House of Commons
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Prayers
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
Stirling has today submitted its bid to be the UK’s city of culture 2025. Winning the bid would bring investment and international attention to the town, and I am sure that every Scottish MP will join me in wishing Stirling the very best for the competition. As I am sure you are aware, Mr Speaker, today—2 February—is also Groundhog day. Of course, in Scotland, every day feels like Groundhog day with the SNP’s incessant calls for another independence referendum.
Turning to question No. 1, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), and I have regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues about improving cross-border connectivity. The UK Government are currently considering the recommendations from the Union connectivity review and a formal response will be published shortly.
Felicity Buchan
Does my right hon. Friend share my disappointment that the Scottish Government refused to engage with the Union connectivity review, and does he share my hope that these party political games will stop and that the Scottish Government will work with the UK Government to improve transport links for the people of Scotland, such as vital improvements to the A1 and the construction of the Borders railway to Carlisle?
Mr Jack
I do share the disappointment that the Scottish Government did not engage in the Union connectivity review. In fact, the Cabinet Secretary for transport, Michael Matheson, instructed his civil servants not to engage with Sir Peter Hendy, the author of the review. But the UK Government have invited the Scottish Government to work closely in partnership to consider the recommendations and identify solutions that work best for all people in the United Kingdom.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
There is no doubt that the UK Government speak a lot about improving connectivity with Scotland, but what is the Secretary of State specifically doing to improve connectivity between the UK Conservative Cabinet and what they refer to as the political lightweights of the Scottish Conservative party?
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
Rail links between England and Scotland are crucial in promoting regional interconnectivity not just to London, but to premier resorts such as mine of Southport. Would my right hon. Friend commit to meeting me so we can discuss putting the link back in through the Burscough curves to connect Southport better with Scotland?
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
With the pandemic leading to more and more people looking to holiday in the UK, what discussions—notwithstanding the comments about the refusal of the Scottish Government—has the Secretary of State endeavoured to have with the Scottish Government about harnessing that new-found demand and supporting important transport hubs such as Edinburgh airport and Haymarket station in my constituency to facilitate improved connectivity?
Mr Jack
As the hon. Lady will know, connectivity is important. It is not just about air; it is also about rail and road. We are very keen to improve connectivity because we realise that that leads to economic growth and improves people’s livelihoods. We are engaging with the Scottish Government in a spirit of good will with a view to improving connectivity for all parts of the United Kingdom.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
The Moray full deal and the Falkirk heads of terms were signed in December. We now have nine deals in implementation and three in negotiation covering all of Scotland. The Government have committed over £1.5 billion for the deal programme in Scotland.
John Lamont
I am sure that the Minister is aware of the Scottish Government’s strategic transport review, and no doubt he will share my disappointment at the very lukewarm support for the extension of the Borders railway to Hawick, Newcastleton and on to Carlisle. Does he agree that this Government should show their full support for the project and tell us when the feasibility study for the Borders railway extension will be started?
Iain Stewart
I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s disappointment. When we signed the Borderlands growth deal, I was determined that the feasibility study for reopening the full Borders line should be in there. I am keen to see that work starting as soon as possible, and we will soon respond to the Union connectivity review, which also references that line. This is a classic example of where the Scottish Government should stop obsessing and spending their time, resources and money on yet more independence preparations and instead deliver on projects that really matter to the people of Scotland.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Borderlands region will see £20 million less investment in its city region deal from the UK Government than from the Scottish Government. Why is that?
Iain Stewart
If the hon. Lady looks at the full package of investment that is going into the Borderlands deal, she will see that this Government are full square behind that area. It really is disappointing that it comes down to this petty point scoring when the whole point of the city region and growth deal is that all parts of government—local, Scottish and UK—work together on delivering the priorities that are determined by local people.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
Talking about the Borderlands growth initiative and the growth deal, does the Minister agree that it is extremely important and beneficial to the whole region, and that Carlisle has become the regional capital of parts not just of England, but of Scotland? Does he also agree that south Scotland recognises the importance of Carlisle’s economic performance to the whole region? Does he further agree that that helps to support the Union?
Iain Stewart
I absolutely agree that the Borderlands growth deal is unique in that it straddles the border. The economic footprint of the region is incredibly important. Last year I held a meeting in Carlisle with local authority leaders and other stakeholders to discuss not just the growth deal, but how it can be the starting point for a proper economic partnership that straddles the border and delivers for my hon. Friend and his neighbouring constituencies.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
This Government are committed to upholding and strengthening the United Kingdom. My Department works closely with our partners across Government and with Scottish stakeholders. This Government are delivering record investment in Scotland and are ensuring that the many benefits of the Union are shared across the United Kingdom.
Stephen Kinnock
The Leader of the House recently described the leader of the Scottish Conservatives as “a lightweight figure”. Does the Secretary of State believe that that comment helped to strengthen the Union?
Mr Jack
I have made my position very clear: I do not think that Douglas Ross—[Interruption.] Well, I made it very clear in the Scottish media, which hon. Members may not have noticed, but that is fair enough. He is the leader of the Scottish Conservatives and was put there by the membership, and we are a constitutionally devolved organisation. He is doing a very good job and holds Nicola Sturgeon to account, and he has my full backing.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
On the Union, this Government are committed to delivering freeports across the United Kingdom, including at least one in Wales. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the creation of at least one freeport in Scotland will result in investment and thousands of jobs and demonstrates why our Union is so effective at delivering for our communities?
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The Sue Gray report released on Monday was utterly damning about the Prime Minister’s conduct, yet the Secretary of State continues to back him against the wishes of his own Scottish Conservative leader, who I notice is not in the Chamber for Scottish questions. We now know that the Metropolitan police are investigating no fewer than 12 incidents in Downing Street, with more allegations every day. It is little wonder then that a recent poll found that the Prime Minister is as unpopular in Scotland as Alex Salmond. Does the Secretary of State think that the Prime Minister, in refusing to do the decent thing and resign, is good for the Union or helps those who want to break it up?
Ian Murray
What is Groundhog day, Mr Speaker, is the Secretary of State’s defence of this broken Prime Minister.
Tomorrow, the Bank of England is projected to raise interest rates, and inflation is running at a 30-year high. There will be much anxiety in Scottish households that Ofgem will announce the raising of the energy price cap, leading to a massive hike in bills. Last night, my colleagues and I voted to give every single Scottish household support towards the cost of their spiralling energy bills. Under Labour’s fully costed plans, we would save every Scottish household £200 and save £600 for over 800,000 Scottish households hardest hit by the cost of living crisis. That is proper action on this crisis for those both on and off the grid, like many thousands in the Secretary of State’s constituency. Given that the SNP did not back these plans in the vote last night either, why are Scotland’s two Governments refusing to take any action whatsoever to help Scots with spiralling energy costs?
Mr Jack
The UK Government are taking action. The energy price cap is being maintained and will be renegotiated—that is ongoing work for the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We are providing a £140 rebate on energy bills for 2.2 million households with the lowest incomes, and we have the £300 winter fuel payment for pensioners.
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
The strength of any Union rests upon the confidence people have in those who are running things. I know that I disagree with the Minister’s political judgment, so let me appeal to his business judgment. Hypothetically, if he were handed evidence that the man running his company had been incompetent and dishonest, and was subject to a police investigation, bringing the entire company into disrepute, would he let him carry on in the role, or would he expect him to step back?
Mr Jack
As has been said many times at this Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister is very sorry for what happened—he has apologised. He has said that if he could have done things differently, with hindsight, he would have done. It is also the case that no one has said that he is the subject of a police investigation. The police are looking into the events that have been passed on to them by Sue Gray, and we will wait for the outcome of that inquiry.
Mhairi Black
I find it quite incredible. Many of the public believe that this Prime Minister has a long history of racism, homophobia and misogyny. He has lost numerous jobs due to his level of dishonesty. He has presided over 150,000 deaths and the loss of nearly £5 billion of public money to fraudsters. Eighty per cent. of people in Scotland want him to resign, and the leader of the Scottish Tories wants him to resign. Let me ask the Minister this: as Scotland’s only representative in Cabinet, what would it take for him to ask for the Prime Minister’s resignation?
Mr Jack
The Prime Minister is doing a fantastic job. He is focusing on the things that matter: delivering on the recovery from this pandemic, the vaccine programme that he backed early on, the booster programme that he led before Christmas, trade deals that will improve outcomes for Scottish food and drink, and many other things. He is a very good leader. The hon. Lady is absolutely prejudging the outcome of the police inquiry.
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
Following the reference to confidence by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), I welcome the publication of the levelling-up White Paper, and the Government’s commitment to decentralising the UK shared prosperity fund to local areas in Scotland and Wales. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an example of confidence in local decision-making, of real devolution and of good Union working?
Mr Jack
My hon. Friend is absolutely right—I know that he is a great champion of the Union. The levelling-up paper, which will be launched today, will contain a lot of initiatives and show that we are using structural funds to practise real devolution by giving that money directly to local authorities.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
The UK Government remain focused on the issues that really matter to people in Scotland, including recovery from the pandemic. My Department continues to work closely with both the Scottish Government and UK Government Departments on the ongoing implementation of the Scotland Act 2016.
Margaret Ferrier
Yesterday, Holyrood backed a motion rejecting voter ID measures in the Elections Bill because they would disenfranchise Scottish voters. That is an indication of the strength of feeling for people across Scotland, and in my constituency, that the UK Government are not giving them due consideration through the legislative process. Can the Secretary of State confirm what plans the Government have to extend Holyrood’s legislative powers?
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
Communities across Scotland have benefited and will continue to benefit from our focus on levelling up. Particularly for coastal communities we are investing a further £100 million over the next three years for transformative seafood projects that will help to rejuvenate our coastal communities.
Jacob Young
The petrochemical and oil and gas industries are vital to coastal communities across our United Kingdom, in Teesside and in Scotland. Will the Minister confirm that this Government are committed to supporting our petchem sector and further oil and gas exploration in the North sea, which will inevitably help us achieve net zero, not hinder it?
Iain Stewart
Yes, I can. The Government are committed to delivering a North sea transition deal, which will be a global exemplar of how a Government can work with the offshore oil and gas industry in partnership to achieve a managed energy transition. This deal between the UK Government and the oil and gas industry will support workers, businesses and the supply chain through this transition by harnessing the industry’s existing capabilities, infrastructure and private investment potential.
Cherilyn Mackrory
This Government’s multimillion-pound investment in the fishing industry will benefit coastal communities right across the UK, from Cornwall to Scotland. Does my hon. Friend agree that only by boosting coastal communities and spreading opportunity to every corner of our country can we succeed in our mission to improve the lives of everybody in our great nation?
Iain Stewart
Indeed I do. The Government have gone well beyond their manifesto commitment to replace European Union funding, by investing an additional £100 million over the next three years for these transformative seafood projects that will rejuvenate the industry and our coastal communities. Levelling up is about helping communities across the UK, and that means building back better, spreading opportunity, improving public services and helping to restore and celebrate pride in our coastal communities.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The world-leading European Marine Energy Centre in Stromness was developed as a consequence of access to EU Interreg funding, money to which we no longer have access. Does the Minister agree that the UK’s shared prosperity fund should be the source of replacement funding for organisations such as EMEC that no longer have access to Interreg funding? What is the Scotland Office doing to make that case within government?
Iain Stewart
I had the pleasure of visiting Stromness last summer, when I saw for myself the huge potential that Orkney has to lead the country in renewable energy. I continue to speak to the leader of Orkney Islands Council to explore all the ways in which we can help to fund these exciting projects.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
Many coastal communities, including in my constituency, benefit from improved coastal shipping. What actions has the Secretary of State taken to assist in introducing a direct ferry service from Scotland to critically important export markets in Europe?
Iain Stewart
I was pleased to reply to a debate that the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues spoke in a couple of weeks ago on exploring the potential for restoring the Rosyth to Zeebrugge link, which, for commercial reasons, ceased operating a few years ago. There are lots of potentials for reopening that. It is primarily a matter for the Scottish Government, but I am happy to work with him and his colleagues to explore all these opportunities.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The ScotWind allocation announced last week has the opportunity to create thousands of jobs in Scotland. The reality is that in its time in office the Scottish National party has created lots of highly-skilled jobs, but they are not in Scotland—they are in China, Poland, Portugal and elsewhere. The Scottish Government failed to put in place sufficient demands for local procurement as part of awarding the contract; it is particularly disappointing for coastal communities, who can see offshore wind turbines being installed but cannot see the jobs. What discussion has the Minister had with the Scottish Government about ensuring that the supply chain for ScotWind creates jobs in Scotland and across the UK?
