing a crisis in the pig industry. There simply are not enough skilled abattoir workers and butchers to deal with the throughput from that industry, which is leading to a looming animal welfare and human crisis.
I have heard many Conservatives say, “Why can’t you just hire local workers?” Well, frankly, you cannot just hire that sort of skilled, dedicated and experienced labour. We cannot just wave a magic wand and magic it up out of nowhere. However unskilled and unspecialised the Government might consider many of those positions, they really do need to act and act swiftly. This is not even a financial measure; it is simply about making sure all parts of the UK have an immigration policy that is appropriate for their economic and social needs. If the UK Government are not prepared to do that themselves, they should devolve it to the devolved Administrations to decide for themselves. I have absolutely no doubt that the devolved Administrations could make much better and much more enlightened and productive choices than the UK Government have shown themselves capable of making so far.
Finally, there is the environmental crisis. Let me be very clear about this: there can be no transition to net zero in the UK without the skills, human capital, knowledge and the expertise of the north-east of Scotland, particularly the contribution of the constituents I represent. COP26 made many important steps forward. Despite that, we are still seeing an almost complete mis-match and failure to engage the clutch plate when it comes to aligning Government rhetoric with actual tangible Government action in this Bill.
The Government have already failed to match the £0.5 billion commitment from the Scottish Government to net zero transition work in the north-east of Scotland for Aberdeen city, Aberdeenshire and Moray. They have also, completely and inexplicably, failed to proceed with the Acorn carbon capture and underground storage project just north of my constituency in Peterhead. An enormous percentage of the potential carbon capture storage is just offshore from Peterhead. It was the most advanced project. It is the only one that can repurpose existing infrastructure. It is the one that can come online most quickly. It is the one that can accept imports of carbon dioxide from other parts of the UK that are as yet not up and running and do not have the ability to sequestrate their own carbon. I am thinking particularly of the clusters in south Wales and around the Solent. It is an absolutely inexplicable decision, which seems to have been taken purely for partisan political reasons and the benefit of playing the politics of the pork barrel in parts of the north of England.
In conclusion, the Bill fails to get to grips with the key challenges that we knew we were facing heading into the Budget. We can only hope that it improves as it goes through Committee and on Report.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to respond to this debate for the official Opposition. It is noticeable that the Government could convince only one of their Back Benchers to turn up to defend their Finance Bill. This has been a short but good debate, with many thoughtful speeches, and I thank all the hon. Members who have taken part—in particular, my hon. Friends the Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), as well as the hon. Members for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), for Gordon (Richard Thomson), for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew).
The hon. Member for Broadland highlighted the importance of local communities. I look forward to scrutinising the details of the alcohol duty changes in due course.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow spoke powerfully about the Bill’s failure to boost growth, increase living standards and tackle the climate crisis. I will return to those points shortly. She also made a very important point about wasteful Government spending and the dodgy contracts that have been given out during the pandemic.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington made a number of important points, including about fairness in the tax base, the Government’s reforms to the tonnage tax and local authority finances. I hope that the Minister can answer the specific questions that he asked about reforms to local government funding.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth spoke passionately about the cost-of-living crisis and how she has spoken to many constituents about the hardship that they face. She talked about the reality of what the Government are doing on universal credit and the shameful food and poverty crisis in this country. She also made important points about the loan charge, and I hope that the Minister will respond properly to the points that several Members made on that issue.
This Finance Bill is a product of the Government’s economic failings over the past 11 years. At the Budget, the OBR forecast growth averaging just 1.3% in the final years of the forecast period, which follows a measly 1.8% in the decade leading up to the pandemic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) said, we can compare that with Labour’s record of growth of 2.3% a year when we were in power. The Conservatives are a party of low growth and the Government have no plan for growth. Working people are paying the price for that failure. They are paying the price in increased national insurance contributions and the freeze in income tax personal allowances. They are paying the price through the cut to universal credit. They are paying the price through lower wages, with real wages on course to be more than £10 an hour lower in 2026 than if the pre-2008 trend had continued. And they are paying the price through inflation that is hurting family finances, with food, heating and petrol all more expensive.
Yesterday, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee told the Treasury Committee that consumers are spending an increasing proportion of their incomes on food and energy. They made the point that businesses may struggle with the rising cost of materials and labour because consumers will not have additional disposable income to spend. Does the Finance Bill include measures to help people with the cost-of-living crisis? Does it reduce the burden of taxes on those who can least afford to pay? Does it encourage investment and boost growth? The answer is no. Like the Budget that it stems from, the Bill has no plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, no plan to grow our economy and no plan to help businesses to succeed.
Instead, the Government’s priorities in the Budget and the Bill are to cut taxes on the banks and make domestic flights cheaper. It is beyond belief that in a Budget just days before COP26 began in Glasgow, the Chancellor chose to cut domestic air passenger duty. I am afraid that that is yet further evidence that the Treasury is not serious about our net zero commitment. Clause 6 will slash the corporation tax surcharge for banking companies from up to 8% to 3% and will raise the surcharge allowance from £25 million to £100 million. Those are the wrong priorities for an increasingly out-of-touch Government.
Labour’s priorities are different. We would use the Finance Bill to bring down energy bills with a cut in VAT on domestic energy; to tackle the climate crisis, rather than making it worse; and to fundamentally reform business rates to help businesses in every part of the country.
With the transition to net zero, the Government seem intent on leaving individuals and businesses to meet the costs on their own, without recognising the opportunity for growth and jobs. Labour knows that investment can unlock good jobs across the country, while helping households to cut bills and keep their homes warm. On business rates, Labour has put forward proposals for fundamental reform, while the Government have broken their promise to do so.
This week, research by the Resolution Foundation found that business investment in the UK lags behind that in countries with higher productivity. Business capital investment in Britain was 10% of gross domestic product in 2019, compared with 13% on average in the United States, Germany and France. There are many reasons for that, including the Government’s patchwork Brexit deal, but the Bill does nothing to help to boost investment.
