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Oral Answers to Questions
(3 years ago)
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Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
The Government’s priority is to keep goods moving and avoid delays at the border. To ensure that, we have set up a new Cabinet Committee on logistics to deal with supply chain issues. I recognise that the new customs controls come in on 1 January. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is supporting traders and hauliers to adjust to their new obligations following the end of the transition period.
Chris Elmore
I am glad that the Minister is setting up a Cabinet Committee—that is lovely—but let me tell her what is impacting people on the ground. Daniel Lambert Wines, an importer in my constituency, for example, has gone from taking seven to nine days to import wine from the EU to 12 weeks. That is really not acceptable. The national Food and Drink Federation says that it is causing huge problems for the supply chains when it comes to bringing wine into the UK, and Christmas is one of the biggest periods for purchasing. Can the Minister set out what she will do to start tackling the issues around the delays in importing wine, so that everyone can have a sensible tipple over the Christmas period?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Member will know that it is important to have committees to work across Government, because the supply chain issues affect all Departments. He will know of some of the actions that we have taken—30 actions to tackle HGV issues to increase efficiency in the supply chain. We have temporarily extended drivers’ hours, relaxed late-night delivery restrictions, and deployed the Ministry of Defence’s driving examiners to increase HGV testing capacity. Yesterday, the policy director of Logistics UK said that she saw a number of signs of improvement.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend and HMRC are working very hard to ensure that the changes to the import processes coming in on 1 January run smoothly and do not result in lots of additional friction at the border. However, the Federation of Small Businesses has estimated that just one in four smaller companies is actually prepared for the changes that are about to happen. Is she aware of that particular issue? If she is, what action is she taking in the short time that remains?
Lucy Frazer
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government and HMRC have taken significant action to ensure that hauliers and carriers are ready. HMRC has weekly meetings with strategic operators. It has conducted webinars for well over 1,000 haulage businesses and it sends monthly emails to more than 14,000 hauliers on the next steps. I appreciate that it might be that big businesses are more ready than small businesses, but we have done work there as well. I am very pleased to have met the Federation of Small Businesses about two weeks ago to discuss these issues.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
I am pleased to say that the distribution analysis published in the Budget showed that the actions of this Government since 2019, over this Parliament, will benefit those on the lowest incomes the most. Income inequality is also lower than it was in 2010, and we on the Conservative Benches know that the best way to reduce inequality is to get people into fantastic, well-paid jobs, which is exactly what we are doing.
Rachel Hopkins
Income inequality in the UK has barely changed over the past 10 years, so how can it possibly be fair to ask working people to pay even more tax through the national insurance increase next year, while the Government are also giving away a £4 billion tax cut for banks’ profits through cutting the banks’ surcharge from 2023? Will the Chancellor set out the combined impact of those two decisions on inequality?
Rishi Sunak
Income inequality on the last published statistics is lower than it was in 2010. There are also fewer people living in absolute poverty. With regard to national insurance, we took a decision to fund the NHS in a progressive manner to clear the backlog and usher in reforms to the social care system that will benefit everyone in this country. As for banks, I am not sure whether the hon. Lady has seen that the rate of corporation tax that banks will pay is going up from 27% to 28% while the rest of the UK corporate base will pay 25%. It is right that the banks pay a fair contribution to our coffers, but we should also recognise that financial services is a fantastic UK asset that employs 1 million people, two thirds of whom are outside of London and the south-east.
Kate Osamor
Although discussions about regional inequality between the north and south in the UK are important, this must not be reduced to a simple and misleading binary. My area of Edmonton, north London, has an unemployment rate of 9.7%, almost double the national average. Will the Chancellor assure the House that he will provide the investment that London needs, starting by providing the funding that Transport for London requires to maintain its services, particularly the bus services, on which lower-income Londoners are disproportionately reliant and which face 20% reductions without support?
Rishi Sunak
If Londoners are worrying about the state of their transport system and who is responsible for it, I think we all know, and those problems were there before coronavirus. What we are responsible for is making sure that people have access to high-quality work, and I reassure the hon. Lady that we are investing in our plan for jobs right across the country. I have visited jobcentres in London. We are helping to get people into work and helping them to get the skills they need. I hope that I can work with her local area to bring that unemployment rate down.
Dr Huq
Covid has accelerated the decline of bank branches, so Acton now has none and no cashpoints, because our post office has gone. The resultant cashless society has hit constituents hard, from the chap who came to see me who has come a cropper because of Trump’s sanctions regime—he has had all his accounts frozen—to my son and his pals who cannot get a hot snack after school without plastic, to businesses that want to bank their takings. Will the Chancellor urgently look into this gross economic inequality that is hitting so many of the constituents of all of us?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady makes a fair point; the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is doing work on exactly that issue. The Government have committed to bringing forward legislation, if required, on access to cash, but I would be very happy to look into the specific circumstances of her constituent. If she writes to me, we will do that.
Richard Burgon
As ever, the Chancellor’s warm words do not match the reality faced by so many people across the country. Take disabled people, for example—[Interruption.] Rather than groaning, will hon. Members please listen? Disabled people have been disproportionately attacked by Tory Governments over the past decade through austerity, cuts to benefits and, most recently, a cruel lack of support during covid. Nearly 2 million disabled people were not given the £20 uplift in benefits, including thousands of households in my seat of Leeds East. Every December, we mark the United Nations International Day of People with Disabilities, so if the Government are genuinely interested in tackling economic inequality, will they—[Interruption.] It is not funny, grow up. Will the Government backdate the payments to disabled people and others on so-called legacy benefits who have been left out and let down over the past 18 months? Disabled people deserve to be treated better.
Rishi Sunak
I am enormously proud of the Government’s commitment to those who are disabled. We looked after them during the crisis and we continue to support them. We recently announced £500 million for the disabled facilities grant, more investment in the Department for Work and Pensions to help close the disability employment gap and—this is something I am personally proud of—investment in Changing Places, which means that those with disabled children or adults will have access to the high-quality facilities that they need to enjoy days out with their family. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I and the Government are committed to helping all those who need our help, and we will continue to deliver on that promise.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
There is currently huge inequality between the taxation of businesses online and those of bricks and mortar. I thank the Chancellor for the support that he has given to the high street during the pandemic through business rate relief. However, as I know that he believes in low taxes, I ask him: when will business rates be modernised so that we can get an even playing field for online and high street businesses, which is very important to the Blue Collar Conservative group?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend has rightly campaigned on this issue and she raises an excellent point. The good news on business rates is that, next year, thanks to the tax cut that we announced in the Budget, 90% of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses will see at least a 50% cut in their business rates bill. That is worth £1.7 billion; it is the biggest business rates tax cut since the system was created, other than during coronavirus. On her point about offline and online, she will know that we have helped to bring in an international tax treaty to tax large multinational digital companies, and we continue to consult on the pros and cons of an online sales tax.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways in which we can reduce inequality is by ensuring that young people are equipped with the skills that they need to succeed, wherever they live? That is why the additional £126 million of funding for work placements and training is so important for young people in Grantham and Stamford.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I know that he is a staunch supporter of skills and getting young people into work in his constituency. He mentions traineeships, which are fantastic initiatives with a 75% success rate in helping young people and a great example of our plan for jobs in action, spreading opportunity right across the country.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Boosting the minimum wage, reducing the universal credit taper rate and increasing the work allowance will make a tremendous difference to the real-world choices of people living and struggling on low incomes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, along with those Budget measures, the fact that we now have a record number of job vacancies means that we have a tremendous opportunity as a nation to really bear down on long-term unemployment and reduce economic inactivity, especially among the most disadvantaged groups?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend obviously speaks with authority on the topic; I am grateful for his support and engagement on these matters over the past year and a half. He is absolutely right: thanks to the actions of this Government’s plan for jobs, unemployment has now been falling for nine months in a row, record numbers of people are in work and wages are rising. As my right hon. Friend says, that is the best way to help people. That is what this Government are doing.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
My Ynys Môn island constituency has one of the lowest gross value added levels in the UK and is in desperate need of investment to reverse that inequality. Can the Chancellor confirm that the match funding announced in the nuclear sector deal is in place for the proposed thermal hydraulic testing facility on Anglesey?
Rishi Sunak
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for not treading on the toes of the Business Secretary, but what she will know is that we allocated £120 million for future nuclear development in the Budget and spending review. I know that the subject is of keen interest to her and that she has long campaigned on it in her area. I am happy to support her in her conversations with the Business Secretary as he decides how to allocate that funding.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
It takes some doing to come up with an inheritance tax aimed at people in the lowest-value properties, but that is exactly what the Chancellor and the Conservatives have done in the way they have designed the social care cap. Even the original author of the policy, Sir Andrew Dilnot, has said that the changes that the Government have made mean that
“the less well off will not gain any benefit from the cap.”
When it comes to tax, we should look at what the Government do, not what they say or the newspapers they brief. Why is the Chancellor imposing a tax rise on almost everyone to pay for a policy that will hurt those with the lowest-value properties in the country?
Rishi Sunak
Our social care reforms will benefit millions of people up and down the country, because they will remove the anxiety that the entirety of their assets will be swamped by ever-escalating social care costs, but that is not all they do. It is important to recognise that they also invest in the social care workforce—half a billion pounds over the next few years to upskill, train and provide development for the social care workforce, which will benefit all of us. Critically, they will also help us to tackle the social care and elective backlog that has built up. I am sure that everyone in this House will want to see that. The waiting lists were scheduled to get to unprecedented levels; we wanted to tackle that, and that is what this funding will do.
Mr McFadden
Families are heading into the winter facing a cost of living crisis with rising prices and the Chancellor’s tax rises on the way. Last week, the Bank of England produced even lower growth forecasts than the Office for Budget Responsibility did at the time of the Budget, and now the Bank is forecasting that inflation will rise above 5% next year. Why does the Chancellor think that the Conservatives have produced such low levels of economic growth over the past 10 years? Has this lost decade of low growth not led directly to the cost-of-living crisis, the high taxes and the inequality that people are facing today?
Rishi Sunak
Forgive me, Mr Speaker; I should have welcomed the right hon. Gentleman to his new position. I look forward to working with him in his new role.
With regard to the winter and energy prices, of course many people are anxious about inflation. It is something that we are grappling with. What I will say to people is that we have put in place multiple interventions to help with those costs, notably the household support fund—half a billion pounds to help millions of our most vulnerable. That comes on top of our existing support, whether it is for pensioners or for those on lower incomes, to help with energy bills that were already in place. This Government remain committed to helping people with the cost of living. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will continue to look at the situation carefully.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Regional mutual banks are a feature of all the other G7 economies, which have much lower levels of regional inequality. They are key to the provision of small and medium-sized enterprise finance. We have a number around the UK that are ready to go, led by experienced professionals; all they need is some pump-prime funding. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me to discuss this very exciting policy area?
Rishi Sunak
I am always delighted to meet my hon. Friend and neighbour, and if we could do that in north Yorkshire, it would be fantastic. He is right—as he always is—to champion the need for small and medium-sized enterprises to have access to the finance that they need, and if he has come up with yet another idea to ensure that that happens, I should be delighted to learn more.
Mr Speaker
I call the Scottish National party spokesperson, Alison Thewliss.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Chancellor likes to talk a good game on the universal credit taper rate and his pretendy living wage, but that only benefits those who are lucky enough to be in work and ignores many people who are disabled, carers or out of work, and those who are still on legacy benefits. Why has he abandoned and forgotten that group when they face a cost-of-living crisis this winter which will often affect them more than the rest of the population?
Rishi Sunak
It is simply not right to say that we have forgotten anyone. We remain committed to supporting all the most vulnerable in our society. I have mentioned previously the various different mechanisms that we have to help people with energy bills, and indeed the recent increase in the local housing allowance.
The hon. Lady says that we talk a good game. Those of us on the Government Benches believe fundamentally in the power and ability of work to transform people’s lives. We want to make sure that people have great jobs, and we want to make sure that those jobs are well paid. The cut in the universal credit taper rate will ensure that there is a £2.2 billion tax cut for those on the lowest incomes, and we are insanely proud of that.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
Through our plan for jobs, more than 100,000 young people have started kickstart jobs, including more than 9,300 in the west midlands, but that is not all that we have done. The spending review provides for investment of £1.6 billion in high-quality education, £554 million in the national skills fund, £2.7 billion in apprenticeships, and £60 million in the youth offer to help young jobseekers find lasting work.
Saqib Bhatti
Last month when I presented awards at the Crimson Academy apprenticeship awards event, I met some incredibly talented apprentices who were raring to go and get into the world of work. Will my right hon. and learned Friend join me in congratulating them, and will she confirm that apprenticeships are a great way for young people to obtain high-skilled jobs that can help to bridge the UK skills gap?
Lucy Frazer
I do of course join my hon. Friend in congratulating those apprentices. The Government are continuing to invest in high-quality technical education and to reform the skills system so that it is employer-led, to give young people the right skills and training to enable them to succeed in life. More than 100,000 apprentices have been hired under our new incentive payment scheme, 75% of whom were under 25. Skills boot camps are upskilling people into high-growth sectors, including the digital sector.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
To help ourselves achieve net zero and improve UK air quality, we are reducing the entitlement to use red diesel, which currently enjoys a duty discount, from next April. The full duty rate more fairly reflects the damaging impact of diesel emissions, and will incentivise the development of greener alternatives.
Carla Lockhart
In my constituency and across Northern Ireland, small family-run construction companies and those operating on a larger scale are telling me that this move will cripple their profitability, and that alongside the significant increase in the cost of materials in the last year, it will make their operation even more challenging. Will the Chancellor and the Minister agree to meet industry representatives to hear about the real-life impact, and to explore how it can be addressed and how jobs and profitability in Northern Ireland can be protected?
Helen Whately
We recognise that this is a significant change for some businesses, but we have consulted on it since it was first announced in 2020. Those whom we have consulted include representatives of the construction sector and representatives from Northern Ireland, and the case simply is not compelling in comparison with the importance of reducing our harmful emissions. Red diesel leads to 14 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, and we need to incentivise greener alternatives as part of our transition to net zero.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I fully support the Government’s push towards net zero. Drainage boards do vital work to protect people, businesses and livelihoods from flood risk. Does the Minister agree that as they come to set their budgets it is vital that the Government provide assurance that their work will not be affected by changes to red diesel duty?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is right to say that drainage boards do really important work. The fact is that the public sector, as well as the private sector, needs to decarbonise. In fact, in a low-lying constituency where there is a great awareness of flooding and climate change it is probably even more important, and I am sure his constituents appreciate the importance of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. I know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working with the Association of Drainage Authorities on the point that he makes.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
Previous receipt of covid-19 support should not, in and of itself be a barrier to credit provided that the applicant meets the lender eligibility criteria. It remains important that lenders carry out checks to ensure that they do not lend to individuals in an unaffordable way.
Mr Perkins
I take the Minister’s point and I agree with what he is saying, but that is not the reality of what people are finding in my constituency. Business owners as diverse as a music teacher, a house renovator and an airport taxi driver have been told that the reason they cannot get a mortgage or other credit arrangements is that they have availed themselves of the Government’s schemes. Their businesses are up and running, and it is concerning if no assessment has been performed. Will the Minister get in touch with people at the high street banks and prevail upon them to ensure that businesses with a sustainable track record that simply used those schemes are not penalised for that reason?
John Glen
The Government have worked with the Financial Conduct Authority and we will continue to work with it and with credit agencies to ensure that those payment holidays have no impact on borrowers’ credit ratings. However, the checks that banks and financial institutions undertake need to reflect changes to individuals’ income. We do not seek to involve ourselves in commercial decisions. The mortgage lending rates to the self-employed are in line with those overall for the self-employed, but of course I will continue to work with the banks and financial institutions, and the regulators, to keep the situation under review.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
The Government’s heat and building strategy announced £3.9 billion of funding to decarbonise buildings over the next three years. This included £1.8 billion of support for low income households. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that her constituency was recently allocated £5.2 million to retrofit low-income homes.
Siobhan Baillie
A retrofit strategy also requires established accreditations that customers can trust and training that workers will want to re-skill into. SGS College, the Active Building Centre and others in my patch across Stroud are uniquely placed to create those programmes and certifications for the whole country so that we can implement the Government’s ambitions. Will my hon. Friend be working with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Education to ensure that funding is available for this crucial work?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is absolutely right say that we need to have the right skilled workforce for our transition to net zero, and training is part of that. This year we have provided £6.4 million to help 18 training providers to train around 8,000 people, and our £2.5 billion funding for the national skills fund includes funding for employer-led boot camps. I would be very happy to meet her to discuss the part that SGS College and the Active Building Centre in her constituency could play in making sure that we have the workforce we need for the net zero transition.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
A decade ago we saw the failure of the green new deal, and only recently we have seen the complete and woeful failure of the green homes grant scheme. These were supposed to retrofit homes, create jobs and boost the economy. Will the Treasury work with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to get a grip on this, so that they invest taxpayers’ money in achieving net zero and creating jobs rather than throwing good money after bad?
Helen Whately
The green homes grant and its associated scheme for the Chancellor’s plan for jobs saw £1.75 billion invested in improving more than 100,000 homes. We are now bringing in a more targeted replacement, the home upgrade grant, to support low-income households, and that received £950 million at the spending review. We will continue to support low-income households to ensure that they become more energy efficient, which is good for keeping bills down and an important part of our net zero transition.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
Levelling up is the core mission of this Government. At the autumn Budget we announced the first awards from the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, together with £5.7 billion for transport investment in eight city regions and £3.8 billion for investment in skills over this Parliament. Our levelling up White Paper will be published in January.
Jason McCartney
I know the passion of the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary for levelling up, and I welcome the creation of a Treasury campus in the north-east. When the Treasury next relocates, may I encourage my right hon. Friends to look at Huddersfield, Marsden and Slaithwaite in my Colne Valley constituency? They are strategically located on the TransPennine rail route between Leeds and Manchester, and we are set to have millions invested thanks to the integrated rail plan. We have fantastic former mill sites ready for regeneration, and the Chief Secretary and the Chancellor would be welcome to join me on a visit.
Mr Speaker
Be careful how you answer, Chief Secretary. There are two more questions to come.
Mr Clarke
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) for his invitation, and I look forward to being in Darlington at the Treasury’s northern hub this week.
I am glad to hear of my hon. Friend’s support for the wider investment on the TransPennine rail route, which will improve connectivity between Manchester, Leeds and York, including Marsden and Huddersfield, with benefits starting this decade. Diary permitting, I would be delighted to discuss a visit to see that investment in action.
Karl MᶜCartney
Thank you, and happy Christmas to you, Mr Speaker.
Connectivity is critical to levelling up, which is why I have advocated and secured significant infrastructure improvements in Lincoln since 2010. The recent counterproductive 25% cut in Lincolnshire’s highways maintenance grant is not levelling up, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was sitting next to the Prime Minister when I raised this issue at Prime Minister’s questions a fortnight ago.
If the Treasury does not provide the funding to return Lincolnshire’s highways maintenance grant to 2019-20 levels, at the very least, there will be a significant impact on improvements and repairs to the highways network in our county. Will the Chief Secretary agree to return the funding to pre-pandemic levels, or at least to put pressure on our colleagues in the Department for Transport to do so?
Mr Clarke
I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend. The spending review confirmed that local road maintenance funding will be held at 2021-22 levels, which include the £500 million potholes fund committed to in our manifesto for places not receiving city region settlements. This represents a 10% increase on 2019-20 local road maintenance funding, with the exact allocations to be confirmed by the DFT shortly.
Lincolnshire will also benefit from the £2.6 billion committed in the spending review for local road upgrades, including the North Hykeham relief road, as well as more than £5 million from the integrated transport block to spend on small local transport priorities. I am, of course, happy to continue this conversation, but there is significant funding coming and specific allocations are imminent.
Julian Sturdy
My right hon. Friend knows the importance of local rail connections to regional growth in the north. With the publication of the integrated rail plan, will he confirm that the Treasury stands ready to approve full funding for new stations such as Haxby in my constituency, which is ready to go?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend raises an important point. The centrality of good local transport connectivity to regional growth cannot be overstated, which is why we have provided £96 billion for the integrated rail plan, the largest ever Government investment in our rail network.
Last year the Government provided £400,000 to support plans for a new station at Haxby. I understand Network Rail has been working in close partnership with the council to develop that work and, in conjunction with other Ministers, I am happy to make sure the work is supported by both HMT and DFT.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Scottish Commercial Music Industry Taskforce understood that the extra money put into the culture recovery fund in the Budget will produce £40 million of Barnett consequentials for the Scottish Government. To date, the taskforce understands that only £9 million of that money has been released, putting our creative and cultural sector at a significant disadvantage. Will the Chief Secretary tell me today, or perhaps in correspondence, when the Scottish Government will receive the remaining £31 million?
Mr Clarke
The Budget provided the largest ever block grant settlement for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as part of the Barnett consequentials, of which we are very proud. On the right hon. Gentleman’s specific point, I am happy to reply to him in correspondence when I have further detail.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
The western gateway partnership covers a cross-border area with 4.4 million people and brings huge economic potential across south Wales and the south-west, but it is still yet to receive the same level of recognition from the Government as other pan-regional partnerships, such as the northern powerhouse. Will the Government address that and get behind the western gateway?
Mr Clarke
The hon. Lady raises a really important point: the western gateway is a phenomenally important part of our wider UK growth package. I engaged closely with it last year when I was the Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government and I am always happy to support its work. The western gateway has equal standing alongside the northern powerhouse and the midlands engine. I can certainly confirm that I and, indeed, Ministers in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities are always happy to engage substantively with the hon. Lady and with the leadership of local authorities in that area.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
One way to reduce regional inequality is to encourage investment, which creates jobs, generates tax revenue and brings opportunities for supply chains. Does the Minister therefore understand many people’s bewilderment at the fact that the Scottish Government have lobbied for there to be no development in the Cambo oilfield? That will cost 1,000 jobs, lose the revenue from 175 billion barrels of oil, push up oil prices, make us more dependent on foreign supplies and create a chilling environment for investment. Does the Minister agree that the economic madness of the Green tail wagging the SNP dog is going to cost Scotland dearly? What assurances can he give to the oil industry that the UK is a place for investment?
Mr Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the importance of oil and gas to the UK economy and, of course, in particular to Scotland’s economy. My colleagues on the Government Benches would join him in saying it is really important that we support the success of the North sea oil and gas industry into the future. The SNP’s lack of support is a serious disappointment and a serious concern. The Government are committed to supporting the transition to net zero, but that must involve the word “transition”, so that industry will be of importance for decades to come.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I thank the Chief Secretary for what he said in support of the western gateway, but may I draw to his attention the importance of skills to improving regional growth? On Thursday this week, the AccXel construction skills accelerator centre will open in my constituency. It is a partnership, supported last year by Government money that a fantastic private sector business has already turned into the centre that will open this week. It will take students at the beginning of next year and drive construction skills to a high level throughout the south-west of England.
Mr Clarke
Skills are at the heart of our wider work on levelling up, which is why £3.8 billion has been allocated throughout the course of this Parliament to make sure we get the right skills for the right people in the right sectors, so that we can grow the economy in the way that is needed. I warmly commend what is going on in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, because it is precisely that kind of work that will ensure that jobs and growth really level up opportunity throughout the country.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
Our fiscal policies support the Government’s ambition of creating a fairer and more equal society, and women are among those who will benefit the most. For example, women are expected to benefit disproportionately from the Government’s increase to the national living wage to £9.50 for workers aged 23 and above, as well as the rise in the national minimum wage for young people and apprentices.
Hannah Bardell
I am glad you found someone to answer, Mr Speaker.
Some 6,500 women in my Livingston constituency are WASPI women and they are furious. When I recently met them with the Women Against State Pension Inequality co-ordinator Carla O’Hara, there was anger and anxiety and there were many, many tears. Will the Minister tell me and the WASPI women from his constituency and from the constituencies of Members throughout this Chamber whether the
“fresh vigour and new eyes”
that the Prime Minister promised back in July 2019 is still on the table? Or is it, yet again, another broken promise?
Mr Clarke
The Government have always considered this issue, which goes back over the past decade, very carefully. For the purposes of intergenerational fairness and the wider sustainability of our pension settlement into the future, it is vital that that settlement is reflective of longer life expectancy. I am afraid that is the underpinning principle of the Government’s work and we stand resolutely behind it.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
The Government recognise that inflation is rising, and are closely monitoring the situation. The Bank of England is responsible for keeping inflation at its 2% target. As my colleagues mentioned earlier, we are working with international partners to tackle global supply chain disruption, and are taking targeted action worth more than £10 billion over the next five years to help people with the cost of living.
Helen Hayes
As food and energy bills are skyrocketing this winter, far too many of my constituents face the appalling choice between heating their homes and putting food on the table. Will the Minister therefore confirm how much more my constituents on average earnings will be paying in income tax and national insurance from next April, as a result of the Government’s decision to freeze the income tax personal allowance and to increase national insurance contributions?
John Glen
The Government very much recognise the challenge that people are facing, which is why we have introduced a range of interventions, including: the warm home discount; the household support fund, giving £500 million to local authorities to distribute; changes to the taper rate; and an increase in the national living wage. That range of interventions will help with the cost of living challenges, and will help many of the hon. Lady’s constituents.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Is it not the case that the dreadful seeds sown by years of ultra-cheap credit and quantitative easing are now bearing their awful fruit through inflation, the ultimate stealth tax?
John Glen
I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s characterisation of the causal relationship, but I recognise that the Bank of England continues to be responsible for monetary policy. My hon. Friend has always held distinct views that represent a particular school of economists, and I will continue to listen carefully to what he has to say to the House.
Mr Speaker
We now come to the shadow Minister; welcome to the Front Bench, Tulip Siddiq.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
There is a cost of living crisis, temperatures are falling and Ministers are ignoring average households, who are struggling to pay enormous bills. Household energy bills have increased by more than £230 since last winter and are set to increase even more early next year, and we have recently seen higher tax receipts from energy bills. Will the Minister back Labour’s policy of using this money to cut VAT on people’s energy bills to zero over the next six months?
John Glen
I welcome the hon. Lady to the Front Bench. I draw her attention to the answer that I just gave concerning the number of interventions that the Government have made, including the warm home discount and additional support through local authorities. Households in the lowest income decile receive on average more than £4 in public spending for every £1 that they pay in tax. The Government are acutely sensitised to the challenges that we face this winter.
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
The Joint Money Laundering Steering Group guidance helps firms to meet their obligations under the money laundering regulations. Banks should take measures to assess risks presented by pooled client accounts to ensure that the accounts are not abused for criminal purposes.
Kelly Tolhurst
Yacht brokers have been using pooled client accounts for years to protect large sums of their clients’ money, without issue. Changes to the guidance have meant that banks are now closing some of these accounts, putting some of these professional, long-established businesses at risk. Will my hon. Friend meet me, UK Finance, and the Association of Brokers and Yacht Agents, to find a solution quickly? This is an important sector of the economy for some of our coastal communities, such as my constituency.
John Glen
My hon. Friend knows a lot about this matter and the industry, and I take her concerns very seriously. Although the Government will never insist on individual lending decisions and behaviours of banks, we will engage closely. I will meet her, and the Association of Brokers and Yacht Agents, and I will write to UK Finance to ensure that the guidance that is posted is being used effectively in the circumstances that she has raised.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Pandora papers show how overseas shell companies secretly buy up luxury property in the UK. In 2018, the Government published draft legislation for a new register of such entities to crack down on the use of UK property for money laundering. This is a matter of law and order. Ministers promised to deliver that register in 2021, yet for some reason, since the current Prime Minister took office, that commitment seems to have been abandoned. Will the Minister now, four years since the UK anti-corruption strategy was published, finally admit that the promise of delivering a register in 2021 has been broken, and will he give us a firm date by which the register will be in place?
John Glen
I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the financial action taskforce report in December 2018 that gave the UK the best ever evaluation in terms of anti-money laundering. There are two or three areas where we have taken action.
John Glen
The hon. Member keeps asking “Where is the register?” I will answer the question in a moment. What the Government have done is put in an additional £63 million in the last Budget to deal with Companies House reform, which is one of the areas. We have been the world’s leader in terms of common reporting standards. We were the first country, five years ago, to raise the standard in terms of transparency. We will implement that register when legislative time becomes available.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
A month ago, I set out our plan for a stronger economy, protecting and supporting jobs, driving up economic growth and cutting the universal credit taper rate, giving the lower-paid in our society a tax cut worth £2.2 billion.
Christine Jardine
In the 2019 Queen’s Speech, the rationale for reform was set out as being to
“ensure our tax system is supporting Scottish whisky and gin producers and protecting 42,000 jobs”—
including many in my constituency. How would the Chancellor square that with the actual proposals, which will tax domestic producers more than those of imported cava, prosecco and champagne; do not take into account how people consume spirits with mixers, the sugar and calorific content or his own Government’s health policies; and actually increase the competitive disadvantage of an important domestic sector compared with the international one?
Rishi Sunak
Our reforms of the alcohol duty system usher in a system that is simpler, fairer and better for public health. I am not entirely sure that the hon. Lady has got the details right on this. In fact, for Scotch whisky, this is an improvement because we have levelled the playing field for higher-strength drinks, which the Scotch Whisky Association had been calling for. With regard to the differential between domestic and foreign producers, because English sparkling wine is produced to a lower alcohol content naturally than foreign sparkling wine, it will actually, for the first time, enjoy a tax advantage under the new system. Perhaps most relevant immediately, we also froze all alcohol duties—a half-a-billion-pound tax cut for British people this year.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I want to take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to the Mother of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who, in the nearly 40 years that she has been in this place, has done more for the rights and representation of women than anyone else.
At the weekend it was briefed that the Government will set up a star chamber to crack down on waste—which, frankly, has been the hallmark of this Government. Indeed, the Government’s own accounts show that the incompetent way in which the business support schemes were structured meant that the Chancellor has allowed fraudsters to walk away with £6.5 billion of taxpayers’ money. That would be more than enough to cut the basic rate of income tax by a penny in the pound, worth £370 a year to basic rate taxpayers. So can the Chancellor explain why quick electronic checks such as cross-referencing with HMRC tax data were not conducted before money was handed out? Given this huge waste of taxpayers’ money, can the Chancellor confirm that he will be the first witness in front of his own star chamber?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady would usually be on top of the numbers. She will understand that there is a difference between a one-off saving of £6 billon and an annual saving on a tax cut of £6 billion. Those two things are not like-for-like comparable. On the numbers she refers to, I am happy to tell her that in the most recent analysis from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s independent adviser, the estimate of fraud was reduced by a third because of the actions that the Government had taken, which is welcome news. But of course we remain committed to tackling fraud. That is why in the spring Budget we invested an extra £100 million in HMRC, with 1,200 new people to tackle fraud, and they are expected to recover over £2 billion over the next 12 months. With regard to bounce back loans, 55,000 loans worth up to £2 billion were recovered and stopped. We are absolutely committed to tackling fraud wherever we see it.
Rachel Reeves
The Chancellor might be relaxed about handing out £6.5 billion, or perhaps it is £4 billion, to companies that did not deserve it, but we on this side of the House are absolutely not. It is reported that a £4.7 million loan was given to a business founded just two days before it was handed the cash. It should not be beyond the wit of Government to get money to where it needs to go—to great British business—without allowing fraudsters to steal taxpayer funds. Leaving the till open and unattended for thieves to clear out would be a sackable offence for a shop worker, yet apparently it is acceptable for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Staggeringly, only one in 40 cases where fraud has been reported is actually being pursued. Let me ask the Chancellor this: when was he first alerted to this fraud, and how much does he think taxpayers will get back from the billions of pounds lost to fraudsters?
Rishi Sunak
As I have said, the new taxpayer protection taskforce at HMRC is expected to recover between £1 billion and £2 billion in the next 12 months, and has already made a good start on that. It is fair to reflect on where we were in spring 2020. I remember being at this Dispatch Box every other day. I remember Members from all parts of the House rightly holding the Government to account for getting money to businesses in a matter of hours and days, not weeks. In fact, I heard from the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), the shadow Chancellor at the time:
“We need a full guarantee for…some loans…We are running out of time, so how will the Chancellor ensure that the bounce-back loans get to the businesses that need them?”—[Official Report, 27 April 2020; Vol. 675, c. 110.]
The then shadow Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), said that the Government should:
“urgently look at 100% underwriting of loans and simplified lending criteria.”
Indeed, the hon. Lady herself wrote to me and said that
“the process for SMEs to apply for such loans appears cumbersome.”
I make no apology for making sure—
Mr Speaker
Order. He might want to apologise now—we cannot take so long on the first two questions from either Front Bench.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
Mr Speaker
Order. I appeal to Members that if you all want to get in, you have to help each other. If you are not going to help each other, do not be disappointed when you do not get in. It is not fair, and the same goes for the Front Benchers. Topicals are meant to be quick, short and speedy to keep the business going. We are not being fair. Whoever is answering that question, please do so briefly.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
As we build a strong economy, we need to raise skills. That is why we announced in the spending review an increase of £3.8 billion in skills spending over this Parliament. The spending review included funding for a specific 50-plus training scheme to support people like those being helped by Teach A Trade so that they can retrain and stay in work. I am happy to speak further to my hon. Friend about how we can support Teach A Trade and others like it to do what they do.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
In this season of generosity and good will, will the Chancellor deliver a gift to the hard-pressed hospitality and tourism sector and amend the Finance (No. 2) Bill to extend the lower rate of VAT beyond March next year?
Rishi Sunak
I am glad that our VAT cuts extend all the way to spring. It is a £7 billion tax cut, and next year, as I have said, there is a 50% discount on business rates.
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con)
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the Welsh Government. This Government are supporting hospitality businesses with a lower rate of VAT till spring worth £7 billion and a business tax cut next year that has Barnett consequentials for the Welsh Government, so hopefully they can do the same.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Rishi Sunak
At the beginning of the crisis, we improved how statutory sick pay works, making it payable from day one. We also changed some things in universal credit and indeed expanded its definition. We also put in place self-isolation payments to help.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I chair the caucus of 40 Conservative MPs who have the River Severn—Britain’s longest river—flowing through their constituencies. The river is causing increasing destruction and chaos for our communities with the increasing floods. Will the Minister meet the River Severn Partnership, a consortium of councils up and down the River Severn, to hear what the flooding Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow)—heard earlier this year during her visit to Shrewsbury, that there will be a gross value added uplift of up to £150 billion if we find a solution for managing Britain’s longest river?
Helen Whately
We recognise the important work of the River Severn Partnership. Between now and 2027, £170 million will be invested in flood and erosion risk management in the English Severn and Wye region, but I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend and colleagues to talk further.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
The hon. Lady raises an important point. Of course, we delivered a record settlement for the Department of Health and Social Care at the recent spending review. That budget will rise to £177.4 billion in 2024-25. NHS dentistry is a top priority of that spend.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Can the Minister confirm that the £1,000 a year tax cut delivered through changes to the universal credit taper rate will begin to be seen in people’s bank accounts this side of Christmas?
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Member will know that an independent review has already been carried out by Lord Morse, and the Government accepted all but one of its recommendations. HMRC does have a helpline, but it is important to continue to ensure that we look after those who are most vulnerable.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for all that he is doing on levelling up and, in particular, for the establishment of the Darlington economic campus. Can he update the House on how things are progressing and how many of his team are now enjoying life in Darlington?
Helen Whately
We are seeing a growing number of Treasury staff working in Darlington along with many Ministers spending time there. I am due to be there tomorrow and I think that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will also be there this week.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
May I advise my right hon. and learned Friend that the Government’s step in the Budget last month to cut business rates by 50% for retail, hospitality and leisure companies, which means that 90% of all eligible businesses will see a cut of at least 50%, has been warmly welcomed across my Borough of Bexley? It will help many business to not only survive, but flourish.
Lucy Frazer
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for mentioning that. We have business rates relief of almost £1.7 billion next year for retail, hospitality and leisure, which is part of a package of £7 billion over the next five years.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Mr Simon Clarke
Transport sits at the heart of the spending review that has just concluded, and of course we have the £96 billion integrated rail plan. I am very happy to look at the scheme to which the hon. Member refers, but obviously Transport Ministers are engaged in a constant process of making sure that we deliver the projects that are the best value for money and result in the greatest transport bonuses across the country.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
Can the Chancellor confirm that, contrary to industry suggestions, the Government remain committed to legislating for access to cash as soon as possible?
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
Absolutely, I can. We will legislate, regardless of what the industry brings forward.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Florence Roby Ltd was turned down when it bid for Government contracts for personal protective equipment last year, despite a 50-year track record of high-quality production. It was not asking for special favours; all it wanted was a fair chance of winning Government contracts. Some £3.5 billion was handed out to friends and donors of the Conservative party through a VIP lane. That is in stark contrast to the experience of Florence Roby Ltd. When will good people such as my constituents get access not to a VIP lane, but to a level playing field?
Mr Simon Clarke
We worked at speed to secure the PPE needed to protect our frontline workers, and we supplied over 58,000 different healthcare settings. We now have a four-month stockpile of all critical PPE to make sure that the NHS can continue to be protected. All these bids are assessed in line with standard guidance to make sure that there is total equity in that process. Any suggestion to the contrary is fundamentally misleading.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Harrogate has been the trial and development location for universal credit, and I have seen how it helps people make work pay. Does my right hon. Friend the Chancellor agree that rolling it out further, and migrating people currently on legacy benefits, will help even more people make work pay?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government are committed to making sure that work always pays, and that is why universal credit is such an improvement on the previous system—an improvement that the Opposition did not support at all.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that Viktor Fedotov, the secret co-owner of Aquind, has been implicated in a £72 million fraud scheme linked to Putin’s Russia. Can the Minister say what due diligence has been done on the project company and its owners, and if he and ministerial colleagues will protect our national infrastructure from these alleged fraudsters by stopping the disastrous project once and for all?
John Glen
The Government remain absolutely committed to protecting this country from illicit finance. We have been a leader in the global community, making this place the safest place to do business, and we will continue in that vein.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
A key way to support economic growth is to help level up our forgotten high streets, such as Eston Square, where the old precinct building is blocking key investment and preventing new businesses from moving in. When the Chancellor is next up in Teesside, will he come with me to Eston, and meet leaders at Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to see what can be done to level up Eston Square?
Rishi Sunak
Yes, I would be very happy to. I am fresh from my visit to Yarm High Street last week to see levelling up in action, and I am back up in the north-east this week.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be aware of the considerable public unease about the proposed demutualisation of Liverpool Victoria. Will he therefore consider sympathetically the cross-party letter he has received from over 100 parliamentarians calling for a review of the law governing mutuals?
John Glen
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have had considerable engagement on this subject. This is a matter for the Financial Conduct Authority, and we have discussed it. Obviously, members will now vote on the proposal. On the broader issue of how this sector is treated, I remain willing to engage with him on further changes and reforms that may help it in future.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Ministers will know of the importance of the Humber ports to the regional and national economy. Access to Immingham and Grimsby ports is in part via the A180, which has an old concrete surface that is crumbling and in need of urgent repair. This afternoon I will meet Highways England to discuss that. May I tell it that the Chancellor will fund those improvements?
Mr Simon Clarke
I commend my hon. Friend for his inventiveness. Our ports lie at the heart of our prosperity, and I am delighted that the Humber freeport is imminently going live, alongside the Teesside and Thames freeports. I wish him the best of luck in making his case for that investment.
Petition
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
It is a pleasure to present the petition on behalf of 1,131 constituents. The petition is self-explanatory, although I think there is a typo and that it should say “accidents”, not “incidents”. The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of Hemel Hempstead,
Declares that Bennetts End Road is a very busy and long road; further that, over the last few years, there have been numerous incidents on the road as a result of local residents crossing the road for various reasons; further that it is especially dangerous for local children accessing the various schools in the area; and further that a solution needs to be found as soon as possible to avoid further incidents on the road and provide all residents a safe way of crossing the road.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to make Bennetts End Road safer by reallocating funding for Hertfordshire County Council to use to install a pelican crossing on Bennetts End Road.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002701]
Ukraine
(3 years ago)
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Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Government for an update—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. We cannot just walk past those speaking; hon. Members should walk around them. Please do not obscure the person who is about to speak. Let us try again.
Bob Seely
Thank you, Mr Speaker. To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development affairs if she will make a statement on the situation in Ukraine.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
I thank my hon. Friend for the close interest that he takes in foreign affairs. We are deeply concerned by Russia’s pattern of military build-ups in and around Ukraine, and we are closely monitoring the situation. The UK is very clear: any military incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a strategic mistake, and the Russian Government should expect significant strategic consequences. The cost of an incursion would be catastrophically high.
At the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Riga last week, and at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ministerial Council, the Foreign Secretary, alongside our allies, made crystal clear our commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Foreign Secretary repeated that support bilaterally to her Ukrainian counterpart last Wednesday, 1 December, and to her Russian counterpart on Thursday 2 December. The Prime Minister has also spoken to President Zelensky on a number of occasions, to reiterate the UK’s support. He raised the issue of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine directly with President Putin when they spoke ahead of COP26.
Our vocal support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is backed by our actions. The Foreign Secretary will host Foreign Minister Kuleba in London tomorrow for the first UK-Ukraine strategic dialogue. Diplomatically, we operate at the heart of the international community’s efforts. Hon. Members will be aware that President Biden is meeting President Putin later today. Yesterday, our Prime Minister met President Biden, and the leaders of France, Germany, and Italy, to ensure that a joint message will be given to President Putin. We have also helped to frame international sanctions against Russia, deepened NATO’s partnership with Ukraine, and led efforts in the UN and OSCE to hold Russia to account.
Militarily, we are providing defensive military support, primarily through Operation Orbital, the UK’s training mission to Ukraine, and since it launched in 2015 we have trained more than 20,000 members of the Ukrainian armed forces. The UK is one of the largest contributors to the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, and that is playing a critical role in providing impartial reporting on the situation on the ground in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this year, we reaffirmed our commitment to that in the integrated review.
Last year alone, we allocated £40 million in official development assistance and other funding in support of programmes that support prosperity, resilience and stability in Ukraine. We have also deepened our bilateral ties with Ukraine, in particular through our political free trade and strategic partnership agreement. In conclusion, the UK is unwavering in our support of Ukraine’s sovereignty, and its territorial integrity, including of its territorial waters, within its internationally recognised borders. Russia should uphold the OSCE principles and commitments that it freely signed up to, which it is violating through its ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
Mr Speaker
Can we try to stick to the time that is allocated in future, please? Minister, are you listening?
Bob Seely
We may be weeks away from a major war in eastern Europe. First, will the Government confirm that the 1994 Budapest memorandum commits the UK and others to respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity? What do the Government believe those treaty obligations amount to? Secondly, does the Minister agree that the tools for preventing war are few, but one of them is an insistence that Nord Stream 2 does not go ahead, and an insistence that gas continues to flow through Ukraine and, indeed, Poland? Do the Government understand that the potential to cut Russia out of the SWIFT international payments system, Iran-style, may amount to a devastating economic blow? In the case of war, is the UK prepared for Russian actions in cyber and espionage, aimed at the UK, and in the UK?
Finally, regardless of whether Russia invades this month or this year, do the Government accept the assessment that Putin will probably try to achieve three things in his last decade in power—first, dismembering Ukraine, whose borders, as he said this summer, he no longer respects; secondly, shattering the unity of NATO; and thirdly, cementing Russia’s identity as a state opposed and viscerally hostile to the west, rather than allied with it? What can the Government do in the long term to militate against these dangerous outcomes?
Vicky Ford
My hon. Friend raises a lot of questions. The UK position on Nord Stream 2 has not changed. We have repeatedly aired our concerns about the construction of Nord Stream 2, which would undermine European security by allowing Russia to tighten its grip on those nations that rely on its gas. Nord Stream 2 would divert supplies away from Ukraine, and the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine is regarded as a deterrent against further Russian aggression, so it is a vital part of Ukraine’s national security.
We have already put in place a number of sanctions against those responsible for the illegal annexation of Crimea. We are co-ordinating with international partners, but as my hon. Friend knows, we never speculate about future sanctions, because to do so would undermine their effectiveness.
Let us be very clear: we stand by Ukraine, and we are considering an extension of purely defensive support to Ukraine to help it defend itself. Putin needs to de-escalate now and return to diplomatic channels.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s comments. It is important at moments such as these that we send the united message from all sides of this House that the UK is resolute in our support for the sovereignty, the independence and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Ukrainians want a democratic future; they want to choose their own path and their own political destiny.
It is essential that, alongside our NATO allies, we make it crystal clear to the Russian Government that any attempt to further undermine Ukraine’s integrity will be met with a strong, consistent and resolute response. We welcome the diplomatic steps that have been taken already, and recognise the importance of the forthcoming dialogue between President Biden and President Putin.
With that in mind, what reassurance are we providing to NATO allies in eastern Europe? Does the Minister believe that this is part of a wider pattern of dangerous behaviour by Russia, with tensions raised in Ukraine, Belarus and Bosnia? Will she engage with the incoming German Government to discuss the cancellation of Nord Stream 2 in order to ensure that Russia is not able to increase Europe’s energy dependency or weaken our unity?
As well as working with our allies, we must ensure that we are doing all we can at home to challenge the Russian Government’s behaviour. We know that the UK continues to be a soft touch for corrupt elites and the dirty money that helps sustain the Putin regime. More than 18 months after the Russia report was published, none of its recommendations has been fully implemented. Will the Minister commit to taking those steps?
Vicky Ford
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for demonstrating the united front in this country in supporting the people of Ukraine—we are absolutely united in standing by Ukraine at this time. To demonstrate Ukraine’s resilience, we need a co-ordinated, increased approach not just defensively but economically, and we especially need support for Ukraine on the energy front. That is precisely why we are working with our NATO partners and other leading allies and why the Prime Minister spoke to not only President Biden but the leaders of France, Germany and Italy yesterday.
We have repeatedly aired our concerns about the construction of Nord Stream 2 and its implications for European security, and we will continue to do so. The right hon. Gentleman will also know that we have already put in place a number of sanctions, and we always stand ready to put in place sanctions against those responsible for human rights and other abuses. We have put in place sanctions against those who led the illegal annexation of Crimea, and we will continue to work with international partners on that front.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I recently visited Ukraine with Foreign Office Ministers as part of the Crimea forum, as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the current situation is not only an early foreign policy challenge but an opportunity for the new German Government to set out their future policy with regards to Russian aggression? Does she also agree, as she mentioned in her statement, that it is through unity that we send a message to Russia? The United States, the United Kingdom and the whole European Union—particularly France and Germany—need to send a united, robust, clear and unequivocal message to Putin that any aggression will be met with severe penalties.
Vicky Ford
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: any Russian incursion into Ukraine would be a strategic mistake, and the costs of such an incursion would be catastrophically high. This needs to be a co-ordinated effort between partners to maximise its impact. I have no doubt that the incoming German Government will have a key role to play, and that is precisely why the Prime Minister spoke to the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the US yesterday to make sure that the message being given by President Biden to President Putin today is a co-ordinated one.
We were very clear in the integrated review that Russian actions pose an acute and direct threat to the national security of the UK and its allies, and we have shown that we take that threat seriously. The current relationship with Russia is not the one that we want, but we will continue to respond to, and call out, Russian aggression wherever it occurs.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
I will not have been alone in being chilled by today’s Financial Times article mentioning an essay written by Vladimir Putin that ends with the words:
“For we are one people”
when talking about Ukraine and Russia. Well, that is not what international law says. We have seen this pattern of behaviour from the Russian state in cyber-attacks in Latvia, in the use of migrants on the Polish border to foment a crisis, in Bosnia and in the continued illegal annexation of parts of eastern Ukraine. There must be consequences to further action, and the Scottish National party will be part of that coalition. I am glad to hear of the international co-ordination that is going on.
I have two concrete proposals and a plea. We have heard already—we have not had an answer—that the SWIFT payment system and Nord Stream 2 must be on the table. Magnitsky sanctions will do so much, but we are dealing with people who do not greatly care, so there must be an elevation of the sanctions available.
I have just pledged SNP support for UK Government actions, so I am not trying to make a political point. However, we are two years out from the publication of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. There is credible evidence of dirty Russian money washing around the UK’s democracy, and the Conservative party in particular. There are Members of the House of Lords who I do not believe should be there, and there must be consequences at home as well as abroad. When will we see serious action on implementing the Russia report recommendations? Vigilance must start at home, as well as abroad.
Vicky Ford
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the UK Government. He raises a number of issues. On disinformation, we have seen time and again from the Russians transparent attempts at disinformation and at providing a pretext for reckless and illegal military action.
On tackling illicit finance and dirty money, this Government continue to step up our activity both domestically and internationally to tackle illicit finance entering our country. We cracked down on illicit finance through the groundbreaking legislation introduced in 2017, the Criminal Finances Act, and we published our economic crime plan in 2019. However, we are going further in tackling dirty money. The National Crime Agency has increased the number of investigations into corrupt elites. Let me be clear: serious criminals, corrupt elites and individuals who seek to threaten the security of the UK and its allies are not welcome here. I am afraid I cannot comment on the SWIFT payment system, as I understand it is also a US issue.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK has a special responsibility as a signatory of the Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine? Indeed, Russia was also a signatory. Will the Government look to increase the support we give not just to the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region, but to those defending the Ukrainian ports on the Black sea from any possible incursions from Russian-occupied Crimea?
Vicky Ford
Russia is very clearly in breach of the commitments it signed up to under the Budapest memorandum through its failure to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and through its use of force against Ukraine. We remain willing to engage in consultations, as provided for under that memorandum, as we did back in March 2014 in Paris after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Russia is refusing to engage, despite the fact that the memorandum obliges it to do so in circumstances where the memorandum is questioned.
We will stand by the people of Ukraine. We are considering extending the support we are giving to Ukraine to help it defend itself, but I need this to be clear: there is nothing in that support that could be construed as offensive or as a threat towards Russia. NATO is a purely defensive organisation and itself poses no threat to Russia.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The difficulty is that Russia under Putin has behaved with extraordinary consistency. If we look at what it did in Georgia and its activities in Greece, in North Macedonia and in Republika Srpska, in so many different places it has engaged in a deliberate act of semi-war, trying to engineer difficulties in each of those democracies. Do we not need to match that consistency with internal consistency of our own, tackling the dirty money in the British public and ensuring that the whole of our democratic and political system is safe from assault by the Russians?
Vicky Ford
I have been very clear, and it is very clear in the integrated review, that Russia’s actions pose an acute and direct threat to the national security of not only the UK but its allies. We maintain functional channels of engagement with the Russian Government to ensure we can make points to them on those issues, and as a fellow permanent member of the UN Security Council we engage with them, but that does not mean we do not call them out. The Foreign Secretary met Foreign Minister Lavrov last Thursday, 2 December, when she absolutely restated the UK’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and urged the Russians to de-escalate the situation. The Ministers also discussed Belarus, Iran and Afghanistan.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Ukraine, Bosnia, Ethiopia, the Solomon Islands—the time for a cross-Government atrocity prevention strategy is now. Will the Minister please advise whether we have seen any build-up of Russian troops around Mariupol to block off the Black sea? Will she also confirm that, if Republika Srpska and Russia try to use hostilities in Ukraine to hide aggression in Bosnia, we will stand firm behind our friends in both Ukraine and Bosnia?
Vicky Ford
We are monitoring the situation very closely and are deeply concerned by the pattern of Russian military build-ups on the border of Ukraine and the illegally annexed Crimea. We call on the Russian Government to uphold the OSCE principles and commitments: they signed up to them and they should uphold them, but they are violating them through their aggression towards Ukraine. We stand by both the people of Ukraine and the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as I made very clear from this Dispatch Box just last week.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The Minister has made clear, I think in the same words that President Biden used, that there would be “catastrophic” consequences were there to be any Russian invasion of Ukraine, but one thing we know is that we already have Russian-activated troops in the Donbass region. They may not wear Russian uniforms, but they come under Russian control. If we see a hybrid attack on Ukraine, will there be catastrophic consequences then? That is the really important issue.
Vicky Ford
The Russians should stop supporting those who are trying to destabilise Ukraine in the Donbass region.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) that the Budapest memorandum means we have a special obligation towards Ukraine. Can the Minister give us an update on the membership action plan, the prelude to NATO membership? When Poland joined in 1999, we were told it was a step too far; when Romania joined NATO in 2004, we were told it was a step too far. Is not now the time to start a debate on whether we can give our Ukrainian allies membership of this important defence pact?
Vicky Ford
We stand firm in our support for Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations, in line with the 2008 Bucharest summit declaration, in which NATO allies agreed that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance. Allies have reiterated that commitment at every summit since.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
The White House statement released yesterday after President Biden’s call with his European counterparts did not mention sanctions. Although I appreciate they are not a magic bullet, significant sanctions might serve as an effective deterrent. Can the Minister confirm that on yesterday’s national security call, the Prime Minister pushed for significant and co-ordinated sanctions? Can she also confirm that any such sanctions would target those in Putin’s inner circle, limiting their ability to travel and potentially cutting off access to US, UK and EU banking and credit card systems?
Vicky Ford
We never speculate on future sanctions designations; to do so could undermine their effectiveness if they are put in place. However, we are closely monitoring the situation. We have taken action against Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea, in co-ordination with international partners. We worked closely with the EU, the US, Australia and Canada to impose costs on those facilitating Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol through sanctions. We will continue to work closely with international partners to ensure that those sanctions remain in place as long as Russia’s illegitimate control of the peninsula continues.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
President Putin is clearly testing us. If there is a strong enough reaction, he may back off this time, but the softer our response, the more likely he is to go. That makes this an important test of our ability to engage in collective action. We need to reach and make public a consensus on specific sanctions that would apply in the event of Russian action. At the moment, I hear from the Minister and the other world leaders stern words, but not specific sanctions that will apply in the event of Russian aggression.
Vicky Ford
Let me be very clear: the Russian Government’s intent is to destabilise Ukraine. Beyond that, we cannot speculate, but we are monitoring the situation closely. We are deeply concerned, but it is critical that we avoid miscalculations. We call on the Russian Government to abide by their international commitments—the commitments to which they have signed up. Any military incursion would be a strategic mistake by the Russian Government and they should expect massive strategic consequences, including severe economic sanctions.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Experience shows that President Putin respects only strength of purpose and resolve. Many Members have raised the issue of the SWIFT system. I am not asking the Minister whether that is a sanction that the Government are proposing to take, but I would like to know how that decision would be reached. When Iran was excluded from the SWIFT system in 2012, it required an EU regulation to make SWIFT do that, because SWIFT is incorporated under Belgian law. Would such a regulation be required this time if the UK Government and other Governments decided to proceed with excluding Russia from the SWIFT payment system?
Vicky Ford
I cannot comment on hypotheticals. Let me just say again that any military excursion would be a terrible miscalculation and the Russian Government should expect massive strategic consequences, including severe economic sanctions.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on being granted this urgent question, but may I express my disappointment that this matter has had to be raised in an urgent question and that the Government have not volunteered a statement? There was a NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting last week. We have a crisis in the Balkans. We have Russia spiking our gas supplies. We have Russia creating the migration crisis in Belarus, and we have Russia on aggressive military manoeuvres around Europe with its massively renewed military hardware. When will the Government take on board the fact that we are in a hybrid war against Russia now and that there needs to be a comprehensive and united western response, because, at the moment, NATO is weak and divided?
Vicky Ford
We have been very clear about the threat that Russia poses not only to our own security, but to the security of our allies as well. That is precisely why the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been working so closely with our friends and allies. The priority of our foreign policy is to build that network of liberty with our friends and allies, working on the defence not only of our own country, but of that of our allies. We absolutely stand by those on the Russian borders, including those facing the situation in Belarus, the Baltic countries and Poland—which I discussed only last week—as well as our friends in Ukraine.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Given that our energy strategy, which stems from the climate policies followed by the EU and the UK, has made us dependent on Russian oil and gas, does the Minister not accept that President Putin, with his ability to use energy blackmail against the west, has no belief that we can implement effective sanctions against Russia?
Vicky Ford
We have continually voiced our concerns about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and we will continue to do so. It has serious implications for undermining European security, especially energy security, and as a destabilising tool. It allows Russia to tighten its grip on those nations that rely on Russian gas. We will continue to voice our serious concerns about this reliance on Russian gas.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
If Ukraine had been a member of NATO, there would now be a grisly roll call of British Army dead. Economic sanctions, yes, but will the Minister confirm that the frozen steppes of eastern Ukraine, with all its historical complexities, are not worth the life of a single British soldier? Like it or not, Russians know that, for 300 years, Crimea was part of Russia. It is almost entirely Russian speaking, as is eastern Ukraine, so we should be aware of Russian opinion. We may not agree with it, but let us not be dragged into any military confrontation.
Vicky Ford
It is vital that we stand by countries that share our vision of being free and democratically run. That is why we are unwavering in our support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, why we are working with NATO partners and why we are considering an extension of purely defensive support to Ukraine to help it defend itself. Defending itself against any Russian incursion will be vital, but let me remind Members what I have said again and again: making an incursion into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake for Russia.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
This is an extremely concerning situation both in Ukraine and across other parts of our continent. May I urge the Minister and the British Government to do all that they can to ensure that NATO speaks with one voice? Russia feeds off mixed messages and, while we have a very strong voice coming out of the United States, the NATO Secretary-General, Stoltenberg, is saying that NATO has no obligation to defend Ukraine. Those are the mixed messages that do not help. What more can Her Majesty’s Government do to ensure that the alliance speaks with one voice?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Member is right: it is vital that we speak with one voice, which is why our Prime Minister was speaking with the leaders of the US, Germany, France and Italy yesterday. The message is clear: any incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a strategic mistake. The costs of such an incursion would be catastrophically high and result in massive strategic consequences, including economic sanctions.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
The Minister has said several times during this session that any incursion into Ukraine would be catastrophic for Russia and a big strategic mistake. Can she confirm that all diplomatic channels are being used, as well as economic sanctions that may come in, and that we are doing our very best to make sure that Ukraine is safe as a sovereign country?
Vicky Ford
The UK is at the forefront of the international community’s efforts. The issue is that Russia needs to de-escalate now and return to diplomatic channels.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
As well as being concerned about the situation in Ukraine, I know that the Minister is also concerned about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and about the involvement of Russia in Belarus. Does she think that there is a need for the Prime Minister to speak not just to individual Governments, but collectively to NATO and collectively to the European Union to make sure that we have a truly united front?
Vicky Ford
We were raising all those issues at NATO last week to make sure that there is a consistent approach on the situation not only in Ukraine, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Belarus.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Do our treaty obligations under the Budapest memorandum include the forward deployment of NATO troops to defensive positions in theatre if invited by the Ukraine Government?
Vicky Ford
We have signed the Budapest memorandum. The Russians have signed the Budapest memorandum. Russia is clearly in breach of its commitment under that memorandum.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
Foreign policy begins at home—our ability to project influence around the world depends on the credibility, integrity and transparency of our Government and our economy here at home—and yet London is awash with dirty Russian money, and the Government have failed for almost two years to implement the recommendations of the Russia report. Will the Minister explain why the Government are dragging their feet on that, because it connects directly to our ability to achieve the objectives that she set out on Ukraine and beyond?
Vicky Ford
I absolutely refute the suggestion that we are dragging our feet. We already have a number of sanctions in place. We work with our international partners—we are a leading voice, for example at NATO last week—and we will continue to do so. I will not comment on specific future sanctions, because to do so would make them ineffective. However, I have made it very clear that any incursion into Ukraine by Russia would be a massive mistake and would lead to severe consequences, including severe economic sanctions.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s tone and particularly the training of the 21,000 members of the Ukrainian armed forces by our armed forces as an important game-changer over the past five years. However, in return for our very strong support, will she continue to remind the Ukrainian authorities that they need to address the issues of corruption and human rights in their country so that we can be properly proud in giving them full support?
Vicky Ford
The UK stands up for human rights and against corruption all across the world.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that Putin has consistently responded to strength and taken advantage of weakness. Although the Minister has continually told us today that she is being very clear, the extent of any British boots on the ground in defence of the Ukrainians is unclear, as are the sanctions that she will propose. Will she be a bit clearer about the defensive posture that we may ask members of the British armed forces to take in Ukraine in support of a country that we all wish to express our support for?
Vicky Ford
The UK and our allies are providing a range of support to Ukraine, including through work that is enhancing Ukraine’s defence capability. It is really important that we continue to reiterate that the support is fundamentally defensive in nature and that neither NATO nor Ukraine pose any aggressive threat to Russia.
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
As we see the build-up of troops on the Ukraine-Russian border, I would be keen to know whether the grey zone sub-threshold attacks, such as cyber and disinformation, are also increasing at the same pace. What do the Government have in place to deal with those attacks to ensure that we control the threat?
Vicky Ford
I will not comment on intelligence matters from the Dispatch Box.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Russia’s actions are deliberate, not accidental, and they are against a clear strategy and sequence. The threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty is clear, but so is the threat to our NATO allies in the Baltic states. Will the Minister set out very clearly that the article 5 protection of our NATO allies in the Baltic states stands firm and will be unquestionable, and that Britain will not renege on our enhanced forward presence, which is protecting the Baltic states from any Russian aggression?
Vicky Ford
The UK stands by our NATO allies in the Baltic states.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
The Foreign Secretary has tweeted that
“allies stand with Ukraine and will defend the frontiers of freedom and democracy.”
Will the Minister confirm that we will use every tool to ensure that our NATO allies stand just as steadfast in ensuring that Ukraine is protected, including in relation to the suggestion that Putin will deploy 175 Russian troops to the area?
Vicky Ford
Let me be very clear: we are standing with our NATO allies. And there is a very clear message from our allies: any incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
I recently returned from the Lithuanian-Belarus border, where I saw at first hand the malign behaviour of Russia on Europe’s borders. We understand that this situation is clearly very grave and I am not sure that that was reflected in the Foreign Secretary’s photo opportunity with a tank in Estonia. If the issue is taken very seriously, can we get a grip on the Putin wallets running amok in London, with free rein to do whatever they like? That is how we will get some attention to the situation.
Vicky Ford
The Foreign Secretary flies the flag for freedom and stands by our troops.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
I am very proud to represent a vibrant Ukrainian community in my Colne Valley and neighbouring Huddersfield constituency, and I will celebrate Ukrainian Christmas with that community in January, as I do every year. It will be watching what we are saying here today very closely. Will the Minister again reaffirm that we will work with our NATO allies to send out an unequivocal message that we steadfastly support the sovereignty of Ukraine?
Vicky Ford
We stand with our NATO allies in steadfastly supporting the sovereignty of Ukraine, and I take this opportunity to wish them a very happy Christmas—lucky you, getting two Christmases.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Ukraine and NATO are concerned that Russia will seize the Suwalki corridor by pushing migrants into the area and stoking unrest. That would allow Russian forces to join Belarus. What assessment have the Government and allies made of the likelihood of that scenario, and what humanitarian support would be provided to migrants caught in the fold?
Vicky Ford
We have no doubt that there is Russian action in Ukraine and in other countries that attempts to destabilise Europe, NATO and our allies. We are absolutely clear in our integrated review that Russian actions pose an acute and direct threat to national security. As I said from the Dispatch Box last week, we are providing humanitarian aid to those caught up in the middle of the crisis.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I very much welcome the Minister’s strong statement of support for Ukraine today. Will she confirm that the firm deterrent and clear warnings that she is giving in this Chamber about President Putin’s behaviour towards Ukraine are also being delivered directly to the Kremlin in a manner that cannot be misunderstood?
Vicky Ford
It is very important that we speak with one voice with our allies. That is why the Prime Minister spoke to President Biden and the leaders of France, Germany and Italy yesterday. We are all giving that same clear message on the call that will happen between Biden and President Putin this afternoon: any military incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a massive and strategic mistake.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The focus on physical incursions into Ukraine by Russia shows that we still have a lot to learn about its way of operating. Will the Minister confirm that when we look at the defensive options that we might be able to provide to Ukraine to help them to deter that threat, we will also look at cyber-security and information, because that is where the Russians are now operating?
Vicky Ford
It is very helpful to have the Minister for the Armed Forces right beside me today, so that it can be very clear that we are considering responses in all domains.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
As part of our response to this situation and a potential disinformation campaign, will my hon. Friend support a strengthening of our £23 million counter-disinformation and development aid package to Ukraine, which can help Ukrainians to discern fact from Russian fiction on social media?
Vicky Ford
I am obviously not able to comment on particular projects from the Dispatch Box today, but as I have said, we stand by the people of Ukraine. We are already providing a range of support to Ukraine to help it to enhance its defence capability, and we will continue to assess that situation alongside our NATO allies.
Prisons Strategy
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Victoria Atkins)
Today, the Government have published our prisons strategy White Paper to build the places, support our staff and transform the prison regime to cut crime. Prisons play a vital role in protecting the public by keeping the most prolific and dangerous offenders in custody and rehabilitating those who deserve a second chance.
As the House knows, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will lengthen sentences for serious violent and sexual offenders to keep them in prison and away from the public for as long as possible. We are therefore determined to build modern prisons to protect the public. We secured almost £4 billion at the spending review to carry out the biggest prison-building programme that this country has seen in more than a century, creating 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s—but buildings are only one part of our plan, because of course most offenders will be released back into the community. To protect the public, we also need to strengthen the prison regime to reform and rehabilitate offenders throughout their sentence, which is the most effective way to reduce reoffending and cut crime overall. The White Paper sets out a seven-point plan to deliver it.
First, we will support prisons in taking a zero-tolerance approach to the drugs, weapons and mobile phones that disrupt and destabilise prisons, allowing organised crime gangs to run their empires beyond the prison wall. We will make greater use of our recently installed X-ray body scanners, which are now operating across the closed male estate and which prevent drugs, weapons and phones from getting into our prisons and create safer conditions for our prison staff and for offenders to focus on reform and rehabilitation.
Secondly, prisoners will be assessed on arrival for any drug or alcohol addictions so that prison officers and health teams can support offenders to map out a sustainable recovery from addiction, enabling offenders to go clean, which we know is pivotal to going straight. We will shift the focus to longer-term recovery, including through abstinence-based treatment, drawing on the best examples of incentivised substance-free living areas, such as at HMP Styal, where prisoners commit to live without drugs and undergo regular drug testing. Crucially, we want continuity of treatment once an offender is released into the community, so that they do not slip back into using drugs and into the life of crime that so often follows.
Thirdly, prisons will assess an offender’s numeracy and literacy skills and their level of qualifications as soon as they arrive in prison. Prison governors will be expected to develop a plan for each prisoner to improve these core skills and raise their level of qualifications so that we better equip offenders for work when they are released. A new prisoner education service will put vocational skills such as construction and computing at the forefront of learning so that offenders get the opportunity to improve their job prospects, giving them credible hope that they can take a second chance, turn their life around and lead a better life after prison for themselves, their families and our communities. I have seen what can be achieved by prison staff and prisoners working together, for example at HMP Lincoln, where prisoners are able to gain their construction skills certification scheme card—it is currently the only prison in Europe where prisoners can be assessed inside the prison walls so that they are ready to go once they are released—and at HMP Downview, where female prisoners work with the London College of Fashion, developing skills, confidence and great clothes.
Fourthly, we want to transform how prisons get offenders into work—one of the best ways to cut re-offending. We will introduce a new digital tool to match candidates to jobs. We will ensure that prisons have dedicated employment advisers to help offenders to find work. There are some brilliant examples, such as the marketing call centre run by Census Life at HMP High Down, or Lyons Haulage, a firm working with offenders at Ford Prison, but we need to do far better at spreading best practice across the estate. Prison governors will be expected to make their work programmes central to the way they operate their prisons, subject to appropriate vetting and security considerations.
The Government will support the changes needed to adapt prisons to accommodate the needs of employers, including through better links with businesses in surrounding areas. We are also designing smarter prisons such as HMP Five Wells in Wellingborough and Glen Parva in Leicestershire, which the Deputy Prime Minister recently visited with my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) to mark the last major phase of construction at the site. These new prisons are being built with large-scale workshops so that offenders can get straight to work in those locations.
Fifthly, we will ensure that prisoners have the support they need to plan properly for a successful release from custody, because it can be a disruptive and potentially precarious moment for many offenders. Our new resettlement passports will help to prepare offenders before release by bringing together everything they need to settle back into the community, such as a CV, identification and a bank account, and start looking for work straightaway. Health and home matter, too; programmes for drug rehabilitation, skills and work will be more closely linked to the support services available in the community when offenders are released, and the new community accommodation service will help to tackle the challenge of homelessness, which disrupts an offender settling back into society and increases the risk that they will resort to crime.
Sixthly, we will make much greater use of smart technology to support reform and rehabilitation. Digital technology will enable inmates to access education and training courses online, as well as addiction recovery and healthcare services.
Finally, we will deliver this ambitious strategy with the hard work, determination, ingenuity and dedication of the brilliant staff who work in our prisons every day to keep us safe. We will recruit up to 5,000 more prison officers across public and private prisons as part of our expansion plans. We will upskill our existing staff throughout the estate so that they are better equipped than ever with the skills required to be a prison officer in the 21st century.
Prison leadership will be critical, too. We have some truly exceptional governors working across the estate today. We will empower those trailblazing governors who deliver the best results by giving them more autonomy over how their prisons are run to meet the strategic vision set out in the White Paper. We will also set out key performance indicators and league tables, and evaluate performance so that we can spread the very best innovative practice right across the estate.
The Government put public protection at the heart of everything we do. We are recruiting more police officers, we are putting serious offenders behind bars for longer, and now we are building state-of-the-art prisons, bolstered with a regime that will drive down re-offending by making sure that every day that an offender spends behind bars involves purposeful reform and rehabilitation to help them to go straight, turn their life around and a make a positive contribution to society. That is how this Government are cutting crime and making our communities safer as we build back better, stronger and fairer after the pandemic. I commend this statement to the House.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement.
We all want to see safer prisons that rehabilitate and reduce reoffending, so investment in providing purposeful activity and preventing drugs from getting into our prisons is welcome, yet the Government have a broken track record on prisons. In 2016, they promised 10,000 new prison places by 2020, but they managed to build only 206 in that time. They simply cannot be trusted on prisons.
Many of the measures announced today treat the symptoms of our broken prison system but do not tackle the root causes of the problem. Drug use in prisons is not a new problem, and it has soared by a shocking 500% over the past decade, so why has it taken so long for the Government to take action? The announcement of airport-style security in prisons is not a new policy—the Government announced it in 2019, in 2018 and in 2017, and it was even a commitment in their 2015 manifesto—yet it has still not happened. Why should we have any confidence that it will happen now?
This is a Government who have failed to get even the basics right in our prisons. After a decade of cuts in the justice system, prisons are currently understaffed, dilapidated, dangerous and overcrowded, with prisoners spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells with no purposeful activity. I remember a visit that I made to Rochester Prison a few years ago. That Victorian prison was so run down that it was marked for closure and services were decommissioned, but then the Government changed their mind in order to cut costs. When I visited, the drug and alcohol treatment programme had stopped running, and the education programme could not operate when it rained because of a leak in the roof. This happened on the Government’s watch, so how can we have confidence in their current plans?
Since 2018, eight prisons have been issued with urgent notifications, most recently Chelmsford Prison, which is housing 700 inmates when it is supposed to hold no more than 545, and where there have been reports of filthy prison cells with a rat infestation. The Howard League described the prison inspection report as the worst that it had ever seen.
We welcome the recruitment of an extra 5,000 officers and measures to upskill staff, but there are now 2,900 fewer officers than there were in 2020, and more than one in 10 frontline prison staff were lost last year. Among band 2 staff, the leaving rate was a shocking one in six. A survey conducted by the Prison Officers Association in early 2020 found that 48% of members believed that the quality of their on-the- job training was poor or very poor, and nearly half the staff reported that they were seriously considering leaving their jobs soon. How will the Minister tackle the issue of retention in the Prison Service, and will she commit herself to the pay review body’s recommendation of a £3,000 uplift for band 3 prison officers, previously rejected by the Government?
The Minister mentioned Downview Prison, which I have visited twice. The work done in that prison is commendable, but many of the women there are victims of domestic abuse, and the majority suffer from mental health difficulties and addictions. Although the Government’s own female offender strategy promises a focus on early intervention and community-based solutions—not only are they more cost-effective, but they reduce reoffending—the Government are investing £150 million to build 500 new prison cells for women instead of investing in what works: women’s centres and community sentences. Can the Minister tell us when they will finally implement the female offender strategy?
A shocking 75% of prisoners reoffend within five years of release, so we welcome measures on training and education and resettlement, but how can they be implemented when there are not enough staff, when prisoners are kept cells for up to 23 hours a day, when assaults in prisons have doubled since 2010, when the prison budget has been slashed by £6 million since 2010, and when self-harming incidents in prisons have increased by 132%? The Conservatives call themselves the party of law and order, but the figures speak for themselves: they have allowed reoffending to rocket because of the dire state of our prisons.
Today’s announcements are a sticking plaster over the fundamental crisis facing a prison system that has been neglected for more than a decade. All that we have had from this Government are warm words and broken promises, when what we need and what is long overdue is real action.
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady, whom I welcome to her new position. If I may, however, I will start by correcting some of the statements that she has just made. In case she missed this information in the statement, I can tell her that 74 body scanners have been rolled out across the male closed estate and have already produced impressive results, spotting more than 10,000 instances of prisoners trying to bring forbidden objects into prisons and thereby helping to safeguard both staff and prisoners.
The hon. Lady asked about the state of the cells. We have said that many of the establishments, some of which date back to Victorian times, are not what we would wish for in the 21st century, and not commensurate with what we know works with prisoners when it comes to rehabilitation and cutting crime. That is why we are upgrading safety standards in 35,000 existing cells. In addition, our unprecedented plan to build major new prisons across the country will incorporate many of the modern technologies that we want to see rolled out over the next few years.
The hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of recruitment and retention. As I said in my statement, buildings are but one part of our plan. We must have dedicated and committed members of staff in those buildings, not only delivering the safety that prisoners within the walls expect but keeping members of the public safe outside those walls. The hon. Lady also raised the issue of recruitment. We take very seriously the recruitment challenges faced by some prisons across the country, which is why prison officers in our 31 “hardest to recruit” sites receive an additional payment of between £3,000 and £5,000. Since the end of October 2016, we have recruited a net increase of more than 4,000 staff.
We do not shy away from the fact that the role of a prison officer is extremely difficult, and does not suit everyone. These are people who bear a great deal of responsibility and who must work with some very dangerous and difficult people, as several highly publicised cases have demonstrated in recent weeks. That is why in the White Paper we have put such an emphasis on supporting our staff and enabling them to develop their careers in the Prison Service, so that they feel fulfilled and are helping to contribute to our nationwide effort to cut crime.
The hon. Lady asked me about women in prison. I am sure it was not deliberate, but she overlooked the fact that the number of women in custody has fallen by 24% in the last decade, since Labour was last in power. We very much stand by the female offenders strategy, as I said in evidence to the Justice Committee only recently. We want to ensure that only women who must be in custody are in fact so sentenced, and we are helping magistrates and judges to find alternative sentences for those women when that is appropriate.
Throughout my statement run the golden themes of education, rehabilitation and reform, but protecting the public is another important theme. I look forward greatly to working with the hon. Lady and other colleagues on both sides of the House to ensure that we keep our constituents safe, while also ensuring that justice is served for victims of crime.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chairman of the Justice Committee.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Anyone who takes justice issues seriously will welcome this statement and these initiatives, and I congratulate the Minister on what she has announced. I might also observe that it builds on work done by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), who set much of this in train. I am also glad that the Minister picked up a number of themes that the Justice Committee has raised with Ministers over the years.
Does the Minister agree that it is important for us to have an honest conversation with the whole of society about the need for prison to focus more on rehabilitation and the prevention of reoffending, something that we have not done for decades under any Government? Does she also agree that to make this work, we must put resources behind it? Can she tell us what proportion of the welcome increase in funding received by the Ministry of Justice in the current spending round settlement will be devoted to rehabilitative measures?
Victoria Atkins
No doubt I shall have a chance to thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) for his work in a moment, but I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee that rehabilitation is critical. Reoffending costs us some £18 billion a year, let alone the terrible human costs which often sit alongside that. This prisons policy should be seen as part of our cross-governmental work to tackle crime, support police officers and ensure that justice is delivered.
I can tell my hon. Friend how much we are spending on reducing reoffending. We are injecting £550 million over the next three years to support prison leavers’ transition back into society, and thus reduce reoffending.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement. I recognise that she has a considerable track record in her previous ministerial roles of prioritising the interests and concerns of women, so I know she will be aware of the research that was recently published by The Observer showing that women in prison were five times more likely to have a stillbirth than women in the general population. She will also be aware of the terrible disruption and suffering experienced by children whose mothers are separated from them by being sent to prison.
Does the Minister agree with the Joint Committee on Human Rights that women convicted of non-violent and minor offences should not be sent to prison, especially when they are pregnant and when they have young children? There are other ways for them to serve their sentences, and that is what should happen. As she said, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is still under consideration in Parliament. Will she consider accepting our new clauses so that judges do not sentence women to prison for minor offences when they are pregnant or when it would mean separating them from young children? Let us have that in the law.
Victoria Atkins
First, I want to put on record my sadness that the right hon. and learned Lady has decided to stand down at the next election, but I very much look forward to working with her across the Floor in the meantime.
On women in custody, as I have said, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of women being sent to prison in the past decade. Of course we want to ensure that the judiciary and magistrates maintain their independence, but we support them in understanding that other measures are available. The work that continues through the female offenders strategy to examine women’s sentencing and women’s residential centres, as well as community solutions including drug treatment, will be critical. I very much hope that, if we can give magistrates and judges the confidence to issue those sentences, the rate of imprisonment will continue to decrease.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We are not making brilliant progress so far, so if we want to get everybody in, we will need fairly short questions and answers.
Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will do my best.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on bringing forward the White Paper, which has been long in the gestation. I am grateful for her commitment to it. Two things: first, when prisoners come into the estate, the importance of understanding neurodiversity and autism needs is very clear. I urge her to visit HMP Parc, where the unit on autism is breathtaking. Secondly, can she outline how, when prisoners leave, resettlement passports and the community accommodation service will make a transformational difference to cutting crime?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for all the work he has done on this issue. We are very appreciative of his commitment to it and of his particular commitment to neurodiverse prisoners. We are considering and learning from the joint inspectorate’s call for evidence, and we will very much take those findings into account when we are designing new prisons. The need for continuity of treatment is also central to the White Paper. We want to ensure that treatment that is given in prison continues beyond the prison gates, so that people have the best chance possible of leading lives that are free from crime and safe for the rest of the community.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The Minister said that the cost of reoffending was some £18 billion, but it is the victims of those crimes that we should think of first. If we know that women’s centres are more effective than prisons in cutting reoffending, we need to ensure that the necessary resources are going into those women’s centres. Also, what is good for women in this case would be good for many men as well.
Victoria Atkins
In fairness, I went on to say that the human costs were far greater. On women’s centres, only last week I was extolling the success of the Greater Manchester commitment to looking after and treating female offenders in a holistic way and the dramatic decreases in reoffending in that area. Of course there are lessons that can be applied in the male estate from what we are undertaking in the female estate. I very much want this policy to be applicable to all prisoners, but I have a particular focus on the vulnerabilities of some—not all, but some—female prisoners.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s statement today. I have many serving and former prison officers in my constituency, and I hear from them at first hand about that sinking feeling when they say goodbye to somebody and then all too soon say hello to them again. These measures to address the revolving door for prisoners are vital.
I also thank the Minister for her time on another matter, which is the proposed new prison on the site of HMP Garth and HMP Wymott between Croston and Leyland. I can see my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) in his place, and I have also spoken to him about this—thank you very much, sir. Residents there understand that the planning process is under way, but can the Minister join me in urging the planning authority, Chorley Borough Council, to consider carefully its representations on the correct infrastructure for the site—it has no bus services at the moment—and on maintaining the environment and watching flooding?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I really want concise questions on just one subject, so that we can get through everybody. Otherwise, others are prevented from getting in.
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend, and I also thank her constituents who do so much to keep our communities safe. On the planning application, I regret that I cannot announce our views at the Dispatch Box; we must leave that to the council. I know that she has been lobbying hard to ensure that the plans meet the needs and concerns of her constituents.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
There is a lot in this statement that is to be welcomed, but the challenge that faces the Minister is that we can undermine it all by continuing to allow overcrowding in our prisons. Some of the prison estate is more than 60% overcrowded. With the prison population forecast to rise by 20,000 in the next four years, why are we not linking this to sentencing policy? The bottom line is that we still send too many people to prison.
Victoria Atkins
Fundamentally, the judiciary and magistrates should be trusted in their sentencing decisions. We need to provide alternatives for people who should rightly be sentenced to alternatives, but that must be a matter for the judiciary. On the question of prison places, this is precisely why we are investing nearly £4 billion in new prisons as well as having a vast programme of work to reshape existing accommodation and put in temporary accommodation so that prisoners are treated safely and decently inside.
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I welcome what my hon. Friend has said, particularly about digital technology. I know she will agree that one of its benefits will be to enable prisoners to communicate with their families in a safe and secure way. That is good for the prisoners’ rehabilitation and also good for the families, particularly the children. May I ask her one specific question? In relation to league tables, which are part of this statement, can she tell us how the Government will be able to make allowances for the very different kinds of prisons with very different types of inmates, so that the comparisons can be fair?
Victoria Atkins
I can reassure my right hon. and learned Friend that we of course recognise those differences. We recognise the challenges that, let us say, a local prison faces, compared with those faced by an open prison or one that accommodates prisoners for many years. That will be taken into consideration. We want these key performance indicators to tell the truth about what is happening in our prisons in a fair way, but also in a way that shares best practice around the country.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
There is much that I welcome in this statement, but I have to say that I deplore the proclamation of the creation of more prison places, especially for women, as a success story. May I press the Minister on the role of women’s centres and in particular on their funding? Can she give the House an assurance that that funding will always be adequate, sustainable and consistent?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, because it gives me an opportunity to reassure the House about the construction of the new female facilities. We want these new facilities to be trauma-informed and trauma-responsive. That includes details such as ensuring that there are no dark corridors, which might sadly trigger memories of sexual violence and abuse, for example. We very much want these new facilities be seen as a step towards the 21st-century prison estate. She makes a fair point about women’s centres, and she will know that plans are under way for our first female residential centre, in Wales. It is taking a little bit of time, but we will get there. We very much want to explore these alternatives, to help to ensure that the figures keep reducing.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I welcome the statement. My hon. Friend will be aware that the Select Committee on Education has undertaken an inquiry on prison education, and there is a lot of evidence on the inability of offenders to undertake apprenticeships and do on-site training, which is hampering skills development. The proportion of offenders in employment one year after release is just 17%, which contributes to high levels of reoffending, as she knows, and there is the welfare cost. The prisoner apprenticeship pathway does not go far enough. Will she support an amendment to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill and work with me to allow offenders to hold and start apprenticeships in prison?
Victoria Atkins
I regret that I am unable to make that commitment at the Dispatch Box, but I join my right hon. Friend in the principle that we want our prisons to be as effective and as meaningful as possible for those who are incarcerated. Apprenticeships, training and using part of the prison as a jobcentre are different ideas for increasing the vital statistic he cites so that people do not reoffend and instead turn over a new leaf, making our communities safer as a result.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The number of drug finds in prisons quadrupled in the 10 years up to 2018, so much so that the Government introduced a £100 million package to try to address the drugs issue. Drug finds in prisons have gone up again in the two years since. What next?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman is mischaracterising the success of the X-ray scanners. I have seen how they work at Lincoln, and they discover objects concealed within a person that would not otherwise be found. It shows the terrible ingenuity of organised crime gangs in getting these substances, mobile phones and so on into prisons. It is precisely because we want to break down these empires that we have such enhanced security measures across our prison estate.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the good practice at Downview and High Down. Most importantly, she has the joy of being a Prisons Minister with money, and I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland) on securing it. It will all go to waste if we do not address the inflation in the number of prisoners due to the addiction of this House to ever longer sentences. There are better ways of punishing people and protecting the public than prison. Her and her colleagues’ rhetoric will affect sentences and the Parole Board, which needs a lead and confidence from those charged with these responsibilities.
Victoria Atkins
I encourage the House to see this strategy as sitting alongside the drugs strategy, because treatment and recovery for prisoners is key to cutting addiction and reoffending. We are committed to a meaningful journey of recovery within prison, and we want abstinence-based treatment to be the longer-term goal. Whatever work we achieve inside prison walls must continue once prisoners are released, to give them the best chance of leading fresh lives.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The House was shocked to its core when we learned of the stillbirth of an 18-year-old mother’s baby at Bronzefield. What specific recommendations does the Minister have on antenatal care? She talks about healthcare for people affected by drugs and mental ill health, but will she please set out from the Dispatch Box what we have learned not to do or to do better for pregnant women?
Victoria Atkins
I am mindful of your call for shorter answers, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I cannot set out in detail everything we are doing, but I hope I can give the hon. Lady confidence that there is a vast programme of work to ensure such cases do not happen again. We are providing specific support for pregnant women, including a multidisciplinary individual care plan. We have introduced pregnancy officers and mother and baby officers in every single women’s prison. We do not want that terrible circumstance to happen again, and I genuinely believe it will be prevented through this work.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
I welcome this package, and I particularly welcome the work on numeracy and literacy. Will the Minister ensure that universal screening for dyslexia and other neurodiversities is included? Will she also ensure that the data follows when prisoners are moved between prisons? Otherwise prisoners find they are sent back to square one, which is extremely frustrating.
Victoria Atkins
I acknowledge my right hon. Friend’s work on increasing knowledge and awareness of neurodiversity issues. We will be looking carefully at the joint thematic report to ensure that neurodiversity is understood and that practice is followed within prisons to support those who have neurodiverse conditions. He makes a fair point about data following prisoners between prisons, which is something we must do much better to ensure we are not constantly restarting a prisoner’s journey when they are moved.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
All this will impact significantly, and perhaps severely in some instances, on prison staff. So far the Government have refused to recognise Prison Service staff as a uniformed service, and they have required them to work until 68 or, in some instances, until they drop. Given that resources have rightly been found for infrastructure and inmates, is it not time that resource was also found for the greatest resource within the Prison Service, which is the men and women who serve? Perhaps they could have their pensions levelled up.
Victoria Atkins
I hope the hon. Gentleman will take the time to read the report, as he will see our emphasis on the vital contribution made by our staff day in, day out and night in, night out to keep our communities safe. I have agreed to meet the Prison Officers Association to discuss the pension age. Prison officers are part of the civil service pension scheme, and the long and short of it is that prison staff pay between two and three times less than colleagues in the fire and police services. However, I want to listen to officers on this point and I am very happy to be meeting my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) and the Prison Officers Association to do so.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
HMP Winchester recently marked 10 successful years of Spurgeons helping prisoners keep contact with their families, and the Minister knows how important that is in breaking the cycle. The only problem is that Spurgeons has not had any family days in the facility for a very long time because of, you guessed it, the pandemic. Does she agree that learning to live with covid must also extend to the secure estate? To enable that, what is the Government’s plan to change the currently very low vaccine uptake in prisons such as mine?
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend is right to say that we must learn to live with covid within the prison estate, as we do outside prison walls. We are working with NHS local services to roll out the vaccine in custody, and clearly we encourage everyone to be vaccinated, not just inside but outside prison. That will be key to our consideration of further removing the national framework. Of course, we must be led by the evidence and the data.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I was a little surprised that the Minister did not mention family ties in her statement, as they are an important part of rehabilitation. Is she prepared to meet me and the charity Children Heard and Seen to discuss the retendering of prisoner, family and significant other support services so we can make sure they are children-focused services and are not just about prisoners’ wants and needs?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) for mentioning family ties, which are critical. Family ties are in the White Paper, and we want to encourage, as appropriate, keeping those connections as best we can. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady and the charity. Through this White Paper we will be welcoming the expertise, knowledge and thoughts of charities that work with prisoners, victims and prison staff to ensure they are shared throughout our work.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The White Paper admirably reflects the need to balance punishment and public protection with rehabilitation that reduces reoffending. Does my hon. Friend agree that a key element of achieving success is trusting the best prison governors to develop the right regimes for their prisons, rather than imposing instructions on them from headquarters, however well intentioned?
Victoria Atkins
Very much so. We want to encourage earned autonomy and we want the best practices to be shared across the prison estate. Last week I was delighted to meet, with the Deputy Prime Minister, a number of prison governors who told us their experiences of what was working in their prisons and shared information and ideas. That is the way forward for prisons: we must understand, of course, that as they serve particular communities—particular groups of offenders—they have the expertise and knowledge as to what will work within their establishments.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her statement. Whether prisons are new or old, what happens inside them is the critical issue, so will she outline what steps are in place to prevent contraband such as cigarettes, drugs, mobiles and other items, which are notoriously used as leverage in prisons?
Victoria Atkins
Indeed they are. Of course, not only are those items ways for organised crime gangs to continue control within the prison walls, but people can use the mobile phones to communicate beyond the prison walls. That is incredibly destabilising not just for prison staff but, importantly, for those offenders who are living by the rules and trying their best and who want to be released as soon as possible. We have been working for some time now on our £100 million security package, which includes not only X-ray body scanners but enhanced gate-security measures to cover other ways in which prisoners can get items into prisons, and that is critical. That will be central to our work going forward.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
A sensible way to reduce prison overcrowding and free up spaces would be to ensure that foreign national offenders serve their time not in British prisons but in prisons in their own countries. How many foreign national offenders are there in our prisons? Will the Minister negotiate compulsory prisoner-transfer agreements to get these people back to their own nations?
Victoria Atkins
We very much want to return foreign national offenders to their country of origin as quickly as possible. That is not always possible, depending on where in the world offenders claim to have come from or, indeed, whether we have been able to identify them as coming from a particular country. I continue to work with Home Office Ministers to ensure that the people who can be identified are returned to their countries of origin as soon as possible.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her investment in rehabilitation. My question is about redundant prisons, and in particular Reading jail which, as she knows, has been redundant for some time. She will have seen Banksy’s very generous £10 million offer to buy this wonderful Victorian building; will she agree to meet me to discuss the possibility and look further into the matter?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind invitation and look forward to seeing how Banksy might represent Reading prison in future artworks, but I regret to say that as the competition has just closed and the bids are being considered, I am afraid I cannot say anything further on the process. I will of course update the hon. Gentleman and the House as soon as decisions have been made.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her praise of staff and governors, of whom we have some superb examples on the Isle of Wight.
Will the Government please make up their mind about what they want to do with Camp Hill? We already have two prisons, Albany and Parkhurst, and there is room to expand in that estate. Camp Hill has now been shut; we do not mind having another prison but, overall, we would prefer the site to be used for community housing because we have only six brownfield estates on the Isle of Wight.
Victoria Atkins
I very much understand my hon. Friend’s concern for his constituents and desire for some certainty. I cannot give an undertaking today but am happy to meet him to discuss the matter further and try to make some progress.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I very much welcome the statement, and particularly the measures to cut reoffending.
On the building of new prisons, my hon. Friend will know that proposals for a new 1,400-capacity prison in Buckinghamshire were met with a wall of opposition and thousands of objections, particularly in respect of the loss of greenfield sites, open countryside and agricultural land. With other parts of the Government talking about a brownfield preference, will my hon. Friend lock into the strategy the condition that all new prisons should be built on brownfield and only on brownfield land?
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend is a staunch defender of his constituents and assiduous in advocating their concerns about this and other matters. I cannot comment further on the particular project that he describes because it is in the planning process, but I am happy to meet him to discuss it further because I am sensitive to the concerns he has raised.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I have written to the Minister to invite her down to south Devon to meet Landworks, a local organisation that helps those who have been rehabilitated to re-enter society. Will she come to visit? Also, will she engage with organisations such as Landworks to ensure that they feed into the process in respect of how we can help prisoners to do their time?
Victoria Atkins
I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend and hope he will treat me to a cream tea in the process.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
On that happy note, I thank the Minister for her statement.
Dyslexia Screening
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Dyslexia Screening Bill 2021-22 View all Dyslexia Screening 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
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
I beg to move, Proceedings Time for conclusion of proceedings First day New Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 1 (nationality) and amendments in that Part. Two and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order. New Clauses and new Schedules relating to parts 2, 3, 4 and 6 (asylum, immigration control, age assessments and miscellaneous provisions) and amendments to those Parts Five hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order. Second day New Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 5 (modern slavery) and amendments to that Part; and remaining proceedings on Consideration. Two hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration on the second day.
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require screening for dyslexia in primary schools; to make provision about the teaching and assessment of children found by that screening to have dyslexia; and for connected purposes.
I am proud to be dyslexic, but it was not always that way. As a teenager, I did not know I was dyslexic. I spent my school years focusing on maths and science subjects, always trying to avoid anything that needed more than a few sentences. I got into the University of Oxford through an interview, knowing that if I had to take the exam, I would fail. It was only there that my dyslexia was identified. My tutor—a brilliant man—took me to one side at the end of my first term and said, “The problem is, Matt, you can talk, but you can’t write.” I have always been quite good at the talking bit. He got me an assessment and I was diagnosed with dyslexia. My diagnosis was a lightbulb moment for me: years of frustration at school all made sense.
I was lucky because I was at one of the best universities in the world and they essentially taught me how to read and write again. I was taught how to deconstruct sentences and how to learn each word as a picture, because my mind works in pictures. Shortly afterwards, Microsoft invented spell check, for which I want to put on record my thanks. After a few false starts, I learned to love words—and here I am in a job that is dominated by them. But I was one of the lucky ones who was caught, and too many children are not caught early enough.
It is a quiet scandal that an estimated four in five dyslexic children—80% of them—leave school with their dyslexia unidentified. That means that young adults are going to university and into the workplace with the same wrong mindset that I had—that they just find reading and writing difficult—so their potential is unrealised and often their confidence is undermined. Without their dyslexia being spotted and supported, many children will not only fail to reach their potential but fail to leave school with the qualifications they deserve.
It does not have to be this way. Cheap and easy computer-based screening tools now exist to help to identify dyslexia. Primary schools need to have specialist skills to interpret results so that better teaching techniques can help dyslexic children to learn to read and write effectively. We need the combination of trained teachers and making the most of the technology. It is so important that children know, and their parents and teachers know, so that teachers can teach dyslexic children according to how their brains work. More than that, with the right screening, teaching and assessment, dyslexic children can make the most of their brilliant neurodiverse minds.
The thing is that dyslexic people think different. Yes, we have problems with the written word and word formation, but dyslexia is associated with positive skills, too: creativity, visualisation, imagination and lateral thinking. Those are the skills that dyslexics tend to have in abundance and that the future of work values more and more.
The process in which the creative skills and lateral thinking become more and more important has only been accelerated by the pandemic, with the digitisation and automation we are seeing. The changing of the world of work like never before means we must make the most of these very human skills. As the machines do more and more of the straight-line thinking, so the jobs of the future are more and more about creativity and communication. It was not a surprise to me to read that an estimated 40% of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic.
This Bill will help more employers to hire the neurodiverse skills of the future. Let me give two examples. GCHQ’s apprentices are four times more likely to be dyslexic, because they are hired for their lateral thinking and pattern recognition skills. I pay tribute to other forward-thinking employers, such as Universal Music, which launched the first handbook for embracing diversity in the creative industries—an incredible resource that I was proud to launch as Health Secretary. This is about not quotas but sensible economics.
There is a flip side. All too often, we see what happens to many undiagnosed dyslexics who then struggle to read and write. Although 40% of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic, it is estimated that so too are over half the prison population. There are correlations between dyslexia and unemployment, drug usage, school exclusions and homelessness. These are the knock-on effects of undiagnosed dyslexia. We have the tools to solve this injustice. I am asking the House to have the political will. While reoffending is such a cost to society—a whole White Paper has just been published on this subject—it makes economic and social justice sense to break the link from dyslexia to the prison door.
I welcome the Education Secretary’s determination to tackle illiteracy, and we have all been inspired by his personal story of arriving in London without a word of English, and making it to the top table. I am grateful for the work that the Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), is doing to prepare a White Paper on illiteracy and innumeracy. I look forward to working across the House to tackle these injustices, and this proposed Bill is just one way to get started.
We need to use modern technology to ensure that every child gets screened for dyslexia at primary school, but screening and technology alone are not enough. We need primary schools to have trained dyslexia specialists to interpret results and begin an intervention using evidence-based practice. We need teacher training to cover the modern, evidence-based techniques for teaching dyslexic children, and those with other neurodiversities; all teachers are teachers of dyslexic children, yet there is inadequate teacher training for all neurodiversity. We also need assessment to be rigorous and to assess true capability.
In the criminal justice system, we need more support for those who cannot read, and support for the dedicated teachers and prisoner mentors who work hard to help prisoners while they are inside, such as the brilliant training staff whom I met last month under the inspirational leadership of Steve Phillips at Highpoint prison in my West Suffolk constituency. They work incredibly hard and will be supported by some of the measures that were announced today, but there is much more to do. In business, employers also have a vital role, because employing dyslexics is not an act of kindness, but good business.
I got the support that I needed; I was one of the lucky ones. We cannot let so many slip through the cracks. We must use the modern tools at our disposal. I am grateful for the support that I have received for this Bill from Members on both sides of the Chamber. I am grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee, and to those who have been in contact with me since I have started to talk about this matter and who have told me their stories, some of which are incredibly moving. I am grateful too to the Centre for Social Justice, which is helping me in this campaign and has today published an excellent paper on the evidence and what needs to happen. By working together across the political divide and beyond politics, we—as a House and as a society—can start to harness dyslexia as a strength, not a weakness, and give people like my teenage self the confidence and support to make the most of their talents.
The Minister knows how important this issue is. The Secretary of State is, every ounce of him, the embodiment of the best of modern Britain. This is an issue that the House and the country can unite behind. I believe deeply that everyone has something to give and a contribution to make, and that it is the role of us in politics and of the Government to help people make the very best of their lives and to help each child to reach the soaring heights of their potential. Let us make the UK a global leader in raising the standards of how we identify, teach and assess children whose minds work differently—who think different. I commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Matt Hancock, Robert Halfon, Dr Rupa Huq, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Paul Bristow, Rosie Cooper, Tom Hunt, Henry Smith, Holly Mumby-Croft, Christian Wakeford, Brendan Clarke-Smith and Jim Shannon present the Bill.
Matt Hancock accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March 2022, and to be printed (Bill 210).
Nationality and Borders Bill: Programme (No. 2)
Ordered,
That the Order of 20 July 2021 (Nationality and Borders Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:
(1) Paragraphs (4) and (5) of the Order shall be omitted.
(2) Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading shall be taken in two days in accordance with the following provisions of this order.
(3) Proceedings on Consideration—
(a) shall be taken on each of those days in the order shown in the first column of the following table, and
(b) shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the table.
(4) Proceedings on Third Reading shall be taken on the second day and shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration on the second day.—(Tom Pursglove.)
Nationality and Borders Bill
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Nationality and Borders Act 2022 View all Nationality and Borders Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
16:45 - The House divided: - Ayes: 245 / Noes: 309 - Question accordingly negatived.
16:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 237 / Noes: 323 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:14 - The House divided: - Ayes: 235 / Noes: 314 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:29 - The House divided: - Ayes: 251 / Noes: 296 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:42 - The House divided: - Ayes: 233 / Noes: 318 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:55 - The House divided: - Ayes: 235 / Noes: 313 - Question accordingly negatived.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 4—Former British-Hong Kong service personnel: right of abode—
‘(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended as follows.
(2) At the end of section 2(1) insert—
“(c) that person is a former member of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps or the Hong Kong Royal Naval service, or
(d) that person is the spouse or dependent of a former member of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps or the Hong Kong Royal Naval service.”’
This new clause would mean that all former British-Hong Kong service personnel, plus their spouses and dependents, would have right of abode in the UK.
New clause 5—British National (Overseas) visas: eligibility—
‘(1) Within two months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must amend the Immigration Rules to ensure that all persons meeting the condition set out in subsection (2) are eligible to apply for the British National (Overseas) visa.
(2) The condition referred to in subsection (1) is that the person has at least one parent who is a British national (overseas).’
This new clause would enable any persons from Hong Kong who have at least one parent who is a British national (overseas) to apply for the British National (Overseas) visa.
New clause 7—Exception to the requirement to pay fees in connection with immigration or nationality—
‘(1) In relation to an applicant meeting the criteria set out in subsection (2) of this section, the Secretary of State must by regulations provide for an exception to any requirement to pay fees set out in a fees order under section 68 (fees) of the Immigration Act 2014.
(2) The criteria referred to in subsection (1) are that the applicant has—
(a) lawfully resided in the UK for a minimum period of five years, and
(b) lawfully worked in a clinical capacity for the National Health Service anywhere in the United Kingdom for an unbroken period of three years
provided that, if the applicant leaves the employment of the National Health Service in any part of the United Kingdom within the three years following a successful application in respect of which the applicant was exempted from paying fees, those fees become payable on termination of employment in the National Health Service.’
This new clause exempts clinical NHS workers from the fees associated with immigration and nationality, provided that they have lived lawfully in the UK for at least five years, worked in the NHS for at least three years, and continue to work in the NHS for a further three years after being granted the fee exemption.
New clause 8—Children registering as British citizens: fees—
‘(1) Within two months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must amend the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018.
(2) The amendments referred to in subsection (1) must include—
(a) provision to ensure that the fees charged for applications for registration as a British citizen under the British Nationality Act 1981 or the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1997, where the person in respect of whom the application is made is a child at the time the application is made, do not exceed the cost to the Home Office of processing the application;
(b) provision to ensure that no fees are charged for applications for registration as a British Citizen under the British Nationality Act 1981 or the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1997 where the person in respect of whom the application is made—
(i) is a child being looked after by a local authority at the time the application is made; or
(ii) was looked after by a local authority when they were a child, and at the time the application is made is either—
(A) under the age of 21; or
(B) under the age of 25 and in full-time education.
(3) Within six months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report setting out the effect of such fees on the human rights of the children applying for registration as British citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981 and the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1997.’
In respect of children registering as British citizens, this new clause would prevent the Home Office from charging a fee which exceeds the cost of processing the application. It would also abolish such fees altogether for looked-after children until they reach the age of 21 (or 25 if in full-time education), and would require the Government to produce a report setting out the effect of such fees on children’s human rights.
New clause 22—Requirement for the Secretary of State to waive the full capacity requirement—
‘(1) In section 44A of the British Nationality Act 1981, for “may” substitute “should”.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to require the Secretary of State to waive the requirement for a person to have full capacity if it is in that person‘s best interests to do so.
New clause 25—Birthright commitment under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement 1998—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act, produce a report setting out how the UK Government will give statutory effect to the recognition set out in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement 1998 of the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may choose.
(2) The Secretary of State must lay the report before each House of Parliament.’
New clause 33—Acquisition of British citizenship by birth or adoption: comprehensive sickness insurance—
‘(1) The British Nationality Act 1981 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 1(3A) insert—
(a) a person born in the United Kingdom after commencement who is not a British citizen is entitled, on application, to register as a British citizen if the person’s father or mother would have been settled in the United Kingdom at the time of the person’s birth, if Assumption A had applied.
(b) assumption A is that, in assessing whether the person’s father or mother met a requirement to have held comprehensive sickness insurance, this is to be regarded as having been satisfied whenever they
(i) had access to the NHS in practice; or
(ii) held a comprehensive sickness insurance policy.
(c) registration under this subsection shall be free of charge.”
(3) After section 50A insert—
“50B Exceptions
(a) is not to be treated as having been in the United Kingdom in breach of the immigration laws during a period of time that has been counted as part of a continuous qualifying period in a grant of leave to that person under Appendix EU of the Immigration Rules, and
(b) is not to be treated as not being of good character on account of a failure to hold comprehensive sickness insurance during some period of residence in the UK.”
(4) The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 is amended as follows.
(5) After section 15, insert—
“15A Comprehensive sickness insurance
(1) For the purposes of any decision taken by a public authority under this Part after commencement of this section, a person is to be treated as having met a requirement to have held comprehensive sickness insurance, whenever they—
(a) had access to the NHS in practice; or
(b) held a comprehensive sickness insurance policy.
(2) This section shall in particular apply to any decisions taken under residence scheme immigration rules.”’
This new clause provides that a person seeking to acquire permanent residence documents, naturalisation or citizenship need not have had comprehensive sickness insurance prior to applying for citizenship.
New clause 34—Registration as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen: Fees—
‘(1) No person may be charged a fee to be registered as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen that is higher than the cost to the Secretary of State of exercising the function of registration.
(2) No child may be charged a fee to be registered as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen if that child is being looked after by a local authority.
(3) No child may be charged a fee to be registered as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen that the child or the child’s parent, guardian or carer is unable to afford.
(4) The Secretary of State must take steps to raise awareness of rights under the British Nationality Act 1981 to be registered as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen among people possessing those rights.’
This new clause would ensure that fees for registering as a British citizen or British overseas territories citizen do not exceed cost price. It would also ensure that children being looked after by a local authority are not liable for such fees, and that no child is charged an unaffordable fee. Lastly, it would require the Government to raise awareness of rights to registration.
Amendment 108, in clause 3, page 8, line 33, leave out subsection (4).
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to remove the good character requirement for a person applying for British overseas territories citizenship who has previously been discriminated against where this could perpetuate that discrimination.
Amendment 12, page 11, line 35, leave out clause 9.
This amendment would remove clause 9, which would enable the Home Secretary to deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice.
Government amendments 17 and 18.
Amendment 2, page 12, line 33, leave out clause 10.
This amendment would remove clause 10, which restricts entitlement to British citizenship for children born stateless in the UK.
Amendment 111, in clause 10, page 13, line 23, after “birth”, insert
“without any legal or administrative barriers”.
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that, in compliance with Article 1 of the 1961 UN Statelessness Convention, British citizenship is only withheld from a stateless child born in the UK where the nationality of a parent is available to the child immediately, without any legal or administrative hurdles.
Amendment 110, in clause 10, page 13, line 27, at end insert—
“(d) in all the circumstances, it would be in the best interests of the child for it to acquire the nationality in question.”
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that the best interests of the child are central to decision-making in deciding whether to grant or decline an application for British citizenship by a stateless child who was born in the UK.
Henry Smith
The Chagos islanders have suffered over half a century of consistent injustices. They were forcibly exiled from their homeland, the Chagos islands—Diego Garcia and outer islands such as Peros Banhos—by the Harold Wilson Administration in the late 1960s to make way for a military base, and they were typically relocated against their will in Mauritius, but also in the Seychelles and other locations.
There are many aspects of the injustices suffered by the Chagos islanders on which I and many other hon. and right hon. Members across the House have campaigned, such as a right of resettlement, a right to compensation—a package has still not been fully realised to any extent at all—and a right to self-determination. It is London, Washington, the UN in New York or Port Louis that is seeking to decide their future sovereign status.
However, there is another injustice that has been suffered by descendants of Chagos islanders: the denial of their moral rights to British overseas territory citizenship. It is no fault of the grandchildren and other descendants of the Chagos islanders that their forebears were forcibly removed from their homeland and essentially dumped in other parts of the Indian ocean, but it has meant that they have lost their rights to British overseas territory citizenship. Had those individuals been born in other overseas territories, such as Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands or Bermuda, they would have a right to British overseas territory citizenship. This is causing great hardship for many families, and dividing many communities as a result.
Those who were born on the Chagos islands and the direct children of those born on the Chagos islands do have a right to British overseas territory citizenship and therefore British citizenship. They are able to settle in this country, and are productive members of our wider society. I am grateful that many have decided to live in my Crawley constituency. However, many grandchildren and other descendants of those islanders are technically seen as foreign nationals, and have to go through an expensive and rigorous visa process to be here, and then apply for indefinite leave to remain. That results in families with different nationality status and immigration status, often in the same household. Some are able to work and to access public funds and public services. Others are unable to, which creates issues in terms of housing overcrowding.