Iain Stewart
I agree with the basic point the hon. Lady is making. Referring back to the answer I gave the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), may I say that if we look at renewable energy as a whole, we see that there are enormous opportunities to develop that technology in Scotland, through our contracts for difference round, which is as big as all the other rounds put together? Huge investment is going in, in offshore wind and in tidal, and I will continue to explore every avenue to make sure that this country is able to secure the lion’s share of that industrial capacity.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
Eight projects in Scotland have received a share of more than £170 million from round 1 of the levelling-up fund. Those projects will create new jobs, boost training, grow productivity and deliver tremendous economic benefit to Scotland.
Suzanne Webb
With all the news on the levelling-up White Paper today, will my right hon. Friend update the House on progress towards the fund’s second round? There will be as many bidders in Scotland as there will be in my constituency, where we are keen to move forward with a bid to regenerate Lye.
Mr Jack
Unsuccessful applicants who have passed the gateway stage will be offered feedback to support future bids. They will also be encouraged to reapply. Round 2 of the levelling-up fund is due to open in spring this year, and more information will be shared in due course.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I feel for the Secretary of State having to come to the Dispatch Box to defend his Government’s appalling record on spending for the devolved nations. Their broken promises on fully replacing EU funds look to set Wales back more than £1 billion over the next few years. Will he confirm exactly how the Government plan on plugging that gap? The shared prosperity fund will see all the devolved nations lose out on vital funding and is simply not good enough.
Mr Jack
To be absolutely clear, regarding funding to the devolved Administrations, the first comment I would make to the hon. Lady is that the settlement for Scotland this year of £41.6 billion is an increase of £4 billion and is the highest settlement that the Scottish Government have received since 1998, so since devolution began. Regarding the UK shared prosperity fund, the European regional development fund and the European social fund are absolutely being replaced with no reduction whatever, as per our manifesto commitment.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend inform the House of what engagement he has had—or other UK Departments have had—with the Scottish Government and, in particular, with local authorities in Scotland to ensure that levelling up is truly a levelling-up exercise across the whole of the United Kingdom?
Mr Jack
As my hon. Friend knows from when he was in the Scotland Office with me, we have had a lot of engagement with Scottish local authorities. We have been very clear that we will deliver the levelling-up money and work with those local authorities to practice real devolution.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
The Union connectivity review recognised the importance of the A1 and recommended that the UK Government should seek to work with the Scottish Government to develop an assessment of the east coast road and rail corridor. The Government will respond to the UCR and publish that response in due course.
Grahame Morris
On the day that the levelling-up agenda has been published, will the Secretary of State tell the House what steps he is taking to devolve powers and finance to the northern regions, so that we can strengthen ties with the Holyrood Government independently of Westminster, so increasing rail capacity, trade and opportunities for business?
Iain Stewart
I know how passionate the hon. Gentleman is about transport matters as I had the pleasure of serving with him on the Select Committee on Transport for a number of years. If he reads through the levelling-up White Paper, which came out today—I appreciate that it is quite a weighty tome, so he might not have had a chance to digest it all yet—he will see in that the measures to which he is referring. We can encourage better connectivity between the different economic centres of the UK. I would be absolutely delighted to see a strengthening of that corridor between Scotland and the north-east of England.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
My office and I have regular discussions with the Ministry of Defence on all matters relating to defence in Scotland, including defence investment with industry and commerce in Scotland, which totalled almost £2 billion in 2020-21.
Ben Everitt
Scotland is home to the Royal Navy Submarine Service, including our essential independent nuclear deterrent, which protects the whole of the UK. As President Putin continues to escalate his military posture and the aggression on the Ukrainian border—let us be clear that it is President Putin escalating this and not the Russian people—does my right hon. Friend agree that our commitment to defence investment in Scotland, including in Trident, is important, indeed vital, to Scotland’s security as part of the UK and as part of NATO? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I need to finish these questions. It is in good order that you hear your own Secretary of State.
Mr Jack
Mr Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear that I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, which is Trident, based at the HM Naval Base Clyde, exists to deter the most extreme threats not only to the United Kingdom but to our NATO allies. Our nuclear deterrent is the ultimate assurance against current and future threats and remains essential for as long as the global security situation demands.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
This Government have consistently said that the best way to support people’s living standards is through good work, better skills and higher wages. Our plan for jobs is working, the economy is growing and unemployment is low. The national living wage, the universal credit taper and allowance changes are putting more money in people’s pockets.
Alyn Smith
The UK energy market is demonstrably broken. Surely that is of concern to all of us in all parts of the House. I am particularly concerned about rural energy prices and disparities between urban and rural areas. Competition law and energy law are reserved to this place. Will the Minister support my call for an investigation into uncompetitive energy practices? If he will not, would he care to come to the city of Stirling and explain to the people of Stirling and Scotland how the UK energy market is working for them?
Iain Stewart
First, let me welcome the city of culture bid by the hon. Gentleman’s home city. I am always happy to visit Stirling—in fact, I believe that I am coming up to visit in the next couple of weeks. I am very happy to meet him to discuss the measures to which he refers, but energy prices are rising globally. That is a consequence of the coronavirus restrictions easing and demand coming back, together with other geopolitical factors, so I would put the points that he raises in that global context.
Speaker’s Statement
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I wish to make a statement about the House practices regarding accusing Members of lying or of deliberately misleading the House. I recognise that there are frustrations around the House’s practices.
First, let me say that there are means by which accusations of lying may be brought before the House, including by means of a substantive motion. The Scottish National party did so on its Opposition day in November. However, Members may not accuse each other of lying or of deliberately misleading the House unless such a substantive motion is under consideration. “Erskine May” is clear that it is
“to preserve the character of parliamentary debate”,
which I take to mean to stop it descending into fruitless cycles of accusation and counter-accusation.
It also says:
“Expressions when used in respect of other Members which are regarded with particular seriousness, generally leading to prompt intervention from the Chair and often a requirement on the Member to withdraw the words, include…charges of uttering a deliberate falsehood.”
It is important to stress context. Similar words said in different proceedings might attract a different response from the Chair depending on the subject being debated, tone and other considerations. In general, though, the Chair will not tolerate accusations of lying or of deliberately misleading the House. That is the long-standing practice of the House, as set out in “Erskine May” and followed by successive Speakers and Deputy Speakers.
Of course, long-standing practices may change—for example, if the House decided that it wanted a different approach, perhaps informed by a Procedure Committee inquiry—but it is not for me to change the practice unilaterally. Therefore, I ask Members to respect this approach. I know feelings run high on important issues we discuss, but there are plenty of ways of making strong feelings felt within the rules and without placing the Chair in the invidious position of having to order Members to withdraw or seeking their suspension.
Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I would like to point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.
Speaker’s Statement
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
We now come to tributes to Jack Dromey.
Jack made his mark long before he came into this House, in particular as a fearless, energetic trade unionist. I remember campaigning him with him in the ’80s and ’90s to save the Royal Ordnance factory in Chorley. He was positive, down to earth, and determined to help working people—characteristics that remained with him throughout his career. I have to say, as somebody who knew Jack and worked with Jack: he was innovative; he was absolutely visionary. We sat down, upon a closure where thousands of jobs were going to go, and Jack said, “We’re in this together; we will stand shoulder to shoulder with the people whose jobs are at risk.” He said, “We’ve got to look beyond what kills people. We can do something different. Let us look for alternatives that save people’s lives.”
The expertise that was in Royal Ordnance Chorley was second to none. Of course we had to fight for the jobs in the first place. It became a choice between Glascoed and Chorley, and Jack said, “With the land values we know where British Aerospace will be.” In the end we came up with real alternatives. We had seen Lockerbie. We had seen the destruction and the loss of life, and in Chorley they designed a cargo that stopped the plane coming down. That was the vision of Jack, who said, “If we can’t save the jobs in making bombs, let us save jobs by finding an alternative to save lives.” So that is my personal experience of Jack Dromey. I knew him on other occasions, but I have to say: he was inspirational to me and he has been inspirational to many others in this House.
Since his election to this House in 2010, he proved to be an exemplary Member of Parliament. He was an assiduous and effective campaigner for his constituents. As a Front Bencher, he was trusted to lead for the party in particularly sensitive areas such as housing, policing, pensions, and, most recently, immigration. While he was a robust Front Bencher, he always demonstrated respect for his opponents and was well like and admired across the House. Nobody could fall out with Jack Dromey.
While we mourn a colleague, it is Jack’s family who will of course feel the loss most deeply. I know the whole House will join me in expressing our condolences to the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). Harriet, I know that all Members of this House will join me in saying to you and your family that we are so sorry for your loss, and it is a sad loss for this House.
I will now take brief points of order to allow for tributes to an esteemed colleague.
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 7 January, this House suffered the loss of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, Jack Dromey, and it is right that we should come together now in tribute to his memory. Let me offer my condolences, on behalf of the whole Government, to the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and her family.
Although Jack and I may have come from different political traditions, I knew him as a man of great warmth and energy and compassion. I can tell the House that one day—a very hot day—Jack was driving in Greece when he saw a family of British tourists, footsore, bedraggled and sunburned, with the children on the verge of mutiny against their father: an experience I understand. He stopped the car and invited them all in, even though there was barely any room. I will always be grateful for his kindness, because that father was me, and he drove us quite a long way.
Jack had a profound commitment to helping all those around him, and those he served, and he commanded the utmost respect across the House. He will be remembered as one of the great trade unionists of our time—a veteran of the Grunwick picket lines, which he attended with his future wife, where they campaigned alongside the mainly Asian female workforce at the Grunwick film processing laboratory. Having married someone who would go on to become, in his words,
“the outstanding parliamentary feminist of her generation”,
Jack became, again in his words, Mr Harriet Harman née Dromey.
Jack was rightly proud of the achievements of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, but we should remember today his own contribution to this House during his 11 years as the Member for Birmingham, Erdington. He was a fantastic local campaigner who always had the next cause, the next campaign, the next issue to solve. I was struck by the moving tribute from his son Joe, who described how Jack was always furiously scribbling his ideas and plans in big letters on lined paper, getting through so much that when Ocado totted up their sales of that particular paper one year, they ranked Jack as their No. 1 customer across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Jack combined that irrepressible work ethic with a pragmatism and spirit of co-operation, which you have just described so well, Mr Speaker. He would work with anyone if it was in the interests of his constituents. As Andy Street, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, remarked:
“He was a great collaborator always able to put party differences aside for the greater good… Birmingham has lost a dedicated servant... And we have all lost a generous, inclusive friend who set a fine example.”
While Jack once said that he was born on the left and would die on the left, I can say that he will be remembered with affection and admiration by people on the right and in the middle, as well as on the left. Our country is all the better for everything he gave in the service of others.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
On a point or order, Mr Speaker. Since the sudden passing of our friend Jack, tributes from every walk of life have captured the essence of the man we knew and loved: larger than life, bursting with enthusiasm and ideas, and tireless in the pursuit of justice and fairness. Jack channelled all those attributes into representing the people of Erdington, into a lifetime of campaigning for working people, and into his greatest love, his family.
The loss felt on the Labour Benches is great. The loss to public life is greater still. But the greatest loss is felt by another of our own, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). She and Jack were married the best part of 40 years ago. The annual general meeting of the Fulham Legal Advice Centre may not sound like the place to find romance, but that is where Jack and Harriet met, with Jack addressing the meeting, and Harriet inspired to blaze a new trail—one that eventually led her to the place she holds today, as an icon of the Labour party and of this Parliament.
When we hear Harriet talk about Jack, one word comes through time and again: “encouraged”. It was Jack who encouraged her to join Brent Law Centre. It was Jack who encouraged her to stand as an MP—the first pregnant by-election candidate. It was Jack who encouraged her to run to be the Labour party deputy leader. When Harriet became the first woman in 18 years to answer at Prime Minister’s questions, Jack sat in the visitors’ gallery with their children, beaming down with love and admiration. I am so glad to see Jack’s family here today, beaming down with the same love, affection and pride.
The sense that Jack was always on your side is felt across this party and across the trade union movement. You can always get a measure of someone by how they treat their staff or those who rely on them. One of Jack’s former employees has said that whenever they met new people, he would always say that she was the real brains of the operation and he was merely the bag-carrier. His humility and sense of humour were legendary.