Labour’s plan for replacing business rates will introduce a system that will incentivise investment, reward businesses moving into empty premises and encourage environmental improvements. Our climate investment pledge will encourage billions in private finance, and unlike Government Ministers, we have a real plan for growth.
No doubt at further stages there will be considerably more to say about other clauses, but I would like to make a few points now. On the residential property developer tax in part 2, we support the principle of taxing the largest developers to pay for the cost of removing unsafe cladding, but we are concerned that the levy alone will not be enough. The Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government estimates that there is a gap of £13 billion between the £2 billion that the levy is expected to raise and the £15 billion cost of works—and it has been reported that the rising cost of works as a result of the Tory supply chain crisis will wipe out much of the £2 billion.
Can the Exchequer Secretary confirm who will meet the gap? Labour is clear that it should not be the leaseholders. The Government must ensure that those who are responsible for putting dangerous material on buildings pay their fair share. Time and again, the Government’s handling of the cladding crisis has left leaseholders on the hook. The Government must finally get a grip on the problem and help the thousands of people who, shamefully, are still living in unsafe accommodation.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington raised the measures on tax avoidance. We support the principle behind the new economic crime levy, which will raise funds to pay for measures to tackle money laundering. Can the Exchequer Secretary tell us more about how the levy will be spent? Does she think that it will be enough to implement the measures in the economic crime plan?
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North made several critical points about other measures to fight economic crime. Will the Exchequer Secretary confirm exactly when the Government will introduce the vital legislation on the register of overseas entities? “When parliamentary time allows” is simply not good enough, when the Government first announced the policy in 2016. As my hon. Friend for Ealing North said earlier, it is notable that the momentum to implement the measure seems to have disappeared since the current Prime Minister took office. We know that this Prime Minister is no fan of transparency or of playing by the rules, but we are facing a crisis of dirty money and corruption—and not all of it is in relation to the Cabinet. The Pandora Papers show how many shell companies are laundering money in this country and buying up luxury properties. We will use the further stages of the Bill to push the Government to do more about economic crime and tax avoidance.
This is a Finance Bill that fails to rise to the challenges we face. It contains nothing to make up for the years of low growth over which this Government have presided, nothing to tackle the climate crisis or to unlock opportunities that the transition to net zero brings, and nothing to ease the growing tax burden on working people. Indeed, the Government have used this Finance Bill to cut taxes on banks rather than cutting them for working people.
The truth is that the Government’s failure on growth means less money for public services while the Government increasingly take more from people’s pay packets. In contrast, Labour has a plan to grow the economy, to invest sustainably in the jobs of the future, and to make our tax system fair. It is for this reason that we will not support the Bill tonight, and I urge all hon. Members to vote against it.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
It is a pleasure to close this debate on behalf of the Government. In a moment I will address many of the points raised in the debate, but I want to begin by reminding the House of the announcements made by the Chancellor in the Budget: more investment in infrastructure, innovation and skills; business rates cut by £7 billion, including the 50% business rates discount for the retail, hospital and leisure sectors; a cut in the universal credit taper; a £500 increase in work allowances; and an increase in the national living wage, rewarding people for their hard work. Those are announcements that the Finance Bill builds upon.
Let me remind the House what the Bill is designed to achieve. First, it will deliver a stronger economy for the British people by encouraging businesses to invest in the UK’s future growth and prosperity. Secondly, it will help to deliver stronger public finances. Thirdly, it will improve our ability to tackle economic crime, tax avoidance and tax evasion. Finally, it will contribute to a simpler and more sustainable tax system, in turn supporting businesses and consumers.
A stronger economy and a strong, dynamic business environment go hand in hand. As a Government, we will always do everything that we reasonably can to encourage business investment. The previous Finance Bill delivered the super deduction, the biggest business tax cut in modern British history, and extended the annual investment allowance, to the end of this year, at its higher level of £1 million. Now is not the time to remove tax breaks on investment. That is why the Bill extends the £1 million level again until the end of March 2023, encouraging businesses to bring forward investment—because this is a Government who back business. It is also why the Bill will make our creative tax reliefs more generous by extending the relief for museums and galleries for another two years and doubling the reliefs for theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries until April 2023.
A number of Opposition Members spoke about the taxation of banks. I should like to put everyone straight on that. As the Bill explains, the surcharge will be set at 3% from 2023, which means that the combined tax rate on banks’ profits will increase—I emphasise that: the tax rate will increase—from 27% to 28%. [Interruption.] There seems to be some problem with doing maths. Opposition Members are shouting at me, but it is a simple fact: the rate will go up from 27% to 28%. Banks will be paying more tax. It may be convenient for Opposition Members to suggest something different—they like the rhetoric—but it is simply not true.
Richard Thomson
As the Minister is so good at maths, can she tell us what the tax rate would be if the surcharge was not being reduced?
Helen Whately
The answer to that question is 33%, but the fact is that the rate is going up, from 27% to 28%. That is an increase in tax; it really is quite simple maths.
While supporting investment and competitiveness in our key industries, we must also continue to fund our crucial public services and strengthen our public finances. To keep this Government on the path of discipline and responsibility, the new charter for budget responsibility sets out two key fiscal rules. First, underlying public sector net debt, excluding the impact of the Bank of England, must, as a percentage of GDP, be falling. Secondly, in normal times the state should only borrow to invest.
That is the context for the introduction of the health and social care levy, which we have already voted on, and the 1.25% increase to tax rates on dividend income, delivered through this Bill. This funding is to provide a new long-term funding stream for health and social care, raising more than £12 billion a year over the spending review period, of which £5 billion is earmarked for social care—that picks up on the question from the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson). I would be delighted to tell him more about the plans involved in that, but I would be digressing too much from the context of the Bill and that is probably one for another occasion. However, what I will say to Opposition Members who want to scrap that extra funding is that they have no other plan to finance getting down the NHS backlog or social care reform, other than through borrowing—they would pass the cost on to future generations. The Government are taking a responsible, fair and progressive way to raise revenue. Additional and higher-rate taxpayers are expected to contribute more than three quarters of the revenue from this increase in 2022-23. Those with the broadest shoulders will pay more.