As I said, this community has suffered a series of injustices. It is the sort of thing you would expect to read in the history books of colonialism of several hundred years ago. We are not talking about many people either. We have just heard a lot about 20,000 Afghans evacuated from that country with the fall of Kabul. We have heard a lot about over 3 million BNO—British national overseas—citizens in Hong Kong with a potential right to settle in this country as a result of the increasing Chinese erosion of democracy there. With the Chagos Islanders, only numbers in the hundreds to low thousands would be eligible.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is not about the numbers; it is about the principle and about living up to our historical obligations. I have seen a number of initiatives of this sort. I will be happy to support this new clause. It remains to be seen what the response will be from the Treasury Bench. Will he join me in putting the message across to the Ministers and officials responsible that this will never just go away? If not today, then sooner or later, these injustices will have to be addressed.
Henry Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support, and I agree with every word he said.
We have had over half a century of appalling injustice, in many different regards, for this community. It is now time that this House rights the wrongs that they have suffered. In allowing British overseas territories citizenship for the descendants of the Chagos Islanders, we can go a long way towards doing that. Chagos islanders were forcibly removed from their homeland not by this House but by an Order in Council. This issue has never had the proper scrutiny of this elected House, which can now play its part in righting a significant historical injustice. I therefore call on Members from across the House to support new clause 2.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) in proposing new clause 2. I pay tribute to his commitment to this cause, which has been a long-standing one for him and his constituents. I wish to put on record the Opposition’s support for the new clause, which seeks to rectify the long-standing injustice in British nationality law that affects a relatively small number of people—Chagossian people, descendants of the Chagos islanders, who were forcibly removed from the British Indian Ocean Territory in the 1960s. The fact that British citizenship does not automatically pass to second and third generation Chagossians despite some of them migrating to the UK with their British parents as very young children is nothing short of a scandal. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will support new clause 2.
Whereas the hon. Member for Crawley is seeking to rectify an injustice, the Nationality and Borders Bill does the opposite and seeks to create chaos and injustice. I will focus my comments on part 1. Clause 9 provides the Government with dangerous and unprecedented powers to deprive UK nationals of citizenship, without warning. We are wholeheartedly opposed to this. Through clause 9, the Government seek to amend the long-standing position under the British Nationality Act 1981 that an individual must be notified if they are to be deprived of their nationality. It exempts the Government from giving notice of a decision to deprive a person of citizenship if authorities do not have the subject’s contact details or if it is not “reasonably practical” to do so. The Government’s proposal also allows such secret deprivations to take place solely on the basis that the Home Office deems it “in the public interest” or in the interest of “foreign relations”. Effectively, this means that the Home Secretary can strip someone of their citizenship without informing them because it would be internationally embarrassing for her to do so. This abhorrent proposal therefore enables the Government to remove basic fairness, on top of an already dangerous power.
Like many measures in the Bill, there is no practical reason for this change. Present rules already allow for citizenship deprivation letters to be delivered to an individual’s last known address. The real purpose of this rule appears to be to introduce measures that remove the right to appeal. These measures make lawful previously unlawful citizenship stripping. They ask Parliament to pretend that an unlawful decision was lawful all along. It is shameful and Orwellian in equal measure.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could cast his mind back to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, where, for the first time, people who had acquired British citizenship through birth were made subject to citizenship deprivation powers. So what he has just commented on was brought in and voted through by a Labour Government. Could he address that point?
Bambos Charalambous
As I mentioned, any reasons to strip people of citizenship are given on notice, but this deprives people of the right to—
Bambos Charalambous
I do not agree with the principle of it: it should be done on notice.
Clause 9 means that individuals will not be able to challenge deprivation of their nationality as they will not be aware or told that they are no longer British citizens, and the time limit for appeal may run out before the individual becomes aware that their rights have been stripped. As Reprieve has pointed out, under these proposals, a person accused of speeding would be afforded more rights than someone at risk of being deprived of their British nationality.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I very much agree with the point that my hon. Friend is making. Is he aware of the very widespread alarm that clause 9 is creating up and down the country?
Bambos Charalambous
My right hon. Friend is exactly right.
In recent years, the Government have unlawfully failed to satisfy the simplest of obligations in relation to citizenship deprivation: providing notice to people that they are seeking to deprive them of their rights. Having been found to have unlawfully stripped people of citizenship without telling them, the Home Secretary now seeks to undo these unlawful actions.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
Can I just ask the hon. Gentleman very simply: does he agree with the principle of citizenship revocation? Forget the issue of duty of notice—does he agree with the principle of it?
Bambos Charalambous
The British Nationality Act has been in law for the last 40 years and that provides the power to strip people of citizenship. What we are talking about here is doing it without notice.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that to deprive a person of their citizenship without warning or explanation would be a flagrant breach of natural justice and that to do so as an alternative to submitting that person to due process under the law risks undermining our national security, rather than enhancing it?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She is exactly right. How can it be right that somebody is able to be stripped of their citizenship without knowing about it? That is clearly a breach of natural justice.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has made a very important point about people not knowing that they have been deprived of their citizenship and how that might affect their ability to appeal. Clause 9 says that someone subject to these new rules
“may appeal against the decision to the First-tier Tribunal.”
However, as I understand it, rule 8 of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission gives individuals 28 days to appeal deprivation of citizenship if they are outside the United Kingdom. Does not he agree that the Minister, in responding today, has to give absolute clarity that that 28-day period will be extended?
Bambos Charalambous
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. How can someone know when the 28 days are going to run if they have not received notice of the decision to strip them of their citizenship? It is basic.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that at the heart of this matter is the complete stripping away of due process? A person does not have to be given notice, or a reason why they are being stripped of their nationality. This has a disproportionate impact on our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. This measure will clearly affect people who have other citizenships available to them, because it is unlawful to deprive someone of citizenship and leave them stateless. Clause 9 is about people’s citizenship, identity and, ultimately, rights; without citizenship, people do not have rights, and that leaves them without an identity or a sense of belonging.
Bambos Charalambous
I will give way one last time, but I need to make progress; otherwise, there will be very little time for anyone else to speak.
Richard Graham
I am grateful to the hon. Member. He is a reasonable man, so I am sure that he will agree that when it comes to sensitive issues, such as the very small number of people whose nationality may be revoked by the Home Secretary, as has been possible for the past 100 years, it is incredibly important that they are not the subject of rather embarrassing scaremongering, such as that being done by the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). Will the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) confirm at the Dispatch Box his clear understanding that when someone has a single nationality, they cannot have their nationality revoked and be sent abroad, as the hon. Member for Bradford East has implied?
Bambos Charalambous
Many people have dual nationality in the UK, and those are the people who are in fear of the measure being introduced. I will now make progress.
The clause not only represents a total disregard for justice and the rule of law, but also says to certain British citizens that despite their being born and raised in the UK, their rights will always be precarious and subject to change, because, in the words of the Home Office,
“British citizenship is a privilege, not a right.”
The consequences of that are drastic. It is a threat to all, but particularly to those from ethnic minority backgrounds. According to analysis by the New Statesman, nearly 6 million people in England and Wales could be affected, and under this proposal, two in five people from an ethnic minority background are eligible to be deprived of their citizenship without being told.
Have the Government learned nothing from the Windrush scandal? They are repeating the same mistakes time and again. How can we trust the Government and the Home Office? How can we trust them with the measures proposed in clause 9? Simply put, we cannot, and I therefore commend the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on bringing forward amendment 12, which would remove clause 9 from the Bill. We support that amendment in the name of fairness and in order to uphold the rule of law.
Another aspect of part 1 that we are concerned about is statelessness and, in particular, clause 10, which is intended to disentitle stateless children in the UK from their statutory right to British citizenship. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for tabling amendment 111, which would give effect to the recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which published an excellent report on the Bill earlier this month. I wish to put on record my thanks, and I am sure the whole House’s thanks, for the enormous contribution she has made as a parliamentarian to preserving rights and demanding equality. She will be sorely missed when she steps down at the next election.
Clause 10 proposes amending and restricting a vital safeguard in British nationality law that prevents and reduces childhood statelessness. Under our international obligations, we have safeguards that mean that a child who was born in the UK and has always been stateless can acquire British citizenship after five years of residing here. The Government’s proposals to restrict and amend that obligation are an affront to children. They will impose the most profound of exclusions on children: the denial of any citizenship, and particularly citizenship of the place where they were born and live—the only place they know. This exclusion and alienation, when inflicted on a child in their formative years, will be highly damaging to their personal development and their feelings of security and belonging. The Government consistently failed, on Second Reading and in Committee, to explain what assessment has been made of the impact of this proposal on statelessness. That is unacceptable.
We Opposition Members therefore welcome amendment 111, and support its intention of ensuring that the Government act in compliance with article 1 of the 1961 UN statelessness convention. It would amend clause 10 so that British citizenship was withheld from a stateless child born in the UK only when a parent’s nationality was available to the child immediately, without any legal or administrative hurdles. This is a necessary amendment, as the Government have failed to protect the existing safeguards, which are in line with international law, in this Bill; on the contrary, they have introduced cruel and unworkable proposals that will only exacerbate the challenges for children and young people in the UK.
New clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), is on an issue that follows on from that of child statelessness. We support that new clause, which concerns the fee—£1,012 for a child—that people must pay to exercise their right to be registered as a British citizen. Like hon. and right hon. Members across this House, I have raised many cases on behalf of constituents navigating this inefficient, ineffective and expensive system. The fees imposed by the Home Office deny people their rights. Application fees are one barrier, and Home Office delays and inefficiencies are another. If we look at the figures, we see that the unfairness is extremely stark—even to the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), who rightly described the registration fees for children as
“a huge amount of money to ask children to pay”.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I have heard that when the Bill was being prepared, the Children’s Commissioner was not consulted at all about its implications for the status of children. Can that possibly be right? Can my hon. Friend enlighten the House on that point?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am not aware that the Children’s Commissioner was consulted, but I am sure the Minister will clarify whether they were.
The fee for a child to register as a British citizen stands at £1,012. The Home Office confirms that the cost of registration is only £372. The remaining £640 is, therefore, money made after delivery of the service. Home Office registration fees do not reflect the cost of registration. On the Government’s watch, people are being prevented from accessing the immigration system, and that leads to exclusion and isolation for the children and young people who are denied citizenship due to the barriers in their way.
Citizenship should not be about cost; it should be about contributing to our communities and inclusivity, but under the current system, it is about cost. By design, it is about astronomical application fees. Rather than fixing these problems through this legislation, which, despite its draconian measures, provides a unique opportunity to right this wrong, the Government concern themselves with outlandish and unworkable policies. I strongly urge Members from all parts of the House to carefully consider new clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. It would deliver fairness where the Government have failed to, and it has our full support.
Finally, I wish to speak about another issue that has broad cross-party support—a further important and unique opportunity to right wrongs. New clause 5, in the name of the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and others, relates to the British national overseas visa scheme. As we know, the BNO scheme was, in theory, designed to offer a path to citizenship for Hongkongers, but in practice the scheme is not working as well as it could. Indeed, there are worrying and significant loopholes in it that mean individuals and groups of individuals are being left in limbo. That is particularly true for younger Hongkongers who have fled the country over fear of repercussions, as those born after 1997 do not hold BNO passports, and are therefore unable to settle in the UK via the BNO route. The result of this loophole in the BNO scheme is that young people who have fled police brutality find themselves fighting for their rights within the sclerotic and inefficient UK asylum system, having been arbitrarily excluded from the scheme because of their age.
Hongkongers born after 1997 do not hold a BNO passport. Those documents were issued to citizens following the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997, so those aged under 24 cannot benefit from the BNO scheme. Home Office figures show that there were 124 asylum claims from Hong Kong nationals in the year to June 2021, compared with 21 the year before and just nine in the year to June 2019. This is a growing problem, and it cannot be swept under the rug. For those stuck in the system, there is, in the words of Hong Kong Watch, an “agonising wait”. That should not exist, and could be fixed in the BNO scheme. Again, the Opposition proposed that in Committee, and naturally we fully support new clause 5. There are deep and historical ties between the UK and Hong Kong. The Government must not waiver in their commitment to people whose way of life has been put at risk. By accepting new clause 5, they could take a significant and immediate step towards that, with the Opposition’s support.
The Government’s decision to offer the Hong Kong BNO scheme is a welcome expression of the UK’s historical relationship with the citizens of Hong Kong. Individuals and families arriving from Hong Kong will enrich the UK’s cultural life and contribute to our economy. However, without amendment, the scheme is in danger of being just more warm words. As I have said on other amendments and new clauses, despite our deep concerns about the Bill’s draconian, dog-whistle politics when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers, it provides an opportunity to right wrongs in our system. I will leave my comments there, as I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Perhaps I should give a little bit of guidance. There are two groups of amendments this afternoon. If colleagues wish to speak to the second group of amendments, they should wait until we get to that group. Obviously, many colleagues will want to speak in various parts of the debate, so it might be wise for colleagues to prioritise the groups that they wish to speak to. I shall prioritise those who have tabled amendments in this first group. I call David Davis.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I ask a question with respect to your ruling? I take it that I will be able to speak to my amendments in the second group in debate on that group, and that I do not have to address them now. Is that correct?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am sure that very careful consideration will be given to the tabled amendments, but some people may not get in on both groups. If there are votes on the first group, that will eat into the time for the second group.
Mr Davis
Thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not looking for a promise.
Before I talk about my amendment, for which I have a one-minute speech, let me address questions that my hon. Friends on the Government Benches asked the Opposition spokesman. He was asked whether he agrees with the idea of withdrawing citizenship, full stop. My answer is that the British Nationality Act 1981 gives too much power to the Home Secretary—[Interruption.] I will answer, if I am not interrupted. It gives too much power, without sufficient early judicial intervention. It allows for a right of appeal, but it does not require the right of application to court first, and given that we are talking about something as serious as citizenship, it should.
We should not give the state the power to take every right away from erstwhile citizens of the country. That is not just my view; it also happens to be that of our biggest ally. In my time in this House, I have only once had a visit, as it were, from the State Department of the United States, and that was on this policy. In some people’s view, we are leaving our “human detritus” out in the conflict zones of the middle east. Most of our allies, having started with that policy, have withdrawn it and are taking back their people to put them on trial in their own country. From a security point of view, this policy does not stand up in the view of our allies.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly strong point. Does he think it is quite inappropriate for one of the leading nations at the United Nations, with the privilege of a veto, not to accept its international responsibilities, when all other members of the permanent five do?
Mr Davis
I do think that, but I was focusing on the security element, and I do not think that the security argument stands up.
Amendment 12, in my name, would remove clause 9 from the Bill. That would not take away the Home Secretary’s right of rejecting citizenship, but it would take away her right to do so without notification. Of course, that matters. I go back to judicial rights. Say that someone does not know that they have had their citizenship withdrawn. They cannot appeal the matter for as long as they do not know, and that might be a long time.
Clause 9(2) says that the requirement to notify
“does not apply if it appears to the Secretary of State that”—
and there is a series of conditions, one of which is that notice should not be given if that is
“in the interests of the relationship between the United Kingdom and another country”.
I cannot think of a weaker reason to withhold the rights of one of our citizens than to favour our diplomatic relations with another country. I do not think we are on the same page on that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I remind hon. Members that being fairly brief in remarks, as done admirably by David Davis, will allow more people to get in. I call the SNP spokesperson, Anne McLaughlin.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Even though the Scottish National party has fundamental disagreements with most of this horrific Bill, that is not the case for part 1, where we are in agreement with much of it. We support the efforts to correct some historical injustices of UK nationality law and bringing British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship law back into line. It should have happened a long time ago, but we support that it is happening now. We pay tribute to the campaign groups that have continued to make the case over several years, including the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, and Amnesty International. However, there are a number of issues that I want to raise and I will start with the SNP’s new clauses.
New clause 34 would ensure that the Government do not profit from people registering as British citizens or British overseas citizens. Hon. Members might be interested to know that, in 2018, the Home Office made profits of £500 million by charging £500 million more than it cost to process applications. The cost to the Home Office of the registration process is about £372 a person, but to the person applying, it is a minimum of £1,100 for children and £1,200 for an adult. Why? More importantly, why does that matter? How does that affect someone’s life?
I would like to share a story that I told in Committee of someone who has become part of my family and the devastating impact that the extortionate fees had on his family life. Cambull—that is not his real name—came from Sudan. The village where he grew up was razed to the ground, everybody fled, and he did not know where the rest of his family were. He assumed that his brothers, sister, mother and father had died, but he did not know for sure. He kept hearing rumours over the years. He came here as an asylum seeker and got his refugee status. He worked in security on minimum wage, zero-hours contracts, but he had a diligent approach to his job and built a life for himself. But the need to know for sure what had happened to his family members was always in the back of his mind. Any of us would share that need.
The Red Cross got some information for Cambull. There was a possibility that some of his family had survived, but nothing was certain. He needed to go back to find out if that was the case. To do that, he needed the protection of a British passport and British citizenship, so he set about applying. Because he was on the minimum wage, it took him years to save up the fees. I realise there are many in here who cannot imagine that, and I make no criticism of them—I am not being facetious—for never having experienced poverty. I would like nobody to experience it, but I would urge Conservative Members to trust me when I say that it took him years to save up the £1,200, and he could not have saved any harder. Had he been charged what it actually cost the Home Office, he would have got to Sudan a whole lot sooner. I know that nobody in this Chamber would have wanted what happened to him to have happened—I am coming to that—but I want to explain the impact of these extortionate fees in the hope that the Government can be persuaded to reduce them.
It took Cambull a long time, but he did finally get back to Sudan, with his British passport, to see what had become of his family, and he discovered that his mum had, in fact, survived the brutal attacks. She later became ill, and was ill for many years, but she lived longer than anyone expected because she had clung on hoping she would see his face one more time. She died two months before he got there. As I have said, I am not for a second suggesting that anybody here or anybody drafting the legislation would not care about what happened to Cambull, but if he had been able to apply for his citizenship when he became eligible—in other words, if he had been able to afford the cost because it was the actual cost, rather than the cost plus profit—he could have been reunited with his mum before she passed away, and it would have meant so much to both of them. There are so many Cambulls out there and others with different stories.
I want to express my party’s support for new clause 8 in the name of the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). I will leave her to make what I know will be very good arguments about the even more offensive practice of making profit from children’s applications. One of those arguments is of course that the courts have already ruled against it, but that does not seem to make a difference to this Government these days.
Finally, on awareness raising in relation to new clause 34, several organisations, including Amnesty, have expressed concern about the lack of it. They have asked for assurances that where an individual application is successful, the Government will take positive action to ensure that other potential applicants are made aware of their equal or similar right to register at discretion. This means that where an example is identified, as the Bill says, of
“unfairness,…an act or omission of a public authority, or…exceptional circumstances”,
on which it is right or necessary to exercise the discretion, there should be publicity and awareness raising. We talked about that in Committee, but those organisations want to know that it will happen, and that members of the public who could use the legislation to the same positive effect will have access—easy access—to such information. I would also like an assurance from the Minister that awareness raising will apply equally to British citizenship and British overseas territories citizenship.
On new clause 33, EU citizens have been living in the UK without knowing that, for some, there is an obscure requirement to hold a form of private health insurance. With free access at the point of need to our unique NHS, of which we are all proud, the EU rules on the need for comprehensive sickness insurance were not really written with the UK’s unusual situation in mind. New clause 33 is necessary because, for many, this requirement has only become apparent when applying for citizenship or when applying for British passports for their children born in the UK, and it is now presenting significant hurdles to obtaining citizenship. It could easily be rectified by this new clause, which would allow an applicant the right of free access to the NHS to satisfy the requirement that an individual should hold CSI.
The Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—made sympathetic noises on this in Committee, so if he will not accept this new clause, will he at least tighten up the guidance so that nobody has to take the risk of shelling out over £1,200 to apply, only to lose it when the decision maker takes the view on CSI that the Minister seemed to be suggesting he would not want them to take?
We support many of the amendments and new clauses, but I will mention just a couple in particular. Amendment 2 in the name of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) would leave out clause 10 on statelessness. Clause 10 requires the Secretary of State to be satisfied that a child was unable to acquire another nationality before being permitted to register as a British citizen. This creates an additional and unjustified hurdle to stateless children’s registration as British citizens. Rather than ease the process and reform the current system to help children attain citizenship, the Government are intent on putting up more barriers and making it more difficult for children under 18 to be registered. Why? Because they have a handful of anecdotal examples of parents who appear to be using the system, as far as they are concerned, to jump the queue.
In fact, I remember only one such anecdote in Committee. However, I do remember hon. Members on the Committee asking repeatedly for evidence, and the Minister stated repeatedly that evidence would be forthcoming. I remember that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) asked, I asked several times, the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) asked and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) asked. When I looked at the record, I counted at least 10 times that we asked for something more than anecdotes, and we were told that the evidence would be forthcoming, but it just has not been, so perhaps the Minister is going to surprise us and give us the evidence now.
The impact of the anecdotes—or the one anecdote I remember being given—was that a child who has done nothing wrong may end up registered as British five years before they otherwise might be. That hardly seems grounds for introducing this restrictive clause. The impact of statelessness on children can be dreadful. It is a terrible thing for a child to feel that they do not belong during their formative years.
I come now to amendment 12 in name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). We are very much opposed to clause 9, which, as we have heard, grants the Home Secretary the power to strip UK nationals of their citizenship in secret and without advance warning. This is deeply concerning, and it sends completely the wrong message. Since this has become public knowledge, I have had a number of people phoning me about it in an absolute panic.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree with me that it is not only us and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) who share these concerns? A petition that was started on change.org by my constituent Mr Kashif Iqbal has now got over 150,000 signatures calling for the removal of clause 9 to ensure that British citizenship cannot be stripped from our constituents in this manner.
Anne McLaughlin
I am coming to the end, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I pay tribute to Mr Iqbal, my hon. Friend’s constituent, because that is what we want. We want public pressure, and in Committee I felt that we were not being listened to at all. Of course, we did not win any of the battles in Committee and we are probably not going to win any of the battles here, but we will try, and public pressure is what will make this Government change their mind.
As I have said, we do support many of the amendments—for example, new clause 2 on Chagos islanders, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) for his tenacity on that. We support new clauses 4 and 5 on Hong Kong citizens, new clause 7 on health care workers—it seems a bit of a cheek to be charging people for the privilege of putting themselves at risk fighting the pandemic—and those amendments and new clauses from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As I say, we support righting the historical wrongs, but our primary concerns are stateless children, stripping away people’s nationality without notice, the CSI requirement for EEA citizens, and the need to end the practice of profiteering from people registering as British citizens—that has to stop.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I remind hon. Members that this debate has to finish at 4.46 pm. Obviously, the Minister will require some time at the end, so if colleagues speak for about five minutes, we might make it.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I wish to speak to new clause 5, and I thank the more than 50 colleagues, representing every party in this House, who have supported it. I also wish to thank Ministers for engaging positively with me on the substance of the amendment.
My new clause aims to provide greater protection for the brave young people in Hong Kong who are fighting oppression. In particular, it gives them a right to settle in the UK, which is very difficult for them at the moment. Why is this needed? I would illustrate that with one case—that of 20-year-old Tony Chung, who has been handed a prison sentence of more than three and a half years. His crime was that what he said on a small student Facebook group when he was 18 years old was deemed to amount to secession and to be in breach of Hong Kong’s national security law. This illustrates how what was once Asia’s freest and most vibrant city is moving towards totalitarianism. Political persecution is growing by the day. Amnesty International calls it a human rights emergency, and I agree. The Hong Kong Government, at the behest of Beijing, are silencing the free press, gagging civil society and smothering all forms of dissent in the city.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend knows, I am a signatory to his new clause. Does he share my concern that 93% of those who have been arrested just for being pro-democracy are young people? We have a unique obligation to protect them and provide them with safe and legal passage. When dealing with the Chinese Communist party that can “disappear” a tennis player, or even sanction Members of Parliament, we must be absolute in the support we give to young Hongkongers.
Damian Green
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and she anticipates a point I was about to make. The key point that arises from her remarks is that the British Government have, sensibly and rightly, introduced the British National (Overseas) visa, which allows people in Hong Kong who registered for that scheme before the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 the right to settle in this country. The problem is that many of the dissenters and demonstrators in Hong Kong are under 25, and therefore too young to have qualified under that route as it currently stands. I seek to give under 25-year-olds that route as well.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on having tabled this new clause. It speaks of the decency of what we represent here in this House, and I support him in that. Does he agree that right now, many of the individuals he is referring to are desperately looking to us for some hope of freedom? We as this, the mother of all Parliaments, need to offer them the chance of that freedom.
Damian Green
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Most of these young people are fighting for the values that we fight for and that this Parliament represents—that I why I am so pleased that Members across the House have supported the new clause. In practical terms, I have thanked Ministers for being positive in their engagement, and I hope to hear more from the Minister when he winds up the debate.
Although the Government are moving in this direction, and their heart is in the right place on this, I fear that at this stage they may not move far enough. In particular, I know the Minister is keen on using the youth mobility scheme, which exists not just for Hong Kong but for many other countries, as a route for young people in Hong Kong to move towards settlement. However, I will enter two quite large caveats about using that scheme.
The first is straightforward practicality, which I can illustrate by the example of a 19-year-old young woman from Hong Kong called Venus—that is not her real name, for obvious reasons. She was involved in many protests, and the university she was at reported those protests to the Hong Kong authorities. She evaded the police for a time, but she soon became aware that they were coming for anyone involved in protests, under the pretext of the national security law. She fled to the UK from Hong Kong the day after, and several of her friends were arrested two weeks later. If she had applied through the youth mobility scheme, it would have taken at least three weeks for her to get out of Hong Kong, which would not have been enough. That is a practical point about using the youth mobility scheme.
My other point is that the youth mobility scheme is reciprocal, requiring both sides to agree. If the Chinese authorities, or the Hong Kong authorities, decided not to participate in a reciprocal scheme, they could close it down tomorrow. What would Ministers do in those circumstances?
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for tabling this new clause. Does he agree that the under-25s from Hong Kong who are seeking asylum and safety in our country not only have to navigate a difficult asylum system, but now also face difficulties with access to healthcare, and also with safety once here?
Damian Green
I do not wish to get into wider issues in the immigration system, as at the moment I am most concerned with giving people a route to get to this country apart from the asylum system. We already have a couple of hundred of people in the asylum system, and if Ministers could find, or if we could find, another route, that would take a bit of pressure off the asylum system. I recommend that Ministers look at Canada’s young talent work experience pathway to permanent residence as a suitable exemplar to follow for Hong Kong.
I want to work with Ministers on this, and I believe that they have the best interests of the people in Hong Kong at heart. I hope not to have to move the new clause to a vote this time; I want to give Ministers more time to work out better details of a mobility scheme that is suitable for young people in Hong Kong. As we know, after this week the Bill will go to the Lords, where it will excite detailed interest. By the time their lordships debate it, I hope and expect that Ministers will have sorted out the gaps that remain in their proposals sufficiently, so that a similar new clause is not needed again. If that is not the case, I expect—indeed, I encourage—their lordships, to table a similar new clause and let us have another go. If that has to happen, those of us supporting the new clause will be less accommodating to the Government than I propose to be today. However, I hope it does not come to that. We all have a duty to the brave people fighting for democratic values—our values—in Hong Kong, and by the time this Bill has passed through all its stages, I want to know that we have fulfilled that duty. It is over to the Minister to do the right thing.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. May I clarify that everybody who wants to speak in this debate is now standing? I call Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
I wish to speak to new clause 8 about child citizenship fees, which I am grateful has been signed by a number of Members. The children in question are not migrants. I repeat that they are not migrants, because every time this issue is raised, there is some suggestion that there is something slightly illegal behind this, which is disgraceful. On the contrary, the large majority are exactly like me and the Prime Minister, and have every right to British citizenship. This Government, and all successive Governments, accept that, but the issue is that they are being priced out.
We in this country charge British children—children!—up to 10 times more to claim their citizenship rights than their counterparts in Spain, France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. The fee is the most expensive in Europe. If the £35 fee introduced back in 1983 had risen in line with inflation, it would be only £120 today. Instead, we charge £1,012—a fee that has doubled in the past decade, and which the Government have the ability to increase at will. It is a fee that far too many cannot afford, and a fee the level of which neither I nor the Prime Minister had to pay.
Why do I keep mentioning myself and the Prime Minister? It is because the circumstances of our births are no different to those of the children in question today. Indeed, many Members across the House were not born here or were born to migrants, and none of us faced such barriers to claiming our citizenship. No one questions our rights, and our British citizenship gives us the right to sit as Members of this House. I repeatedly mention myself and the Prime Minister because I believe that neither of us should be in a position to make things difficult for those children born after us. I certainly did not come to this House to do that.
Like the Windrush generation, through no fault of their own, and often with no idea of what is to come, these children go on to face real difficulties with everyday life and with things that we take for granted, such as travelling, getting a job, renting a home or going to university without being asked to pay international fees. That is in the country they were born in or have lived in their whole lives. Make that make sense.
Citizens UK, Amnesty International, and the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, which has led on this campaign, have estimated that between 85,000 and 215,000 children with a legal entitlement to British citizenship have ended up undocumented due to the extortionate registration fee. Imagine how many children have never had the opportunity to reach their full potential because they spent the end of their childhood, and the beginning of their adulthood, fighting to prove that they have rights in their own country, or fighting to prove that they belong in the only place they have ever called home. It is exactly what happened with the Windrush generation.
We must understand that the harm of being denied citizenship rights in the only country you know cannot be overstated. It is not just about societal barriers; it is the psychological impact of being constantly treated like a second-class citizen. Why do I continually compare them to the Windrush generation? That is because, just like the Windrush generation, a piece of legislation or policy that attempted to dissuade migrants and make the environment more hostile for them is impacting on a group of people who have every right to be here. Just like the Windrush generation, this policy disproportionately affects those of black, Asian, and minority ethnic heritage.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that to make children bear the burden of this Government’s hostile environment policy must be wrong?
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I am sure she will agree with me that, clearly, no lessons have been learned.
New clause 8 does not even ask the Government to scrap the fee, which is my personal preference; it just asks them to reduce it to cost and examine its impact on the rights of children. The new clause does, however, ask for the fee to be scrapped for children in care, for the obvious reason that children in care are the responsibility of the state. As we approach Christmas and we are thinking about families and home, with all the disadvantages that children in care face, the Government seem all too at ease with telling these children that they have no country to call home unless their local authority is willing to pay for it.
I spoke to children who were Lambeth care leavers and they told me horrific tales of threats of deportation to countries they have never been to because they cannot prove their link to their citizenship due to issues with their relations with their parents. Our cash-strapped local authorities cannot afford to keep paying these fees, and they are not border guards or immigration specialists who understand exactly what is happening.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) is absolutely right that there are parts of the citizenship section of the Bill that we appreciate, and things have been corrected. I spoke to the Immigration Minister earlier this week, and I was grateful for his time—I promised I would say something nice, and I did. If we are correcting all these other things, why would we not correct this policy now? We know exactly what the issue is. We know that the courts ruled, the Government appealed, and the courts ruled again that these fees are not in the best interests of children. This Bill is so horrible in so many other areas; is there not just one thing that we can all agree on? Just like with the Windrush scandal, why do the Government want to be dragged screaming into submission on something that they know is absolutely right?
I am glad to be standing here today, because I get to keep the promise that I made just before my election to a group of students from St Gabriel’s College who, along with Lambeth Citizens, explained to me their plight as children who were suffering in this way. I am proud to be a governor at their school, because they are what I call citizens. They are affected by this issue. Some of them have moved on, but they continue to fight for others in their place. I promised that I would stand up in the House and try to show that these young people are valued by their country—because this is their country. I hope that, when new clause 8—hopefully—goes to a vote, every other Member of this House will walk through the Lobby with me and show those young people that they have every single right to be here, that we will not continue to price them out, and that they should be able to access every single right, just like myself and the Prime Minister have been able to do.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I rise to speak to new clause 4, which would secure the right of abode of the brave and loyal servicemen who served Queen and country in the British military, in the Hong Kong Military Service Corps and the Hong Kong royal naval service corps, until 1997. They were servants of the Crown and I believe they should be treated equally to all those who have served in Her Majesty’s armed forces.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I am a co-signatory to new clause 4, and I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing it to the House. Does he agree that this is a unique group of individuals because of that service, and therefore that they should be considered favourably by the Government?
Andrew Rosindell
They most certainly should, and it should not have taken all this time for the Government to accept the need to deal with this matter. This is a left-behind group of ex-servicemen, and they really do need to be given the right of abode here in the United Kingdom.
Only 159 of the 654 British Hong Kong servicemen who applied under the 1990 to 1997 British nationality selection scheme prior to the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China were offered full UK passports for service to the Crown. I believe that those who applied for UK passports and were denied them have been discriminated against, and it is time that was rectified. They should have been treated equally to the 159 and given British citizenship for their armed forces Crown service.
The campaign for the right of abode of former British Hong Kong servicemen has established the number of servicemen still seeking recognition from the Government at around 301, with immediate family growing the group to around 1,000. That is a very low number of people when compared with the 3 million citizens affected by the changes made last year to introduce the BNO passport, which was such a welcome support for the people of Hong Kong.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Am I right in thinking that these very patriotic individuals are seeking the right to come here if they need to in case of future discrimination? They are not necessarily all likely to have to take up that right.
Andrew Rosindell
My right hon. Friend makes a superb point, and he is of course completely correct. These ex-servicemen in Hong Kong are not demanding the right to come here straightaway, but they want that option should there ever be a need for them to leave Hong Kong—if they felt unsafe or their families were under threat. Surely, in such a situation, Her Majesty’s Government should support those who have served Her Majesty’s armed forces.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member and the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) for tabling this important amendment. Does the hon. Member agree that, while the amendment is welcome and it would be an improvement on the current situation, it would still mean that young people born after 1997 were relying on the BNO status of their parents, and that that would disproportionately impact poorer Hongkongers and people whose families moved after 1997?
Andrew Rosindell
I think that refers to a different amendment, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
On new clause 4, is it not the case for this very explicit group of people, who have given loyalty and service to this country in standing for freedom, liberty and the rule of law, that it would be deeply ironic and unjust if we were to leave them to the vagaries of a regime that has turned out to be entirely opposite freedom, liberty and the rule of law? That is why we owe them this duty of care, if they choose to take it up.
Andrew Rosindell
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I agree wholeheartedly. This is about giving people who have loyally served the Crown and defended freedom and liberty in Hong Kong the option, if they so choose, to live in the United Kingdom and be treated as equals. That is surely something we should now accept. This measure is long overdue, and I hope that the Minister will respond accordingly.
I know that Mr Speaker himself shares my interest in resolving this long-standing issue. Prior to his elevation to the Chair, I worked on this issue with him for over a decade. I have worked with a number of Ministers—Home Secretaries and Ministers of State—including my friend James Brokenshire, the late Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup. We have worked together to try to resolve this matter and right this wrong that has been done to these servicemen, but I say with deep regret that, so far, no concrete steps have been taken by this or previous Governments to resolve this matter.
An appropriate solution must include a mechanism to grant every single one of these servicemen immediate settled status in the UK if and when they decide that they would like to take up that option. Furthermore, it should not create another group of left-behind servicemen by requiring an arbitrary period of service for people to be eligible for the right of settlement or by putting an age limit on the immediate family members they can bring to the United Kingdom. Only legislation that includes all those measures will be sufficient to finally correct the anomaly that has led to these fine servicemen being left behind. My new clause 4 would secure those objectives and finally give these servants of the Crown the right to be treated as fully British, which is no less than they deserve.
I ask the Government to support my new clause or to produce an appropriate and legally acceptable way to support these veterans and give them the status they are entitled to, dealing with this matter once and for all. With that in mind, I thank the Minister for reaching out to me about suggesting an alternative solution that may be possible. However, let me be clear: I require guarantees that will not be watered down. If the Minister does not feel able to support my new clause, I expect him to provide a fair and just solution that gives these brave and patriotic Hongkongers the outcome they deserve. I ask him to use this opportunity to provide the assurances I seek.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Can I once again urge colleagues to stick to the five minutes that we talked about? We are going to have to impose a time limit shortly if we are going to get everybody in.
Mr Carmichael
We have a fair old mixter-maxter of different amendments, new clauses and other provisions, and as I try to find a common theme, I find this: policy decisions that we make as a country and that we make in this place sooner or later have domestic policy implications. It does not matter how hard we try to ignore them, as we have with the rights of the Chagos islanders, or how hard we resist the logic of our decisions, as we have in the case of the Hongkongers until recent years—eventually they all require to be dealt with.
I want first to deal briefly with amendment 2, in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill, and with amendment 12, in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9. Clause 10 restricts the rights of children who would be born in this country but who would otherwise be stateless. The point about clause 9, which the right hon. Gentleman made very well, is not only that the removal of citizenship is obnoxious but that removal without notice is supremely dangerous. It is perfectly legitimate for Government Back Benchers to point out that the genesis of removal is to be found in the 2002 Act—[Interruption.] I see them nodding. However, I would gently counsel them that finding a way of making a measure introduced by David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, even more illiberal and draconian is not necessarily something about which anybody should be particularly proud.
It is the removal without notice that is particularly objectionable. As the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, one of the things we are dealing with here is the basic British sense of decency. We should not be using citizenship as some sort of tool for further punishment; there are plenty of other ways in which people who have done wrong can be punished. However, we do not use fundamental concepts of domestic and international law, such as citizenship, as a tool to do that.
The hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) have tabled various provisions on the financial barriers that have been put in place. I was happy to sign the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Streatham, and I very much support those tabled by the Scottish National party.
It seems to me from my casework as a constituency Member that the immigration system is already so complex that it is virtually impenetrable to those who are not in some way legally qualified—and, as far as I can see, to many who are. It should not therefore be administered in such a way that it is open to the Government to make a profit from these cases. There are already sufficient financial barriers in place for those who wish to have, and need to have, citizenship, and we should not be putting a further financial barrier in their way.
There is a whole range of different matters before the House this afternoon, which illustrates to me the fact that this Bill is far from properly scrutinised. We are taking it at a canter this afternoon. There may well be reasons for that in the minds of the Government’s business managers, but, as is the case with trying to wish away the consequences of our foreign policy decisions, they will not carry any water when the Bill gets to the other place, and I fear that, even though the Government will probably get their way in virtually everything today, we will not have heard the last of this Bill yet.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. After the next speaker, I will impose a time limit of four minutes.
Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)
I rise to speak to new clause 7, which is in my name, and has been kindly supported by Members from eight different parties, including immigration and NHS subject experts, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I would like to declare an interest: my partner is an NHS clinician from overseas, but this new clause would not benefit him as he already has his permanent residency status confirmed.
In this country, we typically use the word “hero” far too casually; it is lavished on our celebrities and sports stars, but, while I am sure they are very deserving, this pandemic has shown us who this country’s true heroes are—our NHS workforce. While the entire NHS has played a vital role, our thanks and gratitude should perhaps go in particular to our NHS clinical workers who have come from other countries. They are individuals who have travelled huge distances to be here, often separated from their families, putting their own lives at risk to help save our lives. Regardless of their or our citizenship, the duty and responsibility to care and contribute to the wellbeing of others always comes first with them.
Although I welcome the many steps that the Government have taken already for foreign NHS workers, we need to go further, and I ask the Minister to give this some serious consideration for support this afternoon. With fees for indefinite leave to remain at almost £2,400 and citizenship applications at another £1,330, the total cost of naturalisation is almost £4,000—one of the highest fees of its type in the world, and that is after a minimum of five years, in which there will also have been an initial visa cost, another high fee to be renewed every third anniversary. The process of becoming a citizen for our NHS workers is a costly and challenging one.
Let us take as an example the case of Carrie. It is a real-life case, but I have used a different name. Carrie moved to the UK in 2016, leaving behind a husband and a four-year old child back home in south Asia. It took another year for her husband and daughter to join her because of the costs involved in dependants’ visas. They could only get to be together as a family once more by taking a loan, which she has to pay for over three years.
Three years after she arrived—so with still one more year of loan payments to go—she had to get another loan and compound her cash flow problems because she was due for visa renewal, and so had a load more fees. This year, Carrie is entitled to apply for indefinite leave to remain, with loans still ongoing from previous renewals, and the ILR is more expensive again. What does she do? What options are available to Carrie? Her only choice is to apply for another loan, even bigger than before, to have the right to occupy a space in the UK and call it home. She pays her taxes every month, and has done so for five years—and oh, by the way, she is an intensive care unit nurse. She has spent the past five years, especially the past 18 months, saving lives. She should not be in debt; we should be in her debt.
I feel that it is our duty to create a new route to permanent residency for NHS workers, one that will not leave them in debt, poverty, or in constant worry about funding their next application, and that is by abolishing the costs associated with applying for indefinite leave to remain for NHS clinical workers.
I am proud that our NHS attracts such global talent and recruits from around the world, and, frankly, we would not be able to run it without them. As of last year, more than 160,000 NHS staff stated that they were of a non-British nationality, from more than 200 different countries. Residency should not be about cost; it should be about inclusion, about our communities and about contribution. Arguably, by saving our lives and keeping us safe, our NHS workers have given the biggest contribution of all.
Despite being such valued members of the communities in which they live and work, without ILR and citizenship, individuals cannot be fully part of them. Without ILR, they face barriers to home ownership, difficulty obtaining a mortgage and challenges in the job market and in higher education—there are so many different aspects. Scrapping the fees would not only make ILR more affordable and a viable option for foreign workers in our NHS, but create a more diverse and, crucially, more integrated society. Why is that important? A few weeks ago, I had a message from my partner, who was distressed at having met a new patient that morning who said, “I hope you’re not from Myanmar.” We have a long way still to go with integration and acceptance.
People from other countries who have worked in the NHS during the pandemic and throughout their lives deserve to be able to call the UK home, and actually feel like it is. It is time to abolish the fees for indefinite leave to remain for those who do clinical work in our NHS, so that those who spend time helping and treating us in our time of need can finally feel like they belong and are welcomed here with open arms.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call Seema Malhotra, with a time limit of four minutes.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
I want first to acknowledge my support for new clause 8, which my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) tabled, and to congratulate her on a very powerful speech on ending the shame of profiteering from child citizenship fees. I also support the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous).
I will make my short contribution mainly about amendment 12, which is in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and to which I have added my name. It seeks the removal of clause 9—tabled by the Home Secretary—which would deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice. That is an extraordinary proposal, which has caused shockwaves across communities. In particular, in Feltham and Heston, it has really affected the south Asian community. I am grateful to all who have written in to me and signed the petition, which has almost 150,000 signatures. I also thank the immigration solicitor, Mr Harjap Bhangal, for his work and awareness raising of this issue.
I was born in Britain in Hammersmith in west London, and I grew up in Hounslow. It appears that, under the law, as drafted, I could theoretically be deprived of my citizenship with no notice, and potentially without appeal, because my parents were born in another country, even though they became British nationals and served their community with distinction. Perhaps the Minister will be able to say in his closing remarks whether that could ever happen to anyone. It appears that this proposal is the thin end of an appalling wedge. Members of my extended family were also among those who were expelled from Uganda in mass expulsions of the Indian community. I am sure that the Minister will understand why this has caused such concern.
The Home Secretary’s clause would amend the British Nationality Act 1981, which requires the Secretary of State to give a person written notice of their deprivation order, the reasons for the order and their right of appeal. In clause 9(2), proposed new section 40(5A) of that Act specifies circumstances in which the Secretary of State would be able to deprive a person of their citizenship without notice. That includes when
“the Secretary of State does not have the information needed to…give notice”
or
“it would…not be reasonably practicable to give notice”
for any other reason, or if giving notice would not be
“in the interests of national security”,
in the interests of relations with another country or “otherwise in the public interest”.
Perhaps someone can tell me what “relations with another country” means. If, in theory, a foreign Government with whom the Government are negotiating a trade deal say that they want British citizenship revoked from a group of people they would like to see returned back to their country of origin as a condition, possibly for political reasons, in theory, the Home Secretary could do so without saying why. This is a matter not of what this is likely to be about, but of what becomes possible. There is no practical reason for this change. The present rules governing notice allow for citizenship deprivation letters to be delivered to the individual’s last known address.
I cannot support the Home Secretary’s clause, which has breathed huge distrust and insecurity into the lives of millions of peaceful, law-abiding people. Having this power, without needing to give explanation, could affect not just those people but their children and grandchildren. I urge all hon. Members to support amendment 12 today.
Richard Graham
Today’s debate covers many different aspects. I certainly hope that the Government will consider new clause 4 carefully, but I want to focus on new clause 9 and the impact that the change in notification of revocation of nationality has had.
I say straightaway to the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who is not in her place at the moment, that when she describes the Bill as “hostile” and “horrible”, she should consider very carefully, as we all should, the impact on the lives of so many people of those who are killed by terrorists. Whether they are in Manchester, in London Bridge or anywhere else, the important thing about those ghastly incidents is that they affect those from every background, of every faith, of every race and of every colour. Clause 9 is not—
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
I am not sure whether I heard the hon. Member properly. We are talking today about people dying because of this Government’s policies—because they are so desperate that they are fleeing war-torn countries—and he wants us to think about terrorists. I think that that is quite appalling. I would really like him to withdraw that comment.
Richard Graham
With the greatest respect, what I am talking about is a specific aspect of the revocation of nationality for appalling behaviour against the interests of the country to which we all belong and of which we are all nationals—a very specific point—so I will not follow the hon. Member into that debate, I am afraid.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
To clarify, in reference to the very eloquent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) drew an association between terrorism and the fees for children seeking to get nationality here. That is what has just happened. I think he should revoke those comments.
Richard Graham
I am grateful for the hon. Member’s comments. I specifically quoted two words that the hon. Member for Streatham used in relation to the clause—she spoke about this “horrible” Bill and this “hostile” Bill. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) will recognise that the clause has been used by Opposition Members, notably the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), to stir up concerns—which, bluntly speaking, I regard as scaremongering—among members of different ethnic communities in our country. To my way of thinking, that is deeply inappropriate.
What we are talking about is the notification of revocation of British nationality to a tiny, tiny number of people who have chosen to behave in a way that is totally against the interests of our country and who have allied themselves with the enemies of this country. All the clause will do is allow for the absence of physical notification where those individuals are either unreachable or in a war zone. So far, so good.
Stephen Timms
I am listening carefully to the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but will he take it from me that the alarm about the clause is not because of any stirring from the Opposition, but because of the reality of its content and the Government’s track record?
Richard Graham
Over the past 10 or 11 years, I have agreed with the right hon. Gentleman many times on many issues, particularly work and pensions. On this particular point, I am sorry, but I think he is being a little disingenuous about how some of his colleagues are using it to stir up concerns when actually we need to be together as a nation. Where I agree with him is that there is real work for the Government to do—as the Minister knows, because he kindly gave me time on the point yesterday—to communicate much more effectively with Britons across this country about the facts of the legislation, which draw on a right that has been there for the Government for 100 years, since the first world war. Most people—most of our constituents—have no idea about that.
Richard Graham
I have given way quite a lot. Can I make some progress? I am just conscious that a lot of people want to speak. If the hon. Lady will forgive me, let me make some progress and let us see where we are.
The really important points are as follows. How many people have actually had their UK nationality revoked in such a context? On which crimes does the 100-year clause have an impact? Is there a right of appeal to a legal tribunal? There is. Will anyone have their single nationality revoked, completely obliviously to where their parents or grandparents might have come from originally? The answer to that, to my strong understanding, is almost certainly no in 99.999% of cases.
In the remaining time, may I press my hon. Friend the Minister for clarification, not just for Members but for those in the nation at large, to reassure them about the nature of the atrocities that need to be committed for this clause to be applied, and the fact that it absolutely does not target anyone of any origin whatsoever? Indeed, if it did, my wife, who was Kenyan when I married her, would certainly be affected. There are millions of people who potentially might be affected, and that is why reassurance is required to make clear that this is purely about a very simple business of notification when a person is unreachable or in a war zone.
On that note, I will give way to the hon. Member for Streatham.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
I am very glad that the hon. Member has given way. I was not present when he referred to my speech, but I want to ask him if he really understands what the issues are. The Government, as he rightly said, already have the ability to reduce people’s citizenship, so why do they want to make it even easier, and why do they want to remove all checks and balances? This is where the concern arises. After what has happened to the Windrush generation, and after what has happened to the young people who—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am afraid that we have run out of time. The allotted time allows two interventions, and we have had those, so I am afraid that that is it.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I have just welcomed Little Amal to Parliament Square. Little Amal is the 3.5-metre puppet which has travelled 8,000 km across the world to raise the plight of refugees and support them. However, I did not rise to speak about refugees. I want to speak about clause 9, which has been mentioned several times during the debate.
I know that these powers to strip people of their citizenship are not new powers. I do not need a lecture about what has happened in the past, and which Government introduced it. What worries me is that the legislation that is being introduced now is making the powers more draconian. Since 2019, we have seen the Government justify the deprivation of citizenship of people who do not possess dual nationality, who were born in this country, and who have not set foot in the country to which they are being returned. The Secretary of State simply referred to “reasonable grounds to believe” that an individual would be eligible for foreign citizenship; that was not even confirmed.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is describing exactly what could have happened to me when I was born. It is likely that if this Bill had been law in the early 1970s, I would have been stripped of my citizenship as a young child. [Interruption.]
Tulip Siddiq
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. [Interruption.] Let me just say that, being a middle child, I am not intimidated by the braying from the other side of the House, so I will continue to advance my arguments.
Clause 9 states that the Government do not need to notify someone who has been stripped of citizenship. Is there data from the Home Office which says that the Government cannot enact this law because they have had so many problems reaching people to notify them that they have been stripped of their citizenship? Is there a genuine blockage, or is this being done because it means more power and more severity?
Tulip Siddiq
No, I will not give way.
Is this also being done because it means that the appeals process and the decisions that are made will receive less scrutiny? The Government need to think long and hard about all that.
I am also concerned about the extent to which the Government are beginning to increase the frequency of their use of this policy. Between 2006 and 2018, 175 people lost their citizenship on national security grounds, but 104 of those instances occurred in just one year, 2017. If the Government feel that they have to use these powers more and more frequently, that is a worrying trend. Of course dangerous criminals should be locked up and serve their sentences, but if a criminal has been born and raised here and has been radicalised in this country, why do we think it is the responsibility of another country to try that person? That cannot be right.
I know that this will provoke some reaction from the Government Benches, but the truth is that it is nearly always non-white people whose citizenship is being revoked. Before there is any more braying, let me read out the statistics. According to the New Statesman’s analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics, two in every five people from non-white ethnic minorities in the UK are likely to be eligible for deprivation of citizenship. This compares with one in 20 characterised as white. We cannot argue about the statistics.
Tulip Siddiq
Yes, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who made a wonderful speech.
Richard Graham
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She is making some interesting points, but it is really important for us all to understand that this is not some sort of act of racism. Anna Chapman was a Russian spy with dual nationality and she had her nationality revoked. So I urge the hon. Lady to do the right thing by her old friend Jo Cox and to do the things that bring us together. This is about the good of the nation. It has nothing to do with colour or race.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. What I would say to everyone is that I am not trying here to flame tensions or to play politics. I am genuinely saying that ethnic minorities in this country are in fear of this clause. It has created widespread fear in communities. If we start treating non-white criminals and terrorists as though they are the responsibility of another country and not our responsibility, we will send a signal to law-abiding non-white British citizens that they are somehow less British in this country. I genuinely ask the Government to consider this.
Alexander Stafford
I have been listening to the hon. Lady and I am very confused. Can she tell me where exactly in the Bill it refers to people’s skin colour or ethnicity? Otherwise, this is pure scaremongering and trying to create division. The Bill does not reference skin colour or ethnicity. A terrorist is a terrorist, and I do not want them in this country, regardless of their skin colour.
Tulip Siddiq
I do not feel that I can even respond to the hon. Member’s comments, but I will say that I agree that terrorists are terrorists. Regardless of their skin colour, they should be tried in this country, because they are British terrorists who were born here, radicalised here and committed their crimes because of growing up here. I really think that maybe the hon. Member should go on unconscious bias training, because I am not sure what else to say to him.
Finally, I would say to the Minister that the Government also have to think about whether the powers that they are bringing in are compatible with this country’s international obligations.
Sarah Owen
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is perhaps not the best look to persuade people to trust this Government with their citizenship, when they are shouting down Members who are of an ethnic minority, raising concerns—[Interruption.] And shouting down another one. We are raising genuine concerns on behalf of our constituents and their families.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I was born and raised in this country. I do not even need to mention the colour of my skin. I am here representing people who are genuinely worried about the powers in the Bill and how their lives will be impacted as we move forward. I would just say, without taking up too much time, that people in this House should consider that the powers we have in this House will have a severe impact on people who are non-white, are law-abiding British citizens, make up the fabric of our community, do everything right and now feel that they are being penalised.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I know that emotions are running high on both sides, but Members on both sides should try to take the heat out of this. I have heard shouting on both sides and it is really not helping the debate.
Paul Bristow
I rise to speak to amendment 12 to clause 9. Peterborough is a city of an estimated 20,000 Muslims and a city full of people who can trace their ancestry to scores of different countries around the world. Many are dual nationals. They are my friends, my colleagues and my supporters. I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims—something I do with pride.
Last week, I held a surgery at the Khadijah mosque and met my local branch of the Conservative Muslim Forum. A common experience within British Muslim households and families are stories from first-generation migrants—grandparents and great-grandparents—telling younger family members that there may come a time when they will be asked to leave. Despite our shared values, this insecurity is understandable and genuinely felt. The UK was a very different country in the 1970s, when racism and far-right marches were common and Idi Amin had just thrown the Asians out of Uganda. Even today, Islamophobia and racism are all too common.
Some 93% of Muslims say they feel strongly that they belong to Britain. That not only applies to Muslims; it applies to other communities, too. There is nothing—nothing—in this Bill that should make families more insecure, and those who push this perception on social media and in this House spread fear and anxiety. They should understand the consequences of their actions.
For over a century, Home Secretaries have had the ability to remove British citizenship in exceptional circumstances, provided it does not leave a person stateless. There must be a significant risk of harm to the public, such as terrorism, and there is a right to appeal. This Bill makes no changes to these existing powers. There is a legitimate debate to be had about whether it is right for the Home Secretary to have this power and whether she should be able to strip, albeit in limited circumstances, dual nationals of their citizenship. That argument was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).
But that is not what this Bill is about. Clause 9 alters the requirement for the Home Secretary to serve notice on a person in cases where this would be impracticable, such as if they are in hiding or in the middle of a warzone. To present this as a threat to people living in my city is scaremongering, which is shameful. Nobody in Peterborough is affected by this minor change to the law, and no constituent should feel concerned about their citizenship.
Let me tell the House what Labour activists and Labour councillors are saying in my constituency. Councillor Amjad Iqbal, a legal practitioner—not a lawyer—messaged constituents saying:
“As your councillor I am very concerned at some of the policies this government is sharing behind closed doors. As ethnic minority individuals I wish to share this with you and please sign and send to Paul Bristow the MP whose Government is responsible for this fiasco.”
Behind closed doors? We are debating it in the House of Commons.
Another councillor, Councillor Qayyum, said ward residents
“have been told that their Nationality cannot be revoked by an MP who has written to them on official letterhead paper. This is untrue.”
I cannot revoke anyone’s citizenship. To send out that message to people in my constituency is shameful. This misinformation has consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in my city.
One of the kindest, most loving families in my constituency—a family I helped with a schooling issue—came to me after being told by an activist that I want to see them deported and deprived of their citizenship. This is despicable. I know why Members opposite and the Labour party do this—it is because they have nothing left to say.
Imran Hussain
I also rise to speak in support of amendment 12.
Citizenship is a fundamental right that speaks to our very sense of belonging and identity, which is why it is enshrined not just in law but in the UN charter, the universal declaration of human rights and the 1954 convention relating to the status of stateless persons.
Under this Home Secretary, the Government have failed to treat citizenship with the reverence and respect it deserves. By removing the requirement to give notice, she has done away with due process and has expanded her already draconian powers that allow her to deprive anyone of British citizenship, provided she believes it is in the interest of the public good.
Reference has been made to powers that, according to the analysis of the Office for National Statistics, could affect 6 million people, many from a Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Jamaican or Nigerian background. Let me be absolutely clear: that is the group of people the Bill will disproportionately impact, which is why this House must vote the clause down today.
Over the past fortnight since I originally raised this issue, I have had people telling me, much like some of the arguments we have heard from the Government Benches, “As long as you don’t break the law, you have nothing to fear from the Home Office.” I absolutely disagree: working-class people from a black, from an Asian or from any ethnic minority background have everything to fear from this Home Office. Let us not forget that it is this Tory Home Office that presided over the mass deportations in the Windrush scandal; that it is this Home Office that continues to prosecute a hostile environment against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; and that it is this Home Office that uses Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” not as a warning, but as a guidebook. I therefore have no confidence, and neither do my constituents, that, based on its record, the Home Office will not further expand the scope of its powers to deprive someone of British citizenship on more spurious grounds.
The powers that the Home Secretary has even now to deprive someone of British citizenship already create two tiers in society based on foreign ancestry, but removing the requirement to provide notice takes things even further. An individual stripped of citizenship will not be told or given reasons and will therefore have no real right of appeal—and all this can happen even as they are being deported. Frankly, such a move should send shivers down the spine of anyone interested in upholding liberty and due process. I simply ask those who want to accuse me of sensationalising the situation to come walk for a day, for a year, for a lifetime in the shoes of someone the Home Office has decreed to be a second-class citizen, and then tell me that they honestly believe that these are not the real fears of those from ethnic minority backgrounds in our own country today.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I wish to focus on clause 9 but will refer to amendment 12.
Clause 9 amends the deprivation of citizenship powers in the British Nationality Act 1981. Currently, as Members have highlighted, section 40(5) of that Act requires the Secretary of State to give a person written notice of a deprivation order, the reasons for it and the person’s right of appeal. The power to deprive an individual of their citizenship has been available for more than a century, since the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914, and is currently also contained in the 1981 Act. Home Office powers to strip British nationals of their citizenship were introduced after the 2005 London bombings and broadened in 2014.
As we have heard, there has been some criticism of the clause in the House and outside the House. For example, the Runnymede Trust states that citizenship is not a privilege and that the Bill is
“a threat to ethnic minority Britons”.
I wholly disagree. Citizenship of any country is a privilege, not a right. We are all privileged to be British citizens. It is a privilege that comes with responsibility.
The deprivation of citizenship on conducive grounds is rightly reserved for those who pose a threat to the UK or whose conduct involves very high harm. It is integral to the national security of this country that if an affected person cannot be contacted, or if knowledge of their whereabouts derives from sensitive intelligence sources, we can act in the best interests of this country and our citizens.
Removing someone’s British citizenship is a last resort against the most dangerous people who pose a risk to society, or those whose conduct involves very high levels of harm. It is rare and always come with a right to appeal. Deprivation of citizenship on fraud grounds is for those who obtained their citizenship fraudulently and so were never entitled to it in the first place.
The Bill does not change any existing rights, or the circumstances in which a person can be deprived of their citizenship. Decisions are made following the careful consideration of advice from officials and lawyers, and always in accordance with international law. Each case is assessed individually. With regard to seeking to deprive an individual of their British citizenship on the basis that that is conducive to the public good, the law requires that this action should proceed only if the individual will not be left stateless.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The hon. Member is describing a textbook example of how the Home Office is supposed to work, but in the experience of many of my constituents, time and again its decisions are riddled with errors, mistakes and misjudgments all the way through, from top to bottom; and the Minister knows this well. Given that the Home Office makes so many mistakes, does the hon. Member agree that it needs to be a lot more careful with the people it is dealing with?
Sally-Ann Hart
I agree, in that I, too, have constituents who have been waiting for five years for their asylum status to be decided. I am sure that the Minister agrees that the Home Office officials who deal with people need to have proper and efficient processes in place.
More generally, although human migration has been going on for millennia, we face increasing global challenges caused by a range of complex climate, economic, social and political factors. Uncontrolled mass migration has caused a swing to nationalism in some European countries, and we must not let that happen here. This country has always welcomed immigrants; we have lived together in a tolerant society that welcomes immigrants. The developed world, including our allies in Europe, needs to take better measures to control migration, but also to help people thrive in their homeland, rather than facing the indignity and lack of worth that they face in Europe, where people are exploited or detained in facilities. No man, no woman, no Government, nor any faith should be upholding this new form of slavery.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I rise in support of amendment 12, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). Before I speak to the amendment, let me put on record my complete and absolute opposition to this Bill in its entirety.
This Bill is a sham. This Home Secretary is intent on extending her predecessor’s hostile environment policies to ensure that migrants and asylum seekers feel unwelcome and unwanted in the UK. The legislation is not only atrocious, but poorly written, as is demonstrated by the fact that the Government tabled 80 amendments to their own Bill after it had undergone line-by-line scrutiny in Committee.
Let me turn to clause 9, which amendment 12 seeks to remove. The inclusion of this clause, which allows the Home Secretary to deprive a person of their British citizenship without any warning, is deeply worrying. In the last couple of weeks, more than 60 of my constituents have contacted me to say that they are concerned about the clause. The Government declare that citizenship is a privilege, not a right. They have got it backwards; citizenship is a right, not a privilege, and this clause represents a fundamental breach of the rule of law.
I secured my British citizenship in the ’80s, after nearly two decades in this country. It is people like me and those with migrant heritage who have the most to fear from this clause and this Government. Black, Asian and minority ethnic people—whether they are migrants or not—are frightened of what this Government could do to them, particularly in the wake of the Windrush scandal. Depriving someone of their citizenship is a serious undertaking; it should be subject to appropriate safeguards, which must include giving individuals notice. For this reason, I support amendment 12, which would remove the clause from the Bill.
I want to finish with the words of one of my constituents, who said:
“As an aunt to five children of mixed heritage, as someone with a sister-in-law who is Moroccan, as someone with friends who were not born in Britain, and as a human being who exists in this world, I believe this bill is inhuman, unconscionable, and evil in its intent.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I will reduce the time limit to just three minutes, because I want to try to get as many people in as I possibly can, and I will ask the Minister to respond to the debate no later than 4.30 pm.
Alexander Stafford
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. The residents of Rother Valley warmly welcome the Bill. I will speak against new clause 12 and in favour of clause 9. I have been very disappointed with the tone of the debate, especially with regard to the poor victims of the Windrush scandal, which was an absolute tragedy for this country. Opposition Members are somehow equating this Bill with Windrush. This Bill is designed to strip citizenship from dual citizens who are a threat to this country—terrorists, hardened criminals and those people we do not want in this country and should not be part of this country. For Opposition Members to equate those sorts of reprobates with Windrush is deeply insulting and deeply troubling. It is no more than scaremongering and trying to wind people up.
The Bill is not about taking citizenship without notice; that will not happen unless it is not “reasonably practical” to give that notice. I want to hear from Opposition Members on how we could go to, say, an ISIS fighter in Syria and hand them a notice saying, “You’re being deprived of your citizenship”, or to some terrorist in Chechnya saying, “Excuse me, Mr Terrorist, please stop shooting people—I’ve been sent here by the Government to give you a notice.” That would be ludicrous and would put UK Government officials in danger.
The question for this House is whose side we are on. Are we on the side of the rule of law, British citizens and British officials, or do we want to send British officials into harm’s way—to the ISIS suicide bombers of Iraq and Syria to give them a piece of paper? I say no. [Interruption.] I hear chuntering from a sedentary position. I am happy to take interventions from Opposition Members if they wish to challenge this, but none is forthcoming, because they know that this is the truth. They know that this Bill—
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
The hon. Member says that officials cannot go to some places to inform people about their citizenship. How did they notify Shamima Begum, I might ask, that she no longer had her British citizenship? There are clearly ways to do it. Opposition Members’ objection is that there are already mechanisms in law that allow the Government to deprive people of their citizenship. Why do they want to make that easier? Look at everything that has happened with immigration over the past number of years. That is why people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are afraid—because every time the Government change legislation, things are worse for people from those communities.
Alexander Stafford
I thank the hon. Lady for that point, although I am a bit confused about it. Shamima Begum could be deprived of her citizenship first because she was found, as she was in a refugee camp, and secondly because she was a terrorist—and I say, good. It is good that her citizenship was taken away. Long may we continue taking citizenship away from terrorists.
Frankly, if people have done nothing wrong and are not terrorists or a threat to this country, they have nothing to fear. That is the message to put out there. This is about such a small minority of cases. Some would argue that we should take this measure against more of these terrorists and reprobates. I would definitely support that. This Bill is not about targeting minorities; it is about bad people. I am confused about whose side Labour Members are on. Are they on the side of upstanding, law-abiding British people, or the side of people who want to do harm to the country—to blow people up, cause damage and put us in harm’s way? I am very confused by their point of view.
Sam Tarry
Thousands of constituents in Ilford South are certainly not terrorists. What happens if they decide to go on a protest about their rights, or against something that the Government are doing to them? Would they then be deemed a terrorist, and at what point? Remember that some of the laws that the Government are looking to bring forward over the next couple of weeks extend the circumstances in which people can be accused of being terrorists. If someone is a climate activist, are they now a terrorist? What about someone who is campaigning because their family are Bangladeshis who are drowning in Bangladesh due to this Government’s inaction on climate change? Can it then be said, “You’re a terrorist—you’re going to have your citizenship removed”? The problem is that people in Ilford South do not trust this Government to take care of minority communities because their track record is so dreadful.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We cannot have interventions that last longer than the speech that is being given.
Alexander Stafford
I thank the hon. Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry). That seems to be Labour Members’ argument. They are creating a Windrush of victims, and talking about activists as terrorists. They are not actually on the side of British people, or on the side of victims or activists. They would rather put up these straw men and say, “Ah, but what happens if the evil hand of Government does this or that?” It is complete rubbish. This Bill is designed to allow us to take control of our borders and of who lives in this country. The people of Rother Valley fundamentally want good people in this country, and people who actually know what is going on. There is an appeals process and, as we have established, a tribunal. The Bill is not about arbitrarily taking away citizenship; it is about helping and looking after our country.
Labour is making a desperate bid to stir up, dare I say it, racial tension—and it is racial tension. As the grandson and son of immigrants, I find that deeply upsetting. It is encouraging division in our country when we need to come together to defeat the terrorists and the bad people. The Bill gives the Government no more power than they had before, except for when it comes to notification. I would say that that protects British officials from going into war zones to give notification. We are not talking about depriving people of citizenship in this way when we can trace them; we are not talking about people in the United Kingdom with a postcode, who we can go to, speak to, and deal with. We are talking about those we cannot get access to. I do not see why Labour is supporting those people who want to do harm to this country. It is telling that in order to, frankly, scam votes out of people, it is trying to appeal to the lowest base.
Alexander Stafford
I have given way twice, and have already gained a couple more minutes, so I will not give way on this point.
I will briefly speak to new clause 4, which my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) spoke in favour of. It is superb, and I hope that the Government have listened. Those Hongkongers who have given military or police service should be at the front of the queue, and the Government should look to my hon. Friend’s new clause and support it, because it is exactly what the Bill is about: looking after the good people, protecting those who have done good things and given service to our country, and keeping out the bad ones. That is why I support it.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I was proud to add my name to new clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), on the abolition of the excessive fees that children are being charged, and I hope that the Government accept it. Overall, this Bill is deeply flawed, driven by ideology and destined to have lasting catastrophic consequences. If it is intended to make our system of citizenship and asylum fairer and more humane, it does the opposite. If it is intended to smash the evil gangs who trade in human lives, it does the opposite. If it is intended to end the heart-rending tragedy of people dying in the icy waters of the English channel, it does the opposite. If it is intended to make our borders secure and make us safer, it does the exact opposite. Yet the Government plough on with their hostile environment, without thought for the devastating impact it may have.
Ministers have been warned by experts and academics that the Bill undermines the UK’s commitment to the 1951 Geneva refugee convention and much more besides. Given the weight of evidence against the Government’s approach, one might wonder why they persist. Why, indeed? The removal of ethnic minorities from these islands has been a long-standing fascist demand. On the streets where I grew up, it was translated into something more straightforward and visceral. Chalked up on walls or shouted through letterboxes was, “Send them back.” Now this Government are hanging the sword of Damocles over our head. If someone does something wrong, or something perceived to be wrong by the nation of their ancestral heritage, they could be stripped of their citizenship and ordered to “go back home.” This right-wing rhetoric has returned in the Nationality and Borders Bill that is in front of the House this afternoon.
Let us be blunt, Mr Deputy Speaker: the Bill will not affect your good self, because of the colour of your skin, but it will impact people like me, because of the colour of our skin and our ancestral heritage. What is even more galling is that the Prime Minister is getting someone with brown skin to do his dirty work with a Bill that could have disastrous consequences for black and brown people. No wonder there are accusations of tokenism from within the Asian, African and Caribbean British communities. What is the point of having black and brown people as Cabinet Ministers sitting on the Conservative Front Bench if they are going to directly act against the interests of black and brown people, just so that they can hold ministerial office?
When the military Government of Myanmar disempowered ethnic groups by removing their citizenship, many of us shuddered with horror, but people are now frightened that the Home Secretary can remove their citizenship at a stroke, retrospectively and without any notice.
James Daly
It is better to move on from such an appalling speech.
Amendment 12, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9, is a quite straightforward legal matter. However, as I have listened to the debate, I have thought on occasion that hon. Members have been debating a clause that does not exist or is not in the Bill. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), the Labour Government, through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002—as well as through further legislation in 2016—codified and ensured that a Home Secretary of whatever political party had the power to exclude or take away somebody’s citizenship in certain circumstances. If there was an objection to that principle, an amendment should have been tabled. Anyone in the House had the opportunity to do that. However, the only amendment tabled on this measure concerns the notice period—that is it. Let us therefore have a debate on the notice period. If the Labour party opposes in principle what the previous Labour Government did in 2002 and 2016, I am certain that its Front-Bench team would have tabled an amendment.
Let us get to the notice period and what we are arguing about, on which important issues were raised. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made a point that I hope the Minister will address. If an order is made without notice, does the appeal process start when the order is made or when the order is received, as is currently the norm and the law?
I could read out some of the scaremongering and appalling things said about the Bill, but I do not want to go down into that. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) gave a magnificent speech on that. I find it surprising, because if this or any other Government wanted to do things of which they are being accused, they could do them now. What does it matter whether people have notice or not? There was the genuinely unbelievable suggestion that the Bill could be used to address climate change activists. The Opposition are genuinely scraping the barrel when it comes down to that level. I am here to tell my constituents that that is scaremongering. There is a requirement for exceptional circumstances in clause 9, which are there to protect them, and no one has anything to fear from the clause at all.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
I am deeply concerned by and opposed to the great majority of the proposals in this inherently authoritarian Bill. Much of it appears to be written to satisfy front-page tabloid headlines rather than to fix the broken asylum system. It amounts to a fundamental rejection of our international obligations under the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees and does nothing to resolve these complex issues at all. Even the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that measures in the Bill could lead to an increase in unsafe journeys across the channel rather than a reduction in them. The Bill originally tried to criminalise not only asylum seekers but those who try to help and rescue them. I cannot recall a more immoral and wicked piece of UK legislation.
I am disturbed by clauses 9 and 10, which enable a Home Secretary to deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice and restrict stateless children’s access to British citizenship. As a British citizen with dual nationality, I personally feel the ice-cold chill of those proposals. It looks and feels like a ramping up of the hostile environment. I will not support a set of clauses that create a hierarchy of British citizenship. The Government are trying to reframe citizenship as a privilege, not the right that it is. The message this sends is that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants, so that their citizenship and therefore all their rights are permanently insecure.
This Bill clearly disproportionately targets those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other racial groups, regardless of their country of birth. The racialised nature of this tiered system is obvious: the citizenship of those like myself, many of my constituents and millions of others of minority and migrant heritage is less secure and less important than those who belong to majority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom. It is a shameful piece of legislation that we should all be concerned about. Much of the Bill appears to be written to satisfy the front pages of tabloids, as I have said. It is not in favour of all the communities such as those of our parents, who came here years and years ago and worked hard to rebuild this country, and they are facing this because of this Tory Government.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
There have been some powerful speeches, and I want in particular to pay tribute to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), whom Conservative Members would have done better to listen to rather than shout at.
I want to address the Government’s clause 9, which proposes removing people’s citizenship without notice and, in effect, removing their rights of appeal. When people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds raise concerns—deep concerns—about this proposal, the response from the Government is, “Trust us”. “Trust us”—the people who deported black citizens in the Windrush generation? “Trust us”—the people who sent “Go home” vans around working-class estates? “Trust us”—the people who authored the hostile environment? “Trust us”—the people who are talking in this legislation about offshore detention centres? “Trust us”—the people who have created an atmosphere in which others are trying to demonise those going into the waters off our country to try to save lives and prevent death? “Trust us”? It is no wonder that the people at the sharp end of this Government’s hostile environment and at the sharp end of this racist legislation do not trust this Government.
It is absolutely appalling that people are being made to feel as if they do not belong in their own country and as if they are somehow second-class citizens. Let me contrast that—[Interruption.] No, they are not being made to feel that because of Members of Parliament raising these concerns. It is because of the legislation—the racist, divisive, scapegoating legislation—that this Government are bringing in.
Richard Burgon
I am not going to give way. The hon. Member talked enough rubbish before.
I want to draw a contrast with a community event that I attended in the most ethnically diverse ward in my constituency, Gipton and Harehills, in Leeds on Friday. Young people were there reading poems about their experiences, and one poem read by a local resident was about how the community has welcomed asylum seekers and welcomed refugees. Rather than using the issue of migration as a weapon of mass distraction to distract people from the responsibility that the Tory Government and their policies have for the misery in their lives, this Government would do better to listen to the message of hope and unity from diverse communities and stop peddling this legislation of division, racism, scapegoating and hate—and I make no apologies for this speech.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I just want to put on record four things. First, this Bill is an appalling piece of legislation. It is designed to appease the most backward elements in our society and it is designed to chase headlines in the popular media. The attacks on refugees and the attacks on people who support refugees are nothing but appalling and disgusting. The idea that this country has always been a welcoming place for refugees is simply not true. Often, it has been very hostile towards refugees. If we were that welcoming, we would not have so many people who have legitimately sought asylum in Britain living in desperate poverty, because the Home Office cannot be bothered to process their applications, and they are living in penury as a result. It would not be criminalising people who are trying to save lives on our shores, or prosecuting people in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, or anything else. We should all be very proud of people who demonstrated in memory of those who died off Calais, including the 250 people who attended a demonstration at the Stade in Hastings a couple of weeks ago.
I wish to refer to three parts of the Bill. I absolutely support new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have been a member, and in the past chair, of the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) all-party group for many years, and I worked with Olivier Bancoult, and many other Chagos islanders. We did wrong to the Chagos islanders in the 1970s and ’80s when they were driven off their land, and we have done wrong by them many times since then. The reason British nationality was offered was that the late Tam Dalyell and I tabled an amendment to previous legislation, to try to get recognition of the rights of Chagos islanders. Unfortunately, the Foreign Office and the Home Office collectively got it wrong, and the new clause corrects a mistake—let us be generous and call it a mistake—that was made many years ago, and will grant security to Chagos islanders living in this country.
I strongly support new clause 8 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). Nationality fees should be based solely on the cost of processing, not on the Home Office making a vast amount of money out of that. The new clause would help to right what is an intrinsic wrong.
In my remaining 39 seconds, I strongly support amendment 12, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), about the removal of British nationality. Many of us in the House—probably everybody—has at some point been to a citizenship ceremony at our town hall. They are nice; they are moving occasions. But all that could be for naught. The Home Secretary could simply remove the right of citizenship from someone who has gained it in this country or gained it through their heritage. Such a removal requires the agreement of another country, but people will not get that, and we will end up with stateless people as a result.
Stephen Timms
I wish to support new clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). The “Barriers to Britishness” report was published a year ago this month, and in his foreword, the Conservative hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) pointed out that the cost of citizenship in the UK is the highest in the western world, and that
“the combined cost of applying to become a citizen in Australia, Canada, the USA and France still does not add up to the cost of a single application in Britain. The fee of £1,330 is almost four times the cost to the Home Office of processing an application.”
This is a hostile environment for hard-working, law-abiding migrant families, and that is why clause 9 provokes such anxiety.
I know many families on the so-called 10-year route to indefinite leave, which means that two and a half years’ leave to remain at a time needs to be obtained four times, before they can apply for indefinite leave. They pay extortionate fees every time. Sometimes people lose their jobs because they do not have leave to remain between one two-and-a-half-year period ending and the Home Office getting round to granting the next. No recourse to public funds applies throughout that 10-year period—that is the subject of a different amendment that we will debate later.
At the Liaison Committee last year I told the Prime Minister about a family I know. Both parents work, the mother as a teaching assistant and the father in a big international company. The mother’s job continued after lockdown, but the father was laid off. Lockdown happened in one of the gaps between two-and-a-half-year periods, and the father’s employer did not know whether it was allowed to furlough him under the new scheme, so it did not. That family had no recourse to public funds, and all they could do was turn to a foodbank to survive. At the Liaison Committee the Prime Minister said that hard-working, law-abiding families in that position should have help of one kind or another. I very much agree with him, but unfortunately they do not, and every two and a half years they have extortionate visa fees. How do people cope with massive fees? For one family I know, we are talking about £14,000 every two and a half years in order to stay in the UK. For 10 years, they get no child benefit, even if the children are British citizens; no universal credit if somebody loses a job; and, prior to the pandemic, no free school meals if the family hit hard times. That is the hostile environment for law-abiding, hard-working migrant families, which is why families are so worried about what is in this Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
It has certainly been an interesting debate. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) —I think he is moving on to pastures new after this debate—and I welcome the new shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), to his position.
The debate started with at least one positive point from an Opposition Member, when the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), referred to some of the changes we are looking to make to correct historical anomalies that have existed for far too long. The reforms we make in the Bill to British nationality law will finally address those anomalies, which will have a positive impact for a significant number of people. The Bill also includes measures for the Home Secretary to grant British citizenship to people who would have become British citizens if not for unfairness and exceptional circumstances beyond their control.
Let me turn to some of the amendments. Government amendments 17 and 18, in relation to deprivation of citizenship, are minor and technical amendments to correct a drafting error in clause 9, so this is an appropriate opportunity to address amendment 12 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).
We heard some quite strong comments from Opposition Members about amendment 12, but let us really get into what clause 9 does. It amends section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981 to allow the requirement to give notice of a decision to deprive a person of their citizenship to be disapplied in certain limited circumstances, such as where there is no way of communicating with the person. For example, as was well pointed out by my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches, if someone is in a warzone, it is rather impractical to suggest that we should ask them to stop shooting so that we can pop up and serve them a notice. We heard some extraordinary comments from Opposition Members implying that we can simply pop a letter in the post and it will almost certainly get to someone.
To be clear, clause 9 does not change the circumstances under which a person can be deprived of British citizenship, nor does it remove the right of appeal against a decision to deprive a person of their citizenship. Rather, it preserves the right of appeal in cases where specified circumstances mean it is not reasonable to serve a person with a notice of a decision to deprive. The Government’s minor amendments to clause 9 clarify that the statutory right of appeal in deprivation cases is a right to appeal against the deprivation decision itself and not the deprivation order.
As was touched on, deprivation of citizenship is hardly a new concept; it has been in operational practice for many years, including under Labour Governments. The 1981 Act provides a statutory right of appeal against a decision to deprive. Clause 9 preserves that right of appeal in cases where the notice of a decision to deprive has not been served. Once a person makes contact with the Home Office, they are given a copy of the deprivation decision notice. They can then seek to exercise their statutory right to appeal against the decision.
Kevin Foster
Amendment 12 would remove clause 9 in its entirety, undermining the integrity of the immigration system and this Government’s efforts to keep dangerous people out of this country. To reiterate, there is no change in the scope of who could potentially be deprived, no change in the criteria, and appeal rights are still there.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It is important that we are completely accurate in what we are saying. It is true that the Bill actually does extend the role of the Home Secretary with regard to notices. Let us be clear: it places in the power of the Home Secretary the decision that they need not give notice if that is
“in the interests of the relationship between the United Kingdom and another country, or,”
breathtakingly,
“otherwise in the public interest.”
That confers a huge amount of discretion on the Home Secretary. The Bill takes our concerns about due process to another plane.
Kevin Foster
I am pleased the right hon. Gentleman did not throw a book at the Dispatch Box this time. Let me repeat what I just said: no one extra in scope, no change in criteria, and judicial oversight still there for an appeal. Let us be clear that we cannot simply allow someone who could cause high harm to this country, or who has gained citizenship via fraud, to avoid these provisions simply by hiding away—for example, in one of the repressive regimes that some Opposition Members seem far too supportive of—where we cannot reasonably issue them with a notice. We cannot be in a position where we could never deprive someone of citizenship just because it is not practical to pop a letter in the post to them.
I turn now to new clause 2, which I am afraid would undermine a long-standing principle of British nationality law dating back to 1915, under which nationality or entitlement to nationality is not passed on to the second and subsequent generations born and settled outside the UK and its territories, creating quite a major precedent. However, I do hear the strong point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and, to be fair, by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). We will continue to consider what more we could do, particularly given the low uptake of the £40 million Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office fund designed to assist this diaspora community, and we will certainly be keen to look at that and, potentially, at how it could allow those people to settle here in the UK.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) spoke powerfully to new clause 4. The Government remain extremely grateful to former British Hong Kong service personnel. He will be aware that under the British nationality selection scheme a limited number of personnel who were settled in Hong Kong could apply to register as British citizens. Additionally, because they were all adults at the time, all such veterans would have been eligible to acquire BNO status between 1986 and 1987. We therefore believe that most should hold BNO status and be eligible for the BNO route.
Granting the right of abode would set quite a precedent. However, I am pleased to confirm that the Home Secretary has identified an option that will enable our Government to treat this group of personnel in a similar way to other non-UK service personnel who were based in Hong Kong before handover. To be clear, that would be on top of the existing pathways they are already eligible for, including the BNO visa route and any other route. There is considerable work to be done to fully scope the impacts of this policy and the practicalities of its delivery, and I will aim to provide further details to the House as soon as I am able to, with a view to a solution being provided before the end of the next calendar year. I hope that that is of reassurance to my hon. Friend, whose regular challenge to us is that it is not just about having an idea; it is also about having a timeline to deliver it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and others spoke powerfully about new clause 5, which raises issues about eligibility for the BNO route and particularly about those who were too young to obtain BNO status before the handover to China and whose BNO parents or grandparents, with whom they form a household, do not wish to apply for that route—effectively, they do not wish to move from Hong Kong. There are issues with the new clause as it is drafted, given that it does not contain an age limit and its scope could extend even to those who have never set foot in Hong Kong. However, we hear the very strong points that have been made, and we very much recognise the importance of our close ties to the people of Hong Kong.
I emphasise that those who are not eligible for the BNO route have a number of other UK immigration routes available to them, not least the very expanded skilled worker route. Individuals from Hong Kong can also apply to come, for example, as a student. As my right hon. Friend referred to, there is the existing youth mobility scheme, which is open to those aged between 18 and 30 and which offers a two-year grant of leave in the UK, with scope to switch, once people are here, to routes that lead to permanent settlement. There are currently 1,000 places available each year, and the scheme is substantially under-subscribed.
We believe that those existing measures allow a lot of people to come, and we expect one or two of the new routes being created next year to also open up a pathway to this age group in Hong Kong, alongside others. However, my right hon. Friend asked me about two specific points. First, if the other side unilaterally enacted its provision, that would not automatically change the immigration rules here in the United Kingdom. That would be something we would have to do to close the route for applications by Hong Kong nationals. I must be clear that if unilateral action happened that further damaged the rights and abilities of people in Hong Kong, the Government would look closely at whether to maintain the scheme, to put something else in its place or to continue to allow it to go forward. I point out that we have a number of successful YMS schemes.
On the timeline for applications, whatever route we put in place—I would not want to disabuse my right hon. Friend—there would be a period of time between applying and getting a decision. In the context of our simplification process and the fact that we have moved to create, in some cases, wholly digital pathways for application to the BNO route by Hong Kong citizens, we are certainly happy to look again at whether some of those principles could be applied to the YMS in Hong Kong.
I noted the comments from the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts). We very much welcome and value the contribution of overseas workers in the NHS; that is why we introduced the health and care worker visa. However, making changes in one area would potentially require changes in others, including to routes that some other NHS staff are on. I should also point out that new clause 7 itself would see the applicant, if they left NHS employment within three years, having to pay the fee. I can understand why he sought to put his provision into the Bill, but it would be quite a novel approach that would be difficult for the Home Office to operationalise and would inevitably require enforcement. That is why we do not think it is the right approach.
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate children registered as British citizens under new clause 8. However, I must be clear that we are still waiting for the Supreme Court to give its judgment on this issue, and we will then look to respond.
We do not believe we can accept new clause 33, as we believe all applicants for UK nationality should be treated the same in the tests applied, but we are considering how the issue could be picked up as part of our work on simplification—applying it not only to those who hold settled status under the EU settlement scheme, but potentially to ILR holders more broadly. Although we will not accept the new clause today, I hope the hon. Member for Glasgow North East will be pleased to hear that we are looking closely at that work. I emphasise again, as I have said many times before, that no one has been refused British citizenship purely on the basis of the CSI requirement in free movement regulations.
Turning to amendment 2 in the name of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), which would remove clause 10, unfortunately we are seeing an increasing trend of applications for children whose parents did not take the step of registering their child’s birth with their embassy or high commission, leaving their child without a nationality. Given the request for data, concerns about the use of that route were confirmed by Home Office sampling.
Of more than 200 cases sampled, 96% of parents were Indian or Sri Lankan. Crucially, a child born in the UK to a parent from those countries can only access their citizenship if the parent registers the birth at the relevant high commission. To register the child’s birth they would need to comply with the requirements set. Within the sample, 90% of Indian and Sri Lankan parents had chosen to contact the high commission to obtain letters to show their child was in fact not a citizen, and so clearly had no problem in approaching their authorities. In many cases, the parents had, I think it is safe to say, a chequered immigration record, with only 16% of parents having permission to be in the UK at the time of the child’s birth. In 67% of the cases, the parents had obtained leave to remain in the UK as a result of the child’s applications. That points to why we believe this is a clear concern.
To deal quickly with amendments 110 and 111, amendment 110 would mean in practical terms that parents who had chosen not to register their child’s birth could argue it was not in their child’s best interest to have their nationality. That could raise some obvious issues and concerns and create quite an argument, when in reality that is not something they should be doing—certainly not for an immigration benefit.
Overall, the package of measures in the Bill is fair and proportionate. Again, I say, as many Members have done in their interventions, that the scaremongering about some of the provisions in the Bill and about people who would never be in the scope of the tight criteria for deprivation of citizenship is nothing less than shocking. The criteria applies to those who have committed the worst offences or who are literally overseas committing war crimes. This will never apply in the way that Opposition Members have suggested. I urge the House to reject some of the nonsense that we have heard and vote to support these measures, which will transform our migration system and make sure that we have a nationality system that is fit for purpose.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 1—Prescribed period under section 94(3) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999—
‘(1) The Asylum Support Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/704) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 2(2) (interpretation) for “28” substitute “56”.
(3) Subject to subsection (4), this section does not prevent the Secretary of State from exercising the powers conferred by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to prescribe by regulations a different period for the purposes of section 94(3) (day on which a claim for asylum is determined) of that Act.
(4) The Secretary of State may not prescribe a period less than 56 days where regulation 2(2A) of the Asylum Support Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/704) applies.’
When an individual is granted refugee status, their eligibility to Home Office financial support and accommodation currently ends after a further 28 days. This new clause would extend that period to 56 days or allow the Secretary of State to set a longer period.
New clause 9—Settled and pre-settled status under EU settlement scheme: certification—
‘(1) Within granting a person settled status or pre-settled status under the EU settlement scheme, the Secretary of State must require the provision of a physical certificate to that person.
(2) The certificate mentioned in subsection (1) must confirm that the relevant person has the relevant status (settled status or pre-settled status).’
This new clause would require the Government to issue a physical certificate when granting settled status or pre-settled status under the EU settlement scheme, allowing all those with such status to provide documentary proof.
New clause 10—Asylum visa for persons in France—
‘(1) On an application by a person (“P“) to the appropriate decision-maker for entry clearance, the appropriate decision-maker must grant P entry clearance if he is satisfied that P is a relevant person.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), P is a relevant person if—
(a) P is in France on the date of application;
(b) P is not a national of a member State of the European Union or a national of Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland;
(c) P intends to make a protection claim in the United Kingdom;
(d) P‘s protection claim, if made in the United Kingdom, would have a realistic prospect of success; and
(e) there are good reasons why P’s protection claim should be considered in the United Kingdom.
(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2)(e), in deciding whether there are good reasons why P‘s protection claim should be considered in the United Kingdom, the appropriate decision-maker shall take into account—
(a) the relative strength of P‘s family and other ties to the United Kingdom;
(b) the relative strength of P‘s family and other ties to France;
(c) P‘s mental and physical health and any particular vulnerabilities that P has; and
(d) any other matter that the appropriate decision-maker thinks relevant.
(4) For the purposes of an application under paragraph (1), the appropriate decision-maker must waive any of the requirements in paragraph (5) if satisfied that P cannot reasonably be expected to comply with them.
(5) The requirements in this paragraph are—
(a) any requirement prescribed (whether by immigration rules or otherwise) under section 50 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006; and
(b) any requirement prescribed by regulations made under sections 5, 6, 7 or 8 of the UK Borders Act 2007 (biometric registration).
(6) No fee may be charged for the making of an application under paragraph (1).
(7) An entry clearance granted pursuant to paragraph (1) shall have effect as leave to enter for such period, being not less than six months, and on such conditions as the Secretary of State may prescribe by order.
(8) Upon a person entering the United Kingdom (within the meaning of section 11 of the Immigration Act 1971) pursuant to leave to enter given under paragraph (7), that person shall be deemed to have made a protection claim in the United Kingdom.
(9) The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is amended as follows.
(10) After paragraph 30(1)(b) of Part 1 of Schedule 1 insert— “; or
(c) are conferred by or under sections [Asylum visa for persons in France] and [Right of appeal against France asylum visa refusal] of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.”
(11) In this section and in section [Right of appeal against France asylum visa refusal]—
“appropriate decision-maker” means a person authorised by the Secretary of State by rules made under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 to grant an entry clearance under paragraph (1);
“entry clearance” has the same meaning as in section 33(1) of the Immigration Act 1971;
“protection claim”, in relation to a person, means a claim that to remove him from or require him to leave the United Kingdom would be inconsistent with the United Kingdom’s obligations—
(a) under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28th July 1951 and the Protocol to that Convention;
(b) in relation to persons entitled to a grant of humanitarian protection; or
(c) under Articles 2 or 3 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms agreed by the Council of Europe at Rome on 4th November 1950.’
This new clause would provide for a person in France to be granted entry clearance to allow them to claim asylum in the UK in certain circumstances.
New clause 11—Right of appeal against France asylum visa refusal—
‘(1) If an application by a person (“P“) for entry clearance under clause [Asylum visa for persons in France] is refused by the appropriate decision-maker, P may appeal to the First-tier Tribunal against the refusal.
(2) The following provisions of, or made under, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 have effect in relation to an appeal under these Regulations to the First-tier Tribunal as if it were an appeal against a decision of the Secretary of State under section 82(1) of that Act (right of appeal to the Tribunal)—
(a) section 84 (grounds of appeal), as though the sole permitted ground of appeal was that the appropriate decision-maker was wrong to conclude that P was not a relevant person;
(b) section 85(1) to (4) (matters to be considered);
(c) section 86 (determination of appeal);
(d) section 105 and any regulations made under that section; and
(e) section 106 and any rules made pursuant to that section.
(3) In an appeal under this section, the First-tier Tribunal—
(a) shall allow the appeal if it is satisfied that P is a relevant person; and
(b) shall otherwise dismiss the appeal.
(4) In an appeal under this section, in deciding whether there are good reasons why P‘s protection claim should be considered in the United Kingdom, the First-tier Tribunal shall apply section [Asylum visa for persons in France] (3) as though for the words “appropriate decision-maker” there were substituted the words “First-tier Tribunal”.’
This new clause would allow a person whose application for entry clearance under clause [Asylum visa for persons in France] has been rejected to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
New clause 12—Residence permits: recourse to public funds—
‘Within two months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must by regulations ensure that anyone holding a valid UK residence permit has recourse to public funds.’
Under this new clause, everyone holding a UK residence permit (many of whom currently have no recourse to public funds) would have recourse to public funds.
New clause 13—Undocumented migrants: access to work and services—
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.
(2) Omit sections 20 to 47.
(3) The Immigration Act 2016 is amended as follows.
(4) Omit sections 1 to 45.’
This new clause would repeal the sections of the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts which sought to further restrict undocumented migrants’ access to work and services.
New clause 14—Immigration health surcharge: abolition—
‘Within two months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must amend the Immigration (Health Charge) Order 2015 in such a way as to abolish the immigration health surcharge.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to abolish the immigration health surcharge.
New clause 15—Time limit on immigration detention—
‘(1) This section applies to any person (“P”) who is liable to detention under a relevant detention power.
(2) P may not be detained under a relevant detention power for a period of more than 28 days from the relevant time.
(3) If P remains detained under a relevant detention power at the expiry of the period of 28 days then—
(a) P shall be released forthwith; and
(b) P may not be detained under a relevant detention power thereafter, unless the Secretary of State or an immigration officer, as the case may be, is satisfied that there has been a material change of circumstances since P’s release and that the criteria in section [Initial detention: criteria and duration](1) are met.
(4) In this section, “relevant detention power” means a power to detain under—
(a) paragraph 16(2) of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 (detention of persons liable to examination or removal);
(b) paragraph 2(1), (2) or (3) of Schedule 3 to that Act (detention pending deportation);
(c) section 62 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (detention of persons liable to examination or removal); or
(d) section 36(1) of the UK Borders Act 2007 (detention pending deportation).
(5) In this section, “relevant time” means the time at which P is first detained under a relevant detention power.
(6) This section does not apply to a person in respect of whom the Secretary of State has certified that the decision to detain is or was taken in the interests of national security.’
This new clause would prevent people who are liable to detention under a relevant power from being detained for longer than 28 days.
New clause 16—Initial detention: criteria and duration—
‘(1) A person (“P”) to whom section [Time limit on immigration detention] applies may not be detained under a relevant detention power other than for the purposes of examination, unless the Secretary of State or an immigration officer, as the case may be, is satisfied that—
(a) P can be shortly removed from the United Kingdom;
(b) detention is strictly necessary to effect P’s deportation or removal from the United Kingdom; and
(c) the detention of P is in all the circumstances proportionate.
(2) P may not be detained under a relevant detention power for a period of more than 96 hours from the relevant time, unless—
(a) P has been refused bail at an initial bail hearing in accordance with subsection (5)(b) of section [Bail hearings]; or
(b) the Secretary of State has arranged a reference to the Tribunal for consideration of whether to grant immigration bail to P in accordance with subsection (2)(c) of section [Bail hearings] and that hearing has not yet taken place.
(3) Nothing in subsections (1) or (2) authorises the Secretary of State to detain P under a relevant detention power if such detention would, apart from this section, be unlawful.
(4) In this section, “Tribunal” means the First-Tier Tribunal.
(5) In this section, “relevant detention power” and “relevant time” have the meanings given in section [Time limit on immigration detention].’
This new clause sets out the circumstances in which a person to whom NC15 applies may be held in initial detention, and the maximum duration of such detention.
New clause 17—Bail hearings—
‘(1) This section applies to any person (“P”) to whom section [Time limit on immigration detention] applies and who is detained under a relevant detention power.
(2) Before the expiry of a period of 96 hours from the relevant time, the Secretary of State must—
(a) release P;
(b) grant immigration bail to P under paragraph 1 of Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016; or
(c) arrange a reference to the Tribunal for consideration of whether to grant immigration bail to P.
(3) Subject to subsection (4), when the Secretary of State arranges a reference to the Tribunal under subsection (2)(c), the Tribunal must hold an oral hearing (“an initial bail hearing”) which must commence within 24 hours of the time at which the reference is made.
(4) If the period of 24 hours in subsection (3) ends on a Saturday, Sunday or Bank holiday, the Tribunal must hold an initial bail hearing on the next working day.
(5) At the initial bail hearing, the Tribunal must—
(a) grant immigration bail to P under paragraph 1 of Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016; or
(b) refuse to grant immigration bail to P.
(6) Subject to subsection (7), the Tribunal must grant immigration bail to P at a bail hearing unless it is satisfied that the Secretary of State has established that the criteria in subsection 1 of section [Initial detention: criteria and duration] are met and that, in addition—
(a) directions have been given for P’s removal from the United Kingdom and such removal is to take place within 14 days;
(b) a travel document is available for the purposes of P’s removal or deportation; and
(c) there are no outstanding legal barriers to removal.
(7) Subsection (6) does not apply if the Tribunal is satisfied that the Secretary of State has established that the criteria in subsection 1 of section [Initial detention: criteria and duration] above are met and that there are very exceptional circumstances which justify maintaining detention.
(8) In subsection (6), “a bail hearing” includes—
(a) an initial bail hearing under subsection (2); and
(b) the hearing of an application for immigration bail under paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016.
(9) In this section, “Tribunal” means the First-Tier Tribunal.
(10) The Secretary of State shall provide to P or to P’s legal representative, not more than 24 hours after the relevant time, copies of all documents in the Secretary of State’s possession which are relevant to the decision to detain.
(11) At the initial bail hearing, the Tribunal shall not consider any documents relied upon by the Secretary of State which were not provided to P or to P’s legal representative in accordance with subsection (10), unless—
(a) P consents to the documents being considered; or
(b) in the opinion of the Tribunal there is a good reason why the documents were not provided to P or to P’s legal representative in accordance with subsection (10).
(12) The Immigration Act 2016 is amended as follows—
(a) After paragraph 12(4) of schedule 10 insert—
“(4A) Sub-paragraph (2) above does not apply if the refusal of bail by the First tier Tribunal took place at an initial bail hearing within the meaning of section [Bail hearings] of the Sovereign Borders Act 2021.”.’
In respect of people to whom NC15 applies, this new clause would require the Secretary of State to either release them, grant immigration bail or arrange a reference to the Tribunal within 96 hours.
New clause 18—Illegal immigration: offences—
‘(1) Any person who is present in the United Kingdom without legal authority shall be guilty of an offence.
(2) Any person who enters or attempts to enter the United Kingdom without legal authority shall be guilty of an offence.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or a fine (or both);
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum (or both);
(c) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum (or both).’
This new clause would create offences in respect of persons who have entered the UK illegally or who have remained in the UK without legal authority.
New clause 19—Illegal immigration offences: deportation orders—
‘(1) Any person who is convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 shall be subject to a deportation order unless the Secretary of State deems such a deportation order to be against the public interest.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) above, a deportation order shall be deemed to be in the public interest unless a certificate to the contrary has been submitted by the Secretary of State to the Court.’
New clause 21—Nation of Sanctuary—
‘(1) The Secretary of State and Welsh Ministers must jointly produce guidance setting out how measures under this Act may be exercised in a way that secures compliance with—
(a) the Welsh Government’s commitment to be a “Nation of Sanctuary”; and
(b) the plan published by the Welsh Government in January 2019 entitled “Nation of Sanctuary – Refugee and Asylum Seeker Plan”.
(2) Before issuing the guidance, the Secretary of State must—
(a) in collaboration with the Welsh Minister, prepare and consult on a draft; and
(b) publish a response to the consultation.
(3) In preparing the guidance, consideration must be given to the following matters as far as they relate to refugees and asylum seekers—
(a) conditions in asylum accommodation;
(b) access to public services;
(c) access to language support;
(d) access to education and training;
(e) employment opportunities; and
(f) access to health and social services.
(4) No guidance may be published under this section unless a draft of the guidance has been laid before and approved by Senedd Cymru.’
This new clause would require the UK and Welsh Governments to jointly produce guidance setting out how measures under this Act can be exercised in a way which is consistent with the Welsh Government’s commitment of being a Nation of Sanctuary. No guidance can be published unless it has been approved by the Senedd.
New clause 23—Illegal immigration: offences and deportation—
‘(1) Any person who travels to the United Kingdom from a safe third country and attempts to remain in the United Kingdom without lawful authority shall be guilty of an offence.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable–
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or a fine (or both);
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum (or both);
(c) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum (or both).
(3) A person prosecuted for an offence under this section must be held in secure accommodation until the trial and any subsequent appeal have concluded.
(4) Following conviction for an offence under this section—
(a) a person sentenced to a fine must remain in secure accommodation until the person consents to leave the United Kingdom or until execution of a deportation order relating to the person;
(b) a person sentenced to imprisonment must be returned to secure accommodation immediately following the person’s release from prison, and must remain in secure accommodation until the person consents to leave the United Kingdom or until execution of a deportation order relating to the person.’
New clause 24—Indefinite leave to remain payments by Commonwealth, Hong Kong and Gurkha members of armed forces—
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 68(10), after “regulations” insert “must make exceptions in respect of any person with citizenship of a Commonwealth country (other than the United Kingdom) who has served at least four years in the armed forces of the United Kingdom, or any person who has served at least four years in the Royal Navy Hong Kong Squadron, the Hong Kong Military Service Corps or the Brigade of Gurkhas, such exceptions to include capping the fee for any such person applying for indefinite leave to remain at no more than the actual administrative cost of processing that application, and”.’
This new clause will ensure that Commonwealth, Hong Kong and Gurkha veterans applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain following four years of service will only pay the unit cost of an application.
New clause 26—Age assessments: restrictions—
‘(1) Age assessments under section 49 or 50 must only be undertaken if there is significant reason to doubt the age of the age-disputed person.
(2) A person conducting age assessments under section 49 or 50 must be a social worker.
(3) Age assessments must be undertaken in accordance with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services Age Assessment Guidance or equivalent guidance in the devolved jurisdictions.
(4) When an age assessment is conducted, a process must be used that allows for an impartial multi-agency approach, drawing on a range of expertise, including from—
(a) health professionals;
(b) psychologists;
(c) teachers;
(d) foster parents;
(e) youth workers;
(f) advocates;
(g) guardians; and
(h) social workers.
(5) When making regulations under section 51, the Secretary of State must not specify scientific methods unless the Secretary of State receives written approval from the relevant medical, dental and scientific professional bodies that the method is both ethical and accurate beyond reasonable doubt for assessing a person’s age.
(6) Any organisation developed to oversee age assessments must be independent of the Home Office.’
This new clause would place various restrictions on the use of age assessments.
New clause 27—Unaccompanied refugee children: relocation and support—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act, make arrangements to relocate to the United Kingdom and support a specified number of unaccompanied refugee children from other countries in the European Union.
(2) The number of children to be resettled under subsection (1) shall be determined by the Government in consultation with local authorities.
(3) The relocation of children under subsection (1) shall be in addition to the resettlement of children under any other resettlement scheme.’
This new clause introduces a safe route for unaccompanied children from countries in the European Union to come to the UK.
New clause 28—Immigration health surcharge: exemption for international volunteers—
‘(1) Part 3 of the Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 38, insert—
“38A Immigration health surcharge: exemption for international volunteers
(1) A charge under section 38 may not be imposed on persons who have leave to enter, or to remain in, the United Kingdom through a visa to work voluntarily for a period of no more than 12 months, or for such period as may be prescribed by regulations, for a registered UK charity advancing the charity’s primary purpose.
(2) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section must not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”’
This new clause would ensure that international volunteers, including those working in health and social care, will be exempt from paying the immigration health surcharge.
New clause 29—Immigration Rules: entry to seek asylum and join family—
‘(1) Within six months of this Act being passed, under the power in section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament rules making provision for the admission of persons coming for the purpose of seeking asylum.
(2) These rules shall make provision for admitting persons who have a family member in the United Kingdom who is ordinarily and lawfully resident in the United Kingdom.
(3) For the purposes of this section, a “family member” means a grandchild, child, parent, grandparent, sibling, uncle or aunt.’
This new clause would require the Government to make provision within the Immigration Rules for people to be admitted to the UK for the purposes of seeking asylum where they have a family member in the UK.
New clause 31—Route to settlement for children and young people who arrived in the UK as minors—
‘(1) Within twelve months of this Act being passed, the Secretary of State must amend the Immigration Rules so that – for persons to whom this section applies – the requirements to be met for the grant of indefinite leave to remain on the grounds of private life in the UK are that—
(a) the applicant has been in the UK with continuous leave on the grounds of private life for a period of at least 60 months;
(b) the applicant meets the requirements of paragraph 276ADE(1) of the Immigration Rules or, in respect of the requirements in paragraph 276ADE(1)(iv) and (v) of those Rules, the applicant met the requirements in a previous application which led to a grant of limited leave to remain under paragraph 276BE(1) of those Rules.
(2) This section applies to—
(a) persons who have been granted limited leave to remain on the grounds of private life in the UK because at the time of their application—
(i) they were under the age of 18 years and had lived continuously in the UK for at least 7 years (discounting any period of imprisonment) and it would not have been reasonable to expect them to leave the UK;
(ii) they were agreed 18 years or above and under 25 years and had spent over half their life living continuously in the UK (discounting any period of imprisonment).
(b) persons—
(i) who were granted leave to remain outside the rules on the basis of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; and
(ii) who arrived in the UK as a minor.
(c) any dependants of a person to whom paragraph (a) or (b) applies.’
Under this new clause, the route to settlement would be shortened from ten years to five years for children and young people who arrived in the UK as minors and have leave to remain on the basis of having grown up in the UK.
New clause 32—Compatibility of Part 2 with the Refugee Convention—
‘(1) The provisions in Part 2 of this Act and any subordinate legislation made under Part 2 are, so far as it is possible to do so, to be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Refugee Convention.
(2) Where a court is required to determine whether a provision of this part, or any subordinate legislation made under it, is compatible with the Refugee Convention, and is satisfied that it is not, then it must make a declaration to this effect.
(3) In this section, “court” has the same meaning as in section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998.’
This new clause would ensure provisions of Part 2 were read as far as possible in a manner consistent with the Refugee Convention, and where that was not possible, this was declared by the Courts.
New clause 35—Refugee Family Reunion—
‘(1) Within six months of this Act coming into force, rules must be laid down by the Secretary of State under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 to allow any person (“P”) who has been recognised as a refugee in the United Kingdom to sponsor—
(a) any child of P under the age of 25, who was either under the age of 18 or unmarried at the time P left the country of P’s habitual residence in order to seek asylum;
(b) any parent of P;
(c) any sibling of P under the age of 25, who was either under the age of 18 or unmarried at the time P left the country of P’s habitual residence in order to seek asylum; to join them in the UK.’
This new clause would expand the range of family members who can apply to be reunited with a refugee in the United Kingdom.
New clause 36—Asylum dispersal – analysis of costs to dispersal authorities—
‘(1) Within six months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State must lay before both Houses of Parliament a report analysing of the costs incurred by local authorities for undertaking the role of asylum dispersal authorities.
(2) The report under subsection (1) must include a summary of submissions made by—
(a) local authorities who act as asylum dispersal authorities, and
(b) organisations acting on behalf of the local authorities.
(3) The report under subsection (1) must set out the Secretary of State’s proposals for reimbursing the costs incurred by asylum dispersal authorities.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament an analysis of the costs incurred by local authorities who host dispersed asylum seekers, and proposals for reimbursing them.
New clause 37—Independent Asylum Agency—
‘Within 12 months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament proposals for an independent asylum agency with responsibility for deciding applications for refugee status, and related protection claims.’