Shortly after Harriet’s book came out, a staffer had a copy of it on their desk. Jack roared with laughter as he saw a photo of himself in his 20s, barely recognisable with the prodigious thick beard. “Good grief!” he exclaimed, “What was Harriet thinking?” “What? Putting the picture in the book?” replied the staffer. “No,” Jack said, “marrying me!”
I was fortunate enough to work alongside Jack when I was a new MP in 2015. Our friendship endured, and as I gave a speech in Birmingham just a few weeks ago, it was Jack’s face that I saw in the audience, beaming up at me. He texted me the next day saying how much he had enjoyed it. That was two days before he died, which brings home the shock of his sudden, tragic passing.
Jack cut his teeth as a campaigner who spoke truth to power. He picked battles on behalf of working people, then he won them. It would be impossible to list all those victories today. He led the first equal pay strike after the Equal Pay Act 1970 was brought into law; he supported Asian women to unionise against a hostile management at Grunwick; and, even this year, he campaigned for a public inquiry on behalf of covid bereaved families.
Jack was a doughty campaigner, dubbed “Jack of all disputes”, who was feared by his opponents, but he was also deeply respected and liked across the political divide. Each and every one of us is richer for having known him. We will all miss him terribly.
The funeral service on Monday was beautiful and moving. Today, our hearts go out to Harriet, Joe, Amy, Harry and Jack’s grandchildren. The loss and grief they will be feeling cannot be measured or properly described. It cannot be wished away or pushed down and ignored, because great grief is the price we pay for having had love. We all love Jack and, even though he may no longer be with us here, that love will always live on.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
May I say through you, Mr Speaker, and through the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) the mother of Amy, Joe and Harry, that the personal was very well covered in St Margaret’s two days ago? The political has been covered by the press and by Gordon Brown when he spoke at the service. I would like to contribute a parliamentary word and a trade union one.
The parliamentary one is that Jack showed what can be achieved if, by chance, you cannot have ministerial office during your time here. For those who come here thinking that being a Minister is the only thing that matters, they are wrong.
Secondly, I believe that if we could have more people who have had serious, continued trade union experience coming into this House, the House of Commons would be better for it, and I hope that that will not just be on one side of the House.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
Over recent months, we have been forced to gather here far too often to remember colleagues who, very sadly and often suddenly, have been lost to this Parliament.
Jack Dromey is another Member of this House who has gone well before his time. On behalf of myself and my colleagues in the Scottish National party, I want to extend our deepest sympathies to all who knew and loved Jack. My thoughts, of course, are most especially with the Mother of the House; she has lost a constant companion at her side. She and the family bear the biggest burden of the loss of someone who was at the very centre of all their lives.
I would also like to extend sympathy to Jack’s beloved party, because we all know he was a Labour man through and through. I will also remember Jack as one of the feistiest campaigners in this place—a man rooted in trade union politics, rooted in the rights of workers, and a man who never lost an ounce of that spirit when he entered this Parliament. That fighting spirit extended to causes and campaigns far and wide, and I know that it extended to strikes and protests in Scotland, too. He was a true friend of Scottish workers and a champion of workers everywhere.
Jack was true to the cause and that is probably why he was so good at working cross-party and winning support and friendship across this place. My friend, the former Member of this place, Neil Gray, worked very closely with him on the Pension Schemes Act 2021 and he still speaks so fondly about Jack’s determination and his passion to make sure that that Bill was amended. He would often bound up the stairs to my office to seek my and my party’s support for various campaigns not just for him, but more often, for Harriet.
I will finish by sharing one story that I read about Jack, which I thought was both very telling and very touching. Apparently, a few years ago, a great admirer of the Mother of the House from the feminist movement approached Jack and said, “I always feel a bit nervous around Harriet—I am so in awe of her,” only for Jack to reply, “Me too. Even after all these years.” Today, we can assure Jack and his family that many of us were in awe of him, too. We deeply admired the way he conducted himself and the way he carried himself every day of his life. He left his gentle mark on so many and he will be greatly missed. May he now rest in peace. God bless you, Jack.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Thank you for allowing me, exceptionally, to speak from the Front Bench on a very difficult occasion. What an honour, my dear Jack, and what a sadness it is to speak of the friend I got to know from the other side of the Aisle.
For three years, Jack was the shadow Pensions Minister and we became close. We would meet, talk and plan, and sometimes agree to disagree, but always with equanimity. Politics is adversarial and heated. The media encourage us—in fact, demand of us—to be aggressive and mean-spirited. Jack did not play that game. Others have spoken of his decades of work for the union movement, of his being a loving father and a devoted husband, and even of his management of truculent children on a deserted Greek road. I want to talk about two things. First, he is the best example I know in 11 years in the House of Commons of cross-party working. Many used to joke about how often I would exchange texts with Jack. We worked together and we got results. I would give him briefings on all future legislation, ongoing inquiries and difficult issues. That requires a lot of trust, and such trust can go wrong, as we all know. But he never used confidences unfairly or for quick political gain. I believe that we and this House work better for such a thing. During the process of the Pension Schemes Bill, we spoke or sent texts to each other more than 110 times—I counted them up. Without his help, the Bill, in particular, the measures on collective defined contributions, and the work with the Transport and General Workers Union, would not have happened as they did.
Secondly, I want to talk about Jack’s kindness and generosity of spirit. My children died in childbirth in June 2020 and I want to share with the House what he said when I tried to return to work, as we had two Bills to do that autumn. He saw that I was struggling at this Dispatch Box on 29 June. He sent a text to me afterwards and I wanted to share it with the House:
“Guy, I know we both have a job to do, but I was not comfortable today. I feel for you, and your wife, my friend. We will build work around you. My thoughts are with you. Please take your time. Best wishes, Jack”.
Jack Dromey was, in my opinion, a man made in the Teddy Roosevelt spirit: kind but combative; passionate but polite; and always in the arena, always striving for the benefit of others. There can be no finer compliment than saying that “The Man in the Arena” quote, which is my favourite, applies utterly and totally to Jack. Farewell my friend, it was an honour to know you.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
My husband Henry introduced me to Jack and Harriet when we got together in the ‘70s. We were, as ever, at some conference, Jack was, as ever, preoccupied with fixing some vote, and I was in total awe of Harriet and Jack. Fortunately, I got the seal of approval and we have been friends now for nearly 50 years. Those who knew him well know what a generous, kind, funny, enthusiastic, interested and interesting, loyal, unselfish and consistent friend Jack was.
Jack’s life was filled by his total passion for social justice, his tribal loyalty to the Labour party, his consummate determination to be at the heart of any and every campaign that might help to make the world a better place, and his relentless optimism that he would always win. Jack’s life achievements were so many, his campaigns so eclectic, that it is impossible to capture everything in a short tribute. I want to focus on his work before he became an MP. From the Grunwick strike to fighting to maintain the Rosyth and Plymouth dockyards, from corralling the first ever equal pay strike at Trico to observing the Luanda mercenary trials in Angola, seeking to stop the execution of three British mercenaries, wherever there was injustice, Jack was there. I remember Jack in the ‘70s leading the occupation of Centre Point in London, when London was littered with empty new office buildings while the homeless slept on the streets; in the '80s, when he bravely led the trade unions to oppose Militant in Liverpool; in the ‘90s, when he served on Labour’s national executive committee and worked to modernise the Labour party and make us fit to govern; and in the noughties, when he organised the cleaners’ strike here in Parliament when they were earning as little as £5 an hour.
Finally, two personal memories. In all our fantastic adventurous holidays together, whenever we arrived at a new destination, Jack’s first question was always, “What’s the wi-fi code?” He was not looking for a local restaurant. He was not finding a place for us to have a drink. His first priority was always, “Is everything okay in Erdington?” On new year’s eve, we would always have a sing-song, me playing the piano and everybody else singing. Each year, Jack, with his great singing voice, would give us a solo performance, that harked back to his Irish roots, of “Danny Boy”, with the women joining in to help him with the high note at the end. We always brought in the new year with a bang.
Our grief at his loss is an expression of our love for the man. Jack will continue to live on in all our todays and tomorrows as we take forward the campaigns he worked on and enjoy the successes he achieved. Thank you, Jack, for everything, and for just being you.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
It is a privilege and an honour to speak today about Jack, who I am proud to call my friend and colleague in this place. He was my parliamentary neighbour, as his constituency inside Birmingham city ran alongside the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, and there were many mutual issues affecting our constituents, on which we worked seamlessly, constructively and enjoyably together.
Jack’s arrival in Birmingham was somewhat unexpected, not least because those of us keenly watching the outcome of the selection contest had been advised that this was an all-women shortlist, but we quickly established a rapport. The thing I learnt early on about Jack was that he was a brilliant negotiator. Faced with a brick wall, his instinct was not to pound his way through it, but to skilfully manoeuvre around it wherever possible. And he was ineffably charming and patient. He had a considerable knack locally of bringing people of different persuasions to common positions. He did it at times of great anxiety in the automotive industry in the west midlands with Caroline Spelman, our former colleague from Meriden, with West Midlands Mayor Andy Street and, most recently, with me working on Afghans coming to Birmingham from Kabul.
All of which leads me, finally, to a story about Jack’s negotiating powers and—forgive me for name dropping, Mr Speaker—about his relationship with the Marquis of Salisbury, a former colleague in this place, Conservative Minister and Member for South Dorset, Robert Cranbourne. When his lordship was a Defence Minister, he held regular meetings with the unions in Whitehall. These meetings sometimes ran for four hours and meaningful results were slow in being achieved, but during particularly drawn-out moments the Marquis, as he is now, would catch the eye of the then senior trade union negotiator, as he then was, Jack Dromey. After one such meeting, his lordship rang up Jack to suggest that it would perhaps be better if they sorted out the business beforehand, possibly over lunch, and, to Robert’s relief, Jack willingly agreed. “Where should we go?” asked Jack, to which the Marquis replied, “I wonder if you might like to come to White’s, my club in St. James’s,” to which Jack replied, “Ah, I’ve always wanted to go there.”
And so affairs of state and the Ministry of Defence were congenially sorted out by these two distinguished public servants. On the first occasion, as various chiselled-featured members of the British establishment walked through the club’s hallowed portals, Jack drank orange juice, but on the final occasion, after a particularly successful negotiation had been concluded, glasses of vintage port were consumed. As he stepped out on to the street, Jack thanked his lordship for his kind hospitality, and as he left said over his shoulder, “By the way, please don’t tell Harriet where we’ve been. And especially do not mention the vintage port!” [Laughter.] For the avoidance of doubt, Mr Speaker, I can of course confirm that this was a workplace event. [Laughter.]
As we remember an adopted son of Birmingham taken from us far, far too soon, let us remember the words of Harry, Jack and Harriet’s son, who with both sadness and pride spoke of the quality, but not alas the quantity, of the years they all had together.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
To the tributes already paid, I add the profound sympathies of both myself and all the Liberal Democrats who sit on these Benches. As a relatively new Member of the Commons, I confess that I did not know Jack that well, but what I did know I really, really liked.
I first met him in a mindfulness meditation class, which he, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and I attended with other MPs as we sought to find some calm in the storm of the 2017 to 2019 Parliament. I dare say that it was, at times, hilariously awkward. I remember Jack taking those classes with great humour. He oozed wisdom and kindness, and I think it was that shared experience that meant that, when we caught each other’s eye while passing each other in the Lobby, he would ask how I was, and he really meant it. Since his passing, I have learned that that kind man, whom I liked so much, had a similar effect on pretty much everyone he met. The tributes today are proof of how respected he was across the political spectrum. While a trade union man through and through, he was a pragmatist. He would work with anyone who could deliver his aims and shared his values.
Part of Jack’s appeal and great strength was that he was so obviously driven by his values and by a deep desire to help people. Quite simply, Jack Dromey was one of the good guys. I think it says it all that he worked to the last. In that final debate on Afghanistan, he urged Parliament and the Government to take a more compassionate approach to those in the world who need us the most and said:
“Our country has a proud history of providing a safe haven to those fleeing persecution.”
He also spoke of our country’s most fundamental values
“of decency, honesty and fairness.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 129WH.]
Jack embodied those values.
To the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, to their children, Harry, Joe and Amy, and to the whole family, there are no words, but I hope that from today’s tributes they can take some comfort in knowing the impact that Jack had and how he affected not just this House but the whole country.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
Jack made a big impression as soon as he was elected to this place in 2010 and was appointed to the Front Bench straight away. I was a rookie Minister and he was my shadow. It was a forbidding prospect because Jack came with such a reputation, as the Leader of the Opposition attested, as one of the big trade union leaders of his day, used to rallying mass meetings and getting his own way. It was with a little trepidation that I committed myself to going head-to-head with him for many weeks in Committee for what became the Localism Act 2011.