A number of hon. Members asked about the funding of net zero. Taking a step back for a moment, let me say that the net zero strategy sets out our path to net zero by 2050. Overall, we have earmarked £30 billion-worth of investment in net zero, but that is a long-term investment. Net zero funding in this spending review and Budget specifically includes £1.3 billion of energy innovation funding, £1.4 billion of public sector decarbonisation funding, £1.8 billion to help low-income households to transition to net zero, £620 million extra for the transition to electric vehicles and up to £1.7 billion for large-scale nuclear energy. So, as hon. Members can see, there is funding for net zero in the spending review and Budget. In addition, the revised Green Book means that all policy objectives need to align with net zero.
Let me turn to measures in the Bill that tackle economic crime, and tax avoidance and evasion. The Government are committed to making the UK a hostile place for illicit finance and economic crime, helping to protect our security and prosperity. In recent years, we have taken a series of steps to combat economic crime, including the creation of a new National Economic Crime Centre to co-ordinate the law enforcement response, as well as passing the Criminal Finances Act 2017, which introduced new powers for enforcement authorities to investigate cash believed to be derived from criminal proceeds. The Bill builds on those steps by introducing the new economic crime levy, which will help fund further action on money laundering, including the ambitious reforms that the Government announced in the 2019 economic crime plan, and help safeguard the UK’s global reputation as a safe and transparent place to conduct business. It is a proportionate measure, which will be paid by entities that are regulated for anti-money laundering purposes.
We are also taking action through the Bill to clamp down on promoters of tax avoidance schemes. In response to the question from the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), we are giving HMRC new powers: to freeze and secure a promoter’s assets; to introduce a new penalty on UK entities who support offshore promoters; to petition the courts to close down companies or partnerships that promote avoidance schemes; and to share more information on promoters to support taxpayers to steer clear of such schemes.
James Murray
Will the Minister explain when the register of overseas entities owning UK property will be in place?
Helen Whately
I am happy to write to the hon. Member on that question.
Finally, I turn to the administration of the tax system. Only last year, the Government published a 10-year tax strategy that seeks to improve the tax system and its support for taxpayers. The House will recall that the Chancellor was clear in his Budget speech that we must deliver a simpler, fairer tax system that supports consumers and is also competitive for business, and we have, for example, the most radical simplification of alcohol duties for more than 140 years. As part of that, community pubs can look forward to a new and simpler system of alcohol duties, including draught relief, which will cut duty on beer and cider served in pubs by 5%, as celebrated in the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). Alcohol duties will also be reformed around the simple, common-sense principle that the stronger the drink, the higher the rate. That will be legislated for next year after a detailed consultation.
In the meantime, the Bill does more to build a simpler and more sustainable tax system. Basis period reform, for example, will remove the existing highly complex requirements around basis period rules, including double taxation of early years of trading. Anyone who, like me, has studied accountancy will appreciate that.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary said at the beginning of the debate, the Bill comes before us when we are seeing significant improvements in the economic situation. The Government are rightly focused on economic recovery, and let there be no doubt that our plan is working. A year ago, the country was experiencing the deepest recession on record, but thanks to our plan for jobs, which the Office for Budget Responsibility has called “remarkably successful”, we are recovering fast. The OBR expects the economy to return to pre-pandemic levels at the turn of the year, several months earlier than it thought in March. We do still have historically high levels of debt, but new fiscal rules together with measures in the Bill will ensure that the public finances remain on a sustainable path.
It is a Bill that encourages business investment, delivers stronger public finances, tackles tax avoidance and evasion, contributes to a simpler and more sustainable tax system and fundamentally delivers a stronger economy for the British people. For those reasons and more, I commend it to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
Clause 4; Clause 6; Clauses 7 and 8 and Schedule 1; Clause 12; any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to the subject matter of those Clauses and that Schedules 1 to 5, 24 to 26, 28, 31 to 33, 40 and 86; any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to the impact of any provision on the financial resources of families or to the subject matter of those Clauses and that Schedule | 2 hours from commencement of proceedings on the Bill |
Clauses 27 and 28; Clauses 53 to 66; Clauses 84 to 89; Clause 90 and Schedule 12; Clause 91 and Schedule 13; Clause 92; any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to the subject matter of those Clauses and those Schedules | 4 hours from commencement of proceedings on the Bill |
Clauses 68 to 71 (value added tax); Clause 93 and Schedule 14 (free zones); any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to the subject matter of those Clauses and that Schedule | 6 hours from commencement of proceedings on the Bill |
Business without Debate
Autism and Neurodiversity Research Funding
(3 years ago)
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Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
It is with great pleasure that I rise in my first end-of-day Adjournment debate in the better part of eight years, but it is a topic that I am very happy to return to from this position. It is one that I championed in Government and one that I worked very hard on when I was a Back Bencher prior to my ministerial office. I am hugely grateful to Mr Speaker for granting me today’s debate.
Many hon. and right hon. Members will know that this issue has been close to my heart for many years: autism and the range of brain conditions that can be summarised by the word neurodiversity. From my own direct family experiences, which I spoken about in this Chamber when we held the first Chamber debate on autism back in 2013, and from the plethora of constituency casework that I have worked on over the years helping families of children and young people with autism and associated conditions, I have developed a certain knowledge and experience of these issues. As a Minister and a Secretary of State, I was glad to be able to push the agenda even further.