New clause 38—Instructions to the Migration Advisory Committee—
‘Within two months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State must instruct the Migration Advisory Committee to undertake the following work—
(a) a review of the minimum income requirements for leave to enter and remain as a family member of persons who are British citizens or settled in the United Kingdom; and
(b) a report making detailed recommendations on the design of a work visa for remote areas.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to instruct the MAC to undertake work reviewing the minimum income requirements for family visas; and on the design of a remote areas visa scheme.
New clause 40—Immigration Rules since December 2020: report on effects—
‘(1) Before this Act comes into force, the Secretary of State must commission and lay before Parliament an independent report on the effects of its Immigration Rules on the UK economy and public services since December 2020.
(2) The areas to be covered by the report must include but are not limited to—
(a) food supply;
(b) fuel supply;
(c) hospitality and tourism;
(d) NHS;
(e) social care; and
(f) construction.’
This new clause would require the Government to commission and publish an independent report on the effects of its Immigration Rules on the UK economy and public services since December 2020.
New clause 41—Asylum seekers’ right to work—
‘The Secretary of State must make regulations providing that adults applying for asylum in the United Kingdom may apply to the Secretary of State for permission to take up employment if a decision at first instance has not been taken on the applicant’s asylum application within 3 months of the date on which it was recorded.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to make regulations enabling asylum seekers to work once they have been waiting for a decision on their claim for 3 months or more.
New clause 42—Refugee family reunion—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within 6 months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act, lay before Parliament a statement of changes in the rules (the “immigration rules”) under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 (general provisions for regulation and control) to make provision for refugee family reunion, in accordance with this section, to come into effect after 21 days.
(2) Before a statement of changes is laid under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult with persons he or she deems appropriate.
(3) The statement laid under subsection (1) must set out rules providing for leave to enter and remain in the United Kingdom for family members of a person granted refugee status or humanitarian protection.
(4) In this section, “refugee status” and “humanitarian protection” have the same meaning as in the immigration rules.
(5) In this section, “family members” include a person’s—
(a) parent, including adoptive parent;
(b) spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner;
(c) child, including adopted child, who is either—
(i) under the age of 18, or
(ii) under the age of 25 but was either under the age of 18 or unmarried at the time the person granted asylum left their country of residence to seek asylum;
(d) sibling, including adoptive sibling, who is either—
(i) under the age of 18, or
(ii) under the age of 25, but was either under the age of 18 or unmarried at the time the person granted asylum left their country of residence to seek asylum; and
(e) such other persons as the Secretary of State may determine, having regard to—
(i) the importance of maintaining family unity,
(ii) the best interests of a child,
(iii) the physical, emotional, psychological or financial dependency between a person granted refugee status or humanitarian protection and another person,
(iv) any risk to the physical, emotional or psychological wellbeing of a person who was granted refugee status or humanitarian protection, including from the circumstances in which the person is living in the United Kingdom, or
(v) such other matters as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(6) For the purpose of subsection (5)—
(a) “adopted” and “adoptive” refer to a relationship resulting from adoption, including de facto adoption, as set out in the immigration rules;
(b) “best interests” of a child shall be read in accordance with Article 3 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.’
This new clause would make provision for leave to enter or remain in the UK to be granted to the family members of refugees and of people granted humanitarian protection.
New clause 44—Safe and legal routes—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within 30 days of the date of Royal Assent to this Act and annually thereafter, publish a report on—
(a) all current safe and legal asylum routes to the United Kingdom,
(b) the eligibility criteria for legal entry into the United Kingdom, and
(c) details of the application process.
(2) The Secretary of State must publish a report on its resettlement target of refugees per year, and report on this every year.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish a summary of safe and legal routes to refuge in the UK each year, alongside their eligibility criteria and application process. It would also commit the UK and Secretary of State to publishing its resettlement targets, and reporting on this annually.
New clause 45—Asylum seekers: employment—
‘(1) The Immigration Rules, as laid before Parliament under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971, are amended as follows.
(2) In paragraphs 360 and 360C (right to request permission to take up employment) for “one year” substitute “six months”.
(3) Omit paragraphs 360A and 360D (which place restrictions on the employment that may be taken up).
(4) After paragraph 360E insert—
360F (none) In paragraphs 360 to 360E, the terms “asylum applicant” and “individual” mean—
(a) a principal applicant, or
(b) an adult dependant of a principal applicant in accordance with paragraph 349.”’
This new clause would permit asylum seekers waiting for more than six months for a decision on their claim to take up employment.
New clause 46—Shortage Occupation List—
‘(1) Before a Minister of the Crown makes any changes to the Immigration Rules Appendix Shortage Occupation List as provided for by the Immigration Rules, the Secretary of State must—
(a) consult each devolved authority on proposed changes, and seek their consent; and
(b) lay before Parliament an independent impact assessment of the proposed changes including, but not limited to, the submissions received from the devolved authorities under paragraph (a).
(2) If a devolved authority does not provide the consent sought under subsection (1)(a), the Minister of the Crown may not proceed with the changes.
(3) In this section “devolved authority” means the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers or a Northern Ireland department.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to consult and receive the consent of the devolved governments before making changes to the Shortage Occupation List in order to ensure that it allows additional flexibility and reflects the different needs of each nation.
New clause 48—Family reunion and resettlement: unaccompanied minors—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within a period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, amend the Immigration Rules in order to ensure that an unaccompanied minor seeking asylum in the EEA who has a family member present in the United Kingdom is entitled to claim asylum in the United Kingdom.
(2) For the purposes of this section, “family member” includes—
(a) a parent or guardian of the applicant;
(b) an aunt, uncle or grandparent of the applicant;
(c) a sibling of the applicant;
(d) the spouse of the applicant;
(e) an unmarried partner with whom the applicant is in a stable relationship; or
(f) any children of the applicant.’
This new clause would allow unaccompanied children to have access to family reunion with close relatives in the UK.
New clause 49—Co-operation with European Union on family reunion arrivals and safe returns—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within a period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, produce a report setting out a negotiating mandate for an agreement with the European Union setting out protocols for identifying the state responsible for determining an asylum application using a hierarchy of criteria, including but not limited to—
(a) family unity,
(b) possession of residence documents or visas,
(c) irregular entry or stay, and
(d) visa-waived entry.
(2) The Secretary of State must lay the report before each House of Parliament.’
This new clause would require the Government to produce a negotiating mandate setting out a proposed reciprocal arrangement with the European Union for safe returns and safe legal routes, to cover the issues previously covered by the Dublin III agreement which has now ended.
New clause 50—Advertising assistance for unlawful immigration to the United Kingdom—
‘(1) It is an offence to advertise by any means, including using social media, services designed to facilitate the commission of an offence under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, to a fine or to both, or
(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both.’
New clause 51—Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations setting out the terms of a resettlement scheme for Afghan citizens known as the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (“ACRS”).
(2) There must be provisions within the ACRS to allow those who are fleeing persecution and have family members in the UK to apply for the Scheme.
(3) For the purposes of this section, “family member” includes—
(a) the spouse of the applicant;
(b) an unmarried partner with whom the applicant is in a stable relationship;
(c) any children of the applicant;
(d) a parent or guardian of the applicant;
(e) an aunt, uncle or grandparent of the applicant; or
(f) a sibling of the applicant.
(4) Regulations under this section must be made and the ACRS must come into force within 30 days from the date of Royal Assent to this Act.’
This new clause will place the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme on a statutory footing and ensure that it includes provisions for a family reunion route within it.
New clause 52—Non-UK service personnel: waiver of fees—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act, make regulations exempting relevant persons from the payment of fees in respect of the exercise of functions in connection with immigration or nationality under section 68 of the Immigration Act 2014.
(2) For the purposes of this section, “relevant persons” are persons who—
(a) do not hold British citizenship and are serving or have in the past served in the UK armed forces for a minimum period of five years; or
(b) are dependents of persons identified in paragraph (a).’
Amendment 8, page 14, line 4leave out clause 11.
This amendment would remove clause 11, which provides for the differential treatment of refugees depending on their method of arrival in the UK.
Amendment 114, in clause 11, page 15, line 2, at end insert—
‘(7A) Notwithstanding subsections (5) and (6), a person listed in subsection (7B) must not be treated differently from a Group 1 refugee and in particular—
(a) must not face a restriction on their leave to enter compared to any Group 1 refugee;
(b) must have access to indefinite leave to remain on the same basis as any Group 1 refugee;
(c) must not have no recourse to public funds conditions attached to any leave to enter or remain given to them; and
(d) must have access to family reunion on the same basis as Group 1 refugees.
(7B) Subsection (7A) applies to—
(a) an Afghan national who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in Afghanistan;
(b) a Syrian national who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in Syria;
(c) a Uighur who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in China;
(d) a Christian convert who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in their country of nationality; or
(e) other persons who are refugees because they are outside of their country of nationality for fear of persecution for a Convention reason as set out in article 1 of the Refugee Convention.’
This amendment would prevent the Secretary of State from treating Afghans, Syrians, Uighurs and Christian converts and other people who are refugees at risk of persecution, differently from Group 1 refugees.
Government amendments 19 to 25.
Amendment 132, in clause 15, page 18, leave out lines 27 to 39 and insert—
“(a) there are in law and in practice—
(i) appropriate reception arrangements for asylum seekers;
(ii) sufficient protection against serious harm and violations of fundamental rights;
(iii) protection against refoulement and removal in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights;
(iv) access to fair and efficient State asylum procedures, or to a previously afforded refugee status or other protective status that is inclusive of the rights and obligations set out at Articles 2-34 of the 1951 Convention;
(v) the legal right to remain during the State asylum procedure;
(vi) a refugee status granted to those who are recognised as refugees that is inclusive of the rights and obligations set out at Articles 2-34 of the 1951 Convention for those found to be in need of international protection; and
(b) it is safe for the particular claimant, taking into account their individual circumstances.”
This amendment modifies the definition of a “safe third State” to limit it to States that are in fact safe, in law and practice, for the particular claimant.
Amendment 133, in clause 15, page 18, line 41, leave out “5” and insert “3”.
This amendment is consequential on a later amendment about the definition of “connection”.
Amendment 134, in clause 15, page 18, leave out lines 43 to 46.
This amendment removes subsection (6), which states that a claimant whose asylum claim has been denied by virtue of their connection to a particular safe third State may be removed to any other safe third State.
Amendment 135, in clause 15, page 19, line 2, leave out “may” and insert “must”.
This amendment would clarify that under specific circumstances, an asylum claim that would otherwise be considered inadmissible must be considered under the immigration rules.
Government amendment 26.
Amendment 136, in clause 15, page 19, leave out lines 3 to 10 and insert—
“(a) in the absence of a formal, legally binding and public readmission agreement between the United Kingdom and the State to which the person has a connection;
(b) as soon as the proposed State of readmission refuses to accept the person’s return or if the person’s readmission has not been agreed within three months of the registration of their asylum claim, whichever is sooner;
(c) if, taking into account the claimant’s personal circumstances, including their family ties to the United Kingdom and the best interests of any children affected by the decision, it is more appropriate that the claim be considered in the United Kingdom; or
(d) in such other cases as may be provided for in the immigration rules.”
This amendment broadens the circumstances in which the Secretary of State must consider an asylum application, despite a declaration of inadmissibility.
Amendment 137, in clause 15, page 19, leave out line 21 and insert—
“(a) has been granted refugee status or another protective status in the safe third state that is inclusive of the rights and obligations set out at Articles 2 to 34 of the 1951 Convention.”
This amendment would strengthen the safeguards in place before a “connection” can be relied on for the purposes of inadmissibility, so as to ensure that the right to seek and enjoy asylum is protected.
Amendment 138, in clause 15, page 19, leave out lines 24 to 32.
This amendment changes the definition of a “connection” to a safe third State by deleting the possibility of finding someone inadmissible on the basis of having been granted nothing more than protection against removal in a third State.
Amendment 139, in clause 15, page 19, line 33, leave out “3” and insert “2”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 138.
Amendment 140, in clause 15, page 19, line 37, leave out “4” and insert “3”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 138.
Amendment 141, in clause 15, page 19, leave out lines 43 to 45.
This amendment changes the definition of a “connection” to a safe third State so as to prevent a person being found inadmissible on the basis of a connection to a State to which they have never been.
Amendment 142, in clause 15, page 20, leave out lines 1 to 4 and insert—
“for refugee status or other protective status that is inclusive of the rights and obligations set out at Articles 2 to 34 of the 1951 Convention.”
This amendment changes the definition of a “relevant claim” to a safe third State to ensure that inadmissibility is based on access to a protective status consistent with the Refugee Convention.
Amendment 14, in clause 17, page 21, line 16, at end insert—
‘(1A) The Secretary of State may not serve an evidence notice on a person who was under 18 years of age at the time of their arrival in the United Kingdom.’
This amendment would remove the ability to serve an evidence notice on children and young people who arrived in the UK before the age of 18.
Government amendment 27.
Amendment 118, page 21, line 27, leave out clause 18.
Government amendments 28 to 30.
Amendment 119, page 24, line 30, leave out clause 21.
Government amendments 31 to 38.
Amendment 145, page 25, line 11, leave out clause 22.
Government amendments 39 and 40.
Amendment 146, page 26, line 7, leave out clause 23.
Government amendments 41 to 43.
Amendment 120, page 29, line 2, leave out clause 25.
Amendment 15, in clause 25, page 29, line 13, at end insert—
‘(2A) For the purposes of subsection (2), “good reasons” include, but are not limited to, the claimant having been under the age of 18 years at the time of their arrival in the UK.’
Under this amendment, a claimant who was under the age of 18 at the time of their arrival in the UK would be regarded as having good reasons for providing evidence late.
Government amendments 44 and 45.
Amendment 121, page 30, line 2, leave out clause 26.
Government amendments 46 and 47.
Amendment 11, in clause 28, page 32, line 1, leave out paragraph (a).
This is a paving amendment for Amendment 9.
Amendment 150, in clause 28, page 32, line 4, at end insert—
‘(2) This section and Schedule 3 will have effect notwithstanding—
(a) the Human Rights Act 1998;
(b) the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms agreed by the Council of Europe at Rome on 4th November 1950 as it has effect for the time being in relation to the United Kingdom, including any Protocol to that Convention;
(c) EU derived law and case law retained under sections 2 to 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; and
(d) the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28 July 1951 and its Protocol.
(3) No law or requirement identified in subsection (2) shall affect the interpretation or application of any provision of this section, including restrictions on the actions or policies of public authorities.’
This amendment is to ensure that the provisions in clause 28 and Schedule 3 are not open to judicial interpretation or disapplication under the measures listed in subsection (2).
Amendment 144, page 33, line 21, leave out clause 31.
Amendment 147, in clause 32, page 34, line 24, leave out subsections (2) to (4).
Government amendments 48 to 50.
Amendment 115, in clause 39, page 38, leave out lines 15 to 23.
This amendment would remove certain criminal offences relating to entering and arriving in the UK.
Government amendment 51.
Amendment 102, in clause 39, page 38, leave out lines 19 to 23.
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to prevent ‘arrival’ in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance, rather than ‘entry’ into the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance, becoming an offence.
Government amendments 52 and 53.
Amendment 116, in clause 39, page 39, line 9, at end insert—
‘(F2) No criminal offence is committed under subsections (B1) to (D1) where a person enters or arrives in the United Kingdom for the purposes of making a claim for asylum or humanitarian protection, if the person is one of the following—
(a) an Afghan national who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in Afghanistan; a Syrian national who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in Syria; a Uighur who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in China;
(b) a Christian convert who is a refugee because they face a risk of persecution in their country of nationality; or
(c) other persons who are in need of international protection; or who are refugees because they are outside of their country of nationality for fear of persecution for a Convention reason as set out in article 1 of the Refugee Convention.’
Clause 39 as drafted would involve the criminalisation of the arrival and entry of asylum seekers and refugees with an offence subject to up to four years imprisonment. This amendment would prevent this from happening.
Government amendments 54 and 55.
Amendment 103, in clause 39, page 39, line 30, leave out subsection (4).
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to prevent the offence of facilitating a breach of immigration law being extended to include facilitating ‘arrival’ in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance in addition to facilitating ‘entry’ into the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance.
Government amendments 56 to 59.
Amendment 104, in clause 39, page 40, line 2, at end insert—
‘(10) In section 31(3) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (defences based on Article 31(1) of the Refugee Convention), after paragraph (aa) insert—
“(ab) section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 (illegal entry and similar offences)”.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to extend the statutory defence based on Article 31 of the Refugee Convention to offences of illegal entry under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971.
Government amendments 60 and 61.
Amendment 105, in clause 40, page 40, line 7, leave out subsection (2).
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to maintain the current position that the offence of helping an asylum seeker to enter the United Kingdom can only be committed if it is carried out “for gain”.
Government amendments 62 and 63.
Amendment 1, in clause 40, page 40, line 8, at end insert—
‘(3) In section 25A(3) of the Immigration Act 1971 (helping asylum seeker to enter United Kingdom), for paragraph (a) substitute—
“(a) aims to—
(i) protect lives at sea, or
(ii) assist asylum-seekers; and”’.
This amendment would add people working on behalf of organisations that aim to protect lives at sea to those who are exempt for prosecution for helping someone seeking asylum to enter the UK, as long as those organisations do not charge for their service.
Amendment 106, in clause 45, page 43, line 12, at end insert—
‘(6B) Nothing in this section, or in sections 10A to 10E, permits a person to be removed from the United Kingdom if that removal would violate their common law right to access justice.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to make clear that the regime for providing notice to persons liable to removal remains subject to the common law right to access justice, which in the asylum context is mirrored by Article 13 ECHR.
Amendment 107, page 49, line 3, leave out clause 47.
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to prevent it being compulsory for decision makers and tribunals to take into account whether a person has failed to cooperate with any immigration process when making decisions on immigration bail.
Amendment 122, in clause 48, page 49, line 34, leave out
“has insufficient evidence to be sure of their age”
and insert
“has reason to doubt that the claimant is the age they claim”.
This amendment to Clause 48(1) would align primary legislation to current practice as set out in statutory guidance to ensure children are not subjected to age assessments if there is no significant reason to doubt their age.
Amendment 123, in clause 49, page 51, line 9, leave out “must” and replace with “may”.
Amendment 124, in clause 49, page 51, line 17, leave out subsections (4) to (8).
Amendment 125, page 52, line 1, leave out clause 50.
Amendment 126, page 52, line 22, leave out clause 51.
Amendment 13, in clause 71, page 69, line 38, at end insert—
“(c) the individual is travelling to Northern Ireland on a local journey from the Republic of Ireland.”
Under this amendment, persons who are neither British nor Irish would nevertheless be able to make local journeys from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland without the need for an Electronic Travel Authorisation.
Government amendments 91 to 93.
Amendment 9, in schedule 3, page 82, line 36, leave out paragraphs 1 and 2.
This amendment leaves out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3 to the Bill, which would amend section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (no removal while claim for asylum pending).
Amendment 10, in schedule 3, page 84, line 2, leave out paragraph 4.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 9.
Government amendments 94 and 95.
Amendment 96, in schedule 6, page 95, line 25, at end insert—
‘(4) Authority for the purposes of subsection (3) may be given in relation to a foreign ship only if the Convention permits the exercise of Part A1 powers in relation to the ship.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to follow the drafting in the equivalent paragraphs of sections 28M, 28N and 28O of the Immigration Act, and ensure that enforcement action complies with international maritime law, similar to other enforcement action under Schedule 4A to the Immigration Act 11.
Amendment 97, in schedule 6, page 98, leave out lines 6 to 11 and insert—
“(a) every description of vessel (including a hovercraft) used in navigation, but
(b) does not include any vessel that is not seaworthy or where there could otherwise be a risk to the safety of life and well-being of those onboard.”
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that enforcement action such as pushbacks could not be taken against unseaworthy vessels such as dinghies.
Amendment 98, in schedule 6, page 98, line 20, at end insert—
‘(1A) The powers set out in this Part of this Schedule must not be used in a manner or in circumstances that could endanger life at sea.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure the maritime enforcement powers cannot be used in a manner that would endanger lives at sea.
Amendment 113, in schedule 6, page 99, line 37, at end insert—
‘(13) Nothing within this Act or this paragraph B1 authorises any action or measure which is inconsistent with the United Kingdom’s international legal obligations.’
This amendment seeks to ensure the consistency of Part A1 paragraph B1 (power to stop, board, divert and detain) with the United Kingdom’s international obligations, including under international refugee law, international human rights law and international maritime law.
Amendment 99, in schedule 6, page 102, line 31, at end insert—
‘(2) Force must not be used in a manner or in circumstances that could endanger life at sea.’
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that the use of force in maritime enforcement powers cannot be used in a manner that would endanger lives at sea.
Amendment 4, in schedule 6, page 102, leave out lines 35 to 40.
This amendment would remove the provision granting immigration and enforcement officers immunity from civil or criminal liability for anything done in the performance of their functions.
Amendment 100, in schedule 6, page 102, line 36, leave out “criminal or”.
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to remove the immunity from criminal proceedings for “relevant officers” for criminal offences committed whilst undertaking pushbacks or other maritime enforcement operations.
Amendment 101, in schedule 6, page 102, line 36, leave out lines 36 to 40 and insert—
“J1 The Home Office, rather than an individual officer, is liable in civil proceedings for anything done in the purported performance of functions under this Part of this Schedule.”
This would give effect to the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that the Home Office is liable, rather than immigration officers and enforcement officers being personally liable for civil wrongs that may occur whilst undertaking pushbacks or other maritime enforcement operations.
Tom Pursglove
I am conscious of the wide interest in a significant number of these amendments, so I will predominantly focus my remarks on the Government amendments in this first instance and address other matters in the wind-up.
Our asylum system must not reward those who enter the UK illegally from manifestly safe countries where they cannot possibly still be fleeing persecution and fear. People must claim asylum in the first safe country they come to, and making a secondary and unnecessary move to the UK puts lives needlessly in danger while pushing aside other vulnerable people, including women and children.
We must break the criminal networks that facilitate illegal immigration and exploit people. People who come to our shores illegally will be treated differently. Although we cannot resettle everyone who needs sanctuary, the large numbers we resettle in the UK will be made very welcome. We will be fair but firm in how we continue to embark on this landmark reform of our asylum system.
New clause 20 is a minor, technical amendment that will ensure a small number of references to justices of the peace in immigration legislation in the context of obtaining entry and search warrants in Northern Ireland instead become references to lay magistrates. This is a simple measure that tidies up the statute book.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The Minister makes a critical point about claiming asylum in the first safe country. People traffickers rely on the idea of selling a destination, regardless of where the person starts. The measures my hon. Friend describes will frustrate the people traffickers and do a great service both to this country and to their many victims.
Tom Pursglove
Not for the first time, I find myself agreeing with my right hon. Friend wholeheartedly. It is fair to say that nobody needs to get into a small boat to reach safety. France is a safe country with a fully functioning asylum system, and the same applies to Belgium, Germany and countries across the European Union.
All people do by getting into a small boat is hand over significant sums of money to evil individuals who treat people as cargo and have no regard for human life. We have to bring it to an end, which is precisely what we seek to do with this Bill. I look forward to my right hon. Friend’s support in the Lobby, as we have had throughout the Bill’s passage.
Government amendments 19 to 25 to clause 12 make small technical amendments to apply the provisions in the clause to asylum seekers or failed asylum seekers who are supported under existing legislation if and when uncommenced provisions come into force.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
What my hon. Friend just stated is not unique to him but was stated by the former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who said:
“It is simply not acceptable to destroy identity documents, use false passports, lie about your personal history, refuse to say how you reached this country or any of the other devices which the people-smuggling gangs employ to make their money. Asylum seekers who knowingly commit such acts should lose their right of asylum in this country and be returned as soon as possible to their country of origin.”
He was right, wasn’t he?
Tom Pursglove
Any right-minded or fair-minded person would think it was entirely appropriate for people to engage with the immigration system in this country in an appropriate manner that complies with our evidential requirements. People should comply in the spirit of good will, because inevitably we want to provide sanctuary to those in need of sanctuary at the earliest opportunity possible. That is entirely what our reforms seek to achieve. We also think it is right and proper—as do, I think, the British people—to remove those who have no right to be here.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
If the legislation is carried in the way the Minister wishes, what impact will it have on the awful, vile trade through small boats? Will it stop it? Is there a danger that the UK courts will overturn the intent?
Tom Pursglove
The measures in the Bill are significant. We have recognised—the Home Secretary has consistently recognised this and I recognise it as the Minister responsible for tackling illegal immigration—that the asylum system in this country is currently broken. The length of time it takes to process claims is unacceptable and we need to improve the situation. The Government’s intention is clearly stated: to improve the way we process claims. We expect individuals who seek to claim asylum in this country to comply with the requirements, but of course safety nets are in place, for good reasons, so that it will be taken appropriately into account if people cannot meet the deadlines. We believe that progressing on the basis of processing claims more quickly and removing those with no right to be here will make quite a significant difference. Importantly, it is also about the work that we do not just with our nearest neighbours in, for example, France and Belgium—that collaboration is important and is delivering results, and we want to secure a returns agreement that will help to build on that—but further upstream in removing those with no right to be here back to source countries.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
Yesterday, in a scathing attack on this Bill, Welsh Government Cabinet Ministers issued a statement saying that the Bill undermines Wales’s desire to be a nation of sanctuary, and will exacerbate inequality and harm. In their words:
“Wales is a welcoming nation and we will always stand with those who need us the most.”
Yes, Minister, we do keep a welcome in the hillsides and valleys of Wales. Will he scrap this inhumane Bill, end the hostile environment, put in place safe and legal routes, and stop undermining the responsibilities and aspirations of the devolved nations?
Tom Pursglove
The short answer to that rather long intervention is no. It is not the first time that I find myself disagreeing with Labour politicians, and I am afraid that I disagree with the Welsh Government on this point. All parts of this United Kingdom have a proud record of welcoming to this country people from around the world who are fleeing persecution and conflict; that tradition will continue, as I am sure the hon. Lady knows.
This country has to have a system that is fair but firm, and that brings to an end the abuses in the system previously and to date. Those who are not acting in the spirit that I think all of us would like to see are actually making it more difficult for genuine asylum seekers who are seeking sanctuary, and there are inevitably considerable associated resource implications.
Jeremy Corbyn
Would the Minister just think for a moment what it is like to get into a small dinghy and try to cross the channel, and imagine what sense of desperation people must have to risk their own lives to try to get to what they believe to be a place of safety? I am not defending people traffickers or criminal gangs. I am just saying that we have created a situation, in this country and across Europe, where we leave desperate people with no alternative but to turn to ruthless people to try to get to a place of safety and contribute to our society. I ask him: has he got any humanity?
Tom Pursglove
I am afraid that the intervention is a disappointing one, in the sense that I would not for a moment suggest that the right hon. Gentleman is doing anything that supports people traffickers—of course not. However, I think he is giving credence to their business model, and that is highly unacceptable and disappointing. He should reflect on his position on these matters. As I have set out, nobody needs to get into a small boat to seek to cross the channel to reach safety. The idea that anybody is in danger in France is utterly farcical. The bottom line is that France is a safe country with a fully functioning asylum system. That is a fact and he needs to reflect on it.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Of course, what the former leader of the Labour party was trying to say was that the French are failing to look after the people in their own country. In that regard, he is right, isn’t he?
Tom Pursglove
It is probably fair to say that those on the Benches of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) quite regularly try to reinterpret his comments. In the end, it is highly unacceptable for anybody to get into a small boat for this purpose. I think it is fair to say that this House speaks with one voice in saying that people should not be making dangerous crossings, and we perhaps just disagree about how to render the route unviable.
The Government have brought forward a comprehensive Bill as part of the wider package of measures that we are seeking to introduce to address this issue. It is disappointing that some of us in the House seem to have quite a lot to say in complaining about our approach, but do not actually have a viable alternative to our policy.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I have sat through hours of this debate and have been shocked—although I should not be surprised—by some of the smearing and scaremongering that we have heard. Is it any wonder that we receive some of the communications that we do? There is much to support in the Bill. As the Minister says, the immigration system is clearly not working. I am struggling on one point around resettlement, on which we may be able to take more people with us. The Government have rightly promised that the Bill will provide new, safer routes that can help to address the channel crossings. Will the Minister tell us whether the Home Office now has plans, and can provide more detail on those plans, for more resettlement schemes through safe routes?
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. One of the things we have been very clear about is that we want to expand community sponsorship in particular, but a number of schemes that are already being delivered are making a considerable difference. We should not forget that 15,000 people were airlifted out of Afghanistan over the summer. Nor should we forget that the BNO route in relation to Hong Kong is a valuable and important route that is helping to provide sanctuary to many individuals. That is an ambitious offer that we have made.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Is not the reality that there are people who come to France fleeing their country of origin with the desire to come to the United Kingdom? Will the Minister look at new clause 10, in the name of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), of which I am a co-sponsor and which puts forward a humanitarian visa scheme to enable people who are in France to start their application process off in France to come to the United Kingdom? We spoke about this in the Joint Committee on Human Rights last week and the Minister said he was going to go away and verify whether that suggestion had ever been put to the French. Has he been able to verify that for me?
Tom Pursglove
The hon. and learned Lady comes to this debate with ideas and suggestions about how we tackle this issue, but I disagree with her in terms of the suggestion she makes. In order to have a system like that in place, the French would have to agree to it. I think it is fair to say that there is considerable concern about the number of movements across France as things stand already. That is where, I am afraid, her suggestion, while offered in a spirit of co-operation and trying to be constructive, falls down.
Tom Pursglove
I would like to make some progress, if I may.
Amendments 39, 40 to 43, 46 and 47 clarify the Government’s intention that appeals should remain in the expedited appeal process wherever possible. The revised text, which reflects wording in the primary legislation that sets the statutory framework for tribunal rules, specifies that judges should only remove an appeal from the accelerated or expedited process where there is no other way to secure that justice be done.
Amendments 48 to 50 are minor and technical amendments to clause 34 on internal relocation. They clarify the ambiguity in the current drafting that has the potential to be interpreted in an unintended way, where an individual could only be internally relocated within a country where they had previously been in that part of the country.
The purpose of amendments 51 to 59 is to increase the maximum penalty for the existing statutory offence of overstaying, which is currently six months’ imprisonment. That maximum penalty dates back to the original legislation—the Immigration Act 1971—and is no longer considered sufficient for the present day. Given how much the world has changed over the past 50 years, the existing penalty hinders our ability to deter overstayers, and we consider that raising it would encourage better compliance. Clause 39 introduces a new maximum penalty of four years to align with illegal entry and other similar offences that have already been amended during the passage of the Bill.
In Committee, I promised to bring forward amendments to protect Royal National Lifeboat Institution individuals rescuing persons at sea and those in charge of vessels who find stowaways on board. I am pleased to say that this is now set out in amendments 60 to 63. I am grateful to Members across the House who have raised concerns in relation to this matter, and I am delighted to be able to put it beyond doubt this afternoon.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
My constituency may be landlocked but I grew up on the Kent coast, where many of those who cross the channel land, and I continue to donate to the RNLI, as do many of my constituents. We all know that those who volunteer to serve do so selflessly and often leave their place of work in order to go to sea or to provide support from the land. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking those who volunteer for the RNLI from the Dungeness, Littlestone, Dover, Walmer and Ramsgate stations?
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes the case so eloquently for the RNLI, and sets out the incredible work that its volunteers and others do to protect life at sea, along with many other agencies, such as Her Majesty’s Coastguard, which works tirelessly around the clock, often in very difficult circumstances. I certainly join her in placing on record the Government’s thanks and appreciation for everything they do, and for the individuals in her area who do this tireless work, day in, day out, and week in, week out.
Bambos Charalambous
This Bill is a sham. It does nothing to create safe routes for resettlement, nothing to garner international support for breaking people-smuggling gangs, and nothing to support victims of modern-day slavery. Instead, the Nationality and Borders Bill creates unworkable policies, lets down victims who have been trafficked, and breaks our international obligations. The Bill is a smoke-and-mirrors trick, designed to deflect attention from the Government’s failings and incompetence in the area of asylum and refugee protection.
It is shameful that since the abandonment of the Dubs amendment, the UK has turned its back on unaccompanied child refugees and young people in need of protection. Young people are having to turn to people-smuggling gangs. We need to make sure that the model is broken. People have died during dangerous crossings, and it is important that we tackle the criminal people-smuggling gangs. To do that, we need international co-operation and greater security, and that is why Labour Members have tabled new clause 50, which would make advertising people-smuggling routes via social media an offence. If the Government are serious about tackling the gangs, we cannot see why they would have any problem supporting the new clause.
Smugglers and trafficking gangs are putting people’s lives at risk, and they use social media to promote, encourage, advertise and organise these dangerous crossings. Too often, when the National Crime Agency asks Facebook, TikTok and others to take down dangerous material, they refuse. We have to strike at the heart of this illegal and dangerous operation. That is why we propose a new, additional criminal offence; it would not replace existing offences. The new offence would make it clear beyond doubt that such material is illegal and dangerous, that we will prosecute those responsible for it, and that we expect social media companies to take it down.
It is well known that people-smugglers promote dangerous routes on social media platforms including Facebook and TikTok. They often promise easy journeys at an extremely high cost. Those who are interested may be told to send private direct messages to the smugglers, because they know that private conversations are encrypted and much more difficult for police and intelligence agencies to access. If the Government are serious about tackling the criminal gangs profiting from people’s desperation, they must take urgent action to tackle the problem online. At the moment, they talk tough, but the policing and intelligence response is failing to keep up. The Government should back Labour’s new clause 50 today. Those seeking to profit online from people’s desperation must be made to feel the full force of the law.
As everyone in the Chamber knows, the Dubs amendment was passed in May 2016 by David Cameron’s Government in the wake of an increase in refugees arriving from Europe. It required Ministers to relocate and support asylum-seeking children from the continent. It was initially envisaged that the Dubs scheme would offer settlement to 3,000 children, but the number of places was capped at 480. In May 2020, it emerged that the smaller quota had been filled, and the scheme was abandoned. Ever since, Members from across the political spectrum have warned that this bad decision would force hundreds of vulnerable children to turn to people-smuggling gangs for assistance in travelling to Britain, placing them at greater risk of trafficking.
The Government’s inaction has been deeply depressing. Ministers have shown a callous disregard for the plight of children. When debating these issues, Ministers have made the shameful claim that so-called pull factors for refugees are a reason not to help unaccompanied children to safety.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Does the hon. Member recognise that since 2015, the number of unaccompanied children arriving in the UK and going into the care of local authorities has doubled from an average annual run-rate of just over to 2,000 to significantly over 4,000, and that the Syrian resettlement scheme included an element of specifically identifying vulnerable children and bringing them to the UK as a place of safety? Does he therefore accept that it is simply not true that the Government have turned their back on refugee children?
Bambos Charalambous
At the moment, there are no safe routes for children to come to the UK. That is why there has been an increase in crossings and more unaccompanied children crossing.
Tim Loughton
I have heard a lot of attacks on what the Government are trying to do, and a lot about social media; now we are hearing about children. I have some sympathy with the Dubs scheme—indeed, the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and I previously tabled amendments in support of it—but I have not seen, in any of the amendments tabled, or heard of, in any of our debates, a single practical measure that Labour would take to deter adults from paying the people traffickers and taking to boats for these dangerous journeys. What is Labour’s plan for real solutions to a serious problem? I have not heard a single solution yet.
Bambos Charalambous
If the hon. Member will allow me to continue, he may be interested in what I will say on new clause 49, which addresses his point. I will try to make some progress; I was told off in the last debate for taking too long because I allowed interventions.
Labour believes that it is time that the Government showed global leadership, instead of shirking their commitments enshrined in the refugee convention. We urge them to support new clause 48, which proposes the reintroduction of Dubs.
In new clause 49, the Opposition ask the Government to produce a negotiating mandate that sets out proposed reciprocal arrangements with the EU for safe returns and safe legal routes. Such arrangements were covered by the Dublin III agreement, which has now ended. It is ridiculous that the Government are resorting to dangerous tactics such as push-backs in the channel, when we used to have civilised reciprocal agreements with our geographical neighbours.
Alex Sobel
I thank the shadow Minister for giving way, because the Minister would not. The Government seem to think that the Bill will end small boats crossing the channel, but as he said, the ending of Dublin III has increased the number of small boats making that crossing. Does he not think that, because of the Bill, we will be back here debating this in three years, when there will be even more small boats and even more children and adults dying in the channel?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Bill will fail if there are not reciprocal arrangements, and that is deeply worrying. Not having those arrangements will encourage more dangerous crossings.
Bambos Charalambous
I agree with the hon. Member, but that is directly because we no longer have reciprocal arrangements. That is the crux of the problem with the Bill. We need more reciprocal arrangements with our international partners to allow other measures to be put in place.
Bambos Charalambous
I will make progress.
The agreements we had previously, such as Dublin III, gave people who were eligible a safe route here, and they also allowed us to send people to other safe countries when that was appropriate. It is well known that family reunion leads to better outcomes in terms of the ability of people to integrate. It is also well known that it is only with international co-operation that we can expect other countries to accept the safe return of individuals, where appropriate. We believe that new clause 49 is a sensible and proportionate measure to tackle the issues we face.
This brings me on to new clause 51, which does two things. First, it places the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme on a statutory footing to make sure that it is fully implemented. Secondly, it calls on the Government to draw up the scheme in a way that helps prevent people from being exploited by people traffickers and smugglers. The Government have accepted that safe and legal routes are important as an alternative to dangerous routes run by criminal gangs, but they have not implemented or designed safe and legal routes. That is why we propose that the resettlement scheme be designed in a way that allows those fleeing persecution in Afghanistan who have family in the UK to apply to be included in the resettlement scheme. There would be a specified opportunity for family members to apply under the scheme. The Government have already consulted on ensuring that these family members do not end up being exploited by criminal gangs, and have promised them a route to reuniting with their family members, so we see no reason why the new clause should be controversial, or why the Government would not open the scheme and allow family reunion within it.
It has been absolutely shocking to hear at first hand the stories of desperate people who are eligible to come here from Afghanistan being effectively abandoned. I have had Chevening scholars contact my constituency office who have been left without any support at all, and without any prospect of a safe route from that country. Other MPs have told me about people who have worked closely with the British but have also been left vulnerable—interpreters, women who worked as lawyers, and many others whose lives are under threat from the Taliban. Again, if the Government are serious about drawing people away from the people smugglers and offering them safe routes, then they need to get a grip of this situation.
Matt Rodda
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Does he agree that at the core of this is the poor quality of our relations with some of our nearest neighbours, and, indeed, our falling standing in the international community, which I am afraid—[Interruption.] If I may finish, I am afraid that that is a result of Government policy over the Brexit deal and a number of other matters. Does he agree with me on that point?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have previously said, international co-operation is at the root of dealing with the problems that this Bill will purportedly address.
Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Bambos Charalambous
I will give way one last time, but then I really must make progress.
Shailesh Vara
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. As a point of clarification, the comment was made in the previous intervention that Brexit was a Government policy. Does he agree that the Government were fulfilling the mandate of the British people at a referendum?
Bambos Charalambous
We have already had that debate—in the last Parliament. As is proposed in the Dublin III amendment—new clause 49—our safe and legal routes need to be replaced now that we have left the European Union. That is absolutely integral to making sure that we have the measures in place to deal with the problems we face.
Ministers have talked a lot about the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, but where are the results? We have been waiting since August for the scheme to be implemented, and it still has not been. People are dying. They do not have four years to wait. It is time for action, not words.
We should be looking after people who put their lives on the line by loyally serving the nation. It is nothing short of outrageous that visas for foreigners who served in the UK armed forces cost £2,389. In 2020, there were 5,110 Commonwealth citizens serving in the armed forces. Each year, about 500 of them choose to leave, and those who choose to stay in the UK are compelled to pay extortionate visa fees. A Government consultation has, as we know, proposed scrapping the fees for those who have completed 12 years’ service in the armed forces. Labour has campaigned long and hard for that change, but we believe the proposed qualification period is far too long, and we call on the Government to right that wrong and change the period of qualification. I am grateful to the two largest veterans charities, the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes, for their campaigning work on this issue. They are clear that they believe the current situation is gravely unfair, and it is time the Government started honouring their promise to the armed forces.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I have met many Commonwealth soldiers in my constituency, including Fijians who have worked closely alongside Welsh regiments, and others from Commonwealth backgrounds who have come to our armed forces—indeed, I think they make up something like 11% or 12% of current Army recruitment. I have heard horrifying stories about how they have been treated in relation to visas and settlement, as well as with healthcare costs. It is completely wrong for that to be happening, and for them to be treated in such a way when they have served our country so bravely.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To ask servicemen and women to pay for the privilege of living in the country that they fought for and were prepared to defend is completely unreasonable. The current situation is embarrassing, and we ask the Government to do the right thing and waive fees for veterans seeking citizenship.
Bambos Charalambous
I will give way one last time, but I must make progress.
John Redwood
The hon. Gentleman is generous. Does Labour think there should be any limit on the number of people we invite in each year as migrants, and if so, what should that limit be?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have made clear, I am speaking about Commonwealth veterans who are fighting for us, defending our country. We very much support waiving the fees for them to become British citizens.
I will move on. Clause 11 is a particularly pernicious part of the Bill. As well as creating two tiers of refugees, it seeks to criminalise some refugees according to how they arrive in the UK. Criminalising people who are seeking our protection is a clear breach of the refugee convention and our obligations under international law. Let us consider the implications of that. Under clause 11, it is possible that an Afghan national facing persecution from the Taliban, Uyghur Muslims facing persecution in China, or a Syrian national facing persecution in Syria, could be criminalised. They could be criminalised merely for the way they arrive in the UK, yet their claim for asylum due to the persecution they faced has not lessened because of their means of arriving in the UK—of course it hasn’t. While the Government do little to secure safe and legal routes for persecuted groups, it is cruel to criminalise people who are escaping torture or death. Moreover, no evidence has ever been produced to suggest that such a measure will deter those irregular journeys, as the Government claim.
As a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights pointed out, the Bill is littered with measures that are simply incompatible with human rights law and the UK’s obligations under international treaties. That is one reason why Labour believes that amendments 105 and 98 are necessary. By removing the term “for gain”, the Government are creating a situation where anyone in the channel who helps people in distress, as is their duty under maritime law, could be criminalised. That is clearly wrong, both morally and legally, and we strongly urge the Government to accept amendment 105. It is equally the case, as stated in amendment 98, that there should be safeguards against endangering life at sea. As the Joint Committee on Human Rights recommended, it must be made certain that maritime enforcement powers cannot be used in a manner that would endanger lives.
This is a bad Bill, and we hope that the Government will take heed of the amendments we support. Only through international co-operation, safe and legal routes, and targeted measures against criminal gangs can we, with our international partners, improve the current situation.
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
I will not take too long in my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I wish to make a couple of clear points about foreign and Commonwealth service personnel who serve in our armed forces and then have to pay to live in this country afterwards, and to use public services. There has been wide, broad, and deep support for action on this issue over the past few days, including from people who really do not like to get involved in politics. Whether it is the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and the veteran community or beyond, in our communities up and down the country, people recognise the morality behind the issue of charging those who serve to live in this country.
I speak to all sorts of people in the veterans community. Last night, I had a conversation with Prince Harry about this. He has contributed hugely to the veterans debate and I wanted his view. He said to me, “It’s not only morally right but would mean so much to those who have given so much.” That is not a political intervention; it demonstrates the moral purpose of this measure. It is an almost “effortless change”, as he said, for this Government to make, for us to finally see through what we have said to these people for so long. We owe it to them. They are our brothers and sisters. They have served with us over many years. I recognise that there are things going around today saying how we should not be doing this in primary legislation, for lots of reasons. I will come to that in a minute, but this has been going on for 20 years for these people, and at some point we have to grasp the nettle and make sure that we look after them.
The money is meaningless. I will address the figures that have been put out by the Government and others. On Monday, I was told that the Government could not do this because it would cost £160 million. That is garbage. Do not take my word for it; look at the Royal British Legion, which has campaigned on this issue for many years. I pay tribute to Members across the House, including those on the Conservative side, who have been Defence Ministers and have tried to deal with this problem but have hit the same issues we are hitting at the moment.
On that £160 million, the Royal British Legion has studied the figures. If someone who served in the military in this country applies for a visa, all their dependants use a special code. Someone can only use that code if they have served or they are a dependant, so we can pull the data between 2016 and 2020. It has never cost more than £1 million a year, so the majority of those fees are profit—a charge on our service personnel to stay here.
Let me address the consultation issue and the 12-year period. I do not want to air dirty linen in public, but I was there when that 12-year figure was decided on. It was done on a visit. It was plucked out of the air. There is no evidence whatsoever to back it up. There is evidence in the Department that someone from a foreign or Commonwealth country who serves in the military is likely to serve between six and seven years. Twelve years is well outside that. It is well beyond what our peer nations do, it is well beyond what our allies do, and it is incredibly unkind to these individuals who have worked and served for so long.
I have given the moral case and the financial case, but ultimately this decision comes down to Conservative Members. The whole country is aligned on this issue, and it has been for a very long time. All the political parties will support new clause 52 except the Conservatives, and we are the ones who made a promise that we would do something about this. That is unconscionable. Colleagues can of course take the calls from the Defence Secretary and others, with these figures that I have demonstrated are not true, or they can think about what they are here to do.
I am here to represent the Fijian family in Plymouth who left the military after nine years having fought in Afghanistan and Iraq; they may have been members of the United Kingdom Special Forces group—a relentless operational tempo. Finally they leave, their kids go to school and they save up for a house, but they have to pay a £10,000 bill to stay in this country that they fought for over so many years. Can colleagues really look that family in the eye and say, “No, you have to pay; we have to make a profit out of you for you to stay in this country, despite the fact that you were prepared to commit so much to the privileges and the freedoms we enjoy”?
Finally, I say to colleagues that the tide changes very quickly in politics. This issue has been around for 20 years now, and the tide changes. I know what it is like when people put the screws on and ask you to vote a certain way, but the tide changes. All we can do is what we think is right on the day. The moral and financial case for this measure has never been clearer, and I urge colleagues to consider it carefully before they cast their vote.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Rather than fixing the broken asylum system, the provisions in this part of the Bill risk breaking it all together, endangering, criminalising, delaying, warehousing, offshoring and depriving of their rights those who simply seek our protection. The Uyghur, the Syrian and the persecuted Christian I spoke about on Second Reading, as well as the Afghans who are now in danger because of events subsequent to that debate, all face those bleak impacts despite our best efforts in Committee.
Contrary to the claims that the Bill is about safe routes, it actually does not add a single one, while threatening to restrict vital family reunion rights, pushing more people towards smugglers and dangerous crossings.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I thank my hon. Friend for his forensic work on the Bill in Committee. He correctly says that the Bill does not propose any new safe legal routes, but there is one provision that does—new clause 10, in the name of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), of which I am a co-sponsor. It proposes having a humanitarian visa that people could apply for in France so that they could start the process of coming to the United Kingdom there. Can my hon. Friend confirm that SNP MPs will support new clauses 10 and 11?
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for her intervention, and I am happy to confirm that the SNP will support them. Indeed, there are a range of new clauses from both sides of the House, from Back Benchers in particular, that seek to add safe routes, and they all have our support. For our part, we have tabled new clause 35, which would expand refugee family reunion in a way that this House supported in 2018 in the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil).
Our other proposals try once more to limit some of the harm that the Bill will do at every stage in the asylum process. However, let me first welcome the amendments from the Joint Committee on Human Rights and others regarding the appalling maritime pushback clauses and the criminalisation of rescuers—provisions that risk serious harm even before an asylum seeker is able to enter the asylum process.
For those seeking asylum in the UK who do get here, is it not outrageous that they will be criminalised under an offence in clause 39 punishable by up to four years in prison? That is why our amendment 116 states clearly and simply that if Afghans, Syrians, Uyghurs, Christian converts or others are at risk of persecution in their countries of nationality, their mere entry or arrival for the purposes of seeking asylum is not a crime. Is it not extraordinary that that very idea has to be debated?
Clause 11 means that, having faced the criminal justice system, our Afghan and his colleagues will be stuck in one of the Government’s asylum warehouses. We say that we should not go down that path—a path that the Irish have just rejected as utterly failed and that brought shocking results at Napier Barracks—and that we should make community dispersal work. Our new clause 36 would ensure that dispersal authorities get the funding they need to undertake their vital role.
Clause 15 means that, stuck in that warehouse, the Syrian and his colleagues will have to wait for months on end before their asylum cases are looked at, because their claims will be deemed inadmissible under a ludicrously broad range of criteria that will allow the Home Secretary to say that another country should take responsibility—even if there is not the remotest chance of that actually happening, there is no real reason why it should happen or there are strong reasons, such as family ties, why the claim should actually be considered here. The Home Secretary could even insist that a human rights-abusing country that pays no more than lip service to the refugee convention should take charge, even when our Syrian or Afghan has absolutely no connection to that country whatever.
Amendments 132 to 142, drafted with advice from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, seek to put the necessary safeguards and restrictions in place. We are not saying that it is never appropriate for other countries to be asked to take over responsibility, but crucial safeguards must exist, and they are absolutely nowhere in this Bill. Already this year, 7,000 or so people have had their claims put on hold through inadmissibility procedures. Just 10 were removed. The remaining 6,990 are either still waiting or have been moved into the asylum process. They have been waiting for absolutely no good reason at all and almost certainly at a cost of tens of millions of pounds to the taxpayer. The whole set-up is absolutely ludicrous.
Having toughed out the additional delays, the Uyghur and his colleagues will find that it is the Home Office that finally considers their asylum claims, but we ask why. Time and again the Home Office has shown itself as not fit for purpose, which is why new clause 37 asks us to look to the Canadian model of an independent asylum decision-making body, to ensure that protection claims no longer suffer from political interference and politically motivated targets. Sadly, far from supporting independent decision making, a whole series of pernicious clauses in the Bill would see this Parliament telling decision makers what inferences to draw about evidence provided as part of a claim. We say, “Leave assessments of evidence to the decision makers who actually see it. We don’t get to see it.” That is why amendments 118 to 120 seek to remove clauses 18, 21 and 25.
Anne McLaughlin
I have been told to be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is my hon. Friend aware of Dr Nick Martin, a medical doctor who had been in the British Navy for a number of years and worked on Manus Island, one of the offshoring projects in Australia? He describes himself as “right of centre” and not a natural refugee supporter until he saw the vile way people were treated—[Interruption.] Well, we are modelling this on the Australian system. Does my hon. Friend agree we should listen to the voices of the people who have lived through this, rather than the people who tell us it will be all roses?
Stuart C. McDonald
The evidence about how disgraceful the Australian system was is overwhelming. My hon. Friend adds helpfully to that.
Despite all that, our Syrian, Afghan and Uyghur will almost certainly be recognised as refugees, but let us say that the persecuted Christian convert is refused because the judge is only 49% that he will be murdered on removal. Of those who challenge refusals, around 40% have been successful on appeal in recent years, but in this Bill appeal rights are restricted yet again, and certain appeal processes are accelerated.
Our amendment 121 would delete the Government’s attempt to reinstate the detained fast-track process, which was previously ruled unlawful. Amendment 145 removes another expedited appeal process. It is the Home Office that needs to address delays, not our tribunals. The SNP is also fully behind cross-party attempts to place time limits on the use of detention.
Even if our persecuted Christian, after appeal, joins the others in being recognised as a refugee, the misery this Bill will inflict on them is far from complete. The group will now face all the discriminatory measures heaped on by clause 11, which empowers the Home Secretary to punish recognised refugees through the insecurity of temporary residence, through no recourse to public funds, through limited family reunion and any other form of discrimination or punishment she thinks fit. It is a truly astonishing and outrageous provision. Amendment 114 specifically exempts Afghans, Syrians, Uyghurs, Christian converts and other refugees from such disgraceful treatment, and we fully support amendment 8 to remove the clause altogether.
If our Afghan or any of the others happens to be a young person whose age is challenged, the Bill risks making life especially difficult for them, thanks to the provisions of part 4, rammed into the Bill in Committee against the advice of numerous organisations and experts. The clauses will ramp up the use of age assessments by altering established guidance on when assessments are required, requiring them even when there is no reason to doubt a child’s age. They will allow the Home Office to meddle in an area that should be a matter for child protection and safeguarding teams, and to introduce new, unsupported, inaccurate and unethical scientific methods of assessment. Our amendments 122 to 126 seek to undo the damage of those provisions and leave those with expertise, not an anti-refugee agenda, in charge.
Finally, our new clause 32 simply requires the Bill to be interpreted so far as possible in line with the refugee convention. If the Government maintain there is nothing contrary to the convention in the Bill, surely they will have no problem with that new clause? The reality is, as numerous published legal opinions show, that these provisions are a blatant assault on the refugee convention, and the most vulnerable in the world will suffer. Our amendments seek to ameliorate some of the most outrageous aspects of the Bill, but the truth is that the whole thing needs to be canned.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
My amendment 150 to clause 28, using the “notwithstanding” formula, would exclude the Human Rights Act 1998, the European convention on human rights, EU and retained law and the United Nations refugee convention from judicial authority and judgment. This is all about tackling illegal immigration, which our 2019 manifesto made clear that we intended to and must resolve.
The amendment is not against genuine persecuted refugees; this is about economic migrants who claim that they are within the legal framework of protected refugees. The illegal traffickers convince them to use our human rights laws to come over to our shores in the certain knowledge that they will be protected by our judicial system. Illegal immigrants have no right to enter our borders. Despite the difficult journey that they have made to the French coast, they have no greater right to come here than any other illegal immigrant. When they come, as the traffickers have promised them, they are almost all allowed to stay under Home Office guidance and are protected by the judiciary. They then bring their families across and, with the benefits that they claim—not to mention education and housing—they enter what they believe to be the land of milk and honey. The returns are negligible because of the human rights legislation, as it stands.
John Redwood
I strongly support my hon. Friend’s amendment. Did he note that when I asked the Minister for an assurance that the legislation, unamended, would be proof against human rights legislation distorting the intent, he was not able to give me that assurance?
Sir William Cash
Not only was the Minister not able to, but he did not want to.
This year alone, 26,000 have entered and, unless the legal loopholes are effectively stopped, they will continue to come in a tsunami of numbers next year. The Government have provided a remedy partially in this Bill but not yet regarding the full legal framework of the Human Rights Act, the European convention on human rights, EU retained law and the refugee convention of 1951, as amended with universal application in 1967 by a protocol. On EU retained law alone, I have found on the Government’s website in the National Archives that this amounts to as many as 123 directives and regulations, spelling out masses of laws relating to asylum and immigration that originated in EU law and are now on our statute book, although a few have been revoked.
The official Home Office policy guidance for asylum screening is still essentially based on the same law, and it makes for dismal reading. It is essential that that is changed. At present, an asylum claim must be registered where an individual fears persecution or serious harm of persecution for any given reason on return to their country. How to evaluate a fear varies with every individual and can in many cases be deliberately exaggerated.
To be recognised as a refugee under the UN refugee convention, the claimant can assert that they have a well-founded fear of persecution and be not only unable, but unwilling, to go back to their country of origin or habitual residence. That can be invoked on grounds which include mere political opinions. Furthermore, they can claim that they are within the judicial sphere of “the humanitarian protection policy”, and the discretion as to whether an asylum claim should be accepted is heavily weighted in favour of asylum, even if the claimants do not even use the term “asylum” when they arrive on our shores.
A paper by the highly distinguished former professor of law at Oxford, John Finnis, and Simon Murray explains in graphic terms the law and case law in more than 100 pages of detailed analysis. They conclude that the European Court of Human Rights has wrongly circumvented fundamental principles originated in the European convention on human rights and the 1951 refugee convention. They also argue that, properly interpreted, the UK and other signatory states have no obligation to let in refugees arriving at our borders en masse, have no legal or treaty obligation to accept refuges at all, and have no obligation to provide asylum for dangerous refugees, such as criminals and terrorists.
The European Court, by radical and unwarranted interpretation, has used the article 3 provisions on torture and inhuman treatment and the article 8 provisions on the right to private and family life to extend the ambit of claimants to encourage them to engage in unlawful immigration. That has been done through the formula of so-called living instruments and recent UK judicial rulings that have continuously expanded claimants’ rights within the judicial system. Claimants are granted repetitive appeals that bring the immigration system under intense pressure at monumental expense to the taxpayer, with grave political consequences on the doorstep.
We need to pull the rug from under the traffickers’ feet, save the lives of those who are exploited by them, and protect our own manifesto promises. Despite the Government’s good intentions in aspects of the Bill, we must solve the fundamental problems presented by the human rights legislation and the legal framework of the provisions that I have mentioned. We cannot continue, with unwarranted interpretation and judgments by the judiciary, to allow illegal immigration.
I seek robust assurances today from the Government to resolve the matter by legislation, and I will press my amendment unless I get them. We cannot go on kicking the can down the yellow brick road. The journey has begun, but the question is where it ends. The yellow brick road is not only in disrepair, as it was in “The Wizard of Oz”, but littered with political precipices.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I rise to speak to amendments 96 to 100 and 102, which stand in my name and those of other hon. Members. They arise from the legislative scrutiny of the Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
I remind hon. Members that the Joint Committee is a cross-party Committee with half its members from the House of Commons and half from the House of Lords. We undertake legislative scrutiny of all Bills for their human rights implications. We have taken evidence on the Bill from many people—including the Minister, for whose evidence we are grateful—and we are advised by our own legal experts.
In our report, which we published on 1 December, we concluded that the proposed new measures to criminalise those who enter the UK without a visa or without leave will breach human rights law and the refugee convention; our amendment 102 would deal with that. We also concluded that there should be no immunity from prosecution if criminal offences are committed by border officials, particularly where they lead to loss of life; our amendment 100 would deal with that. I hope that the Government will accept both amendments.
Our amendments 96 to 99 would deal with the major issues relating to pushbacks. The Bill provides greater powers for Border Force to “board, divert and detain” vessels. The Government acknowledge that crossings are perilous; this debate takes place in the shadow of the 27 people who drowned in the channel. The Minister was clear in his evidence to the Joint Committee that he does not want Government action to be the cause of yet more lives lost. Of course not.
Our amendment 97 would circumscribe the new powers to ensure that they could not be used against unseaworthy vessels such as dinghies. Our amendment 98 would ensure that they could not
“be used in a manner…that could endanger life at sea.”
Our amendment 96 would ensure that they could be used only in a way that complies with international maritime law, which the Government say they want to comply with. The Minister said in evidence to us that that is the Government’s intention and that they would make that intention clear in operational directions—but if the power is in the Bill, so should the protections be.
Given the Government’s intention, what reason could they possibly have to oppose the amendments? The Government have a big majority and can whip to vote them down, but the amendments have been tabled by a cross-party Committee of both Houses, they have been expertly drafted by our legal counsel, and they represent what the Government say is their intention.
The Minister is new and enthusiastic in his role. He was very forthcoming in his evidence to our Committee, and he and I have spoken about the subject privately, for which I am grateful. I offer him a bit of advice: not to be the Minister who votes our amendments down just because he can, not to be the Minister who makes his Back Benchers vote against ensuring that lives are not endangered—that is not the right thing for him to do—and not to be the Minister who gives new powers to Border Force that cost lives at sea.
Our amendments allow for the new powers, but make them compliant with international law and make them safe. The Government have no reason to oppose the amendments, so I hope that the Minister will say to his colleagues and his civil servants that he wants to reflect on them because he does not want to stand in the way of putting the Government’s intentions on the face of the Bill. If the Government do oppose the amendments, we will seek to press amendment 98 to a Division, but I hope that that will not be necessary.
Mr David Davis
May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and how sad I am that she will not be standing in the next election? May I also say what a particular pleasure it was to hear my old friend the Minister make such a measured and balanced case? I was very proud of him. That does not mean that we are going to agree on everything, as he will hear in a minute, but I think that he put a very good case.
The current asylum system is broken not just for us but for most of Europe; we should understand that this is not simply a national issue. It rewards smuggling gangs who prey on the desperate, it punishes those with genuine needs through bureaucratic impediments and it pushes the most vulnerable into harm’s way. We know, of course, that thousands have arrived across the channel and dozens, at least, have died as a result. We must find a system that destroys the criminal network underpinning this crisis, vigorously pursues enhanced co-operation with the French and other European parties, and distinguishes properly between economic migrants and those fleeing persecution. At present, we do not do that properly.
I believe that the Home Secretary is entirely committed to these approaches but, unfortunately, while I think that this is a very good Bill in many ways, one element of it—offshoring—sacrifices our long-term values to short-term political expediency, with fairly little chance of success.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
We agree on many things, but perhaps not on this. Does my right hon. Friend accept that, unless we get rid of the pull factor, we will never solve this problem? It is not necessary to go offshore. As my new clause 23 makes clear, it is possible to ensure that anyone who enters this country illegally from a safe country will be held in secure accommodation. The reason people keep coming here is that they know they will vanish in the community and will never be deported. Will my right hon. Friend, who is so good in so many ways, at least look at what we are proposing?
Mr Davis
Of course I will look at it. I have said to the Ministers that much of the Bill is worth while. My right hon. Friend is right about the pull factor, and there are many other things we can do. I have had discussions with the Minister about, for example, improving our surveillance. The irony is that at the moment Frontex, using British surveillance operations, does a better job in the Mediterranean than the Home Office does in the channel. There are many things we can do, and yes, I will look at all available options, as long as they are humane.
Clause 28 and schedule 3 grant the Home Office the legal powers to create an offshore processing system. I am afraid I must say to those on this side of the House that it is based on something of a mythology. It is based on the Australian Government’s approach in 2013. Its scope would allow children, modern slavery victims and torture survivors to be detained offshore, in a place where we have little legal control. The Australian model of offshoring was seriously problematic on a humanitarian level, and the supposed deterrent effect of the policy was really down to an aggressive push-back policy. What the Australians did was push those ships back effectively into the middle of the Pacific, or Indonesian waters in the Pacific. That was the biggest impact. It relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend about the attractiveness of these things.
The Refugee Council of Australia has documented the gut-wrenching sexual, physical and mental abuse that has pushed vulnerable children toward suicide. A 14-year-old girl, held offshore for five years, doused herself in petrol and tried to set herself alight; fortunately, she was stopped. A 10-year-old boy attempted suicide three times. A 12-year-old boy, held offshore for five years, had to be medically transferred to Australia because he had tried to starve himself to death and had reached the point at which he could not even stand up because he was so weak.
Members might think that these are isolated cases, but tragically they are not. From May 2013 to October 2015, there were 2,116 documented assaults, sexual abuse cases or self-harm attempts. More than half of them applied to children. I say that more than half applied to children; only one fifth of the asylum seekers were actually children. So that is an astonishing humanitarian record for that policy.
I know there is a lot of doorstep politics involved in this, but if this were to happen on our watch, just imagine how the public would respond to serious harm being done to a child nominally in our care. Remember what happened when the Iranian Kurdish child of four was shown drowned on a Greek beach? It would be something like that, but in our own control. I do not want to see any British Government of any persuasion facing that.
Anne McLaughlin
I thank the right hon. Member for everything that he is doing on this. He will be aware of Madeline Gleeson, the Australian lawyer, academic and author of the book “Offshore”, who is an expert on offshoring. She said that, once we commit to something like offshoring, there is no going back, and she asked me to tell any Members who were tempted to vote for it that, even for those in Australia who opposed it, the burden on their consciences is to this day a heavy one. So will the right hon. Member join me in urging those Members tempted to vote in favour of offshoring to search their consciences and not do this to themselves or to those children?
Mr Davis
I think everybody in this House wants to do the right thing by our own country and the right thing by vulnerable people too. I do not except anybody from that. What I am trying to do here is to let people know what will happen, before we are fixed with the system and then find ourselves defending something that may turn out to be indefensible. That is my real concern about this element of the Bill, and in my view, the biggest argument is on humanitarian issues.
Also, as Conservatives, we should think about the cost. By any measure, this will be eye-wateringly expensive. At the moment, we spend £1.4 billion annually on asylum costs. That is about £11,000 per asylum seeker. Australia has spent £4.3 billion on just over 3,000 asylum seekers. That is about £1.38 million per person. As an ex-Public Accounts Committee Chairman, I looked rather askance at that and went through it with a fine-toothed comb, and I can tell the House that it is right. If we applied that cost to our asylum situation, we would be talking about something like £34 billion or £35 billion, which is the size of the Government Department. Let us imagine that we were twice as effective as that: the cost would still be £17 billion. Are we really talking about doing something like that? The reason for this is, of course, that we would effectively have to bribe the country that would take the asylum seekers.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend not overlooking the deterrent effect that this would have?
Mr Davis
I hear lots of cheering. That was the argument with respect to the Australian system, but the real deterrent effect of the Australian system was the pushback. The fact is that nobody got to Australia. That was the main effect.
In the past, we have had an argument within our own party about the hostile environment. Remember the hostile environment policy that we lived with for a long time? It did not work. We tried it and it brought our reputation down, so thank you for that. My hon. Friend is right to talk about the pull effect and the deterrent effect. They are all important, but we have to do this in such a way that we can stand by and be proud of it at the end of the policy. That is why I am saying to the House now: this is what it will look like, come the day, and it is not something that I will be proud of. For that reason, I urge the House to support my amendments.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I am in favour of a number of amendments, but for the purposes of time I will largely keep my comments to new clauses 12 and 13 in my own name and new clause 14 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). New clause 12 would provide recourse to public funds to everyone holding a valid UK residence permit. New clause 13 would repeal the sections in the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts that restrict undocumented migrants’ access to work and services. New clause 14 seeks to abolish the immigration health surcharge. I am pleased these new clauses have received lots of support from Members across the House.
It will perhaps be obvious to colleagues that these new clauses are about addressing the unjust suffering caused by the Government’s hostile environment, a term used to describe all the policies that make life difficult for migrants living in the UK by explicitly and deliberately treating them as less deserving of dignity and humanity than British citizens.
My new clause 13, in particular, seeks to overturn the denial of basic human rights. Members will know from their constituency casework that the consequences are brutal and wide-reaching. The hostile environment deters people from reporting crime to the police or from calling out unsafe conditions and exploitative practices at work. It undermines trade union rights and pushes people into poor-quality and dangerous accommodation and homelessness. As new clause 14 highlights, the hostile environment even denies access to healthcare by scaring people from going to the doctor for fear of being charged or being reported, detained and deported.
No recourse to public funds, which new clause 12 addresses, abandons some migrants to having no safety net. It leaves children hungry, it pushes families into poverty and unsafe, overcrowded housing, and it means women, in particular, who flee abusive partners are not entitled to access mainstream refuges. It is breathtakingly cruel and unjust.
The disproportionate suffering that has been inflicted on migrants during the pandemic is well known, if apparently forgotten by this Government. Not only does the hostile environment produce a culture of fear that often risks the NHS being unable to do its job, but it puts all our communities in danger. Although such policies try to incentivise us to be suspicious of one another, they are not in the interest of the majority of people. It should be no surprise that the Bill is another horrifying extension of such an approach. It undermines human decency and must be opposed in every way.
The fact this is all in the context of the ongoing tragedy of people drowning in the English channel is chilling. That such people now potentially face jail sentences if they survive such precarious journeys, as well as an even more hostile environment, is catastrophically wrong.
I emphasise the humanity that runs through the amendments I am supporting today. We have to stop the political immigration game of misinformation and cynicism that has such horrendous human cost. There is no doubt that one of the reasons we are seeing scenes of desperate people trying to cross the channel is the lazy but deadly anti-migrant political agenda that closes off safe routes to the UK.
One of the biggest myths perpetuated by politicians is that they are too afraid to talk about migration when, in fact, the opposite is true. The more politicians talk about being tough on migration, the more they just talk about being tough on migration. For decades the rate of lawmaking in this area has exceeded the rate of lawmaking in every other social policy area.
When people repeat half-truths and inaccuracies and attempt to utilise society’s fears, prejudices and anxieties for opportunistic so-called political gain, a climate of acceptance is created for such ideas at all levels of society. The mainstream media must also reflect on the role of their focus on numbers and their use of words such as “flood,” “influx” and “waves.” I am sorry that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) used the word “tsunami,” which is a disgrace.
Yet it is simply untrue that Britain takes in more refugees than everywhere else, and research shows that two thirds of asylum seekers crossing the channel in boats, for example, are finally granted asylum by the Government’s own measurements. Yes, we need solutions to the soaring inequality, the suffering and the frightening covid death toll over which this Government have presided, but we do not need suspicion and scapegoats. Wherever we are from, we all need a roof over our head, food to eat, healthcare and basic human kindness and solidarity. Surely the true measure of a civilised society is not in its hostility but in its humanity.
I commended these new clauses to the House.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in respect of the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project. It includes a cross-party group of MPs who, to follow on from the comments made by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), absolutely seek to take the toxicity out of this debate, to find consensus, to be careful in the language we use, and to find agreement and, indeed, pragmatic solutions. When it comes to crossing the channel in small boats, we certainly need pragmatic solutions.
Tom Pursglove
My right hon. Friend speaks with great passion on this issue, and I am grateful for the constructive way in which she has gone about raising concerns in this policy area. I wish to emphasise that we will always act in accordance with our international obligations, and to be very clear that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will not be subject to inadmissibility or transferred for offshore processing. It is also important to say that we will not split family units, because that would be contrary to our international obligations.
Caroline Nokes
I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will not mind my instantly picking up on the fact that he very specifically said that “unaccompanied” asylum-seeking children would not be sent offshore, and that we would not split families. I also seek his assurance that we will not send whole families to have their claims decided offshore, and a further assurance that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been accepted into the asylum process will not fall out of it again once they turn 18. To me, it is absolutely imperative that if somebody’s claim is to be decided here, it should be decided here, not diverted midway through the process because they pass an arbitrary age.
I have real concerns about the creation of two tiers of asylum seeker. I tend to use this illustration. We saw horrific scenes in Afghanistan when female judges and female Members of Parliament sought to flee that country. We have put in place some schemes—it is important to emphasise that they are not yet up and running—around the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. Let me draw for the House the image of one female judge who comes to this country under that scheme when it is up and running. She is accepted into our country and is promptly given indefinite leave to remain and the right to work. A second female judge arrives on a small boat, but otherwise the circumstances are the same, in that she would be at risk if she returned to Afghanistan. We seek to offshore her. It causes me real concern that we will create a two-tier system in which people with identical claims to safety—at identical risk from the Taliban—are treated very differently.
I wish to raise concerns about where we might send people. I do not presume to know which countries the Home Office is in discussions with, but they might include Albania, which is in mainland Europe and not part of the European Union. There is already a well-established route from Albania to this country in the back of a van. We could be in a situation where we pay a third country a significant amount of money to accept someone into their asylum system—this is different from the model outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden—but they are then refused. At that point, what is there to stop that person seeking to come back to this country immediately? There could be some sort of circular trade, in which people end up back on our shores, whether in the back of a van or a small boat, and so the cycle goes round and round.
I have some experience as a former Immigration Minister, so I know full well that at this time of year, there is a very popular journey using the return flight to Tirana. [Interruption.] I can see that you want me to hurry up, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will. There is the question of whether people might see an opportunity to head off to a different country, and then end up back here, whether their claim was accepted or denied in that third country.
We must get the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme up and running, and make it effective. We should also fulfil the commitment we made to vulnerable people when the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme came to their conclusion. We cannot talk about safe and legal routes unless we actually have some, and it is imperative that we have them.
I am now stretching your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let me finally address the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) about push-back. I was the Immigration Minister who rejected that idea because I thought that it was too dangerous to do in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the country, with vulnerable and overladen boats carrying women and children, in choppy seas. We should think very carefully before going down that route, because no Minister at all wishes to be responsible for more loss of life in the channel.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I will have to implement a three-minute limit; otherwise, we simply will not get people in.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
This Bill is literally inhumane: it dehumanises asylum seekers, puts lives at risk and turns people into criminals for simply attempting to exercise their basic human rights. But the UK Government are not going to let small matters such as fundamental human rights, the rule of law and natural justice get in the way of their hostile environment, and their attempts to exclude practically anyone who is not a tax-dodging billionaire from settling on these shores. We keep hearing, “The asylum system is broken” from those on the Government Benches. Well, how did that happen? The Government have been in power for 10 years, and the environment has only become more hostile. Perhaps a different approach is needed.
It is for that reason that I support the right to work outlined in new clause 45, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). The right to work is a human right. It is in the universal declaration of human rights, and although it might be denied, it cannot be taken away. Lots of us heard that last week from people who had travelled from Glasgow and the Maryhill Integration Network to speak to us about the issue. They want to work, contribute and share their skills.
Instead of people being a cost to the system, we should let them contribute to the system. Instead of them receiving meagre, insulting support payments from taxpayer, we should let them become taxpayers, but that is not something that the Government are interested in. I do not know when a Government Minister last had to sit in a constituency surgery and look at a biometric card that says, “No right to work” or “No recourse to public funds”. It is one of the most heartbreaking things that Members of this House have to do, and it is a complete insult, because being able to work is a human right.
I also support new clause 9 on EU certification, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), because it would correct another historical wrong. I have constituents who have had emails saying, “Congratulations, you have your settled status. By the way, this email is not proof of your settled status.” Quite how they are supposed to prove that status if they do not have the documentation is beyond me, but it is all part of a Home Office agenda that does not want people to make the United Kingdom their home.
The Government want to close borders, shut down routes to citizenship and send a general message that says, “Unless you have lots of money, you’re not really welcome here.” How can the UK ever be the first safe country of arrival? We are surrounded by water. It is simply not possible. That approach would mean that practically everyone turning up here to claim asylum—whether on a ship or small boat or at an airport—would become a criminal. That is rejected by people in Glasgow North and across Scotland. I look forward to the day when we can have an open, generous, accessible pathway to asylum and citizenship, for those who want to take it up, in an independent Scotland.
Sir Christopher Chope
It is not just the asylum system that is broken; it is also the immigration enforcement system. Last year, the Public Accounts Committee reminded us that the immigration enforcement directorate has 5,000 staff and costs £400 million a year to run, but that every year for the last several years, there have been fewer enforced removals and fewer voluntary returns. In 2019—the last year for which figures were available—there were only 55 convictions for all immigration offences, yet we know that there are probably 1.2 million illegal immigrants in this country. I therefore ask the Minister: what is happening to the published aim of the immigration enforcement directorate, which is,
“to reduce the size of the illegal population and the harm it causes”?
The reason why I tabled new clause 18—I much appreciate the support of the 17 colleagues who have signed it—it is that it would make it clear that it is a criminal offence to be in the United Kingdom illegally. Most people find it amazing that it is not already a criminal offence. It is a criminal offence to watch a television without a television licence, but not to be in this country without authority. My new clause would change that and address the issue of all the people who are here unlawfully.
Sky News has suggested that there may be about 87,000 new illegal immigrants coming in each year. Very few of those, relatively speaking, are failed asylum seekers. There is a much bigger problem of clandestines—those arriving without documents—and there is a very large number, estimated to be 66,000, of people who stay beyond any visa entitlement. We have to deal with the wider issue of illegal migrants and enforce it properly.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I will be prioritising people who have tabled amendments.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Before I speak to my new clause 9, I want to associate myself fully with the comments of the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). In normal times that might surprise people, but I think she put very eloquently the real challenges and issues of offshoring and pushing back.
New clause 9 calls on the Home Office to fill the gap between the digital-by-default proof of status under the EU settlement scheme and the reality of people’s lives. It is typical of the Home Office to have set up a system that does not understand the interactions that people will have to have while proving their status. I thank the Minister for speaking to me about this, and for his letter of today.
Let me give some facts. I represent over 10,000 EU citizens in Hackney South and Shoreditch; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) represents many thousands more. In my constituency, they are 8.5% of the population. Some 60% of Roma people are unable to access digital proof, and there are other groups who have real problems with digital access. Let me mention just some of the cases in my case load. An EU citizen living in my constituency who visits France weekly for work is interrogated by Border Force every time she arrives back in the UK. Another constituent has parents in their 70s who struggle to understand the complex process of proving their status digitally. Another case involves a freelancer who has had to prove his identity to every new employer, which can be every five or six weeks. The website is sometimes down, and many employers just do not want to engage, so he has lost money.
Another constituent works for a charity working with the Roma; it gave the figure of 60% of Roma people finding it difficult to access digital proof. I thank the3million, which has written to me since I tabled the new clause and explained many of these situations, which I do not have time to go into, but I reiterate the concerns of my constituents.
I say to the Minister, whose job I did just over a decade ago, that we are not so far apart on this. I, too, support methods that take us away from the old Immigration and Nationality Directorate letters, which many of my constituents still come to surgeries with in their wallets, folded up until they are falling apart. They are not a great way of proving one’s status in the UK. People lose passports. There are gaps in the system. We have seen with the covid app how we can make a difference by combining digital and paper.
Kevin Foster
An app-based solution was helpfully suggested by the3million. Having held my role, the hon. Lady will know the usual sorts of security caveats that we would add, but it is certainly something we will look at.
Dame Meg Hillier
I thank the Minister for that—it is a bit of a breakthrough. It is important that the Home Office remembers that people will lose records. When they are travelling, they will be in places where there is no wi-fi through which they can access information. A time-limited document that they at least have the option to have on paper would be a very welcome move.
On the basis of what the Minister has said—I will watch him like a hawk on this—I will not press my new clause to a vote, but the hon. Members who signed it have a very strong interest in this. We are talking about EU citizens who have made their life in this country, and we need to give them the comfort that they deserve, so that they can go about their ordinary lives easily and effectively.
Richard Graham
I rise to comment on new clause 52. This is important, because in April 2019, I wrote a letter with the former Member for Bridgend, Madeleine Moon, to the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), and then to his successor a few months afterwards. In that letter, we called for a waiver of fees for Commonwealth servicemen and women. The new clause rightly amends that to all non-UK citizens in the new clause, which is effectively the core of what the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) calls for. It is good to see him in his place this evening and back in the House. I welcome that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
It goes without saying that if colleagues can take less than three minutes, we will get more people in.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
No pressure, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak in support of new clauses 10 and 11 and amendment 8 in my name. I do not say this lightly, but there is a deep wickedness at the heart of this Bill, matched only by its stupidity, because of its reliance on a bogus narrative that we are being—whatever the language used—“swamped” by asylum seekers.
Let us have some facts that might help Back Benchers on the Government Benches. First, 2% of the world’s population lives in the United Kingdom, and 0.65% of the world’s refugees are in the United Kingdom. We are not taking our fair share; we are not overwhelmed. We take fewer the half the number of asylum seekers we did 20 years ago. We are 17th in the league table—lower mid-table—of countries in Europe when it comes to taking asylum seekers per head of population. Germany takes three times more and France takes two and a half times more than we do.
We hear from the Minister that our asylum system is broken. Yes, it is, but not because it is deluged by too many asylum seekers, because evidentially that is not true; it is broken because of incompetence on the part of the Home Office. The Government’s argument is the equivalent of blaming patients for NHS waiting lists. It is unacceptable and it is wrong.
The numbers crossing the channel are tragic and awful, and it is obvious why it is the case. It is because we have seen a clampdown, because of covid and security, on people crossing the channel through other unsafe routes, such as the channel tunnel and ferries. As the narrower routes across the channel have been more heavily policed, what have we seen people doing? We have seen people taking more dangerous routes. The evidence shows us that when a route is closed off, people find further, more unsafe routes, so the Government’s policy will see more people dead in the channel. That is clearly what will happen unless they introduce safe routes. [Interruption.] There is a whole lot of rhetoric about safe routes and no action whatever.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I think all this shouting across the Chamber is not doing anybody any favours.
Tim Farron
Members on the Government Benches can shout, but they are literally voting for something that will see more people dead in the channel. This Bill is a charter for the people traffickers, and the only answer is safe routes. If we offer them the humanitarian visa as a safe route, we offer them the opportunity to do something that is not just morally right, but would actually solve the problem we are seeking to solve. The reality is that we have here a room full of comfortable people creating a two-tier asylum system that will decide between the deserving and undeserving asylum seeker. That is not just morally wrong but against international law. It is undermining Britain’s international standing and weakening our position on a range of issues while doing something morally shameful and undermining everything it is to be British.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I rise in support of amendment 150 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), to which I am a signatory. Before I turn to that, I welcome Government amendments 60 to 63 and pay tribute to the Border Force, coastguard, RNLI and search and rescue organisations operating in Dover and Deal and across east Kent who, day after day, month after month and year after year put their lives on the line to save those at peril on the sea.
It is an uncomfortable truth but a truth all the same—and one on which the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) is wrong—that every person put in peril by the people smugglers is already safe on land in France and in many other countries before France. When we remember the 27 people who recently died, as well as the many other lives lost, we must be united in this place to do whatever it takes to stop more lives being lost in the English channel.
The second uncomfortable truth is that, whatever Opposition Members way wish to say, there are safe and legal routes to come to this country. The Bill shows compassion to those most in need of assistance and prioritises them over people who choose unsafe and illegal routes of entry. Clauses 29 to 37 make it clear that refuge will always be available to people persecuted by reason of their religious, political or other beliefs, their race, their ethnicity or their sexuality. It is right to prioritise protection of those most in need of it.
The third uncomfortable truth is that it is possible to have help for those people in greatest need and to have strong borders. It is possible to have help for those who need it and to ensure that our country has strong and secure protection. It is vital that that is supported in the Bill.
Finally, I turn to the refugee convention, which is now 80 years old and out of date. With some 80 million displaced across the globe, we need a new global compact —a COP26 for the migrant crisis—to ensure that we finally work together globally to put an end to the migrant crisis and the small boat crossing routes that are leading to lost lives in the English channel.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I am sorry, but I am going to put a two-minute limit on speeches. I know that will not be popular, but I will not get everyone in anyway. I am sure that our next speaker, who will be the last on three minutes, will try to stick to two.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I will do my very best, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak to new clause 44 on safe and legal routes, which is tabled in my name, and new clauses 15 to 17 on a statutory limit on immigration detention, which I tabled with the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). I pay tribute to him for his work on the issue.
New clause 44 goes to the heart of the Bill’s supposed objectives, which are predicated on stopping irregular arrivals of asylum seekers by encouraging those fleeing war and persecution to access safe and legal routes. However, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme announced as urgent in August is still not operational, the Syrian scheme has closed, the gateway scheme is not operational and the UK resettlement scheme that opened in February with a commitment to resettle 5,000 people in year one has taken just 770 people. It is a cruel deceit to say that the Bill’s measures encourage the use of safe and legal routes if we have no such meaningful routes.
There is much in the Bill to be concerned about, such as differentiation of refugees in contravention of international law, offshoring of processing claims away from protection, pushing back rubber dinghies and risking lives. Importantly, the Government’s own impact assessment says that the evidence base for such measures is “limited” and that they
“could encourage…cohorts to attempt riskier means of entering the UK.”
However, that is all justified in the name of encouraging safe and legal routes. The Government must face up to their responsibility and deliver those routes.
On new clauses 15 to 17, we are seeking to place a statutory limit on immigration detention and to respond to a missed opportunity in this Bill. I was the vice-chair of a cross-party inquiry over eight months in 2014, with parliamentarians from both sides of the House and all main parties—there were more Government Members than there were Opposition Members—as well as a retired Law Lord, a former chief inspector of prisons and, of course, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire. Our recommendations, which included the limit on detention contained in new clauses 15 to 17, were endorsed by this House in September 2014, so it is disappointing that we are still debating them seven years on.
This is not a particularly controversial proposal. We are unusual in this country in having no limit. During our inquiry, we spoke to a young man who had been trafficked from the Cameroon-Nigeria border. He had been beaten, raped and tortured, and he had made an irregular route to this country on a false passport. He had been detained for three years in contravention of the stated aims of the Home Office that those who have been trafficked should not be detained, that those who have been tortured should not be detained and that detention should be for the shortest possible period. Time and again, we were told that detention was worse than prison, because in prison someone knows when they will get out, but that sense of hopelessness and despair leads to hugely deteriorating mental health.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I am sorry, but time is up.
Sir Edward Leigh
The Pope was recently in Greece, and he criticised European Governments for their lack of humanity to migrants. Normally I agree with the Pope, and it is his job to stand up for the poor and the dispossessed of the world, but—leaving aside the fact that if Greece accepted 100 a day, 1,000 would come tomorrow, and that if it accepted 1,000 the next day, 2,000 would come the day after that—there are countries in the world in such an appalling mess, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Somalia, that there is no limit to how many people would want to come here.
The people crossing the channel are not the world’s poorest. They are paying £6,000 or £7,000 to get here. They are not the world’s poorest people; they are economic migrants. If we are weak as a Government, we are actually being inhumane. We are putting people’s lives at risk because more and more people will come to our shores and risk the channel. So to be kind, it may be a cliché, but we have to be tough and we have to get rid of the pull factor. There is no point in going on blaming the French. Of course, we would like them to take people back, but they probably will not.
We have to get rid of the pull factor, and that is why I have put forward new clause 23. The only way we are going to stop this is if we put economic migrants who enter this country illegally in secure accommodation. They know that they can vanish in the community, there is a minuscule chance of their being deported, and they have better chances and better job prospects here than in France and elsewhere, so the Government have to get firm and tough on this. By the way, according to the law of the sea, it would be perfectly legal for them to escort economic migrants back to the shores of France with Border Force vessels. I say to the Government: act now, get tough, or people will die.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
I have to say there were a lot of myths and misunderstandings in that last contribution.
I want to speak to amendments 113 and 13 in my name, and to endorse new clauses 10, 11 and 28, of which I am a co-sponsor. Amendment 113 prohibits the UK from acting in breach of the UK’s international obligations. In particular, the notions of pushback and offshoring are the most extreme manifestations of the hostile environment, and there is the scapegoating and dehumanisation of those fleeing war and persecution.
Amendment 13 is on an entirely different issue that has not been touched on in the debate, nor indeed was it much in Committee. It relates to electronic travel authorisations, and in particular what is going to happen about movement on the island of Ireland. These authorisations will be required for all non-Irish visitors who wish to enter the United Kingdom, including via the land border.
While the Government insist that there will be no routine immigration checks on the land border on the island of Ireland, these requirements will nevertheless create new bureaucracy and legal uncertainty for thousands of EU citizens—and, indeed, other non-British and non-Irish residents south of the border—who cross the border often on a daily basis, whether for family visitation, to work, to shop, for healthcare, for education or for leisure. Indeed, there are some circumstances where the straightest route between two points actually involves crossing into Northern Ireland, sometimes on several occasions.
The Government might say that they are committed to no new checks, but people will be placed in legal uncertainty and, if there is any interaction with the UK state, major consequences may flow from that. The potential repercussions could be as severe as people going to prison. This is not practical on the island of Ireland, and I urge the Government to reconsider what they are doing in terms of electronic travel authorisations.
David Simmonds
The UK has a long-standing reputation as a beacon of human rights, but we in the House must recognise that we have enormous discretion under international law, and indeed under domestic law, regarding how we exercise our responsibilities. Many of the controversies around the Bill are about the operations, rather than the legislation itself. Having sat on the Joint Committee on Human Rights as we took evidence on a number of these issues, it is clear that there are matters of opinion about whether pushbacks, for example, which are freely used by Frontex, the European Union border agency in the Mediterranean, are for or against and within international law.
I share the concerns expressed about the methods currently available to science, and I agree we would not wish to see those used at present. I agree, however, that it should be open to the Home Office, should effective scientific methods be developed, to use such methods for the purposes of age assessments. I welcome the engagement of the Minister, and other Ministers, on those issues.
I will conclude with two points. First, I agree strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) on the point about needing a new COP26 on the issue of global migration. The world is changing, and the challenges faced by asylum seekers and the numbers on the move mean we must update the way we respond, in partnership with our allies. Finally, I will comment on some of those international obligations, which are often heavily criticised. The UK is rarely referred to the European Court of Human Rights for any breach of our laws, and we are rarely criticised. Indeed, the findings of that Court are not binding on the United Kingdom. As a champion of human rights we should be proud of the UK’s record in that respect, and we should renew our dedication to being a beacon of human rights in the future.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
The asylum system certainly is broken, and this is not the Bill to fix it. On the Afghan resettlement scheme, where is it? How can we trust the Government to deliver any of these programmes, or anything to fix our asylum scheme, if we cannot even come up with that scheme, after many months, and after all of us in the House having received desperate emails from people in Afghanistan who were under threat? I agree with new clause 52, which would waiver visa fees for Commonwealth veterans. We ask them to put their life on the line as members of our country, yet we do not pay their pensions, and we do not allow them and their families visas to say that they are citizens of this country. What more can we ask?
I really want to focus on family reunion. I have stood in the camps of Calais and seen people smugglers wandering around, very maliciously. I have seen the people smugglers about whom so much is made, but it will not be measures in this Bill that sort them out. One missing area is that of family reunion. One of those 27 men, women and children who tragically died in the channel was Harem Pirot. He was fleeing for his life from Iraq, to reach his brother, Anwar, a Sheffield graduate living in Cambridge, who then had to go to Calais to identify his brother’s body. We could cut so many smuggling routes if we were to allow family reunion, yet there is nothing in the Bill about that. Such a measure was promised after the EU Withdrawal Bill, and I talked about it in my maiden speech. It was promised when we discussed the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020, and it was promised in the new plan for immigration that there would be a safe and legal route for refugees, and for people fleeing for their lives to whom we can offer safe harbour. Family reunion needs to be put back into the Bill for it to work in the way it is intended.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I will now call the Minister, but I am sure he is aware that there may be people who might like to intervene.
Tom Pursglove
I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate and for the way in which most of those contributions were expressed. We are dealing with difficult matters, on which Members have strongly and deeply held convictions.
As I have said, it is vital that we do everything in our power to break the business model of evil criminal gangs and reform the broken asylum system. I am conscious of the time constraints, but I will address a number of amendments that have sparked a lot of today’s debate.
Let me start by addressing amendment 150 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on removal to safe third countries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) also raised that, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has been following it. My right hon. and hon. Friends are absolutely right in the sentiments that they have expressed in the amendment. I thank them for their full support on the policy intention, including on third country processing of asylum applications.
There is a recognition that certain existing laws may prevent the Government from achieving our aim to remove those with no legal basis to remain in the country. The legal barriers associated with the removal of failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders are well known. That is why there is work under way across the Government to look at the further legal barriers to removal.
I therefore reassure my right hon. and hon. Friends, and colleagues more widely, that there are no insurmountable domestic legal barriers to transferring eligible individuals overseas under an asylum processing arrangement. Schedule 3 to the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 allows the Secretary of State to remove an individual with a pending asylum claim from the UK to a safe third state if a relevant certificate is issued. The Bill amends section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to make it easier to remove someone to a safe third country without having to issue a certificate.
Obviously, the Bill complies fully with our international obligations, but the Home Secretary fully agrees with the sentiment that is expressed through amendment 150 about the challenges that frustrate the will of the British people in terms of our ability to remove people with no right to be in the UK. I can therefore confirm that the Government have imminent plans to consult on substantial reform of the Human Rights Act, which will be announced imminently in Parliament.
The Home Secretary also recognises my right hon. and hon. Friends’ concerns about aspects of the ECHR and other international agreements. I can therefore confirm that we are committed to reviewing and resolving these issues with the urgency that the situation warrants.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. He says that the Government are committed to resolving these difficulties. Can he confirm that by “resolving” these difficulties, he means that the Government will be legislating so to do?
Tom Pursglove
I refer my right hon. Friend back to the point that I have already made. We intend to consult on substantial reform of the Human Rights Act and will set out our plans imminently in that regard.
Work is under way to develop a new phase of measures to ensure that the clauses in the Bill are not undermined and that legal processes cannot be instrumentalised to circumvent the will of the British people. As we have said, the Government have imminent plans to consult on reform to the Human Rights Act, which are under consideration as we speak. Likewise, work is under way in relation to resolving the question of retained EU law.
Joanna Cherry
It sounds like the Minister is announcing something a bit more radical than perhaps we had anticipated in relation to the Human Rights Act. Can he confirm that the Government are still committed to remaining a signatory—a full signatory—to the European convention on human rights?
Tom Pursglove
The point that I would make is that the Government will set out their intentions in due course. I think it is right not to pre-empt. It is important to make sure that this House is kept updated as to that work, and we will be very clear in our intentions.
Sir John Hayes
It is extremely encouraging news that the Government are going to—at last, I have to say—consider the Blair legacy of the Human Rights Act, but to substantially reform it will require legislation. That much is implicit, is it not?
Tom Pursglove
As I say, Ministers will come to the House with further details in due course.
Work is under way in relation to resolving the question of retained EU law, led by Lord Frost, with input from the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice. For these reasons, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to withdraw their amendment 150.
I turn to new clauses 18 and 19 on illegal immigration offences, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). I hope that they and other hon. Friends supporting the new clauses will recognise that, as part of our groundbreaking new plan for immigration, the Government have sought robust changes to the law around illegal entry and similar offences through the very Bill we are discussing today. The Bill, which my hon. Friends seek to amend, already addresses and indeed exceeds the changes proposed in new clause 18.
Let me turn now to new clauses 24 and 52, tabled by the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). As both new clauses regard settlement fees for non-UK members of our armed forces, I would like to debate them together. It is a fact that our Government and our nation highly value the service of all members of the armed forces, including Commonwealth nationals and Gurkhas from Nepal.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear how valued members of our service community are. This is a good opportunity for the Government to give way on new clause 52, tabled by myself and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). Can the Minister give an assurance that the Government will support it?
Tom Pursglove
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making his case in the eloquent way the House is so used to. Members will be aware of the measures that the Home Secretary and the Defence Secretary announced in the summer for Gurkhas from Nepal, who have a long and distinguished history of service to the UK, both here and overseas. We also remain extremely grateful for the contribution made by former British Hong Kong service personnel. That is why the Ministry of Defence, together with the Home Office, ran a public consultation between 26 May and 7 July 2021 regarding a policy proposal to waive settlement fees for non-UK service personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces. A response to that consultation is coming out shortly, but I recognise the strength of the hon. Gentleman’s feelings and those of the Royal British Legion on this issue. To that end, I thank him and other colleagues for raising these matters, and I invite him and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View to meet Ministers and the legion next week to make sure that the concerns and realities of non-UK service personnel dealing with the immigration system are fully understood. I am under no illusions about how strongly my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View, in particular, feels about this issue, along with colleagues on both sides of the House.
Johnny Mercer
Many Ministers before my hon. Friend—many Defence Secretaries and many Prime Ministers—have said, “We feel”, “We value” and “We are adamant that we are proud of our armed forces.” However, a Fijian family in Plymouth is still being split up because the visa fees have not been sorted out. Tonight is an opportunity to go beyond meetings and words and to actually waive visa fees, which everybody, irrespective of party, knows is the right thing to do. Whether the Government will do that will test their character.
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and note the conviction with which he speaks about these matters, and I reiterate the offer that we have made to meet next week to discuss them. He will appreciate that the consultation has been ongoing and that we would expect to hear more on that in short order.
I would like to pick up on the proposals tabled by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) presented to the House—I would like to say how sorry I was to hear that she will be standing down from the House at the next general election. It is fair to say that the Committee has raised important matters, and I would respond by saying that we have always acted in accordance with our international obligations in relation to matters at sea. On the international convention for the safety of life at sea and search-and-rescue operations, that has consistently been, and will continue to be, the position in the work that we do.
I want to conclude by again thanking hon. Members for their proposals and the lively debate we have had today. Following the tragic events in the channel over the last few weeks, I know that all Members take this debate with the seriousness and concern it deserves. However, the only way we will solve these long-term problems is by delivering a long-term solution. Ultimately, that is exactly what this Bill delivers.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 20 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 50
Advertising assistance for unlawful immigration to the United Kingdom
“(1) It is an offence to advertise by any means, including using social media, services designed to facilitate the commission of an offence under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, to a fine or to both, or
(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both.”—(Bambos Charalambous.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Business without Debate
Bennetts End Road
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
It is a pleasure to present the petition on behalf of 1,131 constituents. The petition is self-explanatory, although I think there is a typo and that it should say “accidents”, not “incidents”. The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of Hemel Hempstead,
Declares that Bennetts End Road is a very busy and long road; further that, over the last few years, there have been numerous incidents on the road as a result of local residents crossing the road for various reasons; further that it is especially dangerous for local children accessing the various schools in the area; and further that a solution needs to be found as soon as possible to avoid further incidents on the road and provide all residents a safe way of crossing the road.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to make Bennetts End Road safer by reallocating funding for Hertfordshire County Council to use to install a pelican crossing on Bennetts End Road.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002701]
Support for Offenders’ Families
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Adjournment debates are great opportunities to raise issues brought up by constituents, and it gives me much pleasure this evening to do precisely that. I am grateful to the Minister for being here, particularly after his extremely busy day. I am sorry to have kept him in his place a little longer, but I am nevertheless delighted that he is responding to the debate. He will be aware of my correspondence on a constituency case with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime and Policing. The debate draws on that, and on the experience relayed to me by my constituent and others caught up in similar nightmares not of their making. I hope that this debate is timely, given the imminent very welcome consultation on upgrading the victims strategy through a victims Bill.
Many, particularly on the Conservative side of the House, take a very stern view of crime and criminality, and many of us have called for stiffer sentencing, particularly for crimes of a sexual nature. Because of the internet and the opportunities for indecent imaging that it presents, the number of those crimes is, sadly, rising exponentially. I will focus largely on the consequences of those crimes this evening. Specifically, I am buttonholing my good friend the Minister on the collateral—the families left behind to cope with the devastation that follows the arrest and conviction of a loved one for those crimes that attract the greatest public opprobrium.
On that front, Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 16 offers some chilly reassurance:
“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”
Less dramatically, the sins of the father should not be pinned on the sons, daughters, or spouse—or on anyone other than the perpetrator.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am always attracted to scripture, and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for quoting it. Families have come to me, having had their windows broken, and mess spray-painted on their homes; that often happens in Northern Ireland due to a family member’s actions. Does he agree that that is not appropriate, and that support should be offered, so that the family does not end up having to pay for the sins of the father, as he says, though that is often what happens?
Dr Murrison
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he speaks from a great deal of experience. Deuteronomy is bang on the money. These are innocents. They need to be dealt with as innocents by the statutory agencies. That is the burden of what I have to say this evening.
During the course of my research, I have been told about the five o’clock knock that hits someone like a train; the stunning effect of the unheralded appearance of police on the doorstep; the trauma of seeing a loved one taken away; and the all-too-often brusque way in which family members are managed by the police, as they sack the family home searching for evidence, and carry off not just the suspect’s possessions, but those of his or her partner as well—the knock after which nothing is ever the same again.
Over 850 individuals are arrested each month for online offences involving indecency. That is a 25-fold increase in a decade. Each one of those carries in its wake a devastated family, a wall of misery, and the destruction of settled, ordinary lives. For most of these people, the worst brush with the authorities they have had up to that point will have been the issuing of a speeding ticket. That makes them particularly susceptible to vicarious shaming and social isolation.
It is therefore hardly surprising that nearly 70% of family members experiencing the knock in such circumstances have severe post-traumatic stress disorder. That is unsurprising, given that they are often told to speak to no one for fear of bullying and vigilante activity; given that, as part of the process, their mobile phones and computers are removed; and given that the go-to resource of many traumatised people in the modern age—the internet—is for them now no longer a trusted entry point to help and support, but a dark, deeply hostile place. The ascent of social media has meant that there is nowhere to hide. Vigilantes—those self-appointed guardians of public safety—use a confected moral high ground to prey on innocents who they deem guilty by association with those convicted of stigmatising offences.
About the time I was first elected, I remember a group of so-called vigilantes confusing the terms “paediatrician” and “paedophile”, and seeing one of their neighbours described as the former, took it upon themselves to attack the home of the hapless specialist in child health. Those bovinely stupid people are the antithesis of the upstanding public guardians they purport to be, and they are encouraged in their misconception, I am sorry to say, by elements of the tabloid press. They are despicable; they are the mob. And it is the mob, or fear of the mob, that drives innocent bystanders of stigmatising crimes from their homes. When those innocents are at their most vulnerable, and most in need of the agencies of the state, there comes no help, no comfort, and no support. Commenting on “the knock”, one of our more thoughtful police officers said:
“We are acutely aware of the devastation we are leaving behind.”
Where is the attempt to mitigate that devastation? Indeed, some within our statutory agencies and authorities behave as if the families of suspects are guilty too, and that is not good enough.
What is to be done? The 2018 victims strategy and its victims code are a good start. In the code there is a decent stab at a definition of “victim”, which it defines as
“a person who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm or economic loss which was directly caused by a criminal offence;”
In common usage, that definition probably does not include family members of people whose crimes have destroyed their lives. Indeed, the then Prime Minister appeared to confirm that when she said, in the foreword to the victims strategy:
“We must make it easier for people who have suffered a crime to cope, recover and move on with rebuilding their lives.”
The simple addition of the word “from” or the phrase “as a result of” before “a crime” would have been helpful in embracing the desperate people who are the subject of this evening’s debate. On the other hand, some would say that the definition of victim should indeed be ambiguous, since surely we can all tell a victim when we see one—can’t we?—a bit like an elephant. Well, I do not think we can. Unless the families of offenders are included explicitly within the definition of “victim”, nothing will change, there will be no recognition or help for them, and the agencies will continue too often to give them the cold shoulder.
Other jurisdictions seem to have been more thoughtful, and they offer a potential way forward that our victims Bill consultation might gainfully reflect on. The United States has a category of secondary victim with access, for example, to the Department of Justice crime victims fund. I am not suggesting that to the Minister for one moment, but it gives an indication of how those victims are regarded by the US. Canada has four categories of victim: direct, indirect, secondary, and tertiary, and all have the dignity of being recognised by the Canadian system as victims, as with the definition used by the US system.
Why is this so important? First, the victims code sets the mood music. Inclusion of the people I am talking about will establish them as victims of crime, and unpick the notion that they have by some curious osmosis contributed to that crime. More tangibly, the victims code offers things to those identified as victims, such as needs assessments, appropriate signposting, and being treated respectfully, sympathetically, and in a dignified and sensitive way.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has secured this debate, and I hope he got my email earlier.
Over the summer I visited the excellent project Children Heard and Seen, which is campaigning for prisoners’ families. I met a woman who, along with her children, had basically been driven from their home, because the husband had been arrested and imprisoned for an offence similar to the one the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. They were driven from their home and had to change their names. She had to stop her postgraduate studies because her computer had been taken away. The repercussions went on and on and on. One thing I have been calling for is a statutory mechanism so that children caught up in such a situation are recognised, identified by the system, and get the help they need straightaway. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me?
Dr Murrison
Yes, I do agree. I am pleased that the hon. Lady has raised her constituency case, because her constituents are not alone, with 850 such arrests made every month. That is just staggering; it is one and a bit for each of our constituencies every single month. We all have constituents in this awful situation, and the situation that she described is exactly the same as has been described to me. These people are under the radar, and I hope that this debate will, in some small way, make their plight clearer. At this critical juncture when we are considering the victims Bill and the consultation leading up to it, perhaps they might be included, and that will be my principal ask of the Minister this evening.
In September, the Prime Minister brought some good news on this front. He said:
“We are committed to legislation for victims in the Queen’s Speech and will be consulting on a Victims Bill later this year.”
Given that we are fast running out of year, will the Minister outline the timetable for the consultation? Will he include in it an improved, more embracing definition of victim—perhaps one that is more nuanced—as other countries have introduced? Will he task officials with drafting improved guidance to statutory agencies, including but not confined to the police, on the handling of families of those arrested on suspicion of serious, particularly stigmatising, crime?
Will the Minister look at improving support to the few lifeline charities that operate in this space, including the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s “Stop It Now!” and Acts Fast? Will he ensure that the consultation includes wording that explicitly recognises the pain and suffering experienced by the massive number of wholly innocent family members of those accused and convicted of stigmatising crime? At a time when their lives are falling apart and they are facing—often alone—financial, domestic, occupational and social ruin, they deserve to be treated as victims, with respect, kindness and dignity. We can do so much better. The victims Bill gives us an opportunity to do so.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Tom Pursglove)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) for securing this important debate and doing the cause that he seeks to advance real justice in the way that he presented his case and the arguments that he marshalled.
The case that my right hon. Friend has highlighted demonstrates the sometimes overlooked impact that one person’s criminal behaviour can have on their family and friends. It is difficult not to be troubled by the circumstances that he described and the impact that that has on families, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) set out in the case of her constituents. Many families, not just those my right hon. Friend alluded to, feel that they are being unfairly punished in the eyes of others for someone else’s actions. The circumstances he described are horrendous and unthinkable. He called it a “wall of misery”, and I think that is rather an apt description.
As my right hon. Friend set out, the consequences of these crimes can be devasting and are felt long after the knock on the door that he described. The empathy that I feel—I am sure all Members feel it—for all those who have been affected in this way in our country is very difficult to put into words. I think the circumstances of that knock on the door are also very difficult to comprehend, not least because of the betrayal of trust that those family members must feel about what has happened. The magnitude of the trauma and the circumstances that they are presented with is unthinkable.
In April this year we updated the victims code, providing victims with a clear set of entitlements and setting out the levels of service that a victim of crime can expect from the criminal justice system. For the purposes of the code a victim is someone who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm, directly caused by a criminal offence. A person who has suffered harm as a direct result of witnessing a crime is also a victim for the purposes of the code and is able to access services that support victims.
While I have great sympathy for families in the circumstances that my right hon. Friend described, I recognise that that provision will not automatically apply to families of offenders. However, support is available for those who have been directly harmed. There are of course certain circumstances in which a family member is a direct victim or a witness to a crime perpetrated by their loved ones, and it is right that we offer them support to cope and, as far as possible, to recover from those crimes. For example, our national homicide service works tirelessly to support those bereaved by domestic homicide. We know that being impacted by crime can have a lasting impact, especially for children and young people. That is why in July this year we worked with the homicide service to launch dedicated casework support for children and young people impacted by these crimes.
The crimes my right hon. Friend spoke of are some of the most abhorrent and are often perpetrated in the home and by those we should feel safe in the company of. Where families, following an arrest or a conviction, face the sort of damaging attention on social media that he described, that should be treated with the utmost seriousness. Therefore we are taking steps in the Online Safety Bill to place new duties on companies to keep their users safe online. I expect, this Government expect and I think this House expects—we have seen this reflected in the debates we have witnessed in recent weeks—that the tech companies must take responsibility for these matters and must take robust action when inappropriate content is hosted on their sites. That is a reasonable expectation and one that, time and time again, this House has echoed. Therefore I for one certainly echo the importance of the Online Safety Bill being introduced in due course.
We are determined to improve support for victims of crime so that they can recover and confidently seek justice through the criminal justice system. We continue to invest significant funding in victim and witness support services, given the increasing demand and the impact of the pandemic. This year we will spend £300 million across Government, with the Ministry of Justice providing just over £150 million. That funding will go towards a range of support services, including the national witness service, rape support centres and local organisations commissioned by police and crime commissioners. I can also confirm that we will consult imminently on a victims law so that we can make tangible improvements for victims across the criminal justice system. I look forward to meeting my right hon. Friend to discuss the contents of the consultation as soon as possible after publication.
As I said earlier, I have huge empathy with innocent families who, through no fault of their own, end up in these circumstances. As Members of this House, we can all think of families in our constituencies who have been caught in the sort of trauma we are discussing this evening. I am truly shocked to hear about the levels of post-traumatic stress disorder linked to these cases, but it is not surprising that there are those levels of PTSD.
While the families we are talking about may not fall within the definition in the victims code, that does not exclude them from accessing the support they need to recover from the harm caused. Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service funds the national prisoners’ families helpline, which provides free and confidential support for those with a family member at any stage of their contact with the criminal justice system. The service’s highly trained and skilled staff provide practical information and emotional support for those who simply need reassurance or guidance. They are also able to point families, including children, to sources of additional support should they need it. Several charities also provide support for families affected by the actions of a family member, including PACT, Nepacs, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and Children Heard and Seen.
The Government are committed to ensuring that everyone who requires mental health support, including offenders’ family members, has access to timely mental health treatment based on clinical need.