However, I was quickly to discover that Jack’s success was based, as evidenced today, on his charm, persuasion and forensic mind. He had a tremendous impact as we spent those many weeks together. In fact, so persuasive was Jack’s oratory and work in Committee that, much to the Whip’s consternation, he incited my first rebellion—as the Minister taking the Bill through Committee! [Laughter.] His remarks were so persuasive that I could find no argument against his amendment and declared that I would accept it, and we did, despite the fact, as former and current Ministers will know, that my speaking notes had “RESIST” in bold type. It is objective to say that Jack’s powers were simply, literally, irresistible.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) attested to Jack’s brilliant work in forging alliances irrespective of party. He mentioned the work that Jack did with our former right hon. Friend Dame Caroline Spelman, his constituency neighbour. They stood up in particular for manufacturing industry interests that created jobs in their constituencies and across the west midlands. That joint work was vital during turbulent times; when investment decisions were being considered, showing the unity of purpose of the local MPs projected nationally was very important.
Jack’s lifetime of knowledge, experience and passion for manufacturing industry made him an authority, carrying universal respect and the confidence of employers creating jobs. I was therefore honoured when Jack asked me, after Caroline stepped down at the last election, to continue that partnership with him. We met regularly with businesses and trade union leaders, not only in his beloved automotive sector, but in aerospace, chemicals, life sciences and food and drink. He is greatly missed by the leaders of those sectors.
Ministers from the Front Bench and my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), as well as the Prime Minister, have attested to what an effective advocate Jack was. He achieved what he did through kindness, enthusiasm, optimism and encouragement, but not without drawing on his trade union skills of organisation and tenacity. His achievements and how he won them made him respected across this House and across the country. He represents, as does the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the very best of this House.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I will start by saying how great it is to see the Mother of the House, our inspiration, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), in the Chamber today, and her family. I knew Jack for years and years; I could probably speak for the next two hours about all the campaigns we worked on together, first as Transport and General Workers Union officers and then as MPs elected to Parliament at the same time.
There are a couple of campaigns that I will talk about particularly. The first, which many people in this Chamber will remember, was when Kraft took over Cadbury. Seven factories were taken over by Kraft, and Jack led the trade union campaign to protect their jobs—a very successful campaign, by the way. As part of that campaign, which I got involved in at Jack’s behest, we went to see the then Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson.
Before the meeting—this is just the sort of thing Jack would do—he discovered that Peter’s favourite chocolate was fruit and nut, so we got a cardboard box roughly the size of Westminster Abbey and filled it with Cadburys Dairy Milk Fruit & Nut before having a very constructive and successful meeting—I wonder why it was so constructive and successful? I must add that I remember saying to Jack before we went in, “Jack, Peter’s quite a lean sort of bloke. He obviously looks after himself. Do you think some of that chocolate might be surplus to requirement?” So by the time we got into the meeting the box was a bit lighter than had originally been the case.
The second campaign, which again was successful—even more successful, actually—was one that is largely forgotten now, involving S&A Foods. I ask hon. Members to bear in mind the name, because that will be important. S&A Foods was a big agricultural combine, largely producing strawberries, about 30% of the British strawberry market. Its workers were largely migrants and very badly exploited. It was a big workforce: I am talking 4,000 to 5,000 people working on the land in the west country picking strawberries, but just for three months a year, and being very badly treated.
Jack got involved in that campaign and, as he always did, threw everything at it. He worked his heart out on getting recognition, getting better terms and conditions and improving the lives of those thousands of people working on the land. That became quite a big deal at the time, and I remember Jack and I going to a meeting of Transport and General Workers Union members and officers afterwards.
Jack always had about 50 things going on in his brain at the same time—that was just the way he was—so as he rose to speak to the members, he was not really concentrating on his words. He opened his speech by saying, “Right, what I want to talk to you about now is S&M”, and I could see the faces of all these pretty traditional—for those who knew the T&G—trade unionists faces dropping, going, “What!”. I was nudging Jack, saying, “Jack, it’s S&A, not S&M—that’s something entirely different.” I think.
As I said at the beginning, I could talk at great length about all the campaigns I did together with Jack. He was always an inspiration. He always led from the front, and he was very largely successful. He was one of the most successful trade union officers industrially in the past 50 or 60 years, or something like that, and often in difficult conditions. Jack had one overriding aim, and that was to improve the conditions and the lives of the people he and we represented. In that, I think he was successful, and in that, I think he left the world better than he found it.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I do not remember the first time I met Jack, but that is probably because when I did, I walked away feeling like I had known him forever. He was gentle, sweet and naturally mindful—by which I mean that, unlike some colleagues, his eyes were not darting around to see if there was someone more interesting or important to speak to. If you had his attention, you held his attention.
To me, he was always so kind. He never defined me by my politics or my football team, but as a person. He always asked about my family and, whenever we had a conversation about my son Freddie, he would regale me with tales and the occasional picture of his grandchildren, accompanied by a beaming smile and sparkling eyes. His adoration of his family was clear to see.
Jack was exceptionally polite. Like a child who can spot an ice cream shop from a mile away, Jack it seems could spot a colleague who needed a confidence boost. He always had a word of praise for anyone downhearted about their performance in this place—a cheeky, “Well done”, a smile as he sat down, a kind tribute in his own comments. He was quite simply a lovely colleague.
I am sure he was prone to arguing with the sat-nav or left his shoes in a perilously dangerous place, but from the outside he looked like a pretty perfect husband, one who loyally and lovingly supported his wife at a time when Parliament was even more challenging for women that it is today. I hope that most of us think that we have a Jack at home, but I still reckon that he could have made a fortune giving consultancy on how to be the long-suffering but supportive male other half. This House has lost someone special, but my heart does not break for us; it breaks for the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and his three children and grandchildren. As I sit down, I remember his warmth and gentleness. I send my love to them today.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to add a contribution from my party. I apologise that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) was unable to be here. He lost his brother last week and the funeral was yesterday, so I will make some comments on behalf of my party.
I came to this House in 2010. I had some relationships and experience in the council and the Assembly, but I knew that this was a bigger place, with more MPs and more people. I looked about, to know who to watch to learn the ropes and the trade. In my opinion, Jack Dromey was one of the people to look at, because, whenever he spoke, had I been going to leave the Chamber, I would sit down. I wanted to hear what he was going to say. That was the sort of gentleman he was.
My last engagement with Jack Dromey was in Westminster Hall—that will be a surprise to people that I was in Westminster Hall, but I was. On that day, Jack Dromey was there as a shadow spokesperson to speak on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. We had a good debate and a good response from the Minister. Afterwards, as I always do, and others do, I thanked Jack Dromey for his significant contribution on a subject that he loved and wanted to add to, and he thanked me in his turn. The Backbench Business Committee had given us the privilege of a debate, but Jack Dromey thanked me for at least requesting it. It is hard to believe that that was on 6 January. Less than 18 hours later, I got a message from the girl in my office to tell me that Jack had passed away. I said, “You’ve got it wrong. I saw him yesterday. That just cannot be right.” Unfortunately, it was right.
Jack Dromey was a man of strong principles, with a devotion to service. His legacy is of a fighting spirit and relentless optimism, and it is one to which each of us on these Benches can and should aspire. Jack, I feel, was a master of all campaigns. If he was campaigning for something, be on his side, because that was the winning side. All of us, both on this side of the House and across the Floor, are the poorer for his absence.
My thoughts and prayers are with his family—with Harriet, our friend and colleague, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and the children—as they face the coming days without this wonderful man, so suddenly taken from us all, but they will have fantastic memories.
I am sure that you will agree, Mr Speaker, that the message that must go to his family today is that they are not alone with their grief and that this House and this great family of MPs and staff are united behind them.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
No one could have failed to be moved on Monday by the incredible tributes to Jack from his three children, Harry, Joe and Amy. All of us know the pride that Jack had in his family, but we felt it, too, on Monday, and also their pride in him.
Jack had that wonderful way of making you feel that everything was going to be alright. It did not matter what scrapes he had got you into, it was all going to be okay. I was lucky to work with Jack on so many campaigns. He was just so formidable on so many different things. If we despaired, he always had some good new idea to pick us up, and then he would be off running with it and we would be racing to catch him up. If we got too highfalutin, he would remind us what they were saying in the Dog and Duck. If we faltered, as all of us do from time to time, he would be there to tell us that we were brilliant and not to lose faith.
Jack was a fabulous feminist. We all saw the support that he gave to Harriet over so many decades. We heard from Amy, Jack’s daughter, on Monday that true feminism at home meant also making sure that Harriet never had to learn how to use a washing machine. I have to say that I was so proud when I heard that. I have known Harriet and Jack since I was in my 20s, and have avoided, wherever possible, using the washing machine at home, and have resolutely refused to learn to cook. I must tell Amy that she got me into a bit of trouble on Monday, because Ed, who was sitting next to me, turned and glowered at me and said, “So, it was all Jack and Harriet’s fault.” I just said that I had learned from the very best.
Jack did not just support Harriet; he supported so many of us as women parliamentarians and women in the trade union movement. One woman trade unionist told me that, many years ago, Jack had encouraged her when she was a young mum to put herself forward in the trade union movement. That would have been pioneering enough at that time, but what he also did when he spied her husband standing at the back holding their child was to find him and tell him what an incredibly important and noble job he was doing in supporting her, too.
Jack also had that amazing special ability to bring people together at a time when politics can feel so divided. We heard how, when he died, he had tributes from the five biggest manufacturing groups in Britain and also the five biggest trade unions, which is a unique reflection of the industrial alliance that he had worked so hard to bring together. In the Labour movement, he not only straddled the left-right divide, but had strong roots in both our liberal and our communitarian traditions. Unusually, his politics and values throughout his life bound together that fierce support for equality, feminism, anti-racism and individual rights, with those deep roots in community, solidarity, family and faith in the dignity of work. He brought that all together. We need more Jacks.
I was with Jack the afternoon before he died. Every conversation that I had with him that day was just pure Jack. I doubted something that I had done, but he said that it was brilliant—I am sure it was not. We talked about Christmas, and he said how wonderful his grandchildren were. He then went on to speak in a debate in Parliament and make a passionate and patriotic case for the Government to do the right thing by vulnerable Afghan refugees. As a last act in Parliament, it was entirely fitting and a demonstration of his persistent decency and solidarity.
Most of all, Jack was an optimist. He loved life and he loved people. He made lives better because he believed that things could be better. So many of us have learned so much from Jack that we will make sure that that legacy carries on.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Jack Dromey was my mentor, my teacher, my political partner and my friend for almost a decade and a half in Birmingham. Like for many of us here today he was like a father to me; indeed, he was at school with my dad, at Cardinal Vaughan in west London, part of that extraordinary generation of second-generation Irish kids: sharp, chippy, pushing, determined to make a contribution to social justice.
It didn’t always start smoothly: my godfather, Spud Murphy, then a prefect at Cardinal Vaughan, used to talk to me fondly about having to give Jack a clip round the ear for smoking behind the bike sheds at school. But Jack was not a rebel without a cause: his cause was social justice, and he fought for it his entire life. His glorious life was one long crusade for the underdog; he fought for them whenever and wherever he found them. His campaigns in Birmingham are innumerable: he fought for more police numbers, he fought for covid families, he fought for the food bank, he fought for Erdington High Street, he fought for manufacturing jobs, he fought for the factory at GKN—and this was all just in the last week of his life.
As you will know, Mr Speaker, Jack brought a particular approach to all his campaigns. It generally started with a very, very long list of bullet points, and Jack would start off by saying, “Just three points”, and we would tease him as he got to, “And seventeenthly”, but he brought to every single one of his campaigns what he used to fondly say was a certain “je ne sais quoi”. He made sure that at the core of every single one of his campaigns were the stories, because we have all been educated in the legend of Joe and Josephine Soap in the Dog and Duck in Erdington. He also brought to all his campaigns not just the art of coalition building but incredible calm, along with persistence. He used to very proudly say that his nickname in the union was “Never snap, never flap Jack”, and he reminded me of that very often as I was losing my rag over the last year and a half.