One of the privileges of being a Back Bencher is that I can put on record my thanks to local organisations in my constituency which do so much to support and work with people with autism, whether it is officers of the local authorities, volunteers in local carers’ groups such as the Swindon Carers Centre, or organisations such as the Uplands Enterprise Trust, which is pioneering and developing more post-19 support for young people with autism and other disabilities in my area, working with the excellent special schools network and the Brunel multi-academy trust in Swindon. It is really innovative work.
My debate today is the beginning of a process that was made clear in my exchange of letters with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on my departure from Cabinet two months ago: to bring about a sea change in how autism and other brain conditions are not only diagnosed, but supported and treated throughout the lives of those people. Our country is one of the most advanced in the world when it comes to these issues, but there is still a huge amount to do.
My successor as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, the late, great Dame Cheryl Gillan, will always be remembered as the author of the groundbreaking Autism Act 2009, which was a new departure for health, in that a specific condition was delineated in legislation, much against the initial resistance of the then Government, but the strength of feeling in this place and outside was such that Dame Cheryl thankfully got her way. The autism strategy, which was revised in its latest iteration only in July this year, is the direct result of that important legislation. Twelve years on, I think we can safely say that awareness and diagnosis levels have risen dramatically, but the situation remains stark.
About 1 million people in the United Kingdom are autistic, but they still have some of the worst outcomes in our society. First, the death rates mean that they die on average decades before the rest of us. Secondly, with two in 10 in employment, they have the lowest employment rates of all disability groups. Importantly, and deeply worryingly, disproportionate numbers of autistic people and people with brain conditions end up in mental health detention or, even worse, in our criminal and youth justice systems. They are being locked up by a system that represents barbaric practices from a generation ago. I have certainly found, from my professional and ministerial experience, far too many in our prison system, our young offenders’ institutions and our criminal justice system generally with those conditions.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I know the right hon. and learned Gentleman has had a particular interest in the issue for a number of years, for both personal and other reasons, so I congratulate him on securing this debate. I give an example from Northern Ireland, which to be fair is not the Minister’s responsibility, but shows what is happening: an increase of 148% in the number of children waiting for an assessment for autism and a 687% increase in the number waiting more than a year for an assessment. This is a system where the capacity is nowhere near meeting demand, as I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman has also said. Does he agree that a corresponding increase in funding to get to the root of autism and how best to treat and live with it must be a priority for the Government?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who rightly outlines some of the pressures on the system—the increase in diagnosis, which in many ways is a good thing, and the personnel and capacity issues that cause many of the delays in diagnosis, which are all too familiar a pattern for many families, including those in England, Wales and Scotland.
It is interesting to note that research by, I think, the Northern Ireland Assembly calculated the estimated cost to the country of the failure to deal with autism at a staggering £32 billion. Let us just think about that. What a cost to our country: resources wasted, lives wasted and lives lost as a result of these omissions. It does not have to be like this.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
It is such a shame to see my right hon. and learned Friend not in Government, but such a pleasure to have him on the Back Benches and to be here for his first speech from the Back Benches in what I suspect is a number of years. Seeing that we have a lot of time in tonight’s Adjournment debate, does he, as a former Lord Chancellor, agree that the way we look at people on the autistic spectrum within the secure estate, and the way he is proposing we might look afresh at that, might affect the way we look at the secure estate as a whole—to understand a lot more, and condemn a lot less? We have such a high prison population, many of whom, especially women, should not be in the secure estate. Could this be the issue that causes us to look afresh at our prison system?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In 2020, he and I visited his local prison in Winchester, a prison with many challenges and, there is no doubt about it, a share of the population with a brain condition, sometimes undiagnosed and often an acquired brain injury. Many people who are in for offences of violence have themselves been the subject of violence. Those issues are frankly endemic within the criminal justice system.
That is why, when I was Lord Chancellor, in last year’s sentencing White Paper, I announced a call for evidence on neurodiversity in the system. I was hugely grateful to Charlie Taylor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, and Justin Russell, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation, for leading that independent call for evidence. Charlie Taylor was a public servant who came from the education sector, specifically the special needs sector, had real frontline knowledge and experience of autism and brain conditions and previously ran the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.
The good news is that, thanks to the published results of the call for evidence, the Government committed—I am pleased to say I committed—to training for frontline staff and the upskilling of those staff right across the criminal and youth justice system, as part of a new custody and detention apprenticeship that is being offered and that will be completed by all prison officers. Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is developing a revised policy framework and guidance all about those issues, but in particular about children in custody with those conditions. This work is carrying on. I will develop those points a little further. I know people are anxious to come in.
Robert Buckland
I will let my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) in first before my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill).
Simon Hoare
I echo what our hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) said in that it is a travesty that my right hon. and learned Friend is not speaking still from the Front Bench, but it is a delight to hear him speak this evening.
To go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), what is my right hon. and learned Friend’s assessment of the impact of covid on diagnosis, assessment, the provision of support and the crucial need to link up the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions?
Robert Buckland
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is no doubt that covid has had an impact on backlogs in all parts of the health system, including diagnosis. Having said that, there are significant advantages in the use of remote technology for people with autism and brain conditions. For them, very often the journey to a clinic, hospital or health centre is in itself traumatic and anxiety forming. I see remote technology as a real liberator for many people with autism, so the potential there is immense.
Sadly, the point my hon. Friend makes about the impact of covid is one that, without increased capacity and increased staffing, we will have to wrestle with for a number of years. On the point he makes about joined-up Government, I well remember saying on many occasions to anybody in Government who wished to listen that Justice could not do this on its own. As a downstream Department, it needed Education, Health, the DWP, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and, frankly, all arms of Government to work together to identify some of these problems at the root to prevent them from becoming part of criminal justice, but I will speak more about that in a while.
Sir Robert Neill
My right hon. and learned Friend is making the case most powerfully and demonstrating, as other hon. Members have said, why it is a tragedy that he is not still on the Front Bench.