As part of the Government’s commitment to build back better, we published our mental health recovery action plan in March 2021, backed by an additional £500 million for this financial year, to ensure we have the right support in place. The plan aims to respond to the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of the public, specifically targeting groups that have been most affected, including those with severe mental illness, young people and frontline staff.
While in some cases further contact between a family and prisoner might not be appropriate, it is right that we reflect that, in the majority of instances, there are significant benefits to both the offender and their family of maintaining the family relationship to help to tackle reoffending when the prisoner is released. The impact of imprisonment on a family member can be significant. For example, for a child of an incarcerated parent there can be social stigma, loneliness and isolation, along with feelings of resentment about being abandoned.
While offenders are in custody, we have an opportunity to support them to appreciate the impact that their offending behaviour has on not only themselves but their family and especially their children. We believe that regular, quality engagement between a prisoner and their children is essential to mitigate the potential harms that a child of an incarcerated parent might experience.
While the focus of the Ministry of Justice’s work is ostensibly on supporting the offender and helping their rehabilitation, there are other initiatives across Government that can support those family members who have to simply carry on. The supporting families programme continues to drive early help and better co-ordination of services for families with multiple and complex needs, including those involved with, or at risk of, crime and anti-social behaviour.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the supporting families programme delivers. That is why the Chancellor recently announced an expansion of the programme, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million, which will enable local authorities and their partners to provide help earlier and secure better outcomes for up to 300,000 families across all aspects of their lives. As well as supporting the recovery of those who have been affected by crime, the programme encourages early intervention to prevent families from entering the criminal justice system in the first place.
To conclude, I hope I have demonstrated the importance we place on supporting children and families of offenders and that, in the time available, I have been able to provide clear examples of how we are working to properly support those leaving prison and their families. I recognise that my right hon. Friend has raised a number of valid points, and there are areas that Government as a whole should reflect on. We should obviously reflect on whether the package of measures and the help that is in place remain appropriate—we must always keep these matters under constant review. I am grateful for the way he introduced this Adjournment debate and for the important matters he raised. I look forward to meeting him to discuss them, and I am very grateful for his contribution tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Solvency 2 (Group Supervision) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(3 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings and to maintain distancing as far as possible, in line with current Government guidelines and those of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give one another and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Similarly, any officials in the Gallery should communicate electronically with the Minister.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Solvency 2 (Group Supervision) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. This instrument is being made to address deficiencies in retained EU law relating to the supervision of UK insurance groups under the insurance prudential regime known as solvency 2. The UK Government have made equivalence decisions that assess that the insurance group supervision regime in another country—a third country—is equivalent to the UK. To date, Bermuda, Switzerland and the European economic area countries have been determined to be equivalent to the UK for the purpose of insurance group supervision. The instrument will ensure that the UK Government’s equivalence decisions achieve in full the objective of avoiding unnecessary duplication of supervisory work.
The instrument affects UK insurance groups whose parent companies are domiciled in equivalent third countries. Such insurance groups are supervised at two levels: first, the UK insurance group level is supervised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and secondly, the ultimate parent group level, the so-called worldwide group, is supervised by the supervisory authority in the relevant third countries.
The instrument enables the PRA, when certain conditions are met, to defer to third-country supervisory authorities if the UK has determined that the third countries are equivalent for the purpose of insurance group supervision. The conditions apply where compliance by firms would be overly burdensome and where waiving the requirements would not adversely impact the PRA’s advancements of its objectives.
In that circumstance, the PRA may disapply or modify regulatory requirements, which amounts to issuing waivers to UK insurance groups. In effect, the waivers exempt those UK insurance groups from demonstrating to the PRA compliance with solvency 2 group supervision requirements at the UK sub-group level. That is in recognition of the fact that compliance at the UK sub-group level has already been supervised by virtue of being a subset of the ultimate group that is supervised by the equivalent third countries.
Pre-EU exit, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority issued guidelines to allow EEA supervisors to issue such waivers. Under such guidelines, the PRA could issue waivers to affected UK insurance groups pre-EU exit. However, those guidelines ceased to have effect in the UK following EU exit. Consequently, existing waivers are due to expire on 31 March 2022. The instrument confers on the PRA the power to issue new waivers.
The instrument brings advantages to UK insurance groups with a parent in an equivalent third country, to the PRA and to the third-country supervisory authorities. The advantages are reduced regulatory compliance cost for the insurance groups; reduced supervisory cost for the PRA; and reduced need for co-ordination between third-country supervisory authorities and the PRA where they are reviewing duplicative materials.
On 2 December 2021, in its 22nd report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee listed the instrument as an “instrument of interest”. In the report, the Committee noted the
“absence of a level playing field: while the UK has granted equivalence to the EU in relation to the supervision of insurance groups, the EU has not reciprocated.”
Although that is true, I urge the Committee not to conflate those two separate matters. Equivalence determinations are made by the UK and EU unilaterally. One decision is within the power of the UK Government and another is beyond the power of the UK Government. Where the UK Government have unilaterally determined equivalence, we have a duty to ensure that our decisions are meaningful and achieve their objectives in full. The instrument ensures that we do not undermine our own equivalence decisions with deficiencies in our domestic law.
Rejecting this instrument does not increase the probability of the EU reciprocating equivalence decision. Conversely, it would penalise UK insurance groups and our regulator by increasing regulatory compliance and supervisory cost.
To conclude, the Treasury has worked closely with the PRA in the drafting of the instrument. The Treasury has also engaged with the UK insurance industry through its industry body, the Association of British Insurers. The ABI has informed the Treasury that the industry welcomes the instrument and has no concerns with it. I hope the Committee has found my explanation useful and I commend the instrument to it.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees.
Following the Opposition reshuffle, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East was due to be here; I hope that the Minister is not disappointed by my presence.
I thank the Minister for providing an overview of these technical regulations. I have a couple of general remarks to make before asking the Minister a couple of questions. As we have heard, the regulations relate to the solvency 2 directive that the EU passed in 2009 and implemented in 2016. The directive was set up to harmonise prudential rules for insurers across the EU. The UK implemented the solvency 2 directive through various pieces of legislation, including the Solvency 2 Regulations 2015. Obviously, when we left the EU single market, we left the EU solvency 2 regime, which onshored the rules.
According to the explanatory notes, the regulations we are considering today
“address failures of the retained EU law to operate effectively, and other deficiencies arising from the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.”
As we have heard from the Minister, the regulations essentially allow the PRA to defer the decisions of overseas insurance regulators where we have agreed equivalence with them. As the Minister said, before the UK left the EU, the EU regulator issued guidelines to allow regulators at EEA level to rely on the supervision of another regulator in partially overlapping areas.
After we left the single market, the PRA adopted those same guidelines, but they are due to expire on 31 March 2022, as the Minister highlighted. He also said that if nothing is done, from 1 April 2022, the PRA would need to begin imposing certain extra group supervision requirements, even if the UK insurer it is regulating has a parent that is already subject to group supervision in another country deemed equivalent.
The regulations we are considering therefore allow the PRA to continue to disapply, in certain circumstances, insurance requirements relating to the UK’s insurance groups whose parent companies are supervised in “equivalent” countries. The PRA would only be able to do that if it were satisfied that compliance with the requirements by the insurance group in the UK would be unduly burdensome, and that the disapplication would not adversely affect the advancement of any of the PRA’s objectives. Under what circumstances would that happen? Can the Minister outline how “unduly burdensome” will be judged? Will the PRA have discretion in that respect?
On the PRA’s objectives, can the Minister say what steps will be taken to ensure that insurance policyholders in the UK will be protected and that their interests will remain central? How will the quality of overseas supervision be monitored, now and in the future, to ensure that those objectives continue to be met?
The explanatory notes say that allowing the PRA to rely on an overseas regulator’s supervision should mean reduced compliance costs for the insurance company, reduced costs for the PRA and a reduced need for co-ordination between the PRA and the regulator in that country to ensure consistency. We broadly welcome that and we recognise that these measures seek to avoid duplicating the work of the PRA. However, the Minister will know that the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee denoted the SI an instrument of interest on 30 November because of
“the absence of a level playing field: while the UK has granted equivalence to the EU in relation to the supervision of insurance groups, the EU has not reciprocated.”
The Minister has mentioned that the Treasury has worked very closely with the PRA, but can he tell us what impact that has on UK-based insurance firms and whether they are at a disadvantage compared with EU-based ones? Will he set out the work that the Treasury has undertaken to achieve reciprocal equivalence with the EU for insurance regulation, and why it has so far failed to achieve that?
Finally, will the Minister comment on the broader solvency 2 reform, which the Treasury is consulting on, and in particular on the balance between increasing competitiveness and safeguarding policyholders? I know that many in the industry believe that reforms could lead to increased investment and support infrastructure across the country, but I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that. I am sure he is relieved to hear that we will not oppose this SI, but I hope that he can address the points that I have raised, because I think they are important.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
It is always a pleasure to serve on a Committee that you are chairing, Ms Rees. Like the official Opposition, I do not intend to divide the Committee on the regulations, because there is a clear need for them in place of the existing temporary fix. As the Minister has said, the regulations are intended to make sure that, where the Prudential Regulation Authority—the UK’s regulatory body—is group supervisor of a UK insurance group whose parent company is in a third country, it can defer to that third country’s supervisory authority under certain circumstances. That includes the essential requirement that the insurance group supervision regime in the third country has been assessed by the UK Government as being equivalent to the UK’s regime.
A few questions arise from that. I have been trying to find out how big an issue this is in the world of insurance in the United Kingdom. Can the Minister tell us how much of the UK insurance market is likely to come under the scope of the regulations? If we did not agree to these regulations or similar ones, how big a problem would we be leaving ourselves with, either by percentage or by value in pounds? Related to that, are there particular sectors or specialist types of insurance that might be especially exposed to the additional costs of duplicate regulation?
Conversely, how significant is the issue of UK insurers whose parent companies are in countries that are not recognised as equivalent? Does that continue to create a difficulty? I would hope that UK companies that are complying with legislation and regulatory requirements in the UK are more likely to be controlled by parent companies that act responsibly and would not give us any concerns about their governance, but it would be interesting to hear whether the Minister can answer that question.
The Minister has given us a list of the countries that are currently recognised as being equivalent. Are there any assessments currently under way that might add further countries to that list? How often will such an assessment need to be redone if there is divergence in the regulatory environment between the UK and some of these countries? Remember, we were told that one of the big business pluses of Brexit was that the UK’s regulatory framework could diverge from the European Union’s in all sorts of areas. Will these assessments need to be redone periodically to ensure that the equivalence that is there today is still there in future?
Related to that, does the Minister have any concerns about the current review of the Solvency 2 directive that the European Union is undertaking? Is that likely to mean that decisions that have been made about equivalence or anything else will only have to be reviewed when that directive is reviewed by the European Union? Of course, this time when the European Union reviews the directive, we are not there. Previously, the UK Government had an equal part on the commission that would carry out that review, but now it is being carried out without one of western Europe’s biggest insurance markets being represented, so are there any potential problems coming along the road as a result of the review?
As the Minister has said, the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee did not flag this up as an instrument that needed particular attention, but it did highlight the fact that the UK Government, the UK Parliament, is about to address the issue from one side even though there is no definite indication that the European Union will address the same issue from the other side. Does that create any advantages or disadvantages, either for a UK insurance company that has subsidiaries trading in the European Union or for UK companies that are subsidiaries of EU-based parent groups? It seems at the moment that we are heading towards a lop-sided equivalence, and I would be interested to know whether that creates any difficulties for any UK insurance companies. I cannot understand how something can be equivalent in one direction and not in the other, but perhaps the Minister or somebody from the European Commission could explain that one.
I have a couple of other questions. I suppose the main one is whether the Minister can confirm that the effect of this regulation is just pretty much to put us back where we were before Brexit, because if it is, there might have been a way to avoid it in the first place.
John Glen
I very much appreciate the comments of the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson and I welcome her to her place this afternoon. I will try to address three or four points that she made about this regulation, and I will come on to the wider issue of equivalence and the broader Solvency 2 reform.
This statutory instrument just re-establishes the PRA’s power to exempt UK insurance groups from duplication. It affects 11 groups. If it were not done, that would mean an annual recurring cost of half a million pounds. The hon. Lady asked about the objectives and who would define them. The PRA has a statutory objective to take account of policyholder protections. That is part of its remit and something that it has an enduring and ongoing responsibility for.
The ongoing evaluation of prospective alternative countries is a matter for the PRA. The context here needs to be understood. We were completely aligned up till the end of the transition period. As a Government, we were very transparent about how we were approaching equivalence. Indeed, we made a number of determinations —I think 17 or 18 out of the 32—in November of last year. We complied fully with the EU and filled in 2,500 pages on equivalence. We also advanced a conversation around a regulatory dialogue and were ready for the memorandum of understanding to be signed. It is now a matter for the EU how it determines the way forward.
Both Opposition spokespeople spoke about the broader Solvency 2 reform. That is being looked at by the PRA and the Treasury, which are looking at the risk margin and the matching adjustment. We are looking at that closely with industry to determine the best way forward. That is completely distinct from this statutory instrument, but there is encouraging progress there.
This is not, though, a deregulatory move on the part of the UK. I think the whole Committee will understand that financial services is a dynamic industry where changes of regulation occur all the time, both on the EU side and here. This SI does not mean lower prudential standards. The PRA cannot issue waivers if by doing so it so adversely impacts the advancement of its objectives, which, as I said, are statutory ones of policyholder protection. The SI simply prevents a cliff edge that would otherwise happen on 1 April 2022. The hon. Member for Glenrothes asked whether the SI takes us back to the pre-Brexit position. The answer is no, it just restores the mechanism by which we can continue to grant equivalence.
I do not think there is too much else I can say to assist, but what we doing is pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. It will ensure that the UK’s equivalence decisions, which assess that the insurance group supervision regime in another country is equivalent to the UK—
Peter Grant
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I thank him for the answers that he has provided to almost all of the questions I raised. I do not think he has yet covered the possible issue of UK insurance companies whose parent companies are headquartered outside the equivalent regulatory countries. Is that a significant issue? Is he aware of any UK companies that will still have to face duplicate regulation because their parent company is regulated somewhere else?
John Glen
Offhand, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a list of countries, but I am happy to look into matter and write to him if I can say something edifying. I do not want to complicate this anymore than I already may have done by my responses.
The instrument simply reduces the regulatory compliance cost for those affected insurance groups and reduces that supervisory cost for the PRA and equivalent third country supervisory authorities. There is nothing that I am trying to do here that represents a significant policy deviation, and I hope that my response has been sufficiently helpful to the Committee to allow the SI to be passed.
Question put and agreed to.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 View all Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements that I am required to read out by Mr Speaker. I remind Members that they are expected to wear a face covering except when speaking or if they are exempt. That is in line with the recommendations of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. That can be done at the testing centre in the House or at home. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed any speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings.
I first call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee for the Bill.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 7 December) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 7 December;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 9 December;
(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 13; Schedule; Clauses 14 to 27; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 9 December.—(Eddie Hughes.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Eddie Hughes.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the room and will be circulated to Members by email.
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and shows how the selected amendments have been grouped for debate. Grouped amendments are generally on the same or a similar issue. Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which they are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. The selection and grouping list shows the order of debates. Decisions on each amendment are taken when we come to the clause to which the amendment relates.
A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. Other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak to all or any of the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate. At the end of a debate on a group of amendments, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment in a group to a vote, they need to let me know.
Clause 1
Regulated leases
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert—
“(but see subsection (5)).”.
This amendment inserts a reference to the new subsection inserted by Amendment 2.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 2.
Clause stand part.
New clause 1—Ground rent for existing long leases—
“Within 30 days of the day on which this Act comes into force, the Secretary of State must publish draft legislation to restrict ground rents on all existing long residential leases to a peppercorn.”
This new clause aims to ensure that the Government introduces further legislation to remove ground rent for all leaseholders, whereas the Act currently only applies to newly established leases.
Eddie Hughes
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and to see the hon. Member for Weaver Vale still in his place following recent moves.
Government amendments 1 and 2, and Government amendments 3 to 5, which we will come to later, relate to the process known as a deemed surrender and regrant. For the benefit of those who are not experts in property law, me included, when the extent of the demise is changed—for example, where an extension is made to a property or to correct an error, or where there is an extension to the term of a lease—the lease is deemed to be surrendered and regranted to the leaseholder.
Government amendments 1 and 2 provide further protection for leaseholders in situations where that happens. Taken together, the two amendments disapply the requirement for a premium to be paid when a regulated lease or a lease granted before the Bill’s commencement day has been surrendered and regranted. In other words, a lease can have a peppercorn rent under this legislation after it has been regranted even if no new premium is paid.
Without these amendments, there is a significant risk that a previously regulated lease could cease to be regulated, leaving leaseholders to pay a potentially significant premium for a simple change, such as correcting an error within the lease, or leaving them to pay a ground rent. It might be helpful if I provided an example of such a situation. If a future leaseholder were to seek the correction of an error in their regulated lease and there was no premium charge for that correction, the Bill, as currently drafted, means that the lease would no longer be considered a regulated lease and therefore the peppercorn requirement would not be applicable to that newly corrected lease.
Amendments 1 and 2 will remove the requirement for a premium to have been paid for regulated and pre-commencement leases subject to a surrender and regrant, in order for the peppercorn rent to be applied. These amendments and the clarifications in amendments 3, 4 and 5 ensure that the Bill does not have unintended consequences when there is a deemed surrender and regrant and that there is fairness in the system for leaseholders and freeholders.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Hollobone, and to respond to the Minister. We have spent considerable time over the last few weeks, in Committee and at Second Reading, discussing vital issues of building safety and leasehold reform. These technical and tidying amendments make perfect sense. They address the potential of leasees paying a premium if this was not put in place, so the Opposition certainly welcome this.
I have one question on the potential for informal lease arrangements to sit outside the scope of the Bill. What reassurance can we give those still caught in the leasehold feudal system that there is provision to tackle this element of the industry?
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Member for his support and for that question. My understanding is that the process through which leases will be regulated as part of the Bill would afford the opportunity for clarification of the informal leases to which he refers.
The Chair
So you did not give way to the Minister? Do you want to speak on new clause 1 in this group of amendments?
Mike Amesbury
No, I was allowing my good colleague the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood to speak.
Maria Eagle
I am grateful to you, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is early in the morning, and therefore perfectly possible that I was wrong about my hon. Friend’s intention. Can the Minister clarify that the main intent of these provisions is to prevent those who perhaps used to be able to charge ground rent on new leases but who, following the enactment of the Bill, will only be able to charge a peppercorn if they wish to collect it, having a not very realistic, false way of getting around the Bill by deemed surrender and then reissue? Is that the main intent of these provisions? Obviously, if he had thought about this kind of trick being played when the Bill was originally drafted, he would have included something in that drafting, but it is always good to think again about the way in which people may seek to get around provisions. Have I got it right? Is that the main intent of these provisions?
Eddie Hughes
I can completely confirm that that is absolutely the main intent.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendment made: 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(5) Where there is a deemed surrender and regrant by virtue of the variation of a lease which is—
(a) a regulated lease, or
(b) a lease granted before the relevant commencement day,
subsection (1) applies as if paragraph (b) were omitted.”.—(Eddie Hughes.)
This amendment provides that where there is a deemed surrender and regrant of a regulated lease or a pre-commencement lease, the new lease may be a regulated lease even if it is not granted for a premium.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2
Excepted leases
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Thank you. I was. I appreciate that it is not my job to be concerned on behalf of the Opposition, but I felt that there could have been some early morning settling into the rhythm of the Committee. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale may have missed the opportunity to speak to new clause 1—[Interruption.]
The Chair
Order. I actually asked the hon. Gentleman quite clearly whether he wished to speak to new clause 1, and he decided that he did not. We are now debating clause 2 stand part.
Mike Amesbury
Sorry. I made a mistake. I do apologise, Mr Hollobone. I thought you said clause 1.
The Chair
Because that particular opportunity was missed, we will ungroup—very kindly, on the Clerk’s advice—new clause 1 from that first group. When we come back to new clause 1 later in proceedings, the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak to it. His opportunity will come; it just has not come when we thought it would. We are now debating clause 2 stand part.
Eddie Hughes
You are very kind, Mr Hollobone. Clause 2 will be of significant interest as it sets out those leases not regulated by the Bill. We have taken care to tightly define these, as we are aware that any loopholes might lead to abuse of the system and a monetary ground rent being charged where we had not intended it. I will consider each of the exceptions in turn.
First, subsections (1) to (3) detail how business leases will be excepted. It is important that a commercial lease that contains a dwelling, such as for a shop or other business, can continue to operate as now, and that landlords of such buildings are not disadvantaged. Businesses are also likely to prefer to pay some form of rent rather than a premium for the use of the property. However, we also need to protect residential leaseholders from any argument by a landlord that a ground rent is payable because of the possibility of a business use. For that reason, subsection (1)(a) states that the lease must expressly permit the premises under the lease to be used for business purposes without further consent from the landlord.
In our response to the technical consultation on ground rent, published in June 2019, we committed that mixed-use leases would not be subject to a peppercorn rent. The example given was a flat above a shop, where these are both on the same lease. In such instances, it would be important that a commercial rent can continue to be paid, to reflect the business use of part of the building. However, we wish to ensure that the Bill does not result in a plethora of mixed-use leases that are to all intents dwellings but where the tenant pays a monetary ground rent. For this reason, subsection (1)(b) requires that, for such leases, the use of the premises as a dwelling must significantly contribute to the business purposes.
The Bill also includes provision to make sure that both parties intend and are aware of this business-use component of the lease. Subsection (1)(c) achieves this by requiring that the landlord and tenant exchange written notices at or before the lease is granted confirming the intention to use and continue to use the premises for the business purposes set out in the lease. The form of this notice will be prescribed in forthcoming regulations. Subsection (3) defines business as including a trade, profession or employment, but not a home business as under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
Statutory lease extensions for flats are already required to be at a peppercorn rent, so we have excepted them from the requirements of the Bill in order to avoid duplication. We will come to so-called voluntary lease extensions for flats when we consider clause 6. Statutory lease extensions for houses are required by legislation to be for 50 years for payment of no premium, but for a modern ground rent, which is typically higher than a peppercorn. Were the Bill to require that rent to be only a peppercorn, we would deprive the landlord of income for the granting of the lease extension. For that reason, those extensions are exempted from the Bill. However, we intend to return to the wider question of enfranchisement in future legislation. Our changes to the enfranchisement valuation process, including abolishing marriage value and prescribing rates, will result in substantial savings for some leaseholders, particularly those with less than 80 years left on their lease. The length of a statutory lease extension will increase to 990 years, from 90 years for flats and 50 years for houses.
I will turn now to community housing leases and other specialist products that we do not want to compromise. Community housing schemes promote the supply of new housing to meet local need where residents contribute towards the cost of shared community services. The use of ground rent in those cases is very different from ground rent for long residential leases where no clear service is provided in return. As we have done throughout clause 2, we have taken care to tightly define community housing leases to ensure that that exception applies only where intended. It covers long leases where the landlord is a community land trust, or the lease is a dwelling in a building that is controlled or managed by a co-operative society. We expect that to cover all deserving dwellings. We have also made provision, should it be needed, to add further conditions to those definitions in order to close a loophole should one be identified in future.
The clause also exempts certain financial products in cases where a form of rent is needed for the product to operate as intended. Subsection (9) defines them as regulated home reversion plans and homes bought using a rent to buy arrangement. It is important that those specialist financial products can continue, maximising choice for homeowners over how they finance their property purchase.
Maria Eagle
I think that many people who get involved in rent to buy perhaps do not understand that they may be excluded from that provision. I notice that the Minister is securing for himself some capacity to make regulations in future in relation to those particular types of leases. Could he give the Committee an indication of what kinds of regulations he anticipates will be made under the power that the Bill will grant him in respect of those particular kinds of rent to buy leases?
Eddie Hughes
I am embarrassed to say that I cannot, and the reason is that we do not know what the loopholes might be. We have a clever bunch of people who seek to avoid legislation. It will be helpful for the Government to be able to make such changes as might be necessary depending on the inventiveness of the people we deal with in future.
Maria Eagle
I am grateful to the Minister; it is remarkably honest of him to say that he does not know. One does not always hear that from Ministers, but am I getting the sense that the intent is to ensure that there is not some kind of workaround to the regulations and to the law, and that the intention is to protect those who have taken out rent to buy plans from oppressive provisions by landlords to charge some kind of ground rent, which the Bill is seeking to get rid of generally?
Eddie Hughes
On the intent, there are some financial products that we have exempted because the structure of their operation is dependent on the continuation of rent payments, but the opportunity is to make regulation in the future should people, for example, pretend to be something they are not, or try to do so. If we have the opportunity to close that down, I think that will be the intention. I feel that the hon. Lady could be building a case for future interventions—we will see. I think she is gathering evidence.
Subsection (9)(a) is clear that in order to benefit from this exemption, home reversion plan products must be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Subsection (10) defines a rent to buy arrangement, ensuring that arrangements such as Sharia mortgages are able to continue. It is important that the Bill enables legitimate activities that require payment of a rent to continue, which clause 2 does in a carefully considered way that has been informed by detailed consultation. The clause is drafted to enable such activities but with tight definitions, ensuring that the clause is not used by landlords to charge a ground rent by the back door.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the Minister for his explanation. I understand the exemptions and I am pleased that they are limited in scope. What reassurance can he give that there will be no unintended consequences in community housing, for example? He referred to ground rent as a means of recovering service charges. That has been a problem for the industry over a considerable number of years.
Eddie Hughes
It is important to point out that the Bill does not cover service charges. In the other areas that we are talking about, ground rent is paid for no discernible benefit in return, but in a community land trust there is the benefit of a shared endeavour to create high-quality community housing, so I do not think the hon. Gentleman’s concern applies.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Prohibited rent
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 3 prohibits a landlord from requiring a leaseholder to make a payment of a prohibited rent. Subsection (2) defines that as making a request that the leaseholder make the payment, and/or having received a payment of prohibited rent, failing to return it within 28 days. To ensure that landlords are held accountable for their actions, we have made a conscious decision to include current and former landlords in the Bill. That will ensure that our enforcement measures, which are detailed later in the Bill, can be used in circumstances where a landlord has sold their interest in the property.
Having focused on landlords, I now turn to those we are seeking to protect. I am sure that the Committee will agree that the protective reach of the Bill should extend beyond current leaseholders who remain leaseholders when the wrongful payment is identified. A leaseholder who has sold the lease, for example, should none the less be able to seek redress if they subsequently realise that their former lease contained a prohibited rent. That is why subsection (3) ensures that the protections afforded to leaseholders also apply to previous leaseholders, a person acting on behalf of a leaseholder, and a leaseholder’s guarantor.
Clause 3 is the foundation for restricting unjustifiable rents for future regulated leases.
Maria Eagle
What limitations will there be on the provisions? Are we talking about the limitation in contract law? How long would a former landlord be under obligation to repay a prohibited payment that he had required, and how long would the former tenant be able to recover it? It is unusual to see a provision stating that
“references to a landlord include a person who has ceased to be a landlord”,
but there is usually some limitation to the liability. Does the Minister have an answer for that?
Eddie Hughes
I am worried that my candid responses to questions are going to get me in trouble, but the honest answer is that I do not know what the limitation is. I will write to the hon. Lady to let her know.
Eddie Hughes
I strongly suspect, however, that the very clever team behind me will provide the answer, and that I will be able to inform the hon. Lady during discussions on a subsequent clause.
The Chair
Please copy in the whole Committee to that correspondence if it is necessary.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Permitted rent: general rule
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 4 introduces the general rule for regulated leases that the permitted rent is an annual rent of one peppercorn. The effect of that is that no monetary rent will be payable in respect of most leases regulated by the Bill.
Clause 4(1) provides that this general rule is subject to clauses 5 and 6, which set out special rules on permitted rent applicable to shared ownership properties and replacement leases respectively. Use of a peppercorn rent is common practice; for example, it is used in statutory lease extensions for flats. A peppercorn is simply a token or nominal rent that in practice is not collected. The purpose of clause 4 is to protect leaseholders from being charged inappropriate rents by landlords.
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill will help my constituents who have suffered in recent years from rising and excessive ground rents, and will help to prevent people from falling into the leasehold tenancy trap that we have also seen in recent years?
Eddie Hughes
The Bill will help to ensure that new long leases granted subsequent to the Bill’s coming into force are set at a peppercorn rate—so, with no financial value associated with them.
Maria Eagle
Does the Minister accept that none the less the Bill, welcome as it is, does not help existing tenants who have already signed leases for which ground rent is payable?
Eddie Hughes
The hon. Lady is quite right. The intended purpose of the Bill, very tightly drafted as it is, is to ensure that we draw a line in the sand by ensuring that new leases in the future have a peppercorn rate. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the Minister for his brief explanation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood quite elaborately argued, this Bill is not about the many; it is just about the new. There are 1.5 million people who will still be in this system, many of whom write to us asking for us to advocate for them in this place. It is a particular issue in the north and north-west, and Wales. This Bill will do nothing for those people. In addition there is a plethora of complexities associated with the Bill—service charges, interesting management fees and so on—which we have spoken about at considerable length. So, while the Bill is welcome, it is narrow in scope and certainly does not deal with the situation here and now.
Maria Eagle
I very much welcome the intent of the Bill, which is to replace the standard charging of ground rent of real monetary value to leaseholders with a peppercorn rent. I welcome that very much; it is an entirely good and proper reform. Anybody who has had to deal with land law over the years—whether as a lawyer, or just as an MP trying to advise constituents—knows just how complicated it is to change these ancient and difficult land law provisions, which go back to feudal times in many ways and which very much have case law behind them. As we can see from this simple Bill alone, significant provisions have to be added to do the simplest things. I have every sympathy with the Minister, who has a record of trying to grapple with the complexities of English land law since he was Back Bencher. It is by no means easy.
I welcome, generally, clause 4, which reduces to a mere peppercorn the ground rent that is chargeable for new leaseholders. That is entirely to be welcomed. However, I want to set out to the Minister the difficulties that many of my constituents have. Thousands of them have in the last few years bought leasehold houses. This is particularly an issue in the north-west. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale rightly said, there has arisen a penchant for selling newly built, often detached houses as leasehold properties. That has, and can only have been to enable the freehold—the reversionary interest—to be turned into a financial product that, over years, often decades, provides a stream of income for whoever retains the reversionary interest, who is often not the original developer or builder of the properties. It is sold on in financial markets to those who are interested in long-term investments providing a stream of income.
Many of my constituents, trapped in such leases, had no idea when they bought the houses that that would be the case, and that they would owe obligations for decades to whoever held the reversionary interest. They had absolutely no idea that the person who held the reversionary interest could change, and that it would be traded on financial markets and bought by people who wanted to exploit to the maximum the provision for income generation over years. The Bill, unfortunately, does not help any of my constituents who are stuck in such provision.
I am entirely in favour of changing that provision by means of the Bill, which I welcome, but there is an argument to say that the Bill actually makes things startlingly worse for those already trapped in such leasehold provisions that have ground rent and sometimes accelerated ground rent. It makes starker the fact that it is anomalous. I have many constituents on a number of estates across my constituency of Garston and Halewood who are finding it difficult to sell their properties. They have suddenly realised that they do not own a house, as they thought they did, but that they are renting it.
I am extremely anxious that the Minister does not rest on his laurels, having got this complicated piece of simple legislation through the House and on to the statute book, but that he realises that there is so much more to do to assist those who are stuck—particularly in my constituency and in the north-west—in newly built houses that they now find they do not really own. They are being financially exploited by remote owners of a reversionary interest that will endure for perhaps 99 or 999 years.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill, by doing the right thing for new houses, will actually make the situation even worse for those who are in existing houses, because potential entrants into the housing market will choose to buy a new leasehold house that is covered by these provisions, rather than a house that her constituent may wish to sell that is under the existing provision?
Maria Eagle
That is the very concern that I have. It not only shines a light on the dilemma and the problems of current leaseholders, who will not be covered by these provisions, but sets theirs up as an anomalous set of arrangements. Until the Minister comes back with legislation to change more thoroughly what has happened in existing cases, which I know will be difficult, these people will be in a more difficult position than they currently are. Not only will they have the ongoing financial burden of the exploitative provisions that have grown up, particularly in the north-west of England, but they will find themselves left behind. The danger is that the Minister may have to move on to other legislation of concern in his Department, and may find that doing something for existing leaseholders is very difficult in land law terms. I know it is difficult to change existing leases by statute.
Mike Amesbury
On Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) highlighted the issue that could arise where, within a single development, on one side of the road would be properties built in its first phase, under the current arrangements, and on the other side of the road properties built in the next phase, under the new arrangements. It is simply inequitable. When people come to market, which property will they purchase? The Minister is familiar with these issues, and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood is right that they need tackling, despite the difficulty.
Maria Eagle
I have every sympathy with that point because I know of examples in my constituency. In the past few years, as these egregious excesses were coming to light and before legislation could be drafted, the Government have tried to impress upon developers that they should not do this kind of thing, and there have been voluntary arrangements. House builders have made voluntary arrangements, sometimes midway through the completion of a phased development, such that some buyers of properties built in the early phases of a development have had to pay ground rent, or accelerating ground rent, service charges and some of the other things that have not been dealt with in this legislation, but in later phases that has not been the case; so there is a difference between properties—even those built to the same design in different phases of one development.
One could say that caveat emptor is the basis of land law in England. It is indeed: “Let the buyer beware.” However, I have a lot of sympathy with constituents of mine who were rushed into buying a property so that they could access Help to Buy, who were first-time buyers, who had not done a degree in English land law before they sought to become homeowners—which, let us face it, is most people—and who relied upon the advice they were given. I have many criticisms of the legal profession and the solicitors—even conveyancers—who advised some of my constituents, because it seems to me that there has been a potential failing, in some cases, there.
In any case, the Minister has come to this, wanting to do something about it—indeed he has drawn a line in the sand, as he said—but he must not forget those individuals that, in drawing the line, he has not helped, and who may in fact find their predicament more starkly highlighted, and may find it more difficult to move on and sell the property that they now have than they would have done without this legislation.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making excellent points. Does she agree that there is a real human cost to this? I know of people living in my constituency who have properties elsewhere in the country, predominantly in the south, who decided to move back to Wirral because that is where they are from, only to discover that they are struggling to sell their properties. Quite often such moves are to look after an elderly family member or for similar reasons, so time is of the essence. Does she agree that we have to remember the human cost?
Maria Eagle
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I have come across many instances myself. Perhaps a young couple, just starting out in life and on the housing ladder, wanting to be able to trade up in time when they start their family, suddenly find that they cannot because their home—their leasehold home—is of pariah status and they find it difficult to persuade somebody else to buy it. I worry that this legislation, welcome though it is—it is a good step: I emphasise that to the Minister—shines a starker light on the predicament that these people are in. It is therefore incumbent upon the Minister and the Government, who have been talking about this issue for a number of years—I am trying to be kind, Mr Hollobone—to come back swiftly with effective and challenging legislation that will do something for the people who are already stuck in this mess.
What we cannot do is say, “Oh, it’s all too difficult.” It is difficult, but as lawmakers, we are here to solve these problems. I will give every support to the Minister if he can come back, ignoring the lawyers who tell him that it is all too terribly difficult and nothing can possibly be done that would not tear up our entire English land law system of trading land. Something can and must be done. He will have my support if he comes back with much fuller legislation to deal with the existing problems of those who are already caught in this situation. Peppercorns are great. Perhaps we can have retrospective peppercornery.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to have you as Chair of the Committee, Mr Hollobone. I welcome the Bill and the Government’s obvious determination to ensure that buyers of new developments will be protected from what I can only describe as dodgy practices.
Having looked into the issue before coming to Committee, and knowing bits and pieces from the media coverage of this story in recent years, I find it shocking that property developers and renowned house builders have thought it acceptable to expect families or individuals buying a property—we all know how expensive that can be; people save for years to have enough for a deposit—to be hit with a ground rent that they do not know is going to double and double over the years. I absolutely welcome the Minister’s determination to stop that practice.
I call on house builders across the nation to think about the consequences of such practices on their customers, and their future customers. I know that a number of house builders have taken steps to stop this practice. I believe that the Competition and Markets Authority is carrying out an investigation and that some, but not enough, house builders have stopped the practice voluntarily. That is why I am glad that the Bill will protect us in the future.
I was taken aback by the fact that the chief executive of Redrow, a renowned house builder, said in a letter to the then Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government that ground rent of £400 per year would not always necessarily double over 10 years, but in fact could reach £12,800 a year. For the average family, the idea of trying to find that amount of money is eye-watering. Even people on good salaries would find that amount punitive. I absolutely welcome the Bill. We must regulate to safeguard hard-working families who want to invest in homes.
Mike Amesbury
I have no doubt that members across the Committee agree with much of what the hon. Lady says, but these measures are for the future, not for the here and now. The CMA investigation is very welcome, as is the work by the Select Committee and all the campaigners who have helped to force the issue, but many people are still applying these practices. Welcome though they are, these are baby steps.
Nickie Aiken
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention; I was coming to that point. In my constituency—the Cities of London and Westminster—many leaseholders live in properties with much older tenancies that involve ground rent. I believe the vast majority are on peppercorn. I have lived in the two Cities for 25 years, as a leaseholder and now, I am glad to say, as a freeholder. There is a massive benefit to being a freeholder, even though I own a flat.
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I am sure that this Government and this Minister will be looking at legislation that can protect all leaseholders, no matter what kind of tenancy they have. I understand that the renters reform Bill will be coming through, which will be a massive step towards creating a balance between tenants and landlords. This Bill and any further legislation that the Government consider on leasehold are about balance and fairness. I welcome the Minister’s taking forward this Bill and future legislation to protect leaseholders.
Eddie Hughes
The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood referred to my previous interest in this subject as a Back-Bench MP. It is an incredible privilege to have championed changes in this area and now to be the Minister responsible for it. I can assure her that my enthusiasm for greater reform is not diminished in any way by my having the opportunity to, at least, begin the legislative process now.
I have a huge degree of sympathy with the cases that have been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the room. It is incumbent upon us, as a Government, to ensure that we do not rest on our laurels, but continue to push and be bold with legislation in the future. Certainly, that has been the case with regard to things that have been said by our previous and current Secretaries of State. The current Secretary of State is determined to be bold and ambitious in all things for which he has responsibility, and I would like to think that we will have further discussions about this subject early in the new year.
Maria Eagle
I am glad to hear it. Does the Minister expect more legislation in this Session?
Eddie Hughes
It is above my pay grade to make those sorts of decisions, but I will be working very closely—
Eddie Hughes
Perhaps one day they will make me Secretary of State and I will be able to make those decisions myself, Mr Hollobone—don’t laugh. As I said, it is our intention to come forward with proposals, so we will be talking again in the new year and discussing this in detail.
Mike Amesbury
On a point of clarity, will the legislation apply to properties that are currently being built, whether they are in Birmingham, Westminster or Manchester? Will the narrow scope of the one peppercorn policy apply to properties that are being built, but are not yet completed?
Eddie Hughes
As I referred to in the discussions about previous clauses, I believe that the legislation will apply once it has been enacted following Royal Assent, so it will apply to new contracts that come into force once the Act is in force. It would not necessarily apply to a property that is being bought today. It will apply only once the law has been enacted. We will have Royal Assent, legislation will be provided and then it will be enacted.
Eddie Hughes
Sorry, Mr Hollobone. I thought you had already decided that you were going to call my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) next.
The Chair
As the Chair, it is not for me to call people but for the person who has the floor to decide who they will give way to.
Eddie Hughes
I defer to you in all things, Mr Hollobone, and I feel better educated. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border.
Dr Hudson
It is great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I welcome the Minister’s comments and the Bill, as well as the constructive comments from the Opposition. We are all on the same page and think that this constructive Bill is a small step towards correcting future injustices.
I take on board the complexities for people in the existing system, but in respect of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, does the Minister agree that if we can get the Bill through, it will shine a spotlight on developers that have existing leaseholders and they may well reflect, so this Bill for new leaseholders might create some retrospective good will? It is a start, and I welcome the comment from the Minister that we can try to address things moving forward. I very much welcome the Bill, and I hope that it will start to address some of the retrospective issues indirectly.
Eddie Hughes
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are signalling strong intent by virtue of introducing the Bill, which backs up the suggestions we have made previously about our intent. With regards to other pronouncements that the Government have made, I think people will rightly expect that legislation will follow in due course. My hon. Friend is completely right.
Lilian Greenwood
I wish to follow up on the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood. Clearly, the Bill will apply only from the date that it receives Royal Assent. Is the Minister concerned that some developers that have acted in unscrupulous ways that the Bill is designed to prevent will see the deadline of Royal Assent as an opportunity to place more people in the position that has been outlined by my hon. Friends and Government Members? Developers might try to get in before the deadline of Royal Assent, rather than taking the message that these sorts of leaseholds should not be offered and are inappropriate. What discussions has the Minister had with developers, and what sense does he have of whether people will act opportunistically?
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution but, fortunately, the evidence does not back up the concern she has voiced. We saw a prevalence of this type of construction. That has peaked, and now its popularity is decreasing, so we already see that developers understand that, effectively, the game is up and the world has moved on. I would like to think that, thanks to the efforts of hon. Members in this room, we are publicising the Bill and our constituents will become better informed as a result of our contributions to the debate. Hopefully, that will serve to protect them.
Mike Amesbury
Some developers have responded to the change in landscape and enforcement action with strong encouragement, but others out there have not done so. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South is correct to say that this is another opportunity to get developments erected as soon as possible. We need only look at the skylines across our cities to see that happening, and some developers will want to continue with that cash cow at the expense of leaseholders. It is a real fear, and I would certainly welcome a Government assessment of the impact in that transitional period.
Eddie Hughes
As I said in answer to the previous question, we can already see—not just now, but over the previous few years—that there has been a rapid decrease in the number of properties being constructed and subsequently sold in this way, so the hon. Gentleman should feel reassured that the Government’s intended legislation is already having an incredibly positive effect.
Nickie Aiken
Following the previous point, does the Minister agree that the conduct of house builders such as Countryside Properties, which has voluntarily agreed to remove the doubling of ground rents from its leasehold contracts, is a step forward? The Home Builders Federation or another trade body should be working with its members to take that forward, as Countryside Properties and others have done, but too many house builders are still not doing so. Perhaps the CMA review will help, but perhaps the Bill will send a clear message to house builders that, actually, they should be looking at their own practices before they are made to do so by the legislation.
Eddie Hughes
I can say nothing other than that I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s comments.
Maria Eagle
We have to have proper scrutiny. There has been a general hope expressed by the hon. Members for Penrith and The Border and for Cities of London and Westminster that this legislation, rather than highlighting the difficulties existing leaseholders have and putting them in a more difficult position, may promote better behaviour towards existing leaseholders from those who are in a position to exploit them. We hope that that will be the case. Do the Government collect any figures that they might publish to enable us to see whether there is the positive impact hoped for by Conservative Members? Does the Minister have any figures that show that is the case—or are we just crossing our fingers and hoping?
Eddie Hughes
The figures are already publicly available.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Permitted rent: shared ownership leases
Mike Amesbury
I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 5, page 4, line 7, at end insert “, unless subsection (2A) applies”.
This is a paving amendment for Amendment 13
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 13, in clause 5, page 4, line 7, at end insert—
“(2A) Where a landlord charges a service charge more than £100 per month, the permitted rent in respect of the landlord’s share in the demised premises is a peppercorn.”
This amendment provides that a landlord of a shared ownership property may not charge ground rent in respect of the landlord’s share if service charges exceed £100 per month.
Mike Amesbury
The amendments were tabled to raise the issue of the often sky-high service charges in shared ownership property—often with little given back in return. I could list any number of examples and am confident that other Members in the room could as well. The Minister will have heard, as I did, the many stories about the extortionate costs faced by shared owners, other leaseholders and social housing residents. The errors are often only exposed when residents, facing costs they cannot afford, lobby hard for information and transparency.
We have heard it all: service charges for shared owners in Kent tripling in one year; leaseholders in Essex being charged £4,275, plus VAT, per year for ground maintenance, when a local landscaping company quoted £660 per year for the same work—something that I discussed with my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood only this morning; and leaseholders in south London being charged over 400% more for their cleaning costs than they were in 2013. I know that inflation is increasing at the moment but—my God—not by that level. To get in the Christmas spirit, a rather festive example stood out to me in the Financial Times, which published an article over the summer about residents in central London being charged £200,000 for Christmas lights, without being consulted in advance.
Those costs impact on leaseholders, and some social housing tenants as well. For shared owners, a particular concern is being charged 100% of the service costs while only owning a small portion of the property. We have seen that up and down the country through the building safety scandal and historical remediation costs. The Opposition welcome the narrow scope of the Bill on peppercorn ground rents, but the fear is that there will be other means or opportunities to rake in the money, and to continue treating leaseholders as a cash cow.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 5 is essential if the Bill is to avoid creating unintended consequences for future shared ownership leases. It will protect leaseholders by ensuring that they pay only a peppercorn rent on their share of the property, but it will also allow landlords to collect a monetary rent on their own share. Without the clause, landlords could not collect a monetary rent on the share of the property that is rented.
Clause 5 applies to qualifying shared ownership leases. Subsection (4) defines a qualifying shared ownership lease as one in which the tenant’s share of the premises is less than 100%. Subsection (7) clarifies that, in a situation in which a shared ownership lease does not distinguish between rent on the tenant’s share and rent on the landlord’s share, any rent payable under the lease is to be treated as payable in respect of the landlord’s share. Subsection (8) means that the clause no longer applies if clause 6 applies. For example, if the leaseholder undertakes a so-called voluntary lease extension in regard to a shared ownership lease, where the leaseholder chooses to enter into a new lease that replaces an existing lease outside the statutory lease extension process, the treatment of that is dealt with under clause 6. We will consider clause 6 shortly.
Clause 5 ensures that the shared ownership model can continue to operate for new leases.
The Chair
Order. The Minister is meant to be speaking about the amendment rather than the clause. Does he have any more comments about the amendment?
Eddie Hughes
About the amendments, Mr Hollobone. Amendments 11 and 13, tabled by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, seek to reduce the payment of rent on a shared ownership property. Shared owners are leaseholders of a share of their property. Most shared ownership properties fall within the terms of the Government’s shared ownership scheme, and the providers will be registered with the Regulator of Social Housing. In the Government’s existing shared ownership scheme, owners have a full repairing lease and are financially responsible for all maintenance charges and outgoings in the same way that any other homeowner is.
On 1 April, the Government confirmed the new model for shared ownership, which introduces a 10-year period during which the landlord will support the cost of repairs and maintenance on new build homes. Under the shared ownership model, landlords can collect rent on their share of the property, and I reiterate that the Bill will allow them to continue to do so. The payment of rent reflects the fact that the shared owner has purchased a share of their home, and pays rent on the remaining share, which is owned by their landlord. The rent paid is not the same as the service charge paid for repairs and maintenance previously described.
The effect of amendments 11 and 13 would be to remove the ability of a landlord to receive the rent that they are rightly due on the share of the property that the leaseholder rents in cases in which the service charge is more than £100 per month. The law is clear that service charges must be reasonable and that, where costs relate to work or services, the work or services must be of a reasonable standard.
Nickie Aiken
I just wish to mention service charges in central London, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale did. I am very aware of extortionate service charges in central London, particularly for private blocks. Service charges of £100,000 are not unknown, but the properties in those cases are worth around £35 million; I suggest that, if someone can afford to buy a £35 million flat, they may be able to afford a £100,000 service charge. However, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale makes an important point, and I would like the Minister to consider it. We must not put all service charges into the same pot. We have to ensure that homes within the community—rent to buy, social housing and community housing—are different from very expensive properties. We cannot put them all into the same position. We must give landlords the ability to charge a fair service charge that is in keeping with the value of the home. There has to be a balance. There is a big difference between a £35 million flat and a rent-to-buy property.
Eddie Hughes
I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point, and I appreciate the extenuating circumstances that might apply to some of the properties in her constituency. We certainly do not experience that in Walsall North.
The amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale would be unfair to shared ownership landlords and would therefore undermine confidence in the sector. I urge the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.
Mike Amesbury
The evidence out there grows by the week. There is a genuine fear that landlords, freeholders and developers will look for other opportunities in response to the legislation. We already see those service charges up and down the country. I know it is a particular issue in London and the south-east, but every city across the country has seen some interesting non-transparent service charges—that includes estates and houses.
Maria Eagle
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that the Committee prevents the inclusion of loopholes in the Bill that could be widened by clever lawyers and then exploited by developers and those with a financial interest in keeping things as they are? His proposals are trying to prevent loopholes from being left in this admirable but small piece of legislation.
Mike Amesbury
I concur. That is exactly my point. I know that a similar amendment was tabled in the other place, as the Minister will be aware. We certainly need reassurance. There are lots of good intentions from the Minister and his Department with regard to this legislation, but we need to look at every opportunity to close those loopholes. I would like to have further discussions as the Bill continues its parliamentary journey—it is a conversation we need to continue. However, in that spirit, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mike Amesbury
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 5, page 4, line 7, at end insert “, unless subsection (2B) applies”.
This is a paving amendment for Amendment 14.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 14, in clause 5, page 4, line 7, at end insert—
“(2B) Where a landlord charges any remedial costs during the course of the lease, the permitted rent in respect of the landlord’s share in the demised premises is a peppercorn.”
This amendment provides that a landlord of a shared ownership property may not charge ground rent in respect of the landlord’s share if any remedial costs are charged.
Mike Amesbury
Taken together, the amendments revisit a question that I have posed to Ministers many a time in previous debates in Committee, on Second Reading and so forth: what about the costs of remediation for leaseholders? It is something we are all familiar with—here in Committee and well beyond—in particular for leaseholders caught in the scandal. We are of course waiting for the next stage of the Building Safety Bill—Report—in the Commons after spending many weeks in Committee. I see the Minister and some other familiar faces. While we wait, hundreds of thousands of leaseholders are receiving bills for astronomical amounts of money to remediate dangerously cladded housing. The cost is for more than cladding, as many people know—there are missing fire breaks, wooden balconies and so forth. Some of the bills top £100,000. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles—a not too far distant neighbour—is very familiar with those kinds of bills in her constituency.
The cost of remediation on shared owners’ shoulders can equal the value of their share of the property. Again, shared ownership leaseholders are too often charged 100% of the remediation cost for properties that they own only a small proportion of. Meanwhile, the associated costs of the building safety crisis, such as waking watch and insurance premiums continue to go up—we have examples of 1,000% and 1,400% right across the country. Despite repeated promises from Ministers—at my last count we were at 19 if I include the new Secretary of State—the issue is very much ongoing.
The amendment will not solve the problem. The Opposition have repeatedly set out a plan to get the building safety crisis fixed and ensure that developers, not leaseholders, bear the brunt of the costs. I am interested in the recent language from the Secretary of State in that regard. He seems to say some of the right things—there are some warm words—but we are now desperate for action. The amendment would at least ensure that shared ownership leaseholders cannot be charged for ground rents while they are also being charged for remediation work, taking one of the many costs of the crisis off their shoulders. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lilian Greenwood
I certainly recognise the situation that my hon. Friend describes. I have a large number of constituents living in flats and being asked to pay astronomical costs for the remediation of their properties for which they bear no responsibility. Will he clarify whether the amendment would apply only where remediation costs are unfairly distributed between the freeholder and leaseholder, or would it apply in all situations where leaseholders are being asked to pay remediation costs?
Mike Amesbury
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. This is about historical remediation costs, but it is a good point to raise. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Eddie Hughes
Amendments 12 and 14, proposed by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, seek to reduce the payment of rent on a shared ownership property in different circumstances. As I have said, in the Government’s existing shared ownership scheme, owners have a full repairing lease and pay rent on the landlord’s share of the property. The role of ensuring that the fabric of the building is maintained and safe for residents is an essential part of the relationship between landlord, leaseholder and, in some cases, a managing agent. Reasonable service charges remain the proper and accountable way through which landlords should recover costs for maintaining a building and provision of services.
I reiterate that the Bill is focused entirely on the issue of ground rents, so remediation costs are outside its scope. The Building Safety Bill is the appropriate legislative mechanism for addressing remediation, as it contains the appropriately detailed legislation for a complex issue of this nature. I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.
Mike Amesbury
We will put this to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Eddie Hughes
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 6, page 4, line 30, after first ‘of’ insert ‘premises which consist of, or include,’.
This amendment clarifies that clause 6 can apply to a replacement lease which includes some premises not demised by the pre-commencement lease.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 4.
Government amendment 5.
Clause stand part.
Eddie Hughes
Earlier, we considered amendments 1 and 2, which relate to disapplying the premium requirement for a lease where there is deemed surrender and regrant. This set of amendments is also connected to the deemed surrender and regrant process, but more specifically, they clarify the matter raised by Lord Etherton with regard to a lease variation.
As currently drafted, it was not clear, where there was a pre-commencement lease where a demise was changed, whether such leases would be captured by clause 6. It was raised in the other place that, if not, any existing ground rent in those leases would be reduced to a peppercorn. We recognise that that might make some landlords reluctant to agree to such changes, thereby disadvantaging their leaseholders, which is not the Bill’s intention. The amendments make clear that the demise of a lease can be changed and the resulting surrender and regrant will not reduce the ground rent on the balance of the term of the pre-commencement lease to a peppercorn.
Any extension to the term of the pre-commencement lease will be required to be a peppercorn, in the same way as for voluntary lease extension. By clarifying that ground rent in pre-commencement leases can continue in this way, the amendment ensures that freeholders need not withhold consent for a lease variation unnecessarily. It also ensures that there is a consistent approach towards existing leaseholders throughout the Bill. As with amendments 1 and 2, the amendments are designed to avoid unintended consequences.
Maria Eagle
I just want a little clarity from the Minister about the circumstances in which this extensive clause would apply. Is the amendment seeking to exclude just the issue of a voluntary lease variation? One might argue, quite plausibly, that any kind of leasehold is entirely voluntary, because the parties to the lease voluntarily sign it—caveat emptor and all that. One can say that any signature of a lease is voluntary in that sense.
Eddie Hughes
I am incredibly concerned that the hon. Lady has me at a disadvantage with regard to her legal expertise. However, I think we understand and accept the distinction between voluntary and statutory when it comes to lease extensions. This principle is well understood within the legal profession. I understand the concern she raises, but I feel it is misplaced, or at least should be assuaged. The intention of the measures is to close a loophole so that people are not deterred in any way from granting a lease extension because they feel they will be disadvantaged as a result.
I beg your indulgence, Chair, to say that, on the hon. Lady’s previous concern about how far back people could go when making a claim if a leasehold has been sold, my understanding is that the statute of limitations will apply, which is generally within six years.
Mike Amesbury
To pick up on the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood on “voluntary”, a freeholder might offer a seemingly reasonable deal to voluntarily and formally extend a lease, but there is a real risk that elements of that could have a premium applied and ground rent could continue. What reassurance is there that that cannot happen? We have seen lots of examples of that. The mis-selling of leasehold properties was mentioned, which the Competition and Markets Authority has investigated and seen evidence of, and which we are all familiar with from constituents. If there is any possibility of a loophole here to do that, unfortunately there are people in this field who will do it, so again it is about that reassurance that the measure closes down those potential loopholes.
Eddie Hughes
I think the hon. Member should be reassured. However, to ensure that that is the case, the Government will communicate regularly and frequently with professional legal bodies to ensure that they understand the case completely. No matter what legislation we introduce, it will not be possible to get away from the fact that, in seeking to enter into a legal contract, members of the public should engage good, independent legal advice. Unfortunately, some people will not and will be disadvantaged as a result.
Mike Amesbury
That goes back to the point that, at the end, people seemed to seek legal advice, which they thought was independent and objective, but clearly it was not. This is about that reassurance. On behalf of our constituents, many of whom are trapped in that situation and still somewhat nervous, I seek that reassurance.
Eddie Hughes
I feel that the clause strikes the right balance between, first, ensuring that the loophole is closed and, secondly, landlords feeling reassured that they will not be disadvantaged in any way by granting a lease extension. I think that both the points that the hon. Gentleman made are covered.
Amendment 3 agreed to.
Amendments made: 4, in clause 6, page 4, line 39, after “period” insert “(if any)”.
This amendment clarifies that clause 6 can apply to a replacement lease for a term that does not extend beyond the end of the term of the pre-commencement lease.
Amendment 5, in clause 6, page 5, line 7, after first “of” insert—
“premises which consist of, or include,”.—(Eddie Hughes.)
This amendment clarifies that clause 6(5) can apply to a new lease which includes some premises not demised by the lease to which subsection (2) applied.
Clause 6, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7
Term reserving prohibited rent treated as reserving permitted rent
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 7 will apply if a regulated lease includes a prohibited rent. Should a lease include such a rent, the effect of the clause is that the term in the lease is in effect replaced by the correct rent term under clauses 4, 5 or 6 of the Bill.
The clause means that, should a lease include a prohibited rent, there is no requirement on the leaseholder to pay that rent. Any requirement in the lease to pay a prohibited rent has effect as if it were a requirement to pay the relevant permitted rent as established under the Bill.
Later in the Bill, with clause 16—in a moment—we will come to the provision in the Bill that enables a leaseholder to seek a declaration from the first-tier tribunal as to the effect of clause 7 on their lease. Clause 7 is important because it has the effect of immediately rectifying, in law, any lease that includes a prohibited rent.
Clause 16 is an important measure to ensure that parties to a lease can seek clarity as to whether a term in the lease is a prohibited rent and, if so, what the permitted rent is. Clause 7, as the Committee will recall, sets out the rent that should apply in cases where a lease reserves a prohibited rent. We expect that in most cases the effect of the clause will be clear, and that the landlord will accept that a prohibited rent is not enforceable. However, where that is not the case, clause 16 means that a leaseholder, or landlord, can apply to the appropriate tribunal for a declaration. If the tribunal is satisfied that the lease includes a prohibited rent, it must make a declaration as to the effect of clause 7 on the lease. In other words, the tribunal must also clarify what rent is payable.
Under clause 16(3), where there are two or more leases with the same landlord, it will be possible for a single application to be made. That may be made either by the landlord or by one of the leaseholders with the consent of the others. That will mean that if there are several properties in the same block, or perhaps in different blocks but with the same landlord, it will not be necessary for a separate application to be made in respect of each lease.
Clause 16 also states that where the lease is registered in the leaseholder’s name with the Land Registry, the tribunal may direct the landlord to apply to the Chief Land Registrar—the Land Registry—for the declaration to be entered on the registered title. The landlord must also pay the appropriate fee of about £40 for that. This will ensure that there is a record of the declaration for any successor in title to the lease. It will also mean that if the leaseholder wishes to sell, the true position will be clear to their purchaser’s conveyancer.
In the case that the tribunal does not direct the landlord to apply to the Land Registry, the leaseholder may do so themselves. That will involve the payment of a modest fee of around £40. I hope that we can agree that it is important that a leaseholder does not encounter difficulties when selling and that future leaseholders clearly benefit from the actions taken to address the prohibited rent included in their lease. The clause achieves that by ensuring that the correct position in relation to ground rent under their lease can be made clear on the register of title.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the Minister for his explanation. If we look at the evidence provided by the National Leasehold Campaign and the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, and take our mind back to the Select Committee call for evidence, I think in 2018, which I know he had a keen interest in at the time, there was a real concern about access to tribunals. Decisions seemed to be weighted against leaseholders. On the worry about access to, and supported provided to, tribunals, what reassurance can he give that the situation can improve as a result of the changing legal landscape?
Maria Eagle
I wish to ask the Minister a question. I apologise to him; obviously we have not yet reached the debate on the commencement provisions, but he might be able to enlighten us on the Government’s intention. Clearly, it is entirely welcome that clause 7 would simply replace the unfair term in the lease that asks for real money for ground rent rather than the peppercorn, which the legislation is intended to outlaw, but the commencement provisions are not totally clear about when that provision will be commenced.
My understanding is that there will be a regulation-making power for the Government to bring into force the Act on the day that they wish to do so. My concern about not being clearer about when clause 7 comes into force is that there may be a gap between when the Bill is passed and when the clause is commenced by the Government, because they will have to make a regulation to do so. Does that leave a space for unscrupulous landlords to continue to have unfair contract terms in their leases after Royal Assent but before the commencement of the legislation?
I wonder whether the Minister could assuage concerns by making it clear that it is the Government’s intention not to have a big gap between Royal Assent and commencement such that a loophole could be created in which clause 7 has not yet been commenced, preventing unscrupulous characters who may want to induce potential tenants into leases with contract terms that would be outlawed by the Bill from doing so. A simple commitment from him that there will be no such gap would satisfy me entirely.
Eddie Hughes
We are here to help. Lord Greenhalgh has already said in the other place that that gap would be no more than six months.
Eddie Hughes
Given the pace at which legislation moves, that feels to me quite quick. With regard to the concerns of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale about the tribunal, I guess time will tell. We will need to monitor the situation closely, to ensure that people have access to tribunals. We are expecting the number of cases covered by this legislation to be relatively small. Given that the Government have signalled their intent, we have already seen reactions in the market, but I would look forward to working closely with the hon. Member, should concerns arise in future, in order for us to address them collectively.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Duty to inform the tenant
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
Is the Government Minister absolutely sure that he wants to vote aye to clause 8?
The Chair
I will suspend the Committee until this matter is resolved, which I hope will be done extremely quickly.
The Chair
I am going to start that debate again. We now come to the Question that clause 8 stand part of the Bill. I call the Minister.
Eddie Hughes
Mr Hollobone, I apologise sincerely for that small confusion on my part.
Clause 8 imposes on landlords a duty to inform whereby they are required to inform an existing leaseholder of the changes introduced by the Act, but only if those provisions in the Act have not yet come into force. This amendment was passed in the other place, and I support the principles behind the Lords amendment. It is vital that there is transparency in the leasehold system. However, there are doubts as to whether the amendment is the most effective means of achieving that objective. As drafted, it places a duty on all landlords. The amendment does not specify how—
Maria Eagle
Does the Minister mean the clause? I cannot see an amendment to clause 8.
The Chair
Order. What we are debating now is that clause 8 stand part of the Bill. No amendment has been moved to clause 8. We are debating whether clause 8, as inserted by the noble Lords, stays part of the Bill.
The Chair
Order. I am going to speak with the Clerk.
This is most unsatisfactory. The Minister can redeem himself by talking about “the clause”, not “the amendment”. If there is any more inappropriate language, I have a mind to suspend the sitting for the rest of the morning until the Government sort themselves out. The clause was tabled as an amendment in the Lords, but is now a clause in the Bill. If the Minister refers to it as “the clause”—we are debating clause stand part—I will allow him to continue.
Eddie Hughes
That is very kind, Mr Hollobone; thank you.
I support the principles behind the clause—it is vital that there is transparency in the leasehold system—but there are doubts as to whether the clause is effective in achieving that objective. It places a duty on all landlords but does not specify how each landlord must satisfy that duty. Furthermore, it relates only to the short period between Royal Assent and the peppercorn limit coming into effect. It would therefore place a significant burden on enforcement authorities for a limited period. Additionally, the changes that the clause requires for the penalty enforcement process to align with the rest of the Bill would delay the implementation of new peppercorn rents.
We are looking closely at how to best achieve the objectives that informed the clause. On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) raised very good points about the importance of transparent, objective legal advice during the purchase process.
I firmly believe that the Government’s provisions will lead to fairer, more transparent homeownership. I hope the Committee will agree that the clause should not stand part.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the Minister for his explanation. He referred to the fact that I and a considerable number of other Members spoke about this matter on Second Reading and have done so throughout the campaign to reform the feudal leasehold system. I cannot quite understand the objection to the clause, given that the lack of transparency has been a major factor in the leasehold landscape—we have referred to the CMA investigation and mis-selling by solicitors. The clause would help to improve the landscape and improve the situation for leaseholders. It makes perfect sense to include provisions on transparency of information in the Bill that the Government are arguing for and which we are scrutinising and challenging. We support clause stand part.
Maria Eagle
I have some concerns about the Minister’s suggestion that we should not keep clause 8 in the legislation, partly because of the exchange that we just had on clause 7. I expressed a little sedentary shock that six months may pass between Royal Assent and the commencement of clause 7. A lot of leases can be signed in six months, which I consider an extended period, and clauses that will become prohibited may not be at the time.
Leases are difficult enough to read as a layperson without having to be aware that the law has been changed to prohibit a particular clause and that a rent set out in a lease should be replaced with a peppercorn rent. One would have to follow Hansard reports of Bill Committees carefully, as well as the commencement of legislation, to have an understanding that there was a prohibited clause in a lease that one had just signed. Even then, one must understand the legal language in leases, which is not the easiest thing for lay people, perhaps first-time buyers. It is extremely useful to have a provision such as clause 8 in the legislation to make it clear that there is an obligation on landlords to inform tenants of this interim period of time.
If the Minister had said in our debate on clause 7 that the delay was going to be a week or two weeks, then perhaps I would not have risen to support this clause, but we are talking about six months. Many leases have clauses that are to become prohibited later on, but the tenant who signed them may not understand that. We wish that were not the case but there are some landlords out there who wish to induce people to sign leases with charges attached that are shortly to become unlawful. Perhaps then there will be some money paid over, and it is more difficult to get that back than not to pay it in the first place.
Given that there is likely to be a period of up to six months between Royal Assent and commencement of the legislation, clause 8 is a valuable provision to keep in the Bill. I cannot understand why the Minister wants it removed. I would be happy if he were to tell me that commencement of the legislation would take place within a week or two of Royal Assent. I would not then be so concerned about this gap. I am concerned that we are creating or allowing too many loopholes that enable our constituents who are signing new leases to fall into traps that those who wish them to sign leases want to induce them into. The fewer loopholes, the better. Clause 8 is an important provision to leave in the Bill and I would vote for it to stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clearly, six months is the limit that we have set. I am sure that people will be working assiduously to try to ensure that that period is minimised. The suggestion that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood made—that she would be reassured to hear that it would be a week—is nigh on impossible. We will continue to work hard to limit that period. During that time, we will communicate regularly with professional bodies to ensure that all solicitors are informed of and understand the changes that are coming.
Eddie Hughes
We are placing a duty on the landlord, and the unintended consequences might be that there are a number of cases that are highlighted and then brought to a tribunal in a very condensed period of time, placing an unnecessary burden. I think it would make for a slightly chaotic approach to the system. We are aiming for a smooth transition. Given the effort that we have put into communicating with legal bodies and the work that hon. Members are doing to highlight the changes the Government have made, it feels like an unnecessary process. However, we will continue to work with the hon. Member during the passage of the Bill to see if there is anything else we can do to meet the objective of the clause.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
We must ensure that the breaches of prohibited rent that I set out in clause 3 are acted on. Clause 9 will place a duty on local weights and measures authorities in England and Wales, that is to say trading standards authorities, to act where a breach of clause 3 occurs in their area. It also gives them the power to act where a breach occurs elsewhere in England and Wales.
In addition, through subsection (2), English district councils that are not trading standards authorities will be given the power to enforce clause 3 but, unlike trading standard authorities, will not be required to do so. That will maximise our ability to act against perpetrators. Both local weights and measures authorities and district councils will be able to retain the financial proceeds from the penalties they impose to cover the costs incurred in carrying out their enforcement functions in relation to residential leasehold property.
Subsection (3) clarifies the area in which a breach occurs and, to be thorough, captures areas where a premises is located on a local authority boundary, although we think that those will be few and far between. I am sure we all agree that although it is important for enforcement authorities to have the necessary duties and powers to act on breaches, it is also important that we provide protection against the duplication of penalties, which is what subsection (4) does.
Equally, I am sure we all agree that it is right to expect landlords to understand the requirement of the new legislation and abide by it. It is our hope, therefore, that enforcement action will not be needed in most cases, but by conferring duties and powers on enforcement authorities, the clause will be instrumental in ensuring that any breach of the restrictions on ground rents can be robustly enforced. That is vital as a deterrent and to protect leaseholders from unfair practices.
Mike Amesbury
My only concern is the obvious one about resources. I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Over the last 11 years, resources have been somewhat depleted as a result of austerity and Government cuts. Although there is the control and skill capacity locally to be the foot soldier for enforcement, it is a matter of having the people and resources to carry that out and implement it.
I notice that on the Bill’s journey in the other place, a reference was made to future local government settlements. The last 11 years have not been good if we use them as an example of potential resources. I would be interested in the Minister’s reply on that important and vital matter.
Maria Eagle
It is good to see that there is some provision about enforcement because there is often a gap in legislation, so the law is made and practical enforcement is not set out. I find it quite an interesting approach to enforcement to say that local trading standards or weights and measures authorities in England and Wales “must enforce” in their own area the standard statutory obligation of such an authority but
“may enforce…elsewhere in England and Wales.”
I may be wrong, but that seems a fairly novel approach to enforcement. I am not saying it is bad, but I would like the Minister to set out in a little more detail why the clause is worded in this manner and whether there are any precedents in respect of other enforcement arrangements that have been drawn on to set out the provision.
Subsection (2) says:
“A district council that is not a local weights and measures authority may enforce section 3 in England (both inside and outside the council’s district).”
We have the prospect of roving entrepreneurial weights and measures departments perhaps thinking that they can go and levy fines of up to £30,000 for a breach somewhere else entirely. I think I have read somewhere that they get to keep the proceeds, so this is quite an interesting tax farming idea—perhaps going back to old England, whereby the collector is given a percentage of the takings. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale, I was going to ask what provision the Government will make to enable a local authority’s trading standards department to search out such breaches. Perhaps they intend to enable trading standards from elsewhere in the country to come galloping in.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. On the point raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood and for Weaver Vale, Liverpool has lost £465 million of funding since 2010, and another £34 million of savage cuts are mooted for the upcoming budget. How does the Minister expect a council such as Liverpool City Council to finance a trading standards team that can actually carry out what the Bill proposes under what we are experiencing through austerity?
Maria Eagle
I agree with my hon. Friend about the savage reduction in available resource that the Government have visited on Liverpool. I am interested to hear from the Minister about the intention of this formulation and whether he anticipates that trading standards from out of area will be galloping around the country doing enforcement work in the manner that the clause lays out, because it is not something that I have seen before in legislation. I may be wrong, but it is not something that I can recall seeing.
Mike Amesbury
Perhaps there will be a VIP fast lane for the new hit squad that goes across the country.
Maria Eagle
I will be interested to see whether there is any kind of entrepreneurialism undertaken by trading standards around the country, but I would like to hear what the Minister has to say.
Nickie Aiken
I thank the Government for including effective enforcement in the Bill. There is no way that the Bill will work, and landlords will not be held to account, unless there is proper enforcement. Having been the cabinet member for public protection at Westminster City Council, which trading standards came under, I know at first hand the brilliant work that trading standards officers do day in, day out in Westminster and across the country. I would really appreciate it if the Minister could give assurances that trading standards teams across the country will have the funding to carry out the extra workload. I certainly think it is important that we ensure they can do so, because we do not want to be giving leaseholders any false hope, and I certainly welcome the ability for local authorities to keep the proceeds of any fines that they may be able to extract from a landlord.
The Chair
Order. I must ask the hon. Lady to resume her seat. It is nothing against the hon. Lady at all—I am enjoying her speech immensely—but it is now time to adjourn.
Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill 2021-22 View all Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we begin, I have a few announcements. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink is permitted during sittings of the Committee except for the water provided. Members are expected to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. That can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please also give one another and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Hansard colleagues will be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Date Time Witness Tuesday 7 December Until no later than 10.10 am UKHospitality; British Retail Consortium Tuesday 7 December Until no later than 10.55 am British Property Federation; Lightstone Properties Tuesday 7 December Until no later than 11.25 am Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Tuesday 7 December Until no later than 3.00 pm ukactive; Federation of Small Businesses; British Independent Retailers Association
We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence session. In view of the time available, I hope that we can take those matters formally, without debate.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 7 December) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 7 December;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 9 December;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 December;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 December;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table;
(3) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 22; Schedule 1; Clause 23; Schedule 2; Clauses 24 to 26; Schedule 3; Clauses 27 to 30; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(4) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 16 December.—(Paul Scully.)
The Chair
The Committee will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration of the Bill on Thursday at 11.30 am.
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Paul Scully.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and circulated to Members by email.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Paul Scully.)
The Chair
Q
Kate Nicholls: Thank you. I am Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, which is the national trade body representing hospitality businesses, from single site to multi-chain. We have 700 member companies and 95,000 outlets—about 95% of the market.
The Chair
Do you have any introductory remarks to make about the Bill?
Kate Nicholls: In the interest of brevity and given the time, I will not make any introductory remarks.
The Chair
Thank you. Dominic, will you introduce yourself and make any introductory remarks that you may have?
Dominic Curran: Thank you, Chair. I am Dominic Curran, property policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium. I will follow Kate’s lead and incorporate any remarks that I might have made into the evidence that I give.
The Chair
Thank you very much. In that case, I will open up the floor to questions. Seema Malhotra.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Kate Nicholls: I will begin by saying that we have had unprecedented engagement in terms of the preparation for the Bill and all the way through the coronavirus crisis. In terms of when we first started talking to Ministers in the various Departments about the impact on rent and rent debt and the ability of businesses that were forced to close to pay rent debt, the engagement began in March of last year and has continued throughout the process. Certainly over the course of the summer since the intention to legislate was announced, we have had extensive dialogue and consultation meetings with Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy officials.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Kate Nicholls: I do not have any concerns about the definition of tenant in this legislation. I think it is important that this piece of legislation sits within the existing canon of property law. There are some very clearly defined terms and references there, so the definitions do not cause us any degree of concern. An area that we may have wanted greater clarity on—we would hope that that would come forward in the guidance to arbitrators—is around the importance of sharing the burden of outstanding rent debt for those businesses that are covered by the ongoing moratorium and the mandatory arbitration process. It is also important to make sure that we have clarity around affordability and the affordability tests, but that could come through in guidance to arbitrators.
In terms of the challenges that businesses have faced over the course of the pandemic, I have to say that in large part landlords and tenants have worked very closely together to try to get through the crisis and, over the period of time that has been affected, about half to two thirds of landlords and tenants have been able to reach agreement on the treatment of rent debt and ongoing rent liabilities during that period, before the Government introduced legislation. The decision and the announcement of the intention to legislate gave a further nudge to those parties that had outstanding rent debt or which refused to negotiate or come to the table over that period. At that point, about a third of our businesses in hospitality had not got a negotiated settlement. The announcement of legislation pushed that towards resolution, and we have more businesses undergoing negotiations now. It is not all resolved. About 60% of our members say that all their outstanding rent debt is resolved and they have agreement as to how it will be treated, but that still leaves around one in five who have not got any form of negotiated settlement yet, the balance of the two being those that are in the process of negotiating while this legislation is introduced.
We see a small number of businesses that have been directly affected and continue to be directly affected. That is why this legislation is important—because without it, we would see an unsustainable rent debt that would be borne by a small number of tenants and would undoubtedly result in damage to their business and their businesses becoming unviable, or an impact on jobs, growth and investment going forward. The legislation remains vital to be able to provide the extended protection and to provide a negotiated solution for the remaining businesses that are unable to negotiate that themselves.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Kate Nicholls: That remains an ongoing discussion with officials and Ministers. Clearly, there is an indicative fee level that is set out for an application to the arbitration process, which is consistent with other arbitration schemes. It is reasonable and relatively small scale. Obviously, even if it is a paper process—let alone if it goes to a hearing—there will be considerable additional arbitration costs. We would welcome a cap on that and direction to arbitrators about the treatment of costs that are incurred as part of an arbitration process. Particularly where there is one party who is being deliberately obstructive or who has not co-operated, it would be helpful to have an ability to award costs.
As we go forward and understand in more detail what the arbitration process will look like, and as the guidance to arbitrators comes out, we as the trade association will work to make sure that we have got template systems in place to allow small independent lessees in particular to have access to the resources—the burdens of proof and the benchmarking data—that would help them to make their case at arbitration, so that we can try to keep the costs as low as possible and avoid the need for small businesses in the sector to require professional advice and support. That is where the costs will ratchet up, rather than the entry point costs to arbitration—where people feel they need to have expert witnesses and expert support to be able to build a case. We will work to make sure that we can do whatever we can to help businesses access that in a cost-effective way.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Dominic Curran: The British Retail Consortium, in the call for evidence that the Government published last spring, did call for a scheme that extended the moratorium to a future date and ringfenced the protection of the arrears that arose during the process, and it called for a process of compulsory arbitration. At least at headline level and in terms of the core principles of the Bill, this is what we have called for and what our members want. We do welcome it.
We have a slight concern about the definition of a business tenancy. The Bill appears to suggest that it is only a tenancy that is not contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. We have been assured by officials in separate meetings that that is not the intention of the Bill and that actually the Bill covers any tenancy that would be within the scope of the 1954 Act, whether it is contracted out or not, which does give us some comfort. That might be an area you would want to clarify in the course of scrutiny of the Bill.
Engagement with officials and Ministers has been fantastic, actually, throughout the pandemic and through the drafting of the Bill. We have a similar concern to UK Hospitality about the approach that will be taken on viability. Some of the definitions that the Government have said they do not want to enshrine in legislation—which is, I suppose, understandable—will be left to guidance for arbitrators. More than ever, the devil will be in the detail on that. We would want to see what that guidance is as soon as possible to give as much clarity as possible to businesses that might be thinking about using this route.
We would want to make sure that that guidance also directed arbitrators to take as broad a concept of viability and affordability as possible, so that there is enough understanding of a business’s circumstances that they could build in an allowance for the uncertainty of future cash flow and turnover, not least because there will be tax rises coming from April onwards when this process will effectively kick in—both higher businesses rates liabilities for many businesses and further tax increases on Business Network International contributions. We would want to see as much certainty in advance as possible and as much understanding of the need for businesses to have a buffer to enable them to trade while all these adverse headwinds are hitting them. We certainly share some of the concerns of UK Hospitality. I think the approach taken on fees is exactly right, as Kate outlined. While there may be a nominal, reasonable amount to enter the arbitration process, we would want the process to be as straightforward as possible, particularly for smaller businesses, which will not have access to in-house or agency consultants to support them through the process, so that it really is open to all and seen as fair and equitable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Q
Dominic Curran: I think it is less of a problem than it is for UK Hospitality. That is not to say that it is not a problem, but I think retail rent collection levels are higher than hospitality, as you would expect, given that the retail sector includes businesses that were allowed to open throughout the pandemic, particularly grocery and pharmacy businesses, so turnover has probably been higher proportionately in retail than it has been for hospitality.
I think it affects a smaller proportion of our sector in terms of the quantum of rent arrears, but it is still significant. It is estimated that there are still several billions of outstanding rent arrears in the retail sector during the pandemic period that the Bill covers, as far as we know. Some of that surveying does not take account of agreements that will have been reached off the books, as it were, or outside the formal rent collection dates, so it is an uncertain figure. When we have spoken to members, and this is an informed guesstimate rather than a thorough survey, it feels like we are at about 80% to 90% of rent having been collected and deals having been done, so it is a very small proportion of the outstanding rent liabilities that is left to be resolved. With each extension of the moratorium every three months, as we have seen over the past year and a half, and particularly with the announcement of this Bill and the process that it proposes, we have seen that percentage chipped away. Ever more landlords and tenants are reaching agreements. While it is a significant problem, it is probably less of a problem than it is for UK Hospitality, but it is still really important that even if businesses do not take advantage of the arbitration process, that process is there—if for no other reason than to help chivvy both landlords and tenants into making new arrangements.
Paul Scully
Q
Dominic Curran: In all honesty, members report that the code of practice did not aid them particularly. Its voluntary nature was the real sticking point. It was not necessarily the content, which was developed in very deep and meaningful consultation with us, UK Hospitality and other interested parties, but it was the fact that it was voluntary that was the sticking point. Because it was good practice, those who were going to use that approach did so anyway, almost regardless of the code’s existence, and those who were not going to use the approach did not feel like the code applied to them, because there were no sanctions on the requirement to negotiate in line with it.
What has helped—in so far as people are aware of it—is the suggestion, and Kate alluded to it, that if you do not negotiate in line with the principles of the previous code and the revised code, there may be some penalty in terms of costs being awarded against you in any subsequent arbitration process. That may help focus minds somewhat.
Paul Scully
Q
Dominic Curran: I would not be able to say significantly, but certainly anecdotally speaking to members, yes, it has helped.
Kate Nicholls: I agree with what Dominic said. The code of practice content was really helpful, and it gave a steer towards negotiations and how you should negotiate in good faith. A mandatory backstop and a legislative backstop are absent. It was limited in its impact in bringing recalcitrant players to the table. When Ministers announced that they were intending to legislate, a third of our businesses still had no negotiations and a large amount of outstanding debt, with no agreement as to how that was to be treated. That has dropped from a third to 20% and it keeps getting chipped away every time we move further forward in the legislative process.
The introduction of the legislative backstop is really important. The code of practice principles will be important to guide discussions for those businesses that fall outside the legislative solution, because obviously there will be parts of the business that will not be covered by the arbitration process. It is about giving the legislative backstop and the clearer direction towards sharing the pain, coming to a negotiated solution and being able to support what would otherwise be viable businesses.
The ministerial forewords in the legislation and the call for evidence are immeasurably helpful in giving a clear direction that landlords should do whatever they can to support businesses that would otherwise be viable. That was the piece that was missing from the code of practice that gives a clearer steer of the intent of the legislation.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Q
Dominic Curran: On the arbitrators who will be used, the Bill says, if I remember it correctly, that the Secretary of State will nominate or choose which arbitrating bodies will be eligible to provide arbitrators to the process, so it remains a bit of an open question. All I would say—having spoken to officials, this point is well understood and well heard—is that given the nature of the discussions that inevitably will be had during the arbitration process, we would prefer to see arbitrators who have a strong accountancy background, perhaps more so, or at least as much as, those who have a property conflict resolution background.
The nature of the process is to look at tenants’ accounts and to make sure that their income, liabilities and forecasts for turnover are such that they can pay a relevant and viable proportion of their rent arrears. So rather than it being a dispute over the interpretation of a lease or the duties of a tenant or a landlord, it should really be about understanding the finances of that business and enabling it to pay a proportion of rent between 0% and 100%, while being able to continue to trade viably at the same time. We certainly want to see the accountancy profession well represented in that.
Whether any other trade bodies, beyond those that represent accountants, are given the right to carry out the process by the Secretary of State remains to be seen. If you wanted to get the confidence of businesses that are tenants, however, you would want to make sure that you had accountants rather than property dispute arbitrators fulfilling the duty.
Ruth Cadbury
Q
Dominic Curran: No, I think it is a reasonable set of stages. There is a helpful flowchart in the revised code. The only point I would make is that we have a situation where the arrears, at least in retail, are historical in that they go up only to April 12 or the end of March, given rent payment dates. We want the legislation to be passed as quickly as possible, the arbitrators to be announced as quickly as possible and the process to start sooner rather than later, because it is the uncertainty that is particularly damaging for any business.
Kate Nicholls: I agree with Dominic that the key thing is that we need to have confidence from both parties to be able to and want to use the process to resolve these outstanding matters as rapidly as possible. I am therefore more attracted to using a multiple variety of arbitration bodies, rather than just one, because we need to make sure that there is no delay in appointing arbitrators and their being able to take on the work. I also agree with Dominic that it is hugely important that they have broad-based financial and business understanding and sector-specific—in our case—understanding of the businesses.
This is not necessarily a legal issue or a dispute resolution issue. This is a financial issue that centres on viability and affordability, and therefore an understanding of the nature of the business, the way it operates, the cost of business and the costs coming down the line, as Dominic alluded to, is critical to an understanding of affordability and ability to pay. Those are the key elements that we want to see. Confidentiality, given that you are effectively opening books and sharing financial information, is really important because tenants clearly need confidence that that will be protected. However, I do not see any problems with the Bill as it is currently drafted.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Q
Kate Nicholls: As soon as we have got the legislation through, we need the communication out there as rapidly as possible that this is coming, so that the scope of the Bill, as it goes through the House, is clearly understood. We are doing a wide range of outreach through the trade press and through our own communication channels to cascade that information out, not only through the trade association but more broadly. We are working closely with BEIS and MHCLG to make sure that that communication goes out there.
I think it is then about making sure that we have a communications plan post the Bill being enacted to ensure that there is confidence in the arbitration process and the arbitrators, and that we encourage people to use it. It will then be down to the industry to make this work. We will work flat out to do that, and to facilitate the tools that people need to enter into confidential negotiations, using the code of practice, and then arbitration if they absolutely need to as a last resort. Arbitration should be a matter of last resort in this case. Success for the Bill and the trade associations helping commercial tenants through this will be if a small number of cases actually need to go to arbitration to be resolved.
Sara Britcliffe
Q
Kate Nicholls: Clearly, it affects our ability to pay and it affects viability. It is quite clear, and Ministers have been quite clear about this over the course of the last week, that we now know and understand in full the economic effects of any restrictions on businesses, such as in hospitality, which have been asked to bear a disproportionate burden over the course of the whole pandemic. It is quite clear that businesses would not survive without further additional support if additional restrictions were imposed. That would be one measure that would be necessary. Your ability to pay your rent on time a quarter in advance is significantly impaired if your ability to trade is restricted. Trading remains quite soft, and consumer confidence remains fragile, so restrictions would have an immediate and significant effect on ability to pay, viability and affordability—all the tests we are talking about. As a minimum, you would need to extend some of these protections going forward.
Sara Britcliffe
Dominic, do you want to add something?
Dominic Curran: Kate said exactly what I would have said; if you just replace “hospitality” with “retail”, you are more or less there. The only thing I would add to Kate’s comments is that, just as at the peak of the pandemic, with the business rates holiday and restart and reopening grants, when retail and hospitality were able to reopen, you would need to see a package of measures to support businesses in the event of any further restrictions.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Q
Kate Nicholls: If you look at the pub-owning businesses and the tied pub companies, there has been a far greater degree of forgiveness of rent among those businesses. It might not be 100% for all of them, but significant rent concessions have been granted throughout the periods of closure, and immediately granted. There has also been a greater willingness to defer rent, allowing rent debt to be accrued and rescheduled over a longer period of time.
If you look at the commercial sector, there has been a variety of different approaches, and there is not anything that really reflects the size of landlord or of tenant businesses in terms of a willingness to negotiate and to reach agreement. Some very small landlord companies have been very willing to give rent holidays, concessions and deferments, and some large commercial companies have been very difficult and intransigent in coming to the table and negotiating, and are taking further enforcement action. It is less to do with the size; it is more the nature of the landlord that has caused the biggest challenges, and the ones that we have found taking enforcement action tend to have been the larger commercial landlords, who have taken a more robust line.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Dominic Curran: Thank you very much for asking that. That is a really important issue for our members. We have been asking for action on county court judgments and High Court judgments since October last year. We are very pleased that the Government listened and took account of our concerns to the extent that it was announced alongside the Bill that there would be no ability for landlords to pursue court processes for rent arrears after 10 November, when the Bill was introduced. Unfortunately, that means that any landlord who started those proceedings before 10 November is now in a more advantageous position than any landlord who was perhaps negotiating in line with the code and taking a more reasonable approach with their tenants.
We have the slightly perverse situation that the “more aggressive” landlords are actually better off now than those who might have been taking a longer, more reasonable and more timely approach. I do not see why it should be impossible for there to be a direction to courts to stay any court hearing—county court or High Court—for rent arrears pending the outcome of any arbitration process, or the period in which you could make an arbitration process after the Bill gets Royal Assent. I do not see why it is right that those landlords who have been more aggressive are able to carry on their approach.
We saw that problem early on in the process. The Government rightly and laudably made it effectively impossible in England for landlords to take properties back, to seize goods to the value of the debt, and to effectively start the process of winding up a tenant. That was the rent protection moratorium, which was very welcome and was extended, but it left, as we have been saying since October last year, a gap in the ringfence that unfortunately some landlords sought to exploit very early on. Landlords’ lawyers were sending tenants letters demanding rent arrears, and they could effectively impose the costs of that process on to the tenant.
The tenant was therefore liable for not only the rent arrears and any interest due but their landlords’ lawyers costs, which some suggested might have been slightly inflated, as well as their own legal costs in defending themselves. One member said to me, “It’s a bit like a water running downhill; it will always find a way.” That was the situation with CCJs. While it is fantastic that there has been recognition of that loophole, unfortunately it applies only from 10 November. Any CCJ that had not reached a final decision but was in train in the courts should be stayed pending the outcome of the arbitration process.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Kate Nicholls: I would echo everything that Dominic has said. CCJs have remained a cause for concern throughout this process, and we have been flagging it as a potential loophole that some landlords are exploiting. The key point about a CCJ is that it seeks to establish that the rent—a debt—is due in full, and the confirmatory judgment that it is due in full cuts across the arbitration process, which talks about a fair sharing, a fair split or fair dealing with the rent debt, so you are pre-empting that discussion. There are significant effects for the business that has a CCJ against it, in terms of credit rating, so there is an onus on a business to try to resolve the matter and prevent it from being heard in court. So this has always been a major source of concern. What we have seen is landlords—even after the date of the ministerial statement that the Government intended to legislate and about the intent on the code of practice and the arbitration process—tabling and starting CCJ processes. That is a particular cause for concern when the intention and the direction of travel are quite clear.
So I agree with Dominic. The concern is that you have this cut-off date of 10 November, which is when the legislation was published, but we would want to see direction to courts to stay all those proceedings, to avoid unnecessary costs to businesses in having to defend cases that should not be being brought and should be set to one side. I think it would be helpful if that was taken forward. Yes, we have raised that as part of the consultation process and we have raised that repeatedly with Ministers and officials over the course of the last year. As Dominic says, we have been highlighting CCJs since October of last year, but, more importantly, highlighting the continued use of them since spring of this year, when the intention was announced. I understand the challenges of legislating retrospectively, but I think it would be helpful to give direction to the courts, and clarity and certainty around that.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Kate Nicholls: Yes, I think that would be helpful to take into account, in terms of both arbitration fees and more general costs, if people are having to incur costs to go to arbitration because of a refusal to negotiate. I think that would be a sensible, pragmatic principle to put into the guidance to arbitrators in order for them to be able to take that into account.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Dominic Curran: We certainly have been making representations to officials since it was clear that this was the direction of travel the Government wanted to go in, and I am sure they have heard loud and clear the points that we have made, which will have been made by UK Hospitality and others. I think they completely understand and appreciate that.
It would probably be helpful, as I think I said earlier, for the Government to set out as far in advance as possible, or as early as possible, who they are thinking of as eligible bodies that could undertake the arbitration process, or whose members could undertake the arbitration process, and perhaps some of the principles that they would like to see for arbitrators—as I said earlier, making sure that there is a strong understanding of accountancy issues, rather than property dispute issues. I am sure that there will be an announcement as soon as the Bill allows the Government the freedom to make that announcement. It will be all set out in secondary legislation. We want people with a strong understanding of the financial issues, rather than property issues.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Dominic Curran: The Government were right not to put in a clear definition of viability, because I think it will be different for every business, let alone every sector. However, at the same time, there needs to be reflected in the guidance to arbitrators as broad a definition of viability as possible, or as broad a set of criteria as possible to be taken into account when assessing viability. Not only will there be the known knowns, if you like, of higher business rates and tax costs, but there will still be a great deal of uncertainty. Who knows where we will be in March and April, but consumer confidence still has not returned to the levels we saw pre-pandemic. While in retail, particularly, there were reasonably good sales figures for October and November, those are perhaps reflective of people spreading out their December purchases and so are not necessarily reflective of a higher level of consumer spending in the economy generally. In that context, I think it is wise to build in as much of a buffer as possible within the assessment of viability and affordability, because we are still dealing with a hugely uncertain situation, in terms of the ability of businesses to trade.
Seema Malhotra
Kate Nicholls: The questions that you raise on issues pertinent to future trading, future recovery and the costs coming down the line are more relevant to a discussion about affordability, rather than viability. Go back to the principles and the ministerial foreword to the legislation and the call for evidence, which talk about making sure that businesses that would otherwise be viable, had it not been for covid, are able to continue trading through the covid recovery period. That means that you need a longer timeline. I think it is helpful to look at, in our case, the hospitality strategy and the tourism recovery plan, which talk about the length of time it will take our businesses to recover. The domestic and international tourism recovery will be in 2023 to 2024, so you need to look at businesses that will be viable over that longer period and will return to a level of viability that they enjoyed previously.
The questions you ask are much more related to ability to pay and affordability, and the key thing we need there is that longer timeline that looks at the sustainability of making this rent debt payment, either in full or in part, at an immediate point or over a longer period. Those are the questions that the arbitrators will look at. For the tenants’ businesses, it is about making sure that you can factor in all those costs that are coming through and the recovery. That is where I go back to the templates and the benchmarking that business organisations and trade associations are able to provide, so you can look at what happens to the margin.
What we know has happened over the course of covid and over the course of the recovery period since reopening—the point at which the rent debt is fixed; it is 19 July, in our case—is a significant increase in the costs of doing business. Revenues have not tracked upwards to the same level, and we are not back at 2019 levels, and therefore the margin of profitability has been squeezed quite dramatically. It takes more sales to make a profit and to break even at this point in time, when you are looking at cost-price inflation of about 13% in hospitality businesses and revenues that are still around 75% to 80% of 2019 levels. Those are the factors, and that is why it is so important that the arbitrators who are making those judgments about affordability and ability to pay can take account of and understand all of those issues and plug in the future changes.
As Dominic alluded to, you have got the business rates, which need to be looked at site by site, as well as on a business basis. You have got changes in the VAT rate that are plugged in for hospitality. The VAT rate will change from 12.5% to 20%, so there will be a significant cost increase in tax that will be passed on to consumers. Therefore, you need to be able to look at what that will do to the end-point pricing, the affordability and the ability of those businesses to pay if we are not going to have inflation.
The Chair
Order. I am sorry to cut across you in full flow, but I am afraid we are at the end of the time allocated for these questions. I thank the witnesses very much indeed. We will now prepare for the next panel.
Examination of witnesses
Melanie Leech and Astrid Cruickshank gave evidence.
The Chair
Before we start with the next panel, I remind Members that they are expected to wear masks in Committee when not speaking. We will now hear oral evidence from Melanie Leech CBE, chief executive at the British Property Federation, appearing by Zoom, and Astrid Cruickshank, director of Lightstone Properties, also appearing by Zoom. For this session we have until 10.55 am. Can the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record? If there are any very brief introductory remarks, you are more than welcome to make them.
Melanie Leech: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to join you this morning. I am Melanie Leech, chief executive of the British Property Federation, which is a membership organisation for all parts of the property sector in the UK, including owners, agents, developers, investors and advisers. We represent an industry that contributes over £100 billion a year to the economy and employs around 1.2 million people. Chair, I will follow the precedent of earlier witnesses by not making any introductory remarks and saving what I want to say for the questioning.
The Chair
Thank you. Astrid?
Astrid Cruickshank: I am Astrid Cruickshank. Thank you for inviting me to join you. I run a small property company called Lightstone Properties. Our investments are mainly car dealerships, retail and leisure. We own all of our investments jointly with joint venture partners, who are all private individuals. I will also wait for the questions.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: We have surveyed our members at various points over the pandemic, and our latest survey, which represents around 16,000 leases across the whole of the UK and within our membership, shows that around 86% to 87% of those leases are now covered by some form of agreement. We believe that the challenge that is left for the arbitration scheme to solve and tackle is a very small part of the total market.
I must caveat that by saying that one of the challenges in all of this for Government, as much as for anybody trying to work to create solutions and outcomes, is that we do not really know how many commercial leases there are in the UK or in the retail and hospitality sector, which is the hardest hit part of the whole market by the pandemic. Business rates data from the valuation office suggests that there are about 620,000, but they vary immensely from very large property owners and very large tenants to individuals who may not be incorporated but who may have invested their savings or their pension pot in a single property and, similarly, sole traders who may be their tenants.
In any of the data that will be shared with you, it is quite hard to get a handle on what that represents in terms of the totality. There will always be a long tail outside any of the data that we present to you. What I can say is that, from the data that I have seen and that is available to me, we think that the vast majority of leases that we surveyed are now covered by agreements.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: In most cases, we have seen people behaving well and coming together—not always immediately, but over time. Increasingly, there is a recognition that the relationship between a property owner and a tenant is an economic partnership and that the two partners need to work together and navigate a way through together. As I say, that has happened as time has gone on and everyone has seen that this is not a short-term hit, but a long-term challenge and problem that needs to be approached in that way.
We have seen a number of examples that have been quite widely reported of tenants who can afford to pay their rent but choose not to do so or to engage in any way, shape or form with their property owners. How do we know that they can afford to pay? Because we can see the backing that they have. We can see that, increasingly, they are now starting to pay dividends and bonuses to senior management and they are starting to invest in new properties. Our view is that if they can afford to do those things, it is a clear indicator that they are not in such distress that they need support with their rent. When they are not even talking to their property owners, they cannot have that conversation.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Astrid Cruickshank: For me, the absolute key is that they have good, sound financial knowledge; they are able to look at a set of accounts—both filed and management accounts—really understand them and work out from them how the underlying business is performing.
One of the things that helped me enormously in my negotiations was doing a compare and contrast of my landlord companies, because each of my properties is in a different one. I looked at my net assets and my cash balance, and at my tenants’ net assets and their cash balance, and then I used that, where I had a much larger tenant, as a way to explain to them our respective positions. I think it is critical that the arbitrators can understand the financial positions of both parties and the financial impact that their decision could have.
For us, insolvency was a major concern, and it has been throughout, because if you have a company that owns just one property and it has bank debt, and that tenant stops paying, you are insolvent. All you can then do is inject additional cash. As I said, my joint venture partners are all private and have their own businesses that were also affected, so it is a difficult thing for me to then send them a note saying, “Please send me £10,000 by Friday,” when I know that their main business is hospitality, for example, and they are struggling themselves.
Melanie Leech: I largely agree with Ms Cruickshank. The key decisions that need to be made are about viability and affordability, which require a financial understanding rather than a particular understanding of property contracts and property leases, so I agree.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: My understanding is that the Government want as few cases as possible to reach the arbitration process, and we share that ambition. We agree that that is right. For us, it is quite hard to see how the same scheme will be accessible both to very small landlords—including private individuals, either themselves or through syndicates and so on, and small companies—and to small tenants, as well as dealing with the very complex nature of the relationship between very large property owners and very large multinational tenant businesses.
The aim is for simplicity and a relatively straightforward and speedy system. I think that is more naturally likely to be able to deal with relatively simple relationships and relatively small-scale sets of books. It is much harder for us to see how larger players will be able to enter the scheme, particularly in a situation where there is either one tenant with multiple landlords, and you are trying to deal with multiple different relationships, or the reverse: multiple tenants with a single landlord. It is really hard to envisage how, in practice, the scheme will be able to cope with those kinds of relationships.
I suspect that it is the Government’s intention that those kinds of cases should not come to the arbitration scheme so that it can be kept simple. In that case, such things as accessibility and the cost structure, and people’s ability to go into it unsupported by ranks of advisers that they cannot afford to pay for, become much more critical. Ms Cruickshank can probably speak more to that.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Astrid Cruickshank: I am pretty pleased with the scheme as it has come forward for landlords of my size. I take on Melanie’s points about larger landlords—going back 20 years, I was a fund manager, and it is a completely different situation—but for me, I think the scheme works well. I like the fact that it includes references to ensuring that the landlord remains solvent, which was critical to me. In terms of fees, a sliding scale that is somehow related to the rent seems the easiest way to keep it affordable. I appreciate that there will have to be a minimum, but if it could be somehow linked to the sum in question that could work for us.
The Chair
We have a sound issue, Ms Leech. Hold on one second.
Melanie Leech: Can you hear me now? I will abandon the headphones. Apologies. Our view is that for the larger, more complex relationships, this scheme should not be the way forward. They should be taken as they would have been before the pandemic. Outside the confines of the ringfencing of this scheme, that will be through the courts. These are, ultimately, legal relationships, and the courts are there to resolve legal disputes. I think the scheme can work well for smaller businesses and less complex relationships, but for those larger, more complex relationships, redress should be through the courts, as it always was and will be again outside the confines of the scheme.
Paul Scully
Q
Melanie Leech: I think what is really important, not only for the individual property owners in the sector but for the market, the health of the sector and the future—I go back to that £1.2 billion GVA that we create every year—is that certainty that you, the Government, understand the importance of contracts as part of what makes UK real estate an attractive investment proposition for pension funds, saving funds and those institutional long-term investors. When we talk about property owners, that is largely who we are talking about. We are talking about our money as individuals, our pensions and savings. In order to protect them appropriately in these circumstances and to secure the future—particularly thinking about the levelling-up agenda, for example, and the investment that will be needed across the country—it was really important that, as part of this announcement, the Government made clear that, if tenants can afford to pay their rent, they should pay their rent in full, and that this scheme is designed to support and facilitate agreement being reached between tenants that are vulnerable and need support and property owners that can afford to give that support. That builds on what has already happened in the market, where millions of pounds of support has already been provided to the most vulnerable tenants. That underlying principle protects the sanctity of the contract for the long term and protects UK real estate as an investment proposition, which we badly need in this country, while also allowing the outstanding cases in which agreement has not been reached to have some kind of resolution.
Paul Scully
Thank you. Astrid, same question to you.
Astrid Cruickshank: I have to say that I think it is quite unfortunate that we need this system at all. I try to speak to all my tenants. I have four who just point-blank refuse to engage. I knew a finance director prior to covid who was always happy to take my call, so it was somewhat disappointing to find, when trying to speak to them to try to agree a way forward, that they just will not engage. I have to say that I have been able to unlock mine now, so unless there are further lockdowns—fingers crossed—I will not need to avail myself of this. I have stuck with the consultation process because I think it is important that there is a voice from a small landlord. People tend to assume all landlords are enormous, and I wanted to make the point that that is not the case.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
Q
Melanie Leech: I hope that a binding arbitration scheme will be a neutral process that allows both sides’ views to be heard and a resolution to be reached between those two positions. As I said in response to the Minister, the principles should be that someone who can pay their rent should pay it, but if they can demonstrate that they need support, because they cannot afford to pay their rent, that case should be heard, and a landlord who is able offer support should give it. I think those principles, if they remain in place and underpin the scheme, should lead to a fair outcome.
The other thing we have concerns about—although I think the process is designed to avoid this—is that it is not a case of both parties starting in an equal position. We start from the position that there is a contract that says that the tenant should pay rent, and the tenant is seeking support to set aside that contractual obligation. The evidence base is primarily driven by the tenant’s position; I have heard concerns that if a landlord wants to go into the arbitration process, they need evidence from the tenant to underpin their position, and, if the tenant does not provide that evidence, the landlord is at a disadvantage in the process.
The process is designed to deal with that by allowing them to initiate the process from a starting position that says the tenant should pay in full. If the tenant gives evidence to demonstrate why they need a concession, the landlord can consider that and put in a revised proposal before getting to arbitration. As long as that is in place, the landlord need not be disadvantaged by not having the information up front. It is important to recognise that the burden of proof for both viability and affordability is primarily on the tenant; it is only at the stage at which the tenant’s case is made, as it were, that the question of whether the landlord can afford to give a concession comes into play, at which time they also need to provide evidence. I think that the Government understand that, and that it is built into the process. That is one of the things that property owners will be nervous about.
Mark Eastwood
Do you want to add anything, Astrid?
Astrid Cruickshank: No, I am happy with that. I think Melanie has covered it.
Peter Dowd
Q
There is an issue about landlords. I think you accepted that landlords agree with the principle that both landlords and tenants might have to share the burden of rent arrears that built up during the period of coronavirus restrictions, in the light of the examination of evidence. Do you accept the principle that there may have to be a sharing of the loss for both the tenant and the landlord? Unlike Government Members, I do not think that this is a laughing matter.
Astrid Cruickshank: May I answer that? Our tenants have had varying experiences throughout the pandemic, and some have made more profit during covid than they did the year before, which is down to their ingenuity—pivoting their business and moving more online. I have had at least five tenants file accounts with Companies House that show a higher profit in the first year of covid than the year before. In such a case, there is no loss to share.
Our tenants in hospitality and the gyms that we own have clearly made losses. We have restructured the leases in all such cases. We have put more money into our entities so that we could give them some rent free to help them through the lockdown. We extended the lease, got a break dropped or got some kind of quid pro quo.
Melanie Leech: In my experience, most larger landlords have been working to a sort of grid. They have tried to look at each of their tenants and see the position they are in, and they have prioritised support to help the most needy. The most support has been given to smaller business, independent businesses and businesses that do not have strong financial backing; it has been given overwhelmingly to the hospitality sector, because everyone has recognised that the majority of those businesses do not have the kind of alternative routes that Ms Cruickshank was just talking about. Millions of pounds have been given in rent write-offs already, as reflected in the data that I referenced at the start.
Forgive me if I was not clear in what I said; let me come back to my point. We believe that those tenants who can afford to pay their rent or who cannot demonstrate need should pay their rent in full. Tenants who can demonstrate significant impact on their businesses and have no way of paying should get support from landlords who can afford to give it. We absolutely believe in that principle, because we believe that property owners and their tenants are economic partners and they should be working together.
It is not, by the way, in a property owner’s interest to either evict a tenant or have a tenant go bust if they believe they are a viable tenant, because an empty building is generating no rent at all—whether it is a debt or whether it is being paid. It becomes a business rates liability that the property owner then has to pay. It becomes a dead building. When a month’s footfall goes from an area, it does not come back. If you have empty buildings, people leave that area and they forget what took them there in the first place. That has an impact on both immediate rent and on the value of the property. It is not in a property owner’s interest not to keep tenants in place wherever it is possible to do so.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: I have not had any concerns about that raised with me by my members.
Astrid Cruickshank: I do not have any concerns about that either.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Astrid Cruickshank: Personally, I would like to see them be in private if I were to take part in one, because I would be disclosing confidential financial information to make the point about my solvency and what I can and cannot offer. Potentially, that would even go as far as who is behind you, who the actual owners are and their ability to inject money or not. I am pleased to see that the Bill says that you would not be required to restructure, so that is good. I feel that in order to make my case properly, I would want to share confidential information. Therefore, I would like it to be private.
Melanie Leech: I would agree with that. By the nature of this, there is going to be a lot of confidential information that is going to be disclosed.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: I think there are precedents already in the legal system for dealing with sensitive information. The principle is well understood. I am assuming that the Government will look at those precedents to shape how the scheme will work in practice. There are parts that will not be sensitive, and there are parts that will be. Whether it is better to have the whole thing protected or whether it is possible to split the evidence and have it dealt with in two parts, I am not sure.
The other point to make is that some of this may not be heard, as it were. It may well be a paper process at a desk, in which case it does not seem to me that there is any particular need to do anything other than give the documents to the arbitrator in confidence and for them to deal with it. I assume that there will need to be some kind of public statement on the outcome, because I assume that arbitrators will want to see precedents emerging and a pattern of what is happening, particularly if there are multiple situations of different cases with the same tenant or landlord. As I say, I am sure the Government are well aware of these kinds of issues.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Melanie Leech: We have worked quite a lot with various small property owners, although they are not in our membership, over the last 18 months. What I have heard from them is that unless there is a cap at a relatively modest level, the scheme will not be accessible to them. Clearly it is a different matter for larger companies. As for poor behaviour, yes, we absolutely think that if parties do not go into or act through this process in good faith, the arbitrators should be able to award costs against them as part of the outcome.
Astrid Cruickshank: I would agree with that. If the example that I gave you—three tenants just refusing to acknowledge any attempt to communicate with them—ended up in arbitration, it would seem entirely unfair that I should be picking up the costs, when I was prepared to make them an offer but they were not willing to even acknowledge that I had made it or respond in any way.