On the last day of Jack’s life we were working together on a book about the future of our great region, the heart of Britain, and as ever he brought to that an extraordinary optimism. He put the green industrial revolution at the core of what he wrote, and this is what he wrote:
“I am passionate in my belief that change is possible. However, as my experience as an MP for a constituency with high levels of inequality and poverty, it is crucial that any change is not just ambitious in the objective of dealing with climate change, but radical in creating opportunity for all. There is much to do and little time to achieve it before it’s too late.”
I say to the Mother of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and the family watching today, like you we have all struggled with the shock of loss. I myself have found comfort in the words not of an Irish poet but of a Greek, who wrote centuries ago:
“Even in our sleep, pain…falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
The wisdom we draw from Jack Dromey’s life is very simple: we should all try to be more Jack. Our community, our country, and this House of Commons will be a damn sight better for that.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my colleague and friend from Birmingham, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), and what I want to say is going to be all about Birmingham. Jack did not sound like me. He was not groomed as I was, just as a child loves their parents no matter what, to love Birmingham, because it was given to me at birth. Jack did not have that, and he loved it way more than me. He would talk about Birmingham in terms that made it unrecognisable to me. I love the place, don’t get me wrong, but Castle Vale, while I love it, is not a place of great beauty. The Aston expressway is not a thing to behold, yet when Jack talked about Birmingham and Brummies, he felt so much as if he was from the tradition of the place of my birth. I think much of that is to do with his Irish ancestry, which so many of us in Birmingham have, but there could be no greater advocate for the city of Birmingham.
I know that many people want to speak, so I will touch slightly not only on Jack being an honorary Brummie—not even “honorary”, Jack Dromey was a Brummie through and through, without question—but on him being an honorary sister. The first time I ever spoke in this building, it was Jack Dromey who sat next to me. He put his arms around me afterwards and said, “I am so proud of you. I am so proud to see you here”—mainly because I was a girl from Birmingham and he loved Birmingham. The last time I ever sat in this place with him was just a week before he died, and we had just been put on the same team together, the shadow Home Affairs team. He said to me, as I sat down from asking a question of the Home Secretary, “It is so delightful to be completely outsmarted and outflanked by brilliant women.” That came as no surprise to me. I say to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), all her family and her children that Birmingham will truly miss Jack Dromey. All the love of a sometimes not very beautiful place is with you and your family.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
Jack and I were both elected in the 2010 general election, and he was my constituency neighbour, but because he was selected relatively late to be our candidate in Birmingham, Erdington, we did not get to meet until we were both newly elected Birmingham Members of Parliament.
I remember in those early weeks lugging around a massive rucksack that basically had a mobile office in it, having no idea of the lobbying required to get ahead in the race for an office in this place. Jack came over to me—we had only spoken a couple of times at this point—and told me that he had secured a whole suite of offices in Portcullis House. On hearing that, I was immediately insanely jealous, but he went on to ask whether I wanted to share them with him. Of course, I went from insane jealousy to all but falling at the man’s feet with gratitude. He laughed and said he simply had to rescue me from my flipping bag, because it was practically the same size as me, and he could bear it no longer. That set the tone for our friendship—lots of gentle mickey-taking and loads of laughter.
I was always struck by how ready Jack was—we have heard so much about this today—with his praise and encouragement. It is something that his children spoke so movingly about at his funeral. Jack would always stop you, text you or drop you a note to say he had seen you make a speech or give a TV interview—whatever it might be—and that it was “first-class, absolutely brilliant, the best of Labour.” He never hedged his bets when it came to praise, did Jack, but he really believed in generous and uncomplicated affirmation not just of his loved ones, but of his friends and colleagues. The sincerity meant it always mattered to the person on the receiving end. It always made a difference.
Not every conversation with Jack was quick. He would stop you to talk about the famous “three or four quick things,” but I soon clocked that the correct number was calculated by taking the number of things Jack said he wanted to talk about, multiplying it by two and adding three. It seemed to work every time, and Jack always got a promise out of you, or maybe more than one promise, to attend a meeting, to look into something or to join one of his campaigns.
In one of our more recent conversations, he told me he wanted to talk about campaigning—four quick things were actually 11—and at the end I laughed and said, “Jack, mate, how is it that your four quick things have now led to 10 absolutely urgent, immediate priorities for my to-do list?” I soon regretted admitting those 10 priorities, because he then laughed wholeheartedly and said, “That’s the target from now on, Shabana: 10 things to be added to the to-do list.”
It is difficult to believe that a man so full of energy, positivity and generosity is gone. He leaves an immense legacy, not just as a titan of the labour movement but as a thoroughly decent, good man. Jack Dromey was first class, he was absolutely brilliant and he was the best of Labour.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
It goes without saying that the loss of Jack has shocked us all, and our hearts go out to Harriet and her family.
Jack was, as we have heard, respected across this House. He was an extremely generous person, often giving praise to his colleagues and associates whether they wanted it or not. I am privileged to chair the Tribune group of Labour MPs, of which Jack was an enthusiastic member. On many occasions, he would stop me somewhere en route as he rushed off to a meeting to tell me what a wonderful job I was doing of organising the Tribune group. On one occasion, when he was particularly effusive with his praise, I stopped him and said, “Jack, not even my mother would believe what you are saying.” He just carried on undeterred, thinking his message had not got across.
No matter how much he was over the top with his praise, he always left you feeling better after speaking to him. He felt the Tribune group had a lot to offer the party, and we met regularly to discuss the issues of the day. Jack would always keep the discussion well grounded and to the point. When we were losing sight of the bigger picture, he would intervene, “Just a few quick points, may I, chair?” He would then set out his opinion, always carefully thought through, with an anecdote here and a shaggy-dog story there—sometimes long and sometimes short, depending on the audience—and always with a twinkle in his eye. He would then bring us back to the point, with the apocryphal question, “What do Joe and Josephine Soap in the Dog and Duck think?” I heard about Joe and Josephine so many times that I feel I have been to the Dog and Duck. I actually got to the point where I googled it, and there is no Dog and Duck in Birmingham. We will miss him in those discussions and, above all, we will miss his dynamism and enthusiasm, which spurred us on; and I will miss his encouragement in keeping the Tribune group going.
We are both proud long-term members of the Transport and General Workers Union. He had been a high-ranking official, becoming deputy general secretary, and I was a lowly lay member of the transport section. We got to know each other when he came to this place, and we found we had a number of mutual acquaintances from the trade union, mainly because my region—the London region—was very influential in the union, and my branch, the cab section, was very influential in London.
Many of the people in my branch were on the broad left of the trade union, and Jack back then was a member of the broad left. There is no questioning Jack’s left-wing credentials. He built a long reputation on the campaigns he fought and won as a trade union official. His determination to stand up for social justice was legendary even then, over 30 years ago, and he continued this struggle in his parliamentary career.
The negotiating skills he honed as a trade union leader enabled him to forge alliances across the divide in this place and to get things done for the people of his adopted Erdington. In my opinion, there will always be a bit of London that is Erdington, and that is Jack’s legacy for them. Jack’s indefatigable campaigning on behalf of the trade union and labour movements touched six decades. He changed the lives of countless people who will never know what he did for them.
One last thing we had in common is that 16 months ago I became a granddad. Nothing made Jack smile more than when we talked about the unalloyed joy of being a granddad. It is probably those chats that I will remember most when I think of Jack. So Jack, if out there, in a parallel universe, there is a Dog and Duck with Joe and Josephine in it, perhaps sometime in the future—not too soon—we will sit down with a pint and find out finally what they actually think. It was an honour and a delight to have known you.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Thank you for squeezing me in, Mr Speaker.
I had known Jack for about 12 years, since he was first selected to stand in Birmingham, Erdington, and I am still a councillor in Kingstanding in his constituency. I have to confess that Jack and I did not always see eye to eye on every issue. I think the first time we met was on Aylesbury Crescent in Kingstanding, where we did not exactly meet on equal terms; we actually had a few coarse words. But whenever I or anyone had a debate with Jack, including in public meetings, we would always get the wink and nod after the little dig or political point, and I respected that enormously.
I last saw Jack at Penny Holbrook’s funeral, about a week and a half before he passed away. My heart goes out to everybody in the Erdington constituency Labour party, because they have had a terrible year, with so many people sadly passing away. Within five minutes, Jack and I were talking about MG Rover. He said, “I remember one particular day”, and I looked at him and said, “Of course you were involved with MG Rover. Why wouldn’t you have been?” We had a long conversation about it. I think he was talking about the situation in 2000 or 2001, when he said, “We went into a meeting with the Phoenix Four”—they thought that the success and the campaign had been won—“I have no shame in telling you that I cried in that room that day”. That is because the issue meant so much to him, because of the thousands of workers at the site and what the company meant to the community.
Then, of course, Jack went on to talk about his grandchildren, as he was playing with another small child at the funeral. He was having a good laugh about the height jokes that his son Joe made to him all the time. We left on good terms that day.
Jack had a very good sense of humour. We have a WhatsApp group for all Birmingham MPs, who will remember that just a few weeks ago—Jack being Jack—he tried to organise something that could have politically shown up me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on a police debate. My right hon. Friend and I have never been so quiet in a WhatsApp group before: because Jack had got the wrong WhatsApp group! He had accidentally got the all-party one, rather than the Labour one. The argument on tactics started between the other MPs, when all of a sudden someone noticed that my right hon. Friend and I were in the group. I saw Jack the next day and he came up to me with a big, beaming smile. I will not repeat what he said because there were a lot of expletives, although it was something along the lines of, “I’m a bit of an idiot, aren’t I?”, but he smiled and joked about it.
Jack was a good man who fought passionately for the city that is my home. Many of us will him terribly.
Mr Speaker
I am very concerned about leaving enough time for the Mother of the House, who is going to sum up at the end. Can we please be brief because there is a lot of business ahead and the family are waiting?
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I rise as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Ireland and the Irish in Britain. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who chairs the group, apologises that he is not here; he is at a funeral today.
Jack was a valued and prominent member of the Ireland and the Irish in Britain group—the community from which he came. Shortly after my arrival here in 2015, he welcomed me not only as a new MP, but as a fellow child of Ireland’s 33rd and, frankly, finest county: county London. “Where are your parents from?”, he asked. “Mine are from Cork and Tipperary”, he proudly did say. His father was a labourer, his mother a nurse—the people who came here to rebuild England. Their work and experience underpinned and drove his politics and dedication to public service. In the trade union movement, he always saw the parallels between his own parents’ struggles and those of newer migrant communities, and he built links with those new migrant communities—most recently with the Polish community at an event at the London Irish Centre.
Jack’s support for the Gaelic Athletic Association in Birmingham and across Britain was a significant part of his involvement with the community. It is no surprise, given that his grandfather, Jack Doherty, was a hurler who played for Tipperary in several All-Ireland finals in the early 20th century. It was a very proud moment for him to take part in the St Patrick’s day parade in Birmingham—which had not taken place for decades because of the pub bombings—alongside the Erin Go Bragh GAA Club, based in his Erdington constituency. Just last year, engaging in the cross-party work of which we have heard so much today, he worked with colleagues on both sides of the House to save Páirc na hÉireann, the home of Gaelic games in Britain ensuring that a generation of children in the west midlands can continue to enjoy Irish culture and sport.
Jack’s son Joe described at Jack’s funeral how he had beamed when visiting the construction centre named after him, imagining his own dad—newly arrived on these shores—knowing what would become of his son. Jack was so proud, as many of us were, when there was an event here in Parliament to honour him and other sons and daughters of that generation of Irish construction workers who had helped to build Britain. He was one of a relatively small band of us MPs who are as proud of the people we came from as we are of the people we represent now, being both British and Irish. Jack also had a strong sense of justice. In the week when we mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, his involvement in the pursuit of democratic, peaceful politics on the island of Ireland and good relations between our two countries was recognised by the Irish Government and by the Irish ambassador to the UK, Adrian O’Neill, who attended Jack’s funeral on Monday.
Being Irish was very important to Jack, and Jack was very important to Ireland and the Irish community in Britain. We will miss him. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
I first met Jack during the Longbridge dispute, when we, as Members of Parliament, were getting together to do our best to save that huge industry in Birmingham. Unfortunately we all know what the result of that was, but Jack always tried his best. I met him next when we had an issue with the HP Sauce company, which was pulling out of Birmingham and going to Denmark. I joined him when he said, “I am going to lead this campaign on behalf of the trade unions.” We had a couple of conversations and meetings and decided to organise a rally. We all walked through Aston for about a mile and a half to the factory, and spoke to the workers there. Eventually, as a result of Jack’s tenacity, we managed to secure better terms and conditions for the people who had been expecting to lose their jobs.