I welcome the very significant initiative that my right hon. and learned Friend made in relation to this when he was the Secretary of State—something that, as he will know, the Justice Committee warmly welcomed. Does he agree that it is very important now that we maintain the momentum for this, and in particular that the moneys available to the Ministry of Justice in the spending review are put into important areas of this system that for too long, until his work, were overlooked?
Robert Buckland
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee. It was encouraging to see that the revenue settlement for the Ministry of Justice over the next three years was a pretty good one, with a just over 4% increase year on year. Obviously, it is now going to be for Ministers, in their allocation process, to work out precisely what they want to spend within that envelope. I very much hope that the announcements we made as a result of the call for evidence—published as part of the autism strategy document in late July, which I cleared together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health—will be followed through on.
More than that, it became increasingly clear to me, as I read the response to the call for evidence and as I followed the debate, that screening people coming into the criminal justice system and the prison system is an essential prerequisite of understanding the best way to handle them. I think a screening process for brain condition would reveal acquired brain injuries. It might reveal an undiagnosed condition—maybe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia even. Let us do that at this stage and work out what is going on in people’s minds, so that we can not just better manage them, but actually help them along the path of rehabilitation.
Do you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that my worry is that, time and again—not just in the prison system, but in the probation service—regimes are set up and orders are made with the best of intentions, and the people with these conditions are set up to fail, because they are not able actually to access, understand or compute that in a way that perhaps neurotypical people can? That is not their fault; it is a fact of who they are and what they are. That is why we need to change the approach that we take. I do not want to see people set up to fail. I certainly do not want excuses for criminal behaviour, but I do want smart answers on ways in which we can meaningfully rehabilitate people. I have seen it happening. In Parc prison—a private prison, I have to say to those on the Labour Benches—in south Wales I was awestruck by the work being done on the neurodiversity wing. Prison officers trained in the right skills were working with some of the most difficult and complex prisoners in that estate and achieving results that might not to the naked eye look terribly remarkable but which, by the measure of the people they were dealing with, were extraordinary. We need to replicate that sort of work, which is being done in one corner of the estate, across the entire prison estate.
The wider debate is all about replicating the best practice we see across Government and local government, and across private enterprise and business as well, because I do not want this debate to be just about what the Government can do—me with my metaphorical hand out, saying, “More money please.” This is about society realising that if we are going to crack the issue and make a difference, we need carefully targeted research into what works.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend back to the Back Benches. I am sure we will be hearing more from him over the coming weeks and months. Does he agree that as well as research, on which I agree entirely, societal support is needed? Organisations such as the Caxton Youth Organisation, a brilliant youth club in my constituency for children and young people with autism and learning difficulties, can play their part in supporting young people with autism. Society and Government also have a part to play because this is about us all working together to support these young people.
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend is right. Drawing on her local government experience and having been directly responsible for many of these services she encapsulates the best practice we see in many local areas. The trouble is that we do not see it everywhere and there is, to use the dreaded phrase, a postcode lottery, which is just not good enough for so many families across our country.
I see where we are now as a moment to make a choice. There is a golden opportunity for Government and indeed for society, and I deliberately wanted to include neurodiversity in this debate because I believe it is hugely important. Diagnostic descriptions are vital for many families. Speaking from my own experience, they open a door to statutory services and obligations—statements, as we used to call them, or education, health and care plans as they became under the Children and Families Act 2014. However, the system is in danger of becoming a prisoner of that process. In the natural concern that public authorities have to conserve resources there is a danger that we start to become overly obsessed with labels and then find that if somebody is not labelled there is, to mix my metaphors, a cliff edge and nothing for the person who does not happen to get through the door marked “autism”.
Let us think about that for a moment—think about how wrong that is in terms of the lives we are dealing with. No one person just presents as autistic; they might have a range of conditions and challenges including, for example, epilepsy, which, sadly, is a very common comorbid condition with autism. There are also other conditions that might fall short of autism but if undiagnosed the consequences can be baleful, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and other types of impairment that mean that people cannot access education, for example, in the way that neurotypical people can. These conditions might not be seen as acute compared with some other conditions that are diagnosed but can lead to disaster for the individual if they are not diagnosed.
School exclusion—I see the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) in her place—is the most obvious consequence. That is a particular issue, and the disengagement with the system that it can lead to all too often leads to a descent into criminality, which, frankly, then brings us back to the criminal justice outcomes that I have been wrestling with all my professional life and in my ministerial incarnation. In devising the right type of support, we need to try to put the process in its proper context. We must remember that this is about the person and centre something on the individual and their needs.
I am delighted after many years to renew my association with Autistica, our country’s leading autism research organisation. Today, by happy coincidence, it published an excellent support plan on autism. Having read it very carefully, I think it is groundbreaking. It is targeted, and it tries to move the debate in a direction in which I think all of us, including the families and those who have autism, would like to see it go. That contribution follows from the Government’s own commitment, in the revised autism strategy published at the end of July, to improve autism research, to improve innovation and to look for examples of best practice.
As we near a very important moment in the life of our country, with the Department’s publication later this year of the long-awaited White Paper on social care, Autistica has identified a gap in research—and guess where the gap is, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is in social care. We have learned so much about genetics and about the causes or the reasons for autism. That has been incredibly important in understanding that this is a condition, not an illness or a disease, and that there is no cure, and in moving away from all that redundant language and understanding the condition for what it is—and celebrating it too, by the way. We do not do enough of that. We tend to view it as some sort of wicked problem. For many people, it is actually their life; it is who they want to be and how they want to be recognised. We must never forget that.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend is making a powerful speech, and it is good to have him free to contribute in this way. Does he agree that, in so far as there are problems, they can be in people’s responses to those with autism, and that if people were to respond in a better informed and more generous way, then such problems as exist today may not be there in the future?
Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no doubt that an inappropriate response, or a response, however well intentioned, that results from a lack of evidence or a lack of understanding, can make a bad position much worse for somebody with a condition such as this. Therefore, for me, research is not a luxury or an optional extra; it is essential. If we, as public services, as private enterprise, as business—as an economy that needs a supply of new talent, bearing in mind the announcement today that there are 1.2 million job vacancies in our country—are to really release the potential of people with brain conditions, then this is, to use the phrase, a no-brainer.
Greg Clark
I am grateful for my right hon. and learned Friend’s indulgence—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I did not correct the right hon. Gentleman the first time, but it is essential that he faces the Chair rather than the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), because he cannot be heard if he is speaking to the back of the Chamber. I never understand why, when there is all this space, people want to sit where the occupant of the Chair cannot see them. There must be a reason for it.
Greg Clark
I will address you directly, Madam Deputy Speaker. I accept your ruling on that.
One problem people with autism sometimes face is that, when they come to an age where they are looking for jobs, work experience is increasingly important and some employers are reluctant, based on lack of familiarity and nervousness, to give work experience opportunities to young people with autism and other conditions. Work experience is an essential gateway to employment. Will my right hon. and learned Friend join me in encouraging employers to open up and give work experience opportunities to a wider range of young people?
Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have seen that in other areas, for example mental health, where there has been concerted work, including by excellent organisations such as the Mindful Employer Network in my area, to demystify the issue and remove the stigma. Such work allows employers to understand autistic people, some of whom see the world in ways that you and I could not dream of. Going back to my celebratory point, it is all about the potential of people with neurodiverse conditions and what they have to offer.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on the debate and on his cause. It is incredibly exciting that he has chosen this subject to focus on after his ministerial career—not that it is the end of his ministerial career; I am sure it will carry on—and I just want to stress how important it is that we talk about autism and educate people about it. In my constituency, we had a five-year-old boy who was excluded from school. He was on the path to being diagnosed, but had not quite been diagnosed. His classroom was moved around over half-term and when he came back, he did not understand where anything was. He kicked off and was excluded. The language used in the letter to his mother included strange adjectives—it said that he was being “manipulative”—and other language one would not use about a five-year-old, because his teachers did not understand his condition. Now he is in a good school that does understand and he is thriving. He will have a lot to contribute to society. I just wanted to congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman and say that I am very happy to support what he is doing.
Robert Buckland
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. I think we formed a pact on Sunday night that we would work together cross-party on these issues. There are plenty of others on the Labour Benches—the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) has a similar experience and knowledge of autism—who I know will put their shoulder to the wheel, and that will be incredibly powerful. She has done work on the issue of knife crime. All too often, there is a sad correlation between the isolation of people who might be suffering from anxiety driven by an undiagnosed condition and what I call a cycle of isolation that can often lead to the decision to arm themselves for their own protection. That is an aspect of knife crime—we always think and talk about gangs—that we misunderstand at our peril, so I am grateful to her for taking part in the debate.
I was talking about the golden opportunity we have. We are between the autism strategy as published and the White Paper, which I am waiting for with relish. The Prime Minister knows that that is another issue I will be pressing him and the Government on in the next few months. Many of us identify social care as an issue not just for older people, important though that this, but for adults with disabilities who need lifelong support. They must be part of the mix. More than half of local government expenditure is on adults with disabilities. If we do not pay regard to that in the plan, we are failing. Although I supported and am happy to support difficult decisions on national insurance and on funding issues, we have to make sure that the system that we are funding is well evidenced, produces the outcomes that we all want to see and has an element of accountability that, at the moment, is lacking. People talk about the black hole of health and social care funding. With respect to everybody concerned with that, that is what it feels like to us on the outside, and we have to change. That is why research on care will be so important.
Steve Brine
I am so pleased that my right hon. and learned Friend made the point that social care is not just about older people. That is so important. What he is actually talking about—who knew that the Back Benchers and Front Benchers were so joined up?—is levelling up. He is talking about realising the potential of everybody in our country. It is not that autism is therefore a condition to be managed and kept in its box, as we seek to minimise the damage, but that we want people to achieve their potential, and if everybody can achieve their potential, that is just levelling up really, is it not?
Robert Buckland
I could not have put it better myself. Levelling up is about people and communities, not things. Things are important and they deliver us levelling up, but levelling up is about people. That is why the Government have to show seriousness of purpose. I am with the Government on these things—I helped to author a lot of the documents on which they will be held to account. This matters, but if we do not focus on people, we are not going to level up. That is the point that my hon. Friend made so well.
I commend the Autistica report to hon. Members, but if I may crave the indulgence of the House for a little longer, I want to outline what Autistica suggests the key stages of support should be that will make a real difference. First, the report made the important point that support for autistic families around and shortly after the time that they receive a diagnosis has to be improved, because it is big news for families. It is a big moment when they get that diagnosis. I remember now the mixture between relief that the system is listening and deep sadness, grief and anger, and all the emotions that someone goes through as a result. These are big moments for families. It sounds axiomatic, but this does not happen, because we do not empower all families of people with autism to understand the diagnosis and to come to terms with what it means for them. This is a moment when services have an opportunity to get to know these families better and to ensure that their personal profile, which should be done, is really understood.
Simon Hoare
Does my right hon. and learned Friend share my concern that, very often, as with so many of these things, the children of the—let me use this phrase—“sharp-elbowed middle classes” seem to get a disproportionate amount of attention, care and support and those who are often least comfortable with officialdom and challenging professionals and asking questions usually get the smaller section of the pie? Quite a lot of work needs to be done on that to ensure that we have that uniformity of levelling up.