Mark Eastwood
Q
Melanie Leech: We have a lot of the larger ones as part of our membership, so yes, I think so. They act for both property owners and tenants, so I have been able to draw on their advice about what is happening in the market—what the relationships are—as well as some of the data that is published. The remit data in particular is drawn from the evidence that they collect. The one thing that they would say, and that I would say, is that we were disappointed that service charges were brought within the ringfence and the protection, because that is money that has already been spent by property owners and agents in maintaining buildings. The tenants might not be able to use them for their primary business purpose while they have been shut, but the buildings still need to be maintained and kept safe, and those costs have increased in some cases.
I know that some on the tenants’ side have suggested that those costs should be reduced because the buildings cannot be occupied. Where we can see that service charges have been reduced, that reduction absolutely should be passed on to tenants—I am not for a minute arguing against that—but where those costs have been incurred, we think that they should be paid and that they should not have been able to benefit from the protection of the ringfencing in the Bill, because that is money that has already been spent by property owners. That is debt that has already been incurred, so we were disappointed by that, and I think the agents would echo that point of view. Beyond that, I think they are supportive of this Bill, as we are.
The Chair
Thank you. Are there any final questions? No. In that case, I thank the witnesses very much for their evidence.
Examination of witness
Lewis Johnston gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Lewis Johnston: Thank you, Chair. My name is Lewis Johnston and I am assistant director for policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. We are a professional body for all forms of alternative dispute resolution. We have 18,000 members across the world, operating across all forms of ADR—arbitration, adjudication and mediation—and we have 6,000 members here in the UK. I will keep my introduction as brief as possible, following the previous witnesses.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Lewis Johnston: In common with some of the previous witnesses, I suggest that financial and accounting expertise will be quite crucial. Obviously, the Bill makes provision for some quite detailed assessments of viability and affordability. There are provisions about the kind of evidence that would have to be given regard to in reaching some of those decisions and making the award, and one of the impressions we got from digesting the Bill was that some of that analysis might require some reasonably in-depth expertise. Within the arbitration profession, there are experts across lots of different fields: there are surveyors, there are property experts who have already acted in property dispute schemes, and there are also financial experts, accountants and so on, but I would say that financing and accounting are probably near the top of the list, given the nature of the decision-making process.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Lewis Johnston: The essence of this choice is about the balance between prioritising the scheme’s affordability and accessibility—obviously, it is meant to be a simple, low-cost way of obtaining redress and getting a resolution—and the need to ensure an adequate supply of suitably qualified arbitrators. As you mentioned in your previous question, some of the required skillsets would be quite specialised, and may be at premium. There are precedent models for this kind of thing. One example, which is not a direct parallel, is the business arbitration service run by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, which is designed for relatively low-value disputes—between £5,000 and £100,000. The costs are fixed at £1,250 plus VAT per party, and that includes the appointment fee and the fee for the arbitrator. It may differ in this regard, but there would need to be certainty and transparency, certainly for the parties involved, and one of the benefits of the business arbitration scheme is that there is no chance of the costs spiralling out of control.
The other thing to mention, which may be a pertinent lesson from the business arbitration scheme, is that it is designed to be a documents-only, very simple, quite streamlined process, which will not require representation for either party, because representation can take up quite a good proportion of the costs. It is done with an assumption against having an oral hearing. Obviously, there is always the option of having an oral hearing if the parties require it; that is in the Bill. I think it is correct that that is open to them, but I suggest that the default assumption should be against that and for it being a documents-only process. Given the simplicity of the kind of cases that are intended to go to the scheme, that would be a good way of managing the costs. I note that the Secretary of State will have the power to introduce either a cap or a sliding scale, and again I emphasise the need for really forthright clarity. It needs to be very simple so people understand how it would apply to different levels of dispute.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Lewis Johnston: There is a degree of uncertainty around that, based purely on the pipeline of cases. As the previous witnesses alluded to, most of these cases, most of these disputes over the ring-fenced rent, will be or already have been settled through negotiation, so you are talking about a relatively small proportion, although it is still going to be quite a high number. There is a margin of error to take into account. On the supply side, in terms of the level of interest, there are lots of very well qualified arbitrators out there who would be forthcoming to handle cases like this. As I say, there is quite a strong precedent of arbitrators with the requisite level of skills and experience taking on fixed-fee or low-fee cases like this, but again I point out that the low fee would still have to take account of and cover the fact that a certain skillset and investment of time would be required. It is important that quality is not compromised. I think, overall, there is a good level of interest and there would be a healthy pipeline of arbitrators to take these cases.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Lewis Johnston: Certainly. I was pleased to see, in clause 21 of the Bill, that guidance will be provided. There are several areas in which guidance might be necessary. The first is something that I know will be coming when applications open for approved bodies to appoint arbitrators, and that is around the precise skillsets needed. We have a reasonably good idea of what that would entail, but a bit more detail would be helpful. For the arbitrators themselves, I think the crux point is around viability and affordability. The Bill and the code of practice go into a bit of detail about the kind of evidence that could be assessed as part of that. I think there should be clarity over exactly how much power the arbitrator will have to be inquisitorial as part of the process, the extent to which they can order discovery and so on, and the kind of evidence they can ask for from the parties.
The Bill is very clear about its intention to balance the interests of tenants and landlords and to maintain the viability of otherwise viable businesses, while also having regard to the solvency of the landlords. There may need to be more guidance, and I appreciate that that might come when cases start to go through the system, about balancing the request of the tenant on what is viable for them with what is consistent with maintaining the solvency of the landlord, when those are at odds. Exactly how that could be decided is a bit of a moot point at this stage.
Peter Dowd
Q
Lewis Johnston: That is a good question, and the discussions we have had with the BEIS team initially focused on the question of capacity, because obviously we are talking about quite a large number of cases. The decision to go for more of a market-based approach, with a list of approved bodies rather than a single monolithic provider, was probably the right one. I appreciate that the Bill is taking more of a principles-based approach than saying that the arbitrators have to be accredited in a certain way. It is more about having the competency and impartiality.
Each of the bodies, if they are to be approved, will have to meet the criteria in one way or another. Speaking just for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, all our members are bound by our code of ethical and professional conduct, which covers issues such as integrity and fairness, disclosing conflicts of interest, ensuring that you are competent to take on the appointments you are given, trust and confidence in the process, and transparency around fees. That would address a lot of things.
Also, anyone that we were to appoint—should we become one of those approved suppliers—would have to make clear and sign a declaration at the outset, which disclosed any potential conflicts of interests or anything that might be perceived as such, as well as declaring they were competent and had the capacity to take on these cases. That would mitigate the risk of them having to resign or of delays in processing the case.
Peter Dowd
Q
Lewis Johnston: I would welcome more detail on exactly what the approval criteria would be and what the role of the approved suppliers under the scheme would be. There has been a good degree of engagement from the Department so far, but what the criteria would be has not yet been published. However, I know that they are coming shortly. That will be the crucial point in terms of assessing what the role of these appointing arbitration bodies would be.
Paul Scully
Q
Lewis Johnston: I understand the intention is that it would be the simpler, perhaps smaller party cases going through to the scheme, and I think that is correct. Given that the emphasis is on simplicity, accessibility and managing the costs, any scheme that had to accommodate the intricate, large-scale cases would encounter some problems in terms of balancing the two. Again, I point to precedents with things like the business arbitration scheme. It is difficult at this point to assess exactly what the appropriate fee level would be, because you would have to properly assess exactly how much work will be involved in each case—obviously not until they had come through—but I think that in the simpler cases that could be set at a level that was affordable. As some of Melanie’s members had made clear, it needed to be at quite a modest level for it to be accessible to them.
In terms of how the arbitration bodies would manage a variation in the complexity of cases, even it was perhaps the smaller, more simpler end of the spectrum, there will still be variation. We would maintain—this would apply to other bodies as well—lists and databases of arbitrators who would be suitable. Based on the nature of the case that came through, there would be a shortlist drawn up based on who had the requisite skill sets to handle that case. The pool that we would draw from should be broad enough to be able to cater to different types of cases and different sectors and so on.
Sara Britcliffe
Q
Lewis Johnston: I would not want to commit to exactly what it would involve until we got to that stage, but I refer again to the precedent set by our own business arbitration service, which is designed to produce an award within 90 days. It is meant to be documents only, and that is £1,250 plus VAT per party. If it was a very straightforward case—if it was documents only and it followed the same processes—I imagine it could be in the same ballpark in terms of fee level. The best thing would be to have real clarity around what the fees were and how they apply to each case, and for there to be perhaps an assumption against having a hearing, and, if there was a hearing to be requested, very clear guidance on what fee that would entail. Perhaps for a half-day hearing, a certain level. For the business arbitration scheme, there is an option for that. It is £500 for a half-day hearing. Again, the assumption is that the cost could be fixed at those initial costs per party, and that a hearing would not be necessary. It would be documents only.
Sara Britcliffe
Q
Lewis Johnston: I think so. I think that would be the assumption. I think it is right that there is an option to go for a hearing if it is requested, but I think that the default assumption should be that it is documents only. That is most in keeping with the intention and aim of the Bill, which is to have very clear, rapid-fire means of redress.
The Chair
Q
Lewis Johnston: No, that has covered most of it. The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators will be making a written submission to the Committee later this week as well, so that might clarify or refine some of the points that I have raised. We are very pleased to have been invited to give evidence here today, and we will be pleased to engage with the Committee as you continue with the work of refining exactly what the scheme and the process will be.
The Chair
Thank you very much for your evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Felicity Buchan.)
Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill 2021-22 View all Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
The Chair
Good afternoon, gentlemen. We will now hear oral evidence from Jack Shakespeare, director of research, policy and communications at UK Active, Andrew Goodacre, chief executive officer of the British Independent Retailers Association, and Martin McTague, national vice chair of the Federation of Small Businesses. We have until 3 pm for this session. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves? If you have any brief remarks to make, please do so now.
Jack Shakespeare: My name is Jack Shakespeare. I am the director of research, policy and communications at UK Active. We are the membership body for the health and fitness sector.
Andrew Goodacre: I am Andrew Goodacre, chief executive officer of the British Independent Retailers Association. We have 4,000 members throughout the UK.
Martin McTague: I am Martin McTague, vice chair of the Federation of Small Businesses. We have 150,000 members across all four nations of the UK.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Good afternoon, panel. I think we met last week, didn’t we?
Andrew Goodacre: We did.
Mick Whitley
Q
Andrew Goodacre: The period we have is about right, actually. Part of the challenge is in scope of what is covered here. Some businesses that have been able to operate throughout the pandemic—essential businesses—but have been in the wrong location have suffered badly with trade. That is still ongoing. Even though businesses are open, if they are in a location near a travel hub or something, footfall will be considerably lower than they are used to—certainly pre-pandemic levels. There is an argument that those businesses are not being protected enough because of that.
Mick Whitley
Q
Jack Shakespeare: Absolutely. I would echo that. The extension and the timescale seem about right; that is the message we are getting from our members. Each sector has its own characteristics. Our sector has a unique recovery curve, in that it is largely subscription focused. Recovery does not cover the cost of service straight away. That impacts recovery. The extended period of time is welcome. I am sure that we will come back to it today, but a guiding principle that needs to sit at the heart of this process is the message of sharing the burden. This is clearly a collective problem that needs a collective solution.
Martin McTague: I think it was about right when we first started discussing this, but omicron has changed all that. It is clear that we are now into a lot more uncertainty. It would be nice to have the flexibility to be able to move that date to respond to what seems to be an ever-changing virus.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Martin McTague: Around the beginning of November, most landlord-tenant arrangements—probably close to 90%—had settled, but the hard-core 10% had got into an acrimonious stand-off. We engaged with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to try to find a way in which those more acrimonious relationships could be dealt with. As for the cut-off date, I realise that it will leave some people on the wrong side of it, but I think that it was about right when it was chosen.
Andrew Goodacre: On the cut-off date, you have to choose a date. There is never a good time, from that point of view. It comes back to an understanding of what negotiations were taking place beforehand, and how they were being managed. Martin referred to a hard-core 10%—we are probably hearing about 15% to 20%. There is a hard core of people on both sides who seem unwilling to reach a negotiation. It would be good to include at the arbitration point an insight into what negotiations and actions were taking place beforehand, and whether those actions were reasonable in the circumstances.
The arbitrator has to decide how to resolve the debt issue. We have heard stories of landlords seeking side agreements or even being willing to write off a level of debt if the tenant gave up their secured tenancy. That kind of negotiation is going on as well. Is that fair? I do not know, because the security may be worth a lot more than half the rental debt, but it is not explained properly. If evidence of what was being said before the ninth can be put forward as part of the arbitration process, that may be a happy halfway house.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Andrew Goodacre: Most of our members deal with smaller landlords, who are possibly not quite so difficult.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Jack Shakespeare: I would support that notion. I think this comes in two parts. I think it comes back to that notion of sharing the burden, and we think the process of county court judgments does not chime with the spirit of the initial code of practice and, obviously, the revised one. I also think that a ringfence should be just that and should not have holes in it. It feels like CCJs are a hole in the ringfence. I would—we would—support the notion that the CCJs process prior to 10 November should be looked at and should be included in protection.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Andrew Goodacre: Looking at what their task is, I would expect arbitrators to have knowledge of leases and the legality around that side, but the biggest judgment that they probably have to make is one before the process starts: is the business viable? So they would need to have a good insight into business. Not all retail businesses operate on the same business model and the same margins and with the same overheads. If the first crunch question is whether the business is viable, because only viable businesses can go to arbitration, they really need to understand business knowledge and business expectations and profitabilities.
Martin McTague: I would endorse that. I think, in this particular form of arbitration, what you are looking for is to protect the interests of both parties, and clearly, if it is not a viable business, that undermines the position and enhances or makes the risk worse for the landlord, but I think most arbitrators are able to take evidence on that kind of issue anyway.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Jack Shakespeare: To go back to the first question, I would endorse the responses from my fellow panellists. For the first question, around viability, that business sense is utterly crucial. The first arbitration case is very important, because it is going potentially to set a precedent, so of course it is incredibly important that these people are chosen correctly.
With regard to cost, I think my answer would be “low”, for understandable reasons. Just because of the wide scope and the differences in size of the businesses that are included in the scope, I think the cost needs to be low. I think that there needs to be an opportunity or option for fees to be re-awarded in the face of bad practice or ineffective decision making. So my answer would be “low”, but of course the affordability of it is down to each business.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Jack Shakespeare: Yes.
Andrew Goodacre: On the cost side, I agree with what Jack is saying: the lower the better. If it is too high, it becomes a barrier to the business, the tenant initiating the action, because it is payable on initiating the arbitration, as I understand it. If a landlord thinks that it is prohibitive to the tenant, the landlord could well play the long game and keep waiting and waiting, because if you do not get the application within six months of the Act being passed, you have missed the opportunity for arbitration. It could well be that if it is too much of a barrier and too high for the individual tenant, they miss that opportunity, so it needs to be kept as low as possible.
Martin McTague: The reason why we are trying to avoid legal action is that when there is an asymmetry of power, when the landlord can use the muscle that they have to try to bully their tenant, you get unfair solutions. I think the principle must be that the cost is as low as possible. I would not want to put a number on that, but I think it needs to be as low as possible.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Martin McTague: My biggest concern is the cut-off date. Given that we are now entering another period of uncertainty, if we ended up with squeeze, where cases were being brushed or pressure being put on because we were getting close to that cut-off date, that could lead to some unfair outcomes.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Martin McTague: Yes. In other words, that is a hard cut-off. We all know that the current situation is changing rapidly.
Seema Malhotra
Q
Martin McTague: We are seeing a lot of retail businesses hanging on by their fingernails, hoping for the best in this last quarter, and trying to get through the Christmas period, which is often make or break for them. If they get even a partial success, and start creeping towards a solution at the end of spring next year, it would be disastrous to try to drive those businesses under when they have survived all the trials and tribulations of covid so far.
Andrew Goodacre: I think the way the code of practice and the Bill have been put together is not bad, and they really try to cover all eventualities. The cost element of arbitration is a barrier to businesses, and puts the legislation at risk. The viability question—how you determine viability, and the clarity and transparency around that—needs to be addressed early on.
I know that we have asked this question and been given the answer, but there needs to be absolute clarity that the Bill applies to all businesses in scope, including those that are contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That was one of the earlier questions that came back from some members, and we were told that it does include all those contracted-out businesses, but we need to be clear on that, because we do not want to end up with an unnecessarily ambiguous area that leads to legal argument.
There are also tenancy-at-will situations. When negotiations on a new lease are ongoing but have not been resolved during the closure period—the protected period—the tenant is operating on a tenancy at will. Arguably, there is no guarantee that that tenancy at will is covered by the Bill. Again, that will need clarity and understanding.
Martin McTague: There is another point that I should have raised. A lot of supply-chain businesses supply those that are directly affected and covered by the scope of the Bill—they have been seriously affected by what has gone on so far. If you take a retailer, for example, virtually everybody who is supplying that retailer has gone through the same sort of trauma as the retailer, but none of them will be protected in the same way.
Jack Shakespeare: I echo and endorse Martin’s point: one of the prospective risks is the uncertainty around the next few months. It feels like a bit of a “hold your breath” moment. You could talk about it being make or break for our sector and for different characteristics across sectors. A make or break part of the year for the gyms, pools and leisure centres sector is January to March. That is a hugely important quarter of the year, and it rolls into that time period. I would just echo that: the uncertainty of the next few months is a major risk.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Q
Andrew Goodacre: Contracted out?
Peter Dowd
Yes.
Andrew Goodacre: I would not know the percentages. Over the years, people have come out of it, sometimes incentivised by the landlord because it is preferential for the landlord to have the tenant contracted out. This is not my absolute field of expertise, but there is a wider view that the Landlord and Tenant Act could be rewritten as well in the near future, to reflect a more modern business environment. There are concerns about that Act in general.
On the issue of whether a business is in or not, we are told that everyone is in—it does not matter. The tenancy at will is slightly different. That is where a temporary tenancy agreement is created because the negotiation for a new one has not been completed, but a tenant is given the opportunity to operate at will until such time as a new one is agreed. A tenancy at will gives no protection whatsoever to either party. Either person could walk away at a week’s notice—at very short notice.
Peter Dowd
Q
Andrew Goodacre: We need to be clear that the Bill is designed, I believe, to protect businesses that were mandated to close in the timeframe of March ’20 to, depending on the sector, August ’21, and it should not matter whether that business is contracted out under the Landlord and Tenant Act—we are told it does not matter—and it should not matter if they have, through circumstances during that timeframe, ended up on a tenancy at will, simply because they could not agree their new tenancy under normal circumstances. Those are the areas where we want to make sure that the legal loopholes do not exist for highly paid lawyers to exploit.
Peter Dowd
Q
Andrew Goodacre: I am sure he has. What we have been told is absolutely correct and reassuring. We just want to see it written with absolute clarity.
Peter Dowd
I am sure the Minister has got that tagged and will be paying due attention to it.
Peter Dowd
Q
Martin McTague: There is a very clear dividing line. The retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are the ones most badly damaged by this whole crisis. It also reflects the point I made earlier. There are extended supply chains within those sectors as well, which have also been affected. In terms of the top of the supply pyramid, retail, hospitality and leisure are without doubt the most affected sectors.
Peter Dowd
Q
Martin McTague: You will probably anticipate my first answer, which is that trade bodies are probably a good way of getting the message out. I think lawyers as well. The first thing that most people in this situation will do is to refer to their lawyer. There has to be a clear duty on lawyers to explain that arbitration is an option that they can take up.
In our experience, the smaller businesses tend to respond better to social media, so a BEIS publicity campaign based on social media contacts. The other obvious one is local government, which could do a lot to get this message back to retailers, especially in their area.
Jack Shakespeare: I support that, absolutely. As a trade body, engagement from the Department to us has been very positive. That communication has been great. We have been able to disseminate as much information as we could accurately and efficiently. I would echo that starting point. Again, use local government, lawyers and social media, recognise the characteristics across each sector and work with trade bodies to get the right messages across. They are obviously the experts in talking to those different businesses.
Andrew Goodacre: The communications have been covered well by my colleagues. To go back to your earlier point on what people have done to get through the crisis, we only do retail businesses, and they worked really hard as always. They have shown great creativity and determination, but one telling fact is that their level of debt has increased five times, by taking out bounce back loans, for instance. The larger retailers would have taken out a business interruption loan.
There was some research done in the summer of this year that suggested that the debt in independent businesses —which is not the usual business model; they do not normally do debt—is five times higher. It is estimated at about £2.2 billion. That has to be repaid. Then you have got rental debt on top of that. It leads back to this argument of viability. When you are assessing a business, you take a cold, hard look at its balance sheet. If a small business has a business loan or rental debt on there—and you have to counter the liability—before you know it, it is technically balance-sheet insolvent. It still may be viable as an operation, but there is a technical balance-sheet insolvency because of the level of liability it is are carrying, which it would not normally be carrying.
Whether it is rental or business loan debt, debt is a problem. Businesses have had to do it because they needed to survive. They wanted to trade and give themselves the chance of re-establishing themselves. Many are doing that. If we get a good Christmas, hopefully they can look to ’22 with some positivity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Q
Martin McTague: I saw a definite change in the atmosphere. I know the Minister will be aware of this, but I think there was some doubt as to whether you, as a Department, would go this far. Free-market instincts would suggest that you would not. As soon as you had made it clear that compulsory arbitration was going to play a part, the whole atmosphere in these negotiations seemed to change. People entered into much more constructive arrangements. Some of them completely avoided or did not want to go down an arbitration route and settle on payment terms, which I do not think they would have done prior to that decision, so I think it has had a wholly positive impact.
Andrew Goodacre: I would say that when we first started looking at the problem in 2020, it was 40% to 50% that had experienced challenges with trying to negotiate something with landlords. I said earlier that we are down to a hard-core 15%—maybe 20%, but it is probably nearer to 15%. There is entrenchment on both sides at that point. The message about sharing a burden that Jack referred to earlier is really crucial in that. People on both sides, where they are entrenched, realise that they stand the risk of losing something from that position. People are beginning to come to it now.
If I have a concern, it is about things I have been hearing from tenants who are saying that landlords are trying to leverage negotiations before getting to arbitration. I mentioned asking people to give up security, or even saying, “We’ll write off part of that debt, but we’re going to increase your overall rent up to this level.” They are using a bit of power, fear and the realisation that cash is king to the business in order to influence a decision that may not be in the best interests of the business in the longer term, but in the short term looks like a natural solution. Some of that may be right. I am not saying that it is not, but there is an indication of some of those behaviours starting to manifest.
Jack Shakespeare: To endorse that, I think it has changed the atmosphere. It has certainly turbo-charged the conversations. It goes back to a few things. The ability to disseminate the information is really important. You have picked up on the clarity before. How that comes out through trade bodies and goes out through lawyers and local government is really important. That will maintain the pace of conversations. It is really important that it does not drop, so that people access that information. The overriding sense of uncertainty looking ahead is a massive dynamic right now, but holistically it has really changed the atmosphere and advanced the conversations.
Paul Scully
Q
Martin McTague: The code of practice has worked, in that it has set an expected behaviour and the way in which the parties should relate to each other. I accept completely that if you tried to expand the scope dramatically it would damage the impact, but clearly it does not stop with the retailer; a lot of people are impacted by this.
Paul Scully
Q
Andrew Goodacre: This code is so much stronger than the previous code in 2020. We are moving in the right direction. It links into your earlier question about changing behaviours, and the code has been instrumental in that. On what would enhance the code, I appreciate that the information is not entirely available yet, but it is about who will be arbitrating, the costs of that arbitration and the decisions around the viability, so that people get to know as early as possible what they need to do to submit, if they feel that they will end up in that situation. Preparing for arbitration will be quite scary to some people—the mere thought of putting all that information together. As soon as we can release what they need to have recorded and prepared, the earlier they can start doing it. You do not want to try to collate all the information with two months to go on the process.
Jack Shakespeare: I have nothing to add to that.
Mick Whitley
Q
Martin McTague: It might do, but the alternative is that they would have to take legal action, which is likely to be much more expensive and protracted. It is not an ideal solution, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Andrew Goodacre: Yes, it could do. If you were looking at costs in the hundreds instead of the thousands that would obviously be better. You have to put it in context. As I think one of your colleagues said, next year an awful lot of cost increases are coming through to business, whether it is the national minimum wage or energy costs, which have tripled for many businesses. Suddenly, whether it is £1,000 or £2,000, it looks like a lot of money. That may lead to a better negotiation and solution before you get to arbitration, but it plays to the landlord to play the waiting game at that point in terms of initiating the arbitration. That is the threat of it.
Jack Shakespeare: To go back to one of Andrew’s last points, as much foresight and clarity on that up front would be beneficial, so that people can make informed decisions on how they go forward.
The Chair
Given that there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. That brings us to the end of today’s oral evidence session. The Committee will meet again on Thursday at 11.30 am in Committee Room 10 to begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Felicity Buchan.)
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chairs: Clive Efford, † Mrs Maria Miller
† Ali, Tahir (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
† Bradley, Ben (Mansfield) (Con)
† Burghart, Alex (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education)
† Carter, Andy (Warrington South) (Con)
† Clarke-Smith, Brendan (Bassetlaw) (Con)
† Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Hardy, Emma (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
† Hopkins, Rachel (Luton South) (Lab)
† Hunt, Jane (Loughborough) (Con)
† Hunt, Tom (Ipswich) (Con)
Johnson, Kim (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
† Johnston, David (Wantage) (Con)
† Nici, Lia (Great Grimsby) (Con)
† Perkins, Mr Toby (Chesterfield) (Lab)
† Richardson, Angela (Guildford) (Con)
† Tomlinson, Michael (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)
† Western, Matt (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Sarah Thatcher, Bradley Albrow, Committee Clerks
† attended the Committee
Public Bill Committee
Tuesday 7 December 2021
(Afternoon)
[Maria Miller in the Chair]
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]
The Chair
A point of order was raised this morning about there not being a debate on new clauses 1 and 4 at the beginning of proceedings today. I am happy to cover the new clauses if the Government and Opposition want that. Although they could have been debated at the time, and Opposition Members did not take the opportunity to do so, out of a sense of fairness this is a way of getting through this slight wrinkle.
Clause 21
List of relevant providers
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)
What a pleasure it is to reach our sixth and final sitting on this important Bill.
Clause 21 will allow the Government to introduce a list of post-16 education or training providers. To be on the list, providers will need to meet conditions that help to protect learners against the negative impacts of provider failure. It will also help to protect public funds by preventing or mitigating the risks of provider failure. Currently, there is a risk that the short-notice exit of a provider from education and training can significantly disrupt the experience of many young people and adults. This can be because of delays in finding a new provider and insufficient planning on what happens next in these circumstances. This clause focuses the operation of a list on the types of providers that the Department considers are most at risk of an unregulated and disorderly exit from provision—independent training providers.
While we value the role of ITPs in helping to provide a more diverse and innovative learning offer, it is not right that these types of providers should operate with less in-built protection for learners than other types of further education provider. Fundamentally, we want to protect learners and public funds if providers cease to provide education or training. Where other regulatory mechanisms are not in place, we want to ensure that there is a consistent set of requirements placed on providers to protect learners and public funds, even where the provision is funded by local commissioning bodies or through subcontracts from directly funded providers.
Where a provider is not directly funded by the Secretary of State—as can be the case with ITPs—the existing levers for the Secretary of State to protect learner interests are not as strong. Contractual conditions of funding to prevent disorderly exits may also not be consistent. The Bill will allow commonality and consistency across funding streams to mitigate provider failure risks. The clause also allows the Secretary of State to set out other matters in connection with the keeping of the list of post-16 education or training providers.
We intend to consult before deciding on the detail of the way in which the scheme will operate. The Secretary of State is required to do so before making the regulations that establish the list for the first time.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
May I record my thanks, Mrs Miller, for what you said a few moments ago about ensuring that new clauses 1 and 4 may be debated? I appreciate your flexibility.
We do not intend to divide the Committee on this subject, but I re-emphasise the point that I made in the discussion on the amendment. I entirely appreciate what the Minister says about the need to ensure protection for learners, but a small number of providers have a long track record of providing a small amount of provision that is none the less important in certain sectors and geographies. If this becomes a bureaucratic or economic minefield, they will simply withdraw from the sector, which will be the poorer for it. We received representations from the Manchester combined authority, which has a long history of working closely with smaller providers. It has real concerns that a national list will lead to smaller providers being missed out.
We do not intend to divide the Committee but we will continue to scrutinise the Government and ensure that the provisions put in place do not, as we fear they may if they are not carefully handled, exclude important, worthwhile providers from the list.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Prohibitions on entering into funding arrangements with providers
Alex Burghart
I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 22, page 28, line 15, leave out from first “to” to “paid” in line 16 and insert “an agreement for the funding authority to provide funding to the provider includes a reference to an agreement or arrangements between the funding authority and the provider by virtue of which amounts can or must be”
This amendment makes clear that an agreement between the Secretary of State and an education provider that must be in place in order for student loans to be paid directly to the provider counts as “funding arrangements” for the purposes of clause 22. It also covers arrangements other than agreements.
Amendment 24 is a minor and technical amendment that clarifies that advanced learner loan funding routed through the Student Loans Company is in the scope of clause 22. This has always been the intention of clause 22(9), and this amendment is merely a technical adjustment to the drafting. It ensures that advanced learner loan funding arrangements are captured by the “funding arrangements” definition in clause 22. Without the amendment, clause 22 may not be adequately applied in relation to providers who receive advanced learner loan funding.
Mr Perkins
We appreciate that clarification.
Amendment 24 agreed to.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 22 is important in ensuring that a funding authority is prevented from entering funding arrangements with a provider that is not on the list. It also makes sure that the funding authority can take action to terminate funding arrangements in an orderly way should a provider cease to be on the list.
The short-notice exit of a provider from the provision of education or training can significantly disrupt the educational experience of young people and adults. The transfer of learners to another provider can take time, be extremely disruptive and increase the risk of learner disengagement. The provision of post-16 education or training is commissioned by various funding bodies and is often subcontracted. As a result, there is a wide variation in the range of obligations and requirements currently imposed on providers.
The provisions in the clause are intended to ensure that a consistent set of requirements is placed on providers and funding authorities to protect learners and public funds, even where the education or training is funded by local commissioning bodies or through subcontracts. The clause also sets out that a provider must not rely on anything in clause 22 as a reason for not carrying out existing obligations under a funding agreement. A funding authority could continue to enforce those obligations even if a provider was not on the list, as the contract would remain valid. This may be important to allow a provider to teach existing learners until they had completed their course where the risk posed by the provider could be managed.
The clause also includes the power for the Secretary of State to set out in regulations the particular characteristics of the funding arrangements that are subject to these funding controls. This is necessary so that the Department can ensure that the controls are applied proportionately. For example, de minimis requirements may be needed so that short-term and low-value arrangements for the provision of relevant education or training are not captured by the requirement for the particular provider to be on the list. The clause is essential in ensuring that there are certain restrictions and controls on the public funding of education or training providers in the scope of the list.
Mr Perkins
It is important to ensure that information is shared widely, not only with providers that might be outside mainstream education provision but with funding authorities such as mayoral or combined authorities, to ensure dialogue and so that smaller providers are not missed out.
The clause clarifies that providers must be approved and have an agreement in place for them to be allowed to have student loans paid directly. Building on the contribution I made in the debate on clause 21, it would be useful if the Minister clarified the steps the Government will take to ensure that only providers with quality offerings and financial stability and robustness receive direct payments and that these steps will not prevent quality, innovative smaller providers from accessing the important opportunities to attract new students.
Further to that, does the Minister anticipate that the extension of student finance will mean that a greater variety of private sector organisations will be able to receive student loan applications? I have met people in my constituency, and have written to his predecessor about other courses whose students have previously been excluded from getting student loans to access them, despite having a long track record of their students going into employment. To what extent does the Minister think the Bill will increase the number of learners who can get student loans for their courses, and how will he ensure that quality, innovative, smaller providers can access those opportunities?
Alex Burghart
The Government are fully aware that ITPs come in all shapes and sizes, and play an essential part in the skills ecosystem. We are very mindful that we do not want to drive good providers out of the market by creating a list. The sole purpose of the list is to ensure that all providers have in place provisions to ensure that they have contingency plans for their students should they go under. That is something that exists elsewhere in the skills space. We are extending it to ITPs, and intend to do so in such a way that will not create a bureaucratic overload. To the hon. Member’s point on student loans, it will very much depend on how the system evolves from this point.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Funding arrangements: interpretation
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss clause 24 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 23 provides definitions for key terms in this part of the legislation relating to funding arrangements with post-16 educational training providers, and ensures that the correct legal person and funding arrangements that they are party to are in scope of the relevant obligations. The clause is essential to the interpretation of the list of post-16 educational providers, and should stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24 provides that the regulations for creating or keeping the list, altering the categories of education and training in scope of it, or amending primary legislation will be subject to the affirmative procedure. That means that they will be subject to an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny over the use of those powers, and must be approved by both Houses prior to becoming law. The clause provides that the powers to make regulations in clauses 21 and 22 include the power to make supplementary, incidental, transitional or saving provision.
By way of example, once regulations have been made under clause 21, the Department may consider it necessary to amend statutory powers to provide financial assistance for relevant educational training so that they signpost the prohibitions that will apply, and which effectively constrain those financial assistance powers. One such power will be in section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973. Clause 24 will ensure that there is appropriate parliamentary scrutiny over the use of the powers, and should stand part of the Bill.
Mr Perkins
We appreciate that clarification. The clause and its subsections clarify the powers to make regulations under clauses 21 and 22, and we have no desire to oppose it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Provision of opportunities for education and skills development
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 53, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “education” to end of line 17.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 54, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “has” to “level.” and insert
“is earning below the Living Wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation.”
New clause 7—Level 3 qualifications provision—
“(1) Employer Representative Bodies may prescribe additional Level 3 qualifications, as part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.
(2) Additional Level 3 qualifications may be prescribed under subsection (1), in instances where the Employer Representative Body identifies a local need or skills shortage.”
Mr Perkins
The clause addresses the lifetime skills guarantee and the provision of opportunities for education and skills development. Subsection (1) says:
“Any person of any age has the right to free education on an approved course up to Level 3 supplied by an approved provider of further or technical education, if he or she has not already studied at that level.”
Amendment 53 would simply remove the final eleven words of the sentence. It is a probing amendment to test the reasons why the Government are seeking effectively to remove the word “guarantee” from the lifetime skills guarantee, and instead offer a significant limitation on the number of people who are able to study under it.
We think it is vital that people in low-paid employment have the chance to take additional level 3 qualifications to support them into better paid work or into new sectors. We also think it is crucial that people in industries or sectors that are diminishing have the opportunity to retrain. Substantial financial barriers would prevent them from accessing those courses.
When the Prime Minister made his speech announcing the lifetime skills guarantee in Exeter, he seemed to understand that point. The speech was all about the need for people to retrain and to be able to move from one sector where there were not going to be jobs in the future to jobs in other sectors. He wanted them to seize those opportunities. Unfortunately, the lifetime skills guarantee, which is going to take a long time to come into being anyhow, already has limitations.
Amendment 53 seeks to test the Government’s view on ensuring that more people are able to access a second qualification. Earlier, we gave the Government the opportunity to support a quite limited amendment on a second qualification.
I remind the Committee that a lifetime skills guarantee was in place for level 3 qualifications for everyone until 2013, when the former Chancellor George Osborne removed it. The decision to reintroduce this poor relation of that policy shows how the Government are learning at least some lessons from the mistakes they have made, but it lacks the ambition needed to reverse the failures of previous Government policy. More than 9 million jobs are excluded, many in sectors that have skills shortages and vacancies, such as tourism and hospitality.
I was speaking to a business in my constituency just this weekend that owns a number of establishments in the hospitality sector. It is desperate to attract members of staff into the sector. This is an organisation with a long track record of training up and developing members of staff, and ensuring that people make the best of their careers. It would be alarmed to hear that those kinds of opportunities are excluded from the lifetime skills guarantee. It is essential that the Government get this right. We hope they support our proposals.
Amendment 54 is an attempt to put on to a legal footing the promise made by the Secretary of State at the Association of Colleges conference in November. He said that
“from next April any adult in England who earns a yearly salary below the National Living Wage will also have the chance to take these high value Level 3 qualifications for free.”
That is precisely what the amendment seeks to do. It says that if anyone has a level 3 qualification and is earning below the living wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation, they would be able to take another level 3 qualification.
As we have laid out, we think that restricting the opportunities for students to take a second level 3 qualification is a huge missed opportunity. As the Committee has rejected our more ambitious amendment to allow all students the right to take a second level 3 qualification, we believe that the Government should at least be willing to support an amendment that supports what the Secretary of State has said.
New clause 7 relates to students wishing to do a level 3 qualification in an area where the local skills improvement plan has identified a local skills shortage. It would allow the local skills improvement plan to approve funding for a second level 3 qualification where local labour market shortages are identified.
The Bill contradicts itself. Reportedly, its aim is to ensure that skills policy is determined locally. New clause 7 would ensure that local skills improvement plans were able to identify that there was a skills need in the area and encourage people to retrain in that sector. Anyone who votes against that once again will seize power from local skills improvement plans and place it in the hands of the Secretary of State. We look forward to hearing what I imagine will be universal support for our amendments from hon. Members who are keen to support people in their constituencies.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield in his amendments 53 and 54 and new clause 7. We have had this debate already in Committee and I still think that the Committee made the wrong decision to prevent learners having a second chance at a level 3 qualification for the reasons that I set out.
Those reasons were as valid the other day as they are now for these amendments, because we live in a dynamic economy where industries come and go. The industry that my town was historically dependent on, and that the town of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South is equally famous for, is hatting. Those industries have pretty much died out, but the hatting industry made Denton famous. The Bowlers of bowler hat fame came from Denton, although they made their money at Lock & Co. Hatters in St James’s in London. However, that industry and those skills have gone.
In the past 50 or 60 years, my constituency has had to diversity and the workforce has had to retrain. That pace of chance will be prevalent in the decades ahead as technology advances, the global economy shrinks to make the world a smaller place, and international trade becomes the norm, meaning that we buy goods from other countries rather than make them here.
If we are going to have an industrial strategy that says that we want to be the lead nation in the new green industrial revolution, we need to ensure that we have the skills and the workforce to match that ambition. I am supportive of that and, if we are being honest, every Member of the House recognises the challenges and is supportive of it. That is not a top-level ambition, however; it has to be dealt with in the nitty-gritty of legislation.
We have a Bill going through Parliament that is rightly focused on skills and training and on ensuring that the next generation of the workforce has a built-in dynamism to be able to diversify, retrain and fill skills in the areas of the economy that have shortages. As the Opposition have said, that may mean someone has to have a second bite of the cherry at a level 3 qualification. If the subject in which someone has a level 3 is no longer fit for purpose, or relevant to the modern workplace, are we going to leave them languishing with inappropriate qualifications and skills that are no longer needed, or are we going to give them the opportunity to retrain, reskill and join the workforce, hopefully in highly paid, decent jobs? That is why I support amendments 53 and 54, which would put that idea on a legal footing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield rightly said.
The voice of local businesses and the economic partnership between local government, businesses, academia and training providers are setting out local skills improvement plans. They identify key skill shortages in their economic areas, and they should be given the flexibility to say, “You know what, in my area, we have an absolute shortage of skills in a particular sector. We want to make sure that our area is really dynamic in that sector and therefore it is a key priority for our partners to skill up to level 3 adequate numbers of the workforce.” That is sensible. It is devolution as it is meant to work, from the bottom up, and that is why I also support my hon. Friend’s new clause 7.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, because I agree with everything he said.
The amendments and the new clause address the issue from the relevant two angles. They are designed to offer a genuine lifetime skills guarantee for individuals—one that is aspirational and does not fall back on the argument that because someone got a couple of A-levels 30 years, they cannot now retrain for a level 3 qualification to meet a skills need in the local area. I think about the changing world of work, and how much more is now digital or IT-based. There has been a shift in skills, which is driving our economy. Unless we agree to the amendments, so many people will be locked out from making a genuine shift in their skillset and acquiring a higher skilled job, which would put them on a sustainable footing. It is short-sighted to attempt to restrict that opportunity.
We have heard much about the responsibility of employers to lead the development of skills plans for their areas, given that they understand their local economies. New clause 7 is positive because it would genuinely enable employer representative bodies to shape what that level 3 qualification should be, based on the skills shortages in their areas. The new clause would meet the purpose of ERBs in developing the skills plans and ensure the lifetime skills guarantee for local people.
I support the terms of the amendments and the new clause. I should add that there are still a few hat factories in Luton producing artisan hats, and very good they are, too.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I will speak to the amendments and the new clause that appear in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield.
Of course we all want to see a high-skill, high-wage workforce. We need that for our economy. A crucial part of that is the retraining of employees. I am sure that most people in the room agree that the evolving workplace means that we need a process of continuous development if we are to adapt and ensure that our economy thrives, against an ever-competitive global marketplace.
One need only think back to what happened to clerks working in yesteryear—the Minister might say that that was in my time—to see how they had to retrain and develop typewriting skills, and then progress to work on computers and so on. With the advent of computer technology and handheld devices, simply picking items in a logistics centre moved from literally picking things up against a piece of paper to the use of mobile technology. These are skills that demand more of the workforce. We have to put that in the context of having the lowest productivity of the major European nations and among the lowest in the OECD. That is why the skills agenda is important, and I commend the idea behind the Bill the Government have brought forward.
A lot of this work was developed by a former Member of this place, Gordon Marsden, who did a huge amount of work. That was well remembered by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish on the very Back Bench, who will have known him far better than me. Gordon Marsden was the one who really pushed the notion of a lifetime learning entitlement. It is right that we are looking to introduce that.
Amendments 53 and 54 would give any person the right to free education on an approved course to level 3 if they earn below the living wage as identified by the Living Wage Foundation. The wording of the Bill ensures that the LLE is available only to those who have not already studied at that level. That undermines one of the defining aspects of the LLE and what Gordon Marsden envisaged. The vast majority of people obtain a level 3 qualification between the ages of 16 and 18. This qualifier would limit the LLE too restrictively, as my hon. Friends have said.
Our amendments seek to expand the application of the LLE to those who need it most—those who are furthest from skilled work and who earn below the living wage—redefining the parameters to adapt the policy to fit the needs of the population. In fact, there was widespread support for the Lords amendments, including from Universities UK, that widened the eligibility so that an individual could access the LLE regardless of their prior level of study.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield highlighted, the Secretary of State for Education announced just a few days ago in a speech to the Association of Colleges that the Government will be launching a pilot, which will see adults who earn below the national living wage able to undertake national skills fund level 3 qualifications for free. That is to be embraced. I am sure many of us, certainly on this side of the Committee, think that that is right. Why not actually commit it to the Bill, as my hon. Friend said? If there really is true ambition and a will to see proper levelling up and the reskilling of our economy, we should commit it to the Bill. It seems bizarre, or perhaps it has not been considered as fully as the Secretary of State led us to believe in his speech. Elsewhere, many are calling for and supporting the removal of the restriction in the Bill for those who have not already done a level 3 qualification. That would facilitate those who want to reskill rather than upskill, which are both equally valid and necessary.
New clause 7 would widen the availability of courses that form part of the lifetime skills guarantee by allowing employer representative bodies to prescribe additional qualifications as approved courses falling within the lifetime skills guarantee. The Augar review—the post-18 review—recommended an all-age level 3 entitlement. The Government have put this into effect, but only for a limited list of level 3 qualifications. The Association of Colleges wants that to be changed. My local college, which I referred to before—Warwickshire College Group—is one of the finest colleges in the country and certainly one of the biggest. Its principal is very vocal about wanting to see that change.
My question to the Minister is, therefore, what is the justification for such limits? The reform has the potential to be wide ranging and revolutionary. Before further meat is added to the bones in the form of the subsequent White Paper, the Bill in its current state will introduce unnecessary limitations on the LLE. That is why new clause 7 and the two amendments are important to ensure that we can broaden the skillset of our workforce and our population, ensuring that we are able to adapt to an ever rapidly changing global economy.
Alex Burghart
Amendments 53 and 54 taken together would alter the eligibility criteria for the proposed legal entitlement to a level 3 qualification for all adults. Amendment 53 in particular is intended to make anyone in England eligible for those qualifications, regardless of their prior qualification level; and amendment 54 is intended to make anyone in England eligible if they earn less than the living wage.
Amendments 53 and 54 highlight the reason why we are opposed to putting such an entitlement into the legislation in the first place: it could constrain our ability to respond quickly and flexibly to adapt such entitlements to benefit adults who are most in need of support. For example, if we wanted to change the offer within the legislative framework, we would have to change the legislation. We have already announced that, from April next year, we will also expand the free courses for jobs offer to include any adult in England who earns below the national living wage or is unemployed, regardless of their prior qualification level. We are able to do that without needing legislation.
By targeting eligibility on the lowest-paid earners and the unemployed, we will ensure that we support those most in need of support to access better job opportunities and to improve their prospects. I hope that the hon. Member for Chesterfield agrees with that, given that amendment 54 seeks to target those same adults. However, it is also not a good use of public funding to expand eligibility in a non-targeted way to anyone, regardless of their wages or prior qualification level, which is what amendment 53 appears to do. We therefore do not support the inclusion of amendments 53 and 54 in the Bill.
Mr Perkins
That was a useful and interesting little debate. We heard a lot about the—I want say burgeoning, but at least still existing—hat industry. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South and for Warwick and Leamington will be glad to know that I have seen at least two colleagues in hats recently—one was my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who as they know is quite a trend-setter—so it might well be that a recovery in the hat industry is looming. It was a useful debate, and we heard some valuable contributions on why the amendments are important.
Turning to the Minister’s remarks, I accept that the amendment has similarities to and is possibly even more wide ranging than one that has already been rejected by the Committee, so we will withdraw it. However, we will press amendment 54 to a vote, because all that it seeks to do is to put on to a legal footing the promise that was made. I hear what the Minister says—“Don’t worry, we are going to deliver the policy; we just aren’t going to vote for it”—but I think there will be real value in ensuring that the Government commit to the thing that they say are going to do, which is about those who earn below the national living wage, as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, being able to access level 3 qualifications.
Given what we heard earlier in the passage of the Bill about the importance of local decision making, local skills improvement plans and local employers deciding their priorities, it would seem a sensible approach to allow them to identify local priorities and allow people to study a second level 3 qualification if addressing a known skills shortage. We will therefore look to press new clause 7, as well as amendment 54, to a Division. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 53.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 54, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “has” to “level.” and insert
“is earning below the Living Wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation.”—(Mr Perkins.)
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
The Government agree with the ambition to ensure that people in England have access to education no matter their age. We are committed to helping everyone get the skills that they need at every stage in their lives.
In April, we launched the free courses for jobs offer as part of the lifetime skills guarantee. That gives all adults in England the opportunity to take their first level 3 qualification for free, regardless of age. It is not right, however, to put the free courses for jobs offer into legislation. That would constrain the Government in allocating resources in future, and make it harder to adapt the policy to changing circumstances. The Secretary of State recently announced, for example, that from April next year we will expand the offer to include any adult in England who earns below the national living wage or is unemployed, regardless of their prior qualification level.
Through the adult education budget, full funding is also available through legal entitlements for adults aged 19 and over to access English and maths qualifications and fully-funded digital skills qualifications for adults with no or low digital skills. In areas where adult education is not devolved, the adult education budget can fully fund eligible learners studying up to level 2 if they are unemployed or earning below around £17,300 per year.
The spending review has provided a fixed quantum for adult skills, and the level of provision that is funded in any year needs to fit that quantum. Funding increases to follow increased numbers of learners, or a higher-funded mix of provision, will have to be subject to affordability within the overall envelope. The spending review process, rather than legislation, is the appropriate way for determining how the Government allocate resources over the long term. Funding for the free courses for jobs offer will be available throughout the three-year spending review period, giving further education providers the certainty that they need to invest in the delivery of the offer.
Moreover, the Bill is not an appropriate place to create new legal entitlements when we are in the process of reforming further education funding and of carrying out a review of qualifications at level 3 and below. Those vital programmes will ensure our skills system is fit for the future. By creating a legal entitlement for anyone to access their first qualification up to level 3, we would cut across those vital reforms and pre-empt the consultation process.
I now turn to the proposal in the clause that any employer receiving apprenticeship funding must spend at least two thirds of that funding on people who begin apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3 before the age of 25. The Chancellor’s spending review commitment delivers the first increase to apprenticeships funding since 2019-20. Funding will grow to £2.7 billion by 2024-25.
There have been some changes in the make-up of apprenticeships since the reforms: a higher proportion of apprentices are now aged over 25. In 2020-21, 16 to 24-year-olds still accounted for 50% of apprenticeship starts. In the same period, level 2 and level 3 starts made up 69% of the total. I know that there are concerns about the fall in starts among young people. I recognise the value of apprenticeships to young people embarking on their careers, and I am determined to ensure that there are good apprenticeship opportunities at all ages and stages, but I am concerned about the implications of trying to address that in the Bill.
The clause restricts opportunities for older and younger employees, and it restricts employer choice. Eighty per cent. of the UK’s 2030 workforce is already in work, so it cannot be right that only a third of apprenticeships funding is made available to those who are over 25. We want older people to be able to use apprenticeships to progress or retrain. The Confederation of British Industry estimates that one in six workers—5 million people—will go through radical job change and require re-training by 2030.
Age should not be a barrier to opportunities to learn or a limiting factor in our ambitions. I do not want to restrict young people to starting at level 2 or 3 apprenticeships. I also want an 18-year-old with good A-levels to see an apprenticeship as a strong alternative to university. They should be able to start a level 6 apprenticeship and gain a degree.
Employers agree. In evidence submitted to the Committee, the Open University sets out that 82% of employers, both large and small, believe that it is important for apprenticeships to be available for those of all ages and at all levels. Our work on accelerated apprenticeships clearly shows our ambitions for young people. The institute has already published progression routes from T-levels on digital production, design and development, civil engineering and building services design to level 4 apprenticeships. As an example, a T-level graduate in digital production, design and development could move on to a level 4 DevOps engineer apprenticeship and reduce the length of the apprenticeship training by up to 12 months. I want the apprenticeships programme to be responsive to the different needs of individuals, employers and the economy. I therefore believe that we should remove clause 25 from the Bill.
Mr Perkins
There is a real concern about the number of apprenticeships that are available for people between the ages of 16 and 24. The Minister makes an important point, which I would not remotely disagree with, that many people, for a variety of reasons, seek investment in their skills beyond the age of 24. Of course, opportunities should be there for them, but the lifetime skills guarantee, which might more accurately be described as a one-off skills guarantee, is really important. I do not agree with his description of 50% of apprenticeships going to 16 to 24-year-olds as a really big achievement. Too little apprenticeship funding is targeted at those under the age of 25.
Many people are concerned that since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy businesses have sat on this pot of funds, looking to utilise them. They have often not taken people on at entry level, but instead utilised the apprenticeship levy to provide MBAs for level 6 or 7 qualifications for their managerial staff. That is really what clause 25(3) seeks to address. Had the Minister said, “We’ve got a different approach to targeting that,” that would have been one thing, but simply to wipe the clause from the Bill is very concerning, and will be met by real disappointment from many of those who share the view that too little apprenticeship funding is being targeted at those under the age of 25.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25 disagreed to.
Clause 26
Further education in England: intervention
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Colleges and designated institutions play a crucial part in their local communities by enabling young people and adults to gain the skills they need. In the small numbers of cases in which an institution is failing to deliver an acceptable standard of education or training, or is failing in other ways, Government must be able to intervene to secure improvement.
Existing powers under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to intervene in colleges in the FE sector can be used in certain prescribed circumstances in which there are serious failings: mismanagement, for example, or financial or quality failures. In those circumstances, action can be taken to remove or appoint members of the governing body, or to give direction. Clause 26 extends those existing powers to allow for intervention where the education or training provided is failing, or has failed, to adequately meet local needs. Where the prescribed circumstances are met, clause 26 also enables the Secretary of State to direct the governing body to transfer “property, rights or liabilities” to another body.
The statutory intervention powers that we are amending through clause 26 are intended to be used only as a last resort. Our core support and intervention activity is delivered through administrative processes set out in the published guidance, “College oversight: support and intervention”. The Government are not seeking these powers in order to implement a new wave of mergers across the college sector—that is not the purpose of intervention. However, there is good evidence that structural change can, in the right circumstances, play a valuable role in securing improvement. We have also been clear that decisions on the college curriculum are for the governing body, not for Ministers to second-guess. We are working with Ofsted to increase the focus of inspections on how well colleges are meeting skills needs. The Government’s primary focus is on supporting colleges and designated institutions, and preventing things from going wrong.
In conclusion, strengthening the existing statutory intervention powers is necessary to ensure that, as a last resort, the Government are able to act where there is failure and there is no alternative means of securing improvement.
Mr Perkins
Clause 26 sets out in detail some additional powers relating to further education colleges in England, and the desire of the Secretary of State to intervene. The intervention regime for colleges is already complex, having been noted as a cause for concern by the Independent Commission on the College of the Future. Dame Mary Ney’s independent review of college financial oversight also identified the complexity of the regime, and in this Bill the Secretary of State is looking to find additional reasons to intervene, beyond financial failure. There is a real risk that this clause will just add to that complexity, going precisely against the apparent aim of establishing a simpler system.
Crucially, the Bill proposes new powers of intervention for the Secretary of State without giving colleges the freedoms to deliver. Last week, the Government passed an amendment that removed colleges from being strategic partners in the establishment of local skills improvement plans, so colleges are left accountable, but not empowered. Indeed, in a way, it goes further than that: if a college were to disagree with what was in the local skills improvement plan—if it were to consider that a local skills improvement plan that had been approved did not meet the needs of all of its learners—its failure to follow that plan could lead the Secretary of State to intervene and its being considered to be a failing college.
We accept that there needs to be an understanding of interventions, but there are questions that we would like to test the Minister on. First, why is it appropriate to hold colleges accountable for the delivery of LSIPs, but not treat them as strategic partners in developing those LSIPs? Secondly, do the new intervention powers apply equally to all post-16 education providers? If not—if they apply only to FE colleges—what consultation has the DfE undertaken with the Office for Students in order to ensure that this aligns with its approach to the oversight of higher education provision? Thirdly, what happens in circumstances where colleges believe that a poor or inappropriate LSIP has been produced that is not in the long-term interests of their locality? Do they simply deliver on a plan that they believe to be inappropriate, or are there mechanisms available to them to make representations on that point? If the needs of the local learning community have altered but the LSIP has not, how would a college be able to raise that? What consequences would be available to the Secretary of State if a college was seen not to fit in with what the LSIP said, even if the circumstances on the ground had changed?
Alex Burghart
As we have made clear throughout the Bill, the Government are on a mission to create an employer-led system in which the provision of skills reflects the skills that employers in a community need. We are absolutely set on ensuring that we get qualifications designed by employers to give students the skills the economy needs, at both local and national level. The clause sets about creating an accountability framework that places colleges in that sphere. We want colleges to respond to the ideas set out in a local skills improvement plan. However, as I have also made clear, these are absolutely powers of last resort. What we are really looking for is a profitable relationship between employer representative bodies and local providers. For that reason, we hope the clause will stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27
Further education bodies in education administration: application of other insolvency procedures
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 27, page 33, line 19, at end insert—
“(2C) Before applying to a court for an education administration order in relation to a further education body in England, the Secretary of state will conduct a review of the impact of the closure of a Further Education institution on learning opportunities in the local area and provide a report to Parliament on steps taken to ensure that the opportunities for learners are not restricted by his application for an education administration order.”
Amendment 61 is a probing amendment that would require the Secretary of State to review further education provision prior to applying for an education administration order for a college. There should also be a review of the impact of closing a college; if the impact of such a closure would be a reduction or complete removal of provision, we would request that the Secretary of State report to Parliament to allow for appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.
It is crucial for the Secretary of State to ensure that local areas have adequate further education provision before deciding to merge and close colleges. The colleges most likely to be closed are often those in more rural areas, those that are smaller, those that are facing specific challenges or those in communities that face specific challenges because they do not have the density of population. Although we recognise that there may be financial collapse as a result of their geographic isolation, that should not necessarily mean that the provision their students rely upon disappears with the merger of the college.
It is important to have scrutiny at both a local and national level. We believe that it should be parliamentary scrutiny, to ensure that the Secretary of State commits to reporting to the House before announcing such a decision, and to ensure that there is a review of the impact of a closure on the local labour market and on the courses available to people in that local community.
Alex Burghart
Amendment 61 would require the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the impact of the closure of an FE institution on learning opportunities in a local area and provide a report to Parliament on the steps taken to ensure that opportunities for learners are not restricted ahead of an application for an education administration order. We will hear about education administration orders in the next few minutes.
I appreciate what Labour Members are trying to do, but the effect would be to delay an application for an education administration order, which would run counter to the purpose of the amendment. First, if an FE body becomes insolvent, it risks being placed into a regular insolvency procedure by a creditor or its board. The primary objective of a regular insolvency procedure is to prioritise the interests of creditors. This means that any closure scenario could result in the best returns to creditors being prioritised over the needs of keeping the body open for learners. Going down a standard insolvency route with a college will prioritise creditors, risking students studying there being pushed to one side.
That is not the case with an education administration order. Education administration was brought into force via the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 for this very reason. An education administrator has a special objective to prioritise the interests of learners by avoiding or minimising disruption to student studies, which sits above the interests of creditors. This means that an education administration order does not immediately result in the closure of that FE body. Depending on the time available in any given insolvency situation, the Department conducts rigorous contingency planning in the run-up to a particular education administration—it is front-loaded; it happens before we actually place the order—including a review of the options available that best prioritise learners. Once an FE body is in education administration, all options to exit, including closure, are further reviewed by the Department in conjunction with the education administrator. When considering the various options to exit education administration, the interests of learners are paramount, given that special objective. The Department also conducts public sector equality duty reviews as part of that.
First, the requirement to undertake a review of learner opportunities and produce a report to Parliament, as the amendment proposes, would significantly delay an education administration application. Any delay at this time would risk the FE body being placed into a normal insolvency procedure, which would not prioritise the interests of learners.
Secondly, although I acknowledge the importance of transparency, a public report at that stage of the process would not be helpful. Without knowing specifically what hon. Members intend to be covered in such a report, the broadness of the amendment means that a report would likely contain sensitive information, which in turn could jeopardise an education administrator’s sale or transfer negotiations with other education bodies. This, too, could cause delays and actually reduce priority for learners.
Thirdly, reporting is already in place as part of an education administration. Education administrator reports, published according to statutory deadlines, are available from Companies House and include details of how the administrator has undertaken the education administration, the options considered and the reasons for a preferred course of action, together with financial information such as the statement of affairs of the FE body and the education administrator’s receipts, payments and time costs.
Finally, I stress that education administration happens mercifully rarely. Only two further education colleges have been placed into education administration to date. The amendment would not introduce anything that is not already intended in an education administration and would, I am afraid, adversely affect the interest of learners. I therefore suggest that it is not added to the Bill.
Mr Perkins
I listened carefully to the Minister. As I said at the outset, this is a probing amendment to identify the extent to which the interests of learners are considered within education administration. I also listened to the Minister’s point regarding the creditors of such an institution, which was important and well made. I accept what he said about the need to go into education administration with due urgency. In that process that follows, which he laid out, there is a real need for the Government to say more, perhaps through a parliamentary statement, for people to better understand the situation on the ground in regard to future provision and those affected by any change in that provision. Notwithstanding that, it is not our intention to push the amendment to a vote.
Mr Perkins
Within my intention not to push the amendment to a vote, I would like to give way.
Matt Western
It is like “Just a Minute”. I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I just want to elaborate on the point in his concluding remarks about how many colleges face financial uncertainty. According to the Times Educational Supplement, it was one in seven in a recent survey. We saw with Hadlow College—one of the two that the Minister was referring to—that 2,000 students suddenly lost their places. That can have a huge impact on a town and a region.
Mr Perkins
It absolutely can. Cases such as that impact not only the learners affected at that very moment, but on the provision for the next generations coming through. It has a very detrimental impact on the local community. My hon. Friend’s point is well made. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider clause 28 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 27 proposes to clarify ambiguities in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 regarding the use of company voluntary arrangements—a procedure allowing a company or corporation in insolvency proceedings to come to an agreement with its creditors over the payment of debts. Company voluntary arrangements can be used as an exit route for normal administration, as set out in insolvency legislation.
Company voluntary arrangements can also be used as an exit route from education administration under the FE insolvency regime, which we have just been debating. That has been clarified in case law, which has been in place since March 2020, when the High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales ruled that in the education administration of West Kent and Ashford College, education administrators had the power to propose a company voluntary arrangement.
We are using the opportunity to legislate in the Bill to clarify ambiguities in the current legislation and cement that existing case law into legislation. To be clear, we are cementing what the courts have already decided on. To achieve that, clause 27 proposes to extend the existing power of the Secretary of State for Education to make regulations related to the application of insolvency legislation to FE bodies so that express provision may be made in respect of the use of company voluntary arrangements.
Clause 28 deals with the potential conflict related to the treatment of secured creditors as between the transfer scheme provisions of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 and the provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986, as applied by the 2017 Act. Specifically, the proposal amends schedules 2, 3 and 4 to the 2017 Act, making it clear that, where a transfer scheme looks to transfer secured assets free of the security, that can happen only with either the consent of the secured creditor or a court order. That is in line with protections for secured creditors in normal administration in insolvency proceedings.
Clause 28 also cements into legislation the Government’s response to the technical consultation for the insolvency regime for further education and sixth-form colleges, which was made in June 2018. We have informed the three main lenders to the FE sector—Barclays, Lloyds and Santander—of our proposed changes, and I am pleased to report that they are supportive. Barclays said:
“As a lender with significant loan exposure to the English FE sector (and desire to continue to support colleges with new loans) we are in favour of the changes proposed. The Transfer Scheme changes in particular provides welcome clarity on a point that had previously had a negative impact on sector risk profile and our appetite to lend.”
These clauses are good for the sector and good for the law, and I believe they should be good enough for us.
Mr Perkins
As the Minister was reading out that very positive quote from Barclays about his clause, it occurred to me how rarely he has had the opportunity to read out support for his Bill over the course of its passage. That is unsurprising, of course, when he is pressing ahead with amendments that 86% of respondents to his consultation are against. None the less, it was good to hear that full-throated support for this proposal from Barclays.
We do not intend to vote against clauses 27 or 28. I will simply make the point that the financial pressures facing our further education sector over the past 11 years, and particularly the past 12 months or so, have been truly unprecedented. I regularly meet representatives of colleges who are absolutely at their wit’s end, and not only about the scale of the funding cuts they have experienced over the past 11 years, but about the extent to which last-minute decisions are constantly made that leave them in a position in which they have to make redundancies in order to stay afloat, only then to discover sometimes that there is a change in the Government’s policy and they have to recruit for some positions that they had made redundant only a few months before.
So it was with the recent announcement about the adult education clawback. I have asked parliamentary questions on this issue. A number of colleges received a clawback from their adult education fund and were told that there was no right to any appeal. Then the previous Secretary of State said that they would allow appeals and I believe that in some cases the appeals were granted. In the meantime, however, those colleges were forced to cut their cloth accordingly.
Consequently, I say to the Government that although we do not oppose clauses 27 or 28, we believe that there needs to be a much greater sense of responsibility about the Government’s role in the financial distress that many of our colleges are currently suffering, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington referred to earlier, and about the impact on those colleges of the constant last-minute decision making that they have suffered over the past 11 years.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 29
Meaning of “relevant service” and other key expressions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss clause 30 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 29 is the first of a chapter of clauses that relate to the criminalisation in England and Wales of contract cheating services, which are more widely known as essay mills. Taken together, this chapter of clauses will make it an offence for an organisation or individual to complete, or arrange for another person to complete, all or part of an assignment on behalf of a student. It also criminalises the advertising of these cheating services. Essay mills threaten to undermine the reputation of our education system and to devalue the hard work of those who succeed on their own merit. They also prevent students from learning themselves and risk students entering the workforce without the knowledge, skills or competence they need.
Clause 29 provides clarity on the exact meaning of the key terms used throughout this chapter of clauses; removes the potential for unintended consequences to arise from the clause; and allows for fraudulent essay mill companies, their employees and contractors to be captured by the legislation. Because of the way that we have defined “relevant service”, we have also ensured that generally permitted study support, such as revision guides, will not be in scope, but essay mill companies that complete assignments on behalf of students will be in scope.
Clause 30 criminalises providing essay mill services or arranging for such services. It is therefore crucial in our fight against essay mills. It provides a powerful legislative tool to tackle these deplorable organisations and individuals.
I will talk briefly about the practicalities of the offence that we are creating. It will be for the prosecution to prove that the cheating service has been provided to the student. However, the burden of proof in relation to the defence is on the defendant. For example, the defendant would need to prove that they could not have known, even with reasonable diligence, that the student would or might use the material provided to complete an assignment. For example, simply asking a student to sign a contract that states that they will not use the work in a certain way is not a defence. Clause 30 states that clearly.
If someone were to be found guilty, they would be liable to be punished with a fine. The appropriate fine will be determined by the courts in accordance with Sentencing Council guidelines. Clause 30 will help to tackle the existence of these companies and to fine them appropriately if they continue to carry out these illicit services.
Mr Perkins
Clause 29 defines the term “relevant service” and other key expressions. We have no desire to vote against it.
I am interested in the representations that the Minister has received about the way clause 30 is drafted. Subsection (4) will immediately set those with more experienced legal minds than mine—there are such people in this place—to consider how difficult it may be to achieve a successful prosecution under these provisions. If there is a defence that enables a defendant to say, “I had no idea what the legislation was”, that starts to bring home how difficult it might be to get successful prosecutions in this area.
Notwithstanding that point, we support the Government in seeking to bring the provisions in the clause into being. We think this is an area of real importance. Every single student who diligently does their revision and their work, and who has a qualification in their hands that they have earned, needs to know that the qualification has meaning. If other people can win that qualification not through the same diligence and hard work but by accessing these cheating services, that undermines the qualification and those hard-working students. We support the intentions behind the clause, but are interested to see what representations the Minister has received on the drafting.
Will the Minister also tell us how he anticipates that the fines and offences will be regulated? For example, will the provision of a cheating service that is utilised by five different students be five offences or one? It is the technological advances that have taken place that make such a clause necessary—it would not have been previously. If, for example, an organisation was putting things on the internet that were subsequently being used in a way that was considered to be cheating, where is the line between the sale of those services and that information, and simply selling access to a website? Will the Minister tell us a little more about what he anticipates will be seen as a cheating service? That would be helpful.
Matt Western
I have a few points to add to my hon. Friend’s remarks. In principle, these clauses make some important points about essay mills and the advertising of relevant services. There is a long-overdue need to legislate to prevent such services, and this will give the issue the importance that the sector has been demanding for some time. Back in 2018, something like 40 vice-chancellors wrote to the then Secretary of State demanding action on this issue. We are three years on. The problem has grown to an industrial scale and needs tackling.
The problem has become so—well, I would not say endemic, but it is widespread, and there are many students out there who seek to access these services or feel under pressure because of the need to get good grades. There was a case not so long ago where Coventry University students were blackmailed by an essay mill company, which said that if they did not pay yet more money, it would tell their university. There is a lot to be covered in this respect, and that is why the clause is very important.
Alex Burghart
I am pleased to see that the Opposition support our move to legislate on this matter. We are all of one mind that cheating services actually end up undermining the good work of the vast majority of students, and they introduce an unnecessary element of doubt.
I reassure the Opposition that the Bill has been carefully drafted with some excellent Government lawyers. Clause 33 is designed to ensure that convictions are much more likely and that some of the easy defences—for example, that these services were just providing information and had no idea that it would be used in cheating services—cannot be used as a get-out-of-jail card. We are confident that it is a major step forward in combating this insidious crime and we look forward to its enactment.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 29 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Offence of advertising a relevant service
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 27, page 33, line 19, at end insert—
‘(2C) Before applying to a court for an education administration order in relation to a further education body in England, the Secretary of state will conduct a review of the impact of the closure of a Further Education institution on learning opportunities in the local area and provide a report to Parliament on steps taken to ensure that the opportunities for learners are not restricted by his application for an education administration order.”
This probing amendment is designed to find out the Government’s anticipated tariff for such offences. To what extent is it seen as a serious offence? To us, it is absolutely obvious that the fine needs to be of a sufficient sum to make it not worth providing such services. Although we support the Government’s intentions, we seek further clarification about the level of the anticipated tariff for such an offence. Will perpetrators get off with a fine that costs them the equivalent of a week’s dinner money, or are the Government taking such offences seriously? Will they set the fine at a high enough level to act as a deterrent?
To return to the question to which I do not believe the Minister responded when we considered clause 29, in the event of a cheating service that is utilised by five students, would that be judged as five offences or one?
Mr Perkins
That is useful clarification. Can the Minister also clarify whether perpetrators would be guilty of a civil or criminal offence? Would they get a criminal record? In the event that a business was perceived to be providing those services, what would be the impact on that business? Or is an individual judged to have committed the offence? I would be grateful for that clarification.
Overall, we believe it is vital that there is a level playing field. We support the Government’s intention to prevent the use of fraudulent services, such as essay milling, and we believe that the fines should be such to act as a deterrent. We also believe that there should be a corresponding damage to reputation provision when people or businesses commit that offence. It is crucial that the amount of the fine and the publicity surrounding those fines reflect the severity of the offence. As we have said, the practice significantly undermines the efforts of all students who work hard to achieve their qualifications legitimately.
Matt Western
It would be interesting to hear from the Minister what form of penalty the Government imagine. We heard the probing question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield about the case of five individuals. Can the Minister elaborate on what sort of penalties he envisages for the business behind the essay mill? If he does not agree with our suggestion, what scale of punishment does he believe would be appropriate? Is it more akin to dropping litter, fly-tipping or another offence?
Alex Burghart
We are in agreement that essay mills need to be driven out of business, and that is why the clauses are in the Bill. In response to the hon. Gentleman’s points, these are serious criminal offences.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I suspect that the Minister is about to say that the Sentencing Council will have a view on the issue, and actually it is for the Sentencing Council to determine the length and type of sentences that might be involved in criminal activities.
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is extremely prescient, and I congratulate him on that. This is a criminal offence and we want to see it seriously punished. However, for reasons I will set out, we do not think that amendment 62 would solve the problem in the right way. It would amend clause 31 by setting a minimum penalty of a fine of no less than £5,000 for the offence of advertising a cheating service. As drafted, the Bill does not state the level of fine payable on conviction. Instead, conviction of either offence carries the penalty of an unlimited fine—as the name implies, that is a fine imposed without financial limit. That approach carries serious potential consequences and provides a significant deterrent effect to those planning to advertise contract cheating services.
The Government do not believe that setting a minimum amount is appropriate, where maximum fines are unlimited. Setting a minimum fine of £5,000 risks that level of fine being seen by essay mill providers as a likely fine, rather than a minimum. Sentencing and the precise size of a fine should be matters for the independent judiciary, in accordance with Sentencing Council guidelines, based on the full facts of the case. I would draw hon. Members attention to the fact that Ireland, which has a similar legal system and a similar offence, imposes a fine of up to €100,000 per offence and/or a prison sentence. That is the sort of thing that might go through the minds in our justice system. We do not therefore think that the amendment is necessary.
Mr Perkins
I accept what the Minister says. I do not accept that introducing a minimum fine of £5,000 would necessarily lead to essay mill services thinking that that would be the likely level, but I take his point. The amendment was a probing amendment to try to reach some understanding of the Government’s position. If there have been fines of the level that he outlined, that will be heartening for all those who want to see the issue addressed. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 31 makes it an offence to advertise essay mills. Marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry, and we do not want this industry to be successful or to have lifeblood. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques that seem to indicate that they offer legitimate academic writing support for students, when in fact they are providing cheating services. Students who use essay mills risk their academic education and future employment prospects if they are caught cheating. Anecdotal reports indicate that some essay mills are even seeking to blackmail students who have used the services, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington mentioned. The clause will put beyond doubt that advertising cheating services in England and Wales is not just unethical but illegal, and will provide the means to prosecute those who fail to comply with the law in England and Wales.
Mr Perkins
I have already outlined our support for this move. We believe that this is a serious offence. It is important that any perceived legitimacy of essay mill services is aggressively challenged. On that basis, we will support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 31 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 32
Offences: bodies corporate and unincorporated associations
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss clause 33 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 32 relates to which bodies can be prosecuted under the essay mill provisions in the Bill. Cheating service providers can range from UK-based organisations registered at Companies House with offices and permanent staff to lone individuals operating with minimal infrastructure. Where offences are committed by companies, unincorporated bodies and partnerships, the clause enables certain individuals, such as the directors of companies, to also be prosecuted in particular circumstances. It also sets out some relevant procedural rules. For example, it clarifies that proceedings for offences committed by an unincorporated body should be brought in the name of the body and not its members, and any fine imposed on conviction of an unincorporated body should be paid out of the funds of the body. The clause will enable the legislation to function with legal certainty. Clause 33 sets out the definitions of certain terms in this chapter, allowing for absolute clarity on the intended purpose of the clause.
Mr Perkins
We welcome clause 32. It is important that where offences are committed by bodies of this sort there are consequences for their officers. The clause ensures that directors, managers, secretaries or other similar officers of the body corporate are guilty of an offence, if an offence under this chapter is committed by their body corporate and either they are known to have consented and been in connivance, or it is attributable to neglect of their duties under the organisation. We will therefore support clause 32. Clause 33 is simply an interpretation clause that makes sense of the terms in clause 32.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
16 to 19 Academy: designation as having a religious character
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss clauses 35 and 36 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 34 provides the Secretary of State with an order-making power to enable the designation of 16-to-19 academies as having a religious character. It also provides for the Secretary of State to make regulations about the procedures relating to the designation. In addition, it sets out the freedoms and protections relating to religious education, collective worship and governance that the designation provides. The clause will ensure that when existing sixth form colleges designated with a religious character convert to academies they retain their religious character and associated freedoms and protections. It will also enable new and existing 16-to-19 academies to be designated with a religious character in the future. The Government are committed to supporting existing sixth-form colleges to convert to academy status. I am pleased that a significant proportion of them have already taken that step, and are making a strong contribution to strengthening the academy sector.
Clause 35 improves the efficiency of administration of the further education sector. It is thankfully rare for a further education body to enter into insolvency proceedings. However, where a designation order can form part of a rescue procedure, we need to ensure that it can take place swiftly, minimising disruption to learners and costs to the taxpayers. For some FE bodies in financial difficulty, it may be desirable to transfer the college institution from the insolvent FE body to a new solvent company as part of the process of exiting insolvency proceedings. To ensure that the institution remains within the statutory further education sector in order to keep it appropriately regulated, it would then need to be immediately designated accordingly. Existing legislation requires the Secretary of State to make a statutory instrument when he seeks to carry out such a designation. That process can take several months, and needs a completion date to be specified significantly in advance, which could complicate and delay the exit from insolvency proceedings. Delays impose a longer period of disruption on learners and could generate extra costs to the taxpayer. As such, clause 35 allows the Secretary of State to use an administrative order, which can be enacted relatively quickly, to designate an institution as being within the statutory further education sector.
Clause 36 relates to the high-level quality rating for higher education providers without an approved access and participation plan, which is currently an award under the teaching excellence and student outcomes framework. Higher education providers with a TEF award currently benefit from an uplift to their fee limit, meaning that they are able to charge a higher level than HE providers without such an award. There is currently an error in the legislation that could prevent a timely link between TEF awards and a provider’s fee limit. To take an example, let us consider a provider that does not have an approved access and participation plan. If that provider is entitled to the TEF fee uplift in any academic year, it is dependent on whether it had an award on 1 January in the calendar year before the relevant academic year. That means that a provider seeking to charge the TEF fee uplift in academic year 2022-23 could only do so based on an award that was in force in January 2021, rather than January 2022, which was the original intent. Clause 36 will correct that error and ensure a more timely link between fee limits and the TEF award, helping to further incentivise excellence in higher education.
The Chair
I call Mr Perkins.
Mr Perkins
Sorry, I have got all tangled up here; give me a moment, Mrs Miller. For the sake of those listening on the radio, my hearing aid has got stuck in my mouth.
The Chair
It is usually an earring with me, I have to say.
Mr Perkins
Sorry, what did you say? [Laughter.]
We do not intend to divide the Committee on clauses 34 to 36. We think it is important that the law does not discriminate against academies or institutions for having a religious character designation, should they wish to do so. Clause 34 would change the rules so that when the Department next seeks to create 16-to-19 academies, it will be possible for organisations to apply to set up one with a religious character. Ministers intend to change the law to ensure equality for technical education in school careers advice, and to allow religious sixth forms to academise. A group of 14 sixth-form colleges that are Catholic run have so far been prevented from doing so due to their religious character; this clause would overturn that obstacle.
We recognise that there are many excellent academies out there, just as there were many excellent state-maintained schools. We think it is regrettable that the Government have decided to prioritise academies over schools run by local authorities. I have a very personal reason for saying that: my children went to an outstanding school that was run under the local council. Unfortunately, due to its finances, it was forced into a position where it took on academy status, and ultimately, that academy was described as a failing school. The desire to drive that school into academy status caused really significant problems. It is my view that the academies that the Labour Government created were a positive thing, and that there are many excellent academies out there. However, we think that the Government should remain neutral on this issue, rather than trying to force schools down one route or the other.
Notwithstanding that, we support the changes in clause 34. Sixth-form colleges should not be discriminated against if they have a religious designation and wish to become academies.
Clause 35 assigns a designation to terms in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. We can support the clause given that is sets out the designations of institutions in the FE sector relating to the 1992 Act. Clause 36 is a technical change that clarifies the relevant date, for purposes of fee limit, for certain higher education courses, as set out by the Minister. We are happy to support the clause, which sets out the determination of the fee limit.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 35 and 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 37
Extent
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss clause 38 stand part.
Alex Burghart
Clause 37 sets out the territorial extent of the provisions. Obviously, Westminster does not normally legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the relevant devolved Administration. However, we have sought the support of the Welsh Government to lay a legislative consent motion where there is an impact on the competence of Senedd Cymru. We have agreed with the Scottish Government and with the Northern Ireland Executive that legislative consent motions are not required.
Clause 38 sets out when provisions in the Bill come into force. General provisions on extent commencement and short title come into force on the day of Royal Assent. Subsection (2) sets out the provisions that will come into force two months after the Act is passed. All other provisions will come into force on a day, or days, appointed by the Secretary of State through regulations made by statutory instrument.
Mr Perkins
Clause 37 sets out the extent of the Bill. I heard what the Minister had to say about the Welsh Assembly; can he just confirm that he has consulted the Welsh Assembly on the extent to which this Act applies to Wales and, given that there are differences between what is offered in England and in Wales, that there is nothing in the Bill that has led to problems in that relationship? Notwithstanding that point, we agree with the extent to which the clause applies to England and Wales, and also the specific provisions that extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland. We agree with clause 38 on commencement and understand what it is saying.
Alex Burghart
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have consulted Welsh Ministers, and we are of one mind with our counterparts in Wales.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 37 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 38 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 39
Short title
Alex Burghart
I beg to move Government amendment 26, in clause 39, page 42, line 13, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment removes the privilege amendment inserted in the Lords.
For Bills starting in the House of Lords, a privilege amendment is included to recognise the right of this place to control any charges on the people and on public funds. It is standard practice to remove such amendments at this stage of the Bill’s passage through the House of Commons.
Mr Perkins
The Labour party is always enthusiastic for powers to be centred in the hands of those with democratic accountability, so we are very keen on clause 39. The Government have not yet had an opportunity to explain why they thought it was sensible to start the passage of the Bill in the other place, notwithstanding the excellent job that their lordships have done, which the Minister has sought to wreck over the course of the past week and a half. It would be interesting to hear from the Government why they made the decision to start the Bill in the other place. Notwithstanding that, we have no reason to oppose the amendment.
Alex Burghart
I have been a Minister for only a short time, and I have to say I am unaware why the Bill started in the Lords, but I have nothing but admiration for their lordships, who did a wonderful job. Obviously, we have had to amend some of their amendments in order to make the Bill as good as it can be, but I am sure that everyone can see that the parliamentary process is being done to the full, even if it is being done this way round.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 39, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Information about technical education and training: access to English schools
“(1) Section 42B of the Education Act 1997 (information about technical education: access to English schools) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), for “is an opportunity” substitute “are opportunities”.
(3) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In complying with subsection (1), the proprietor must give access to registered pupils on at least one occasion during each of the first, second and third key phase of their education.”
(4) After subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must—
(a) ensure that each registered pupil meets, during each of the first and second key phases of their education, at least one provider to whom access is given (or any other number of such providers that may be specified for the purposes of that key phase by regulations under subsection (8)), and
(b) ask providers to whom access is given to provide information that includes the following—
(i) information about the provider and the approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships that the provider offers,
(ii) information about the careers to which those technical education qualifications or apprenticeships might lead,
(iii) a description of what learning or training with the provider is like, and
(iv) responses to questions from the pupils about the provider or approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships.
(2B) Access given under subsection (1) must be for a reasonable period of time during the standard school day.”
(5) In subsection (5)—
(a) in paragraph (c), at the end insert “and the times at which the access is to be given;”;
(b) after paragraph (c) insert—
“(d) an explanation of how the proprietor proposes to comply with the obligations imposed under subsection (2A).”
(6) In subsection (8), after “subsection (1)” insert “or (2A)”.
(7) After subsection (9) insert—
“(9A) For the purposes of this section—
(a) the first key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 13, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year;
(b) the second key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 15, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year;
(c) the third key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 17, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year.””—(Alex Burghart.)
This new clause replaces clause 14. It removes requirements about university technical college access to pupils, requires access to pupils to be given in each key phase once (rather than three times), requires proprietors to ensure pupils meet at least one provider (or a prescribed number), and makes technical changes.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Alex Burghart
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I will now discuss new clause 1, which seeks to replace clause 14. We all agree that we need to strengthen provider access legislation. The Government introduced provider access legislation in 2018 to ensure that all young people get information about technical options when planning their careers, but too many schools have disregarded the law and are reluctant to promote alternatives to A-levels and university. We announced our three-point plan to improve compliance with that legislation in the “Skills for Jobs” White Paper back in January, and that included plans to strengthen the duty.
As it stands, clause 14 would require schools to deliver nine provider encounters per pupil—three during each of the first, second and third phases of their education. We are concerned that nine encounters would place unnecessary pressure on schools and risk taking up too much curriculum time. The clause would also name university technical colleges on the face of the Bill as one of the providers that every pupil must meet where practicable. That would give more weight to one provider than the rest, and we want to act in the interests of all providers, not just university technical colleges. The new clause strengthens existing provider access legislation by requiring schools to provide a minimum of three meetings with providers of technical education or apprenticeships for pupils in school years 8 to 13.
Mr Perkins
We understand the reasons for the new clause, but what is the Government’s view about why the existing Baker clause has not been as successful as they might have liked? Has it taught the Minister anything with regard to the limitations of the statutory guidance, on which he may have chosen to reflect, and to why having things on the face of the Bill often carries greater weight than purely putting things into statutory guidance or secondary legislation?
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman knows full well that Governments often keep things in statutory guidance in order to retain flexibility. The last Labour Government did that time and again. As a mere parliamentary researcher, I remember consideration of what is now the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, in which there were many examples of powers introduced through statutory guidance and secondary legislation. It is a time-honoured custom that is there for good reason.
In this case, we believe that there is a need to strengthen practice. In particular, I want to mention the need to strengthen quality. The other day, I was talking to a friend who has a 16-year-old daughter and who is herself in education. Her daughter had come home saying, “There is absolutely no way I’m going to do an apprenticeship.” My friend asked why and her daughter replied, “Because the man who came to talk to us today was so boring it has put me off.”
We need to ensure that we have interventions of quality. That is very much where our position is centred. The new clause includes the power for the Secretary of State to set out further details about the number and type of providers that pupils should meet under the terms of this duty. Putting the detail in secondary legislation will give us flexibility.
The new clause strikes the correct balance between widening pupil access to information on technical options in apprenticeships, without placing undue pressure on schools. It will set out in primary legislation that every state school must provide the three encounters of which I have spoken. Of course, we must ensure that those provider encounters are of high quality. That is why, for the first time, we are setting parameters for the content of the encounters in primary legislation.
We want to ensure that every encounter is meaningful and gives pupils the opportunity to explore what the provider offers, what career routes those options could lead to and what it might be to learn or train with that provider. We intend to consult school and provider representatives on the underpinning statutory guidance to ensure that we have provider access legislation that works for them and, most importantly, for young people.
With the Government’s large-scale reforms to technical education, it has never been more important for every young person to understand the full range of options that are available to them. The new clause will be crucial in ensuring that every pupil, whatever their ambitions, can explore apprenticeships, T-levels and other technical education qualifications. We want to send a clear message that schools must open their doors to other providers, so that pupils get broad and balanced information about all their options.
Mr Perkins
The Minister outlines why he believes the new clause is necessary. Given his remarks at the end there, I have to say that he would have better achieved what he set out to achieve had his party not voted against clause 14. All new clause 1 does is weaken the clause 14 that was in the Bill and that the Committee voted against this morning.
Notwithstanding that, we recognise that the new clause will be better than not having it at all. It removes requirements for university technical college access for pupils. The Minister suggested that that would be prioritising UTCs above other organisations, but I did not see it like that. I thought that they were simply referred to as another provider, and no doubt ones that Lord Baker is particularly enthusiastic to see given access.
The points that Lord Baker made in his contribution in the House of Lords are important, however, and they need to be considered. The noble Lord suggested that many schools—through either lack of time or a deliberate attempt to ensure that their students looked only at the school’s own sixth form, for financial or other reasons—were not implementing the original Baker clause and were indeed subverting the opportunities that were placed in front of children. I would be interested in hearing whether the Minister agrees with Lord Baker about that, or whether he believes that there are other reasons why alternative providers are not getting access to young people at each of those three crucial stages.
The Committee will be aware that, as part of the Labour party’s offer at the next general election, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has brought forward a plan for the equivalent of two weeks’ compulsory work experience for every pupil, and for face-to-face professional careers advice to be something that every student can rely on. We think it vital that children and young people have access to professional and appropriate careers advice. Work experience can be genuinely life-changing for many young people, particularly those from more deprived backgrounds. It is crucial that work experience is seen as a mark of an excellent school provision, rather than an additional thing that is nice to do.
It has very much been my experience that many schools leave the responsibility for work experience to the child and their parents to sort out. Effectively, the only commitment that schools require is that the child does not die or get injured while they are there. There is no real assessment of the quality of that work experience, so the milkman’s son ends up doing a milk round, while the MP’s son spends a week in an MP’s office—everyone just does the stuff that they already know. Worst of all, some children do work experience in a school, which is the one environment that they have been in for their entire lives, and that is considered acceptable.
Alternative opportunities for young people to look at different environments and learn about different opportunities are absolutely crucial. As clause 14 was rejected, we will support the new clause, but we believe it less ambitious than what their noble lordships had already introduced. Much of what the Minister said about the importance of the sector is undermined by his tabling of a clause that is weaker than the one that came from the Lords.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 2
Lifelong learning: special educational needs
“When exercising functions under this Act, the Secretary of State must ensure that providers of further education are required to include special educational needs awareness training to all teaching staff to ensure that all staff are able to identify and adequately support those students who have special educational needs.”—(Mr Perkins.)
This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there is adequate special educational needs training for teachers of students in further education.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
New Clause 3
Report on the performance of employer representative bodies
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, and every twelve months thereafter, the Secretary of State must publish a report on the performance of employer representative bodies and lay it before both Houses of Parliament.
(2) Each report must contain a statement setting out—
(a) the role of employer representative bodies,
(b) the accountability of employer representative bodies,
(c) the cost of employer representative bodies,
(d) the number of employer representative bodies in England and the areas covered,
(e) the number of employer representative bodies that have been removed and the reason why.
(3) Each report must contain an independent assessment of the impact of each employer representative body on—
(a) the development of local skills improvement plans, and
(b) local rates of participation in further education.”—(Mr Perkins.)
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to publish and lay before both Houses of Parliament an annual report on employer representative bodies to allow for scrutiny of their role and performance.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
New Clause 4
Access to Sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans
“(1) The Secretary of State must make provision by regulations for Sharia-compliant student finance to be made available as part of the lifelong learning entitlement.
(2) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument, and a statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”—(Mr Perkins.)
This new clause allows the Secretary of State to make provision for Sharia-compliant LLE loans to ensure that the LLE is not a barrier to participation and upskilling.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Perkins
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), relates to access to sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans. It is important that students do not feel excluded from applying for lifelong learning loans because they are not sharia-compliant. There are many different aspects to loans under sharia law. Though their effect may be similar to that of other loans, the way in which they are set up and implemented is different, and the funds are also utilised in different ways.
It is incredibly important—and I think this is recognised by Members of both main parties—that action is taken on sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans. It is regrettable, however, that thus far nothing has been done. We have been given to believe that the Augar review may result in sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans, but we have not yet seen anything to that effect. My right hon. Friend’s new clause therefore encourages the Secretary of State to
“make provision by regulations for Sharia-compliant student finance to be made available as part of the lifelong learning entitlement.”
Alex Burghart
I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss sharia-compliant student finance. The Government have been considering an alternative student finance product, compatible with Islamic finance principles, alongside their other priorities as they conclude the post-18 review of educational funding.
New powers were taken in section 86 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to enable the Secretary of State to make alternative payments, in addition to grants and loans, to enable the implementation of ASF. Clause 15 already makes provision for such alternative payments to be made as part of the lifetime loan entitlement. As such, when coupled with the existing provisions in HERA, the new clause would not give the Secretary of State any additional powers. The clause 15 provisions for alternative payments would come into force should the Government decide to commence the provisions in HERA that enable alternative payments to be provided to students. The Government will reach a decision on the availability of a sharia-compliant student finance product as part of the full and final conclusion of the post-18 review, and will provide an update on ASF at that time.
In relation to the second part of the new clause, the Secretary of State may already lay student support regulations using the affirmative procedure contained in section 42 of the Teaching and Higher Education 1998, should he choose to do so. The new clause would not add any powers beyond those already under the Bill or existing legislation, and so should not be added to the Bill.
Rachel Hopkins
I rise to support new clause 4, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham. The Minister says we will see the outcome of the post-18 review with regards to HERA. However, the reason why it is so important that the new clause is added to the Bill relates to further education. Because no finance or loans fit with the principles of Islam, many people end up saving up until they have sufficient funds to be able to afford their degree. The whole point of the Bill is the emphasis on ensuring that people can up their skills at level 3. If they are not able to access a loan that is compliant with the principles of Islam, and if they are on a low income, they really have no chance of being able to save up to afford to fund up front from their savings. The proposal of a lifelong learning entitlement through a loan therefore becomes a vicious circle, and they will not be able to access the training and gain the skills that they need.
For many people, this really is a matter of urgency if we are genuinely going to help people to reskill or upskill, particularly for many constituents of mine in Luton South. It is important to push the Government on this, particularly because HERA was published in 2017, and because of the commitment from the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, in 2013 when this first started to be talked about. This long-term delay and lack of action is not good enough. I support new clause 4.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
New Clause 5
National review and plan for addressing the attainment gap
“Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must undertake a review to understand how to support those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in GCSEs in—
(a) English, or
(b) mathematics,
for the purposes of issuing a plan to support such people to achieve a level of attainment in those subjects through higher education, further education or technical education, as is necessary to advance their skills and education.”.—(Mr Perkins.)
This new clause intends to ensure that everyone is supported to attain the level of English and/or maths skills they need by ensuring there is a requirement for the Department for Education to have a plan to close the attainment gap based on a review of current policies and barriers to attainment in English and/or maths.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Perkins
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). It would introduce a national review and plan for addressing the attainment gap and intends to ensure that everybody is supported to obtain the level of English and/or maths skills they need by requiring the Department for Education to have a plan to close the attainment gap based on a review of current policies and barriers to attainment in English and/or maths. Our attainment levels as a nation, particularly in maths, are noticeably behind many of our competitor nations, and particularly the major nations in Europe. It is crucial that there are both local and national strategies to raise attainment for English and maths at grade 4.
I think there is widespread agreement on that across the House. The Government’s approach has often been to say, “Well, until you have achieved this, you cannot do that.” The Labour party’s approach has always been much more of a carrot. We recognise that there needs to be greater investment, specifically in picking out those students who, for a variety of different reasons—whether as a result of learning disabilities or of social disadvantages—are less likely to attain grade 4 level in English and maths. We think it is crucial that we have a strategic approach to attaining that.
A large amount of the recent catch-up funding that was identified by the Government was never actually provided, and there has been a discrepancy between the amount of the catch-up funding that was directed to those in the most deprived communities and the amount that was provided overall. Catch-up funding, more than anything else as a result of the lockdown, particularly needed to be focused on those in the most deprived communities, who saw that attainment gap grow over the course of the covid pandemic. That the Government have a strategic plan and are operating a national review of the attainment gap—particularly setting out to achieve the reduction in their cap within six months of the passing of the Bill—is an important amendment. We therefore support the new clause.
Alex Burghart
New clause 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham, seeks to require the Secretary of State to undertake a national review and have a plan for addressing the attainment gap within six months of the Act passing in relation to those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in GCSE English or maths. The Government are clear that supporting people who are yet to achieve GCSE grade 4 or above in English or maths—the equivalent of level 2—is of the utmost importance, given that good levels of English and maths are linked to better economic and social outcomes. We want young people and adults to have the literacy and numeracy skills to thrive in work, education and life. That is why we already have a clear plan and are taking significant steps to support those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in English and maths.
All learners aged 16 to 19 are required to continue studying English and maths if they do not have a level 2 qualification in these subjects already, including, for example, those studying T-levels. Additionally, apprenticeships in particular have an exit requirement in English and maths in order to complete the programme. We also support adults by fully funding GCSE and functional skills qualifications in English and maths up to level 2 through the adult education budget. In addition, as of next year, we are rolling out Multiply, a new £559 million programme for adult numeracy, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the spending review. This will significantly increase the provision and opportunities for adults to improve their maths skills.
More broadly, we have reformed functional skills qualifications, which are a widely acceptable alternative to GCSEs, improving their rigour and relevance. The Government have also established 21 centres for excellence in mathematics, designing new and improved teaching resources, building teacher skills and spreading best practice across the country through their wider networks. In response to disruption to education during the pandemic, a further £222 million has been provided to continue the 16-to-19 tuition fund for an addition two years from the 2022-23 academic year, allowing students to access one-to-one and small group catch-up tuition in subjects that will benefit the most, including English and maths.
Improving English and maths attainment is already a key part of the Government’s plans across higher, further and technical education. In 2020, 68% of 19-year-olds held grade 4 or above in both English and maths GCSE, which is an increase of 6 percentage points since 2013-14, the year before we required students to continue studying English and maths. This is a major step forward. The OECD’s 10-yearly survey of adult skills showed that in England people aged 16 to 65 currently perform significantly above the OECD average for literacy and around the OECD average for numeracy. The Government continually review the impact of policy, so a formal review at this time is not necessary.
Andrew Gwynne
I am heartened by what the Minister highlighted in his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield about some of the Government’s attempts to close the attainment gap, but the reality is that it still exists and we should redouble our efforts to close it. I feel passionately about that because failing to get a good GCSE in English and maths can hold a young person back and deprive them of real opportunities later in life.
I know that from experience, because as I mentioned last Tuesday, in 1990 I left high school with a clutch of good GCSEs, but they did not include maths. I really struggled with maths at high school, much to the frustration of my dad, who was a maths teacher. It turned out that I had dyscalculia, so I struggled with numbers.
I desperately wanted to be a teacher—in my heart, I would still love to teach in schools. The best bit of this job is on a Friday when, as Members of Parliament often do, I go to local schools and think about what could have been if I had got a C or above in my maths GCSE. I resat it and still could not get a C—I got a D —so that was my teaching dream gone. Frustratingly, I went on to study a higher national diploma in business and finance, as I have already said, which is NVQ level 5, where I got a distinction and commendation in managerial economics, finance and advanced numeracy—but I cannot get the piece of paper that says “General Certificate of Secondary Education”.
I strongly believe that we have to close the attainment gap and give young people every opportunity to get that piece of paper, because if they do not have a GCSE, even if they have subsequent pieces of paper that are worth far more, so many doors are shut, so many opportunities are missed and so many dreams are dashed. I recognise that the Minister will not support the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, but I urge him to carry on doing all he can to ensure that every child, young person and adult has the opportunity to do the best they can with the basic skills of English and maths.
Mr Perkins
Those of us who have been on the Committee in the last week or so may well have been wondering what the next episode in the life story of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish was, and we were not disappointed. [Laughter.] Joking aside, he makes an incredibly important point.
Too often in this place, there is a suggestion or an implication that if only the teaching was a bit better or there was a bit more application, everyone would have those GCSEs in maths and English. Actually, as my hon. Friend has laid out and as many others will know, students who are brilliant in many regards can have barriers that prevent them attaining those grades. It is a crucial issue for us. Thousands of other people out there have had their dreams similarly dashed by being unable to achieve those qualifications, so I appreciate what he has just said, which adds weight to the debate on new clause 5.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
New Clause 6
T-levels: Duty to review
“(1) Two years after the date on which the first T-levels are completed, the Secretary of State must perform a review of the education and employment outcomes of students enrolled on T-level courses.
(2) No qualifications may be defunded until the Secretary of State’s duty under subsection (1) has been undertaken.”—(Mr Perkins.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
New Clause 7
Level 3 qualifications provision
“(1) Employer Representative Bodies may prescribe additional Level 3 qualifications, as part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.
(2) Additional Level 3 qualifications may be prescribed under subsection (1), in instances where the Employer Representative Body identifies a local need or skills shortage.”—(Mr Perkins.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
Alex Burghart
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. I hope you will indulge me for a few moments so that I can thank you and Mr Efford for the way in which you have shepherded us through these six sittings. It has been an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, particularly as this is my first Bill Committee on the Front Bench—
Alex Burghart
Who knows? Perhaps it will be the last. It has been a pleasure to hear a debate of this quality, to enjoy Opposition Members’ paeans to the heady days of Thatcherism when there were great opportunities in the Manchester region, and to hear their fulsome praise for former Conservative Secretaries of State for Education. It is has been a privilege to listen to the sometimes philosophical debates about whether BTECs are brands. I feel that for the sake of future historians, we should put in Hansard how cold it has been in Committee Room 14. On one occasion, an hon. Lady had to bring in a blanket and wrap herself in it. Mrs Miller, thanks to you and Mr Efford, we have survived, and we look forward to taking the Bill forward.
The Chair
I thank the Minister for his very kind words.
Mr Perkins
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. On behalf of all my colleagues here, I add my thanks to you and Mr Efford for the work that you have both done and for your support through this debate, which has been very good natured and constructive, even if it was not, ultimately, as successful as we might have desired. I also place on record our thanks to the Clerks, who have been tremendously helpful in the enormous amount of work that we asked them to do. As always, we all very much appreciate the quality and timeliness of their work, and their diligence. I thank everyone who served on the Committee for their varying contributions, whether they were here for all of it or not.
The Chair
I thank the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman for those kind words. I thank you all for your constructive debate throughout the Committee, and I thank the Clerks and Hansard.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Committee rose.
Written evidence reported to the House
SPEB14 Sandwell College (Level 3 (T level) Qualification Reform – Strengthening their implementation)
SPEB15 Sandwell College (The Defunding of BTECs)
SPEB16 Sandwell College (Qualifications, T Levels and Work Placement feedback and suggested improvements)
SPEB17 Chegg Inc.
SPEB18 Mencap
SPEB19 Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation (YPO)
SPEB20 Community trade union
SPEB21 The Tutors' Association
SPEB22 CBI
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] (Second sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 View all Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. As I was saying earlier, having been the cabinet member for public protection at Westminster City Council, I know that enforcement is the cornerstone by which we put words into action and ensure that what we pass in legislation has the intended effect in real life.
It is a welcome provision that the income from financial penalties will be kept by local authorities, but we need sustainable funding sources for enforcement ahead of the game. Local authorities may eventually keep the income from penalties, but work will need to be undertaken before that by the trading standards teams to bring enforcement cases to fruition. That funding is particularly important given the increase in the range of new enforcement duties being placed on trading standards departments across the country.
It is also important to recognise that no two councils are the same. They come in all shapes and sizes—rural, urban, global cities such as my own—which all have different numbers of leaseholders who will be affected by the Bill. I would welcome the Minister giving consideration to the kinds of measures that councils will need in order to be appropriately supported, in proportion to the number of leaseholders they may have within their local authority area and the duties being placed upon them.
Of course, as I have said, I welcome the Bill—it does so much to ensure fair enforcement—but we need assurances that there will be guidance for trading standards teams, particularly on the new provisions we will be introducing on leasehold and freehold law, to ensure that trading standards officers are adequately trained to deal with what may become difficult enforcement situations. Trading standards officers may not be trained in landlord and tenancy law; they may require some more training. Ultimately, we need the provisions in the Bill that place additional duties on trading standards teams to be under- pinned by proportionate support and adequate guidance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster for her contribution, and also the Opposition spokespeople for their contributions.
I was asked why we are allowing authorities to range outside of their geographical area of responsibility, and whether there is precedent. There is precedent in the Tenant Fees Act 2019. A similar approach has been applied. There might be a landlord in one local authority area that owns some properties in another, and then it is most appropriate for a single local authority to pursue that claim. That is why that ranging is allowed. I much preferred the evocative imagery from the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood of people gallivanting across the country and trying to claim money in other areas, but the explanation is unfortunately much more mundane.
On associated costs for councils from the duty, because the move has been well telegraphed and we expect people to be compliant, we expect the number of claims to be small, but we will continue to review them and will work with the Local Government Association and others to ensure that local authorities are properly remunerated in preparation and that they are properly resourced.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Financial penalties
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
The Bill will allow enforcement authorities to act on unfair practices against leaseholders. Clause 10 enables an enforcement authority to impose a financial penalty on a landlord who has required a leaseholder to pay a prohibited rent. There is a separate power under clause 11 to make a recovery order to repay the prohibited rent.
It is important to note at this point that a conscious decision has been made for former landlords to be subject to penalties for breaches of the ground rent restrictions and to remain accountable for their actions at the commencement of the legislation. I am sure that the Committee will agree that we would not wish to see the development of the poor practice of landlords selling their leases in order to avoid financial penalties.
Clause 10 sets clear parameters for enforcement authorities to work within, but we must of course ensure adequate checks and balances so that those in breach are not unfairly treated. Before imposing a financial penalty, enforcement authorities must be “satisfied beyond reasonable doubt” that a breach has occurred. Where an enforcement authority is satisfied, subsection (2) clearly defines the parameters of the financial penalty that may be imposed. The Government’s decision to increase the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £30,000 shows that we have listened to parliamentary stakeholders, who felt that a stronger deterrent was needed.
Subsection (3) permits only one financial penalty to be issued where multiple breaches have occurred on a single lease. However, where enforcement action has been taken against a landlord, and that landlord is found to have breached clause 3(1) again, they may be subject to a further financial penalty after their initial fine. I am sure that the Committee will agree that that is the right thing to do.
In a case in which a landlord has committed breaches in relation to multiple leases, an enforcement authority may impose a single financial penalty to cover all breaches. In that scenario, the minimum or maximum amount of the financial penalty is the sum of the minimum and maximum penalties that could have been imposed if each breach had been dealt with separately. If a landlord has breached clause 3 on two of their leases, for example, the enforcement authority could not decide to issue a single penalty of £600 as that total would mean that the landlord had paid a penalty below the minimum amount of £500 per breach. The enforcement authority will be required to consider issuing a penalty of at least £1,000.
Importantly, clause 10 ensures that landlords are protected from being charged twice for the same breach by two separate enforcement authorities. Should the minimum and maximum penalty thresholds need updating, the Secretary of State has the power to change them through regulations for England, and Welsh Ministers can do so for premises in Wales. Subsection (10) makes it clear that this may be done only to reflect changes in the value of money. Financial penalties are an important deterrent, but they must be managed appropriately. The clause sets out a clear framework for enforcement authorities to work within and provides a balanced and fair approach towards those in breach.
Clause 11 forms an important part of the Bill’s deterrent measures to discourage landlords from including an inappropriate monetary ground rent in a regulated lease. Subsection (1) enables an enforcement authority to order the repayment of a prohibited rent where they are satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the leaseholder has made such a payment and the landlord has not already refunded it.
Subsection (2) sets out who the enforcement authority may order to repay the prohibited rent, including the landlord at the time when the payment was made, and the current landlord. That means, for example, that if it is not possible to trace a previous landlord, a leaseholder will still be able to recover the ground rent that they were wrongly charged. That is fair; a new landlord must take responsibility for the leases that he has taken over. Subsection (2)(c) makes it clear that an agent acting on behalf of the landlord may also be ordered to repay any prohibited rent that the leaseholder paid to them. That is important, as we know that there may be cases where the landlord is absent or unresponsive. A responsible managing agent would wish to ensure that leases, and their own practices, comply with the law.
There are protections in the clause to prevent duplication of recovery orders. Where the tenant has applied to the appropriate tribunal for a recovery order, the enforcement authority may not make such an order. If an enforcement authority has already made an order in respect of that payment, no further order may be made in respect of it.
Subsection (4) enables some administrative ease to assist enforcement authorities. It enables an enforcement authority to make a single order in respect of a number of prohibited rent payments, provided that they all relate to the same lease. The clause is vital to ensuring that an enforcement authority can act where a prohibited rent has been charged and order the landlord to repay it so that the leaseholder is not out of pocket.
On clause 12, it is only fair that where a prohibited rent has been wrongly paid, it should be possible for the leaseholder to recover interest on the amount that they are out of pocket. The clause makes provision for that. Interest is payable from the date of a payment of a prohibited rent until the date that it is repaid. The interest rate, as is standard practice for such matters, is the rate specified in section 17 of the Judgments Act 1838.
To ensure that the amount of interest to be paid is not disproportionate, subsection (5) places a cap on that amount. It must not exceed the original amount of prohibited rent that the landlord is required to repay. It is only fair that a leaseholder should not only be recompensed for the amount that they are out of pocket, but recover the interest on that amount.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to welcome you to your place, Ms Elliott. I welcome the Minister’s and the Government’s response to some of the debates on the Bill in the other place about the maximum level of fine. Given that a number of landlords and freeholders have deep pockets, it will act as a more effective deterrent.
On multiple breaches, I am making an assumption that an element of sense will be applied, so that someone with multiple breaches would be looking at the maximum fine. I know that that will be a judgment call for the enforcement authorities and trading standards, which will be well resourced—we have had the assurance from the Minister today.
The clause picks up on several earlier points made on both sides of the Committee. It is essential that people are informed from the outset of the duties that will be not only implied but overt as a result of the Bill. Residents and leaseholders will be particularly keen to ensure that where they have been wrongly charged and levied—essentially, ground rent should never have happened in the first place—they will be able to retrieve that quickly. I welcome the clauses but there are still a number of questions for the Minister.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I have a couple of points for the Minister. There are extensive provisions on the recovery of prohibited rent, which I generally welcome. I notice that on page 14 of the explanatory notes, under the heading “Financial implications of the Bill”, it says:
“An Impact Assessment has been prepared for the Bill and covers the implications on private sector bodies and home purchasers… The Impact Assessment illustrates a de minimis impact of less than £5m.”
It then says that there is an assumption
“that the number of enforcement cases will be very small.”