That is what Jack was about. He was a great man, and from that day onwards I realised that he was someone whom I wanted to know better and become closer to. So when my friend and his predecessor as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Erdington, Siôn Simon, decided that he was going to move on, one of the first things I did was speak to Jack. On Friday evenings Jack was usually with his family, but one Friday evening Siôn and I met at a curry house where he and I and a couple of other friends tended to go to transact business, and I said, “Siôn, if you are leaving, perhaps we should speak to Jack Dromey, because he is a great guy, and we want someone like him who understands a community like Erdington which contains industries and a huge number of working people.”
When I called Jack he was in Ireland, listening to a recital being given by his daughter Amy. He texted me saying, “Can we speak tomorrow? I am at this recital, and I can’t talk to you now.” He contacted me the next day. The local Labour party then went through the necessary procedure, and selected him because it believed that he was the right person.
Jack was always at the forefront. Recently when a young lad, Dea-John Reid, was stabbed to death, Jack and I, along with our hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), turned up and spoke to representatives of the black churches and the community. I hope that our action has prevented any further uprisings.
Jack was always there. He was always there for the community, and he was always there for me. When I became frustrated by local authority issues, the following day he would either call me or come and see me in Portcullis House and try to explain how I could make progress.
Let me end by sending my condolences to the Mother of the House, to Joe and to Amy, and by changing an adage around: behind every strong woman there is a strong man. May Jack rest in peace.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I want to pay a very short tribute,
because we have heard so much from both sides of the House that encompasses so accurately Jack’s many qualities. When he came to the House, he was fully formed as a political activist and one of the greatest trade unionists of his generation. He had the abilities to ensure that social justice was advanced. He never gave up, and he was optimistic. He loved and was proud of his wife—he was a feminist before many of us knew what that word meant—and was unashamed to be Mr Harriet Harman. He was a very rare, very talented, very kind and gentle man who was the best of the Labour and trade union movement. We will all miss him terribly.
Condolences, obviously, to the Mother of the House and to his fantastic children, who are in the Gallery. As someone who was fortunate to benefit from Labour party romance, I always looked up to Harriet and Jack’s law centre romance as something that I should follow.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Jack Dromey has been in my life for a very long time. I was a candidate in Taunton—an eminently winnable seat for Labour—and because I was from the Transport and General Workers Union as well as a Co-operative, this young man suddenly pitched up for a day to help me, so we have known each other since 1974. He was really suspicious of me at first—there I was, a university academic standing as the Labour candidate—but he found out that I had served an apprenticeship at the ICI paint factory in Slough and we became great friends. Ever since that day, we worked together—we started the all-party parliamentary manufacturing group—and did wonderful campaigns together. He was not just a colleague or a comrade; he was a mate.
When you are serious about politics, you come here on a Thursday morning, to make the Leader of the House’s life a misery, and Jack was a member of that club. I still see him there. Jack was so warm and generous, and he had a way of worming things out of you. He had a big family, and I have four children and 12 grandchildren. We used to compete, and I know more about his family than you could ever believe because he would tell me. He would ask of my family, “How are you getting on? What stage are you at?” but I bored him because everything he had to say was more exciting than what we were doing.
The fact about Jack was his passion. As Chair of the Education and Skills Committee and then the Children, Schools and Families Committee, I have always been passionate about children’s issues, and he was passionate about families and children. He once said to me, “Barry, if you are a Member of Parliament and you care about the job, you cannot bear to think of a child in your constituency going to bed tonight with nothing in their tummy.” He was compassionate, he was funny and he was wise. I was with him and John Smith one night when we raised a glass of champagne and said, “Nothing but the best is good enough for the workers.” Jack, we love you, miss you and will work to be even better than we are because of you.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
I first met Jack when I was a young researcher working for the then MP Oona King and he was at the Transport and General Workers Union. She had secured a private Member’s Bill to ensure that cowboy contractors did not do shoddy work in council homes or treat their staff badly, but she was double-booked for a meeting with senior officials—that was not uncommon for her—and I was terrified, because she said that I had to sit in and work out what the Bill should contain. She said, “Don’t worry—Jack Dromey will be there. Let him do the talking,” and of course what happened was that Jack mobilised the business community and trade unions and got the Government to support our Bill. Despite its not getting through, the Government supported the measures, and Oona, Jack and others managed to change many thousands of people’s lives by improving the work done in council homes. That legacy continues up and down the country, including in my constituency. I often look at those blocks of flats and think, “If Jack and others hadn’t done that work, people’s lives would have been much worse.”
When I arrived in Parliament, Jack was always there, as others have said, providing constant encouragement. Even when I was going through very tumultuous times in my constituency and in managing the politics there, he would have very encouraging words, constantly giving me confidence and constantly supporting me whenever I needed it.
In his last speech in Westminster Hall, which I had the privilege of chairing, he said that
“the bravery of our service personnel and Government officials who stayed on the ground in Kabul, at great personal risk during Operation Pitting, represented the very best of Britain.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 129WH.]
He told the Government how important it was to act to protect Afghani people for what they did.
Jack represented the best of British—the best of our country—and he is greatly missed by all of us. He was family to me, and I know to all of us across this House and in his constituency. My thoughts are with the Mother of the House and the family. Jack will be greatly missed, but he will always live in our memories and in what we go on to do. That is his legacy.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Jack Dromey had a fierce heart for justice, and combined with his inherent kindness and decency, he was able to achieve so much for so many, and we have heard much about that today.
First, I want to pay tribute to Jack on behalf of my constituents. When Jack was not in Birmingham, Erdington, his home was in Dulwich and West Norwood. He and the Mother of the House are familiar figures in our community, valued and faithful supporters of our local independent businesses, kind and generous neighbours, and friends to so many. A few weeks before Christmas, I spotted from my car the lovely scene of a pair of grandparents taking a grandchild for a walk, before realising some moments later that this was Jack and the Mother of the House. Since Jack’s untimely death, so many of my constituents have expressed their shock and sorrow, and have told me how much they will miss Jack.
Secondly, and briefly, I want to pay tribute to Jack as a tireless champion of early years education, and maintained nursery schools in particular. Jack understood the transformative impact that high-quality early years education can have on reducing inequality and disadvantage, and he understood that every child, no matter their background, deserved the best. As the recently appointed shadow Minister for children and early years, I have spent the last few weeks meeting people who work with small children, and so many have mentioned Jack’s powerful advocacy for their profession and how much he will be missed.
Jack was a friend to all of us, especially to colleagues with less experience, to whom he offered support, a listening ear and, always, wise counsel. Jack is irreplaceable, most of all to his family and to the Mother of the House, for whom there is so much love in my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood and across the wider Lambeth and Southwark Labour family.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I think we all thought that Jack would always be here because the whole of his life was devoted to being there for others—the workers he represented, the constituents he was so proud to serve and the family he loved. I simply want to say that it was such a privilege to be at his funeral on Monday. As we have heard, his children spoke so beautifully about their father, with so much love and joy, and I am absolutely certain that he was looking down on them from on high, bursting with pride. Amid the laughter and the smiles, and the tears and the stories, there was a moment in the service when a shaft of sunlight came through the window and illuminated the nave, and I like to think that it was illuminating also the essential truth about Jack’s life. Although it was cut short, he used every single day that he had in trying to build a better world—oh, what an example for the rest of us to follow!
Mr Speaker
I am now going to bring in the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). May I just say, Harriet, that this shows how the House can be at its best, and that it is at its best because of the love for you, Jack and your family?
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of myself and my family, I warmly thank all hon. Members who have spoken today. I say to everyone from all the around the country who has sent us cards, emails, texts, tweets, and who have posted on Facebook, that the memories they have shared with us, and the respect that they have shown for Jack, have given so much comfort to me and his beloved family as we face the total shock of his sudden death from heart failure just three weeks ago.
Jack hated inequality and oppression, and his life’s work was a steadfast focus on supporting those who were fighting against it. His roots in the Irish working-class immigrant community, his solidarity with black and Asian people fighting against inequality, and his respect for middle-class people who, though not suffering hardship themselves, wanted to work to end it for others, made him the polar opposite of the culture wars and the living embodiment of the coalition that is the Labour party. He spoke up for people and they heard him, and that made them stronger, whether they were those he worked with or those he had never met.
Much has rightly been said about Jack’s support for me in my work. It was phenomenal and it was unswerving. But it was not just because I was his wife; it was a matter of principle. Jack believed that men should support and respect women, and he detested men who he saw holding their wives back in their own self-interest.
For all of us who received it, Jack’s support was a super-power. It made us all walk taller; it made us all feel stronger. We will so miss him. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your tribute, for your kindness to me and to his family, and for allowing us this time today to pay tribute to Jack.
IOPC Report on Metropolitan Police Officers' Conduct: Charing Cross Police Station
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the Independent Office for Police Conduct report on police officers’ conduct at Charing Cross police station.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
As the House is aware, the Independent Office for Police Conduct yesterday published the findings of an investigation into bullying and discrimination at Charing Cross police station between 2016 and 2018. The report makes extremely disturbing reading. It describes abhorrent behaviour and misogynistic, racist and homophobic communications between officers, which appear to have become commonplace. On a personal note, as someone who knows the Met well, I cannot begin to describe my horror at the revelations in the report.
It is right that individuals found to have committed gross misconduct have been dismissed and cannot re-join policing. However, this is obviously about more than individuals; it is about how a toxic culture can develop and fester in parts of a police force—a culture that is allowed to go unchallenged until a brave officer blows the whistle or a message is discovered on an officer’s phone. These events have a corrosive impact on public trust in policing and undermine the work of the thousands of diligent and brave police officers who keep us safe every day. I am grateful for the work of the IOPC in investigating these allegations, and I expect the Metropolitan Police Service and the Mayor of London to implement the report’s recommendations as soon as practically possible.
We are also taking action to address these issues. The Home Secretary has established the Angiolini inquiry, which has now started, and Dame Elish is examining the career of Sarah Everard’s killer. While focused on that case, she will be considering whether the culture in the places where Sarah’s murderer worked meant that alarm bells did not ring earlier. In the second part of her inquiry, we expect a light to be shone on wider policing, including on those cultural issues.
In addition, at the Home Secretary’s request, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire rescue services is currently inspecting forces across England and Wales to judge their vetting and counter-corruption capabilities. As part of this, we have specifically asked it to look at how forces are ensuring that misogyny and sexism are identified are dealt with in the workplace. We are also working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ensure professional standards on social media use for all police officers.
Being a police officer is an honour, conferring special status on those who serve. The findings of the IOPC’s report are shaming for those who have abused that honour and for the Metropolitan police. Standards must be raised. The precious bond of trust between the public and the police depends upon it.
Dr Offord
As a London MP, there are few opportunities to seek answers on the performance of the Metropolitan police, so I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.
The publication of the report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct joins the list of misdemeanours that have occurred in the Met in recent years. The IOPC opened its investigation in March 2018 following claims that an officer had sex with a drunk person at a police station. This is, in itself, a criminal offence, and it is even more shocking following the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer less than a year ago. The report says that officers searched social media with the intention of having sex with people they have made contact with through being a victim of crime. This is an egregious breach of trust with the public and must be addressed immediately. Officers were found to have sent messages to a female on a shared group chat saying:
“I would happily rape you…if I was single I would happily chloroform you.”
Other officers gleefully boasted about their behaviour by sending messages including:
“You ever slapped your missus? It makes them love you more. Seriously since I did that she won’t leave me alone…Knock a bird about and she will love you. Human nature.”
It surely is not.
The investigation uncovered evidence in relation to bullying, violence towards women, perverting the course of justice, discriminatory language and other inappropriate behaviours. The range and severity of these messages demonstrates that they are not humorous comments but evidence of a sinister and obnoxious culture that has pervaded the very organisation and individuals who are supposed to uphold the law. Worst of all, it tarnishes the reputations of all the decent, hard-working employees of the MPS.
Where is the Mayor of London in all this? Recently we heard his comments on the cost of living, accusations about the Prime Minister, Brexit, levelling up and drug decriminalisation—on everything except what he is responsible for, the policing of London. While more young people are murdered on the streets of London and police officers commit crimes, we need leadership on keeping Londoners safe, and that is not happening.