Robert Buckland
Again, that is a really important point. I do not make any criticism of the sharp-elbowed middle classes; these people are doing what they think is right for their children. I have been there and I make no apology for it, but among all those dedicated, wonderful, loving parents and carers, there are many families who do not have that wherewithal, and they often come to our surgeries and offices for help. We are the last port of call and, very often, we can make a difference. Looking back on the plethora of cases that I have dealt with, I am probably most proud—I know that hon. Members will share this feeling—of bumping into families years later and being told, “You helped our son. He has just finished his education and is going to go off and pursue a skill. If you hadn’t intervened six years ago, I don’t know where we’d be.” That is wonderful, but it should not be necessary: that is the big message that I want to convey today.
Rather than just stand here and make a general cri de coeur, my aim is to look at the bigger picture. Individual cases such as the one that the hon. Member for Croydon Central mentioned are symptoms of the problem, but it is all about dealing with the challenge itself. Documents such as the Autistica plan really help to tie the threads together and give us a blueprint that the Government, working with the private and charitable sectors, can run with.
I mentioned support around diagnosis. The document has some very interesting proposals for pilots and initiatives relating to how we can improve what is referred to as the diagnostic pathway. At the moment, there is a lot of ambiguity about precisely what is offered and what works, but the time of diagnosis is not a time for ambiguity. It is no good making educated guesses at that point; we want to know with certainty what pathways work. Families embarking on this new journey need that certainty, so I strongly commend to the Minister the document’s recommendations, particularly in relation to the work of the National Institute for Health Research.
As stage one, we need a framework that can be applied nationally, rather than relying on purely local initiative. Stage two, as the document describes it, is preparing for the future: after diagnosis, what systems do we have to match the needs of people with autism and brain conditions with the right therapies and services? We need to make those connections better; we need to connect people to safe practical advice, particularly from people who have been through the system. Peer-to-peer support works in so many contexts, and particularly in this one.
What we and Autistica are asking for is not a finger in the air, but evidence-led systems. It is no good just saying that the needs of autistic people are diverse. They are diverse, believe me: when you have met one person with autism, you have met one person with autism. They are all wonderfully unique, in my experience, but that should not be an excuse to say, “We’ll let a million flowers bloom and see complete diversity.” We need less of an unguided mêlée and much more of a framework—a mechanism by which, with evidence, we can ensure better support for people as they prepare for life and work out the pathway.
Finally, the third element of the report is meeting in a realistic and feasible way—we are not trying to create something totally out of this world—the evolving, ever-changing needs of people with autism. That is particularly important at the transitions, be they from primary to secondary, from secondary to tertiary, or from tertiary out of education. Age 25 is a big time for people who have an education and healthcare plan, because it is the moment when it stops—and what’s next? All such transitions can feed anxieties that if left unchecked can develop into a co-morbid mental health problem, with the concomitant waste that I spoke about at the beginning of my speech.
The truth is that the needs of people with autism and their families fluctuate and change. Instead of inviting crisis, let us plan for it and avert it. The support that the report envisages is all about services that will be there if things start to get a bit heavy, but that can be light-touch in other circumstances. The suggestions about nurturing expertise in the NHS and social care with hubs of expertise to deliver specialised services seem the most sensible way of developing those service models.
This is going to take investment, but, as I have said, I do not believe that it should begin and end with Government, which, hopefully, is good news for my hon. Friend the Minister. If she has had a chance to see the report that I mentioned—it was published only today, but I know that her officials will be familiar with it, because Autistica works very well with the Department, and I commend those officials for working with it so constructively—she will know that it sets out a costed programme, in which Autistica itself declares it will invest, or partner, to the tune of nearly £16 million. That is money from the third sector, but we ask the Government to step up, because the total cost of the projects that Autistica envisages in its list is just over £65 million. All those projects are designed to improve the evidence base and hence to improve the way in which we can deal with each of those three stages, and I warmly commend them to my hon. Friend.
What, finally, is the context in which we should work? I have talked—at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious—about the need for Government Departments to come together: the Department for Work and Pensions on employment, the Department for Education on exclusions, the Minister’s own Department on diagnostics and care, and my former Department on criminal justice. As I have said, however, this will require an effort from all sections of society, and the private sector must step up as well.
It is in businesses’ interest to get this right, if they are to unleash the talent of autistic people not just because it is good, but because it is damn sensible. It is to that sort of enlightened self-interest in the wider community that I want, through the House, to appeal tonight. I think that the offer of finance from Autistica is significant, although I want to see it scaled up. I think that the work we need to do outside this place to harness philanthropy and the support of the private sector could start to bring us much closer to the levels of research investment that we see in, for example, the United States, which, although it does not enjoy the wonderful national health service that we have in our country, is very far ahead of what we are doing here in terms of research investment.
If we are to succeed, that partnership between the third sector, the private sector and the public sector will be essential. The quid pro quo for Government is that our wonderful officials must remember that they do not have a monopoly on wisdom. I have sat in the Minister’s seat and worked with officials and worked well with them, but sometimes there is an institutional reluctance to go outside the tent because of fears about control, whatever form it may take, and, inevitably, about accountability. We must overcome that, because Government alone will not be able to crack this.
The last two years have, in many ways, opened our eyes to the potential that Government can offer. Government-led support and declarations of Government funding meant that we were able to create a vaccine manufacturing capacity virtually from scratch. I am about to see 250 jobs come to Swindon—jobs that would not have existed a few years ago, without the terrible crisis that we have all had to live through. The Government rose to the challenge, and I was proud to see them do so, underwriting, in effect, many of these initiatives.
We heard words such as “moonshot”, did we not? We heard about the Government’s big ambition to deal with the threat posed by the pandemic, and rightly so. Let us remember that. Let us bottle it and use it here. Let us have our autism moonshot; let us have our neurodiversity moonshot. Let use the power of Government—its convening power—to kick-start this research, and to lead our society in the improvement of research. Through the gathering of that evidence and Autistica’s work, we can reach some of Autistica’s 2030 goals. Its realisable ambitions for 2030 include: halving the employment gap for people with autism; services truly centred around the person with autism; proven support from day one; public spaces being more accessible for neurodivergent people; tailored health checks for people with neurodivergence; and, yes, screening at an early age, whether in the health system or the education system. That is a wider application of the principle that I wanted to see in our criminal justice system.