One would hope that that would be the case, because one would hope that landlords will not seek to charge and benefit from ground rent in the interim between the Bill coming in and peppercorn becoming payable, when it becomes commenced, by putting provisions into new leases that charge ground rent. One hopes that that is a correct interpretation. The explanatory notes then say:
“Over and above the use of the proceeds arising from the enforcement action, a further amount of expenditure will be required to provide additional capacity within the National Trading Standards function to support local weights and measures authorities. Leasehold law is a complex area, and it is felt that a central support function will aid the effective introduction of the provisions of this Bill. The cost estimate of this support function is £29,000 per annum”,
which is very precise. It is sort of a round figure, but it is quite a small sum. I wonder whether the Minister could explain the assumptions underlying the explanatory notes.
Eddie Hughes
I have two points. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale and I will be aligned in hoping that people decide to fine those who commit multiple breaches at the higher rather than the lower end of the spectrum. That would be our hope. We will have to see. It is not for he and I to decide those things; we need to leave that to others, and hopefully they will base that on their experience.
On the figure of £29,000 and the impact assessment, my understanding is that, given that we expect there to be a small number of cases, we would not necessarily expect all local authorities to need to stand up some sort of specialism. In the natural development of things, one local authority may develop some expertise and be able to act on behalf of others, and it will therefore be contained and concentrated in one place. This is obviously a developing theme. Until the law is enacted, we do not know exactly how it will work and how landlords might behave. It is something that we will need to return to and be mindful of. We must ensure that we keep an eye on it to see where the burden falls and then resource appropriately.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 11 and 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Enforcement authorities: supplementary
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Government amendment 9.
That schedule 1 be the First schedule to the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 13 makes various supplementary provisions in relation to enforcement authorities. Importantly, it requires them to have regard to any guidance that may be issued by the Secretary of State and Welsh Ministers, depending on the location of the property. We have made it clear that the Government intend to issue guidance on various matters to ensure that enforcement authorities act with consistency. Subsection (3) amends schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to ensure that enforcement authorities have the investigatory powers that they need to enforce the ground rent restrictions in the Bill.
The final subsection of clause 13 introduces the schedule, which sets out how an enforcement authority may impose a financial penalty or make a recovery order. This includes the relevant time limits, rights of appeal, the recovery of a financial penalty or an amount ordered to be paid if the landlord does not comply and retention of sums received. We will consider these details when we come to consideration of the schedule. The clause contains important supplementary provision to ensure that enforcement authorities receive the guidance necessary to perform their role properly and consistently. It gives them the powers they need to be effective and sets out procedures that are appropriate and fair.
I turn to Government amendment 9. Members will know that the Bill applies to both England and Wales. They will also know that in the other place the Government made a series of changes to give certain powers to Welsh Ministers. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank colleagues in the Welsh Government for working constructively with us on these issues. Amendment 9 in my name is one more change in a similar spirit.
Clause 13 and paragraph 11 in the schedule allow enforcement authorities to keep the proceeds of any action to cover the cost of that action. With penalties of up to £30,000 per lease, that is vital so that local authorities or local trading standards are not left out of pocket for implementing the provisions in the legislation. To act as an effective deterrent, freeholders, landlords and managing agents need to understand that action will be taken if they charge a prohibited rent.
However, enforcement penalties have not been designed as a new income stream for the authorities. As such, any excess proceeds from a penalty beyond what is needed to cover the enforcement action in relation to the Bill and other residential leasehold enforcement cannot be kept, ensuring penalties remain proportionate to the breach and enforcement costs are still covered. In these circumstances, the Bill would see all such excess proceeds being paid to the Secretary of State. Amendment 9 would make sure that, if the penalty is imposed in relation to leases of premises in Wales, the excess proceeds would go instead to Welsh Ministers. This is a small but sensible change, and I hope it will be supported by the Committee.
The schedule sets out the procedure that an enforcement authority must follow when they wish to impose a financial penalty or make an order requiring the repayment of a prohibited rent under the legislation. This will help to ensure consistency and fairness in enforcement. Enforcement authorities must give the relevant person notice of their intention to impose a financial penalty within six years of the breach occurring and within six months of the authority having evidence that they consider justifies serving the notice. The relevant person will usually be the landlord, but where the notice relates to a recovery order it may be a former landlord or agent. The notice must contain relevant information about the reasons for imposing the penalty or making the recovery order, the amount of the penalty or the terms of the order, and the right to make representations. The landlord then has 28 days to respond.
If, after considering any representations, the enforcement authority decides to impose a penalty or make a recovery order, it must give a final notice. This must set out the amount of penalty and/or terms of the recovery order and the reasons for the penalty or order. It must address how these will be paid, the landlord’s rights of appeal and the consequences of failing to comply. An enforcement authority may at any time withdraw or amend a notice of intent or final notice by providing written notice to the relevant person. The landlord, or person acting on their behalf, has a right of appeal to the appropriate tribunal against the decision to impose the penalty or make the order, the amount of the penalty, or the terms of the order.
Any appeal must be brought within 28 days of the final notice and is to be a re-hearing of the enforcement authority’s decision. However, the appropriate tribunal may admit new evidence that was not previously before the enforcement authority. In those cases, the existing final notice is suspended until the appeal is determined or withdrawn. The appropriate tribunal may confirm, vary or quash the final notice. It may increase or decrease the penalty imposed, but it is bound by the same minimum and maximum limits as the enforcement authority.
If the landlord fails to pay all or part of the financial penalty, or to repay a prohibitive rent, the enforcement authority can seek repayment on the order of the county court as if the penalty or payment were payable under an order of the county court.
I am aware that concerns have been raised about the resources of local authorities to enforce the legislation. I trust the fact that the schedule enables an enforcement authority to retain the proceeds of any financial penalty for future residential and leasehold enforcement is very welcome. My officials have discussed with national trading standards and the Local Government Association what further options can be considered to support the Bill’s implementation. Furthermore, we are producing guidance to which enforcement authorities must have regard and which will support those authorities in fulfilling their enforcement responsibilities under the legislation, as called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster.
Mike Amesbury
With regard to the excess that could be generated, and terms of the clause and the amendments, there could be a transfer to the Welsh Secretary. Does the Minister envisage that happening in reality, given the situation that many local authority trading standards have faced over the past 11 years? That point has been echoed across the Committee today. Could the Minister elaborate on the discussions that he has had with the Welsh Government, because there are elements of a tidying up exercise here? The Minister said that he had further discussions of other mechanisms that would help trading standards effectively conduct and resource their enforcement role. What are those mechanisms and sources of other potential income?
Maria Eagle
I have a couple of probing questions. There is no doubt that it is good to see some enforcement provisions. Given the range of penalties from £500 to £30,000 and given that trading standards have to effectively obtain their costs from the proceeds when undertaking the enforcement activity, is the Minister concerned that that might offer an incentive to trading standards—the enforcement authority—to pitch their fine or notice at a higher level than perhaps might otherwise be the case? Does he agree that going through this administrative fining arrangements, with all the appeals that we see in the schedule, would probably not be worth it for an enforcement authority if it were only going to get £500 at the end of the day, given the difficulty of understanding all the nuance of landlord and tenant law and leases? Is it therefore much more likely that there will not be much enforcement activity?
One of the other concerns for such an officer and an enforcement authority, might be that if there is an appeal to the administrative tribunal by the landlord against the amount being levied by way of penalty, that might be reduced from what the authority originally set out to cover its costs, say, to a much lower figure, closer to £500, which would perhaps most certainly not cover its costs. Is there an incentive in part for the enforcement authority to pitch the fine high, but any tribunal that considers an appeal may cut the fine to such a level that the enforcement authority might not be able to obtain its costs back from the proceeds? Perhaps, therefore, the overall impact will be that the enforcement authority thinks better of engaging in enforcement if it does not have resources it can guarantee will be used to do that. I would be interested to know what the Minister and his Department have considered in respect of the incentives built into the system in the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
In answer to both those points, there could be some confusion as to the motivation behind the level at which the fine is imposed. Our intention is to impose fines at a level that is a deterrent, and that is why the maximum limit has been lifted; however, as I said, the fines are not intended to be an income stream for the relevant authorities. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood suggests that there might be a perverse incentive for authorities to impose fines at a higher level in order to increase their income. However, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale said, how often would I expect money to be returned to the Secretary of State? The intention is to pitch the fine at the appropriate level, which is commensurate with the level of crime—let us put it that way—rather than associating it with the income that needs to be covered.
Eddie Hughes
I think it would be helpful if I conclude my contribution, and then the hon. Lady can come back in. [Interruption.] Well, it might be helpful if the hon. Lady let me respond to the points she made first. As I said, if the fine is set at a level that is appropriate to the crime, that might be in excess of what is necessary in order to cover the costs incurred by the authority. In that case, as it is not meant to generate revenue, the money would go back to the Secretary of State or the Welsh Minister, as appropriate.
The natural equilibrium of things will be reached by ensuring that the money generated covers the costs of administering the programme. If it does not, the Government will need to be mindful of that. As I have said, we are in conversation with the Local Government Association and we will see how that progresses. The hon. Lady is wise to raise that point. We do not want to see anything that disincentivises authorities from prosecutions because they do not think their costs will be covered. That is a really important point, and we will need to be mindful of it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Amendment made: 9, in schedule 1, page 19, line 16, leave out from “paid” to end of line 17 and insert—
“(a) where the penalty was imposed in relation to a lease of premises in England, to the Secretary of State, and
(b) where the penalty was imposed in relation to a lease of premises in Wales, to the Welsh Ministers.”—(Eddie Hughes.)
This amendment provides that penalty proceeds not used by the enforcement authority to meet enforcement costs must be paid to the Secretary of State, if the penalty was imposed in relation to premises in England, and the Welsh Ministers, if the penalty was imposed in relation to premises in Wales.
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 14
Recovery of prohibited rent by tenant
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 14 provides leaseholders with an alternative route for redress should they wish to take action directly, instead of by approaching an enforcement authority. It enables the leaseholder to apply directly to the appropriate tribunal for a recovery order that requires the landlord to repay the prohibited rent.
The clause mirrors the provisions in clause 11 in relation to enforcement authorities, enabling a leaseholder—or someone acting on their behalf—to apply to the tribunal for a recovery order if they have paid a prohibited rent and it has not been refunded. As in clause 11, the recovery order may apply to the landlord at the time the prohibited rent was paid, or to the current landlord. It may also apply to a person acting on the landlord’s behalf, where that person received the money. As I said, the provisions are fair, and are included in the Bill to ensure that the prohibited rent can be recovered effectively and repaid to the leaseholder. The person ordered to repay the rent has up to 28 days following the date of the recovery order to make the repayment. That ensures that the repayment is made promptly. Later in our discussion we will come to provisions in the Bill for the landlord to appeal if they consider it appropriate.
The clause also includes, as clause 11 did, provision that a single order may be made in respect of multiple wrongful payments. It prevents duplication by clarifying that the tribunal may not make an order if one has already been made successfully by an enforcement authority in respect of the same payment. The clause gives choice to leaseholders, which I am sure we are all in favour of, to seek their own resolution to any prohibited rents that have been paid. They can choose to apply to the appropriate tribunal without involving their local enforcement authority. I hope that we can all agree that that is a helpful provision to ensure that leaseholders can take their own action if desired.
Clause 15 makes equivalent provision to that in clause 12 in relation to interest that may be ordered on top of an order to repay prohibited rent. Clause 15 applies where the recovery order is made by the appropriate tribunal rather than an enforcement authority. As in clause 12, the clause provides that interest is payable from the date of a payment until the date it is repaid. The interest rate is the normal rate that applies to court judgments: a simple interest rate of 8% per annum. To ensure that the amount of interest to be paid is not disproportionate, there is a cap on the amount of interest that a person may be required to pay. It must not exceed the amount of the wrongly paid rent that the tribunal orders to be repaid. As I said in relation to clause 11, which clause 15 mirrors, it is only fair that a leaseholder should not only be recompensed for the amount that they are out of pocket but recover interest on it.
Mike Amesbury
With regard to the tribunal, I referenced the evidence from the National Leasehold Campaign and the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, and that David versus Goliath arena. I do not think it is a matter of choice; I wonder why anyone would opt for this route versus the other provisions in the Bill. Clause 15 is very straightforward, applying the same principle.
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Just because we cannot imagine the circumstances in which it would be necessary does not mean that they do not exist. Whether a person should choose to pursue it themselves depends on how well informed and able they are. Perhaps they might find it easier or quicker. I am not sure, but the option should at least be available to them.
Mike Amesbury
That demonstrates why clause 8 and the duty to inform were so important. That would, again, help with this potential.
Eddie Hughes
I can say only what I said earlier: I do not think that clause 8 and the duty to inform are required. I am not sure that it would necessarily make it easier. The hon. Gentleman questioned why somebody would want to pursue it themselves. As I said, they would no doubt be a well informed and able person. I am not sure that the duty to inform would have applied.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Will the Minister expand on clause 15(5), on the amount of interest payable not exceeding
“the amount ordered to be paid under section 14”,
and the equity of that? It strikes me that if someone is required to make a payment and a long period has expired, which is why interest is being added to the amount, for what reason would that be deemed not payable? How would that be fair on someone who has been disadvantaged in that way?
Eddie Hughes
I think it simply represents the fact that, in reality, we will ensure that we pursue these things more quickly. We should not be in a position where the two are of equal level. I understand the hon. Lady’s point and will consider this further as the Bill progresses.
Maria Eagle
The difference between these clauses and the previous clauses we discussed is that the organisation that will in the first instance decide the size of the fine is the tribunal, rather than the enforcement authority—I think I am right about that—because the tenant will make an application to the tribunal for a fine to be levied and to get back the money they have wrongly paid. Do the Government intend to give some guidance to the tribunal as to how to set that fine? There is quite a wide range; it is between £500 and £30,000. Does the Minister expect that the tribunal, in making such a determination, will follow the same kind of guidance as the enforcement authority would follow were it initially setting the level of fine? Has he given any thought to consistency between the two ways of getting to a fine in this instance—whether through the tribunal or the enforcement authority?
Eddie Hughes
It would absolutely be our intention, through guidance or otherwise, to ensure consistency across both approaches.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 15 and 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Assistance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 17 enables enforcement authorities to assist leaseholders, where they request it, with various applications to the appropriate tribunal for redress. We have discussed that a leaseholder may apply to the tribunal for a recovery order to recover any permitted rent, along with any interest that would have been payable. We have also discussed the provision to apply to the tribunal for a declaration that will establish for the record whether a term in a lease is a prohibited rent, and if so, what the permitted rent is.
We want to ensure that the system of redress for leaseholders is easy to navigate. That is why we have taken a belt-and-braces approach whereby enforcement may take place via the enforcement authorities or a leaseholder may seek redress directly by application to the appropriate tribunal. Should a leaseholder wish to do this, the clause makes it clear that an enforcement authority may offer assistance to the leaseholder with that process. I hope hon. Members agree that it is important to give enforcement authorities the power to offer appropriate assistance to leaseholders who wish to seek redress directly from the tribunal. The clause achieves that.
Mike Amesbury
The clause seems fairly proactive, essentially hand-holding through the process, which in one dimension is most welcome. However, I still question the incentives for people to go down the enforcement authority route—trading standards—rather than the tribunal route for cost recovery. I am curious.
Maria Eagle
I have a similar concern to my hon. Friend’s. The clause states that, “An enforcement authority may,” not “must”, which means that it may not. It may decide that it does not wish to. If it were to take enforcement action itself, it can retain the proceeds of any enforcement that occurs, but there is no indication that the costs of assisting a tenant, which may be just as an extensive as if it were to carry out the enforcement action itself, are recoverable in any way. Does that not suggest that the relevant enforcement authority may choose not to?
Eddie Hughes
I feel as though the hon. Lady has almost answered her own question. If somebody comes to the authority seeking advice, and it decides that, given its expertise in the field, it would be better if it pursued the claim itself, perhaps it might be minded to do that. In that case, it would be “may” rather than “must”. That leaves the leaseholder with a choice as to the route that they take. It is appropriate that both options are available to them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 18
Interpretation of enforcement provisions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 18 defines which is the appropriate tribunal for a lease of premises that is in England or in Wales. The clause also glosses the meaning of “tenant” in clauses 11 and 14, which relate to recovery orders, and in clause 17, which relates to assistance by an enforcement authority.
I should note that, in discussing the Bill, I have generally referred to “leaseholders”, rather than tenants, as that is the term that most people are familiar with in the context of a long lease. However, Members will have observed that the Bill uses the term “tenant”. The clause defines “tenant” for the enforcement clauses in the Bill, so to avoid confusion I shall refer to “tenant” in my comments on this clause.
Clause 18 has the effect that in those clauses, references to tenants include former tenants and people acting on behalf of a tenant, but not former tenants or people who have guaranteed the payment of a rent for a tenant in relation to making an application as to the effect of clause 7 on the terms of a regulated lease. That wide definition will ensure that any party that has been affected by a breach of the terms of the Bill will be able to seek redress.
The clause excludes former tenants and guarantors from the definition of tenant in clause 17(1)(b), because that provision relates to an enforcement authority helping a tenant to seek a declaration of the application of the Bill to a lease, something that will not be needed by a former tenant and cannot be actioned by a guarantor. For example, a former tenant who has sold on their interest in a property will have no need to seek a declaration as to whether a rent term in that sold-on lease should be a peppercorn. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Administration charges for peppercorn rents
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 19 is included to prevent a potential loophole whereby a landlord might charge an administration fee in relation to a peppercorn rent. This measure is achieved by amending the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, thereby requiring that no administration charge is payable in relation to the collection of any ground rent that is restricted to a peppercorn by this Bill. Subsection (5) provides a leaseholder with recourse to redress, if needed. It enables a leaseholder to apply to the first-tier tribunal in England or to a leasehold valuation tribunal in Wales for an order varying the lease on the ground that such an administration charge is not payable.
A further measure, should it be needed, is included in subsection (6), which amends the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987. This enables a leaseholder to apply to the relevant tribunal to request that it makes an order appointing a manager where prohibited administration charges have been made. A tribunal-appointed manager does not act on behalf of the landlord; they are appointed by the tribunal to take over the landlord’s right to manage the building. This is a strong measure, intended to provide a deterrent to help ensure that a landlord does not continue to seek administration charges in relation to a peppercorn rent under the Bill. Clause 19 is necessary to ensure we guard against any potential loopholes in this legislation.
Mike Amesbury
I welcome clause 19. The interest in charges that are applied under various titles is well documented. I think the clause does close a loophole. Of course, the Opposition have stated our desire and concern to see these provisions extended to some 4.5 million leaseholds. There are 1.5 million households that are in leaseholds, with some 270,000 in the north-west and a similar figure in Wales. This measure obviously applies to those going forward. I welcome the clause within the narrow scope of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Amendments to the Housing Act 1985
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 20 makes two amendments to the Housing Act 1985. Specifically, they amend part V of the Act on the right to buy. The purpose of the amendments is the same: they update the 1985 Act to ensure that requirements in it relating to ground rent are aligned with the provisions in the Bill.
Clause 21 gives the Secretary of State the power to make provision that is consequential on the Bill through regulations, including provisions amending an Act of Parliament. We do not take such a power lightly, and in drafting this legislation we have sought to identify and make all necessary consequential amendments on the face of the Bill. The changes to the Housing Act 1985 in clause 20 are a good example of this.
However, long residential leasehold is a complex and interdependent area of law. Therefore, we consider it prudent to take the power in clause 21 to ensure that, should any further interdependencies be identified at a later date, these can be addressed appropriately. There are various precedents for such provisions, including section 92 of the Immigration Act 2016, section 213 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and section 42 of the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee considered the powers in the Bill, including this one, and noted that there was nothing in the Bill that it would wish to draw to the attention of the House.
Maria Eagle
Clause 21(2) states that
“the provision that may be made by regulations under subsection (1) includes provision amending an Act (including an Act passed in the same session as this).”
Can the Minister tell the Committee why that is? What Act being passed in this Session could possibly need to be amended as a consequence? Is there another Bill that has provisions about such things? Why is that part in parentheses included?
Eddie Hughes
My understanding is that consideration has been given and we do not think there is anything, but we need to be prepared should the circumstance arise. That is my understanding of the requirement.
Mike Amesbury
What would those circumstances be? Can the Minister give us examples?
Eddie Hughes
As I said in my speech, the law is complex and there are interdependencies between various Acts. The provision makes sure that there is nothing that we have missed in terms of another piece of legislation that would be relevant and would have an impact; it gives us the opportunity to make an amendment appropriately. That is my understanding.
Maria Eagle
I am sorry to press the Minister on this, but clause 21 says,
“including an Act passed in the same session as this”.
What other Bill or Act in this Session could possibly have a provision that may need amending as a consequence of the Department overlooking something? This is complex housing law. What other Bill that is being passed through Parliament in this Session has complex housing law in it?
Eddie Hughes
I can only say again that we do not know the answer to that, otherwise we would obviously have made the necessary amendment at this point.
Eddie Hughes
I appreciate that the hon. Lady is not happy with the answer, but unfortunately that is the circumstance.
Clause 22 makes provision relating to regulations under the Bill. Subsection (1) is a standard provision that enables consequential, supplementary, incidental, transitional, saving or differential provision to be made, if necessary, in connection with the exercise of powers under the Bill. As is usual, subsection (2) provides that regulations under the Bill must be made as a statutory instrument. Subsections (3) to (4) relate to the procedure for making regulations under the Bill. Regulations under the Bill will follow the negative procedure, unless they make provision under clause 20 amending an Act. As we have discussed, for provisions under clause 20, the affirmative procedure will be followed, requiring active approval from both this House and the other place.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott. I am grateful to the Minister. I very much welcome the Bill. It is a tightly scripted, focused Bill, which will accelerate its passage. I welcome these clauses, which allow the Secretary of State and the Government to bring in subsequent and consequent amendments, if need be.
One of the key themes of the Bill is that it gives homeowners and leaseholders more of a sense that they have rights over the building they own and that is their home. Currently, in many cases, the leaseholder has to apply to the freeholder for permission to do things to the property that they consider to be their home. That can include whether they can keep a pet in the building. Is that something that the Government will look at as we move forward? When someone owns their home, they should have the right, as a responsible pet owner, to keep a pet. I declare a strong interest in that, both personally and professionally—I am a veterinary surgeon and am fully aware of the physical and mental health benefits to people and animals of the companionship of responsible pet ownership. Will the Government look at those rights moving forward?
Mike Amesbury
The hon. Gentleman spoke about people owning their home. This is the whole issue with leasehold; people do not own their home. I wish him well with the pets, and his practice.
Dr Hudson
I take on board that comment, but a key theme for leaseholders is having more of a sense of belonging, ownership and ability to make decisions such as whether to keep a pet. I realise that this is a tightly worded Bill, but can the Minister say whether we will consider that issue in future?
Maria Eagle
I have every sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s plea that homeowners—leaseholders think they are homeowners, but they do not own everything—should have the right to do things such as own pets. The Minister will tell me if I am wrong, but I think that the regulations and consequential amendments that we are discussing relate only to the power to deal with landlords seeking to continue ground rent, other than peppercorn rent, in the interim period between Royal Assent to the Bill and when the regulations are brought in to commence it properly, which we understand might be in six months’ time.
Talking about these provisions is a bit like dancing on the head of a pin. I know I have been contributing significantly to that, but they apply in a very narrow range of circumstances that relate to landlords who seek to continue to charge ground rent, or put clauses into leases that come into existence after Royal Assent but before the commencement of the provision seeking to get ground rent payments from their leaseholders-to-be. We are dealing here with a very narrow range of circumstances in what one hopes would be a very short period. The Minister has suggested a period of six months until commencement. I suppose that if a landlord were then to continue to try to have leases with provision for ground rent that was other than peppercorn, these provisions could apply in those circumstances. We are talking about badly behaved landlords after the commencement of the legislation that keeps ground rent as peppercorn. Can the Minister confirm that the regulations that we are talking about do not relate to anything other than that?
Eddie Hughes
That is my understanding. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border rightly said again that this is a tightly crafted Bill. The point that he made would fall outside the scope of the Bill, but given the importance that many people place on ownership and his expert experience as a vet, I look forward to discussing this topic with him as we look at future legislation next year.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 21 and 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Interpretation
Eddie Hughes
I beg to move amendment 7, in page 14, line 13, leave out “consideration in money or money’s worth” and insert “pecuniary consideration”
This amends the definition of a premium so that only pecuniary consideration, rather than any consideration in money or money’s worth, is included.
Government amendment 7 makes a minor technical change to clarify the definition of “premium” used in the Bill. Members who are closely watching proceedings in the other place will know that the Government amended the Bill there to make it clear that it applied only to leases where a premium was paid. That was done to ensure that the legitimate practice of longer leases on a rack or market rent could continue. This amendment is a further clarification, again in response to concerns raised in the other place by the Earl of Lytton, about the impact that the newly added definition of a premium would have on properties with a “repairing covenant”. We are talking about a relatively small number of properties where a leaseholder agrees to take on the cost of repair works in a property. That could be, for example, for the renovation or upkeep of a home. As currently drafted, the definition risks inadvertently reducing the rack rent on such properties to a peppercorn. That is not, and never has been, the intention of this legislation. We are therefore removing the words “money or money’s worth” and substituting for them the words “pecuniary consideration”. “Pecuniary consideration” is of course a much more preferable phrase, as it is broadly any consideration sounding like or expressed in terms of money. This amendment will ensure that the Bill operates as intended.
Amendment 7 agreed to.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 23 defines key terms for the purposes of the Bill. For example, it defines “long lease” and “rent”. Only long leases are regulated by the Bill. A long lease is generally a lease granted for more than 21 years, although some other types of lease are also captured. These are leases for a term fixed by law under a grant with a covenant or obligation for perpetual renewal—that excludes a situation where the lease is a sublease from a lease that is not a long lease—and leases terminable after a death, marriage or civil partnership. In the Bill, “rent” includes
“anything in the nature of rent, whatever it is called.”
Clause 23 also signposts where other terms, such as “peppercorn rent” and “regulated lease”, are defined elsewhere in the legislation.
We have arrived at these definitions after careful consideration. They have been drafted with the intention of avoiding the creation of loopholes that could be exploited to get around the intention of the legislation. The fact that ground rent has not been specifically defined is a very conscious decision, and has been arrived at following a great deal of deliberation. Rent has been defined broadly, and in the way it has been, to ensure that it captures the nature of ground rent without being too specific and risking landlords reintroducing it by another name.
Changing these definitions risks undermining the intention of the legislation. We have, however, provided some further clarification to the definition of rent in response to issues raised in the other place. Specifically, clause 23(3) makes it clear that other legitimate charges—such as service charges, insurance and so on—that might be reserved as rent in a lease will not be reduced to a peppercorn under the legislation merely because they are reserved as rent in the lease.
Mike Amesbury
Again, I welcome the intention of the clause and its various provisions and the amendment, but in relation to service charges, which relate to an earlier narrative under other clauses, there is still the potential that, as we deal with the issue of ground rents, the issue will become service charges. They are not at all transparent. We can look at managing agents, for example. They seem to be accountable to nobody other than themselves. You, Ms Elliott, or I, or anybody in this room, could set up as a management agent and tuck away some interesting so-called service charges. As I said, they are not transparent. We are absolutely clueless as to what some of them are for. An example is car-parking payments. Additional charges for that are sometimes astronomical. I think we could see those consequences that I referred to before. I gave the example of charges going up by 500% or 400% across the country as a result of this measure. We need assurances about that. I know that the Government and the Minister have tried to tighten things up, to prevent those loopholes, but assurance is needed, particularly for leaseholders out there who may be listening to our proceedings.
Eddie Hughes
I completely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is incumbent on the Government to ensure that when the legislation is in force, we are in contact with professional organisations, tenants groups and so on to ensure that, if we see a pattern of egregious behaviour of the type that he has described—people effectively trying to reclaim costs through some other route—we find a means to address it. I understand his concern, and I look forward to working with him, once the legislation has taken effect, to ensure that we track any unfortunate consequences.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24
Crown application
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Eddie Hughes
Clause 24 deals with the issue of Crown land and makes it clear that the Bill will apply to Crown land, including that belonging to the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, the Duchy of Cornwall or a Government Department. Prior to the introduction of the Bill, both the Queen and the Prince of Wales granted consent in writing.
Clause 25 states the territorial extent of the Bill, which extends to England and Wales. We have worked closely with the Welsh Government throughout the passage of the Bill to ensure that the legislation meets the needs of leaseholders in England and Wales. As a result, the Bill specifically transfers executive competence to Welsh Ministers in a number of areas, including on the definition of community housing leases in clause 2(6)(b); the penalty amounts to account for the value of money, in clause 10(9); and the provision of guidance in clause 13(1)(b). That will ensure that the legislation works for leaseholders in both England and Wales.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 View all Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 3 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 9 / Noes: 4 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
We now come to clause 14 and Government new clause 1.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. Am I correct that new clause 1 has not been put to the Committee? I expected us to deal with it alongside clause 14. In the absence of the Minister, will you clarify what has happened?
The Chair
I can clarify that Government new clause 1 will be voted on later. It was grouped for debate with clause 14 stand part, but there was no debate.
Clause 16
Lifelong learning: amendment of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)
Clause 16 amends the definition of “higher education course” in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to make express provision for the regulation of modules and to make it clear what a module of a higher education course is, as distinct from a full course.
The current post-18 student finance system does not specifically provide for modules. The lifelong loan entitlement will transform student finance by supporting more flexible and modular provision. This legislative change is needed to provide the explicit underpinning for the delivery of modular provision. This clause makes specific provision for modules by amending part 1 of HERA 2017, which relates to the regulatory regime under the Office for Students.
The amendments relieve higher education providers of certain additional burdens that would otherwise arise from the addition of the concept of modules under HERA.
Mr Perkins
I am grateful to the Minister for moving the clause; he was not here to move clauses 14 or 15 stand part. He has offered no apology to the Committee. As we did not have the opportunity to hear from him before those clauses were voted on, will he explain what happened this morning?
Alex Burghart
I am happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman, and I apologise to the Committee: I was unexpectedly held up on my way here. I apologise to everyone for the inconvenience and for any discourtesy, particularly to you, Mrs Miller. The amendments relieve higher education providers of certain additional burdens that would otherwise arise from the addition of the concept of modules under HERA. These relate to certain requirements to provide or publish information under section 9 of that Act.
We want to reduce the bureaucratic burden on providers where possible, and these changes will ensure that the introduction of funding for modules through the LLE will not add to this.
We will consult on the detail and scope of the lifelong loan entitlement in due course. We will take this and other wider engagement into account before we reach a final position on fee limits and will bring forward further primary legislation on this matter.
Overall, the changes in the Bill will help to pave the way for more flexible study and for greater parity between further and higher education.
Mr Perkins
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. I appreciate the Minister’s apology—these things happen—but I was under the impression that in the event of a Minister being unable to move a motion someone else stands in. As a result of no one being here, clauses to the Government’s Bill have passed without debate. For those who made representations, that feels like quite a discourtesy.
I accept the Minister’s apology for his being unavoidably detained, but people listening to our deliberations might well wonder what the Government’s intentions are as the Bill has been unable to be amended.
May we have your advice on how this unavoidable situation can be put right so that people can at least understand the Government’s thinking?
The Chair
It is for the Government to decide how they deliberate on their business in the House. I certainly agree with Mr Perkins that it is unusual not to have a Minister here to move clauses, but the Minister has given us an explanation. New clause 1 has not been moved; it will be moved and voted on later. I think you have made your point, Mr Perkins.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
In fact, there is no need to extend this debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Universal credit conditionality
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss new clause 8— Benefit eligibility: lifelong learning.
The secretary of state must ensure that no learner’s eligibility to a benefit will be affected by their enrolment on an approved course for a qualification which is deemed to support them to secure sustainable employment.
Alex Burghart
Clause 17 seeks to change the law so that some students could keep their universal credit entitlement while studying.
It may help if I explain to the Committee that financial support for students comes from the current system of learner loans and grants designed for their needs. Section 4(1)(d) of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 sets out that one of the basic conditions of entitlement to universal credit is that the person must not be receiving education, which is defined in regulations made under subsection (6).
Where students have additional needs that are not met through this support system, exceptions are already provided under regulation 14 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, enabling those people to claim universal credit. This includes, for example, those responsible for a child—either as a single person or as a couple—or those aged 21 or under studying non-advanced education, such as A-levels, who do not have parental support.
It is an important principle that universal credit does not duplicate the support provided by the student support system. The core objective of universal credit is to support claimants to enter work, earn more or prepare for work in the future. There is an expectation that people who are able to look for work or prepare for work do so as a condition of receiving their benefit.
Let me reassure the Committee about the important work already that is under way. Officials at the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions are working closely together to help to address and mitigate the barriers to unemployed adults taking advantage of our skills offers. For example, DWP Train and Progress is a new initiative aimed at increasing access to training opportunities for claimants. As part of this, in April 2021, a temporary six-month extension in the flexibility offered by UC conditionality was announced. As a result of this change, adults who claim universal credit and are part of the intensive work search programme can now undertake work-related full-time training for up to 12 weeks —or up to 16 weeks as part of a skills bootcamp in England—without losing their entitlement to UC. That builds on the eight weeks during which claimants were already able to train full time without losing their UC entitlement. This flexibility has now been extended to run through to the end of April 2022. Such measures are helping to ensure that UC claimants are supported to access training and skills that will improve their ability to gain good, stable and well-paid jobs. Claimants who enrol on a longer course that is not advanced education can also retain their entitlement to UC, provided they can still meet their UC conditionality requirements.
More broadly, we are continuing to support working families on UC. As we set out at the spending review, we have reduced the taper rate to 55% and increased work allowances to £500 per year, allowing UC claimants to keep more of what they earn. This is an effective tax cut worth £2.2 billion, meaning that almost 2 million of the lowest paid in-work claimants are better off overall by around £1,000 a year on average. We do not think it is necessary for the UC regulations to be amended in this way, and the clause should therefore be removed from the Bill.
New clause 8 seeks to ensure that eligibility to benefit is retained for claimants undertaking certain courses deemed to support them to secure sustainable employment. In addition to what I have stated on universal credit and Train and Progress, claimants on new-style jobseeker’s allowance are able to undertake a full-time course of non-advanced study or training—not above level 3—for up to eight weeks if work coaches identify a skills gap and are satisfied that it will improve the claimant’s prospects of moving into work more quickly.
The time spent on the course can be deducted from the hours of work search that the claimant is expected to undertake. Claimants on new-style employment and support allowance can already receive benefits while in education, whether full or part-time study, as long as they satisfy the eligibility conditions.
The DWP is monitoring the impact of Train and Progress, with the review date due in April, and will make decisions on continuing based on the evidence available. This will include the potential to extend the legacy benefit groups that have not transitioned to UC.
New claims for legacy benefits are no longer possible, so this is a diminishing case load. Existing claimants can still study part time as long as they meet their conditionality requirements and are willing to give up their study for employment, which they have agreed to look for.
The core objective of universal credit and other working-age benefits is to support claimants to enter work where appropriate, earn more or prepare for work in the future. There is an expectation that people who are able to look for work or prepare for work do so as a condition of receiving their benefit. We therefore do not think it is necessary or appropriate to change eligibility criteria to benefits for those who enrol on a course, so the clause should not stand part of the Bill.
Mr Perkins
It is vital that the cross-party support in the House of Lords on ensuring that those in receipt of universal credit are not penalised for undergoing level 3 training is upheld in the Bill.
What the Minister just said, however, somewhat undermines other things that we have heard from him and other members of the Government about the importance of skills training and education. Much of the Government’s approach to skills, which we support, has been about the importance of qualifications and apprenticeships being proper qualifications that are given depth and that develop people’s learning. For that purpose, apprenticeships are a minimum of one year; level 3 qualifications are longer, and even level 2 apprenticeships are a minimum of one year.
It appears that the Government’s approach to universal credit is that those who are seeking to get themselves into the jobs market should be allowed to do very basic training of the sort I have seen on many excellent work programmes, but that if they want to develop the qualifications they would gain on a one-year course they will be unable to do so while claiming universal credit.
It is essential that those who are furthest from the labour market have every opportunity to find work.
Alex Burghart
What one-year courses is the hon. Gentleman thinking of where claimants may continue on universal credit while studying?
Mr Perkins
Apprenticeships are a one-year course. Many people might be on an apprenticeship and on universal credit. I have had the opportunity to see many courses that people are not on for longer than what the Minister said and face perhaps significant barriers to accessing the world of work. We have real concerns, which were shared by those in the other place, that rather than helping people to move from universal credit into work this programme will prevent them from doing so.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak for the first time in this important Committee under you, Mrs Miller.
One of the key points that we have seen is the move to online learning for many people, which would be time away from seeking work. Many of the modules last for a quarter, six months or a year. Does my hon. Friend agree that, under the clause, many people will feel uncertain about whether they can undergo training?
Mr Perkins
I absolutely do agree. Under the original drafting of the clause it was clear that to access universal credit people had to be on an approved course that took them towards the world of work. It fits in with the principles of universal credit, as we are led to understand them. Under the clause,
“the Secretary of State must review universal credit conditionality with a view to ensuring that adult learners who are—
(a) unemployed, and
(b) in receipt of universal credit, remain entitled to universal credit if they enrol on an approved course for a qualification which is deemed to support them to secure sustainable employment.”
The word “sustainable” is very important. The Government’s approach seems to be that it is better to get anyone off unemployment and into work in any capacity, even if it is only a few days of casual employment, than to allow them to take sustainable steps to develop skills and get a job on which they can rely in the long term. My hon. Friend, many Labour Members and possibly Conservative Members will have come across constituents who are bedevilled by unstable employment—a day here or a few days there—without anything on which they can rely in the long term to sustain their families financially. Sustainable employment that they can trust is vital.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I shared many of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns so I went to the Department for Education to seek clarity. As I understand it, many of the things that he is suggesting are already possible. Under both the current system and the new proposals, if a job coach accepts that a qualification would help someone into work, that coach can already approve that qualification and allow someone to do that training instead of job seeking under the work-based requirements for universal credit. Someone can also do a part-time qualification outside of working hours and still receive universal credit. Does he accept that that is true and perhaps contradicts some of his comments?
The Chair
Before Mr Perkins responds, may I remind Members that an intervention is just that; if you want to make a speech, make a speech.
Mr Perkins
A very well made point, Mrs Miller.
I accept that what the hon. Gentleman describes may be true on some occasions. However, the way in which the Bill is drafted and the very fact that the Government seek to oppose it, means that many job coaches, and many learners, will think that the Government would prefer to get them off the dole and into any job, at any moment, rather than invest in their skills. I have met many people in a variety of projects who are employed by the private sector, social enterprise or Jobcentre Plus to support people into work whose absolute focus seems to be to get one person from one list on to another. I fear that the long-term contribution to that person and ensuring that their training and qualifications are sustainable—the purpose of the Lords amendment—is lost as a result.
The hon. Member for Mansfield appears to be saying that the principles of the Lords amendment are already in operation given how job coaches operate. If that is the case, what is the harm of including the amendment in the Bill? If those rights and opportunities already exist for people, I cannot see the point in the Government’s opposition to the amendment.
The noble peers saw the value in the amendment, which enjoyed cross-party support. It is disappointing that, by their attitude, the Government are continuing to create the impression that people on universal credit who have the audacity to invest in their skills rather than simply take the very first opportunity to get off the dole and into work, however unsustainable or unreliable, should be discouraged from that.
On Second Reading, I was struck by the contribution from the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). He said:
“the Government have placed much emphasis both on the importance of making work pay and on the current high level of job vacancies. Unfortunately, many people are currently some distance from the workplace and are not able to take advantage of these opportunities. However, many of them would be able to do so if universal credit conditions were reformed so that they could more readily access education and training. With that in mind, I urge the Government to consider carefully the amendment tabled by the Lord Bishop of Durham.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2021; Vol. 703, c. 416.]
As I said at the time, the hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to say that.
Given the twin challenges of Brexit and covid, Ministers must do all that they can to ensure that those who are furthest from the labour market are able to retrain or upskill. It has never been more important to ensure that we make the best of every single person. We know that there are staff shortages and we can respond to that in two ways. We could say, “Well, we have got shortages in staff, so let’s just get people into those jobs and fill the gap with a body.” Or we could say, “Let’s make sure we upskill the people who are currently furthest from the labour market, so that they are able to make a sustainable, long-term contribution.” That is the approach adopted by the Labour party.
The Opposition believe that it is a travesty that people in receipt of universal credit can be penalised for taking up an opportunity that could help them move into sustainable employment. We understand that the Government want to prevent people from undertaking qualifications for the sake of it, but those in receipt of universal credit should be supported to undertake training that is deemed appropriate by their work coach, in line with the principles outlined in the Bill. I hope that Members recognise the importance of supporting the clause.
New clause 8 is designed to probe why the Government may be against people in receipt of other benefits developing their skills so that they get closer to the labour market. Many people who are on a variety of benefits, such as incapacity benefit and other legacy benefits, may be very nervous about losing their entitlements to them. We all know that it is much easier to be taken off those benefits than to be put back on them. With some patience, tolerance and support, those people would be able eventually to join the world of work. There is a false dichotomy between those who Jobcentre Plus says are ready to go into work and should be spending every hour of every day looking for a job and other people who the Government accept will never get into work. Instead, we should be supporting everyone, rather than threatening them. We tabled new clause 8 to understand for what reason the Government would be against people developing their skills in a manner that pushes them to the labour market, even if they are in receipt of benefits that do not prompt the immediate response from Government that they should be doing all that they can to find work. I commend the new clause and clause 17 to the Committee.
Matt Western
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Miller.
I support clause 17 and new clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield and me. The new clause relates to the universal credit conditionality clause that was inserted during Lords consideration of the Bill by the Lord Bishop of Durham and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle. It relates to the issues surrounding adult learners who are unemployed and in receipt of universal credit, who would remain entitled to that benefit within law if they were on an approved course.
To put it simply, the current welfare system actively discourages people from getting the skills that they need. A person loses their rights to receive unemployment benefits if they take an educational training course. Surely that cannot be right. The “Let them Learn” report from the Association of Colleges that was published recently highlights the great work of colleges with Jobcentre Pluses to support unemployed people into work. In fact, the Association of Colleges described the current system as “unjustifiable and incoherent”. Indeed, the principal of my local college wrote to me ahead of our consideration of the Bill to express her concern about the universal credit restrictions. She viewed them as causing barriers to retraining and upskilling. That cannot be right.
The truth is that unemployed people, or those in low-paid jobs, are the least likely to take out a loan for fear of risking greater indebtedness and poverty for themselves and their families. As someone who in the course of their career did courses at evening classes, I know that access to such courses is really important. However, if someone cannot afford to get to them, they simply will not take them up. The truth is that this will impact far more on certain groups than on others. We know that 53% of those on universal credit are women. We know that, as of July 2021, 30% of claimants were aged 16 to 29; 40% of people on universal credit are working.
How can those workers justify taking a cut in their monthly pay and finding time to reskill? Indeed, the Department for Education’s impact assessment reveals that the cost of study is the greatest barrier to further study. That is why we propose new clause 8 and will vote against the Government. We believe that the clause introduced by the Bishop of Durham and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle should be in the Bill.
Alex Burghart
We believe that it is important that the welfare system helps people to get into work as quickly as possible, but we are not blind to the fact that some people will need or desire additional training. I referred to the flexibilities we have introduced to allow people to do bootcamps—a very productive way of reskilling at speed. On my visits to Salford, Bedford and Doncaster I met people who had been referred by their work coaches and were acquiring new skills that would often lead them into new professions.
Similarly, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield mentioned, it is possible for people to be on apprenticeships while claiming universal credit if their pay is low enough, and courses for the new lifetime skills guarantee that the Prime Minister made will often be available to people who are on universal credit.
We have shown that the system is capable of flexibility. We do not believe that people ought to be able to claim benefit while on long courses. However, there are opportunities to skill up, move into work and still receive some protection from universal credit.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 50, page 22, line 6, at end insert—
‘(1A) The Secretary of State must also prepare and publish a review of student maintenance entitlements.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to review the maintenance support available to further education students and courses.
The amendment ensures that those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have the opportunity to undertake level 3 qualifications in order to get a job or gain higher-paid qualifications.
The success of the lifetime skills guarantee depends on those who need training or upskilling being able to take up the opportunity. In his speech at Exeter college, the Prime Minister outlined, in a great fanfare, his intention—in the midst of the pandemic—that people should be able to retrain. It was clear that he appeared to have those people in mind, but little attention has been paid to how they will take up the offer if they cannot afford to put food on the table while they are studying.
We believe that it flies in the face of reason not to set out during the passage of the Bill maintenance support for those from marginalised groups and those furthest from the labour market. I believe that the Government are minded to say that they will respond in due course, but as the lifetime skills guarantee will not be fully implemented until 2023, which signals the Government’s too little, too late approach to the skills challenge, we believe that it makes sense to announce maintenance support in the Bill, which is why we tabled amendment 50.
Alex Burghart
Amendment 50 would require the Secretary of State to publish a review of student maintenance entitlements, to be conducted annually, I believe. We agree wholeheartedly with the importance of ensuring students are supported to enable them to succeed in their studies. The Government’s ambition for the lifelong loan entitlement is to help those studying at higher levels to have the opportunity to choose the best course or modules based on their learning needs, rather than just choosing the funding system that is most advantageous for them.
In our forthcoming consultation on the LLE, we are seeking to understand better the barriers that learners might face in accessing it, and how the availability of maintenance loans and other forms of support could help. It is crucial that we consider the importance of creating a sustainable student finance system.
Rachel Hopkins
I thank the Minister for taking my intervention. In the earlier part of the debate, when the Minister was not in place, we were not able to consider Sharia-compliant loans. Will the Minister please include that in his comments?
Alex Burghart
I believe we will come later in the debate to another clause that treats the subject of Sharia, and I will be happy to address the hon. Lady’s point then. It is something that the Government will consider.
It is crucial to consider the importance of creating a sustainable student finance system, alongside what will be necessary to ensure that the Government can offer all eligible students the opportunity to study. However, as with clause 18, imposing an annual reporting requirement would create an unnecessary burden upon Government and the taxpayer. The student support regulations are updated annually, as it is, providing the Government with a regular opportunity to introduce improvements. In addition, introducing a review requirement before the maintenance policy is finalised would be untimely, and would pre-empt the outcome of the LLE consultation.
The Bill already provides the necessary powers for maintenance support to be introduced as part of the LLE, if the decision taken is that it should, following the consultation. Advanced learner loans are currently available in further education. Learner support funds are available for adult learners aged 19 and over, and there are bursaries of up to £1,200 a year for students in specific vulnerable groups, such as care leavers. With that in mind, and given that the amendment is burdensome, pre-emptive and unnecessary, we cannot support it.
Matt Western
I rise to speak in favour of amendment 50, which would require the Secretary of State to review maintenance support available to further education students and courses. The Augar review recommended that student maintenance should be extended to cover students in further education as well as higher education. That was one of the important findings in that review. We have been waiting two and a half years for some outcome from the Government, which I hope we will get soon.
The Association of Colleges reminds us in its briefing that many adults will be unable to take up lifelong learning opportunities, because there is no support for living costs when taking a course at that level. Such people will be prevented from transforming their life chances. The Minister will be aware that the Government’s own impact assessment reveals that one of the main barriers to adult learners is the cost of study, including living costs.
Right across the higher and further education landscape, there are calls from many, including the Open University, for an extension of maintenance support to FE students. The Welsh model is interesting: the Welsh Government introduced reforms to tackle that issue by extending maintenance support including, importantly, means-tested grants to all students, regardless of mode of study, while maintaining low tuition fees for part-time study.
Elsewhere, in the written evidence, Birkbeck University argued for a maintenance grant to prevent further hurdles to taking up study. Universities UK states:
“We would…welcome further details on the government’s plans for introducing maintenance support for individuals studying through the”
lifelong learning entitlement
“and, specifically, what would the minimum intensity of study be for individuals to be eligible for maintenance loans.”
Those factors are important. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish talked about his own experience the other day. I was lucky enough to go to university many decades ago—
Matt Western
It is hard to believe. The Minister is right on that point but, as a third child, I would not have been able to go were it not for the maintenance grant, back in those days. That is why being given a maintenance grant is very much a mobilising and enabling part of the provision of education, to allow young people the chance to study. Since the removal of the EMA—education maintenance allowance—many have not been able to access education, because they just cannot afford to take the courses without some form of maintenance support.
For those reasons, we tabled the amendment. I very much hope that everyone in Committee will support it.
Mr Perkins
Apologies for the slight delay, Mrs Miller, I was still musing on how long ago it was that my hon. Friend went to university. It was quite a shock. The points he made are important. For that reason, we believe the amendment has merit. We have heard what the Government have said. We will get the opportunity to vote on clause stand part, so we look forward to supporting it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
The Government agree that many learners need to access courses in a more flexible way to fit their study around work, family and personal commitments, and to retrain as their circumstances and the economy change.
Existing equivalent or lower qualification rules, however, were designed to help maintain a sustainable system. As such, we are designing the lifelong loan entitlement not only to support students pursuing higher and further education flexibly, but to share the costs fairly. We want the lifelong loan entitlement to provide value for money to students, the education sector and the taxpayer.
The complexity of that balance and the transformative nature of the LLE is one of many reasons why we intend to consult on its detail and scope before legislating on eligibility. It is crucial that careful consideration of the needs of providers, learners and stakeholders informs our final policy design, and that we do not pre-empt the consultation’s findings; however, introducing an ongoing obligation to report annually on eligibility before the policy detail is yet finalised may prejudice the outcome of the consultation, as it could indicate a future path for ELQ rules before there has been a chance for open consultation to happen.
Beyond that, the Government believe that a yearly reporting duty in perpetuity would be an undue and disproportionate burden at this stage. Placing such a duty in primary legislation would be restrictive and out of kilter with prior similar legislation passed by Parliament on student finance. For example, the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 gave significant powers to the Secretary of State over student finance, with much of the detail of the policy covered in a complex suite of regulations, including eligibility, repayments and fee limits to name but a few.
It would be disproportionate to put a requirement to report in primary legislation when the system is already under continuous review and subject to frequent amendment. Previously, much of the detail on how the system works has been set out in secondary legislation, with necessary monitoring and review undertaken only after changes have been implemented and had time to embed. The Government will of course address plans for review and monitoring as we work towards the roll-out of the lifelong loan entitlement from 2025 and post implementation. I therefore believe that the clause should be removed from the Bill.
Mr Perkins
It is regrettable that the Government will seek to remove clause 18 from the Bill. It was introduced by the Lords for entirely the right reasons. On many occasions we have all seen the Government having to be dragged to the House in order to answer for their performance. The country also faces significant skills challenges. Who would have known a year ago that we would have spent so much of the last few months talking about the heavy goods vehicle driver crisis? Such things arise suddenly.
Given the dynamic state of skills policy—particularly, at the moment, legislatively but also in terms of employers’ ability to access skills—we think that clause 18 is proportionate. It requires the Secretary of State purely to prepare and publish a report on the impact on the overall level of skills in England and Wales of the rules regarding the eligibility for funding of those undertaking further or higher education courses. There is a lot of scope within that. The level of tuition fees in this country is so disproportionate to any other nation around the world, or any of the other major competitor nations in Europe, that inevitably it pushes students to access the courses that will lead them towards the jobs that pay the most.
There are many crucial public servants in this country who might not end up earning king’s ransoms but are performing roles of incredible importance to our country. A regular review of funding and maintenance support in the context of the level of skills is of real value. As a result of that review, the Government might think about being more flexible on tuition fees for certain courses, or taking specific steps to support learners in a variety of areas to study for the specific skills that the Government think will be of most use to our country and economy, and providing incentives for them to do so.
There are all kinds of different professions for which the Government rack their brains about how they can get more people to study. Each year we hear of courses in medical environments, for example, where thousands of places go unutilised. Such a review could push the Government to take the steps required to ensure that the country addresses those areas of skill shortages. It was a sensible amendment by their lordships, and it is regrettable that that very minimal commitment expected of the Secretary of State should be too much for the Government.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 19, page 22, line 34, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment leaves out clause 19(3) of the Bill (regulations about courses of initial teacher training for further education to include provision about special educational needs awareness training), which was inserted at Lords Report.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2—Lifelong learning: special educational needs—
“When exercising functions under this Act, the Secretary of State must ensure that providers of further education are required to include special educational needs awareness training to all teaching staff to ensure that all staff are able to identify and adequately support those students who have special educational needs.”
This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there is adequate special educational needs training for teachers of students in further education.
Alex Burghart
We can all agree that it is vital for teachers to be trained to identify and respond to the needs of all their learners. That must include those with special educational needs and disabilities. However, the Government do not prescribe the content of further education initial teacher training. We believe that experts from the sector are best placed to design training programmes to meet the needs of learners, using a clear occupational standard as their benchmark.
The new occupational standard for FE teaching, published in September, has been developed by representatives from the sector who themselves work alongside and employ teachers. The standard clearly articulates the key knowledge, skills and behaviour that FE teachers must demonstrate. That includes an explicit requirement to actively promote equality of opportunity and inclusion by responding to the needs of all students. We believe that the standard is the right place to set out the expectations of teachers and what their training should cover, and that view is shared by sector experts themselves.
The Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers has stated that the new occupational standard for teachers in the FE sector
“provides an appropriate framework for the design and delivery of FE initial teacher training programmes—including the new qualification that UCET and other sector groups are currently helping to develop”.
UCET is of the view that
“the standard and qualifications based on it will help to ensure that all new FE teachers are properly equipped to recognise and respond to the needs of their learners—including those with SEND”.
Furthermore, UCET has said:
“It is vital that providers of FE ITT should be able to use their expertise and judgement to tailor training programmes to the needs of trainees and learners within the framework provided by the occupational standard.”
It concludes that
“it would be unhelpful to remove this flexibility by mandating the content of FE ITT programmes in legislation.”
I believe that it is important that we listen to the voices of expertise in the sector and do not unduly tie their hands. We have been clear that we intend to make public funding available only to FE ITT programmes that meet the new occupational standard.
Clause 19(3) as drafted, although honourable in intent, is unhelpfully restrictive. It would require the Secretary of State, when making regulations for the first time under this power, to make provision relating to SEND awareness in FE ITT even if the regulations being made did not bear at all on the content of training programmes. This is, in our view, the wrong way to achieve the right aim.
I want to directly address new clause 2. The Government are already driving up the quality of teaching in further education and strengthening the professional development of the FE workforce. We provide significant funding for programmes to help to spread good, evidence-based practice in professional development. Examples are the T-level professional development offer, which integrates support for learners with SEND throughout its offer, and the FE professional development grant pilot. Making sure that teachers have access to high-quality training and professional development will ensure that learners, including those with SEND, receive the highest standard of teaching.
Our continuing professional development offer for teachers also includes provision delivered by the Education and Training Foundation. That training improves the capability and confidence of the FE workforce to identify and meet the needs of learners with SEND.
Ultimately, providers themselves must make decisions about what training is relevant and necessary for their teachers. That means that they can respond to the specific needs of their learners and those who teach them.
It is also important to note, outside professional development, that under the SEND code of practice there should be a named person with oversight of SEND provision in every college. Those people co-ordinate, support and contribute to the strategic and operational management of the college.
The Government are committed to ensuring that all learners, including those with SEND, are benefiting from outstanding teaching in the FE sector.
Mr Perkins
I rise to oppose Government amendment 23, and to discuss new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle. I believe that clause 19 is an important clarification added to the Bill by the Lords. The Minister spoke passionately about the need for ensuring that those who attended ITT further education courses have awareness of special needs. However, it is precisely because of that that we believe clause 19 is sensible. Government amendment 23 removes clause 19(3), which ensures the duty for initial teacher training providers to provide special educational needs awareness training.
That is particularly important because a huge number of people, later in life, are identifying that they have learning difficulties, be that autism, attention deficit disorder, or Asperger’s syndrome. These were not picked up throughout their school career because there has been such a low level of awareness about such issues within much of the teaching profession.
We know that awareness of issues like autism has improved a great deal in recent years, but there are still many people going through our school system with other conditions, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and others. With access to the right support, teaching could have been provided that recognised their disability and enabled them to access the curriculum to the best of their ability. It would have also enabled them to understand themselves. That is a crucial point about special needs; we must help people to understand themselves. I have spoken to many people who say, “I always knew I was different, but I never knew what it was. It was only in my 20s or my 30s that I realised.” There is a family member of mine in their 40s who has recently identified having a disability of this kind.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I speak as someone with both dyslexia and dyspraxia; I was diagnosed when I was 12. Does the hon. Member agree that it is important to ensure that every single teacher—not just SEN specialists, but regular teachers—have a certain level of understanding of different types of disability, and that not all young people, or adults, process information in the same way?
Mr Perkins
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. That is precisely the value of this provision. It makes this not the responsibility of the special needs co-ordinator—who, if they get an opportunity to sit down with someone would have that professional awareness— but, instead, makes sure that people right across the sector are able to identify these needs. We would not expect every teacher to become a full SENCO expert, but it is about them having the awareness to identify that there may be issues that need to be given further consideration—that is what I think is of real value.
New clause 2 attempts to find a different way to deliver the same initiative as the one proposed by their noble lordships in clause 19, whose subsection (3) places a duty on teacher training providers to ensure that SEN training is part of their work. In new clause 2, the obligation is on all providers of FE colleges to ensure that all their staff have been provided with special needs awareness training. There are two different ways to deliver that training. It can be delivered at the point where someone is qualifying, or can be certified at the point where someone is employed. There is merit in either approach; simply to dismiss both approaches is really disappointing.
New clause 2 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there was adequate special educational needs training for teachers of students in further education. Given the high number of students with special educational needs who access further or adult education, often as a second chance when they have had a negative experience of school, it is particularly crucial that trainee teachers in the sector have an awareness of the issues the students face.
We must remember that people within the further education sector are far more likely to have an identified special educational need than those in mainstream schooling. The sector needs this kind of awareness. The Department for Education’s own figures show that the percentage of pupils with a special educational need, but no education, health and care plan, has increased to 12.2%, continuing an upward trend.
Tom Hunt
As the hon. Member will know, it is important to provide support at that stage, but it is also important to start as early as possible. What are his views on the ten-minute rule Bill being introduced today by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), which would require the assessment of every primary school kid for dyslexia, and whether that should be extended to dyspraxia?
The Chair
I am sure Mr Perkins will draw that comment back to the subject of the debate here today, as opposed to what might be going on elsewhere.
Mr Perkins
I am fiercely conscious of that point, Mrs Miller. I take the restriction that has been issued by the Chair, but would say briefly that there is real value in the hon. Gentleman’s point about identifying issues as early as possible—I think every one of us would appreciate that point. But, accepting that that has not happened, it is crucial to ensure that people at every level in the further education environment understand and are aware of the issues.
The new clause proposed by the noble Lords has real value, and I urge the Government to consider ensuring in the Bill that people across our FE sector have that awareness. The Minister has said there may be many people in that environment who do not have the need to have that awareness. As I have laid out, it is my view that it should be the responsibility of everyone to ensure that they are able to identify various kinds of special need and know how best to support learners with special needs in all kinds of environments.
Matt Western
I rise to speak in favour of new clause 2 and against Government amendment 23. I have various concerns with clause 19 and where the Government seem to be going with the review on initial teacher training, including the market review that the Government are consulting on and where it seems to be heading. It would be easy to conclude that they are seeking to centralise control of how teacher training is being delivered and to move away from the diverse approach that we currently enjoy. I have real concerns about what clause 19 proposes, and specifically what the Government propose with amendment 23.
Alex Burghart
We fully understand the sentiment behind the changes that the Lords and the Opposition are trying to make, but we disagree with the way that they are going about them. We think that the occupational standard is the best place to contain such provisions and that the occupational standard is best owned by the profession itself. We believe that the profession ought to hold the ring on such matters. We do not want to set a precedent that every detail of initial teacher training should be set out in primary legislation. For that reason, we are acting as we are.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Burghart
It is important that the further education sector has enough suitably trained teachers to deliver the high-quality outcomes all learners deserve and that we all want to see. That is why a consistently high-quality initial teacher training offer in further education is needed. Initial teacher training in further education is not regulated, nor is there any primary legislation to allow for regulation. The clause gives the Secretary of State the flexibility to introduce measures through secondary legislation to secure or improve the quality of further education initial teacher training provision. The clause does not place requirements on trainee or practising FE teachers. To be clear, the Government have no intention of reintroducing mandatory qualifications for individual teachers in the FE sector.
We are already working with the sector to bring about the change and improvement needed. For example, we worked with a group of sector employers to support the development of a revised employer-led occupational standard for further education teaching. The clause sends a clear message that the provision of high-quality FE initial teacher training is vital, and therefore that secondary legislation should be introduced to complement and strengthen non-legislative measures where appropriate.
Mr Perkins
We do not oppose the clause. It is of real importance that initial teacher training for the further education sector is put on a statutory footing. We think that this is of particular importance given the scope and scale of the sector, and that many people in FE—probably more than in any other academic establishment—move directly into lecturing from the workplace. There has often been a two-way path between people in all kinds of different vocational environments. For example, mechanics, plumbers and painter-decorators may sometimes practise their chosen trade and at other times move into the further education sector. For that reason, it is important that the best standards of training for those teachers is in place, so we welcome the Government’s putting this on a statutory footing.
Obviously, it remains a regret that clause 19(3) has been deleted. We will continue to press the Government to ensure that, although that provision has been removed from the Bill, there is a real commitment to ensuring a high standard of awareness of special educational needs. On that basis, we will not oppose the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Office for Students: power to assess the quality of higher education by reference to student outcomes
Matt Western
I beg to move amendment 60, in clause 20, page 24, line 13, at end insert—
“(5A) When measuring student outcomes under subsection (5), the OfS must take account of mitigating circumstances, such as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 56, in clause 20, page 24, line 16, at end insert—
“(6A) The OfS must consult the higher education sector before determining a minimum level in relation to a measure of student outcomes.”.
This amendment requires the OfS to consult the higher education sector before determining minimum levels.
Amendment 57, in clause 20, page 24, line 17, leave out “not”.
This amendment requires the OfS to determine and publish different levels to reflect differences in student characteristics, different institutions or types of institution, different subjects or courses, or any other such factor.
Amendment 58, in clause 20, page 24, line 23, leave out “or subject being studied”.
This amendment is intended to probe the OfS’s powers of intervention at subject level.
Amendment 55, in clause 20, page 24, line 24, at end insert—
“(7A) When making decisions of a strategic nature in relation to a measure of student outcomes, the OfS must have due regard to the potential impact on the participation in higher education of students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.”.
This amendment seeks to ensure that the OfS’s measure of student outcomes does not jeopardise widening participation for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
Amendment 59, in clause 20, page 24, line 28, at end insert—
“(8A) The OfS must work together with the devolved authorities to minimise the potential for different assessments of the quality of higher education with a view to protecting the United Kingdom’s higher education sectors’ international reputation.”.
This amendment probes the impact that moving the English higher education sector out of line with the UK Quality Code will have upon the coherence and consistency of UK quality assessment and the UK’s HE sectors’ international standing.
Matt Western
It is a pleasure to be able to give my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield a bit of a break this morning, given that he has been doing so much hard work in the past hour or so. The amendments essentially relate to the role of the Office for Students. I have been in my role a short time—slightly longer than the Minister—but I have to say that I have some reservations about what the Office for Students is doing presently. I understand its remit and purpose, but I am not sure what direction it seems to be taking us in. That direction comes from its leadership. It is a shame that the chief executive is standing down. We need more continuity there, and I await the appointment of her replacement with great interest.
We have tabled several amendments. Amendment 60 would require the Office for Students to bear in mind mitigating measures—for example, the past 22 months of the covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has had on students and therefore on outcomes. When assessing quality, it is important that quality is understood in the context of such factors. In the case of the past two years, there has clearly been a huge impact on students and their ability to learn, despite the best efforts of lecturers and the teaching profession to deliver as much as possible as well as possible in really challenging circumstances, whether face to face or mostly online. So much of the normal teaching framework has been greatly challenged.
The most recent pilot of the student covid insight survey showed that students’ experience has changed dramatically because of coronavirus. On the academic experience, 29% of students reported being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their experience in the first term. Statistics from the Library highlight employment levels for those aged 16 to 24; I am not talking about outcomes. It is easy to look at what has happened to employment as an obvious measure of outcome, but employment levels have fallen 9%, which has clearly had a huge impact on the student outcome as a result of the national crisis.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has also found that the impact of the pandemic has been very likely to disrupt the career progression of those in the early stages, with many graduates potentially delaying their entry to the labour market by staying in education. Research by jobs website Milkround provides us with further evidence. It shows that, compared with the typical 60%, just 18% of graduates are securing jobs this year—a third of the figure we would normally expect.
The purpose of the amendment is to identify and recognise the need to establish a link between what we might call force majeure events such as the pandemic and ensuring that the OfS is more flexible when considering student outcomes. It cannot be a static metric. That point is echoed by a significant representative body for the higher education sector, Universities UK, which states:
“Employment outcomes will also be impacted by national and local economic conditions.”
It is important that the OfS bears that in mind in any framework that it establishes for outcomes.
Amendment 56 has been tabled because we want to see true and substantive consultation with the higher education sector before the outcomes are defined. The Government should talk to the Universities UK representative body, which has been exploring the development of a framework in England for an institutional programme and course review process centred on best practice. Given that Universities UK represents 140 institutions, collaborating with them and exploring the work that already exists would be a sensible start for the Government to focus on. Universities UK also says that it is “unclear whether the baselines” of minimum assessment of standards
“will be subject to thorough consultation.”
I hope the Government will start a consultation programme with all the representative bodies to understand how they may structure student outcomes.
Alex Burghart
I rise to speak to this monster group of amendments: 60, 57, 56, 58, 55 and 59.
Amendment 60 would add to the power in clause 20 an obligation on the Office for Students to assess and consider mitigating circumstances such as the pandemic. The OfS is already required to take into account wider factors when assessing the performance of providers. It has a general duty to have regard to the need to promote equality and opportunity and is subject to the public sector equality duty. It also has a public law obligation to take all material factors into account when reaching a decision.
The OfS will therefore consider a range of different contextual factors that may explain the reasons for a provider’s performance before reaching any final judgment. For example, this may include factors such as the relative proportions of students from disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds. This could also include information from the provider about the actions it has taken, or plans to take, to improve quality, and external factors that may be outside a provider’s control such as the pandemic.
The OfS has previously produced guidance on how it expects providers to comply with the quality and standards-related registration conditions in the light of the pandemic. It is well aware that particular circumstances may be in play at a particular time, including the disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
Amendment 57 would leave out the word “not” and in doing so completely reverse the purpose of this clause. Students would be expected to accept that they might achieve different outcomes—and, in some cases, lower outcomes—depending on their background, which risks entrenching disadvantage in the system. That cannot be right. Every student, regardless of their background, has a right to expect the same minimum level of quality that is likely to improve their prospects in life. That is why we included the provision in this clause to make clear that there is no mandate on the OfS to benchmark the minimum levels of standards it sets based on factors such as particular student characteristics. The OfS will none the less continue to consider appropriate contexts, including student characteristics, and make well-rounded judgments when assessing individual providers.
Amendment 56 would require the OfS to consult before determining minimum levels of student outcomes. I reassure the Committee that, under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, the OfS already has a statutory duty to consult before publishing any revised version of its regulatory framework, including on quality measures. In relation to student outcomes specifically, it has already undergone one round of consultation, while a further consultation on specific outcome levels and how the OfS will take wider context into account will be published early next year. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.
Amendment 58 suggests that the OfS may be required to determine different expected outcome levels by reference to each subject, which would be inappropriate. Requiring the OfS to determine different minimum outcome levels for different subjects would mean that students studying certain subjects would be expected to accept different and, in some cases, lower outcomes than if they had chosen a different subject. All students should expect that minimum levels of continuation and completion rates, as well as the proportion of students that achieve employment commensurate with their qualifications, will be the same for all subjects.
Amendment 55 would require that the OfS has regard to widening participation for disadvantaged and under-represented groups.However, I assure the Committee that the OfS already has to take due regard of the impact of its decisions on disadvantaged and under-represented groups. The minimum expected levels of student outcomes will form only part of the overall context the OfS takes into account as it makes rounded judgments. When itexercises any function, it must, under section 2 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, have regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in connection with access to and participation in higher education, and that duty applies when the OfS looks at how disadvantaged students and traditionally under-represented groups are supported and what they go on to achieve. It includes access, successful participation, outcomes and progression to employment or further study. The OfS has a public law obligation to consider relevant wider factors, which could include, amongst other things, the characteristics of a provider’s students, where appropriate.
Amendment 59 would require the OfS to work with devolved Administrations to minimise different assessments of higher education quality. HE is a devolved matter, and it is right that each Administration should be free to drive up quality in the way they think best. I understand that there is a concern about the removal of direct reference to the UK quality code from the guidance in the OfS’s regulatory framework and its impact on the reputation of the UK’s higher education sector, but the OfS has already made clear that its regulatory requirements would continue to cover the issues in the expectations and core practices of the quality code, which will remain an important feature of the regulatory framework. The OfS is not proposing to abolish the UK quality code—indeed, it has no power to do so. The code will continue to be important in the sector and providers will still be able to use it.
I would like to take this opportunity to announce the Government’s intention to table an amendment on Report that will give the OfS an explicit power to publish information about its compliance and enforcement functions, in particular when investigating higher education providers for potential breaches of registration conditions, which will give the OfS protection from defamation claims when it does so. That increased transparency will be in line with other regulators’ powers and protections, including appropriate safeguards.
Rachel Hopkins
I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and the proposed amendments, in particular those including the requirement to consult the higher education sector before determining the standards. My constituency, Luton South, is home to the fantastic University of Bedfordshire, which takes many non-traditional students—for want of a better term. The majority of its students are older and may be working and studying additional qualifications to support their work. Many come from disadvantaged and under-represented groups. It is vital that we understand the difference that universities like the University of Bedfordshire make to those people’s lives when considering the clauses and the amendments proposed.
Matt Western
I thank the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South for their comments. Let me pick up on the points my hon. Friend just made. Educators and educationalists are concerned that these measures could lead to a reduction in opportunity and access, and that many could feel marginalised in the education process. I am not a specialist and have no background in education, but I understand that many schools have started to direct and encourage students to take certain GCSEs, to stay on to take A-level, BTECs or whatever. They may be prevented from doing so because of concern about the results achieved by that school or college, which could dissuade them.
It can never be known at the start what will happen to a student with the right sort of teaching and course. That education could bring alive their interest in a subject. I would underline the sense of caution that motivates the amendments. The Government need to tread incredibly carefully, for fear of reducing access and participation in our education sector. I appreciate that you may wish to restrict the number of amendments put to a vote, Mrs Miller, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 56, in clause 20, page 24, line 16, at end insert—
‘(6A) The OfS must consult the higher education sector before determining a minimum level in relation to a measure of student outcomes.”—(Matt Western.)
This amendment requires the OfS to consult the higher education sector before determining minimum levels.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Burghart
Clause 20 clarifies the provisions set out in section 23 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, known as HERA, which relate to the assessment of the quality of higher education provided by a registered provider. Section 23 of HERA currently places no restrictions or stipulations on how the Office for Students might assess quality or standards. Clause 20 provides some much-needed clarity. It puts beyond doubt the OfS’s ability both to determine minimum expected levels of student outcomes and to take those into account alongside many other factors when it makes its overall and well-rounded assessment of quality. It also makes clear that if outcome measures are to be used, the outcomes can be any the OfS considers appropriate.
The OfS looks at important indicators of high-quality higher education that are hugely valuable to students. They may include student continuation and completion rates and progression of graduates to professional or skilled employment or further study. The OfS is already regulating on that basis. The Government believe strongly that every student, regardless of background, has a right to expect the same minimum level of quality and the same opportunities to go on to achieve successful outcomes. Students from underrepresented groups should not be expected to accept lower quality, including poorer outcomes, than other students. That is why the clause also makes clear that there is no mandate on the OfS to benchmark the minimum levels of standards it sets based on factors such as particular student characteristics. The use of minimum levels for student outcomes is not and will not be a blunt instrument that relies only on data.
Absolute outcomes are only one aspect of a provider’s performance. To make a well-rounded judgment on a provider’s absolute performance, the OfS will consider a higher education provider’s appropriate context before determining whether a registration condition has been met. Alongside that work on baselines, the new Director for Fair Access is tasked with rewriting national targets to focus on social mobility and ensuring that higher education providers rewrite their access and participation plans. New and ambitious targets will be set to raise standards in schools, reduce drop-out rates at university and improve progression into high-paid, high-skilled jobs.
Clause 20 is an important element of the Bill because it serves to ensure that higher education provision delivers quality for all students, the taxpayer and the economy.
Matt Western
I do not have any further points to make and will not press any other amendments.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
List of relevant providers
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 29, in clause 21, page 25, line 10, at end insert—
‘(aa) for mayoral combined authorities or other authorities as defined by the Secretary of State, to keep a list of relevant education or training providers who meet the conditions specified by the authority in respect of that education or training;’.
The effect of this amendment is that mayoral combined authorities or other authorities as defined by the Secretary of State will be able to establish a list of their own relevant education or training providers.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 30, in clause 21, page 26, line 12, at end insert ‘including mayoral combined authorities or other funding authorities.’
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 29.
Amendment 31, in clause 22, page 27, line 8, after ‘(a)’ insert ‘or (b)’.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 30.
Mr Perkins
It is a great pleasure to move the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and myself. The amendments concern the Government’s plans to have a list of preferred providers. What could go wrong with this Government and a list of preferred providers, I hear hon. Members ask? There have been reasons to question the Government’s record when it comes to relevant providers. The particular concern that the hon. Member for Bury South and I, and others, have is that when it comes to the Secretary of State and his Whitehall colleagues providing a list of providers to be considered appropriate by metro Mayors and combined authorities in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or anywhere else, important local providers will be missed out.
The amendment was tabled because of those local providers, both private sector providers and social enterprises, which might not have the huge ability to do detailed tenders but are important and proven in many local areas. There is a real concern in Manchester from the metro Mayor, which I suspect is where the interest of the hon. Member for Bury South comes from, and in other areas, that their importance should be recognised.
The amendment says that provision should be made,
“for mayoral combined authorities or other authorities as defined by the Secretary of State, to keep a list of relevant education or training providers who meet the conditions specified by the authority in respect of that education or training”.
Amendment 30 would add,
“including mayoral combined authorities or other funding authorities”,
to clause 21. It is really important that those local providers can be utilised by local combined authorities and metro Mayors.
During the Bill’s stages, there has been much talk about devolution and the importance of local decision making, but at every turn, we see the opposite—the Secretary of State is clawing back power for himself. In this case, without the amendment, that would be at the expense of local decision making, because if the mayoral combined authority was in a position to say, “We’ve worked really closely with a provider,” but for whatever reason, the provider was not on the Secretary of State’s list, it could be missed out.
The amendment seeks to ensure that the Government, who once passionately championed devolution, do not allow Whitehall decision makers to prevent the continuation of local arrangements and relationships that are delivering for local communities. As I said, there is concern that the Secretary of State’s list of relevant providers will exclude local providers that may not offer the scale and scope of national providers but are proven and have a successful track record in local areas. I have been to Manchester and discussed in great detail the strong relationship that the Mayor’s office has established with local small and medium-sized enterprises and social enterprises that are doing great work locally.
It sometimes feels as though the Government have a love affair with major firms that promise them the world. We fear that smaller providers will inevitably be missed off the Secretary of State’s list and that local learners and local businesses will be the biggest losers. It is vital that mayoral combined authorities, and other authorities that have local expertise, can continue those agreements with existing providers and that there is no break in provision where funding contracts are in place for adult education. Again, it feels as though the clause seeks to centralise power in the hands of the Secretary of State without paying due consideration to local representation, which is why I am keen to support amendment 29.
Alex Burghart
The amendments aim to give mayoral combined authorities and other authorities the power to keep their own lists of relevant education or training providers, specify their own conditions and exercise discretion about whether certain conditions have been met by relevant providers. The list of post-16 education and training providers that can be established under the powers in the clause aims to put in place guiding principles for a coherent and consistent scheme to protect learners in the case of provider failure. This important, specific point is made in subsection (5), which says:
“A condition may be specified in regulations under subsection (1)(a) only where the Secretary of State considers that specifying the condition in relation to a relevant provider may assist in preventing, or mitigating the adverse effects of, a disorderly cessation in the provision of education or training by the relevant provider.”
The whole clause is there to prevent circumstances in which providers crash out of the market and leave those in training with nowhere to go.
Mr Perkins
The Minister has a tendency to sit down rather abruptly before he has had the opportunity to respond to things that have been raised, so I just wanted to catch him at this moment. Will he explain what about subsection (5) in any way secures the quality and robustness of those providers? Is it his view that the Secretary of State’s list will somehow ensure the finances or quality of that provider? What assurances can he give the hon. Member for Bury South and myself, and all those who have those local relationships, that those local relationships will not be the victim of this desire for consistency?
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. If he looks at subsection (7)(b), he will see that one key thing we seek—this is relevant to the point I am making regarding preventing provider failure—is providers having relevant insurance cover, which we might consider through regulations. There have been a number of cases in the past where some providers have not had that, and there has been a real risk of a break in the provision given to certain students. We do not want to exclude small, local providers of the type he mentions at all. If ever it was felt that the Government were doing that, I draw his attention to subsection (10)(d), which says that an appeals process will be set out in regulations. I hope he can take some comfort from that.
Members will note written evidence from Learning Curve Group, an independent training provider, stating:
“Learning Curve Group welcomes the Government’s proposal…to include a register of providers who meet certain conditions as we believe this will increase overall quality and ensure high standards.”
We intend to work closely and collaboratively with mayoral combined authorities and other funding authorities on the creation of the list and the conditions that will apply. We will continue to engage with MCAs in designing the conditions and operation of the list. Through collaboration, we can ensure that we set a high bar for all providers for protecting learner interests. We certainly value the expertise and input that MCAs will have in this. As I said last week, we recognise the importance of the work of MCAs and their vital work in supporting local communities.
Mr Perkins
Subsection (7)(b) relates to the relevant provider having insurance cover. Will the Minister confirm whether that means insurance cover in the context of employer liability in the event of an apprentice or other adult learner being injured, or is it insurance cover in the event of the failure of the business and additional costs that might be attached to that? Will he clarify what the clause refers to?
Alex Burghart
It is the latter—in the case of business failure. The Bill sets out that we will consult on the conditions and provisions for being on the list prior to making the first set of regulations, to help ensure that those conditions manage and mitigate the risk of disorderly exit. That consultation will allow us to take into account fully the views of those affected by the scheme, including MCAs.
Mr Perkins
The Opposition are not opposed to clause 21 standing part, but there is a real danger that the way it is drafted will create much greater bureaucratic responsibilities. Inevitably, the result is going to be smaller providers not ending up on that list, either because they consider that their relatively small provision means that the Government’s requirements make it prohibitive for them to carry on, or because they get missed, as inevitably happens when dozens of local lists are turned into one major one.
We are not opposed to the Government introducing conditions and having standards and the register, but there is a real danger that the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Bury South and a number of different combined authorities will mean that really important local relationships will end up falling by the wayside and that provision may end up getting lost. We will press amendment 29 to a vote. Amendments 30 and 31 are conditional on amendment 29.
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)
Tuesday 7th December 2021
(3 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 View all Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 December 2021 - (7 Dec 2021)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
A point of order was raised this morning about there not being a debate on new clauses 1 and 4 at the beginning of proceedings today. I am happy to cover the new clauses if the Government and Opposition want that. Although they could have been debated at the time, and Opposition Members did not take the opportunity to do so, out of a sense of fairness this is a way of getting through this slight wrinkle.
Clause 21
List of relevant providers
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)
What a pleasure it is to reach our sixth and final sitting on this important Bill.
Clause 21 will allow the Government to introduce a list of post-16 education or training providers. To be on the list, providers will need to meet conditions that help to protect learners against the negative impacts of provider failure. It will also help to protect public funds by preventing or mitigating the risks of provider failure. Currently, there is a risk that the short-notice exit of a provider from education and training can significantly disrupt the experience of many young people and adults. This can be because of delays in finding a new provider and insufficient planning on what happens next in these circumstances. This clause focuses the operation of a list on the types of providers that the Department considers are most at risk of an unregulated and disorderly exit from provision—independent training providers.
While we value the role of ITPs in helping to provide a more diverse and innovative learning offer, it is not right that these types of providers should operate with less in-built protection for learners than other types of further education provider. Fundamentally, we want to protect learners and public funds if providers cease to provide education or training. Where other regulatory mechanisms are not in place, we want to ensure that there is a consistent set of requirements placed on providers to protect learners and public funds, even where the provision is funded by local commissioning bodies or through subcontracts from directly funded providers.
Where a provider is not directly funded by the Secretary of State—as can be the case with ITPs—the existing levers for the Secretary of State to protect learner interests are not as strong. Contractual conditions of funding to prevent disorderly exits may also not be consistent. The Bill will allow commonality and consistency across funding streams to mitigate provider failure risks. The clause also allows the Secretary of State to set out other matters in connection with the keeping of the list of post-16 education or training providers.
We intend to consult before deciding on the detail of the way in which the scheme will operate. The Secretary of State is required to do so before making the regulations that establish the list for the first time.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
May I record my thanks, Mrs Miller, for what you said a few moments ago about ensuring that new clauses 1 and 4 may be debated? I appreciate your flexibility.
We do not intend to divide the Committee on this subject, but I re-emphasise the point that I made in the discussion on the amendment. I entirely appreciate what the Minister says about the need to ensure protection for learners, but a small number of providers have a long track record of providing a small amount of provision that is none the less important in certain sectors and geographies. If this becomes a bureaucratic or economic minefield, they will simply withdraw from the sector, which will be the poorer for it. We received representations from the Manchester combined authority, which has a long history of working closely with smaller providers. It has real concerns that a national list will lead to smaller providers being missed out.
We do not intend to divide the Committee but we will continue to scrutinise the Government and ensure that the provisions put in place do not, as we fear they may if they are not carefully handled, exclude important, worthwhile providers from the list.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Prohibitions on entering into funding arrangements with providers
Alex Burghart
I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 22, page 28, line 15, leave out from first “to” to “paid” in line 16 and insert “an agreement for the funding authority to provide funding to the provider includes a reference to an agreement or arrangements between the funding authority and the provider by virtue of which amounts can or must be”
This amendment makes clear that an agreement between the Secretary of State and an education provider that must be in place in order for student loans to be paid directly to the provider counts as “funding arrangements” for the purposes of clause 22. It also covers arrangements other than agreements.
Amendment 24 is a minor and technical amendment that clarifies that advanced learner loan funding routed through the Student Loans Company is in the scope of clause 22. This has always been the intention of clause 22(9), and this amendment is merely a technical adjustment to the drafting. It ensures that advanced learner loan funding arrangements are captured by the “funding arrangements” definition in clause 22. Without the amendment, clause 22 may not be adequately applied in relation to providers who receive advanced learner loan funding.
Mr Perkins
We appreciate that clarification.
Amendment 24 agreed to.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 22 is important in ensuring that a funding authority is prevented from entering funding arrangements with a provider that is not on the list. It also makes sure that the funding authority can take action to terminate funding arrangements in an orderly way should a provider cease to be on the list.
The short-notice exit of a provider from the provision of education or training can significantly disrupt the educational experience of young people and adults. The transfer of learners to another provider can take time, be extremely disruptive and increase the risk of learner disengagement. The provision of post-16 education or training is commissioned by various funding bodies and is often subcontracted. As a result, there is a wide variation in the range of obligations and requirements currently imposed on providers.
The provisions in the clause are intended to ensure that a consistent set of requirements is placed on providers and funding authorities to protect learners and public funds, even where the education or training is funded by local commissioning bodies or through subcontracts. The clause also sets out that a provider must not rely on anything in clause 22 as a reason for not carrying out existing obligations under a funding agreement. A funding authority could continue to enforce those obligations even if a provider was not on the list, as the contract would remain valid. This may be important to allow a provider to teach existing learners until they had completed their course where the risk posed by the provider could be managed.
The clause also includes the power for the Secretary of State to set out in regulations the particular characteristics of the funding arrangements that are subject to these funding controls. This is necessary so that the Department can ensure that the controls are applied proportionately. For example, de minimis requirements may be needed so that short-term and low-value arrangements for the provision of relevant education or training are not captured by the requirement for the particular provider to be on the list. The clause is essential in ensuring that there are certain restrictions and controls on the public funding of education or training providers in the scope of the list.
Mr Perkins
It is important to ensure that information is shared widely, not only with providers that might be outside mainstream education provision but with funding authorities such as mayoral or combined authorities, to ensure dialogue and so that smaller providers are not missed out.
The clause clarifies that providers must be approved and have an agreement in place for them to be allowed to have student loans paid directly. Building on the contribution I made in the debate on clause 21, it would be useful if the Minister clarified the steps the Government will take to ensure that only providers with quality offerings and financial stability and robustness receive direct payments and that these steps will not prevent quality, innovative smaller providers from accessing the important opportunities to attract new students.
Further to that, does the Minister anticipate that the extension of student finance will mean that a greater variety of private sector organisations will be able to receive student loan applications? I have met people in my constituency, and have written to his predecessor about other courses whose students have previously been excluded from getting student loans to access them, despite having a long track record of their students going into employment. To what extent does the Minister think the Bill will increase the number of learners who can get student loans for their courses, and how will he ensure that quality, innovative, smaller providers can access those opportunities?
Alex Burghart
The Government are fully aware that ITPs come in all shapes and sizes, and play an essential part in the skills ecosystem. We are very mindful that we do not want to drive good providers out of the market by creating a list. The sole purpose of the list is to ensure that all providers have in place provisions to ensure that they have contingency plans for their students should they go under. That is something that exists elsewhere in the skills space. We are extending it to ITPs, and intend to do so in such a way that will not create a bureaucratic overload. To the hon. Member’s point on student loans, it will very much depend on how the system evolves from this point.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Funding arrangements: interpretation
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 23 provides definitions for key terms in this part of the legislation relating to funding arrangements with post-16 educational training providers, and ensures that the correct legal person and funding arrangements that they are party to are in scope of the relevant obligations. The clause is essential to the interpretation of the list of post-16 educational providers, and should stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24 provides that the regulations for creating or keeping the list, altering the categories of education and training in scope of it, or amending primary legislation will be subject to the affirmative procedure. That means that they will be subject to an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny over the use of those powers, and must be approved by both Houses prior to becoming law. The clause provides that the powers to make regulations in clauses 21 and 22 include the power to make supplementary, incidental, transitional or saving provision.
By way of example, once regulations have been made under clause 21, the Department may consider it necessary to amend statutory powers to provide financial assistance for relevant educational training so that they signpost the prohibitions that will apply, and which effectively constrain those financial assistance powers. One such power will be in section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973. Clause 24 will ensure that there is appropriate parliamentary scrutiny over the use of the powers, and should stand part of the Bill.
Mr Perkins
We appreciate that clarification. The clause and its subsections clarify the powers to make regulations under clauses 21 and 22, and we have no desire to oppose it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Provision of opportunities for education and skills development
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 53, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “education” to end of line 17.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 54, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “has” to “level.” and insert
“is earning below the Living Wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation.”
New clause 7—Level 3 qualifications provision—
“(1) Employer Representative Bodies may prescribe additional Level 3 qualifications, as part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.
(2) Additional Level 3 qualifications may be prescribed under subsection (1), in instances where the Employer Representative Body identifies a local need or skills shortage.”
Mr Perkins
The clause addresses the lifetime skills guarantee and the provision of opportunities for education and skills development. Subsection (1) says:
“Any person of any age has the right to free education on an approved course up to Level 3 supplied by an approved provider of further or technical education, if he or she has not already studied at that level.”
Amendment 53 would simply remove the final eleven words of the sentence. It is a probing amendment to test the reasons why the Government are seeking effectively to remove the word “guarantee” from the lifetime skills guarantee, and instead offer a significant limitation on the number of people who are able to study under it.
We think it is vital that people in low-paid employment have the chance to take additional level 3 qualifications to support them into better paid work or into new sectors. We also think it is crucial that people in industries or sectors that are diminishing have the opportunity to retrain. Substantial financial barriers would prevent them from accessing those courses.
When the Prime Minister made his speech announcing the lifetime skills guarantee in Exeter, he seemed to understand that point. The speech was all about the need for people to retrain and to be able to move from one sector where there were not going to be jobs in the future to jobs in other sectors. He wanted them to seize those opportunities. Unfortunately, the lifetime skills guarantee, which is going to take a long time to come into being anyhow, already has limitations.
Amendment 53 seeks to test the Government’s view on ensuring that more people are able to access a second qualification. Earlier, we gave the Government the opportunity to support a quite limited amendment on a second qualification.
I remind the Committee that a lifetime skills guarantee was in place for level 3 qualifications for everyone until 2013, when the former Chancellor George Osborne removed it. The decision to reintroduce this poor relation of that policy shows how the Government are learning at least some lessons from the mistakes they have made, but it lacks the ambition needed to reverse the failures of previous Government policy. More than 9 million jobs are excluded, many in sectors that have skills shortages and vacancies, such as tourism and hospitality.
I was speaking to a business in my constituency just this weekend that owns a number of establishments in the hospitality sector. It is desperate to attract members of staff into the sector. This is an organisation with a long track record of training up and developing members of staff, and ensuring that people make the best of their careers. It would be alarmed to hear that those kinds of opportunities are excluded from the lifetime skills guarantee. It is essential that the Government get this right. We hope they support our proposals.
Amendment 54 is an attempt to put on to a legal footing the promise made by the Secretary of State at the Association of Colleges conference in November. He said that
“from next April any adult in England who earns a yearly salary below the National Living Wage will also have the chance to take these high value Level 3 qualifications for free.”
That is precisely what the amendment seeks to do. It says that if anyone has a level 3 qualification and is earning below the living wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation, they would be able to take another level 3 qualification.
As we have laid out, we think that restricting the opportunities for students to take a second level 3 qualification is a huge missed opportunity. As the Committee has rejected our more ambitious amendment to allow all students the right to take a second level 3 qualification, we believe that the Government should at least be willing to support an amendment that supports what the Secretary of State has said.
New clause 7 relates to students wishing to do a level 3 qualification in an area where the local skills improvement plan has identified a local skills shortage. It would allow the local skills improvement plan to approve funding for a second level 3 qualification where local labour market shortages are identified.
The Bill contradicts itself. Reportedly, its aim is to ensure that skills policy is determined locally. New clause 7 would ensure that local skills improvement plans were able to identify that there was a skills need in the area and encourage people to retrain in that sector. Anyone who votes against that once again will seize power from local skills improvement plans and place it in the hands of the Secretary of State. We look forward to hearing what I imagine will be universal support for our amendments from hon. Members who are keen to support people in their constituencies.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield in his amendments 53 and 54 and new clause 7. We have had this debate already in Committee and I still think that the Committee made the wrong decision to prevent learners having a second chance at a level 3 qualification for the reasons that I set out.
Those reasons were as valid the other day as they are now for these amendments, because we live in a dynamic economy where industries come and go. The industry that my town was historically dependent on, and that the town of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South is equally famous for, is hatting. Those industries have pretty much died out, but the hatting industry made Denton famous. The Bowlers of bowler hat fame came from Denton, although they made their money at Lock & Co. Hatters in St James’s in London. However, that industry and those skills have gone.
In the past 50 or 60 years, my constituency has had to diversity and the workforce has had to retrain. That pace of chance will be prevalent in the decades ahead as technology advances, the global economy shrinks to make the world a smaller place, and international trade becomes the norm, meaning that we buy goods from other countries rather than make them here.
If we are going to have an industrial strategy that says that we want to be the lead nation in the new green industrial revolution, we need to ensure that we have the skills and the workforce to match that ambition. I am supportive of that and, if we are being honest, every Member of the House recognises the challenges and is supportive of it. That is not a top-level ambition, however; it has to be dealt with in the nitty-gritty of legislation.
We have a Bill going through Parliament that is rightly focused on skills and training and on ensuring that the next generation of the workforce has a built-in dynamism to be able to diversify, retrain and fill skills in the areas of the economy that have shortages. As the Opposition have said, that may mean someone has to have a second bite of the cherry at a level 3 qualification. If the subject in which someone has a level 3 is no longer fit for purpose, or relevant to the modern workplace, are we going to leave them languishing with inappropriate qualifications and skills that are no longer needed, or are we going to give them the opportunity to retrain, reskill and join the workforce, hopefully in highly paid, decent jobs? That is why I support amendments 53 and 54, which would put that idea on a legal footing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield rightly said.
The voice of local businesses and the economic partnership between local government, businesses, academia and training providers are setting out local skills improvement plans. They identify key skill shortages in their economic areas, and they should be given the flexibility to say, “You know what, in my area, we have an absolute shortage of skills in a particular sector. We want to make sure that our area is really dynamic in that sector and therefore it is a key priority for our partners to skill up to level 3 adequate numbers of the workforce.” That is sensible. It is devolution as it is meant to work, from the bottom up, and that is why I also support my hon. Friend’s new clause 7.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, because I agree with everything he said.
The amendments and the new clause address the issue from the relevant two angles. They are designed to offer a genuine lifetime skills guarantee for individuals—one that is aspirational and does not fall back on the argument that because someone got a couple of A-levels 30 years, they cannot now retrain for a level 3 qualification to meet a skills need in the local area. I think about the changing world of work, and how much more is now digital or IT-based. There has been a shift in skills, which is driving our economy. Unless we agree to the amendments, so many people will be locked out from making a genuine shift in their skillset and acquiring a higher skilled job, which would put them on a sustainable footing. It is short-sighted to attempt to restrict that opportunity.
We have heard much about the responsibility of employers to lead the development of skills plans for their areas, given that they understand their local economies. New clause 7 is positive because it would genuinely enable employer representative bodies to shape what that level 3 qualification should be, based on the skills shortages in their areas. The new clause would meet the purpose of ERBs in developing the skills plans and ensure the lifetime skills guarantee for local people.
I support the terms of the amendments and the new clause. I should add that there are still a few hat factories in Luton producing artisan hats, and very good they are, too.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I will speak to the amendments and the new clause that appear in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield.
Of course we all want to see a high-skill, high-wage workforce. We need that for our economy. A crucial part of that is the retraining of employees. I am sure that most people in the room agree that the evolving workplace means that we need a process of continuous development if we are to adapt and ensure that our economy thrives, against an ever-competitive global marketplace.
Alex Burghart
Amendments 53 and 54 taken together would alter the eligibility criteria for the proposed legal entitlement to a level 3 qualification for all adults. Amendment 53 in particular is intended to make anyone in England eligible for those qualifications, regardless of their prior qualification level; and amendment 54 is intended to make anyone in England eligible if they earn less than the living wage.
Amendments 53 and 54 highlight the reason why we are opposed to putting such an entitlement into the legislation in the first place: it could constrain our ability to respond quickly and flexibly to adapt such entitlements to benefit adults who are most in need of support. For example, if we wanted to change the offer within the legislative framework, we would have to change the legislation. We have already announced that, from April next year, we will also expand the free courses for jobs offer to include any adult in England who earns below the national living wage or is unemployed, regardless of their prior qualification level. We are able to do that without needing legislation.
By targeting eligibility on the lowest-paid earners and the unemployed, we will ensure that we support those most in need of support to access better job opportunities and to improve their prospects. I hope that the hon. Member for Chesterfield agrees with that, given that amendment 54 seeks to target those same adults. However, it is also not a good use of public funding to expand eligibility in a non-targeted way to anyone, regardless of their wages or prior qualification level, which is what amendment 53 appears to do. We therefore do not support the inclusion of amendments 53 and 54 in the Bill.
Mr Perkins
That was a useful and interesting little debate. We heard a lot about the—I want say burgeoning, but at least still existing—hat industry. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South and for Warwick and Leamington will be glad to know that I have seen at least two colleagues in hats recently—one was my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who as they know is quite a trend-setter—so it might well be that a recovery in the hat industry is looming. It was a useful debate, and we heard some valuable contributions on why the amendments are important.
Turning to the Minister’s remarks, I accept that the amendment has similarities to and is possibly even more wide ranging than one that has already been rejected by the Committee, so we will withdraw it. However, we will press amendment 54 to a vote, because all that it seeks to do is to put on to a legal footing the promise that was made. I hear what the Minister says—“Don’t worry, we are going to deliver the policy; we just aren’t going to vote for it”—but I think there will be real value in ensuring that the Government commit to the thing that they say are going to do, which is about those who earn below the national living wage, as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, being able to access level 3 qualifications.
Given what we heard earlier in the passage of the Bill about the importance of local decision making, local skills improvement plans and local employers deciding their priorities, it would seem a sensible approach to allow them to identify local priorities and allow people to study a second level 3 qualification if addressing a known skills shortage. We will therefore look to press new clause 7, as well as amendment 54, to a Division. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 53.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 54, in clause 25, page 30, line 17, leave out from “has” to “level.” and insert
“is earning below the Living Wage, as identified by the Living Wage Foundation.”—(Mr Perkins.)
Alex Burghart
The Government agree with the ambition to ensure that people in England have access to education no matter their age. We are committed to helping everyone get the skills that they need at every stage in their lives.
In April, we launched the free courses for jobs offer as part of the lifetime skills guarantee. That gives all adults in England the opportunity to take their first level 3 qualification for free, regardless of age. It is not right, however, to put the free courses for jobs offer into legislation. That would constrain the Government in allocating resources in future, and make it harder to adapt the policy to changing circumstances. The Secretary of State recently announced, for example, that from April next year we will expand the offer to include any adult in England who earns below the national living wage or is unemployed, regardless of their prior qualification level.
Through the adult education budget, full funding is also available through legal entitlements for adults aged 19 and over to access English and maths qualifications and fully-funded digital skills qualifications for adults with no or low digital skills. In areas where adult education is not devolved, the adult education budget can fully fund eligible learners studying up to level 2 if they are unemployed or earning below around £17,300 per year.
The spending review has provided a fixed quantum for adult skills, and the level of provision that is funded in any year needs to fit that quantum. Funding increases to follow increased numbers of learners, or a higher-funded mix of provision, will have to be subject to affordability within the overall envelope. The spending review process, rather than legislation, is the appropriate way for determining how the Government allocate resources over the long term. Funding for the free courses for jobs offer will be available throughout the three-year spending review period, giving further education providers the certainty that they need to invest in the delivery of the offer.
Moreover, the Bill is not an appropriate place to create new legal entitlements when we are in the process of reforming further education funding and of carrying out a review of qualifications at level 3 and below. Those vital programmes will ensure our skills system is fit for the future. By creating a legal entitlement for anyone to access their first qualification up to level 3, we would cut across those vital reforms and pre-empt the consultation process.
I now turn to the proposal in the clause that any employer receiving apprenticeship funding must spend at least two thirds of that funding on people who begin apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3 before the age of 25. The Chancellor’s spending review commitment delivers the first increase to apprenticeships funding since 2019-20. Funding will grow to £2.7 billion by 2024-25.
There have been some changes in the make-up of apprenticeships since the reforms: a higher proportion of apprentices are now aged over 25. In 2020-21, 16 to 24-year-olds still accounted for 50% of apprenticeship starts. In the same period, level 2 and level 3 starts made up 69% of the total. I know that there are concerns about the fall in starts among young people. I recognise the value of apprenticeships to young people embarking on their careers, and I am determined to ensure that there are good apprenticeship opportunities at all ages and stages, but I am concerned about the implications of trying to address that in the Bill.
The clause restricts opportunities for older and younger employees, and it restricts employer choice. Eighty per cent. of the UK’s 2030 workforce is already in work, so it cannot be right that only a third of apprenticeships funding is made available to those who are over 25. We want older people to be able to use apprenticeships to progress or retrain. The Confederation of British Industry estimates that one in six workers—5 million people—will go through radical job change and require re-training by 2030.
Age should not be a barrier to opportunities to learn or a limiting factor in our ambitions. I do not want to restrict young people to starting at level 2 or 3 apprenticeships. I also want an 18-year-old with good A-levels to see an apprenticeship as a strong alternative to university. They should be able to start a level 6 apprenticeship and gain a degree.
Mr Perkins
There is a real concern about the number of apprenticeships that are available for people between the ages of 16 and 24. The Minister makes an important point, which I would not remotely disagree with, that many people, for a variety of reasons, seek investment in their skills beyond the age of 24. Of course, opportunities should be there for them, but the lifetime skills guarantee, which might more accurately be described as a one-off skills guarantee, is really important. I do not agree with his description of 50% of apprenticeships going to 16 to 24-year-olds as a really big achievement. Too little apprenticeship funding is targeted at those under the age of 25.
Many people are concerned that since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy businesses have sat on this pot of funds, looking to utilise them. They have often not taken people on at entry level, but instead utilised the apprenticeship levy to provide MBAs for level 6 or 7 qualifications for their managerial staff. That is really what clause 25(3) seeks to address. Had the Minister said, “We’ve got a different approach to targeting that,” that would have been one thing, but simply to wipe the clause from the Bill is very concerning, and will be met by real disappointment from many of those who share the view that too little apprenticeship funding is being targeted at those under the age of 25.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Colleges and designated institutions play a crucial part in their local communities by enabling young people and adults to gain the skills they need. In the small numbers of cases in which an institution is failing to deliver an acceptable standard of education or training, or is failing in other ways, Government must be able to intervene to secure improvement.
Existing powers under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to intervene in colleges in the FE sector can be used in certain prescribed circumstances in which there are serious failings: mismanagement, for example, or financial or quality failures. In those circumstances, action can be taken to remove or appoint members of the governing body, or to give direction. Clause 26 extends those existing powers to allow for intervention where the education or training provided is failing, or has failed, to adequately meet local needs. Where the prescribed circumstances are met, clause 26 also enables the Secretary of State to direct the governing body to transfer “property, rights or liabilities” to another body.
The statutory intervention powers that we are amending through clause 26 are intended to be used only as a last resort. Our core support and intervention activity is delivered through administrative processes set out in the published guidance, “College oversight: support and intervention”. The Government are not seeking these powers in order to implement a new wave of mergers across the college sector—that is not the purpose of intervention. However, there is good evidence that structural change can, in the right circumstances, play a valuable role in securing improvement. We have also been clear that decisions on the college curriculum are for the governing body, not for Ministers to second-guess. We are working with Ofsted to increase the focus of inspections on how well colleges are meeting skills needs. The Government’s primary focus is on supporting colleges and designated institutions, and preventing things from going wrong.
In conclusion, strengthening the existing statutory intervention powers is necessary to ensure that, as a last resort, the Government are able to act where there is failure and there is no alternative means of securing improvement.
Mr Perkins
Clause 26 sets out in detail some additional powers relating to further education colleges in England, and the desire of the Secretary of State to intervene. The intervention regime for colleges is already complex, having been noted as a cause for concern by the Independent Commission on the College of the Future. Dame Mary Ney’s independent review of college financial oversight also identified the complexity of the regime, and in this Bill the Secretary of State is looking to find additional reasons to intervene, beyond financial failure. There is a real risk that this clause will just add to that complexity, going precisely against the apparent aim of establishing a simpler system.
Crucially, the Bill proposes new powers of intervention for the Secretary of State without giving colleges the freedoms to deliver. Last week, the Government passed an amendment that removed colleges from being strategic partners in the establishment of local skills improvement plans, so colleges are left accountable, but not empowered. Indeed, in a way, it goes further than that: if a college were to disagree with what was in the local skills improvement plan—if it were to consider that a local skills improvement plan that had been approved did not meet the needs of all of its learners—its failure to follow that plan could lead the Secretary of State to intervene and its being considered to be a failing college.
We accept that there needs to be an understanding of interventions, but there are questions that we would like to test the Minister on. First, why is it appropriate to hold colleges accountable for the delivery of LSIPs, but not treat them as strategic partners in developing those LSIPs? Secondly, do the new intervention powers apply equally to all post-16 education providers? If not—if they apply only to FE colleges—what consultation has the DfE undertaken with the Office for Students in order to ensure that this aligns with its approach to the oversight of higher education provision? Thirdly, what happens in circumstances where colleges believe that a poor or inappropriate LSIP has been produced that is not in the long-term interests of their locality? Do they simply deliver on a plan that they believe to be inappropriate, or are there mechanisms available to them to make representations on that point? If the needs of the local learning community have altered but the LSIP has not, how would a college be able to raise that? What consequences would be available to the Secretary of State if a college was seen not to fit in with what the LSIP said, even if the circumstances on the ground had changed?
Alex Burghart
As we have made clear throughout the Bill, the Government are on a mission to create an employer-led system in which the provision of skills reflects the skills that employers in a community need. We are absolutely set on ensuring that we get qualifications designed by employers to give students the skills the economy needs, at both local and national level. The clause sets about creating an accountability framework that places colleges in that sphere. We want colleges to respond to the ideas set out in a local skills improvement plan. However, as I have also made clear, these are absolutely powers of last resort. What we are really looking for is a profitable relationship between employer representative bodies and local providers. For that reason, we hope the clause will stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27
Further education bodies in education administration: application of other insolvency procedures
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 27, page 33, line 19, at end insert—
“(2C) Before applying to a court for an education administration order in relation to a further education body in England, the Secretary of state will conduct a review of the impact of the closure of a Further Education institution on learning opportunities in the local area and provide a report to Parliament on steps taken to ensure that the opportunities for learners are not restricted by his application for an education administration order.”
Amendment 61 is a probing amendment that would require the Secretary of State to review further education provision prior to applying for an education administration order for a college. There should also be a review of the impact of closing a college; if the impact of such a closure would be a reduction or complete removal of provision, we would request that the Secretary of State report to Parliament to allow for appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.
It is crucial for the Secretary of State to ensure that local areas have adequate further education provision before deciding to merge and close colleges. The colleges most likely to be closed are often those in more rural areas, those that are smaller, those that are facing specific challenges or those in communities that face specific challenges because they do not have the density of population. Although we recognise that there may be financial collapse as a result of their geographic isolation, that should not necessarily mean that the provision their students rely upon disappears with the merger of the college.
It is important to have scrutiny at both a local and national level. We believe that it should be parliamentary scrutiny, to ensure that the Secretary of State commits to reporting to the House before announcing such a decision, and to ensure that there is a review of the impact of a closure on the local labour market and on the courses available to people in that local community.
Alex Burghart
Amendment 61 would require the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the impact of the closure of an FE institution on learning opportunities in a local area and provide a report to Parliament on the steps taken to ensure that opportunities for learners are not restricted ahead of an application for an education administration order. We will hear about education administration orders in the next few minutes.
I appreciate what Labour Members are trying to do, but the effect would be to delay an application for an education administration order, which would run counter to the purpose of the amendment. First, if an FE body becomes insolvent, it risks being placed into a regular insolvency procedure by a creditor or its board. The primary objective of a regular insolvency procedure is to prioritise the interests of creditors. This means that any closure scenario could result in the best returns to creditors being prioritised over the needs of keeping the body open for learners. Going down a standard insolvency route with a college will prioritise creditors, risking students studying there being pushed to one side.
Mr Perkins
I listened carefully to the Minister. As I said at the outset, this is a probing amendment to identify the extent to which the interests of learners are considered within education administration. I also listened to the Minister’s point regarding the creditors of such an institution, which was important and well made. I accept what he said about the need to go into education administration with due urgency. In that process that follows, which he laid out, there is a real need for the Government to say more, perhaps through a parliamentary statement, for people to better understand the situation on the ground in regard to future provision and those affected by any change in that provision. Notwithstanding that, it is not our intention to push the amendment to a vote.
Mr Perkins
Within my intention not to push the amendment to a vote, I would like to give way.
Matt Western
It is like “Just a Minute”. I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I just want to elaborate on the point in his concluding remarks about how many colleges face financial uncertainty. According to the Times Educational Supplement, it was one in seven in a recent survey. We saw with Hadlow College—one of the two that the Minister was referring to—that 2,000 students suddenly lost their places. That can have a huge impact on a town and a region.