Will the Minister, first, look at the Sexual Offences Act 2003 with a view to changing the law so that any person, of any age, who is in a position of trust with any other persons, regardless of their age, commits a criminal offence if they seek to involve the other person in sexual activity? Secondly, will he expand and speed up Baroness Casey’s review of the Metropolitan police’s culture and standards to take into account behaviours outside the realm of the workplace so that proper background checks are made on the appointment of MPS staff in all departments, including the MO7 taskforce? Finally, will he seek the establishment of a confidential complaints system in the MPS so that whistleblowers, particularly women, can raise their concerns without being subjected to campaigns of threats, intimidation, coercion and abuse by others?
Confidence in the MPS is incredibly low following a number of abuses. If the public decide they no longer have confidence in those who police them, then that really would be a crime.
Kit Malthouse
I share my hon. Friend’s horror at some of the messages that have been published, which really are abhorrent. As I understand it, the unit that is being investigated has since been disbanded, and quite rightly so, with disciplinary action following.
With regard to my hon. Friend’s specific requests, on the offence, I am certainly happy to look at that suggestion and explore it further as a possibility. On the Casey review, he is quite right that Dame Louise Casey has been appointed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to examine cultural issues within the force.
Obviously, that started with the appalling killing of Sarah Everard and the consequences thereof, but I am sure, knowing Dame Louise as I do, that she will be looking closely at all these issues as they unfold, sadly, on an almost weekly basis in the newspapers. I have asked today for a meeting with her so that I can understand exactly where her inquiry is going and establish for myself that it will fit neatly with the work we are doing, through the inspectorate and through the Angiolini inquiry, into wider issues of culture in the Met and elsewhere in policing. On the establishment of whistle-blowing systems, one of our specific requests of the inspectorate as it looks at all the police forces across the UK is that it make sures that adequate whistleblowing facilities are in place—or that the process is there—that will allow officers who want to call out bad behaviour to do so with confidence. Again, it is worth saying that although it is possible to put in place processes, practices, manuals and training, and we can do our best to train police officers and to instil in them the right values—that has never been more important than now, as we are having such a huge influx of new, young police officers waiting to be filled with the right kind of values—this still does point to a culture of leadership making it clear that such behaviour is not to be tolerated, and projecting confidence on officers to step forward and call out bad behaviour and this kind of communication. Whatever the processes we put in place, unless the wider leadership of UK policing is able to project that confidence, I think we will fail in our mission.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the comments from the Minister, particularly his thanks to the IOPC for the report? The behaviour outlined in the report is truly appalling. As a woman and a mother, I found it chilling. Such shameful behaviour undermines policing and threatens public trust. The Metropolitan police must accept and urgently implement the IOPC’s 15 recommendations.
Sadly, this is not just an issue in London; there have been disgraceful cases involving misogyny or racism among officers in Sussex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Scotland. Ministers will know about these—we have been aware of them for some years. It is not good enough to leave police forces to solve these problems, or to wait until all the different reviews are completed. We need action now from the Government to tackle discrimination and prejudice within policing, and to help rebuild confidence.
Police training needs overhauling now, so that police officers get ongoing training throughout their careers, including on anti-racism and on tackling violence against women and girls. Action is needed now on the wholly inappropriate use of social media to perpetuate prejudice or bullying. What are the Government doing now to make sure that that happens? Action is needed now to tackle racism within the police force, but the National Police Chiefs’ Council action plan on race is 18 months overdue. Why is the Home Office not making sure that this happens sooner?
The Home Office inquiry after the murder of Sarah Everard is still non-statutory, meaning that it still does not have the full range of powers. Will the Minister listen to Labour’s calls and place it on a statutory footing? If the Government want to show that they believe in tackling misogyny, at a time when the rape charge rate has fallen to a record low of 1.3%, will the Minister finally commit now to making tackling violence against women a strategic policing requirement?
Confidence in the police is absolutely fundamental—to protecting victims, catching criminals and keeping our communities safe. We all want the police to be the best that they can be—victims deserve it, the public deserve it and all good police officers deserve it. We need a plan from the Government to make sure that that happens. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner must now spend every minute of her remaining time working to make the Met the best that it can be. That means tackling serious violence, and violence against women and girls, and getting prosecution rates up, but it also means a relentless focus on raising standards. Nothing less will do.
Kit Malthouse
I recognise that the hon. Lady’s job is to challenge the Government to do ever better, and I welcome her doing so, but I hope she will bring the same forensic challenge to the Mayor of London. Having done the job of deputy Mayor for policing and crime, I would certainly have taken responsibility for driving such changes forward from City Hall. Indeed, we faced similar problems between 2008 and 2012, established our own race and faith inquiry and drove through some of the very difficult reforms that were required a decade ago. I hope she will speak to her party colleague in City Hall and press him also to bring action.
While the hon. Lady is right to urge us into ever-greater action on these matters, I know she recognises that there is plenty of work already ongoing. We are, for example, working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council as part of the new national working group on inappropriate social media use by police officers, working out what more we can do to drive that down. I recently met the chair of the scrutiny panel for the NPCC race and equality plan, and I am confident she will be able to bring impetus, momentum and scrutiny to the work it is doing.
We have not made the Angiolini inquiry statutory, because we want to get on with it. We need speed if we are to solve some of these problems fast and maintain confidence in UK policing. If we find, in discussion with Dame Elish, that the statutory basis is required, we will consider that. For the moment, we want to get on with it fast and, as I say, the work has already started. We do not believe, given the way the police regulations are drawn, that Dame Elish will face any obstacle in obtaining the evidence she needs from those forces involved in stage 1 of the inquiry, but if obstacles are put in her way, we are committed to trying to remove them for her. We are examining the strategic policing requirement at the moment and will make announcements about what is or is not included in it in the months to come.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Words cannot really cover how I felt when I read the IOPC report; that anybody could think that using such language is acceptable, let alone police officers—and police officers based in my constituency, in a police station just up the road. I will be meeting the borough commander for Westminster tomorrow to discuss the report and how he and his colleagues plan to bring its recommendations to pass. I also welcome the review by Dame Louise Casey; I have worked with her for many years and I know she will leave no stone unturned when it comes to looking at the culture of the Metropolitan Police.
Does my right hon. Friend agree, however, that although it is clear there are rogue police officers in the Metropolitan Police and other police services, there are thousands and thousands of dedicated and hardworking police officers up and down the country who are equally disgusted? Will he join me in thanking them for their service?
Kit Malthouse
I share my hon. Friend’s disgust at these events. As a former Westminster councillor and the London Assembly member for the area that includes Charing Cross police station, and having visited the police station to see its work in policing one of the most diverse, sensitive and difficult parts of the country and the capital, I find it shocking to see such evidence. I agree that that disgust and fury will be shared by the thousands of police officers across the United Kingdom who do extraordinary things every day to keep us safe. It will be shared not least, given the nature of the messages, by the ever increasing numbers of female and black and minority ethnic officers—the numbers in UK policing are now at an all-time high in both categories—who are doing their best to help us all in changing the face of British policing.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
This report is truly shocking. One key issue is the screening out of unsuitable applicants right at the start. I want to ask about current recruitment and vetting, as so many officers are now being employed. Does the Minister believe that the use of solely online recruitment, assessment, checks and offers is appropriate? That is happening in several forces, where there are no face-to-face interviews. One recruit said that the first time he had a face-to-face interview was when he was being measured for his uniform. I will just quote what Karen Ingala-Smith of the anti-violence charity Nia said, referring to Sarah Everard’s killer:
“Couzens was at least the 15th serving or former officer to have killed a woman. Now is the time for more rigorous checks, not fast-track online selection processes”.
Kit Malthouse
As I am sure the Chair of the Select Committee will recognise, the advent of the pandemic meant that we had to find innovative ways to continue with our recruitment process. We are obviously reviewing them as we emerge from the pandemic, to ensure that we get them exactly right. As I explained earlier and as I am sure the right hon. Lady knows, we have commissioned a general inquiry across UK policing to look at vetting procedures to make sure that the police across the UK have consistency—because each force is responsible for its own vetting—and that that net is drawn as sharply as we possibly can to ensure that we get the right people into policing.
Critically, however, it is important that we monitor carefully how those new young police officers coming through feel and what they are being exposed to, and give them the confidence to know that where there is bad behaviour, they are able to call it out without detriment to themselves. There is not just one piece of the jigsaw; an entire machine needs to be built to ensure integrity in all police officers—to build confidence among the British people that the right people are getting into policing, that they are being maintained in policing and that, where things go wrong, corrective action can be taken quickly.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The racism, misogyny and bullying uncovered by the report are damning, but I do not believe that it is reflective of the vast majority of our police forces, as my right hon. Friend just said. We owe it to those officers to root out this behaviour. The IOPC started its investigations four years ago, and similar investigations in Hampshire—as the Minister will know, as my near neighbour—took three years. What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that investigations are completed in a more reasonable timeframe, and that anonymity is not used to hide those who are involved in such heinous behaviours?
Kit Malthouse
My right hon. Friend is quite right that we need to ensure that inquiries are speeded up as much as possible. I hope that she will remember that, a year or so ago, we introduced reforms to the way in which the IOPC operates to push it to ever greater alacrity in its inquiries. Now, in the case of an inquiry going over 12 months, it is required to write a letter to the appropriate authority—whether that is the police and crime commissioner or me—to explain why. Often, the delay is the fault not necessarily of the IOPC, but of inquests, criminal inquiries or correspondence providing information that extends the timeframe. However, we need to know why.
As far as transparency and anonymity are concerned, I have written recently to all legally qualified chairs of disciplinary panels to say that there should be a stringent examination of whether those hearings need to be held in private or in public. It is absolutely vital for trust in policing that the British people not only know that justice is being done in a disciplinary process, but can see it too.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I want to try to get everyone in but, as colleagues are aware, we have another statement and then further business, so I request that questions are short and to the point, which will enable the Minister to be short and to the point as well.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
In the last year alone, Cressida Dick was forced to make two public apologies for corruption and cover-up, in the Daniel Morgan murder case and—although she never apologised—for the atrocious mishandling of the vigil for Sarah Everard. We have seen the Met accused of institutional corruption, misogyny, racism and, following the Stephen Port killings, homophobia, not to mention the handling of the partygate fiasco. Now we have this damning report on the Charing Cross police station by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. This lack of leadership and the culture of cover-up are letting down honourable rank-and-file police officers, so why did the Home Secretary think that it was remotely acceptable recently to extend Cressida Dick’s term, as opposed to demanding her resignation?
Kit Malthouse
Two of the matters that the hon. Lady refers to are still under investigation by Her Majesty’s inspectorate and I hope that that will conclude shortly. It is worth pointing out that this incident was discovered shortly after the commissioner became commissioner and the unit was disbanded shortly thereafter on her watch. The reason that her contract was extended is that we thought she was the best person for the job.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
As someone who represents a central London constituency, I am shocked and horrified by these revelations and the toxic culture that it represents in some parts of the Metropolitan police. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that he will bring up these concerns with the Mayor of London, because the Mayor needs to take responsibility for sorting out the culture of the Metropolitan police?
Kit Malthouse
As somebody who, as I said, served in City Hall as deputy mayor for policing, I can tell the House that the intention of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, which created the mayoralty and put the police authority and then the Metropolitan police under the control of the Mayor of London, was to ensure that the forensic examination of Met performance and internal processes could be done as close to the frontline as possible and that the Mayor should be in the driving seat.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
As one of the two Members of Parliament for Westminster, I have always greatly valued and supported the work of our local police, and I think that our good and decent police officers will also be appalled by what they have seen in the past few days. They know what we know—that policing a young, modern, diverse city such as Westminster and London is founded on trust. That trust will also be reflected by having a police service that reflects London, so will the Minister tell us what immediate steps he is taking to review the progress, which has faltered over recent years, in ensuring that London’s police service is as diverse in all its forms as the city that it polices?
Kit Malthouse
Hon. Members will have seen that, as part of our uplift programme not just in London, but elsewhere, we are specifically pushing to increase diversity both in terms of gender and race within policing. That is important nowhere more than in London and we have been working closely with the Metropolitan police to maximise the possibility of not only people from a BME background, but women joining the police force.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will be aware that I have spoken about the issue of the Met police on a number of occasions. I am very proud to represent Vauxhall in south London. It is a diverse constituency where, if I am honest, sometimes the relationship between the community and the police can be fractious. We have a number of great community leaders who are willing to work and build the trust between the police and the community. However, reports such as this just blow that confidence out. How can I reassure my diverse community—my diverse community of young black children, of LGBT people, of women who feel let down by the police—that they can have confidence and trust in the police? How will the Minister address the issues relating to the fact that, when we come to summer, we will see our police out on the streets and the young who are fearful of the police will not trust them, women who want to go out across Vauxhall at night will be scared to approach the police, and our LGBT people who want to go out and enjoy themselves will not want to come forward to the police? How is he going to address that culture now?