This could be a decade of achievement. It is up to all of us and the Government to make it happen.
The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) for securing this important debate on funding for autism and neurodiversity research and for such a wonderful, heartfelt speech. It is truly my honour to respond. I commend him on the incredible work that he has done throughout his career to improve the lives of the nearly 560,000 autistic people and about 5 million neurodivergent people across the country. In his previous roles as Lord Chancellor and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, he has been instrumental in driving improved awareness and understanding of autism across Government.
We know that too many autistic people and neurodivergent people more generally are ending up in the criminal justice system and that much more needs to be done to improve people’s experiences. The review that my right hon. and learned Friend commissioned as Lord Chancellor in 2020 looked at this important issue and, as a direct result of his contribution, I expect our newly published national autism strategy will make a big difference to the lives of autistic and neurodivergent people who come into contact with the criminal and youth justice systems. We know that the strategy needs to improve autistic people’s lives. It was informed by a national call for evidence and incorporated the views of more than 2,700 autistic people, their families and carers. It is underpinned by an implementation plan for year one—that is 2021-22—and backed by over £74 million for the first year alone. It sets out our vision for what we want autistic people’s lives to be like by 2026. Over the next five years, we will improve understanding in society, reduce diagnosis waiting times and improve access to high quality health and social care for autistic people.
My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned social care, and that will be a key part of the White Paper along with the social care needs of working-age adults. We will also publish further implementation plans for year two and beyond that will build on our actions this year. They will set out how we will drive improvements across health and care, employment, education and the criminal justice system.
We have made important strides across England in the last decade since the introduction of the landmark Autism Act 2009. I pay tribute to our friend Dame Cheryl Gillan for all her work in this area. The Act includes improvements in public awareness of autism and the availability of diagnostic services. To date, we remain one of the only countries in the world to have such legislation—I know that we are proud of that—but we know that we still need to do more to ensure that autistic people have equal access to services across their lives.
One of the biggest challenges that we face is, as my right hon. and learned Friend outlined, gaps in our evidence about what services and support work best for autistic people. I saw the real-life impact of that recently when I was interviewed by an impressive young woman called Immie. She told me about her struggle and how long it took her to get diagnosed with autism as well as the struggles faced by women and girls in getting the right support due to under-diagnosis. While we know that that is an issue and are taking action to address it, we need better evidence about the effects of masking and under-diagnosis of autism for women and girls.
When I was the Apprenticeships and Skills Minister, I met many young autistic people who told me they struggled to find and get into work. Recently, at the start of UK Parliament Week, I visited Littlegreen Academy in my constituency, which specialises in providing education to boys aged seven to 16 with autism. Pretty much every single one of them asked whether I would help them to get some work experience, to help them get on the ladder towards employment. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), I took that as my action from the meeting.
Through our new autism strategy we are strengthening and promoting pathways to employment, such as supported internships, traineeships and apprenticeships, but to make further headway on closing the unacceptable autism employment gap we need to better understand the barriers to employment and the other barriers faced by people with autism.
We know that we have not reduced fast enough the number of people with an autism diagnosis in in-patient care, which is important, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon said. There are many reasons for that number, but a main reason is that people are being diagnosed as autistic after they are admitted. We need to make sure the number of autistic people in such settings is reduced, as in many cases they are not the right settings. We set up a delivery board across Government and across system partners to make sure we monitor progress, identify blockers and propose actions so that people are better supported in their community, not in inappropriate in-patient care.
Many hon. Members mentioned the lack of understanding, and it is so important that we have more general understanding. I am sure many hon. Members remember the autism training that MPs and their offices received, again at the behest of Dame Cheryl Gillan, who pushed and encouraged us all to do that. I certainly learned a lot.
As set out in the “Right to be heard” publication in 2019, we are also trialling the Oliver McGowan mandatory training in learning disability and autism for all health and social care staff, backed by £1.4 million of funding. The trials are under way, and three providers are currently delivering the training. Hundreds of staff have already been trained. There will be a final evaluation report, which is due in the spring, and the outcomes will inform the wider roll-out of the Oliver McGowan mandatory training. We are working with his parents, Paula and Tom, to introduce the training.
As part of our new autism strategy, we will publish a cross-Government research action plan that lays out the steps we will take to improve and embed a culture of autism research by 2026. We know that we need a strategic approach to ensure that areas currently receiving less research investment, such as care and support—my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned the postcode lottery—are prioritised in future. We also need to make sure we are prioritising the right areas for research and that the research delivers the right change.
We will work with autistic people and their families, the research and voluntary sectors and NHS England to carry out this research action plan, which will ensure that we are building on the important work already happening in autism research. For example, we have already provided £81 million for autism and neurodiversity research in the past five years, which includes funding for a study on the impact of covid-19 on autistic people, a project to improve the accuracy of adult autism assessments and a systematic review to understand what mental health support works for autistic people.
In addition, we were delighted to announce this year a three-year partnership between the National Institute for Health Research and the UK’s leading autism research charity Autistica—which my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned—to fund research into the social care that works for autistic people. The partnership will encourage and support more research applications in this important subject area and we encourage many people to make such applications. I am glad we have had the opportunity today to hear about Autistica’s fantastic work and to welcome its new support plan. I am due to meet Autistica next week—that gives me some time to read the report—and I look forward to working with it on the development of our research action plan to transform the autism research funding landscape over the next few years.
I again thank my right hon. and learned Friend for securing this important debate and all Members for their contributions. I recognise that we must ensure that the actions we take to support and improve the lives of autistic people and their families are grounded in evidence. Through our new autism strategy and research action plan, we will level up support for autistic people throughout the country. I look forward to working with my right hon. and learned Friend and other Members to make that happen.
Question put and agreed to.