Mr Perkins
It absolutely can. Cases such as that impact not only the learners affected at that very moment, but on the provision for the next generations coming through. It has a very detrimental impact on the local community. My hon. Friend’s point is well made. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 27 proposes to clarify ambiguities in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 regarding the use of company voluntary arrangements—a procedure allowing a company or corporation in insolvency proceedings to come to an agreement with its creditors over the payment of debts. Company voluntary arrangements can be used as an exit route for normal administration, as set out in insolvency legislation.
Company voluntary arrangements can also be used as an exit route from education administration under the FE insolvency regime, which we have just been debating. That has been clarified in case law, which has been in place since March 2020, when the High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales ruled that in the education administration of West Kent and Ashford College, education administrators had the power to propose a company voluntary arrangement.
We are using the opportunity to legislate in the Bill to clarify ambiguities in the current legislation and cement that existing case law into legislation. To be clear, we are cementing what the courts have already decided on. To achieve that, clause 27 proposes to extend the existing power of the Secretary of State for Education to make regulations related to the application of insolvency legislation to FE bodies so that express provision may be made in respect of the use of company voluntary arrangements.
Clause 28 deals with the potential conflict related to the treatment of secured creditors as between the transfer scheme provisions of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 and the provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986, as applied by the 2017 Act. Specifically, the proposal amends schedules 2, 3 and 4 to the 2017 Act, making it clear that, where a transfer scheme looks to transfer secured assets free of the security, that can happen only with either the consent of the secured creditor or a court order. That is in line with protections for secured creditors in normal administration in insolvency proceedings.
Clause 28 also cements into legislation the Government’s response to the technical consultation for the insolvency regime for further education and sixth-form colleges, which was made in June 2018. We have informed the three main lenders to the FE sector—Barclays, Lloyds and Santander—of our proposed changes, and I am pleased to report that they are supportive. Barclays said:
“As a lender with significant loan exposure to the English FE sector (and desire to continue to support colleges with new loans) we are in favour of the changes proposed. The Transfer Scheme changes in particular provides welcome clarity on a point that had previously had a negative impact on sector risk profile and our appetite to lend.”
These clauses are good for the sector and good for the law, and I believe they should be good enough for us.
Mr Perkins
As the Minister was reading out that very positive quote from Barclays about his clause, it occurred to me how rarely he has had the opportunity to read out support for his Bill over the course of its passage. That is unsurprising, of course, when he is pressing ahead with amendments that 86% of respondents to his consultation are against. None the less, it was good to hear that full-throated support for this proposal from Barclays.
We do not intend to vote against clauses 27 or 28. I will simply make the point that the financial pressures facing our further education sector over the past 11 years, and particularly the past 12 months or so, have been truly unprecedented. I regularly meet representatives of colleges who are absolutely at their wit’s end, and not only about the scale of the funding cuts they have experienced over the past 11 years, but about the extent to which last-minute decisions are constantly made that leave them in a position in which they have to make redundancies in order to stay afloat, only then to discover sometimes that there is a change in the Government’s policy and they have to recruit for some positions that they had made redundant only a few months before.
So it was with the recent announcement about the adult education clawback. I have asked parliamentary questions on this issue. A number of colleges received a clawback from their adult education fund and were told that there was no right to any appeal. Then the previous Secretary of State said that they would allow appeals and I believe that in some cases the appeals were granted. In the meantime, however, those colleges were forced to cut their cloth accordingly.
Consequently, I say to the Government that although we do not oppose clauses 27 or 28, we believe that there needs to be a much greater sense of responsibility about the Government’s role in the financial distress that many of our colleges are currently suffering, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington referred to earlier, and about the impact on those colleges of the constant last-minute decision making that they have suffered over the past 11 years.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 29
Meaning of “relevant service” and other key expressions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 29 is the first of a chapter of clauses that relate to the criminalisation in England and Wales of contract cheating services, which are more widely known as essay mills. Taken together, this chapter of clauses will make it an offence for an organisation or individual to complete, or arrange for another person to complete, all or part of an assignment on behalf of a student. It also criminalises the advertising of these cheating services. Essay mills threaten to undermine the reputation of our education system and to devalue the hard work of those who succeed on their own merit. They also prevent students from learning themselves and risk students entering the workforce without the knowledge, skills or competence they need.
Clause 29 provides clarity on the exact meaning of the key terms used throughout this chapter of clauses; removes the potential for unintended consequences to arise from the clause; and allows for fraudulent essay mill companies, their employees and contractors to be captured by the legislation. Because of the way that we have defined “relevant service”, we have also ensured that generally permitted study support, such as revision guides, will not be in scope, but essay mill companies that complete assignments on behalf of students will be in scope.
Clause 30 criminalises providing essay mill services or arranging for such services. It is therefore crucial in our fight against essay mills. It provides a powerful legislative tool to tackle these deplorable organisations and individuals.
I will talk briefly about the practicalities of the offence that we are creating. It will be for the prosecution to prove that the cheating service has been provided to the student. However, the burden of proof in relation to the defence is on the defendant. For example, the defendant would need to prove that they could not have known, even with reasonable diligence, that the student would or might use the material provided to complete an assignment. For example, simply asking a student to sign a contract that states that they will not use the work in a certain way is not a defence. Clause 30 states that clearly.
If someone were to be found guilty, they would be liable to be punished with a fine. The appropriate fine will be determined by the courts in accordance with Sentencing Council guidelines. Clause 30 will help to tackle the existence of these companies and to fine them appropriately if they continue to carry out these illicit services.
Mr Perkins
Clause 29 defines the term “relevant service” and other key expressions. We have no desire to vote against it.
I am interested in the representations that the Minister has received about the way clause 30 is drafted. Subsection (4) will immediately set those with more experienced legal minds than mine—there are such people in this place—to consider how difficult it may be to achieve a successful prosecution under these provisions. If there is a defence that enables a defendant to say, “I had no idea what the legislation was”, that starts to bring home how difficult it might be to get successful prosecutions in this area.
Matt Western
I have a few points to add to my hon. Friend’s remarks. In principle, these clauses make some important points about essay mills and the advertising of relevant services. There is a long-overdue need to legislate to prevent such services, and this will give the issue the importance that the sector has been demanding for some time. Back in 2018, something like 40 vice-chancellors wrote to the then Secretary of State demanding action on this issue. We are three years on. The problem has grown to an industrial scale and needs tackling.
The problem has become so—well, I would not say endemic, but it is widespread, and there are many students out there who seek to access these services or feel under pressure because of the need to get good grades. There was a case not so long ago where Coventry University students were blackmailed by an essay mill company, which said that if they did not pay yet more money, it would tell their university. There is a lot to be covered in this respect, and that is why the clause is very important.
Alex Burghart
I am pleased to see that the Opposition support our move to legislate on this matter. We are all of one mind that cheating services actually end up undermining the good work of the vast majority of students, and they introduce an unnecessary element of doubt.
I reassure the Opposition that the Bill has been carefully drafted with some excellent Government lawyers. Clause 33 is designed to ensure that convictions are much more likely and that some of the easy defences—for example, that these services were just providing information and had no idea that it would be used in cheating services—cannot be used as a get-out-of-jail card. We are confident that it is a major step forward in combating this insidious crime and we look forward to its enactment.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 29 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Offence of advertising a relevant service
Mr Perkins
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 27, page 33, line 19, at end insert—
‘(2C) Before applying to a court for an education administration order in relation to a further education body in England, the Secretary of state will conduct a review of the impact of the closure of a Further Education institution on learning opportunities in the local area and provide a report to Parliament on steps taken to ensure that the opportunities for learners are not restricted by his application for an education administration order.”
This probing amendment is designed to find out the Government’s anticipated tariff for such offences. To what extent is it seen as a serious offence? To us, it is absolutely obvious that the fine needs to be of a sufficient sum to make it not worth providing such services. Although we support the Government’s intentions, we seek further clarification about the level of the anticipated tariff for such an offence. Will perpetrators get off with a fine that costs them the equivalent of a week’s dinner money, or are the Government taking such offences seriously? Will they set the fine at a high enough level to act as a deterrent?
To return to the question to which I do not believe the Minister responded when we considered clause 29, in the event of a cheating service that is utilised by five students, would that be judged as five offences or one?
Alex Burghart
I am sorry, I forgot to reply to that. It would be five offences.
Mr Perkins
That is useful clarification. Can the Minister also clarify whether perpetrators would be guilty of a civil or criminal offence? Would they get a criminal record? In the event that a business was perceived to be providing those services, what would be the impact on that business? Or is an individual judged to have committed the offence? I would be grateful for that clarification.
Overall, we believe it is vital that there is a level playing field. We support the Government’s intention to prevent the use of fraudulent services, such as essay milling, and we believe that the fines should be such to act as a deterrent. We also believe that there should be a corresponding damage to reputation provision when people or businesses commit that offence. It is crucial that the amount of the fine and the publicity surrounding those fines reflect the severity of the offence. As we have said, the practice significantly undermines the efforts of all students who work hard to achieve their qualifications legitimately.
Matt Western
It would be interesting to hear from the Minister what form of penalty the Government imagine. We heard the probing question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield about the case of five individuals. Can the Minister elaborate on what sort of penalties he envisages for the business behind the essay mill? If he does not agree with our suggestion, what scale of punishment does he believe would be appropriate? Is it more akin to dropping litter, fly-tipping or another offence?
Alex Burghart
We are in agreement that essay mills need to be driven out of business, and that is why the clauses are in the Bill. In response to the hon. Gentleman’s points, these are serious criminal offences.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I suspect that the Minister is about to say that the Sentencing Council will have a view on the issue, and actually it is for the Sentencing Council to determine the length and type of sentences that might be involved in criminal activities.
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is extremely prescient, and I congratulate him on that. This is a criminal offence and we want to see it seriously punished. However, for reasons I will set out, we do not think that amendment 62 would solve the problem in the right way. It would amend clause 31 by setting a minimum penalty of a fine of no less than £5,000 for the offence of advertising a cheating service. As drafted, the Bill does not state the level of fine payable on conviction. Instead, conviction of either offence carries the penalty of an unlimited fine—as the name implies, that is a fine imposed without financial limit. That approach carries serious potential consequences and provides a significant deterrent effect to those planning to advertise contract cheating services.
The Government do not believe that setting a minimum amount is appropriate, where maximum fines are unlimited. Setting a minimum fine of £5,000 risks that level of fine being seen by essay mill providers as a likely fine, rather than a minimum. Sentencing and the precise size of a fine should be matters for the independent judiciary, in accordance with Sentencing Council guidelines, based on the full facts of the case. I would draw hon. Members attention to the fact that Ireland, which has a similar legal system and a similar offence, imposes a fine of up to €100,000 per offence and/or a prison sentence. That is the sort of thing that might go through the minds in our justice system. We do not therefore think that the amendment is necessary.
Mr Perkins
I accept what the Minister says. I do not accept that introducing a minimum fine of £5,000 would necessarily lead to essay mill services thinking that that would be the likely level, but I take his point. The amendment was a probing amendment to try to reach some understanding of the Government’s position. If there have been fines of the level that he outlined, that will be heartening for all those who want to see the issue addressed. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 31 makes it an offence to advertise essay mills. Marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry, and we do not want this industry to be successful or to have lifeblood. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques that seem to indicate that they offer legitimate academic writing support for students, when in fact they are providing cheating services. Students who use essay mills risk their academic education and future employment prospects if they are caught cheating. Anecdotal reports indicate that some essay mills are even seeking to blackmail students who have used the services, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington mentioned. The clause will put beyond doubt that advertising cheating services in England and Wales is not just unethical but illegal, and will provide the means to prosecute those who fail to comply with the law in England and Wales.
Mr Perkins
I have already outlined our support for this move. We believe that this is a serious offence. It is important that any perceived legitimacy of essay mill services is aggressively challenged. On that basis, we will support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 31 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 32
Offences: bodies corporate and unincorporated associations
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 32 relates to which bodies can be prosecuted under the essay mill provisions in the Bill. Cheating service providers can range from UK-based organisations registered at Companies House with offices and permanent staff to lone individuals operating with minimal infrastructure. Where offences are committed by companies, unincorporated bodies and partnerships, the clause enables certain individuals, such as the directors of companies, to also be prosecuted in particular circumstances. It also sets out some relevant procedural rules. For example, it clarifies that proceedings for offences committed by an unincorporated body should be brought in the name of the body and not its members, and any fine imposed on conviction of an unincorporated body should be paid out of the funds of the body. The clause will enable the legislation to function with legal certainty. Clause 33 sets out the definitions of certain terms in this chapter, allowing for absolute clarity on the intended purpose of the clause.
Mr Perkins
We welcome clause 32. It is important that where offences are committed by bodies of this sort there are consequences for their officers. The clause ensures that directors, managers, secretaries or other similar officers of the body corporate are guilty of an offence, if an offence under this chapter is committed by their body corporate and either they are known to have consented and been in connivance, or it is attributable to neglect of their duties under the organisation. We will therefore support clause 32. Clause 33 is simply an interpretation clause that makes sense of the terms in clause 32.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
16 to 19 Academy: designation as having a religious character
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 34 provides the Secretary of State with an order-making power to enable the designation of 16-to-19 academies as having a religious character. It also provides for the Secretary of State to make regulations about the procedures relating to the designation. In addition, it sets out the freedoms and protections relating to religious education, collective worship and governance that the designation provides. The clause will ensure that when existing sixth form colleges designated with a religious character convert to academies they retain their religious character and associated freedoms and protections. It will also enable new and existing 16-to-19 academies to be designated with a religious character in the future. The Government are committed to supporting existing sixth-form colleges to convert to academy status. I am pleased that a significant proportion of them have already taken that step, and are making a strong contribution to strengthening the academy sector.
Clause 35 improves the efficiency of administration of the further education sector. It is thankfully rare for a further education body to enter into insolvency proceedings. However, where a designation order can form part of a rescue procedure, we need to ensure that it can take place swiftly, minimising disruption to learners and costs to the taxpayers. For some FE bodies in financial difficulty, it may be desirable to transfer the college institution from the insolvent FE body to a new solvent company as part of the process of exiting insolvency proceedings. To ensure that the institution remains within the statutory further education sector in order to keep it appropriately regulated, it would then need to be immediately designated accordingly. Existing legislation requires the Secretary of State to make a statutory instrument when he seeks to carry out such a designation. That process can take several months, and needs a completion date to be specified significantly in advance, which could complicate and delay the exit from insolvency proceedings. Delays impose a longer period of disruption on learners and could generate extra costs to the taxpayer. As such, clause 35 allows the Secretary of State to use an administrative order, which can be enacted relatively quickly, to designate an institution as being within the statutory further education sector.
Clause 36 relates to the high-level quality rating for higher education providers without an approved access and participation plan, which is currently an award under the teaching excellence and student outcomes framework. Higher education providers with a TEF award currently benefit from an uplift to their fee limit, meaning that they are able to charge a higher level than HE providers without such an award. There is currently an error in the legislation that could prevent a timely link between TEF awards and a provider’s fee limit. To take an example, let us consider a provider that does not have an approved access and participation plan. If that provider is entitled to the TEF fee uplift in any academic year, it is dependent on whether it had an award on 1 January in the calendar year before the relevant academic year. That means that a provider seeking to charge the TEF fee uplift in academic year 2022-23 could only do so based on an award that was in force in January 2021, rather than January 2022, which was the original intent. Clause 36 will correct that error and ensure a more timely link between fee limits and the TEF award, helping to further incentivise excellence in higher education.
Mr Perkins
Sorry, I have got all tangled up here; give me a moment, Mrs Miller. For the sake of those listening on the radio, my hearing aid has got stuck in my mask.
Mr Perkins
Sorry, what did you say? [Laughter.]
We do not intend to divide the Committee on clauses 34 to 36. We think it is important that the law does not discriminate against academies or institutions for having a religious character designation, should they wish to do so. Clause 34 would change the rules so that when the Department next seeks to create 16-to-19 academies, it will be possible for organisations to apply to set up one with a religious character. Ministers intend to change the law to ensure equality for technical education in school careers advice, and to allow religious sixth forms to academise. A group of 14 sixth-form colleges that are Catholic run have so far been prevented from doing so due to their religious character; this clause would overturn that obstacle.
We recognise that there are many excellent academies out there, just as there were many excellent state-maintained schools. We think it is regrettable that the Government have decided to prioritise academies over schools run by local authorities. I have a very personal reason for saying that: my children went to an outstanding school that was run under the local council. Unfortunately, due to its finances, it was forced into a position where it took on academy status, and ultimately, that academy was described as a failing school. The desire to drive that school into academy status caused really significant problems. It is my view that the academies that the Labour Government created were a positive thing, and that there are many excellent academies out there. However, we think that the Government should remain neutral on this issue, rather than trying to force schools down one route or the other.
Notwithstanding that, we support the changes in clause 34. Sixth-form colleges should not be discriminated against if they have a religious designation and wish to become academies.
Clause 35 assigns a designation to terms in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. We can support the clause given that is sets out the designations of institutions in the FE sector relating to the 1992 Act. Clause 36 is a technical change that clarifies the relevant date, for purposes of fee limit, for certain higher education courses, as set out by the Minister. We are happy to support the clause, which sets out the determination of the fee limit.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 35 and 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 37
Extent
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Burghart
Clause 37 sets out the territorial extent of the provisions. Obviously, Westminster does not normally legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the relevant devolved Administration. However, we have sought the support of the Welsh Government to lay a legislative consent motion where there is an impact on the competence of Senedd Cymru. We have agreed with the Scottish Government and with the Northern Ireland Executive that legislative consent motions are not required.
Clause 38 sets out when provisions in the Bill come into force. General provisions on extent commencement and short title come into force on the day of Royal Assent. Subsection (2) sets out the provisions that will come into force two months after the Act is passed. All other provisions will come into force on a day, or days, appointed by the Secretary of State through regulations made by statutory instrument.
Mr Perkins
Clause 37 sets out the extent of the Bill. I heard what the Minister had to say about the Welsh Assembly; can he just confirm that he has consulted the Welsh Assembly on the extent to which this Act applies to Wales and, given that there are differences between what is offered in England and in Wales, that there is nothing in the Bill that has led to problems in that relationship? Notwithstanding that point, we agree with the extent to which the clause applies to England and Wales, and also the specific provisions that extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland. We agree with clause 38 on commencement and understand what it is saying.
Alex Burghart
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have consulted Welsh Ministers, and we are of one mind with our counterparts in Wales.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 37 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 38 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 39
Short title
Alex Burghart
I beg to move Government amendment 26, in clause 39, page 42, line 13, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment removes the privilege amendment inserted in the Lords.
For Bills starting in the House of Lords, a privilege amendment is included to recognise the right of this place to control any charges on the people and on public funds. It is standard practice to remove such amendments at this stage of the Bill’s passage through the House of Commons.
Mr Perkins
The Labour party is always enthusiastic for powers to be centred in the hands of those with democratic accountability, so we are very keen on clause 39. The Government have not yet had an opportunity to explain why they thought it was sensible to start the passage of the Bill in the other place, notwithstanding the excellent job that their lordships have done, which the Minister has sought to wreck over the course of the past week and a half. It would be interesting to hear from the Government why they made the decision to start the Bill in the other place. Notwithstanding that, we have no reason to oppose the amendment.
Alex Burghart
I have been a Minister for only a short time, and I have to say I am unaware why the Bill started in the Lords, but I have nothing but admiration for their lordships, who did a wonderful job. Obviously, we have had to amend some of their amendments in order to make the Bill as good as it can be, but I am sure that everyone can see that the parliamentary process is being done to the full, even if it is being done this way round.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 39, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Information about technical education and training: access to English schools
“(1) Section 42B of the Education Act 1997 (information about technical education: access to English schools) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), for “is an opportunity” substitute “are opportunities”.
(3) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In complying with subsection (1), the proprietor must give access to registered pupils on at least one occasion during each of the first, second and third key phase of their education.”
(4) After subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) The proprietor of a school in England within subsection (2) must—
(a) ensure that each registered pupil meets, during each of the first and second key phases of their education, at least one provider to whom access is given (or any other number of such providers that may be specified for the purposes of that key phase by regulations under subsection (8)), and
(b) ask providers to whom access is given to provide information that includes the following—
(i) information about the provider and the approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships that the provider offers,
(ii) information about the careers to which those technical education qualifications or apprenticeships might lead,
(iii) a description of what learning or training with the provider is like, and
(iv) responses to questions from the pupils about the provider or approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships.
(2B) Access given under subsection (1) must be for a reasonable period of time during the standard school day.”
(5) In subsection (5)—
(a) in paragraph (c), at the end insert “and the times at which the access is to be given;”;
(b) after paragraph (c) insert—
“(d) an explanation of how the proprietor proposes to comply with the obligations imposed under subsection (2A).”
(6) In subsection (8), after “subsection (1)” insert “or (2A)”.
(7) After subsection (9) insert—
“(9A) For the purposes of this section—
(a) the first key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 13, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year;
(b) the second key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 15, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year;
(c) the third key phase of a pupil’s education is the period—
(i) beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in the pupil’s class attain the age of 17, and
(ii) ending with 28 February in the following school year.””—(Alex Burghart.)
This new clause replaces clause 14. It removes requirements about university technical college access to pupils, requires access to pupils to be given in each key phase once (rather than three times), requires proprietors to ensure pupils meet at least one provider (or a prescribed number), and makes technical changes.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Alex Burghart
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I will now discuss new clause 1, which seeks to replace clause 14. We all agree that we need to strengthen provider access legislation. The Government introduced provider access legislation in 2018 to ensure that all young people get information about technical options when planning their careers, but too many schools have disregarded the law and are reluctant to promote alternatives to A-levels and university. We announced our three-point plan to improve compliance with that legislation in the “Skills for Jobs” White Paper back in January, and that included plans to strengthen the duty.
As it stands, clause 14 would require schools to deliver nine provider encounters per pupil—three during each of the first, second and third phases of their education. We are concerned that nine encounters would place unnecessary pressure on schools and risk taking up too much curriculum time. The clause would also name university technical colleges on the face of the Bill as one of the providers that every pupil must meet where practicable. That would give more weight to one provider than the rest, and we want to act in the interests of all providers, not just university technical colleges. The new clause strengthens existing provider access legislation by requiring schools to provide a minimum of three meetings with providers of technical education or apprenticeships for pupils in school years 8 to 13.
Mr Perkins
We understand the reasons for the new clause, but what is the Government’s view about why the existing Baker clause has not been as successful as they might have liked? Has it taught the Minister anything with regard to the limitations of the statutory guidance, on which he may have chosen to reflect, and to why having things on the face of the Bill often carries greater weight than purely putting things into statutory guidance or secondary legislation?
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman knows full well that Governments often keep things in statutory guidance in order to retain flexibility. The last Labour Government did that time and again. As a mere parliamentary researcher, I remember consideration of what is now the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, in which there were many examples of powers introduced through statutory guidance and secondary legislation. It is a time-honoured custom that is there for good reason.
In this case, we believe that there is a need to strengthen practice. In particular, I want to mention the need to strengthen quality. The other day, I was talking to a friend who has a 16-year-old daughter and who is herself in education. Her daughter had come home saying, “There is absolutely no way I’m going to do an apprenticeship.” My friend asked why and her daughter replied, “Because the man who came to talk to us today was so boring it has put me off.”
We need to ensure that we have interventions of quality. That is very much where our position is centred. The new clause includes the power for the Secretary of State to set out further details about the number and type of providers that pupils should meet under the terms of this duty. Putting the detail in secondary legislation will give us flexibility.
The new clause strikes the correct balance between widening pupil access to information on technical options in apprenticeships, without placing undue pressure on schools. It will set out in primary legislation that every state school must provide the three encounters of which I have spoken. Of course, we must ensure that those provider encounters are of high quality. That is why, for the first time, we are setting parameters for the content of the encounters in primary legislation.
We want to ensure that every encounter is meaningful and gives pupils the opportunity to explore what the provider offers, what career routes those options could lead to and what it might be to learn or train with that provider. We intend to consult school and provider representatives on the underpinning statutory guidance to ensure that we have provider access legislation that works for them and, most importantly, for young people.
With the Government’s large-scale reforms to technical education, it has never been more important for every young person to understand the full range of options that are available to them. The new clause will be crucial in ensuring that every pupil, whatever their ambitions, can explore apprenticeships, T-levels and other technical education qualifications. We want to send a clear message that schools must open their doors to other providers, so that pupils get broad and balanced information about all their options.
Mr Perkins
The Minister outlines why he believes the new clause is necessary. Given his remarks at the end there, I have to say that he would have better achieved what he set out to achieve had his party not voted against clause 14. All new clause 1 does is weaken the clause 14 that was in the Bill and that the Committee voted against this morning.
Notwithstanding that, we recognise that the new clause will be better than not having it at all. It removes requirements for university technical college access for pupils. The Minister suggested that that would be prioritising UTCs above other organisations, but I did not see it like that. I thought that they were simply referred to as another provider, and no doubt ones that Lord Baker is particularly enthusiastic to see given access.
The points that Lord Baker made in his contribution in the House of Lords are important, however, and they need to be considered. The noble Lord suggested that many schools—through either lack of time or a deliberate attempt to ensure that their students looked only at the school’s own sixth form, for financial or other reasons—were not implementing the original Baker clause and were indeed subverting the opportunities that were placed in front of children. I would be interested in hearing whether the Minister agrees with Lord Baker about that, or whether he believes that there are other reasons why alternative providers are not getting access to young people at each of those three crucial stages.
The Committee will be aware that, as part of the Labour party’s offer at the next general election, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has brought forward a plan for the equivalent of two weeks’ compulsory work experience for every pupil, and for face-to-face professional careers advice to be something that every student can rely on. We think it vital that children and young people have access to professional and appropriate careers advice. Work experience can be genuinely life-changing for many young people, particularly those from more deprived backgrounds. It is crucial that work experience is seen as a mark of an excellent school provision, rather than an additional thing that is nice to do.
It has very much been my experience that many schools leave the responsibility for work experience to the child and their parents to sort out. Effectively, the only commitment that schools require is that the child does not die or get injured while they are there. There is no real assessment of the quality of that work experience, so the milkman’s son ends up doing a milk round, while the MP’s son spends a week in an MP’s office—everyone just does the stuff that they already know. Worst of all, some children do work experience in a school, which is the one environment that they have been in for their entire lives, and that is considered acceptable.
Alternative opportunities for young people to look at different environments and learn about different opportunities are absolutely crucial. As clause 14 was rejected, we will support the new clause, but we believe it less ambitious than what their noble lordships had already introduced. Much of what the Minister said about the importance of the sector is undermined by his tabling of a clause that is weaker than the one that came from the Lords.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 2
Lifelong learning: special educational needs
“When exercising functions under this Act, the Secretary of State must ensure that providers of further education are required to include special educational needs awareness training to all teaching staff to ensure that all staff are able to identify and adequately support those students who have special educational needs.”—(Mr Perkins.)
This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that there is adequate special educational needs training for teachers of students in further education.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Perkins
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), relates to access to sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans. It is important that students do not feel excluded from applying for lifelong learning loans because they are not sharia-compliant. There are many different aspects to loans under sharia law. Though their effect may be similar to that of other loans, the way in which they are set up and implemented is different, and the funds are also utilised in different ways.
It is incredibly important—and I think this is recognised by Members of both main parties—that action is taken on sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans. It is regrettable, however, that thus far nothing has been done. We have been given to believe that the Augar review may result in sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans, but we have not yet seen anything to that effect. My right hon. Friend’s new clause therefore encourages the Secretary of State to
“make provision by regulations for Sharia-compliant student finance to be made available as part of the lifelong learning entitlement.”
Alex Burghart
I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss sharia-compliant student finance. The Government have been considering an alternative student finance product, compatible with Islamic finance principles, alongside their other priorities as they conclude the post-18 review of educational funding.
New powers were taken in section 86 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to enable the Secretary of State to make alternative payments, in addition to grants and loans, to enable the implementation of ASF. Clause 15 already makes provision for such alternative payments to be made as part of the lifetime loan entitlement. As such, when coupled with the existing provisions in HERA, the new clause would not give the Secretary of State any additional powers. The clause 15 provisions for alternative payments would come into force should the Government decide to commence the provisions in HERA that enable alternative payments to be provided to students. The Government will reach a decision on the availability of a sharia-compliant student finance product as part of the full and final conclusion of the post-18 review, and will provide an update on ASF at that time.
In relation to the second part of the new clause, the Secretary of State may already lay student support regulations using the affirmative procedure contained in section 42 of the Teaching and Higher Education 1998, should he choose to do so. The new clause would not add any powers beyond those already under the Bill or existing legislation, and so should not be added to the Bill.
Rachel Hopkins
I rise to support new clause 4, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham. The Minister says we will see the outcome of the post-18 review with regards to HERA. However, the reason why it is so important that the new clause is added to the Bill relates to further education. Because no finance or loans fit with the principles of Islam, many people end up saving up until they have sufficient funds to be able to afford their degree. The whole point of the Bill is the emphasis on ensuring that people can up their skills at level 3. If they are not able to access a loan that is compliant with the principles of Islam, and if they are on a low income, they really have no chance of being able to save up to afford to fund up front from their savings. The proposal of a lifelong learning entitlement through a loan therefore becomes a vicious circle, and they will not be able to access the training and gain the skills that they need.
For many people, this really is a matter of urgency if we are genuinely going to help people to reskill or upskill, particularly for many constituents of mine in Luton South. It is important to push the Government on this, particularly because HERA was published in 2017, and because of the commitment from the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, in 2013 when this first started to be talked about. This long-term delay and lack of action is not good enough. I support new clause 4.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Perkins
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). It would introduce a national review and plan for addressing the attainment gap and intends to ensure that everybody is supported to obtain the level of English and/or maths skills they need by requiring the Department for Education to have a plan to close the attainment gap based on a review of current policies and barriers to attainment in English and/or maths. Our attainment levels as a nation, particularly in maths, are noticeably behind many of our competitor nations, and particularly the major nations in Europe. It is crucial that there are both local and national strategies to raise attainment for English and maths at grade 4.
I think there is widespread agreement on that across the House. The Government’s approach has often been to say, “Well, until you have achieved this, you cannot do that.” The Labour party’s approach has always been much more of a carrot. We recognise that there needs to be greater investment, specifically in picking out those students who, for a variety of different reasons—whether as a result of learning disabilities or of social disadvantages—are less likely to attain grade 4 level in English and maths. We think it is crucial that we have a strategic approach to attaining that.
A large amount of the recent catch-up funding that was identified by the Government was never actually provided, and there has been a discrepancy between the amount of the catch-up funding that was directed to those in the most deprived communities and the amount that was provided overall. Catch-up funding, more than anything else as a result of the lockdown, particularly needed to be focused on those in the most deprived communities, who saw that attainment gap grow over the course of the covid pandemic. That the Government have a strategic plan and are operating a national review of the attainment gap—particularly setting out to achieve the reduction in their cap within six months of the passing of the Bill—is an important amendment. We therefore support the new clause.
Alex Burghart
New clause 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham, seeks to require the Secretary of State to undertake a national review and have a plan for addressing the attainment gap within six months of the Act passing in relation to those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in GCSE English or maths. The Government are clear that supporting people who are yet to achieve GCSE grade 4 or above in English or maths—the equivalent of level 2—is of the utmost importance, given that good levels of English and maths are linked to better economic and social outcomes. We want young people and adults to have the literacy and numeracy skills to thrive in work, education and life. That is why we already have a clear plan and are taking significant steps to support those who have not achieved grade 4 or above in English and maths.
All learners aged 16 to 19 are required to continue studying English and maths if they do not have a level 2 qualification in these subjects already, including, for example, those studying T-levels. Additionally, apprenticeships in particular have an exit requirement in English and maths in order to complete the programme. We also support adults by fully funding GCSE and functional skills qualifications in English and maths up to level 2 through the adult education budget. In addition, as of next year, we are rolling out Multiply, a new £559 million programme for adult numeracy, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the spending review. This will significantly increase the provision and opportunities for adults to improve their maths skills.
More broadly, we have reformed functional skills qualifications, which are a widely acceptable alternative to GCSEs, improving their rigour and relevance. The Government have also established 21 centres for excellence in mathematics, designing new and improved teaching resources, building teacher skills and spreading best practice across the country through their wider networks. In response to disruption to education during the pandemic, a further £222 million has been provided to continue the 16-to-19 tuition fund for an addition two years from the 2022-23 academic year, allowing students to access one-to-one and small group catch-up tuition in subjects that will benefit the most, including English and maths.
Improving English and maths attainment is already a key part of the Government’s plans across higher, further and technical education. In 2020, 68% of 19-year-olds held grade 4 or above in both English and maths GCSE, which is an increase of 6 percentage points since 2013-14, the year before we required students to continue studying English and maths. This is a major step forward. The OECD’s 10-yearly survey of adult skills showed that in England people aged 16 to 65 currently perform significantly above the OECD average for literacy and around the OECD average for numeracy. The Government continually review the impact of policy, so a formal review at this time is not necessary.
Andrew Gwynne
I am heartened by what the Minister highlighted in his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield about some of the Government’s attempts to close the attainment gap, but the reality is that it still exists and we should redouble our efforts to close it. I feel passionately about that because failing to get a good GCSE in English and maths can hold a young person back and deprive them of real opportunities later in life.
I know that from experience, because as I mentioned last Tuesday, in 1990 I left high school with a clutch of good GCSEs, but they did not include maths. I really struggled with maths at high school, much to the frustration of my dad, who was a maths teacher. It turned out that I had dyscalculia, so I struggled with numbers.
Mr Perkins
Those of us who have been on the Committee in the last week or so may well have been wondering what the next episode in the life story of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish was, and we were not disappointed. [Laughter.] Joking aside, he makes an incredibly important point.
Too often in this place, there is a suggestion or an implication that if only the teaching was a bit better or there was a bit more application, everyone would have those GCSEs in maths and English. Actually, as my hon. Friend has laid out and as many others will know, students who are brilliant in many regards can have barriers that prevent them attaining those grades. It is a crucial issue for us. Thousands of other people out there have had their dreams similarly dashed by being unable to achieve those qualifications, so I appreciate what he has just said, which adds weight to the debate on new clause 5.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Alex Burghart
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. I hope you will indulge me for a few moments so that I can thank you and Mr Efford for the way in which you have shepherded us through these six sittings. It has been an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, particularly as this is my first Bill Committee on the Front Bench—
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Michael Tomlinson)
Hear, hear.
Alex Burghart
Who knows? Perhaps it will be the last. It has been a pleasure to hear a debate of this quality, to enjoy Opposition Members’ paeans to the heady days of Thatcherism when there were great opportunities in the Manchester region, and to hear their fulsome praise for former Conservative Secretaries of State for Education. It is has been a privilege to listen to the sometimes philosophical debates about whether BTECs are brands. I feel that for the sake of future historians, we should put in Hansard how cold it has been in Committee Room 14. On one occasion, an hon. Lady had to bring in a blanket and wrap herself in it. Mrs Miller, thanks to you and Mr Efford, we have survived, and we look forward to taking the Bill forward.
Mr Perkins
On a point of order, Mrs Miller. On behalf of all my colleagues here, I add my thanks to you and Mr Efford for the work that you have both done and for your support through this debate, which has been very good natured and constructive, even if it was not, ultimately, as successful as we might have desired. I also place on record our thanks to the Clerks, who have been tremendously helpful in the enormous amount of work that we asked them to do. As always, we all very much appreciate the quality and timeliness of their work, and their diligence. I thank everyone who served on the Committee for their varying contributions, whether they were here for all of it or not.
The Chair
I thank the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman for those kind words. I thank you all for your constructive debate throughout the Committee, and I thank the Clerks and Hansard.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Asthma Outcomes
(3 years ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Steve McCabe (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government and House of Commons Commission guidance. Members are also asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. That can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered asthma outcomes.
Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr McCabe. This is an issue that is close to my heart and close to the hearts of others here. There are few families in the whole of the United Kingdom for whom asthma has not been a key issue; it has been an issue for my own, and I want to speak about that as well. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to have the debate. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group for respiratory health, which recently completed an inquiry into this issue, so I am delighted to be able to raise the issue of improving asthma outcomes in the UK. I very much look forward to the response from the Minister. I am also very pleased to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), in her place, and I wish her well in her new role.
What does asthma mean to me? My second son, Ian, had asthma. He was born with very severe psoriasis, which meant that we had to apply cream to him three times a day when he was a wee boy. The doctor told us that the psoriasis would eventually go away, but that it would be replaced by asthma. I am not sure of the medical connection—I am not medically qualified to understand it—and I know only what the doctor told me and my wife. Ian has had asthma all his life now—he is 30 years old—and has used salbutamol, the wee blue inhaler, which is always there. It is very clear, from our family’s experience, that those salbutamol inhalers are really important. They are important for Ian. Asthma did not stop him participating in sports, but it meant that he always had to have that inhaler close by, should he at any time feel shortness of breath or need a wee helper.
In Ian’s class at school, there were many others who had asthma issues. As an elected representative, whenever I help constituents with benefit forms, whether for attendance allowance, personal independence payments or whatever, I always ask them about their medical circumstances. More often than not, asthma features among the ailments that they confirm they have—even for those of a different generation. They have often had it for many years. Asthma is an incredibly important issue.
I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. I always like dealing with him, because I always find his answers helpful. He has a passion for the health issues that we bring to his attention, and he always tries to give, and indeed succeeds in giving, the answers that one wishes to receive. Today, we are going to ask a number of questions, and we very much look forward to his responses. I am pleased to see hon. Members in their places. I had hoped that more Members would be able to attend, but I understand that last night was a late night for Members and that there are other pressing matters today.
I have always had a particular interest in respiratory health. This debate has arisen as a consequence of the APPG’s report, which we published last year: “Improving asthma outcomes in the UK”. We looked at the UK mainland, but we also had contributions from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Obviously, I bring the Northern Ireland perspective to any debate, wherever it may be about, and bring in Strangford too. I am my party’s health spokesperson in this place, and I work closely with my colleagues back home in the Northern Ireland Assembly, particularly with Pam Cameron, my party colleague. She and I work on many things together, including this topic.
Last year, the APPG produced a report investigating the reasons behind the UK’s poor asthma outcomes. We were pleased, honoured and humbled that recognised experts in fields relating to asthma responded to our invitation to take part. The experts ranged from clinical experts from primary, secondary and tertiary care to patient advocacy groups, national asthma champions and patients.
The inquiry was incredibly helpful and detailed. I thank Hugh McKinney of the APPG secretariat and his team for bringing together all the people who wanted to contribute. As a result of the inquiry and the report, many countries in the world now look towards us to learn about how we deal with asthma. They want to learn something from us here in the United Kingdom, and perhaps do things that wee bit better.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing today’s debate. As with most conditions, research and development is key to improving outcomes. Does he agree that funding into asthma research must be provided from a clearly defined central source and that there must be increased capacity for trials in hospitals?
Jim Shannon
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. No matter what the sphere of health, early diagnosis and attention is key. Indeed, my son is an example of that, as a child born with the ailment. There was early participation in his treatment by the doctors, including our own GP and those in the hospital. It is clear to me that that helped him on the pathway to better health. The hon. Lady is absolutely right and I thank her.
We received a large number of written submissions, including evidence from across the numerous asthma disciplines. We were encouraged that there was such a high level of interest. The APPG tries to do a catch-up once a month with stakeholders and those with medical expertise. Each month, we aim to hear from between 16 and 20 people who have an interest in the subject. They bring all their information to us, which we are pleased to have. We were incredibly encouraged that there was such a high level of interest, and I thank every one of them for their help and expert advice.
Let us consider the impact of asthma on people in the UK. The number of people affected by asthma in the UK is among the highest in the world, with some 5.4 million people sufferers. I had never done an interview with GB News until yesterday morning, but they were interested in this debate and a former colleague in this House was the interviewer. It was nice to catch up with Gloria de Piero again in her new job, and it was a platform and an opportunity to raise awareness and the questions were clear. That figure of 5.4 million people suffering from asthma came up early on in that interview.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. On raising awareness, will he join me in congratulating and commending so many of the voluntary groups, particularly those working with issues around chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? I can think of one such group in my constituency, in the Causeway area, that highlights these matters and draws attention to them in the wider community, in order that there is greater awareness across society to try and help people cope with that debilitating condition.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for that point. He is right that there many charities and volunteers, as well as many people who have the disease. A great number of people have expertise, interest and keenness to help and assist them. COPD is one of the most debilitating diseases that I have ever seen. I never realised just how many people in my constituency suffer from COPD, but there seem to be a large number, some of whom are in the advanced stages of a deterioration in health. I have a very good friend who is an artist; we have been friends for many years. He is interested in rural and country sports, as I am, which is where our friendship came from. Today, he is completely dependent on oxygen 24/7 and rarely leaves the house. For a man who was active and fit, COPD has changed his life dramatically.
Some 65% of people with asthma do not receive a yearly review—I am keen for the Minister to respond to that—despite recommendations by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that they should. I respectfully ask the Minister, if they are not getting a review, why not? Asthma has an impact on every patient’s quality of life. A recent pilot study for Asthma UK showed that the impact can be considerable: 68% said asthma attacks hold them back from work in school; 71% said severe asthma affects their social life; 54% said it holds them back from going on holiday; and 66% said severe asthma has made them or their child anxious. When the child is anxious, the parent is anxious—we all worry about what happens. The study also found 55% said having severe asthma has made them or their child depressed. The issue of depression and mental health has come up during the difficulties we have had with covid over the past year and a half.
Asthma deaths in the UK have increased by one third over the last decade. Three people in the UK die from asthma every day, which is among the highest in Europe, yet studies show that more than two out of three asthma deaths could be prevented. Three people die every day and if we had the right things in place, we could save two of those three lives every day in the UK. I put that challenge to the Minister, who I hope will give us the confident and positive reply that we would like to see.
Margaret Ferrier
Air pollution can trigger asthma attacks, and it is believed that it is linked to the rise in childhood asthma. Does the hon. Member agree that tackling air pollution could also bring public health benefits?
Jim Shannon
I absolutely agree. The hon. Member is making points that we all agree with. I am glad she has brought that to my attention. I come to London to work and am aware of the air pollution and the steps that the Mayor of London and others that are taking to try to address that, by restricting the number and type of cars coming in. As the hon. Lady rightly said, people have died in London from air pollution and we must address that. In large metropolises and population clusters, where vehicles and the economy are concentrated, air pollution is important.
I am fortunate to have lived in the countryside all my life. It means that when I go out of my back door there are green fields and the neighbours are about half a mile away, so there is a distance between us as well. However, some 14,000 vehicles a day pass by us on the road—the A20 from Ards to Portaferry—which, by its very nature, shows where the problem is.
Asthma exacerbations lead to over 77,000 hospital admissions each year. It is estimated that asthma leads to a direct cost to the NHS of £1 billion and an indirect cost to society of £1.2 billion due to time off work and loss of productivity. This goes back to the intervention by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) when she referred to early diagnosis which can stop people losing work days and reduce the cost to the NHS. These factors cannot ignored be when it comes to addressing the health issues and helping to balance the books.
This year, the APPG’s intention was to produce a one-year-on report to highlight and emphasise the tremendous work that has been carried out by all those working in asthma. We intended to highlight the progress that has taken place in the past year, the actions of the Government, and any further areas that needed to be reconsidered. Our job will be to continue to note the progress—it may not be the progress we would like to see—and speak to the Minister to see how we can change that. However, covid changed everything. It changed our thinking dramatically. It has had a devastating effect on many lives and has impacted on asthma care. It affected the scope of our latest report, as well as concentrating on asthma outcomes one year on. We have also looked carefully at the impact of covid on respiratory health and asthma in particular.
I have the greatest admiration and respect for all those working in the NHS during these difficult times, especially those in respiratory health, which has been the hardest hit. They are all heroes—that word is used often, but it is true here—and a credit to the profession and the NHS. We are grateful and thankful to them all.
In the past year, covid has had an impact on those with asthma, COPD and the complex health needs that can sometimes be exacerbated by covid, leading to further difficulties. The past year has been difficult for every one of us. We have probably all lost loved ones to covid. In October last year, we lost my mother-in-law, who had complex needs. Covid took her, and we still miss her.
Today, I want to concentrate on the three critical issues identified by the clinical advisers who addressed our inquiry and shared their expertise and evidence. The first issue is the overuse of salbutamol reliever inhalers. We are not saying that people should not have them. That is not what the inquiry said or what the APPG is saying. We are looking at the potential overuse of those inhalers. The second issue is the new unified asthma guidelines. Thirdly, we need better use of biologics.
Prior to the covid pandemic, responders to our inquiry last year identified the overuse of salbutamol inhalers—the blue, not brown, inhalers—and oral corticosteroids as the biggest area of concern and the most important cause of exacerbation and unnecessary asthma deaths. In our report, the APPG also cited numerous studies that have shown that over-reliance on salbutamol may lead to the reduced use of preventer inhalers and to a greater risk of preventable attacks. Regular overuse has also been shown to increase the risk of asthma attacks, hospitalisations and deaths. The Department of Health and Social Care needs to look at the overuse of medications and whether that may do more harm. The evidence in this case seems to show that this is one of those situations.
A recent study by the SABA use in asthma global programme—the SABINA programme—found that high use of such inhalers was frequent among UK patients and
“was associated with a significant increase in exacerbations”
and in reliance on asthma-related healthcare. It stated the need to align SABA inhaler prescription practices with current treatment recommendations.
Some 22.5 million of these inhalers are dispensed to asthma patients each year, an average of five per diagnosed patient. Way back in 2019, before covid, and during one of the few times in my life I have had health issues, there was a week when I could not even come to Westminster, because the doctor told me it would not be safe to travel. My chest and breathing were at a level where he advised me not to travel. At that time, I was on the blue inhalers. I think I had three over that 11 or 12-week period. I may have had a wee bit too much, although I did not realise that at the time. That is one of the issues highlighted by the inquiry.
Patients using excessive numbers of inhalers should be flagged, identified and immediately seen by an asthma-trained clinician. I bring it to the Minister’s attention that we think it is time to rethink asthma treatment and get this right for patients and constituents across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are innovative approaches that demonstrate SABA-reduction.
A 2018 study in The Lancet suggested a maintenance and reliever treatment, with a combination steroid and long-acting beta-agonist, which would allow SABA-free treatment. That could be an effective way to reduce SABA overuse among patients, where clinically appropriate. As ever, it must always be done in consultation with and under the guidance of your doctor and those with health expertise.
The Sentinel project undertaken in Hull and East Yorkshire improved outcomes for adult asthma patients by identifying SABA over-reliance and appropriate implementation of a MART strategy. There is a pilot scheme, which could be the marker, the guide, the standard, the level for the rest of the United Kingdom. Data from that pilot Sentinel study demonstrated that MART can substantially reduce the SABA prescribing.
To ensure that that happens, it is important to restore the asthma reviews, which were hit badly by covid. It is time, ever mindful that covid is our priority, to look at the other issues in the United Kingdom, and asthma is one of them. Asthma UK’s latest annual survey showed that 66% of people with asthma are not receiving basic care for their condition, and that that level has fallen, for the first time in eight years. Minister, what has been done to address that fall? How can we do it better?
An annual asthma review is an important component of addressing that. I should be grateful if the Minister would update us on the progress that has been made on restoring the annual reviews. When we are responding to health issues in the United Kingdom we often need data, so it is important to have that in place.
We also suggested in our APPG report that primary care incentives might be necessary to drive the reduction of SABA use. We stated that the QOF—quality and outcomes framework—or the investment and impact fund have the potential to help with that. The patient pathway is also an important method to reduce SABA use, which brings me to my second point—the new unified guidelines.
Last year, in our inquiry, we analysed the challenges faced by clinicians in treating severe asthma. We found that almost all the experts identified the existence of multiple asthma guidelines as confusing, unnecessary and a cause for concern. If they are confusing to experts, and therefore for our constituents and patients too, we need to have a singular approach. Again, I look to the Minister for a response.
The Royal College of Physicians told us in its submission that
“national audit data collected from England, Scotland and Wales indicates that the standard of care against national guidelines (NICE and BTS) and recommendations from NRAD are variable and on the whole substandard.”
There is a need to get things right and singular. As a consequence, the APPG strongly welcomed the commitment to and the ongoing work to produce unified guidelines as a necessary step forward to improve asthma outcomes. We felt that it was especially important for our time-stretched clinicians that all guidelines on asthma should be in one place.
The unified guidelines were delayed due to covid, but are due in 2023. Our main concern, however, is that we understand that the draft scope for the new unified guidelines does not include severe asthma. I bring that to the Minister’s attention, because we feel it should. Perhaps the Minister will give us some indication of what will be done to address that, because that appears to me to be a serious omission, and others will agree.
It is unclear how any guidelines could be described as “unified” when the most serious type of asthma is not included. I have a concern, a question mark in mind, about that. It is especially puzzling when we consider that the existing NICE, British Thoracic Society/Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, Global Initiative for Asthma and NRAD—national review of asthma deaths—guidelines all give similar criteria for referring a patient for severe asthma.
If severe asthma is excluded from the scope of the unified guidelines, the concern is that newer treatment options will not be addressed properly, which takes us back to the intervention by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West. This is about early diagnosis and treatment at an early stage. If we do not get that right, we will have complications and problems later.
Those newer treatment options include the use of biologic treatments and the latest best practice in phenotyping, which were strongly recommended by both clinicians and severe asthma patients in our inquiry. The long-term plan states:
“We will do more to support those with respiratory disease to receive and use the right medication”,
but without severe asthma included in the unified guidelines, that is unlikely to happen. How can we make that happen, rather than being unlikely? Will the Minister therefore give me, the House and those in and outside this Chamber the thinking behind that omission? What is the possibility of adding severe asthma back into the discussion? If we can retrieve that and bring it back in, I will be pleased. I also wonder what can be done while we wait for the new guidelines. Four sets of guidelines are confusing for clinicians. Surely it would be preferable not to wait until 2023 for clarity. We need to act today—for the three people who die every day due to asthma. That is the imperative. Is there any way that the Minister can reflect on that and give consideration to updated living guidelines to reflect current best practice and treatment?
Unified or updated guidelines can materially affect my third point on biologic therapies. They are life-saving treatments for people with certain types of severe asthma and asthma that is difficult to control. They can reduce asthma attacks in severe asthma, reduce the need for steroids and improve symptoms. At present, they are only offered to patients through the specialist asthma clinics. There was strong support in our report last year for the appropriate use of biologic treatments and we supported the extension of prescribing to secondary care clinicians for severe asthma patients. Many clinicians viewed the use of biologics as a better alternative to traditional oral corticosteroid treatment for severe asthma and we received evidence that a large majority of patients who are eligible still do not have access to them.
Asthma UK suggests that
“82% of difficult and severe asthma patients are often not being referred at the right time, or sometimes, not at all.”
That is hard to believe. Asthma UK and BLF also told us that the current NHS asthma care pathway does not take full account of the availability of the new treatments. So most people with severe asthma are still reliant on OCS. According to Asthma UK, three in four people eligible for biologic treatment are still not accessing it and thousands of patients are having to endure treatments that are considered inadequate and suffer unnecessary side effects.
That is linked to the Government’s five highest health gains programme, which introduced a commitment by the UK to match or surpass comparative nations in the access to new and innovative medicines in five clinical areas, one of which is severe asthma biologics. The scheme committed to the objective of
“reaching the upper quartile of uptake for 5 highest health gain categories”
during the course of the first half of the scheme, by mid-2021. We applaud the Government’s initiative and action on that to date, but the deadline has clearly been missed. New data commissioned by NHS England has shown that the UK is far from the upper quartile and confirms that we are currently ninth out of 10 with regard to comparator countries. We must improve that. We must get better and do that for our patients. We also recommended extending the Accelerated Access Collaborative’s severe asthma programme, and increasing resources to increase capacity for prescribing biologics will be important for achieving that. Will the Minister give a renewed commitment to achieving upper quartile access and set a new, clearly defined target for when and how that will be achieved?
In October 2021 the Government announced 40 new community diagnostic centres, which are set to open across England in a range of settings, from local shopping centres to football stadiums, to offer new and earlier diagnostic tests closer to patients’ homes. I want to put on record my thanks to the Government and the Minister for that commitment. It is clearly there and we thank him for that. However, we cannot make it a postcode lottery. If it can happen here in London, it should happen in Cardiff, Newcastle, Liverpool and everywhere else. Nowhere should be any different, so I would like to see that happening.
The Government have stated that the new centres will be backed by a substantial amount of money—a £350 million investment—and will provide around 2.8 million scans in the first full year of operation. They are designed to assist with earlier diagnosis through faster and easier access to diagnostic tests for symptoms in areas including breathlessness, cancer and ophthalmology. In the Budget, the Chancellor announced an additional £5.9 billion to tackle the backlog of general diagnostic tests to deliver more checks, more scans and more treatment. The intention is to increase the number of diagnostic centres to at least 100 and I understand that each one will include a multidisciplinary team of staff, including nurses and radiographers, and will be open seven days a week. The Government and the Minister are to be commended for that, and I warmly welcome it and the funding that will be allocated. I hope they can help address the covid-imposed inequalities that we have seen across the country in asthma care and treatment. Will the centres be fully staffed, will they have trained staff and will they be in place?
I also welcome the breathlessness diagnostics, which will be included in the centres. It is essential that they should be equipped to diagnose any cause of breathlessness, whether cardiovascular, lung cancer, asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) mentioned. It is also important to establish an appropriate referral system from the centres, should further investigation be warranted. Will the Minister confirm that the FeNO and spirometry tests will be included in all centres, to allow for fuller asthma assessments?
I look forward to the contributions from other Members, and I thank those who intervened on my speech. I very much look forward to the Front-Bench contributions, particularly from the Minister.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I congratulate him on securing this excellent debate. I thank him very much for what he has said. My speech will be less wide-ranging than his, but I want to deal with two particular aspects. First, I should declare an interest, in that my brother works in this industry. Having said that, we never talk about work, so that is literally as much as I can say about what he does. However, I have had several meetings with representatives of Kindeva, a company that deals in the asthma industry, and visited its site. It is based in my constituency, so I will refer to the company in some detail. I will first discuss the change in drug delivery that is proposed by DHSC, before talking about prescription charges.
Asthma can be an incredibly dangerous condition. As Asthma UK data show, there are around 75,000 asthma-related emergency admissions to hospital every year in the UK and, sadly, asthma causes the death of around 1,200 people every year. Thankfully, however, although there is no cure, there are simple and, importantly, accessible treatments that can help keep the symptoms under control, including inhalers. That being said, the fact that people are still dying from this condition shows that more work needs to be done, and I was encouraged by the response from the Minister for Care and Mental Health to the debate on access to salbutamol inhalers last week, during which she set out the steps that the Government and NHS are taking to improve asthma outcomes. I was particularly encouraged to learn that the NHS long-term plan includes respiratory disease as a national clinical priority and sets out a number of respiratory interventions, including plans for early and accurate diagnosis of respiratory conditions. I would welcome reassurance from the Minister that the Government will work with the NHS to achieve the aims set out in the long-term plan.
I want to take the opportunity to mention an issue that has been raised with me by Kindeva, a pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organisation, when I visited its state-of-the-art research, development and manufacturing facilities at Charnwood Campus in my constituency, which is the very first life sciences opportunity zone that is based in the UK. During my visit, I saw the production of pressurised metred-dose inhalers, or PMDIs, and I heard about Kindeva’s work to transition to green propellants. I am delighted that as part of this, Kindeva and Loughborough University formed a knowledge transfer partnership to proactively address the inhalation drug delivery industry’s move to develop PMDI propellants with lower global warming potential, or GWP, than exists currently in marketed propellants. That is a fantastic example of universities and businesses working together to turn a cutting-edge idea into a marketable product, and it reflects the success of Charnwood Campus.
That being said, I understand that the NHS’s current target to reduce the carbon impact of inhalers by 50% by 2028—by switching patients from PMDIs to dry powder inhalers—coupled with the Government’s review on the use of fluorinated gases, is creating uncertainty for the industry. Specifically, I have been informed that the NHS switchover policy is shrinking the size of the UK PMDI market, and that Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ proposals to remove the essential medical use exemption of F gases in PMDIs would put considerable pressure on the market before green propellant alternatives are widely available.
Although I fully support the Government’s net zero strategy and their commitment to build back greener from the pandemic and level up all areas of the country in the process, if we are to achieve these aims, we must work with industry to ensure that we do not unintentionally drive innovation out of the country, along with opportunities for inward investment and long-term, highly skilled jobs, particularly in the east midlands and, from my point of view, most particularly in Loughborough. We have a fantastic opportunity to be a world leader on green propellants, and we have the willingness of industry to make the necessary changes. I therefore ask the Minister and the NHS to work with the industry and, most importantly, afford it the time needed to transition to greener propellants, by delivering the current NHS emissions reduction targets over a longer timeframe, and maintaining the current medical use exemption for F-gases until 2030.
Consider the situation, imagine the scene, of struggling for breath. Constituents have that problem across the country every day. They need consistency of treatment to enable them to trust the medication and have it delivered quickly and accurately. When they need the medication, it is very often an emergency. They need the drug delivery to be accurate and timely. Let us take that into consideration when looking for net zero outcomes in medications and treatment.
Asthma UK called for a suspension of prescription charges for asthma medications and for them to be added to the medical exemptions list. I think we would all agree, particularly in the case of the son of the hon. Member for Strangford, who was born with the condition, that this is not something that can be avoided. Therefore, why should patients pay for those prescriptions?
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this important debate. It is incredible that the subject of asthma has not been discussed more often in the House, given that it affects to so many people.
I would like to start with some key statistics on severe asthma: 5.4 million people in the UK currently receive treatment for asthma, including 5,282 people in my constituency of Blaydon, where we have a sad history of respiratory conditions, including asthma, affecting the lives of too many people.
Around 200,000 people in the UK have severe asthma, which is the most debilitating and life-threatening form of the condition, and which does not respond to conventional treatments. Four out of five people with suspected severe asthma, who should be referred to a specialist, are not getting the care that they need; 46,000 people are missing out on life-changing biologic treatments.
The north-east region has the highest oral steroid prescribing rate at 20%, prescribing two or more courses of oral corticosteroids in the previous 12 months compared with the 14% average. As we have heard, oral steroids can have very nasty side effects, including osteoporosis, weight gain and diabetes.
Severe asthma has a devastating impact on every part of someone’s life. Living with severe asthma is so much more than asthma attacks and occasional hospital admissions. People may feel isolated, lonely and scared, left without hope or the right support. The covid pandemic has clearly shown that for many people that is a very real concern, leaving many of them in isolation.
One person with severe asthma reflected on how it impacts on them:
“It’s really restricted me. I have suffered because there was a point when I refused to leave the house… So, it really affected my work, my lifestyle. Meet your friends, just even speaking to them, I would get really out of breath. I was trying to avoid all of that.”
Without specialist treatment and support, people with severe asthma end up in a never-ending cycle of emergency trips to hospital, relying on toxic oral steroids, which can have very nasty side effects. It has now been shown that as few as four courses of oral steroids over a lifetime can be associated with adverse effects. Another person with asthma, speaking to the British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK, said:
“Steroids made me able to breathe but they ruined my life. The insomnia, the racing thoughts, the weight gain. I have lost all confidence and self-esteem.”
Asthma UK’s recent survey of more than 2,000 people who used oral steroids in the last year revealed the devastating consequences on their quality of life, with 73% experiencing at least one side effect, and one third experiencing side effects relating to their mental health. Another person in the survey, a woman in her thirties, said:
“They affect my mental health really badly and the effects last for weeks or months after I finish the course. I dread taking them but do it to make my asthma better.”
That is not the kind of life that we want people to have.
However, there are some potential treatments. Life-changing biologic treatments offer hope, but only if people have access to them. Treatment in care for severe asthma has transformed over recent years. There are now five life-changing biologic treatments available that reduce, or even stop, the need for oral steroids. A person in another Asthma UK survey said:
“I just wish I had been put on this biologic a lot sooner. Because the period I was suffering, you can’t explain it in words. It was really, really hard for me. It was just so depressing that sometimes you think your life is just not worth living anymore.”
Access to those biologic treatments is poor. Asthma UK’s report, “Do No Harm: Safer and Better Treatment Options for People with Asthma” showed that an estimated 46,000 potentially eligible people are still missing out. Recent analysis by Logex showed that England is second from the bottom on biologic uptake in a comparison with similar European countries. Work is being done to improve the uptake of biologic therapies through the accelerated access collaborative, and Asthma UK has also developed a patient-facing tool, but much more needs to change to bring us in line with other European countries.
Nicki, from Oxford, has been able to access a biologic treatment early, in special circumstances, because she was not responding to other treatments for severe asthma. She says:
“My asthma was so bad that I spent my late twenties and early thirties being blue-lighted to hospital regularly with life-threatening asthma attacks, rigged up to machines to help me breathe and not knowing if I was going to see my 35th birthday. I couldn't walk anywhere due to breathlessness and had severe asthma attacks without warning. My plans for starting a family were put on hold because I was too ill and the only thing that offered any kind of relief was long-term steroid tablets, but these caused me to rapidly put on weight and I was still in and out of hospital continuously. My partner had begun to feel like my carer and I was losing my independence.
Since I have been on dupilumab, I feel like a new woman. I’ve taken part in cycling challenges, love walking my dogs, have a fantastic new job in health research and am able to finally contemplate starting a family.
It was a difficult process for me to get access to dupilumab but I know I’m one of the lucky ones—some people wait years for referrals and this can have a huge impact on their lives. It’s vital people get referred if they’re ever going to reap the benefits of this potentially life-changing treatment.”
That is a vivid illustration of the dramatic impact of new biologic treatments on those for whom they are suitable and available.
A lack of comprehensive guidelines can result in delays and missed opportunities for referral. Dedicated specialist services now offer a comprehensive systematic assessment, multidisciplinary team input and phenotyping. However, 82% of people who would benefit from seeing a specialist, according to British Thoracic Society guidelines, are not getting referred. Covid-19 will have compounded that; there was an 86% drop in referrals for respiratory disease during lockdown, and that has not fully recovered. People are unable to access these specialist services because there is a lack of awareness that severe asthma is a distinct condition that needs dedicated services and biologic therapies to treat it effectively. Furthermore, many health professionals do not know when to refer someone or understand the benefits that referral to a specialist could bring.
Other research from Asthma UK has shown that there is a variation in when clinicians think they should refer someone. This is because the current guidelines are confusing and conflicting, as we have heard. It is incomprehensible that a condition affecting over 200,000 people in the UK did not have a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence management guideline until the covid-19 pandemic, when rapid guidance was produced. That was a positive step, but a fully evidenced guideline with clear referral criteria is still urgently needed to address the huge unmet need and show the benefits of referring someone to specialist care. It is disappointing to see that severe asthma has been excluded from the upcoming NICE, British Thoracic Society and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network joint guideline draft scope on asthma. Including severe asthma, with clear referral criteria, within the NICE guidelines has the potential to transform care for people with asthma.
There are some clear policy recommendations regarding severe asthma. Repeated use of oral steroids must be seen as a failure of asthma management, and prompt urgent action and appropriate referral should be taken. Primary and secondary care clinicians need to be proactive in order to recognise and refer those with suspected severe asthma. NICE should develop a single, comprehensive severe asthma guideline on identifying, referring and treating people who may have difficult or severe asthma. We need to see the brilliant work by the accelerated access collaborative implemented, and the appropriate funding put in place, to allow severe asthma specialists to provide the right care and biologics to all who need them.
Before concluding, rather than concentrating only on severe asthma, I will touch on some broader issues about asthma. These are key points that need to be addressed. The SENTINEL study, which we heard about from the hon. Member for Strangford, is looking at the use of the blue short-acting beta agonist inhalers, and proper management for people with asthma that ensures they are properly reviewed. This is with the aim of reducing the use of SABA inhalers, and of using other anti-inflammatory inhalers properly to decrease the number of exacerbations. That has the potential to bring improvements for all asthma sufferers, not just those with severe asthma.
As we also heard from the hon. Member for Strangford, annual reviews are really important for all those with asthma. It is important that there are properly trained asthma nurses who can conduct those reviews, and that they feature in the new community diagnostic hubs that have been announced, so people can get access to these reviews. Not everyone gets access to reviews—too few people do at present.
We have talked about how the new asthma guidelines need to include severe asthma. Having that unified guideline would be very helpful. We need better access to biologic treatments for those who would benefit from them. Finally, I want to mention the impact of covid-19 and the recovery plan. I hope that the Minister will say something about what is being done to support people with asthma, and with severe asthma, and to make positive improvements in the wake of covid-19.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, in what is an extremely important and timely debate. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing it, and I know that the issue is very close to his heart. He exerts such energy, enthusiasm and dedication through his work with the all-party parliamentary group on respiratory health, and the issue also has a very personal resonance for him, as we heard, given that his son has been diagnosed with asthma. The hon. Gentleman has first-hand experience of asthma’s impact on a young person and a family, of the concerns that it brings to the whole family and of the need for improved, ongoing care for everybody affected.
The hon. Gentleman set the scene extremely well, and in a detailed manner. He raised with the Minister the issues that clearly need to be addressed, and ensured that we are all aware that we should be speaking more about asthma and its implications, given its impact on so many people across the United Kingdom. He gave some startling figures, including that three people a day die as a result of this treatable disease. We should be doing far more to ensure that those deaths do not happen and that the interventions required are delivered in a timely manner. Those who need additional support must get access to the trained nurse clinicians and the annual reviews that they so desperately need.
I also thank the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). I do not believe I have had the pleasure of speaking to her personally in this place yet, because of our absence during the covid pandemic. I look forward to speaking with her about her particular interest in health. I say that as a clinician, as the chair of the all-party parliamentary health group and as someone with an interest in taking these issues forward. She raised such important matters, including the move towards climate change-friendly, net-zero alternatives. She said that the move must be staged so as not to be too quick for the people who desperately need the medication to catch up, and that it must be done in a very pragmatic way so that it does not impact on those UK organisations that she spoke about, including in her own constituency. Those organisations are working so hard to ensure that science is at the forefront and that, while we achieve net zero, we put patient health at the forefront of all of the decisions that are made in this context. She spoke extremely well on that matter.
The hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) always speaks eloquently on health-related matters, and I very much welcomed her person-centred approach to the debate. She detailed the impact of asthma on people’s lives, and contributed that first-hand information to the debate. Asthma has a devastating impact on individuals, and people must have access to the biologic treatments that she described. Where there is innovation and excellence in our NHS, it must be available to everybody who needs treatment. That is why, importantly, she told the Minister that individuals must have access to community hubs for diagnosis, linked with early prevention and prescribing. There should be no postcode lottery; no matter where people live in the United Kingdom, they should have access to the treatment that they so desperately need.
While I think about hon. Members’ contributions, I will also briefly mention prescription charges, which the hon. Member for Loughborough also discussed and are extremely important. The Scottish Government abolished prescription charges in 2011, but in England the current charge is £9.35 per item. Since 2011, those suffering from asthma in Scotland have had access to free inhalers, meaning that no person is ever left without an inhaler because of cost. A recent survey conducted by Asthma UK found that three quarters of people living with asthma in England had struggled to pay for their prescriptions and that individuals had often turned to skipping doses of their inhaler to cut costs—again, the impact of poverty and deprivation causing detriment to those who have asthma.
Jane Hunt
I thank the hon. Lady for letting me intervene. I understand her point about Scotland, but there is available an annual prescription charge, which is far less. However, my point was really about the fact that asthma sufferers cannot help it, essentially. Is there something we could do there?
Dr Cameron
Absolutely, and the hon. Lady makes an excellent point. While the choice in Scotland has been to abolish prescription charges, I note that she did not suggest that to the Minister. However, she did suggest—perhaps because we know that asthma often starts in childhood and is not something that people have much control over—that an exemption could be applied. Following that recommendation from the hon. Lady, I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the matter.
Cost itself should not mean that someone cannot access healthcare, and in a developed country such as the United Kingdom, there should be no prohibition owing to charges and costs, particularly for something for which people often need daily medication. We have heard from Asthma UK that that is happening—people are skipping doses and many are struggling to pay for their prescriptions in England.
In 2021, the Scottish Government published their respiratory care plan, which is a care plan covering 2021 to 2026. It includes a workstream specifically on asthma, and I am pleased that that is being taken forward at that level. We know that asthma attacks across the UK, including Scotland, have increased by a third over the last decade, and the number of people affected in the UK is among the highest in the world, with about 5.4 million receiving treatment for asthma. That is equivalent to one adult in every 12, and one child in every 11, so we know that asthma is widespread and that it needs to be a priority for Government action.
Asthma affects people of all ages, as we have heard, and often starts in childhood. I must declare that I have been diagnosed with asthma and have had asthma since childhood. I say to the Minister that there is absolutely nothing worse than the feeling of struggling for breath. I have found wearing a mask difficult at times, but I have continued to do so, and there are exemptions for people with severe health conditions. However, asthma comes upon people suddenly and can leave them with a feeling of such a lack of control, so it is important to have specialist advice from the nursing staff, which the hon. Member for Strangford spoke of.
I do not believe that I received such advice when I was younger; I think I was given an inhaler, told to go off home to practice and learn to use it myself. I wonder whether the issue that the hon. Gentleman raised—people overusing their inhaler medication—is down to there not being enough early intervention and education on how to use an inhaler properly.
I say to the Minister that although the recommendations have been raised on the Floor of this debating Chamber, we need meaningful data. We need to know about overuse, and the rationales and reasons for that overuse. Do people need more education and intervention from clinical nursing staff in the community hubs? Does the cost mean that people in poverty struggle to access treatment, and is that contributing to the death toll? That data is crucial.
As has also been widely mentioned, Asthma UK has indicated that NICE should develop comprehensive guidance on severe asthma. Can we also make sure that the newer treatment options—the biologic treatments—are widely available to everyone who needs them?
I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, which has been an extremely positive one. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Strangford, because this issue is so important to so many people in the United Kingdom, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this Backbench Business debate on improving asthma outcomes and for setting out so comprehensively the issues and challenges faced by the UK’s asthma sufferers. He said there are not many families in the UK who are not affected by asthma—his own son is an asthma sufferer—and I absolutely agree with him. I have a cousin currently in hospital who is a severe asthma sufferer; his covid was made worse by his severe asthma. It is a condition that affects many of us.
The hon. Member also set out some sobering statistics about asthma, which should shame us all. He made three asks and set out the areas where he believes the Government need to do more, which was echoed by many other speakers. They relate mainly to the overuse of blue inhalers, the conflicting guidelines and the need to improve them, and biologic therapy, which I will touch on.
We also heard from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), who raised the issue of air quality and air pollution. We know that air pollution exacerbates asthma. Most Members will know the case of Ella Kissi-Debrah, the nine-year-old asthma sufferer who died, and the coroner said air pollution was a factor in her death. We know that air pollution affects asthma sufferers really badly and more needs to be done about it.
The hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) set out very well the great work being done by businesses and the university in her constituency, and also raised the important issue of prescription charges and the need to have a medical exemption from them. Others raised that issue, too, and I absolutely agree.
Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) set out the facts and statistics—the really terrible statistics—that the UK has on asthma and the challenges around gaining access to biological medicines. She also told the stories of some asthma sufferers.
We have heard today that severe asthma is the most debilitating, even life-threatening, condition that does not respond to conventional treatment. As has been said, it is estimated that about 200,000 people in the UK have severe asthma, and without specialist treatment and support people with severe asthma end up in a never-ending cycle of emergency trips to hospitals, relying on toxic oral steroids that have nasty side effects; we heard real-life stories about those from my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon. She also said that four out of five people with suspected severe asthma who should be referred to a specialist do not receive the care they need, and that 46,000 people are missing out on life-changing biological treatment, an issue that was raised by almost all hon. Members who spoke today.
Today’s debate is important because currently there is no cure for asthma; it is only possible to manage the condition so that symptoms are kept under control. We must ensure that asthma treatments and outcomes are of the highest quality. The UK has one of the worst mortality rates for asthma in Europe, with a death rate almost 50% higher than the average death rate for the EU. That should embarrass us all. Despite initiatives such as the 2014 national review of asthma, asthma deaths rose by more than 33% in England and Wales between 2008 and 2018. Some 5.4 million people in the UK are receiving treatment for asthma, leading to 41,000 hospital admissions last year for asthma-related concerns, and 1,300 deaths.
If those figures are not enough to show that we must improve asthma outcomes, we should note that two thirds of asthma deaths are preventable. Three people die from asthma attacks every day. That number must be lowered.
The disruption caused by the pandemic has had a huge impact on asthma care and outcomes. Basic asthma care is an annual review, an inhaler technique check and a written asthma action plan. Members have discussed how that care is not enough. Last year, the number of people receiving even that basic level of care dropped for the first time in eight years, with more than 3.5 million people missing out on potentially life-saving treatment—that is 3.5 million people with asthma who were put at risk. However, even before the pandemic, respiratory care was lagging behind care for other conditions. Basic care levels for asthma were stalling. Recent research by Asthma UK shows that 75% of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were also missing out on fundamental care.
We must understand the challenges of asthma treatment in our country and look at what we might do differently to save lives and improve patient outcomes. There are several areas for the Government to improve. Many excellent suggestions have been made today. I want to focus on the restoration of the normal delivery of care, prescription charges and air pollution. The Government’s work should not be limited to these areas and I urge the Minister to explore other avenues, such as early diagnosis and promoting the take-up of covid booster vaccinations for asthma patients.
In England, the NHS long-term plan included respiratory diseases as a national clinical priority, with the objective of improving outcomes for people with respiratory diseases including asthma. I urge the Government to therefore commit to restoring the normal delivery of care for people with respiratory diseases, so that everyone with asthma receives at the very least the most basic level of care and that 3.5 million people are not denied the basic care they deserve.
Many Members have referred to the Asthma UK survey that found that 76% of people with asthma struggle to afford their prescriptions, 57% skip their medication because of the cost, and 82% say their symptoms worsen as a result. People on lower incomes are already nearly twice as likely to have had an asthma attack than those on higher incomes. The inability to afford prescription charges is highly likely to be a contributing factor. It is putting lives at risk. People should not be forced to choose between paying for a prescription or risking their lives.
Health inequality is one of the major drivers of poor health outcomes that we see today, and asthma is no exception. We know that asthma symptoms are exacerbated by breathing polluted air, as well as from smoking. Air pollution can worsen existing health inequalities and the people living in the poorest areas are often the most exposed to polluted air, reinforcing unequal health outcomes for deprived communities. We need to make sure that air pollution is reduced across the country and must adopt into law enforceable targets set out by the World Health Organisation to bring air pollution down to below harmful levels.
In November 2020, the APPG on respiratory health produced its report on improving asthma outcomes in the UK, which we have heard about today, and I look forward to its forthcoming one-year-on report. I urge the Minister to consider those reports and reflect closely on the recommendations and issues raised by the hon. Member for Strangford.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr McCabe, after our many hours in Committee. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and congratulate him on securing this debate and for his work on the APPG. As ever, in speaking of his and his family’s experiences, he was typically open for the benefit of the House and those watching our proceedings, and I pay tribute to him for that.
I also welcome the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) to her role on the Opposition Front Bench. She has big shoes to fill, but on the basis of today and what I know of her from her time in this House, I have no doubt that she will do so with skill and dedication and with her typical courtesy while holding us to account as a Government. I wish her all the best in the role.
The Government are dedicated to improving asthma outcomes. In the past 10 years, we have rolled out guidance and initiatives to improve in this area. In 2011, the Department for Health, as it then was, published an outcome strategy for COPD and asthma. It set out a proactive approach to early identification, diagnosis, intervention, proactive care and management. All stages of the disease, as we have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the House, can affect anyone. When it does, it has a huge impact on their lives.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for bringing to life this issue and what it means for individuals with the examples she used, and for talking about her own experience, which is incredibly powerful. I pay tribute with her, as ever, for being willing to share that with this House.
A wrong diagnosis will result in patients not getting the care they need. That is why in 2013 “A Guide to Performing Quality Assured Diagnostic Spirometry” was produced by the NHS with several charities and stakeholders. It was published to support the accurate diagnosis of respiratory conditions to tackle the effects of misdiagnosis.
In 2014, the national review of asthma deaths—the first UK-wide investigation—was published. It aimed to identify avoidable factors, and make recommendations to improve care and patient self-management. NHS England and NHS Improvement commissioned the national asthma audit programme in 2018. It provides data on a range of indicators to show improvements and opportunities in asthma outcomes. The audit’s data are used by providers to assess their quality and support improvement.
More recently, as a number of hon. Members have alluded to, the NHS long-term plan, published in 2019, includes respiratory disease as a national clinical priority with the objective to improve outcomes for people with respiratory diseases including asthma. The respiratory interventions proposed in the NHS long-term plan include early and accurate diagnosis of respiratory conditions. Diagnosing conditions earlier may help to prevent avoidable emergency admissions for asthma.
As part of the long-term planning commitment, pharmacists in primary care networks will undertake a range of medicine reviews, including teaching patients the correct use of inhalers and contributing to multidisciplinary work. I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and constituency neighbour the reassurance she sought that we continue to work closely with the NHS in the delivery of that long-term plan, specifically on these objectives set out in it.
To deliver on that objective, NHS England has established 13 respiratory networks across the country. They will provide clinical leadership for respiratory services and are focused on improving clinical pathways for asthma. Since the long-term plan was published, a number of initiatives and publications have been announced.
Before making further progress, I will turn briefly to some of the comments made by hon. Members—I suspect this is a timely way of responding to them. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough talked about Kindeva, based on the Charnwood campus in Loughborough in her constituency. I know it well, as the neighbouring Member, and know that it is something she and Jonathan Morgan, the leader of Charnwood Borough Council have championed as a huge asset to our national economy and national effort in this space. She talked about the pMDI market, F-gases and the transition. We commit to our net zero ambitions, but she is right to highlight the need for the transition to be done in a sensible and measured way, and we continue to work closely with industry partners and industry-representative bodies in order to manage that process. I hope that gives her at least a degree of reassurance on this important issue.
NHS England’s national patient safety team has prioritised its work on asthma. This work is part of the adoption and spread safety improvement programme, which aims to identify and support effective and safe evidence-based interventions and practice across England. The asthma ambition is to increase the proportion of patients in acute hospitals receiving every element of the British Thoracic Society’s asthma discharge care bundle to 80% by March 2023.
The quality outcomes framework—QOF—ensures that all GP practices establish and maintain a register of patients with an asthma diagnosis. The QOF for 2021-22 includes improved respiratory indicators. The content of the QOF asthma review was amended to incorporate key elements of basic asthma care for better patient outcomes, including an assessment of asthma control, a recording of the number of exacerbations, an assessment of inhaler technique, and a written, personalised asthma action plan.
Since April 2021, the academic health science networks and patient safety collaboratives have been working with provider organisations to increase take-up of the British Thoracic Society’s asthma care bundle for patients admitted to hospital in England. Centres’ compliance with the elements of good care outlined in the bundle is measured in the national asthma audit.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for his responses. He mentioned the 2023 target, to which I referred. Is it possible to shorten that timescale?
Edward Argar
As ever, the hon. Gentleman tempts me to be more ambitious. We have set 2023 as a realistic and achievable target. If it were possible to achieve it sooner, that would of course be a positive. Both in my Department and beyond, everyone will have been encouraged by the hon. Gentleman’s ambition and encouragement to go further and faster on that target, if they can. He makes his point well. I will make a little progress and then come back to several of the hon. Gentleman’s questions.
We recognise the particular effect of asthma on children and young people, which is why NHSEI’s children and young people’s transformation programme is promoting a systemic approach to asthma management. The first phase of the national bundle of care for children and young people with asthma has been developed with clinical and patient experts. A complete version of the bundle of care will be published in spring next year. The children and young people asthma dashboard, developed alongside the bundle, will be able to identify asthma care by race, geography, age and social deprivation, which goes to a number of points highlighted by the shadow Minister, among others. That will help ensure that children and young people with asthma who face the starkest health inequalities are prioritised.
The national care bundle has an environmental impact section that sets out three key standards around air pollution, which is an issue raised by Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), who is no longer in her place. We set out the Government’s clean air strategy in 2019, recognising the impact of air pollution on health and a range of other factors that affect people’s lives. In this space specifically, we recognise three key standards. First, all healthcare professionals working with children and young people with expected or diagnosed asthma should understand the sources and dangers of air pollution. Secondly, patients and their parents or carers should always receive information on how they can manage asthma with regards to air pollution. Thirdly, integrated care systems should ensure that they are linked with schools, where education around asthma should also be provided.
The NICE guidance, entitled “Air pollution: outdoor air quality and health”, provides advice for people with chronic respiratory or cardiovascular conditions on the impacts of air pollution. It is important that we recognise that there are ways that, in a health context, we can care for people who face those impacts. Going back to the 2019 clean air strategy, however, we as a society have a much broader obligation to tackle the root causes of those problems and to improve the quality of our air, particularly in our cities but across our whole country.
Given the pivotal role of respiratory medicine in treating patients with covid-19, some centres’ ability to commence patients on biologics may have been impacted at the peak of the surge. I think all Members will recognise that.
The pandemic obviously revolves around a respiratory illness. Those who treat respiratory illnesses, including asthma, have been on the frontline, along with all our health and care staff. I join the shadow Minister and others in paying tribute to the amazing work they have done. As we seek to recover elective services and get more routine services back to normal, we are ambitious but also recognise, in the face of uncertainties over winter and the new variant, that respiratory services can be some of the hardest to recover and bring back to normal operation, because those are the services affected by the disease and the nature of its transmission.
Liz Twist
Will the Minister be a little more specific about the opportunity for those with severe asthma to access biologic services? That is a very specific ask. Without wanting to minimise the impact of covid-19 and the size of the need for a recovery plan, that is a specific issue for a group of people.
Edward Argar
I always give way to the hon. Lady, occasionally with a little trepidation, because I know she will ask a measured and difficult question. That is a very important question. During the pandemic, specialist respiratory services for severe asthma have continued to run, but she asked a specific question about biologics, a subject raised by several colleagues. Prescription and access to biologics is co-ordinated through severe asthma centre multidisciplinary teams. They should ensure all treatments, conditions and options are considered when prescribing. I am perhaps less clear about that than she might want, because I would caveat that by saying it would be a clinical judgment.
We do recognise the value of biologics. That goes to what the hon. Member for Strangford said: all treatments and options should be considered by clinicians on an individual, case-by-case basis, rather than what may have happened in the past, which was a presumption in favour of inhalers as a way of managing the condition rather than treating it or getting to the root causes. Although not eliminating the condition, that could deliver the improvements that make a difference based on an individual’s condition.
Edward Argar
That is one of the easier things to do, given that this policy area belongs to the Minister for Care and Mental Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), so I can commit to her writing to the hon. Lady. I am happy to do that, though I suspect that response will come back to the point about clinical judgment and decision making. I will also commit my hon. Friend to writing to the hon. Member for Strangford on the detailed and specific point he made about the annual review.
The use of remote consultations and biologic medication that can be taken at home mean we have been able to support most people with severe asthma during the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, NICE published “COVID-19 rapid guideline: severe asthma”, which provided guidance on starting or continuing biological treatment. In writing that guidance, particular attention was paid to streamlining the process of moving patients on to biologic therapies, to compensate for any barriers that may have occurred because of changes to the NHS in response to covid-19.
The hon. Member for Strangford raised the subject of unified guidelines. NICE’s updated guidance is produced jointly with the British Thoracic Society and SIGN, so it will update all three key areas. They are working with other UK expert bodies to develop a joint guidance for the diagnosis, monitoring and management of chronic asthma, which will update and replace existing guidance.
Community diagnostic centres or CDCs—another theme raised by several hon. Members—which diagnose a number of conditions, are to be launched in place of asthma diagnostic hubs. Diagnostics for respiratory conditions are part of the proposed core services to be provided by CDCs. I hope that gives reassurance.
A review of diagnostics in the NHS long-term plan highlighted that patients with respiratory symptoms would benefit from that facility due to the number of diagnostic tests involved. At the spending review, we announced an extra £5.9 billion of capital support for elective recovery, diagnostics and technology over the next three years, with £2.3 billion of that to increase the volume of diagnostic activity and to roll out CDCs. The planned increase will allow the NHS to carry out 4.5 million additional scans by 2024-25, enhancing capacity, enabling earlier diagnosis and benefiting asthma patients.
I am conscious that I need to leave the hon. Member for Strangford at least three or four minutes for his winding-up speech. One point that has come up among hon. Members this morning has been about prescription charges: a challenging area. Currently, we have no plans to review or extend the NHS prescription charge medical exemption list to include asthma. I heard the points made by hon. Members, but a number of conditions are analogous to asthma, in terms not of their effects, but of their chronic or lifelong impact.
Equally, a balance has to be struck with proportionate charges and the contribution that makes to the NHS drugs budget to facilitate the provision of new treatment. Approximately 89% of prescriptions are dispensed free of charge already, and arrangements are in place to help those most in need. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough alluded to the fact that to support those who do not qualify for an exemption, the cost of prescriptions can be capped by purchasing a prescription pre-payment certificate, and that can be paid for by instalments. A holder of a 12-month certificate can get all the prescriptions they need for just over £2 a week.
When we started the debate, I wondered whether we would use the full hour and a half. It is testament to the hon. Member for Strangford, and the contributions of all hon. Members, that we have, and I should stop here to give him a few minutes to come back. To conclude, it is right for him to bring this debate to the House. I am grateful, as other hon. Members are, because asthma affects many of our constituents, day in, day out, and while we have made huge progress, it is right for him and other hon. Members to continue to press for even more ambition and even more progress. I pay tribute to him for that.
Jim Shannon
I thank all hon. Members for their immense contributions and incredibly helpful comments. I think we all spoke with a united voice, from all parties and all parts of the Chamber. I believe we got an excellent response from the Minister and a commitment—even though asthma is not in his direct portfolio.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) referred to volunteers and charity groups. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) referred to air pollution, as others did. The hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt)—also a Leicester City supporter, though we lost on Saturday, but that is by the way—referred to prescription charges. The firm that she mentioned contacted me as well, and I am pleased that the Minister was able to respond to her questions. The hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) brings a vast amount of knowledge of and interest in this subject. She referred to quality of life, mental health issues and how biologic therapy is needed.
The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), a friend and the SNP spokesperson, spoke about her personal experience of asthma. It is also pleasing to have so many Members present to support the shadow Minister taking her place for the Labour party, the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark). Certainly; she has had an exceptional debut as the shadow Minister in Westminster Hall. I was pleased with her contribution, which encompassed all our thoughts and ideas, notably the effect of air pollution and how treatment for severe asthmatics is not in place.
I thank the Minister so much for his response. He gave us the details and told us about the 2023 target, but we will try to do better. He referred, too, to consideration of the annual review and to the unified or joint guidelines to be agreed. There is much to be encouraged by in his response. With that in mind, I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. Here is a battle to be fought; we are about to fight it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered asthma outcomes.
Mavisbank House
(3 years ago)
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Steve McCabe (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Members are asked by the House to take a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the estate, which can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please give one another and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the restoration of Mavisbank House.
I hope everyone is sitting comfortably, because the next 15 minutes or so have something for everyone: Romans, the Enlightenment, social justice and more. That is what Mavisbank House is—something for everyone. At least, it could be, with the right proposals and the right funding.
Mavisbank House, near Loanhead, in my constituency of Midlothian, is a category A listed building, proudly perched in a landscape of registered ancient woodland and high biodiversity. It is considered the most important example of early 18th century Scottish architecture. Words can do Mavisbank House only so much justice. To really appreciate it in all its splendour, people would have had to see it in person a century ago. That is because this architectural marvel now stands as a gutted, neglected, dilapidated shell. It is literally crumbling by the day.
I hope that, at the end of today’s debate, the Minister will agree that this situation can and should be reversed, and I look forward to setting out the ambitious proposals to save Mavisbank House that would turn this ruin into a real asset for the community. I am sure the Minister would be welcome at any time to come and see its current condition.
This is how the Landmark Trust has referred to Mavisbank House:
“Arguably the most important building at risk case in the UK”.
That is a bold claim, but it is absolutely true. To understand why Mavisbank is more important than hundreds of similar Palladian villas in Scotland and in Britain, we need to start with its history.
Mavisbank House was first planned in 1698 and the foundations were laid in 1723, under the supervision of Scotland’s pre-eminent architect, William Adam. Adam has been credited with being the first to bring Palladian and baroque architecture to Scotland, and he was prolific in transforming fusty old castles into grand country retreats. He totally revolutionised his field. In many ways, Mavisbank House was where this revolution began. It was Scotland’s first Palladian villa, a style that soon became ubiquitous among the landed classes. That brings to mind something that stills rings true today: where Midlothian leads, Scotland follows.
Owing to its pioneering style, Mavisbank House was also a bit of an experiment. It was a prototype for the Roman ideal of cultured retreat and classical design that set the pattern for Scottish and British architecture for the next century. It was a bold experiment, and it succeeded. It totally changed the way the landed classes lived and created a new kind of country economy. Its style embodied the Enlightenment ideals of improvement and logic, making it one of the world’s first physical embodiments of this intellectual revolution.
As for who this ground-breaking architectural experiment was being made for, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik was Mavisbank’s first resident. He might not be one of the towering names of Scottish history, but he certainly knew many of the big names and played a part in many of the key historical events that took place during his lifetime. Through him, Mavisbank was placed at the centre of Scotland and Midlothian’s story.
We could take, for instance, Sir John’s contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment. Sir John served as vice-president of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh at a time when the philosophical foundations of a new world of reason were being laid in the closes and wynds of Edinburgh’s old town. In the midst of that distinctly Scottish movement, which, in the words of historian Arthur Herman, “invented the modern world”, Sir John penned essays on everything from the effect of lightning on trees to the size of deer horns, while remaining true to his Scottish roots by penning humorous songs in the Scots language, his ain mither tongue.
Sir John’s love of writing extended to his friendships. On numerous occasions, Mavisbank hosted the great Enlightenment poet, Allan Ramsay, whose Scots poetry influenced giants such as Robert Ferguson and Robert Burns, and whose son, of the same name, became a renowned portrait artist for everyone from George III to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Into that world of Enlightenment and Scottish cultural renaissance, Mavisbank was born. I hope it can soon be reborn in a new, but similar, context. I look forward to the day when intellectual havering and bonnie music can again be heard in Mavisbank.
Aside from Sir John’s philosophical and musical leanings, he was also a Member of not one, but two, national Parliaments—first, the pre-Union Scottish Parliament, and then this place. I could not possibly comment on which of the two Christmas parties he might have preferred, but when he voted for the Union in 1706, who is to say whether it was a case of being
“bought and sold for English gold”?
Surely not.
Whatever the case, that is another example of Mavisbank’s deep connection to some of the most significant moments in Scottish history and it underlines Mavisbank’s status as a building of utmost historical importance. It sat at the heart of conflicts over intellectualism and Scottish independence, as well as the blossoming of distinctly Scottish arts and culture and a renaissance of the Scots language. Those issues are as relevant today as they were back then.
Perhaps the most salient aspect of Mavisbank’s history is that which touches on one of the darker and most shameful practices carried out by our predecessors—the trading of human beings as slaves. If the Minister happens to be a connoisseur of Caribbean coffee, he will no doubt be aware of Blue Mountain Coffee, a Jamaican coffee company whose main plantation is a place called—you’ve guessed it—Mavis Bank. Mavis Bank, Jamaica, was named after Midlothian’s Mavisbank because of the owner’s Scottish roots. It was recorded as a coffee plantation as early as 1808. There are records of the estate selling slaves in the 1820s. On their labour those fortunes were made.
Mavis Bank, Jamaica, was home to the atrocity of treating human beings as property, for the profit of wealthy Scots, all under the name of a couthy manor house back in the old country—back in Midlothian. That is not an image of ourselves that many of us want to confront, but confront it we must, because it is the truth. By exploring the history of Mavisbank House, we are forced to come face to face with those injustices of the past. We are forced to recognise the horrors of Scotland’s role in the slave trade and learn the lessons needed to build a more just future.
I consider it a great honour to have as one of my constituents Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, who not only discovered the game-changing barley abrasion process in brewing, but has been a prominent campaigner for social justice and human rights for many years. He grew up in Jamaica and became Scotland’s first black professor in 1989. Sir Geoff has used his wealth of life experience and incredible strength of character to campaign for many years against racism and the legacy of slavery, most recently as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Last year, Sir Geoff was a prominent voice calling for the Melville monument in Edinburgh to be reinterpreted through new signage, to reflect Dundas’s support for “gradual abolition”, which delayed the abolition of the slave trade by some 15 years. In the past, Midlothian was instrumental in the racist horrors of the slave trade, but Midlothian residents such as Sir Geoff give me hope that we can contribute to the dismantling of the racism of today.
In the light of Mavisbank House’s huge significance to architecture, the Enlightenment, art and the pursuit of social justice, it is an absolute scunner to see the state of it today. This building of national and European significance is in a state of extreme dilapidation. In the 1950s, the forecourt was used as a scrapyard. In 1973, the house was gutted by fire. It has never recovered and sits as an empty shell, slowly crumbling. Things got so bad that it was scheduled for demolition in 1987; it was saved only by a public outcry and a High Court interdict. Decades of neglectful ownership have left us at a point where we now do not even know who owns it.
It does not have to be this way. There is nothing inevitable about Mavisbank falling into disrepair, and plenty of buildings in a similar state have been given a new lease of life. In the case of Mavisbank House, the Save Mavisbank project has set out a new vision for how this incredible piece of history can be brought back into the present to benefit Midlothian. The Save Mavisbank project is led by Historic Environment Scotland and supported by the Landmark Trust. The project seeks to unlock Mavisbank’s huge potential for environmental, health, economic and cultural benefits, and aims to give this amazing asset back to the community. The project wants not only to recreate the house as it was in yesteryear, but to bring it to life again, with real value for the surrounding communities. The Save Mavisbank project aims to
“return glass to its windows, urns to its rooftops, heat and light to its rooms, laughter to its terraces, living and learning to its stairwells and courtyards”.
The project’s vision is for the remains of Mavisbank House to be compulsory purchased and reunited with the surrounding landscape, in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. The estate would become a natural and historical landscape where people could come to enjoy its beauty, learn its history and take home some of its knowledge. This pioneering plan includes a skill centre, a community wing, visitor accommodation, a community green space, walkways and a participatory rewilding project.
Let me take some time to consider key aspects of the proposals, and the benefits they could bring to Midlothian and to Scotland. I am deeply grateful to Rhona Brankin, chair of the Mavisbank Trust, for her deep knowledge of the site and her passion for the proposals, as well as everyone else involved, including those who showed me round when I have visited. Restoring Mavisbank is much more than preserving a piece of heritage; it is a chance tangibly to improve the lives of people in a former mining area that needs investment. The process of restoring it, maintaining it, and then hosting programmes at Mavisbank it would create jobs, skills and training opportunities—this is a massive investment opportunity. Creating skills and jobs is a core component of the project, whether in landscape management, horticulture, stone masonry or heritage science. On top of that, Historic Environment Scotland’s Engine Shed skills centre could provide a crucial link to wider training activities across the country.
Let me come to the fantastic tourism value of the site. Midlothian is blessed with world-renowned heritage sites such as Rosslyn Chapel, Penicuik House and Dalkeith Country Park, to name but a few. The addition of Mavisbank House would create what Save Mavisbank has called a “string of pearls” along the Esk Valley, cementing Midlothian as a visitor destination right on the doorstep of Scotland’s capital. An invigorated tourism economy, and all the accommodation and catering businesses that that would bring, is much needed post-pandemic.
There are even proposals for on-site accommodation at Mavisbank itself. That would also offer a chance to pioneer how the heritage sector should approach challenging sites such as this in the future. Mavisbank is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious heritage restoration projects ever planned in Scotland, so just think of the lessons that could be learnt from it if we took it on.
The health and wellbeing benefits of this project are numerous too. NHS Lothian’s support for the project points to the fact that the proposals include “green health prescribing”—using exposure to nature to tackle mental and physical health problems. Save Mavisbank’s community surveying found that one of Mavisbank’s qualities most valued by visitors is the sense of tranquillity and green space. Why not harness that for health benefits? It is an approach that started gathering steam only in recent years, and, with NHS Lothian on board, Mavisbank could be at the centre of this movement—just as it has been with so many movements in the past. Gardening is a big part of this, and with its ample grounds there is even the potential for allotments, which are something in very high demand in Midlothian.
I have not even mentioned the potential for digital reconstruction projects, live theatre, and arts spaces. It is a vast and varied space; it is almost a case of, “Name something the community needs, and Mavisbank has the potential for it.” I am sure the Minister needs no telling just how rare that kind of opportunity is. Incredibly, there might even be the remains of a Roman fort in the grounds of the house—a rare thing in unconquered Caledonia. The Romans might not have made it very far in Scotland, but they did make it to Midlothian, and I am sure they found it well worth the journey from Rome, just as with our EU friends nowadays who find their way there. Imagine how that potential site could benefit local schools and nearby universities studying archaeology—yet another string to the bow.
Importantly, collaboration and community engagement run deep in the Save Mavisbank proposal. It is the product of collaboration between the Landmark Trust and Historic Environment Scotland and comes after four years of close working through a joint project board meeting monthly in Scotland and England to draw up the scheme.
On a local level, Midlothian Council has confirmed its support and its willingness to take forward the compulsory purchase of the house, and the people of Midlothian themselves have had a voice throughout, as a community representative has sat on the project board since its inception. Consultation with community stakeholders has been key.
Beyond that, both NHS Lothian and NatureScot formally support the proposal. NHS Lothian would be brought on board for the social prescribing programmes planned for the house’s grounds, and NatureScot would be a key partner in the environmental programmes. There is huge local enthusiasm for saving Mavisbank, demonstrated by the project’s audience research. Current efforts are indebted to the community-led Mavisbank Trust; its efforts to rescue the building were by the community and for the community.
However, saving Mavisbank is completely contingent on funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Put plainly by Save Mavisbank,
“if the National Lottery Heritage Fund cannot support this project it will not proceed”.
Following an initial failed lottery bid in 2013, Save Mavisbank was advised to reapply, which makes it particularly disappointing that the latest proposal was again rejected in July.
Potential challenges, which could have impacted the application, included issues with parking and general access, but those are easily surmountable. Save Mavisbank has considered having multiple different entrances spread throughout the ground, and the improvement of paths and signage are in the proposal. More steps could be taken to move that forward.
In the 2021 bid, the project’s partners had committed to finding £10 million, on top of the £8 million it sought from the lottery. Funding for the project is there; the lottery is just the missing element in it. In spite of their bitter disappointment, everyone previously on board remains committed to the project, which is coming together. So many different bodies with a shared motivation and passion is really quite something to behold. We cannot allow that momentum and energy to fade into nothing.
That brings me to the reason for this debate: to bring Mavisbank to the Minister’s attention. Obviously, I recognise that a big hurdle here is the question of funding, specifically from the lottery, but there are some key ways in which the Government could do their bit to help save Mavisbank. Will the Minister meet with me and representatives from Save Mavisbank to discuss how we can take this forward? That would be the best way to get into the detail of the issues.
To draw my contribution to a close, us Scots pride ourselves on our history and our ability to keep it alive and vivid in our own culture. However, the track record in giving due respect to architectural heritage has been quite shocking in the past; ancient tenements have been demolished for car parks and castles have been allowed to crumble into the sea. Mavisbank cannot be allowed to join the list of important buildings that used to exist. Let us not repeat yesterday’s mistakes and allow a piece of history to disappear, then mourn its loss after it is too late. Let us act while we still can. I will share some words directly from the building itself, translated from the Latin carved into the stone:
“And may what the numerous ages erode be restored intact, and may it be granted that the older you are, the more beautiful you may shine.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for securing this debate on the important topic of Mavisbank House.
As the hon. Member said, there was indeed something for everyone in his speech, which highlighted a good smattering of famous names from our history and acknowledged, quite rightly, that not all of our history is glamorous or uncontroversial. We have some challenging facts in our history, which we also need to face head-on, as he quite rightly articulated. As he clearly laid out, Mavisbank House is testament to a unique aspect of Scottish and British history and is one of the most important at-risk heritage sites in the country. The Government share the hon. Member’s concern that this unique piece of Scottish and British history has fallen into such disrepair.
The hon. Member rightly mentioned the importance as Scotland’s most pre-eminent small country house and first palladium villa. It was built by two towering figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Sir John Clerk and William Adam. Sir John Clerk was a poet, politician, musician, classicist, mathematician and philosopher, which puts us all to shame, and he played a vital role, as he mentioned, in the Act of Union. The house Sir John built at Mavisbank was a testament to the man and his time. Mavisbank would go on to become an iconic landmark, not just in Scotland but across the United Kingdom.
I have not yet had the opportunity to visit Mavisbank, but I appreciate the hon. Member’s offer and would like to take him up on it at some point. I have seen pictures of the site, which are quite alarming, and I share his concern at the potential loss of this important historic monument. I also share his sentiment that it is a vitally important heritage asset for the local community. Mavisbank House is a fine example of the power of heritage and culture to create a sense of place. Heritage sites such as Mavisbank House are also vital for the local economy, attracting visitors and providing high-skilled jobs, and I was pleased to hear the hon. Member mention the importance of those important skilled jobs in the heritage sector.
The hon. Member mentioned his understandable disappointment and frustration at the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s decision not to fund the scheme through the heritage horizon award. The National Lottery Heritage Fund is an arm’s length body of the Government, as I am sure he will know. It is for the fund rather than me or Government to decide or dictate which of the many worthy bids receive funding. Since its formation in 1994, it has awarded more than £3 billion to almost 10,000 areas, historic buildings and monument projects across the UK. In Scotland alone, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has distributed more than £890 million to 4,727 projects since 1994. In the hon. Member’s constituency of Midlothian, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has invested £17 million in that time, of which more than £12 million has funded built heritage projects such as the Penicuik heritage regeneration project and many more important historic places and assets across Midlothian. The hon. Member mentioned Penicuik in his speech, so we see the importance of that name in his local area.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has worked tirelessly to support the heritage sector through several alternative funds. However, I share the hon. Member’s disappointment that Mavisbank House was not able to secure heritage horizon funding. I have been assured that all due processes were followed—I do not think he was questioning the process—but the harsh reality was that the heritage horizon award was a highly competitive fund designed to revolutionise the UK’s heritage through investment in “ambitious, innovative and transformational projects.”
I am told that, fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on perspective—other schemes matched those objectives even more clearly than Mavisbank, leading to the difficult decision to reject its bid for funding. Although Mavisbank also met those criteria, limited funding can only go so far. An example of a successful bid in Scotland was the Cairngorms national park authority, which was awarded £12.5 million. That award will fund an ambitious seven-year programme to achieve transformational change for people and nature in north-east Scotland. It will bring together 45 different partner organisations to look at cultural heritage, environmental protection, climate change and biodiversity, and deliver meaningful improvements to people’s health and wellbeing. Though that is a great example of a project, it does not distract from the hon. Member’s compelling arguments about Mavisbank, covering many of those areas as well.
I understand that the National Lottery Heritage Fund has been in contact with the hon. Member, as well as with Historic Environment Scotland and the Landmark Trust, which I acknowledge play a pivotal role in securing our national heritage. I understand that the National Lottery Heritage Fund has provided feedback and is looking at alternative options for Mavisbank House. I urge him to explore all available options—he is clearly doing that—to save Mavisbank House, including the National Heritage Memorial Fund, a funder of last resort for assets of national importance in the UK. I am sure that, as one of the most important at-risk heritage sites in Scotland, Mavisbank House would have a strong case. Of course, any decisions are at the discretion of the National Heritage Memorial Fund board, but I am sure that, given the case that I have heard articulated today, he would get a strong and sympathetic hearing. As hon. Members will be aware, heritage is a devolved matter for the Scottish Government, and I also therefore urge the hon. Member to continue conversations with the Scottish Government and Historic Environment Scotland.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for bringing the house and this fascinating piece of history, which his speech articulated so well, to our attention. I am happy to continue conversations with him, the Scottish Government and any other stakeholders. It sounds as though he is already engaging with a very large number of stakeholders, and Mavisbank House is fortunate to have him bringing so many people together and supporting this bid with such passion. I am happy to help in any way I can—with the caveat that I cannot promise funding that is not directly under my control—with this really important project. I wish him and everyone involved the best of luck in securing funding for this unique heritage site.
Question put and agreed to.
Affordable Housing: Planning Reform
(3 years ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear a face covering when not speaking in the debate, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming onto the Estate; those can be obtained from Portcullis House or taken at home, as preferred. Please also use your judgment—everyone here is very intelligent—and give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the Chamber.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered access to affordable housing and planning reform.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to take the lead in today’s debate. I would like to declare a registered financial interest in that I have a part-share in a property used for long-term rent. I am glad to have secured this debate, as the severity of the housing situation in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which I represent, requires urgent intervention. It is not a new situation; I recall having a meeting with the current Health Secretary when he was the Housing Secretary, some years ago now, asking him to intervene in the housing situation on Scilly by allowing the council to have powers to address the rate of second home ownership on the islands.
Likewise, in relation to housing in Cornwall, my Cornish colleagues and I have regularly raised the difficulty faced by residents to acquire affordable housing since we were elected. More recently, we have raised this directly with the Prime Minister in meeting of Cornish MPs. I secured a debate in 2018 asking the Government to address the difficulties that second home ownership and the holiday let industry place on families who need affordable homes so that they can both work and raise their families locally.
Various measures have been introduced, predominantly in support of first-time buyers, which is welcome, as having a home of one’s own brings security and a commitment to the local community that is rarely matched by any other intervention. However, recent developments in relation to the pandemic and a clumsy approach to housing by some council officers, until recently, have starved ordinary working families of appropriate and affordable secure housing. Therefore, while access to affordable housing for working families is not a new difficulty, it has become a whole lot more difficult over the past two years.
In the first quarter of 2021, searches for homes to buy in Cornwall topped 15 million, and 1.1 million people searched for homes to rent. Our total population is just half a million, and many of them are finding that the house that they rent and believed was secure is being taken back by the landlord to capitalise on the boom in Cornwall as a holiday destination. I feel slightly guilty because I have promoted Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly as holiday destinations for many years; I might need to tone that down a bit, because although it has had the desired effect, it has also put enormous pressure on our housing supply.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
If my hon. Friend is going to stop promoting people coming to Cornwall, he is very welcome to promote them coming to Devon. However, he makes a serious point about the fact that the impact of visitors and tourists is driving up prices. Does my hon. Friend think that there are ways in which we can act by closing the business rate loophole, for instance?
Derek Thomas
I would not want a tabloid paper to misinterpret what I said about coming to Cornwall; please do still come. I am going to Devon as well, so let us not argue about jam and cream. Absolutely, the topic of the debate I had in 2018 was that very thing: how to ensure that properties that should pay council tax do so, because that helps to deliver services that we all need, including for those who own a second home.
If a person is lucky enough to get anywhere near a rental property, then they will pay approximately £100 a week for one bedroom in a shared house; £200 a week for a two-bedroom house with no garden; and £400-plus a week for a three-bedroom house. That may not surprise people living in London, but it marks an enormous inflation in rent in Cornwall, particularly given that the average wage in my constituency is £25,000 a year. It can quickly be seen that such rent is not an affordable housing solution.
As it happens, there is almost no chance of securing a property. A search for houses to rent in my constituency last night returned a total of three three-bedroom houses across the whole constituency. A letting agent has advised me that 100 families compete for each three-bedroom property that is advertised. Those families include key public sector workers who have accepted jobs as teachers, police officers, NHS workers and, ironically, according to our own planning department, planning officers themselves. On the Isles of Scilly, people with jobs that are critical to the islands’ day-to-day existence face the prospect of leaving Scilly in the spring if they cannot find a home to rent. Properties for sale are equally few, and are out of reach for the majority of those needing homes in Cornwall and on Scilly. House prices have risen by 15% in the last year.
I do not want to dwell on the severity of the situation much more, other than to thank a number of town and parish councils in my constituency. They share my concern and have taken time to discuss the issue and write to me, pressing and calling for action. They include Penzance Council, Ludgvan Parish Council, St Just Town Council, St Erth Parish Council, Sancreed Parish Council and a representative of Madron Parish Council, to name just a few.
I am pleased to say that there has been a dramatic gear change at Cornwall Council since May this year. A new Conservative administration, council leaders and MPs are tackling the housing shortage. The council’s strategy, now under consultation, includes commitments to improve availability and access to homes for local residents by working with public and private sector partners to bring forward sites, and to provide modular private rented homes for key workers and local people in towns. After years of pressure from me, there is a renewed emphasis on bringing more long-term empty homes back into use. It is unbelievable that there are thousands of empty homes in Cornwall. They are not second homes or holiday lets; they are just empty—not used at all—despite the pressure on housing that we have had for such a long time.
The council plans to increase the rate of affordable housing provision on exception sites—increasing the minimum number of affordable housing units, I hope to 100%—through the use of grants. It will work with housing associations to develop a pipeline of sites to increase affordable housing, including by releasing council sites, which is a new and novel idea. Critically, the council wants to re-engage with small and medium-sized developers to find and develop land, and to step up work with local councils, parishes, towns and communities to identify suitable and stalled sites.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
In my constituency of Twickenham, housing is extremely expensive. For anyone who grows up in the area and for key workers, as the hon. Gentleman said, it is almost impossible to get on the housing ladder. The social housing waiting list is enormous, and I see people every week who are struggling to get rehoused. He spoke about finding sites. We have very few sites in south-west London. Does he agree that, where there are public sector-owned sites, for instance police stations—Teddington police station, to be exact, in my constituency—there is national legislation that forces the owner to get the best value, so they have to sell to the highest bidder? I know that there are local housing associations—and, indeed, a GP surgery—that would be keen to redevelop that police station for affordable and social housing, but they are going to be outbid by luxury developers, who will build more luxury housing that we do not need.
Derek Thomas
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That is a theme with which we are familiar in Cornwall. In fact, in 2015 we signed a devolution deal that talked about one public estate. The idea was that all publicly owned land would be used for the benefit of the local community, including for housing. It would be fair to say that that has not materialised, for various reasons. When we talked to the NHS, it said what the hon. Lady said: that it must get the maximum return. The police station in St Ives, where the housing shortage is most critical, has been sold, even though there was a local attempt to try to secure it for housing. There is a real challenge, and maybe the Minister will look at that. Network Rail owns land, and all sorts of land that could be built on seems to be locked up. That would be a great thing to address, and I am sure that it will be addressed in the White Paper.
Another bugbear of mine has been the sheer number of planning proposals that have approval but are yet to be built. I understand that, in Cornwall alone, there are 19 units that are approved and not yet built. The council intends to work with Homes England to develop a partnership to unlock developments that have planning permission, so that they can become homes for local people. Other ideas include a pilot to explore the conversion of vacant buildings in town centres, which the towns fund is seeking to do in Penzance and St Ives.
I am also hopeful that the council recognises that it is not solely responsible for bringing family homes into existence. For example, despite several attempts by me and other colleagues in Cornwall, the council has repeatedly blocked opportunities to build family homes using models such as rent to buy, because it has an apparent dislike of local people freely owning their own homes. This is a missed opportunity, as I know that rent-to-buy companies have had ambitions to build thousands of homes on sites without using any public money, which would have helped to address many of the pressures that we see. I am hopeful that we will see a change of heart at the council.
The timing of this debate is not an accident. I have been trying to secure it for some time but was particularly keen to get it now, because I am aware that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities plans to bring forward revised proposals to address the problems faced by hundreds of thousands of people who need housing across the country. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) referred to the waiting list for social housing in her constituency. In Cornwall, there are 14,000 homes needed by people on the list. There is no better way to level up than to ensure that people have a secure home of their own.
Secure homes mean secure communities which, in turn, mean secure rural schools, secure services such as post offices, GP practices and bus routes, and the survival of pubs and churches. The Government’s plan must speed up the delivery of homes that are genuinely secure and affordable. Cash that goes to councils for housing must be spent on housing, not on endless meetings and draft proposals. A recent council-owned scheme that I visited took seven years to deliver 55 houses for shared ownership and affordable rent.
Support must be given to small builders, which are best placed to build quality homes in rural areas, and there needs to be a massive effort to attract people into the trade with high-quality training opportunities. The building trade can be seen—I know this from my experience in school, because I went on to become a Cornish mason, which involves slate, stone and different types of plastering—as a negative career, but I can testify that some of our most skilled people work in the construction trade, and we need an awful lot more of them.
As I have just discussed, land belonging to the public sector must be secured in order to build homes that are affordable, and this must be done quickly. I am fully in favour of building homes, but we must ensure that they are built in the right place for the right people, and at the right price. If we do not, which is the greatest fear of people in Cornwall, house building in areas such as Cornwall will never match the demand of an open market, prices will always be out of reach, and green fields will continue to be lost. In the current climate, we cannot leave the situation to the mercy of market forces. Although I would ordinarily support that, intervention is needed in Cornwall, on Scilly and in many parts of the United Kingdom.
Novel ideas must be considered to ensure that people can access the homes they need. With your permission, Dr Huq, I will suggest a few novel ideas to the Minister that would help to address the situation in Cornwall and elsewhere where it is a real issue for local people. First, we could speed up and increase the supply of housing by using Homes England money to pay on results, such as rewarding social landlords and developers big and small on the completion of homes that people can afford. At the moment, it takes an age to even get anywhere near the site by using Homes England money. It would be far better to create the incentive that the money follows the completion of homes.
Secondly, the Government should consider offering local authorities the opportunity to introduce a blanket requirement for all new building to be restricted to primary residence only. This policy idea is reassuring to communities who find that they are quickly becoming ghost towns in the winter months. When I go and talk to my parish and town councils about the housing that is needed, they have no confidence that the houses will meet a local need. To have a blanket restriction—as a tool and opportunity for local councils—that all new housing must be for primary residence only would really help to reassure communities who, at the moment, often oppose such developments.
Anthony Mangnall
I am sorry to interrupt and have two bites of the cherry, but my hon. Friend is making a really important point. I understand that somewhere else in Cornwall has introduced such primary residence restrictions, and I wonder whether he might add any weight to the implications of doing so and whether it has been deemed a success.
Derek Thomas
It is a great subject, because it actually happens to be in St Ives, which is part of my constituency, so I know a little bit about that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A neighbourhood plan introduced the policy of primary residence only, so all new housing has to be for primary residence. They did it—this is years ago now, so it is not a new problem—because purchased properties were often pulled down and others built in their place, which devastated the local community. We have seen villages such as Mousehole, Porthleven, Coverack and others where, in winter, the lights are pretty much switched off.
St Ives has done it and we have not seen a particular impact. In the summer I went to see quite a large site developed by bunnyhomes, where every single home for primary residence was sold without a problem. It definitely can be done and it would make it easier if it applied across the whole authority, rather than in one particular town area. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.
The Government should re-emphasise to councils our commitment to home ownership and make it more difficult for councils, such as Cornwall council, to restrict other housing delivery models, such as rent to buy. I fully understand the pressure on houses to urgently respond to the situation today, but I cannot stress enough how positive it is for a family to own a home and put roots down in that community, support the local school and feel that they have a stake in how that community goes forward. Home ownership is a significant part of the mix and must be protected.
The Government should consider an incentive to landlords to sell to their tenants by enabling capital gains tax to be used to give the tenant help with the deposit and purchase price. We remember that a previous Chancellor introduced rules that made the financial incentives for being a long-let landlord much more difficult. Many landlords in my constituency are looking to sell their properties to their tenants, but that is surprisingly difficult to do. One idea came to me from a landlord who is keen to do this. His alternative is to switch it—avoid the tax implications and switch the property to a holiday let, which he does not want to do. We are seeing other landlords do that, but he wants to have the opportunity to sell his property to the tenant, but the tenant needs help to get the deposit together. There may be a way to use capital gains to support that transfer. Otherwise, we will continue to see long lets lost to holiday lets or sold to the highest bidder. These homes are often snapped up by those who can afford a second home to retreat to in coastal areas and other attractive parts of the British Isles. That issue must be addressed.
The Government should consider introducing a licence scheme, so that properties currently lived in require a specific licence before they can become a holiday let or bolthole. This policy idea favours permanent residents. In the past couple of years, because of the need for staycation and inability and sometimes reluctance to fly abroad for holidays, we have seen people flooding into tourist attraction areas and driving up a holiday let market that has seen large numbers of families evicted from their homes, which they have sometimes rented for many years, and these homes transferred a holiday lets. We would therefore like the Government to intervene and require a licence to be given to allow that house to move from a permanent residence to a holiday let or some other use. That is novel, I know, but we are in such a time where families cannot hold down the jobs or get the jobs we need them to have because of the lack of housing.
Councils should consider applying council tax to all homes, irrespective of their use. At the moment, the police, the parish and town councils do not get their share of the council tax if that property is switched to a holiday let or business, as we discussed a few moments ago. Such a policy of council tax across all properties built for living in would also save the UK taxpayer, who at the moment pays the Treasury to refund councils which lose that council tax income. That is a fair idea that recognises and values houses built to be lived in.
The Government have encouraged the possibility of creating new locally led development corporations to encourage local areas to come forward with ideas for new towns to deliver jobs, homes and economic growth. There is an appetite in Cornwall to identify village garden sites. This seems entirely sensible, but the challenge facing this innovation is the immediate escalation of land value when an area is identified for development. That absorbs the very money that would otherwise be used to create the infrastructure to serve a new community.
The increase in land value, which the locally led corporation then has to find, undermines the viability of the scheme and the ability to deliver the infrastructure needed. The Secretary of State and the Minister here, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), should consider allowing these locally led development corporations to be established much earlier in the process, to secure the sites before the value rockets. This policy idea enables the development of these garden villages, which reduces the incredible pressure placed on existing towns and villages to meet the entire housing demand.
I would like to quickly move on to the thorny issue of enforcement, because as we consider planning reform, enforcement should not be ignored. Currently, we have something of a gold rush in Cornwall, with people and businesses buying any land they can get hold of. Small farms are being sold because they are no longer commercially viable and are often snapped up by individuals who have no intention of farming but would quite like a piece of Cornwall’s real estate. They get hold of this land and carry out all sorts of development and destruction, knowing that the council’s enforcement team is overwhelmed, under-resourced and seemingly lacks power, or at least fears legal challenges at every turn. It is a huge problem across Cornwall, and I am sure it is a problem elsewhere in the country.
It is a complex issue, but I would like to take this opportunity to suggest a simple adjustment. The Government could, and should, introduce a fixed penalty system where councils can apply a significant and proportionate fine to both the owner and contractor. An owner or developer may feel that a breach of planning and possible enforcement is worth the risk, as the financial gain may outweigh any enforcement action. However, such people rely heavily on contractors who will be less inclined to breach planning law if the penalty applied to them. As a former tradesman, I know that I would check to ensure the task I am charged with has the necessary planning consent if there were a potential fine and a blot on my copybook. A fines system would fund enforcement and ensure councils have the capacity to do a good job.
When it comes to housing, this is the time to be bold. It is time to apply some clear, blue-sky thinking and demonstrate that the Government are on the side of those who, in the past, we have described as “just about managing.” Right now, in Cornwall and on Scilly, these families are not managing.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
I aim to take the Front-Bench spokespeople from 3.38 pm, so please could the Back-Bench speakers stick to six minutes? We kept changing it, as we did not know how long the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) was going to speak for, but if everyone sticks to six minutes, then everyone will get in.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for opening the debate. I want to reinforce much of what he said, because the challenges that we have in York seem to replicate those in Cornwall and elsewhere across the country.
We have a housing market that is out of control and heating up at pace, year after year. When I bought my first house, the housing affordability ratio was 3. In 2019, in York, it was 8.3. Right now it is 11.7. So, just in the period of the pandemic, it has already risen significantly and is increasing even today. In York it is growing faster than anywhere else in the north, or indeed, I understand, in the country, at 14% in the last year. York is a very desirable place to live and, with new ways of working, people now realise they can live in York and still have a base in London.
People’s patterns are changing, but the housing crisis is just escalating for us. We cannot recruit skilled workers, the tourism and hospitality sectors are struggling to function and, while social care has not been able to recruit for some time, we are now seeing graduate professions, such as working in the NHS, coming under significant strain. People cannot afford to live in York, but we need their skills. Therefore, the impact of the housing crisis is showing itself in the economy.
As the luxury and investment markets increase, the housing market is heating up further. I understand that estate agents can, and do, now name their price and that investors see opportunity. Why are we in this situation? There are so many questions to be asked, including why we see housing as at asset at all, when we know it should be a human right. York’s social housing numbers have also been falling, but at the same time, the waiting lists have increased threefold since I have been an MP. Affordability is completely unaffordable in York. In post-industrial cities such as York, like in many areas of the north, there is an economic dependence on low-wage and insecure work. Housing poverty is a reality for vast swathes of my constituents. In the private rental sector, behind Bath, Brighton and Oxford, York is the fourth least-affordable place to rent outside of London—and the least affordable in the north. When 61% of renters have no savings, a future of home ownership is completely unrealistic. This traps more people in housing poverty.
Over the past decade, the City of York Council has only built an average of 36 affordable homes a year, and has seen a net loss of its social housing stock. Over 200 of these units lie empty, awaiting repairs, but the council is struggling to recruit the necessary skills to bring them back into use because traders cannot afford to live in York. That means that we have a skills shortage preventing us from bringing those properties into use. That is a problem right across the industry; it shows how investment is needed to get control of the housing market—to then get control of the economy.
Of those who are lucky enough to rent, many are living in box bedrooms—I am talking about whole families—or damp, mouldy homes. That is completely unacceptable. As in Cornwall, York is being absolutely overrun by Airbnb’s, holiday lets and second homes. Over a quarter of the housing stock is owned by private landlords, who can literally name their price. In addition to the measures laid out by the hon. Member for St Ives, we need to collect proper data, both on what domestic residential properties are being used for and on Airbnb’s and holiday lets. We also need to ensure that we have a mechanism or lever to secure homes for primary occupation, as opposed to other use.
York’s local plan is with the inspectors; this is an issue that runs sore in our city, so we want to see that come forward as fast as possible. However, the local plan process was designed for a different era; I put it to the Minister that we need to refresh and overhaul that process, so it is not just about numbers but about looking closely at tenure and what is needed to join up the housing and economic needs of an area. We need to look at longer-term development, and ensure that it is hardwired into what we are doing. As the Minister knows, we have a massive site in York Central that is owned by Homes England and Network Rail, which are public sector organisations, and yet the demand on Network Rail is to release that land as a capital receipt, in order to see investment over 60 or 70 years that will enable housing to be built to meet local needs in the right forms of tenure.
There are so many things that I could speak about today, but I will end by saying that the issue of land banking must be addressed. Developers’ ability to sit on land without having to pay the price, needs to be brought into focus. Today housing is a driver of inequality, and housing is too important to be used in such a way. We need to make sure that we build homes that people can afford to live in, and end this racket in the housing market.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), because this is a long overdue debate on a subject that many of us across the south-west feel extraordinarily passionate about, and extremely concerned. Each week, issues relating to available housing affordability can be found in my inbox—by post or email. It is becoming distinctly more alarming over the course of covid.
I just want to add a bit more of a Devon perspective. First, in my constituency of Totnes and south Devon, there are 5,000 second homes in South Hams; 27% of all second homes are found in the south-west. To put that in context, 57% of the properties in Salcombe are second homes; in Hope Cove that goes up to 80%; and in Thurlestone Sands it is 95%. That has had the undeniable impact of pushing up rental and property purchase rates. Anybody who wants to work or live in the local area on a full-time basis simply cannot find a property to live in, so of course they look around to see where they can find appropriate housing—and it is often many miles away. I think about the lifeboat service in Salcombe. I think about the teachers in Salcombe. I think about the doctors and nurses who live in and around Kingsbridge and Totnes, who do not have adequate properties to live in to enable them to work and provide the very necessary public service that we expect in our rural community.
The second part of this is the way in which we calculate what is “affordable”. According to the Devon County Council website, “affordable” is not based on the reality of what people are actually earning on the ground, so I ask the Minister to be considerate and to look into how we might find a better formula. When we have a lot of people with second homes working outside the area, it pumps the number up so that it is not indicative of what local wages really are.
From my perspective, the purpose of this debate, and the purpose of the discussion that we are having around affordability and available housing, is to make sure that those that do have second homes pay their fair share, and that there is support for those who want to live and work in the area. I do not want to take up much time because I know that lots of people will make many of the same points, but since I arrived in Westminster I have made it a bit of a mission to work on closing the loophole around business rates for second home owners.
For those that do not know, lots of people got away with not paying council tax by claiming business rates, and therefore were eligible for business rates relief. When covid came along, they were then eligible for the covid grants, and there were two of those. So actually, out of the 13,593 properties in Devon alone, the vast majority claimed the covid grants. I have no doubt that some of them absolutely are legitimate businesses, and we should welcome their taking that money to support their businesses so that they can continue to thrive, but I personally know of many examples where lots of people were claiming for that money because they were just putting their second home on to the business rates so that they could escape paying council tax and then, in the circumstances of covid, benefited. That is totally unacceptable and morally, I have to say, completely dubious and unacceptable. I hope there will be a review to look into those who were claiming to be eligible to pay business rates but were not actually running businesses. That is important.
That brings me to what I think we can do. The Chancellor has been good by mentioning that he wants to close that loophole, but can we do it sooner rather than later, and not in the expectation that more grants will be paid out? We need to announce where we are going with this. I might add that there should be a minimum requirement of actual days let in order to be eligible for business rates, and the Minister should make it as high as possible because legitimate businesses would have nothing to fear—so 180 days, 200 days, 210 days, or whatever he thinks is proportionate. That would at least start us on the process to getting this right and closing that loophole.
I have been very privileged to work with Councillor Judy Pearce, the leader of South Hams District Council. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), in a fantastic speech, made a very important point about data. In South Hams we are running a review of all second home properties and Airbnb, and we are happy to share best practice with any other hon. Member. We need to be able to point to the data so that we can make the argument somewhat better. So my first ask is to push on with the business rates.
My second ask is around Airbnb. It is great that people want to come to south Devon and spend their holiday in the south-west, but I do not understand the taxation policy around Airbnb. I believe that all too often the money does not stay in the local area, unlike with local letting agencies. We need to consider what Edinburgh and London are doing, and now, as I think I saw in The Guardian—it might surprise people that I occasionally read The Guardian—the island of Tiree has just introduced an alternative to Airbnb. Those are models that we should definitely look at.
My third and fourth points are on local government. Where possible there should be, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives said, a new planning requirement to have one’s house as a second home. Local government and local authorities should have the power to raise council tax above and beyond the statutory level that they have now. Again, it is about the stresses and strains that are put on our resources and our communities, so we have to make sure that we get that right.
It is great that we now have the planning Bill. The Minister has been extremely diligent in listening and working with many of us. Two weeks ago, we debated the Planning (Enforcement) Bill. If we insert measures in that Bill into the planning Bill, we might use the fines put on all the developers that break their enforcement orders to build social and affordable housing. Frankly, we need to toughen up on developers and ensure that we are leading by example.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), who has called such an important debate, especially for the south-west. The holiday industry is important to us, but so is our housing market. Our housing market in the south-west is broken, and needs fixing.
The pandemic has turbocharged our housing crisis. We not only have a housing crisis; we have a homes crisis. In many cases, there are enough houses but not enough homes for people to live in. Too many tenants have been turfed out to make way for holiday lets and second homes, which can sit empty for much of the year.
The low-wage economy means that many people cannot afford to live in the communities where they work. The sell-off of council homes means that there is no longer that safety net for far too many local families, and that is not good enough. We need to see proper action, and nowhere is that more important than in the south-west, where more than a quarter of England’s second homes are, according to 2019 data. Our rural and coastal villages are being hollowed out, and local people are priced out of moving or buying within the community where they grew up. In cities such as Plymouth, homes are being flipped to become Airbnb properties, damaging our local hotel trade and robbing local people of a home of their own.
I want to see more people come to the south-west—it is a great place to be—but housing policy should put local people first. We need a focus on first homes, not second homes. That is why I have worked with Councillor Jayne Kirkham, leader of the Labour group on Cornwall County Council, and Councillor Tudor Evans, leader of the opposition on Plymouth City Council, to develop our “First Homes not Second Homes” approach. That is a very simple, five-point radical plan, designed to tackle the housing crisis that is facing so many rural and coastal communities because of the surging number of second homes and holiday and Airbnb lets in the south-west, especially since the pandemic hit. The region most affected by second homes is rightly where the solution to fix the problem should be first applied. Our “First Homes not Second Homes” approach is a simple one, which I hope that the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) will be able to support.
First, let us give councils the power to quadruple council tax on holiday lets and empty second homes. We need an economic disincentive against keeping houses empty, denying local people homes.
Secondly, let us introduce a licensing scheme for second homes, holiday homes and Airbnb lets, to understand the full extent and to set a minimum floor on the number of homes in any community that must be for local people and not for second homes, holiday homes or Airbnb lets. The minimum floor should be 51%, meaning that no community can be dominated by folks who do not live there. Then let us give councils the power to adjust that threshold upwards, to suit local circumstances—60%, 75% or 90%—because it is time that we called time on the takeover of the south-west by absent landlords.
Thirdly, let us create a “last shop in the village” fund, so that councils gain the power to introduce an affordable community infrastructure levy on empty and underused second homes, to support the last shop in the village, the last pharmacy, the last post office, the last pub and the last bus. Hollowed-out communities do not sustain essential community infrastructure and services. We need to find a new way to keep them in business.
Because people should not need to move away from where they grew up to get a decent job and a home they can afford, I want us to focus, fourthly, on an effort to build first homes, not second homes. That means building more genuinely affordable zero-carbon homes to buy or rent and for social rent, with a preference and priority for local people. In particular, that should focus on the key workers who keep our communities alive—the nurses, the shop workers, the teachers, the care workers, the farm workers who are now being priced out of our communities.
Finally, we need to introduce a discount lock for future renters and purchasers of those properties, to ensure that affordable first homes are not lost in the market blizzard of second home and holiday let purchases after that first family moves on, staircasing the benefits, not losing them. That is why we need a focus on first homes, not second homes.
We need to be bold, because our communities are being dominated by a second-homes approach. If we do not act soon, the south-west’s amazing attractiveness will be lost. Shops will not have anyone to work in them. Care homes will not have anyone to support the people inside. We will lose the essential spirit of the west country. That is why we need a focus on first homes, not second homes. I hope the Minister will respond to those points. We need to put first homes first and second homes second.
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing, as he called it, a timely debate that is at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. I question the Cornwall and Devon bias to my right; Derbyshire is where people should be going for their holidays.
Like many former coal communities, the Bolsover constituency is fairly rural. Small pit villages, such as Glapwell and Shuttlewood, and small towns are its backbone. Anyone who has driven through the constituency recently will have seen the number of new dwellings popping up—439 since 2019. I have had the pleasure of visiting many of them, and many are affordable. It is a step in the right direction. It is great to hear how welcome those new residents are, many of whom are moving from outside the constituency and, indeed, from the south-east because they realise the benefits of living in Derbyshire.
In my relatively short time as the Member for Bolsover, my mission has always been focused on four things: infrastructure, skilled jobs, education and housing, which are all tied together. An area needs those things to thrive. They cannot be looked at in isolation. There is no point having housing without jobs and infrastructure, and there is no point building it all without equipping people with the skills they need to take advantage of those opportunities. Places in my constituency such as Shirebrook have suffered cycles of stagnation and deprivation that are difficult to disrupt. Nothing has ever really replaced the jobs and pride that the mines brought to many of my local communities. Honest people can work hard their entire lives, but because of the social and economic facts of the area, it is hard to grow the standard of living.
It is crucial that the Government continue to make bold decisions to promote the sustainable building of new homes in parts of the world like Shirebrook, which the Minister visited recently. On top of the tremendous benefits to the construction sector, new affordable housing is an important part of our offer to young people in our community. For too long, it has been accepted that, to find a good job and start a good life, people have to move away from places like Bolsover, where there are limited services and opportunities. Building affordable homes gives young people an incentive to stay local and invest their energy and creativity in the place they grew up. It can keep families together; staying local allows young people to maintain their most powerful support networks during a mental health crisis, takes pressure off the social care system and breaks down the worrying trend of loneliness in old age.
That is why I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to launch the First Homes scheme in Shirebrook. It allows local people and key workers the opportunity to buy their first home at a 30% discount. I was grateful to host the then Secretary of State for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who I think appreciated the unique challenges associated with regeneration in my constituency. Actively building new homes allows us to plan and grow our public services sustainably. Why do we build a few more houses in a village, with a salami-slice approach, rather than building a proper new estate with a school and GP practice, which can benefit the whole community? Building sustainably means a stronger local market for public services, which means better services for residents. When residents are against developments, it is almost certainly because they are unsustainable.
That is also why I am supporting and working with a number of local stakeholders on a project that has been known by many names, but which we will refer to as the Shirebrook growth corridor. We are looking to bring together infrastructure, housing, education and employment opportunities, which can help to break the cycle of stagnation that places such as Shirebrook have seen and unleash our potential.
I am sure the Minister will agree that now is the best time to embrace developing sustainably. We need to look at how we can use green technologies, such as mine water heating, electric vehicle charging points and heat pumps to reduce energy bills, reduce emissions and make the journey to net zero much more achievable. That is precisely what we are doing with the Shirebrook growth corridor.
All of that is not without its challenges, however. During the summer, I did a series of village hall meetings across my constituency and was slightly amazed that the most raised topic was not anything on the national agenda; it was parking in rural villages. Many of those areas were built at a time when most families did not have a car and if they did, they had one. Now, it is perfectly common for families to have two or three. That puts a huge burden on the villages in question and people do not like the traffic that builds up. I therefore encourage the Minister to get his officials to give some serious thought as to how we can solve the great parking issue in rural areas, particularly in areas such as Pinxton.
I would also raise section 106 moneys, because unfortunately, we hear time and again that although section 106 moneys have been agreed, they do not appear. Serious efforts are needed to ensure that residents are not being undersold by developers.
In closing, Dr Huq, as I can see that you are giving me that look, affordable housing is a vital cog in the system, but we need to see it in line with all the other elements that make sustainable communities. I am grateful for the way the Department has engaged with me so far, but I look forward to further conversations on the Shirebrook growth corridor, among many other things.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on bringing this matter to Westminster Hall today. It will be no surprise to right hon. and hon. Members that I am here to give a Northern Ireland perspective. It is not the Minister’s responsibility, but I want to replicate the viewpoints put forward by others.
I am reminded that the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a policy and a strategy to ensure that people who wanted to buy their homes could do so. That introduced many people to the opportunity of having their own home. I have supported that over the years. I bought my own home and my mother and father’s farm. The opportunity was there to do so and the opportunity to reduce the price was also helpful for me.
While I am aware of the differences between the planning system in Northern Ireland and that in mainland UK, the similarities in need are outstanding. In my constituency of Strangford, families are in need of suitable homes, as are young people, and our elderly and disabled are in need of affordable homes. We have currently not found the right way to provide that. Co-ownership is one option I suggest to the Minister and we have schemes of that kind in Northern Ireland. My second son Ian and his wife Ashley bought a co-ownership home, where they bought half and the other half was controlled by the firm that built the homes. That meant people were able to have access to homes at an early stage in life. Is that a policy that the Government, and the Minister in particular, are looking at for the mainland? People can access half the price of co-ownership homes, thereby providing the possibility of home ownership. It has to be set up by the firms, but it can happen.
To give a snapshot of the needs at home, the population of Ards and North Down is projected to rise by some 1.5% from 2019 to 2029, along with the percentage of older people who are 65-plus. As other hon. Members have said, we have areas where people want to go and live—it is good that that is the case—thereby the demand for houses has risen dramatically. I know that those from the 65-plus vintage buy a lot of the houses down on the Ards peninsula, where I live. However, it also means that the social stock is under pressure. Some 25% of buildings in the years 2019 to 2029 will need to be specifically for people who are elderly or disabled, or will need to be age-friendly. The housing growth indicator shows that there will be a new dwelling requirement of 5,500 in Ards and North Down for the 14-year period starting in 2016. In that year, there were more than 70,000 households in Ards and North Down, of which 72% were owner-occupied, 16% were privately rented, and 12% were socially rented.
The reason I list those stats is that they show a rising demand for social housing. Even if we built 5,500 houses over that 14-year period, the demand for social housing in Ards and North Down at this moment is over 3,000, so that tells us what the need is. The public and private sectors are simply not meeting the need that is there. My constituency has much to offer—others have said this as well, so I will say the same thing—including a quick commute to Belfast just up the road. There is the joy of great high street shopping, salons and solicitors. Everything is there to make homes much more attractive if appropriate housing were available.
I have outlined the housing sector report that was presented to Ards and North Down council in an attempt to explain why there must be changes in planning zones and policy, in order to allow affordable, economic, environmentally friendly housing to meet the need that it perceives. The right housing in the right place at the right price can empower people to put roots down and to feel that where they live is where they want to be. The upshot is that weighted consideration must be given to new building applications, taking in the need in the area. I need to impress on Members that when I talk about housing stress, it is not a matter of numbers on a page: it is a matter of people’s lives. It is about the pensioners who are unable to heat their old four-bedroom draughty houses; the young families who are unable to pay £850 per month for a two-bed terraced house in the private sector housing market; the young person who is unable to leave their parents’ home and live their own life; or the abused partner who is unable to leave their home, as there is nowhere they can afford to go. Those are the realities in my constituency, and they are realities in everybody else’s constituency.
I fully support what the hon. Member for St Ives has said. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response: I know it will not be about what he can do to help us in Strangford, but he will be able to help us look at the bigger picture. We need changes in the system that lead to changes on the ground, and that work needs to begin now, so I urge the Minister to work co-operatively with the devolved Administrations—that is where there is contact between the Minister and my representation of the constituency of Strangford—to swap and enlarge ideas and strategies to allow UK-wide changes that will enable affordable housing to be built, thereby enabling our need to be met.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing this important debate on planning reform and affordable housing, and also for his work as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, of which I happen to be a member.
The two issues we are debating today are of great importance to people across the whole country, including in my constituency of Bolton South East. Access to affordable, good-quality housing is the single biggest issue that fills my mailbox every week, and I am sure it fills other Members’ mailboxes as well. The importance of housing has been highlighted by the covid pandemic, and specifically by the effect it had on those parts of the country where there is a lot of overcrowding due to multi-generational households or because many people cannot afford a home of their own and are living in rented accommodation—perhaps renting a room in a house. The pandemic threw up this big problem that we have in our country and, to be fair, it is not a party political issue. Over the past 40 or 50 years, there seems to have been a failure to build more affordable, decent homes in our country across the piece.
Obviously, most Members are not able to help when our constituents write to us about such issues, irrespective of how much effort we make, because the housing stock is just not there. In Bolton alone, there are 9,000 people on the waiting list for a council property. I pay tribute to the work of Bolton at Home, whose representative I met this summer at one of its new developments. Jon Lord, the chief executive officer, told me that a single three-bedroom home for social rent, which had just been finished, had received 400 applications from families—400 people applying for one home. How is Bolton at Home meant to choose which of those 400 families, who are all equally needy, is deemed worthy of that property?
When it comes to owning a home, an affordable home is classed as costing no more than 30% of the average monthly household income. Although the median income in Bolton is around £26,000, which equates to a house price of around £80,000, the average house price in my area is £125,000. How does that add up? That builds on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) about the cost of housing in relation to salaries.
Some 14,000 of my constituents are on universal credit, the majority of whom are working people on low incomes. We are living through a massive housing crisis, and that is compounded by the fact that mine is the 37th most deprived constituency in the United Kingdom, with almost 9% unemployment and 40% of children living in poverty. The route out of the crisis is clear: we need to build more homes.
On planning reform, I want to briefly discuss an issue that is important to my constituents. I am concerned that the Government will implicitly force local councils like mine to turn greenfield sites into housing developments, rather than existing brownfield sites. In Bolton, historically an industry-based town, we are blessed with more than 100 existing brownfield sites, predominantly in the form of ex-factories. However, the lack of available funding and the costs of converting those premises means councils are often forced to give planning permission to build on green spaces. Often, if planning permission is denied, companies appeal to the Secretary of State and, because of the rules, most of the time they are successful, so our green space is taken.
I would like to see a legislative and financial framework to assist housing developers, private developers, local authorities and social housing companies to convert existing brownfield sites into affordable housing, which could alleviate much of our housing crisis. That is a possible solution that could lead to affordable housing. We do not have to have this crisis. It is not just in Bolton—across the country, there are brownfield sites that are eyesores, blotting the landscapes of our towns and cities.
We should do something practical to see how we can use brownfield sites rather than greenfield sites. We know that because of the particular buildings that are there, the preparation needed to make it possible to build on that land will cost money. I ask the Government to work nationally, through a special body, with local authorities or even with private developers to give out grants to make the land usable, and then it can be built on. The houses could then be sold with a 5% or 10% profit on each property, or it could also be done through a housing association. There are ways that we can deal with the issue.
Again, it is not a party political issue. Brownfield sites have not been utilised by any Government for so long, and they are pieces of land that could be used for building good homes. I really hope that the Minister will go back and talk to the relevant people. I am sure that they can work out a suitable, fair formula that helps everyone to convert brownfield sites and thereby provide homes. I know that if the brownfield sites in my area were converted, my constituency would not have a housing problem.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing this really important debate. I associate myself with the remarks that many Members have made about planning reform, but I want to focus on why we desperately need a clear solution to affordable housing.
My constituency of Vauxhall lies in the centre of London, just over the river from this House. As such, it faces the brunt of the affordable housing crisis in this country. As an MP, I get constituents contacting my office every day with problems that are exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing in Vauxhall. Many of those who contact me have horror stories of poor housing, urgent maintenance issues and severe overcrowding, which are making their lives a misery.
One of my constituents lives with four other family members in a one-bedroom flat, and they are forced to share bunk beds because there just is not enough room for individual beds. Would this be tolerable to any of us? My constituent also told me that right above the bed, there is a massive crack on the ceiling that lets in cold air, and that the flat is damp and has rodent problems. My constituent’s grandmother has dementia and has to adhere to strict guidance, meaning that the rest of the family are confined to the bedroom.
Another constituent explained to me that she lives with her three children, two of whom have been diagnosed with autism. They, too, share a one-bedroom flat, with no room for the children to develop. They also highlighted safety concerns; one child nearly fell from the third floor before a neighbour intervened. I defy anyone in this House to say that we should not expect such cases in Britain today. We are the fifth-richest economy in the world, but the truth is that unacceptable housing standards, poor housing and overcrowding are far too often the norm—not just in Vauxhall and London, but across the country.
The pandemic highlighted the devastating impact of overcrowded housing on households and families. In the past one and a half years, those in overcrowded housing have been at more risk of contracting covid, and such households also suffered the most from measures to combat covid. Our local councils play a vital role in housing supply and council reform, and research by the Local Government Association highlights that investment in new social housing could generate £330 billion for the country over 50 years. In turn, that would generate work in the construction sector, with over 89,000 jobs. More importantly, however, it would offer a clear route out of unaffordable housing and insecure private rental.
A survey commissioned by the National Housing Federation found that nearly 20% of respondents had experienced mental or physical health problems because of the lack of space in their homes during lockdown. We cannot fail to see the link between inequality and the social injustices that plague our society, so I ask the Minister to look at how we can increase the supply of genuinely affordable housing and social housing—like the home I grew up in, in Vauxhall—at the heart of housing policy. Only a publicly funded programme of council house building, supported by Government grants, will help the Government to meet their target of 300,000 new homes.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, just as it is to respond to what has been an extremely thoughtful and well-informed discussion. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this important debate, and on the considered way in which he opened it. He spoke with great clarity and persuasiveness about the severe housing pressures in his corner of England—pressures that, as he made clear, have been exacerbated by the pandemic—and he set out a number of interesting proposals to address them, many of which warrant further consideration.
When it comes to second and holiday home ownership in particular, we very much agree that more needs to be done to ensure that local first-time buyers get priority access to new homes for market sale, and that local people who are not in a position to buy or to secure social housing can access affordable private rentals, rather than those homes being used by landlords exclusively as short or holiday lets.
As an aside, I very much welcome the fact that there is an energetic all-party group on the short lets sector, because the regulatory balance in this area is delicate and needs to be approached sensibly, without party political controversy. If the Minister has time, I hope that he might outline whether the Government have any plans to better regulate the short-term platforms spoken about by many in this debate.
I strongly commend the detailed “First Homes not Second Homes” proposals set out today by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). I know the painstaking work he has been doing, as have Councillor Jayne Kirkham, Councillor Kate Ewert and others, to ensure that local people in Devon and Cornwall are not priced out of their local communities. I hope that the Minister will give those proposals serious consideration.
More generally, the hon. Member for St Ives was absolutely right to have used this debate to make the case, on behalf of his constituents, for focusing on delivering the right quantity of new housing in the right places at prices that local people can afford. It was implicit in his remarks that that should be done in a way that secures buy-in from existing local communities. I think those sentiments were shared widely by Members on both sides of the Chamber. Where he and I differ is in the belief that the means of achieving that vision are the flawed proposals outlined in the Government’s August 2020 White Paper for reform of the planning system—assuming that those proposals eventually emerge in some recognisable form from the review initiated by the Secretary of State following his appointment in September.
I will use what remains of my time to pick up on the two main themes of the debate—availability and affordability of housing—but also to draw out the third element, which is what the public’s role in the planning process should be. When it comes to the availability of housing, all Members who have spoken today have made it clear that there is widespread agreement on the need to accelerate the delivery of new housing across the country.
While the Opposition do not deny that the existing planning framework has its problems and there is an obvious case for reform, there is scant evidence that it is the primary cause of supply constraints. Even with all the caveats that must be considered, the statistics make it clear that the total number of units granted planning consent each year has consistently outstripped the rate of construction over the past decade, and the number of un-built permissions is highest in the regions with highest demand. Amazingly, London, of all places, where housing pressures are acute—I know this from my constituency caseload, which mirrors the situation set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi)—has the largest volume of unused consents. A report by the consultancy BuiltPlace suggests that our capital has as much as 8.1 years of supply approved, and yet unused.
Instead of obsessing about supply side reform, the Government would do well to focus, in the first instance, on cracking down on land banking and speculative planning, and consider what might be done to incentivise or compel developers—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—to build out the permissions they have acquired.
When it comes to housing affordability, we really must get away from the over-simplistic notion that ramping up the supply of new housing will fully resolve the affordability crisis affecting many parts of the country. That is a theme that has re-emerged time and time again. Even if the Government’s target of 300,000 new houses a year were to be met—that is a very big if, given that completions in 2020-21 stood at just over 216,000—the impact on prices would be relatively small, and it would be felt only in the medium term.
Prior to the pandemic, there were a million more houses in England than there were households; that surplus has increased over recent decades and continues to grow, at the same time as prices continue to rise. Put simply, increasing home ownership—and boosting home ownership rates among the young, in particular—is as much about the affordability criteria and who can buy any new housing that becomes available as it is about overall deficiencies in supply. Instead of obsessing about supply side reform, the Government should look at how lending can be better targeted towards first-time buyers, so that they, and not just those who already have large amounts of equity, can purchase new homes to live in. As my hon. Friends the Members for York Central, for Vauxhall, for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) have said, we need better support for those who simply cannot buy, such as greater protection for private renters and action to reverse the sharp decline in social housing provision over recent years.
A key point, which has been implicit in today’s contributions but not brought expressly to the surface, is the role of local people and their priorities in the planning process. It is not disputed that there is an issue that needs to be confronted in terms of England’s discretionary planning system, but the solution to the problems of housing availability and affordability is not to silence communities and hand control of planning to development boards appointed by Ministers in Whitehall. As much as some rather offensively like to brand them in this way, most people in England are not die-hard nimbys, and that is why nine in 10 planning applications are approved.
What local people want, and what they should retain, is a say over how their areas are developed and a right to challenge inappropriate or harmful proposals that they do not believe will help to sustain balanced communities or, as the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) remarked, provide the necessary infrastructure and amenity to thrive. Instead of attempting to reduce the public’s involvement or remove them from the planning process entirely, the Government should concentrate on how the system can be reformed to ensure that more developers bring forward proposals that significantly enhance local areas for existing communities, as well as for newcomers. That will incentivise local people to say yes with greater frequency.
As things stand, we have no idea whether proposals to reform the planning system will re-emerge from the review that the Secretary of State commissioned and, if they do, what form they will take. If a Bill is introduced next year, we hope that it will be the product of genuine reflection on the criticisms levelled at the White Paper by Members from all parts of the House. We hope that rather than approaching the planning system as so much red tape that needs to be swept aside, the Government will seek to make the current system more reflective, rational, transparent and democratic, and better resourced, putting communities at the heart of good place making that delivers high-quality, zero-carbon affordable new homes in the places where they are so desperately needed. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said powerfully, the housing crisis is, at the end of the day, not about numbers or units; it is about how we build the homes that people and families need so that they can flourish.
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and to wind up this Westminster Hall debate. It has been thoughtful and considered, with detailed and useful contributions from Members from across the House. I hope that I will be able to pick up on the points made by Members, and occasionally I may refer to the excellent speech that has been provided to me by my officials.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) on his appointment to the shadow housing portfolio—a very important role indeed. I look forward to working with him as he attempts to keep us true, and to helping to persuade him of the righteousness of our approach, and I wish him well. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this important debate and making such a thoughtful contribution. I am sure that he will not stop promoting Cornwall or, for that matter, Devon. We want him to promote them, but we also want to ensure that his constituents have good quality, decent and affordable homes to live in.
I remind everybody of the importance of building more homes. The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich spoke about other reasons and methods to ensure that we provide affordable homes, but fundamentally we have to build more homes if we are going to supply good quality homes in the places that people want. That is why over the last 10 years we have had programmes such as the affordable homes programme, under which hundreds of thousands of new properties have been built across our country. That is why we are using programmes such as Help to Buy, which has only recently provided its 300,000th instance of help to buy for Sam Legg and his partner, Megan, who bought a home in Asfordby in Leicestershire. Sam said that without the Help to Buy programme, he would not have been able to afford to get on to the property ladder. That is a dream that more than 80% of people, particularly those in the social and private rented sectors, say they want to achieve—the right to own, the right to buy and the right to acquire. They want to get themselves on to the property ladder.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives and several other colleagues—including my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)—mentioned the importance of primary residences. I recognise the challenge that has been put to us, and it is one of the reasons why we have reformed stamp duty and increased the costs to foreign and international purchasers of British property. To the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, it is why we will introduce a threshold for the business rate loophole tie-up, to ensure that only proper letters are letting their properties and making use of the business rate regime.
I am conscious that other Members have made points about council tax and the importance of local authorities having discretion over it. We have allowed local authorities to increase the council tax to 100% for second homes, but I will consider carefully the points that Members have made about local authorities having further discretion over their council tax regime.
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) spoke about First Homes, which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport mentioned in a slightly different context. I was pleased to visit Bolsover a couple of weeks ago to give Nicky Bembridge, an NHS worker, the keys to his first home. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the First Homes regime is provided by developer contributions and it does not cost the taxpayer a penny. It means that local homes are available to local people at a discount of at least 30% off the market rate. Local authorities have the discretion to determine which residents will be eligible—it could be people who live locally, or people with skills that are missing from the area and are needed.
The First Homes product allows people to get on the property ladder, while covenanting the discount into the future so that future generations of local people or skilled workers, defined by the local authority, will be able to get on to the property ladder. I rather hope that if some First Homes are built in Plymouth, they can be built on the site of the former registry office, which I think is being demolished—thanks partly to £250,000 of brownfield funding that the Government are providing to Plymouth City Council to ensure that that work is done.
The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned brownfield sites. We are absolutely committed to further development on brownfield land, and that is one of the reasons why we have introduced further funding for that purpose. In the recent Budget, £1.8 billion was made available for brownfield remediation, £300 million of which will be given to mayoral combined authorities. Greater Manchester has already benefited to the tune of more than £90 million of public money for brownfield remediation, and we look forward to going further in the future.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised an important point about the time it takes to make local plans. She is perhaps more aware of that than most, because York has not had a local plan since 1956, when the present planning regime was barely eight years old.
We are very conscious of that challenge. If we are to get more developers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to build different types of property on different land packets to different tenures, we need a planning system that is far more transparent, predictable and speedy. I take on board the points made about the planning system by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, but I think we all recognise that it is far too slow. It can take seven years for a local plan to be produced, and a further five years for planning permissions to be granted and spades to go into the ground. That is far too long for SME developers that are living, quite literally, hand to mouth. We need a system that is far more predictable and speedy, and that will be the effect of our planning reforms, which I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House we will introduce.
We also want to make the planning system far more engaging. It is very important that more people get involved in our planning system. It really is not very democratic that literally 1% of local people on average get involved in local plan making—that is more or less local planning officers and their blood relations. The percentage rises to a massive 2% or 3% of people getting involved in individual planning applications—still not enough. We need a system that is far more engaging, three-dimensional and digitised. That is what our planning reforms will provide.
By providing a digital planning system, we will free up local planning officers, giving them much more bandwidth to do the sort of strategic planning that they trained to do, that we want them to do and that communities need them to do, rather than focusing on the administration of agreeing that a dormer window can be put in a particular building. We will ensure that we have a faster and more accessible planning system. We have also committed ourselves to a review of the resourcing of local planning authorities to make sure that—quite apart from digitisation, which should increase their bandwidth—they have the wherewithal to do the work that we want them to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives raised the importance of skills and apprenticeships in our construction supply chain, a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. The Department for Education has made available some £2.7 billion for the purposes of apprenticeships, and innovative partnerships between the National House Building Council and developers such as Redrow have allowed for the development of bricklayer academies. One has opened in my constituency —I am sure it is just coincidence that they chose Tamworth.
The academies mean that the time it takes to train a bricklayer is cut in half. They also allow young people to see that there is a career in construction beyond bricklaying. They may be 19 and learning how to lay bricks, but they also learn that, by the time they are 30 or 35, they can do other things in the construction sector and they do not have to lay bricks for the rest of their working life. That encourages more people, and also more women, into the construction sector—a very important thing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover raised the importance of infrastructure. That point was also made by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. We recognise that, if we are to get more people to support our planning regime, they must have the infrastructure to support the homes that are built around or near them—the GP clinic, school, roundabout or kids’ play area. We know that the present system of section 106 agreements is loaded in favour of the developers, and that the bigger developers tend to have the bigger lawyers, with the bigger guns, who can drive down the will of local authorities to resist.
That system means that proposed infrastructure is often negotiated away, or does not arrive on time. We are going to introduce an infrastructure levy, and I hear the point made by many contributors that that ought to be as localised as possible. That levy will allow infrastructure to be built up front, when people want it and in a way that they expect. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover rightly said, if the infrastructure can be put in place, that will carry with it the hearts and minds of local communities, who will see that they will get some bang for their buck.
Members raised the issue of empty homes. There are sometimes good reasons that homes are empty—for example, if they cannot be repaired, if they are in the wrong place to meet demand or if they are not the right size for the people who most need them. However, I hear what colleagues have said. As I have already pointed out in my remarks about council tax and the consideration of further discretions, I will go away and ponder the points that have been raised by a significant number of Members.
I will make one final point, Dr Huq, before I make some concluding remarks.
Christopher Pincher
Before I make those remarks, I will allow the hon. Lady rapidly to intervene.
Munira Wilson
I want to pick up the point I made in my intervention, about the statutory duty placed on police forces to sell to the highest bidder police stations that are being closed, which therefore considers financial rather than social value. This is a problem not just for Teddington police station, but across London, where we have a real dearth of sites. Will the Minister look at changing national legislation so police forces can consider affordable housing bids?
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Lady makes an important point. I remind her that developer contributions can contribute to affordable homes being built in her locality, and that it is a Government obligation carefully to consider how public money is spent so as to ensure we get best value for it. I will certainly go away and consider the point she has raised.
I will say one quick thing about net zero, which a number of Members raised. The future homes standard, which we are to introduce in 2025, will mean that homes are built with materials and heating systems that make them at least 75% more carbon efficient than homes built to present standards. As a down payment on the 2025 date that we have set the sector, next year we will introduce an uplift in building regulations to ensure that homes are at least 31% more carbon efficient than homes built at present.
This has been an important debate, and I have been pleased to hear the contributions made by colleagues from across the Chamber. I hope I have given reassurances to Members as to the importance that the Government place on building good-quality, affordable homes around our country, where they are needed. Be they for ownership, shared ownership, affordable rent or social rent, we need more good-quality homes. That is one of the building blocks of levelling up. It is a mission that the Government have set me and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and one that we shall deliver.
Derek Thomas
I am grateful to the Minister for his response and to all the Members who took part in the debate. What was really clear from the debate, and something I hope will follow through to the White Paper, is that at the centre of the issue are families and people across the country who need housing. They need houses they can afford and that give them security in their local communities. If we can get that message across and if it is in the White Paper, I feel that we have done our job.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered access to affordable housing and planning reform.
Great British Railways HQ: Darlington Bid
(3 years ago)
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Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate. I see that other colleagues are here as well. It is a pleasure and a delight to call Peter Gibson to move the motion.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Darlington’s bid to become the home of Great British Rail.
Thank you, Sir Gary, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my Tees valley colleagues for attending to show their support, and Darlington Borough Council for its ongoing work to help to bring the headquarters of Great British Railways to Darlington.
Perhaps it was inevitable that our railways should feature heavily in my work as the Member for the great railway town of Darlington. Over the last 24 months during which I have had the privilege to serve in this place, railways have featured extensively, both here in Parliament and at home in Darlington. To quote the father of the railways, Edward Pease,
“thou must think of Darlington; remember it was Darlington sent for thee.”
Those words are as relevant today as when they were spoken two centuries ago, and they led to the route of the railway line from Shildon to Stockton incorporating Darlington. Edward was a visionary who used infrastructure as the basis for levelling up. However, for too long, those words and Darlington’s position as the birthplace of the railways have been overlooked and ignored.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I always enjoyed my little spats with the hon. Gentleman’s predecessor, Jenny Chapman, when we both claimed our respective towns were the real home of the railways. The first passenger line went from Stockton to Darlington. We agreed that it started in Stockton, but, she said, with Darlington money. Surely Stockton is the real birthplace of the railways. The hon. Gentleman should set aside his ambition to bring these headquarters to Darlington and work with me and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) to bring them to Stockton, the real home of the railways. After all, Darlington is getting all those civil service jobs. We need to be levelled up.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
A reminder that interventions should be brief.
Peter Gibson
The hon. Gentleman grew up and spent a long time in Darlington. I am sure he will back my campaign, rather than a personal campaign.
In the 1970s, the National Railway Museum was tipped to be located in Darlington, but was instead opened in York. In 2004, a new museum was opened at Shildon. Both decisions robbed Darlington of hundreds of thousands of visitors. I am told that, at the time, a councillor is reported to have said, “We want nowt more to do with trains.” However, I am pleased that that attitude has changed, with firm backing from Conservative-led Darlington Borough Council and with cross-party interest in protecting and restoring our railway heritage. Despite those oversights, Darlington’s ingenuity and expertise have not waned, and many of my constituents are already working in the railway industry or in skilled engineering and administrative jobs. Indeed, Darlington is home to Railpen, which administers railway pensions and occupies the stunning baroque revival-style Stooperdale Offices, built as a HQ for the North Eastern Railway Company.
I am delighted to make the case on the record for why Great British Railways should come to Darlington. As we are in the festive season, I want to inform the Minister of the carol of Darlington’s railway past, present and future yet to come, in the hope that by the end of the debate he will embody the spirit of Christmas and be mindful to bestow this gift on Darlington. Fundamentally, Darlington has a unique and unmatched connection to our railways. It all began in 1819, when the novel idea of using a steam-powered locomotive to pull passenger carts was first mulled over. Indeed, although the House legislated in 1821 to allow the creation of the Stockton and Darlington railway, it was in our town that the idea of a modern passenger railway was conceived between Edward Pease, Jonathan Backhouse and the famous George Stephenson. Stephenson’s ingenious Locomotion No.1, built in the north-east thanks to the financial backing of the Pease family, would pull the first passenger carts over Darlington’s Skerne bridge in 1825.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I am the Member for the rest of Darlington borough, where the railway line heads to the west. Does my hon. Friend agree that the original railway line started to the west of Darlington and finished to the east of Darlington, at Stockton, and that Darlington is obviously the central part of that historic railway line?
Peter Gibson
I am grateful for that intervention from my hon. Friend, who makes an excellent point. With its position on the Stockton-to-Darlington railway line, Darlington is actually central to the Stockton and Darlington railway.
Skerne bridge commemorated the birth of the railway in 1825 and is immortalised on the former £5 note—a bridge that still carries passenger trains, is a world heritage site and is the world’s oldest continuously used railway bridge. In my maiden speech, I challenged the decision of the National Railway Museum to remove Locomotion No. 1 from our town, where it had been on display for over 160 years and stood as a monument to the father of the railways, Edward Pease, who embodied Darlington’s entrepreneurial spirit. First, it stood on a plinth at Darlington’s North Road station, before being moved to Bank Top station. It then once again returned to North Road to sit in the Head of Steam Museum. The only times it had left our town was to be showcased around the world, and to be protected from harm during the second world war. Thankfully, our battle to protect the engine resulted in some success. Under the agreement, Darlington and Shildon will share the display of the engine, and there will be a guaranteed plinth for a new replica of Locomotion No. 1 at Bank Top station.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
I am sure that the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and I would be happy for my hon. Friend to play around with Locomotion No. 1 for some time, but everybody would agree that Stockton is the real home of the railway. The first discussions about putting the railway together were had in Stockton, the first railway track for that railway line was laid in Stockton, and the first ticket was sold in Stockton. My hon. Friend can keep Locomotion No. 1, but we want Great British Railways.
Peter Gibson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a great champion of Stockton. I challenge and question some of his historical perspective, but I know that he is campaigning vigorously, just as I am, to bring Great British Railways to the Tees valley.
The permission to describe Darlington town as the historical home of Locomotion No. 1 was agreed with the National Railway Museum, and we have agreed to the purchase of a working replica for the Head of Steam Museum in Darlington. Through a kind gift from Network Rail and the efforts of Sir Peter Hendy, we also have Darlington’s D6898—the very last diesel railway engine, which was built at Faverdale in 1964.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
While my hon. Friend is on the subject, he will be aware that Locomotion No. 1 was the first train to pull into Redcar train station. Does he share my passion to see Redcar train station redeveloped, as I have shared with the Minister previously?
Peter Gibson
I am grateful for that intervention from my hon. Friend, who is a doughty champion of Redcar. Redcar station is very familiar to me, having travelled through it as a schoolchild, and having previously served on the coastal communities board in Redcar, I know that it is a pivotal piece of infrastructure for the levelling up of Redcar. I would be happy to support him in his endeavours to do just that.
Paul Howell
To enhance the discussion around Redcar railway, I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) is aware of the need to put a station at Ferryhill and allow the people of Redcar to come to Sedgefield and the people of Sedgefield to go to Redcar.
Peter Gibson
My hon. Friend is continuing his campaign for Ferryhill station. I thank Paul Gilbert, Rob Davis, and Rob Morton who did the restoration work as part of Network Rail’s gift of D6898 to Darlington. The culmination of this campaign, and its outcome, will ensure that Darlington’s railway past continues to be the bedrock of our town’s story, while establishing Great British Railway’s headquarters in Darlington will secure its present and future.
In choosing a new home for Great British Railways, the Government have the chance to recognise the essential and pivotal place that Darlington has in the national, and international, story of the railways, and to restore our place in history as the home of the organisation. This is an exciting time in Darlington’s railway present, as our Bank Top station is redeveloped and our railway heritage is protected and restored, ahead of the bicentenary celebrations of the Stockton and Darlington railway in 2025. There has been a massive investment of £20 million from Tees Valley Combined Authority to help establish our rail heritage quarter. I pay tribute to the efforts of Ben Houchen and all he has done for our area.
Darlington is firmly on the up, thanks in large part to the Government’s levelling-up agenda. Earlier this year, the Chancellor—a firm friend of our town—announced that the Treasury would create a new northern economic campus in the centre of our town, in close proximity to Darlington’s Bank Top station. Already, civil servants from the Treasury, the Department for International Trade, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Office for National Statistics are benefitting from our excellent transport links.
Matt Vickers
I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree with me that levelling up is about spreading opportunity the length and breadth of the country. Darlington has its Treasury jobs, and York has its Cabinet Office jobs. Is it not about time that Great British Railways came home to Stockton?
Peter Gibson
I am once again grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. However, my job is to champion all that is great about Darlington, and push for continued investment and new jobs. I will not dissuade him from continuing his campaign, but my job here is to champion Darlington’s cause.
Peter Gibson
I will give way one more time, and then I really must make some progress.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. We are all Tees valley MPs in this Chamber this afternoon. I would like to send a message to the Minister. I am old enough to have been there in Darlington as a schoolboy when we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Stockton to Darlington railway. I hope to still be around when we celebrate the 200th anniversary. Our message from Tees valley is that we want it in the Tees valley. We might fight among ourselves over it, but we want the headquarters of Great British Railways in the Tees valley.
Peter Gibson
The hon. Gentleman should know that we can work together, just as he has worked with my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on the campaign for a hospital in his constituency, and just as all the Tees valley MPs have worked hard to secure the Darlington economic campus. However, at this stage in the discussions about the home for Great British Railways, there is nothing wrong with a little bit of friendly competition between me, the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has already been working in Darlington and was recently spotted in its redeveloped market hall. That redevelopment complements the rejuvenation of the town centre, with £23.5 million secured from the towns fund, allowing our town to reverse the disastrous changes of the past and making Darlington a thriving market town once again.
Only a few weeks ago, the Chancellor announced millions more in his autumn Budget to revolutionise transport in the Tees valley—vastly improving regional connectivity. At its centre will be the redeveloped, modern Bank Top station, which will help the thousands of civil servants, along with Ministers, to move freely up to the town from London and make journeys locally, connecting the northern economic campus with the new freeport along the Tees. This £105 million transformation will revolutionise rail capacity north of York, increasing the frequency and reliability of services. The redevelopment of Bank Top will increase capacity with three new platforms, a new station building, car park and improved public access, adding to and enhancing the splendour of our grade II* listed station. This will turn Bank Top into a regional hub that is fit to serve not only Darlington and the Tees valley but large parts of south Durham and North Yorkshire. I also warmly welcome the recent award of £50,000 for a feasibility study on the reopening of the Darlington to Weardale railway, which will further enhance connectivity and opportunity.
In addition, we are restoring our rail heritage. I pay tribute to Network Rail, Darlington Borough Council and the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, which have worked hard locally to maintain Darlington’s Skerne bridge and to brighten up three other historic railway bridges in Darlington. With reeds and weeds already cleared from Skerne bridge and the continuation of the £60,000 project to restore three of the bridges, two having already been repainted, our town centre is already looking like the natural place to find the headquarters of a national railway, with green livery aplenty and the restoration of the town’s proud crest, replete with Locomotion No. 1 at its heart.
There is, of course, more to be done, and I will continue to push Network Rail to ensure that the restoration of North Road bridge is completed and, most importantly, that our Bank Top station has tactile paving installed, something that has been called for by the excellent Darlington Action on Disability group.
We may have lost our huge carriage works many years ago, but sleek new Azuma trains roll off the production line just a few miles up the road at Hitachi Newton Aycliffe, where many of my constituents work. The Minister will also be aware of the wonderful work of the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, which hand-built Tornado, the new steam train licensed to operate on the mainline, and I look forward to the Prince of Wales engine, again hand-built in Darlington, joining its sister on the network very soon. With thousands of civil servants moving north, the redevelopment of Bank Top and the restoring of our railway heritage at this pivotal moment in our town’s railway story, bringing the HQ of Great British Railways to Darlington just makes sense.
As I have already set out, we have secured Darlington’s future prosperity and growth through the movement of civil servants north, the creation of a new freeport on the River Tees and the investment in our town centre. However, as my hon. Friend the Minister will know, Darlington’s railway connections are under threat once again from London North Eastern Railway. Our greatest worry is that, even though we recently saw off the proposed changes to next year’s timetable on the east coast main line, the proposals are back, and I am worried that they will lead to a further act of betrayal of Darlington, robbing us of vital connectivity.
We know that there will be a growth in the number of journeys made from Darlington’s Bank Top station. Indeed, estimates show that within a decade an additional 340,000 passengers will be using the station every year, yet proposals for May 2022 risk leaving the town poorly connected, with regular services to London and Edinburgh slashed. Locating the Great British Railways HQ in Darlington would undoubtedly soothe the worries of my constituents as we bounce back from the damage done in the past, and it would further restore our town’s pride in its historical connections with the railways.
I need not repeat the myriad Government Departments coming to our proud town. The reasons are manifold: our proud history, local talent, connectivity, levelling-up opportunities and reversing the brain drain from the north-east. There are, of course, many other notable towns bidding for the HQ—Crewe, York, Derby and, as we have already heard, Stockton—but ours is the only bid backed by the people of Darlington, whose forebears created and built the railways, and I am proud to work closely with Darlington Borough Council to unite the town behind the bid. I trust I have conveyed to the Minister the desire and the need to put the HQ of Great British Railways in Darlington. We have the heritage, the history, the connectivity, the ingenuity and the people. I will conclude by imploring the Minister to choose Darlington as we build on a legacy of the past, secure our present railway and deliver for the future.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am not sure I have served under your chairmanship before. You might recall that I am a football referee in my spare time, and it feels as though we have had a bit of a derby between Stockton and Darlington this afternoon. Before I respond to the various points made by hon. Members, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing this debate and putting across his points so forcefully and politely, and also for allowing his colleagues from across the Chamber to contribute. He is a very good parliamentarian and conducted this debate excellently.
Only a couple of weeks ago I was in this Chamber debating the merits of York as a potential headquarters. It is genuinely heartening to see right hon. and hon. Members doing outstanding work up and down the country, preparing bids for their cities and celebrating the rich railway heritage of this country, no matter where it may be. It is equally heartening to see all the Tees valley MPs working together—and a bit apart, but mainly together—to put forward the case for the Tees valley, and I thank the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for his contributions. He has announced that he might be leaving this place at the next election, which would be a tremendous loss, but the way he has conducted himself in this debate shows that he is doing the best for Tees valley, and should be commended for it.
We are all aware of the important role that Darlington and County Durham played in the formation of the railways, with that county deserving the name of “the cradle of the railways”. It was the home of the world’s first public railway to run steam locomotives, as we have heard: the famous Stockton and Darlington Railway—I am quite sure that is the right way around, but I am very careful about what I am saying now—which opened in 1825. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington said, when designing the route for that railway George Stephenson at one point suggested that it bypass Darlington altogether. That was when Edward Pease, a local Darlington manufacturer and main promoter of the railway, replied,
“George, thou must think of Darlington; remember it was Darlington that sent for thee”,
securing its position in the rich railway heritage of this country.
Today, Darlington houses the Head of Steam railway museum in the historic North Road station building, which opened in 1842. That museum is home to several locomotives, including the replica of Locomotion No. 1, which appropriately was the train that connected the two great towns that have been the subject of a minor debate here today. I am sure it went from both Stockton to Darlington and Darlington to Stockton with equal gusto.
A place as steeped in the history of this country’s railways and, indeed, the world’s railways as Darlington and County Durham will always have an important role to play. As evidenced by my mailbox, there are a few other places across the country that have played an important part in our proud railway heritage, and which right hon. and hon. Members are proud to represent. I look forward to the next debate in this Chamber in which I get to learn about the railway history of another place, but it has been a delight to hear celebrated all that is good about Darlington’s rail past, rail present and, as my hon. Friend said, rail future.
I do not want to bore Members with a repeat of the speech I gave in the York debate—although I am very good at doing choruses and am available for karaoke at Christmas parties if they are allowed. However, I think it is important that we remind ourselves of the Government’s aim, which is a world-class railway that works seamlessly as part of a wider transport network, delivering opportunities across the nations and regions of Great Britain. In the Williams-Shapps plan for rail, published in May this year, we set out the path towards a truly passenger-focused railway underpinned by new contracts that prioritise punctual and reliable services, the rapid delivery of a ticketing revolution with new flexible and convenient tickets, and long-term proposals to build a modern, greener, and accessible network.
Alex Cunningham
There is a bypass around Darlington at the moment, all the way to Stockton, which the Minister may like to bear in mind. He might have enjoyed the small spat between the Tees valley MPs as we bid for the headquarters, but I wanted to tease him a little and ask him how he is going to ensure that Great British Railways is in fact British, particularly given that much of our railway sector is run by foreign companies, the latest example being that Chiltern Railways is now run by a company owned by German state railways.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I say to the hon. Gentleman that those private operators are great innovators in our rail market. Rail privatisation has doubled the number of passengers being carried on our railways over the course of the past decade or so. That is something to be celebrated, because it took place at a time when the view that we need to decarbonise our transport network—which all parties now share—was not quite so widely held. Innovation that has been brought in by private operators should be celebrated, no matter where in the world they come from.
Paul Howell
Just to pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), the bypass at Darlington needs a bit on the top as well. Perhaps we could make that point to the Roads Minister. In terms of rail, where better to put the home of Great British Railways—[Interruption.] I shall ignore the barracking from Members in a sedentary position. Where better to put it than right next to Hitachi, one of the foremost railway manufacturing companies in the UK and which is based just along the road in Newton Aycliffe?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Hitachi is a Japanese company, but the intellectual property, huge number of jobs and innovation that it brings to our rail market are fantastic. Those are British jobs, in Britain, and we should welcome that. We should not be afraid of what international investment can bring to our rail market, or indeed any other market, and to the supply chain, as my hon. Friend quite rightly says.
Central to the Williams-Shapps plan for rail is the establishment of a new rail body, Great British Railways, which will provide a single, familiar brand and strong, unified leadership across the rail sector—something for which the rail sector has been calling for a decent time now. GBR will be responsible for delivering better value, flexible fares and the punctual and reliable services that passengers deserve, but it will also bring the ownership of the infrastructure, fares, timetables and planning of the network all under one roof. It will bring today’s very fragmented railways under a single point of operational accountability, ensuring that the focus is on delivering for passengers and freight customers.
GBR will be a new organisation with a commercial mindset and strong customer focus, and it will have a different culture from the current infrastructure owner, Network Rail, and very different incentives from the beginning. This new body obviously needs a new headquarters. GBR will have responsibility for the whole rail system, and needs a national headquarters as well as regional divisions. I am very happy to confirm that the national headquarters will be based outside of London, bringing the railway closer to the people and places that it serves and ensuring that skilled jobs and economic benefits are focused beyond the capital, in line with the Government’s commitment to levelling up.
Matt Vickers
My hon. Friend the Minister has confirmed that he is aware of Stockton’s amazing historic links to the railway—it is the home of the railway—and of the incredible and improving transport links from Stockton. However, is he aware of the incredible, committed, hard-working, high-skilled, dedicated, dynamic workforce that the Department for Transport could be lucky enough to employ should it bring Great British Railways to Stockton?
Chris Heaton-Harris
The honest answer to that is yes. The competition to find the national headquarters will recognise that. Indeed, it will recognise the towns and cities with rich railways histories that are strongly linked to the network, ensuring that the headquarters will take pride of place at the heart of a new era for British railways.
Sir Gary, thank you very much for the reminder about time. I shall wind up by saying that the reforms proposed under the Williams-Shapps plan for rail will transform our railways for the better, strengthening and securing them for the next generation. The reforms will make the sector more accountable to taxpayers and to Government, and will provide a bold new offer to passengers: punctual and reliable services, simpler tickets and a modern, green and innovative railway that meets the needs of our nation. Although transformation on this scale cannot happen overnight, the Government and the sector are committed to ensuring that benefits for passengers and customers are brought forward as quickly as possible. We have done this with flexible season tickets, and the transition from emergency recovery measures agreements to the new national rail contracts is under way, with the first tranche delivered in July 2020. GBR will be in a place to continue to move fast in delivering reform.
The Government and the GBR transition team welcome everybody’s interest in the competition and their advocacy for their respective cities and towns, and we invite participation in the forthcoming competition, which I have yet even to announce but which has engendered great initiatives of debate in this place. I look forward to seeing the visions put forward by Stockton and especially Darlington, which I am sure will be heard by those who will make a judgment on this competition.
Question put and agreed to.
Antimicrobial Resistance
(3 years ago)
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Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Before we begin our next debate, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. That is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. That can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the health impacts of increasing levels of antimicrobial resistance.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Gary. Mark Twain once said:
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
This is not a trouble that will not happen. This trouble is happening now; this trouble will get much worse. The UK Health Security Agency chief medical adviser, Dr Susan Hopkins, said that antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, was “a hidden pandemic” and that it was important that
“we do not come out of COVID-19 and enter into another crisis.”
What I fear most is that, as Warren Buffet once said:
“What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”
There can be no excuse this time if we do not prepare well for a future pandemic of AMR.
This is not the first time I have raised the issue in the House, and it will not be the last, because AMR is simply too important to ignore. Antibiotics are one of the most powerful tools in healthcare, underpinning every aspect of modern medicine. We need them not just when we are poorly at home with an infection but when we are going through significant life-changing procedures such as chemotherapy and hip replacements. Antibiotics work by killing bacteria but, in the same way that the covid-19 virus can mutate and evolve, so can bacteria, developing resistance to antibiotics.
Right now, this year, about 700,000 people will die from antibiotic resistance infections across the world. It is estimated that by 2050, AMR could claim as many as 10 million lives a year. It is not a hypothetical or vague threat that is happening elsewhere; it is happening in the UK, is getting worse and will get much more so. Professor Jennifer Rohn of University College London has said:
“AMR has very much not gone away, and in the long term the consequences of AMR will be far more destructive.”
The latest report from the English surveillance programme for antimicrobial utilisation and resistance found that antibiotic resistance increased by 4.9% between 2016 and 2020. That means that one in five people with a bloodstream infection in 2020 had one that was antibiotic resistant—a serious, potentially life-threatening situation.
I want to tell you about a mother named Helen. Helen experienced resistant infections in 2013 and 2018, which caused her a great deal of anxiety and pain. She was to experience a third resistant infection shortly after giving birth. When her baby was just six weeks old, Helen developed mastitis, an infection of the breast tissue. She soon developed flu-like symptoms, and a GP prescribed her an oral antibiotic. The infection was resistant and two days later it was getting worse, and she could barely hold her baby. She started vomiting and was sent to A&E, where she was kept on heavy-duty intravenous antibiotics for two nights. Luckily, the sepsis was caught early and she recovered, but it could have been a very different story. Sepsis causes 48,000 deaths in the UK every year, many of them due to resistant infections.
AMR is the next pandemic. It is a hidden pandemic, but that does not mean that we can treat it any less seriously than covid-19. We must have the right plan in place. First, we need a strong system for monitoring the impact of rising AMR here in the UK. I welcome the fact that the Government have been looking into recording AMR or antibiotic resistance as a cause of death on death certificates and I had a welcome update from the Minister on where we are with those proposals. However, it is surprising that not many parliamentarians are focused on the problem, given its context and scale. It is good to see my fellow parliamentarians here today who are taking an interest, but until we have a proper register and until more parliamentarians are made aware of the issue through their constituents, I do not think the levels will be sufficiently high to raise awareness as often as we need in Parliament to make sure we take the matter forward and take action against it. Secondly, we need to support only the appropriate use and prescription of existing antibiotics. Thirdly, we need to ensure that we incentivise the development and research of new antimicrobials and antibiotics.
We need to take a one-health approach across all three issues that recognises the link between resistance and use in humans, animals, agriculture and the environment. The Government’s five-year national action plan on AMR set out the steps we need to take, but we are now just about halfway through and have yet to see any clear update on progress. The UK has been a trailblazer on AMR, but that lack of reporting is not where we need to be. We must be at the forefront of taking domestic action, not least because we are trying to maintain our leadership position as an example for other countries.
It was pleasing to see that the UK made AMR a centrepiece of our G7 presidency. We are long-standing global leaders in AMR and this is hugely important work, but we cannot afford to let our attention drop from what we can also do here and at home. The Minister and I shared many conversations on this matter as Back Benchers and I know she is very focused on and aware of the context, particularly in diagnostics, which I will talk about shortly. Will she consider introducing annual reports for all the partners on the actions in both this plan and in the next five-year action plan?
As has already been mentioned, one of the biggest issues facing us is the fact that there is not enough research and development of new antimicrobials. I would be interested to see what metrics of success we can use to judge the outcomes of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s AMR project, formerly called the pilot, which is trialling a new model for valuing and paying for antibiotics. This is a world-leading, first-of-its-kind subscription-style payment model that will help incentivise companies to develop new drugs needed to tackle resistant infections and is supported by NICE.
The reasons we need a new model are complex. Bacteria naturally evolve to become resistant to certain drugs, but that evolution is happening faster than new medicines are reaching healthcare systems. That is partly because developing antibiotics is a long, complex and risky process, with many products failing along the way. At the end of that process, we do not have a viable commercial market for the new products. That is the key problem and that is because antibiotics are not like other medicines. Often, we want to reserve the new antibiotics for the patients who really need them, meaning the new products could just sit unused on the shelf. In that scenario, the cost of development could way exceed the return, undermining future research. The commercial model for developing antibiotics is broken.
I pay tribute to the UK’s leadership in introducing the AMR project in the first place. I know it is the result of many years of work by the Government, NHS, NICE and the industry sector, but we cannot afford that leadership and drive to slacken off now, because the price is simply too high if we do not succeed. As the Minister knows, the pilot looks at only two antibiotics and, as yet, there are no concrete plans to evolve into a new permanent model for all new antibiotics that come after them. Even though we are world leaders, we must urgently start thinking about the next steps and that must be built into the next action plan. The next steps must consider how we evolve the pilot and implement its learnings at scale and pace. Will the Minister comment on what conversations she has had with NHS England and NICE about how best to do this and what the timeframe might be?
We must also remember that the world is watching the world-leading AMR pilot. NICE has always been regarded as the gold standard and its actions have always carried weight, but now it is running one of only two pilots in the world considering this issue. It is therefore important not only that we get the project right, but that we also get right how we talk about what happened, the results and, indeed, what went wrong. Given that the goal is to incentivise private research and development, I urge the Minister to work with industry on that communication to ensure we are all aligned on the successes and learnings.
In 2019, in their five-year national action plan, the Government committed to reducing hospital-acquired infections by 2024 and halving gram-negative bloodstream infections in the NHS long-term plan. However, there is increasing concern that the covid-19 pandemic will have pushed those targets into the background. I would welcome the Minister’s comment on that issue, too.
As a final action point, in his landmark report, Lord O’Neill describes diagnostics as the most important of his 10 commandments to tackle AMR. The launch of the community diagnostic hubs represents an important opportunity to combat an increased incidence of AMR through accurate and targeted prescription. However, we need to tackle the false economy of simply prescribing antibiotics because they are cheaper than a diagnostic test.
I know other Members want to come in, so I will close by recognising those who do tireless work on this issue and with whom I work closely. First, Antibiotic Research UK or ANTRUK, which is in my constituency, is the world’s first charity specialising in antimicrobial research and education. It provides vital research and support services for patients impacted by resistant infection. Secondly, the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy provides the secretariat to the all-party parliamentary group on antibiotics, of which I am a member. Without its efforts, the efforts of the Minister and her team and the work of many others, we would not have achieved so much in our fight to stop the next pandemic, but that must be our challenge, to make sure that this time we prepare properly for a pandemic that absolutely will happen if we do not put the right steps in place.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Before I call Theresa Villiers, we are expecting three Divisions in the House in a moment. When we get to that point, Members should perhaps think about adjusting their diaries, because it will be 25 to 35 minutes before we come back.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), whose track record on this important issue is second to none. I warmly congratulate him on securing more time in this Chamber on this important issue.
“Before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, an infection from a simple cut could mean the end of life. Nearly 100 years later, the antibiotic safety blanket we live our lives with is being pulled from us.”
That is a quote from the former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, on the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance. She and many others have spoken out in apocalyptic terms about the catastrophe ahead of us if we do not stem the tide of infections resistant to treatment with antibiotics, as my hon. Friend has so articulately put it.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
We will get under way. I know Karin Smyth is not here, but I am sure she will pick up the pace of the debate when she returns. The debate may now continue until 5.55 pm.
Theresa Villiers
I started my speech by referring to the remarks of the former chief medical officer, and I was about to say that she is entirely right to have spoken out on this issue. It is not just some millennium-bug anxiety about something that might or might not happen in the future, because people are already dying. Every year, an estimated 50,000 people die from drug-resistant infections, and that number will grow massively unless we deal with the problem.
During lockdown, many of us will have viewed the video of Bill Gates’s warning about a global virus pandemic, which was made years before it actually happened. If action is not taken now on a global scale to deal with AMR, people will look back on Dame Sally’s predictions in the same way. They will say that leading scientists highlighted the potential return to the days when routine surgery, childbirth, a cut in the arm or even an insect bite could give rise to a serious risk of death, and they will ask why we did not act. The good news is that a great deal of action is under way. The O’Neill report, commissioned by David Cameron, was groundbreaking. It was highly influential around the world, and 135 countries have finalised action plans on tackling AMR.
This year, it is very welcome that the UK Government have been using their G7 presidency to try to deliver more tangible progress, as they did last time they held the presidency, in 2013. However, the fact is that developing new antibiotics is massively expensive. The attempt to do so has already forced a number of smaller firms into insolvency and caused some bigger companies to exit their research and development programmes in this area. The fact is that many hundreds of millions of pounds can be pumped into R&D, with no return on that investment whatever if a project turns out to be unsuccessful.
The high failure rates of antibiotic development apparently leave just 40 antibiotics in clinical trials globally. The problem is compounded by the fact that if a new antibiotic is successfully discovered, we want to use it as sparingly as possible, keeping it for serious conditions and to head off potentially worsening AMR problems in the future. That creates even more problems with the risk-return ratio. There is therefore an urgent need for policy reforms to create market conditions that enable sustainable investment in antibiotic innovation, including properly valuing and paying for new antibiotics.
It is very encouraging that the industry has set up a £1 billion investment fund to try to bridge the funding gaps, particularly for smaller biotech companies, that will have a strong focus on drugs that could have the maximum impact in securing and safeguarding public health. Also welcome is the AMR project, which we have already heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton. The project, launched by the UK Government, NICE and NHS, is trialling a new subscription-style model for antibiotics. Under the model, payment is based on the product’s overall value to the NHS, rather than on just counting the pills dished out to patients. Two medicines have been selected, and contracts are expected to commence in April 2022.
It is very welcome that the project has continued despite the pandemic, but we now need to press ahead with wider implementation in order to cover more research and bring in the devolved nations, so that we have a whole-country approach. We need the project to get beyond the pilot stage, and we need to learn from it to ensure that a sustainable solution is put in place for new antibiotics that reflects their long term value to society as a whole.
In conclusion, I very much welcome the leading role that the UK Government have taken on this issue on the world stage. However, if we are to succeed in addressing this great challenge of our time, there is still a lot of work to be done. For example, we need to increase public understanding of the dangers of over-prescribing or misusing antibiotics. We must also tackle the overuse of antibiotics in farming. I do not see that as a domestic problem with our sector—we have strict rules to prevent that from happening in UK farming—but we need to use our trade and foreign policy to raise standards on antibiotics use in agriculture all around the world.
Above all, the Government need to be bold and ambitious in putting in place a long-term market solution that changes how we pay for antibiotics, so that we can reward and incentivise the scientific research that can save us from the nightmare we face: a return to Victorian medical outcomes, where 40% of our population have their lives cruelly cut short by infections we cannot treat. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what action the Government are going to take to drive this crucial issue forward.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
It is a pleasure not only to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, but to speak in this important debate. I warmly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for having secured it. I share his view on the priority of keeping the Government’s focus on this very important subject: as a co-chair with my hon. Friend of the all-party parliamentary group on antibiotics, I urge the Minister to reflect very carefully on the suggestions my hon. Friend has made and that continue to be made in this debate. I also want to highlight a few other important points that we need to consider.
First, the Government need to carefully assess how covid has impacted on the global and national antibiotic resistance challenge. Unsurprisingly, the once-in-a-century scale of the pandemic has generated concerns that the increased prescribing of antibiotics worldwide on the back of covid will amplify the problems of growing resistance. The scale of the virus disaster and the variety of global health systems has led to a huge, unco-ordinated and large-scale use of different antibiotics, and we need to know how the nature of the AMR threat has evolved as a result.
The covid experience and the size of the Government’s response also offer lessons for the AMR debate by indicating that, when necessary, we can rise to the challenge and assign huge resources to protect the public. The costs involved in developing the new drugs needed to beat the resistance are enormous, as has already been touched on in this debate, but arguably our perspective on that has shifted somewhat when we consider the scale of the fiscal firepower deployed against the covid virus—some £378 billion in this country alone, as of October’s Budget.
Given the potential of AMR to equal or surpass what covid has done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton mentioned, with the very plausible prediction of 10 million dead annually across the world by 2050, it seems reasonable to increase our national financial commitment now. With a much more significant—but still relatively small—investment, we can really make a difference. As has already been mentioned during this debate, and as the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has called for, raising the £10 million cap for the Government’s AMR project subscription trial could be one such investment.
The Government should also explore whether they can build more laboratory capacity in middle income countries and the developing world, as part of our public health and wider aid strategies. The lack of significant medical microbiological facilities in such nations is a significant factor in the mistaken prescribing of antibiotics that fuels the growth of AMR around the world. These labs are necessary to generate the guidance on which antibiotics best fit which disease.
The source of the deficiency is an absence of quality, accredited training and the lack of medical microbiological biomedical scientists, producing a situation in which under-informed prescribing practices simply spread resistance. Building that capacity would be a helpful addition to the UK public health and aid policy, because, as the pandemic has shown, disease mutations that develop abroad do not stay there for long.
Growing antibiotic resistance in lower income countries is both a disaster for them and a serious threat to lives in this country. I urge the Department of Health and Social Care to engage closely on this aspect of the problem and listen to calls, such as those from the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, for the creation of a global antimicrobial stewardship accreditation scheme to ensure co-operation across health and research systems and to generalise global good practice. Ministers should constantly remember the need to address the challenge of resistance across Government—I mean making sure that other Government Departments know the impact that AMR has.
I want to touch on one example of that. At the APPG on antibiotics, we recently connected scientific researchers at the University of Exeter with Ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, so they could share the case for amending the Environment Bill so that it took account of the issue of antimicrobial residues in water and sewage. I understand DEFRA’s decision that although it should not adopt the specific University of Exeter recommendations, it will continue to listen to this research work, including through the new shared outcomes fund pilot project on AMR surveillance, which is in the Environment Act 2021, but we need to see a level of engagement across the board, from all Departments. A Government assessment of whether a further statutory basis is needed to step up action on AMR should be welcomed.
I finish on this brief point, Sir Gary. Many of us in the Chamber now have sat here before, talking about AMR. We are constantly raising the same arguments and the same points, but we really need to spread that message wider. The biggest disappointment is that it is the same few Members raising the same points: the subject does not seem to be getting the political traction it needs. Given where we have been with covid, that might be slightly understandable, but we have to remember, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said: if we take our eye off the ball, AMR has the potential to be a much larger pandemic than we have ever seen before.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
The winding-up speeches will begin at 5.32 pm. We are now going to have seven and half minutes of pure gold from Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
You are most kind, Sir Gary; thank you very much. I am not sure about the pure gold, but I will certainly do my best to make my contribution to the debate. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). He is not only an hon. Member but my friend, and has been for all the time we have been together in the House. We have spoken on many issues together, so I am pleased that he has brought this subject forward.
I have an interest in this issue, probably because of my constituency. I will start with a comment from back home. This is not only a UK-wide issue but a global issue. As Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer, Dr Michael McBride, said:
“As certain antibiotics lose their ability to kill particular strains of microbe, and if we cannot develop new drugs that can beat those bugs, then by the year 2050 we can expect about 10 million deaths per year, worldwide, from drug-resistant infections.”
If that does not shock hon. Members or sound horrific, it should. If hon. Members thought the covid-19 pandemic was their worst nightmare, with all its repercussions and problems and horribleness, I suggest that this debate has the potential to be their even worse nightmare. Will I be here in 2050? It is highly unlikely, but many others will be, so we should ensure that what we do today will be sufficient to protect those of tomorrow—my children, my grandchildren and, whenever they come, my great-grandchildren.
The rise in antibiotic-resistant infections is of real concern: England saw 90,000 hospital admissions because of such infections in 2019-20 alone. There is a real problem, and we need to act now, as right hon. and hon. Members have said. There is a rising tide of antibiotic-resistant infections. We have to do something.
I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union. I have acknowledged on the record the need for investment in agriculture in the effort to tackle antimicrobial resistance from every angle. The Ulster Famers’ Union said:
“As a farming industry, we are committed to playing our part in reducing antibiotic usage and resistance. Significant progress has already been made in the pig and poultry sectors, which have seen their usage fall by over 50% and 80% respectively. Historically, those working with cattle are smaller users of antibiotics but there are improvements that can be made.”
I welcome that commitment from not only the Ulster Farmers’ Union but the National Farmers Union here on the mainland; it is a joint operation. We should support the clear commitment by the farmers unions to do these things and take this action.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech, and he makes a good point about the pig sector. I am sure he will be aware that the reduction in antibiotic use in the pig sector has not affected yields at all, which demonstrates that things can be done more sustainably, and can be better for the environment, without affecting the economics of farming.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The farmers unions welcome these things because, first, they are the right things to do, and secondly, because they do not affect the profitability of the sector or the industry. We need to try to reinforce that.
My constituency has only two or three pig units—one is fairly big, by the way—but a big poultry sector, which has made significant moves towards those things. I live right in the middle of a farm. All my neighbours are dairymen or have beef cattle or some sheep, and they told me that they are careful about what antibiotics they give their animals because that is the right thing to do. Who led the way on net zero targets from the farming sector? The National Farmers Union. It did not have to be coaxed to do that; it was happy to do it. Those are some good things.
It is clear that the farming community is stepping up to the mark and that we in this House need to do more. We need to get the message out that antibiotics are a last line of defence. We must allow our bodies to do their work against viral infections, which antibiotics cannot hope to address. I do not take antibiotics often, but I had to in 2019 because I got a bad infection, and those worked well to clear up my chest infection. Researchers at the University of Limerick found that GPs often felt pressurised into prescribing antibiotics, particularly for fee-paying patients in both in and out-of-hours situations, despite being aware that antibiotics were inappropriate for treating non-bacterial infections. Can the Minister provide an idea of what GPs and consultants do in relation to that and why it is important to get that right and not to be pressurised into giving those out?
GPs need our support and a clear message needs to be sent. We need to ensure that the message is simple: that it is a matter of life and death. Antibiotics are the last of our steps to take and only if we hold them as sacred will we ensure they can still work effectively and save lives. At the end of the day, that is all we want.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for securing this important debate. He spoke passionately about this important issue and I thank him for all his work to highlight it. I also thank him for telling us Helen’s story. Very often, when we stand in this Chamber, we forget that we are speaking about real people, so I thank him for sharing that with us.
The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) made a reasoned contribution and I completely agree with her that action needs to be taken on a global scale. We cannot just look at isolated countries, one by one. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) made a thought-provoking contribution when he spoke about the awareness required and that we need more political traction, not just by having debates but ensuring that more Members of Parliament are aware of the matter. I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who, as we say, is everyone’s friend. His contribution was pure gold and he made important points about the support that GPs should be getting, and that taking antibiotics is the last step.
Antimicrobial treatments are among the most powerful tools in healthcare and have helped save millions of lives, as has been said. They are one of the most important medical discoveries in history, adding an average of 20 years to a person’s life expectancy. Yet the growing resistance to antimicrobial treatments poses a threat to our collective health. In Scotland, for example, an estimated 1,312 bloodstream infections were caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria last year. That number is likely to grow, with drugs becoming less effective over time, and research into new antibiotics is simply not keeping up with the speed at which microbes are developing resistance. In the long term, that poses a threat to our health services. As the World Health Organisation noted, antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat that is no longer a prediction for the future. It is happening now in every region and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age and in any country.
Much of that antimicrobial resistance is caused by the overuse of antibiotics and more emphasis must be placed on ensuring that antibiotics are not overused in treatments. In the UK, for example, only 10% of those suffering from a sore throat actually require antibiotics, yet they are prescribed in 60% of cases when patients seek treatment. Part of the problem is a lack of awareness of antimicrobial resistance. We can help raise awareness through initiatives such as World Antimicrobial Awareness Week in November and the APPG’s work, as mentioned by the hon. Member for York Outer. In Scotland, the antimicrobial resistance and healthcare associated infection strategy group leads the domestic approach to tackling the misuse of antimicrobials, with a plan published every five years. We are gradually seeing a reduction in the use of antibiotics in Scotland, but as has been said, this is a global problem that requires global action.
Greater global action is also required on the use of antibiotics in animal feed. Currently, many farmers feed their livestock antibiotics to prevent potential infections. That practice may pose a problem because it allows bacteria to build up immunity to antibiotics, potentially reducing their overall effectiveness, and that then may pose a risk to humans in cases where those antibiotic-resistant bacteria jump from an animal to a person. To prevent that from happening, the European Union prohibits the import of animal products where antibiotics have been used to promote growth; currently, the UK Government have taken no such action. When negotiating trade deals, the Scottish Trade Minister, Ivan McKee MSP, noted that the UK failed to include measures to prevent antimicrobial resistance in its trade deal with Japan.
In conclusion, antimicrobial agents are a miracle of modern medicine. However, their effectiveness is under threat. Although the UK has made progress in combating microbial resistance, I have spoken to relevant organisations working in the field, and the feedback that they gave me was that more action will be needed in the long term. I ask the Minister, and the UK Government, if they will consider increasing the level of funding to help reduce the threat of antimicrobial resistance. I look forward to hearing how she plans to ensure that the general public are more aware of this situation. Without drastic action being taken, it threatens to be the next pandemic-in-waiting.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on bringing this very timely debate to Westminster Hall. It is timely because if we do not learn from the situation that we are in, we will end up in a very bad place; it is with that in mind that I give my remarks.
This is a really unusual subject; I have not been involved in a debate on it before, but it is one on which there is so much agreement. We have a problem, we have evidence of a problem, we agree that we have a problem, we have solutions that we generally agree on and we are genuinely world leaders. I think the Government sometimes bandy around the fact that we are world leaders when we are not; but we are genuinely world leaders in this area, and that is something to be proud of. We have some fantastic people in this country. However, why is the situation not improving? What more needs to be done, and, crucially, has enough been done in recent years? How do we know what has been done? As the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said, why is there not greater interest and political pressure on this subject?
It was 2013 when Professor Dame Sally Davies described this as a
“catastrophic threat”.
She said:
“If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics. And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection.”
It was in 2014 that the estimated figure of 10 million people dying as a result of AMR by 2050 was mooted. I was working in the health service when that discussion was being had, back in 2013-14. I vividly remember the concern of specialists, particularly colleagues in pharmaceuticals, about that, and the actions that were being taken to support clinical practice to make sure that did not happen. However, I do not think that most people walking the streets are aware of the catastrophic prediction made then.
We have a problem—we agree on the problem—and we know the causes of the problem: inappropriate use of antimicrobial drugs in healthcare; poor infection prevention and control practices; use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture, and accelerated spreads of AMR infections through global trade and travel. Additionally, as the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and other hon. Members have said, there are limited numbers of new drugs available to replace those that become ineffective. The former Prime Minister, David Cameron, launched a review in 2014, and the list of 10 recommendations was published in 2016. In 2017, the cost of global action was estimated at $40 billion. That is an eyewatering sum, but when compared with what is being described as the incalculable cost of covid, which reaches trillions of dollars, that $40 billion estimate starts to look quite small. Others have indicated that in reality the cost of this could be unimaginable to most of us.
There was an excellent debate in Westminster Hall on 26 April 2016, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) addressed the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who is also an expert in this area. My hon. Friend said:
“Although I welcome the renewed focus that today’s debate brings, I fear we are no closer to a solution than we were two and a half years ago.”—[Official Report, 26 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 540WH.]
I think there is concern in the Chamber that that remains the case today.
The Government have targets, although they are not terribly specific. Many are for the period 2021 to 2025—for example, being able to
“report on the percentage of prescriptions supported by a diagnostic test…by 2024.”
On the eve of 2022, I expect the Minister to be able to outline how meeting those commitments is going. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton made some helpful suggestions for what we should be measuring, how we should be measuring it and how that should be reported, which I am sure the Minister will address.
On animal use, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted, the investment required by farmers was yet to be formally evaluated in 2019, so it would be useful to know whether the Minister has evaluated that cost. It would also be helpful to have an understanding of how we are collaborating with our European neighbours, now that we have left the European Union, because we know that collaboration is really important, particularly in the agricultural industry.
We should be prepared, and we should certainly be on track, but I fear we are not, so the crucial issue is: what do we need to do? I pay tribute to Dame Sally Davies, our special envoy on AMR, and her work to highlight this issue, which, as she has said in the last year, is a silent pandemic. As she has told us, covid needs to be a wake-up call to the warnings that she has issued over the years. I have listened to her speak on this issue, as has another all-party group, and she has recently used quite a vivid image to describe the situation: covid is like putting a lobster into boiling water, but AMR is like a lobster in cold water. It is a silent pandemic.
One of the issues is that fewer adults know about this. I absolutely agree, and I think that is also true of Members of Parliament. We need to learn from covid, including about things such as altering behaviour, washing our hands and access to water. We also need to support those on the frontline much better, including through clinical direction, to help them in the way that they need in order to treat patients.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
I call the Minister. Please remember to leave two or three minutes for Kevin Hollinrake to respond.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for bringing forward today’s debate, and all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions. As has been made clear in this debate, antimicrobial resistance is undoubtedly one of the most significant global health challenges that we face today. The covid-19 pandemic has illustrated the substantial impact that major outbreaks of disease can have on society, endangering lives and disrupting public services and the economy. The threat of AMR is no different.
Last year, in England alone, there were over 55,000 cases of resistant infections and more than 2,000 estimated deaths. Across Europe, hospital infections caused by resistant bacteria add £1 billion to hospital treatment and societal costs. In addition, the emergence of multi and extremely drug-resistant strains of infectious diseases threatens to undo years of global effort to tackle them. For example, there are now strains of tuberculosis that are resistant to almost all lines of treatment. TB deaths have increased for the first time in a decade and global targets are no longer on track. As other hon. Members have said, without working antibiotics, routine surgery such as caesarean sections or hip replacements could become too dangerous to perform, and cancer chemotherapy could become prohibitively high risk. As my hon. Friend highlighted, the threat of AMR also extends beyond human health. The implications of AMR for animals and crops threaten food security and trade. It is predicted that the global cost of AMR could amount to $100 trillion without action.
So what are the UK Government doing to tackle this risk? As Members have referenced, in January 2019 the Government set out the UK’s vision to contain and control AMR by 2040. That vision is supported by a five-year national action plan across the spectrum of human and animal health, agriculture, the environment and food. We are halfway through implementing our five-year action plan and have made considerable progress. We are committed to reducing the need for antimicrobials by lowering the burden of infection in our communities, in the NHS, on farms and in the environment—if you don’t get the bug, you don’t get the drug.
We have also taken a series of steps to ensure the appropriate use of antimicrobials, where they are needed, in both humans and animals. Antibiotic use in farmed animals has decreased by 52% since 2014, with a decrease of 79% in sales of veterinary antibiotics that are most critical for human health. Among European nations with a significant livestock farming industry, the UK has the lowest use of antibiotics, and antibiotic consumption by humans reduced by 6.6% between 2016 and 2019.
No new class of antibiotic has been developed since 1987, and the market for antimicrobials is broken, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said. To address that, we are testing a new Netflix-style subscription model for antibiotics—a world first. The economic model and evaluation reports for the two antimicrobials in the project have been completed, and the reports are currently undergoing consultation with registered stakeholders, including drug manufacturers. We hope that the first payments under the new model will be made in 2022, and I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton that we will incorporate the learnings from the pilot project in any new framework for the purchase of antimicrobials in the future.
We maintain a formal dialogue with industry through the joint Government and industry working group on AMR. The group, which has members from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and NHS England and Improvement, last met in October 2021, and the next meeting will take place in spring 2022.
I wholeheartedly agree with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton on the importance of reporting. That is why a range of annual reports are already published by our partners across Government and their agencies, highlighting progress against the ambitions of the national action plan. The most recent of these, the “English surveillance programme for antimicrobial utilisation and resistance report 2020 to 2021”, was published on 17 November 2021. The report includes national data on human antibiotic prescribing, resistance, antimicrobial stewardship implementation, and awareness activities. The UK Health Security Agency also publishes data on antibiotic prescribing at practice level, and quarterly on the web platform Fingertips.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton asked for an update on the national action plan ambitions. I will start by exercising caution on the figures in the light of covid-19. In England, however, we have seen an 11.2% decrease since 2019 in healthcare-associated gram-negative engagement. In response to my hon. Friend’s question about death certificate recording, it is important to acknowledge the difficulty faced by medical practitioners in distinguishing whether the cause of death of a patient with a resistant infection was due to the resistance itself, the infection or another cause. However, we will work with professional bodies to enhance the likelihood of AMR being accurately recorded where it can be determined that a resistant organism is responsible for an infection that caused or contributed to death.
Additionally, the Office for National Statistics upgraded its death recording software in January 2020 in order to support codes for AMR and allow analysis of mentions of AMR in death certificate data. We are not only taking action at home but continue to take a global lead in the world’s collective fight against AMR. The UK is committed to pushing the AMR agenda forward through multilateral forums, including as a signatory to the United Nations’ Call to Action. I am delighted that the UK’s special envoy, Professor Dame Sally Davies, represents the UK on the UN Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance in order to advocate and advise on AMR globally.
Under the UK’s G7 presidency this year, we have secured ambitious commitments on AMR to balance innovation, access and stewardship for antimicrobials. G7 Health Ministers have agreed to strengthen the resilience of antibiotic supply chains and, with the G7 Climate and Environment Ministers, they will develop sustainable, clean and green solutions for antibiotic manufacturing. The G7 Health and Finance Ministers are working together to strengthen antibiotic development to ensure that there is a sustainable pipeline of new and equitably accessible antimicrobials in the making and building of the UK’s subscription model.
Finally, in recognition of the global effort required to tackle AMR, the UK invests significantly to improve global knowledge, surveillance and understanding of AMR—an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy). The Department of Health and Social Care invests significantly in tackling AMR where the burden is highest, including through the Fleming fund, which improves laboratory capacity for surveillance of AMR, and the global AMR innovation fund, which funds innovative science in neglected areas of AMR R&D. Both of these projects are UK aid funded and are primarily for the benefit of people living in low and middle-income countries.
We also invest UK aid on research into new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics, as well as capacity building, technical expertise and support to relevant programmes, such as strengthening healthcare systems and improving infection prevention and control. Again, I want to thank my hon. Friend for bringing this incredibly important matter to the Chamber and for providing the opportunity to emphasise the necessity of collective domestic and international action if we are to effectively solve the very serious threat that AMR poses to us all.
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister. As I said earlier, she has always been a passionate champion of this subject, long before she was an excellent Health Minister. AMR is quite an esoteric issue. Most hon. Members, as we can tell from the attendance, are not particularly concerned about or aware of the problem. I was only made aware of the issue because a charity in my constituency, Antibiotic Research UK, or ANTRUK, drew my attention to it. It acted as an adviser to a Radio 4 programme called “Resistance”, which is well worth listening to. There are about four or five series, and it is a dramatisation where an antibiotic-resistant bug wipes out over 99% of the planet’s population.
That is the potential for how devastating AMR could be, so it is absolutely critical that we get this right. For me, it is down to the three D’s—drugs, diagnostics and data. I wonder how concerned we all would have been about covid, particularly early on in the crisis, had we not seen the data behind it. For most of us, it did not really directly affect us, so the data is crucial. I know that it can be challenging to determine exactly what somebody has died from in the case of a resistant infection, but it is critical that we establish a framework so that there is more concern among parliamentarians, the media and constituents, which leads to parliamentary concern, and constituents can come to our surgeries and say, “We are very concerned about this, because we have had a catastrophic personal incident ourselves.”
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. There were few of them, but this is a hugely important issue, and I really am grateful to hon. Members for coming here and speaking about it today.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered health impacts of increasing antimicrobial resistance.
Written Statements
Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018: Commencement
(3 years ago)
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The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)
Today, I am delighted to announce the commencement of the majority of the provisions of the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018, and alongside this, the publication of:
the Government’s response to a public consultation on the draft statutory guidance; and
the revised statutory guidance, which has been reviewed considering the public consultation held earlier this year.
The provisions specified within the commencement regulations will be brought into force on 31 March 2022. This will allow reasonable time for mental health units to prepare for the new requirements the Act will place on them, and enable them to take account of the statutory guidance which is being published in advance of commencement, alongside the response to the recent public consultation on the statutory guidance.
The Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 was introduced in the House of Commons by the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) in July 2017 and received Royal Assent in November 2018. The Act, also known as Seni’s Law, is named after Olaseni Lewis, who died as a result of being forcibly restrained by up to 11 police officers while he was a voluntary patient in a mental health unit. Seni was 23 at the time of his death, doing a postgraduate Masters in IT and business management at Kingston University and should have had his whole life ahead of him. Following their son’s death, Aji, Conrad and the Lewis family campaigned and fought for justice for their son, and the answers to what happened to him on that day. It took seven years before there was an inquest, which ruled:
“The excessive force, pain compliance techniques and multiple mechanical restraints were disproportionate and unreasonable”.
The Act aims to clearly set out the measures which are needed to both prevent the inappropriate use of force and ensure accountability and transparency about the use of force in mental health units, encouraging a human-rights, trauma-informed and person-centred approach to patient care. The statutory guidance sets out how we expect mental health units to meet the requirements of the Act. The requirements of the Act and the statutory guidance provide a much needed opportunity to embed a consistent approach across services nationally.
I believe that every individual has the right to be treated with dignity, in a caring therapeutic environment which is free from abuse. The use of force can sometimes be necessary to secure the safety of patients and staff. However, it is always accompanied by risk and can often be a traumatic experience for patients when they are most vulnerable and in need of compassionate care. For too long mental health services have relied on the use of force, with data showing the use force is at an all-time high.
This Act represents a vital step in efforts to reduce the use of force in mental health units, which affected over 13,000 individuals in 2020-21 and disproportionately those with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
I am encouraged that this landmark piece of legislation enjoys the support of patients, people with lived experience, voluntary and charitable sector organisations and the NHS. Today’s commencement of the majority of the Act represents a significant step forward in our efforts to prevent the use of inappropriate force in mental health units, which would not have been possible without the tireless campaigning of the hon. Member for Croydon North, Aji and Conrad Lewis and their daughters Kemi and Lara. Aji Lewis, with the support of her family, continues to campaign to reduce the use of force and improve mental health services for all patients. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to meet Aji and hear her family’s and Seni’s story directly from her.
This is part of the Government’s wider reform agenda to improve support for individuals with severe mental illnesses. The Government published their Mental Health Act White Paper on 13 January 2021 which sets out proposals for once in a generation reforms to the Mental Health Act, responding to and building on the Independent Review of the Act, led by Professor Sir Simon Wessely’s. As part of this, NHS England and NHS Improvement has developed the Patient and Carers Race Equality Framework to support mental health services to improve the experience of care for people from ethnic minority backgrounds by increasing staff understanding of their racial and cultural differences.
We are also working hard to achieve our NHS long-term plan commitment to give 370,000 adults and older adults with severe mental illnesses greater choice and control over their care and support them to live well in their communities by 2023-24. Through this plan, we are also expanding services for people experiencing a mental health crisis including working towards 24/7 crisis resolution and home treatment services and investing in a range of local complementary and alternative crisis services. In addition, all NHS mental health providers have now established 24/7 all-age urgent mental health helplines for those experiencing a mental health crisis or those supporting them.
[HCWS446]
Prisons Strategy White Paper
(3 years ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
Today the Government have published our Prisons Strategy White Paper which sets out our plans to build the prison places the country needs, transform the prison regime to protect the public, and to drive down reoffending and cut crime. The White Paper sets out our plans to deliver on this.
The White Paper sets out our ambitious plans to:
Deliver the biggest prison building programme in more than 100 years, with almost £4 billion to create up to 20,000 additional prison places to help us to meet demand as tougher sentencing rules come in and the courts clear backlogs.
Support a zero-tolerance approach to weapons, drugs and contraband in prisons, disrupting criminal activity from within the prison walls and, crucially, ensuring good order and discipline in our estate so that staff and prisoners are safe and can focus on the purposeful activity which reduces reoffending.
Use the prison system to get more prisoners off drugs, by improving drug testing and delivering access to a full range of drug and mental health treatment, including abstinence-based drug treatment options, with stronger continuity of drug treatment on release.
Introduce an improved prisoner education service, which ensures prisoners have access to a range of services to improve skills, such as literacy and numeracy, and acquire qualifications, and is focused on opening up employment opportunities for prisoners on release.
Transform the opportunities for work in prisons and on release on temporary license (ROTL) to increase job prospects for prison leavers, by holding governors to account for the job opportunities and outcomes they achieve for prisoners.
Provide the basics that offenders need to live crime-free lives (such as a CV, setting out the qualifications, skills and work experience gained in custody, ID and conditions of release) through a system of “passports” to better aid resettlement and investing £200 million a year by 2024-25 to transform our approach to rehabilitation.
Empower governors to innovate locally, while still operating with and being assessed against clear outcome measures that align with the Government’s priorities.
Use clear, public and transparent prison performance statistics with published key performance indicators (KPIs) for prisons and league tables to compare performance and spread best practice, ensuring success is measured against our priorities: security and stability; substance misuse and mental health; and resettlement and family ties.
Recruit an extra 5,000 prison officers and upskill our existing staff by enhancing training, supervision, and qualifications; as well as making sure we hire the next generation of governors through an HMPPS fast-track scheme.
Modernise our prisons with digital infrastructure so that prisoners have autonomy over their in-prison affairs, and staff have a reduced bureaucratic burden, enabling them to work more efficiently.
The full package of proposals will help us bring down rates of reoffending, which cost our economy over £18 billion per year, beat crime and build back better—to make our communities safer, and level up opportunities across the country. This White Paper sets out what we will deliver over the next two years as well as our longer-term 10-year vision. The White Paper can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prisons-strategy-white-paper
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Independent Reporting Commission: Fourth Substantiveusb Report
(3 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
I have received the fourth substantive report from the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC).
The IRC emanated from the Fresh Start Agreement of November 2015. That agreement set out the Northern Ireland Executive’s commitments around tackling paramilitary activity and associated criminality, and led to a programme of work to deliver a Northern Ireland Executive action plan containing 43 recommendations.
The New Decade, New Approach Agreement, in January 2020, included a commitment to ongoing work to tackle paramilitarism and, earlier this year, it was agreed that a second phase of the programme of work to tackle paramilitary activity would run until March 2024.
This fourth substantive report builds on the work already undertaken by the Commissioners and highlights the ongoing challenge of paramilitarism, and reminds us of the important work still to be done.
I would like to thank the commissioners for their work, particularly in delivering this year’s report in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
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