Kit Malthouse
Having wrestled with these issues in the past, I completely agree with the hon. Lady that it is totally critical that there is a strong bond of trust with communities who have perhaps had a fractious relationship with the police. I think that the best thing that they can do is decide to be the change themselves, and I urge all communities in London and elsewhere to put forward their brightest and best to be police officers.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Cutting 21,000 police officers since 2010 has led to the rush to recruit officers to backfill those gaps, and the vetting of those officers is crucial. Does the Minister think that recruiting people purely through interviews online and doing that vetting purely online is suitable, given that the police are such a customer-facing, hands-on—sometimes literally— service with the public?
Kit Malthouse
It is worth pointing out that, while the assessment process was online, once those police officers enter training, it is not accepted that they will necessarily be attested at the end. They are constantly assessed throughout their training on whether or not they are suitable. We continue to monitor their performance not just through training and in the immediate months after their acquisition, but thereafter. Having said that, we have to be slightly careful to bear in mind that, of the 11,000-odd who have stepped forward to be police officers, the vast majority of them are bright, smart, well-meaning and well-motivated people with the right kind of values to be police officers, and we have high hopes for them in the future.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The report was chilling. What worried me most was that the horrific cases were referred to the IOPC in 2018, yet the concerns about sexist discrimination and sexual harassment in the London Metropolitan police were not addressed by the time of the horrific murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and Sarah Everard, who has been mentioned a few times. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), I have had young women in my constituency writing to me and saying that they do not feel safe walking around at night in my constituency. As someone who had a bad experience with the police before I became an MP, I ask the Minister to set out some tangible steps the Government are taking to ensure that the misogyny in the force is tackled and that they are actually doing a proper job, so I can reassure my young constituents that they are safe to walk around in Hampstead and Kilburn.
Kit Malthouse
As I explained earlier, we are engaging at all levels with the various actions plans that are in place to try to bring change in policing. And, of course, we are injecting a much more diverse shot of energy and personnel into policing through the uplift programme. However, it is—I am not making a political point—primarily the job of the Mayor of London to hold the commissioner to account on these issues. We are sending in the inspectors not just to London but to every force to look at their vetting and anti-corruption processes to make sure they are functioning well, but with a particular emphasis on the ability internally to call out exactly this kind of behaviour. It appears that this incident came to light after phones were brought in to be checked after a previous incident—this was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord)—and they were discovered almost accidentally. We have to ask why. Why were there not police officers calling out that behaviour? That is what we are sending in the inspectors to have a look at.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will understand that this case, among other things, will reinforce the profound concern about the level of violence towards women and the lack of accountability for men who are responsible for that violence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) alluded to in her remarks, the Government have so far refused to make violence against women and girls a strategic policing priority. Given the seriousness of this latest report, the fact that it is not an isolated case and the clear need for cultural change across the Metropolitan police, will the Minister stop procrastinating and bring that in?
Kit Malthouse
We have not refused at all. We have said we will consider it, along with all the other horrendous crimes that, sadly, teem around this country and which we have to deal with. As I say, we will publish our findings on the strategic policing requirement shortly.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I am the only female former police officer currently serving in this place. Although I served with dedicated officers, I would be lying if I said that I did not recognise an element of the culture from my own service over 28 years ago. Training is absolutely vital. Post the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, all police officers and staff across the UK attended three days of diversity training. It was a big undertaking, but it visibly demonstrated to the public that we were taking this seriously. What steps is the Minister taking and what conversations is he having with the College of Policing for something similar?
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady speaks with knowledge and she is exactly right. We are in intensive conversation with the College of Policing, which, as I hope she knows, is under new leadership, to ensure that we get the package of training exactly right, and, specifically, that the training catches up with modern phenomena, which perhaps it has been a little slow to do, such as social media.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The findings of this report were deeply shocking, but if we look just at this last year, we have seen that the Metropolitan police have deep-rooted structural problems, from racism to bullying to misogyny. Currently, we have a commissioner in the job that I do not believe is fit for purpose. Does the Minister agree that, to really tackle the broken culture in the Metropolitan police, we also need to change the commissioner?
Kit Malthouse
I recognise that media coverage has the tendency to compress time. It is worth pointing out that the issue came to light in 2017 and the unit was disbanded in 2018. Charing Cross police station was merged into a wider borough operational command under new leadership, which is committed to driving out this kind of appalling behaviour. Whether that culture persists, and the vigour with which the Met is pursuing it, will be revealed, we hope, by both the Angiolini inquiry and the work of Dame Louise Casey. I urge the hon. Lady to wait for those conclusions.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
This cultural problem does not just apply to Charing Cross, or even, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) said, to the Met. It also does not just apply to middle-ranking and junior officers. As a councillor and now a Member of this House, I worked with Chief Superintendent Paul Martin and Chief Inspector Ricky Kandohla, who were both found guilty last week of gross misconduct and dismissed without notice for a series of offences. The chief superintendent led the three-borough basic command unit and was found to have committed bullying and discriminatory conduct towards a female police officer, misuse of a bank card, and impropriety over a promotion. Will the Minister assure the House that any reviews will address the cultures within our police forces right to the top of senior levels?
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
The report not only makes for incredibly uncomfortable and difficult reading, but destroys public confidence. This is not just about the Met. Alongside the Government’s failure in the criminal justice system, where victims are let down and rape prosecutions have fallen to just 1.3%, how can the Minister expect victims of serious sexual assault and rape across the country to come forward? What will he do about that?
Kit Malthouse
I have previously expressed sincere regret for the results in the criminal justice system on rape. I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that some of our actions—not least Operation Soteria, which is showing good signs of making progress in this area—will give people more confidence in getting a result. However, the incidence of reported rape in this country continues to rise as more and more people come forward to report that appalling crime, and we must ensure that they are confident of getting justice through the criminal justice system. That is what the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and I are dedicated to.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The IOPC’s report was truly damning, but it is not the only example of misogyny in the Met police that has come to light in the past couple of weeks. The Met has also been made to pay compensation to a woman in Nottingham who was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer, and it has been made to apologise to my constituent Dr Koshka Duff for misogynistic and derogatory comments made before and after a strip search. Does the Minister agree with the report’s conclusion that the incidents the IOPC investigated are
“not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’”?
Will he commit to an independent, public, statutory inquiry into institutional misogyny in the Metropolitan police?
Kit Malthouse
Given the incidents we have seen—I too was appalled by the incident to which the hon. Lady refers—it is hard not to agree with the IOPC conclusions. As I have explained in the past few minutes, several inquiries in this area are ongoing within the Met, and I think it best to wait for them to conclude before deciding on what the next steps may be.
Levelling Up
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations (Michael Gove)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Government’s plans to level up and unite our country.
The White Paper we are publishing today sets out our detailed strategy to make opportunity more equal and to shift wealth and power decisively towards working people and their families. After two long years of covid, we need to get this country moving at top speed again. We need faster growth, quicker public services and higher wages, and we need to allow overlooked and undervalued communities to take back control of their destiny.
While talent is spread equally across the United Kingdom, opportunity is not. Our country is an unparalleled success story, but not everyone shares in it. The further a person is from one of our great capitals—whether it is London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast—the tougher life can be. For every local success, there is a story of scarring and stagnation elsewhere, and that must change. We need to tackle and reverse the inequality that is limiting so many horizons and that also harms our economy. The gap between much of the south-east and the rest of the country in productivity, in health outcomes, in wages, in school results and in job opportunities must be closed. This is not about slowing down London or the south-east, or damping down animal spirts, but rather about turbocharging the potential of every part of the UK. This country will not achieve its full potential until every individual and community achieves everything of which they are capable. Our economy has been like a jet propelled by only one engine, now we need to fire up every resource that we have.
The economic prize from levelling up is potentially enormous. If underperforming places were levelled up towards the UK average, unlocking their full potential, this could boost aggregate UK GDP by tens of billions of pounds each year. So, how do we achieve success? First, we do so by backing business. The economic growth that we want to see across the UK will be generated by the private sector, by businesses and entrepreneurs investing, innovating, taking risks and opening new markets. We will support them every step of the way, by cutting through the red tape, by making it easier to secure investment and, as our White Paper today outlines, by creating the right environment on the ground for business.
As the Chancellor laid out in our Plan for Growth, we need to invest in science and innovation, improve infrastructure and connectivity, and extend educational opportunity to underpin economic success. This White Paper makes clear our commitment to improve education, investment and connectivity fastest in those parts of the country that have not had the support that they needed in the past. We have set out clear, ambitious missions, underpinned by metrics by which we can be held to account to drive the change that we need.
On productivity, science and innovation, our mission one is that, by 2030, we pledge that pay, employment and productivity will have risen in every area of the UK, with each containing a globally competitive city; closing the gap between top performing areas and the rest. Mission two will see a massive increase in domestic public investment in research and development outside the greater south-east, increasing by at least a third in the next three years, and we will use the shift in resources to leverage private sector investment in the areas that need it most.
On infrastructure and connectivity, we will have better local transport, bringing the rest of the country closer to the standards of London’s transport system. We will also improve digital connectivity, with billions of pounds of investment, bringing nationwide gigabit-capable broadband and 4G coverage to the whole UK, and we will expand 5G coverage to the overwhelming majority of the population.
On education and skills, we will effectively eradicate illiteracy and innumeracy, with investment in the most-underperforming areas of the country. There will be 55 new education investment areas in England alone, driving school improvement in the local authorities where attainment is weakest. Our sixth mission is to have new high quality skills training, targeted at the lowest skilled areas, with 200,000 more people completing high quality skills training annually.
We know that, to achieve these missions, we will need smart, targeted, Government investment. That is why we are investing more than £20 billion in research and development to create a science and technology superpower. Today, we are allocating £100 million specifically to three new innovation accelerators in the west midlands, Glasgow and Greater Manchester. It is also why we are investing £5 billion in bus services and active travel, with new bus investment today in all our mayoral combined authorities and the green light for bus projects in Stoke-on-Trent, Derbyshire, Warrington and across the country. It is also why we are investing in new academies, new free schools and new institutes of technology. Today, we are establishing a new digital UK national academy—just as the UK established the Open University to bring higher education to everyone, we are making available to every school student in the country high quality online teaching, so geography is no barrier to opportunity.
We will also use the freedoms that we now have outside the EU to reform Government procurement rules to ensure that the money that we spend on goods and services is spent on British firms and British jobs. We will unashamedly put British workers first in the global race for investment. Economic opportunity, spread more equally across the country, is at the heart of levelling up, but levelling up is also about community as well. It is about repairing the social fabric of our broken heartlands, so that they can reflect the pride we feel in the places we love. That is why we are investing in 20 new urban regeneration projects, starting in Wolverhampton and Sheffield and spreading across the midlands and the north, with £1.8 billion invested in new housing infrastructure to turn brownfield land into projects across the country like Stratford and King’s Cross in London.
By regenerating the great cities and towns of the north, we can relieve the pressure on green fields and public services in the south. A more productive, even prouder and faster-growing north helps improve quality of life and wellbeing in the south, which is why we are refocusing housing investment towards the north and midlands.
Our housing mission is clear: we will give renters a secure path to greater home ownership, we will drive an increase in first-time buyers and we will deliver a tough focus on decent standards in rented homes. A new £1.5 billion levelling-up home building fund will give loans to small and medium-sized builders to deliver new homes, the vast majority of which will be outside London and the south-east. Our housing plans will set a decent minimum standard that all rented properties must meet.
Our White Paper this spring will include plans to cut the number of poor-quality rented homes by half, address the injustice of “no fault” evictions and bear down on rogue landlords, thereby improving the life chances of children and families up and down the country.
We will also take action in law to tackle the problem of empty properties and vacant shops on our high streets. Building on the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), we will ensure that properties cannot remain unloved and unused for months, dragging down the whole high street. Instead, we will put every property to work for the benefit of the whole community.
Also central to improving quality of life for all will be further investment in sport, culture, nature and young people. That is why we are investing £230 million extra in grassroots football and using the community ownership fund to help fans take back control of clubs such as Bury FC. It is also why every extra penny of Arts Council spending will now be allocated outside London, from celebrating ceramics in Stoke to supporting pride in British history in Bishop Auckland. There will also be another £30 million allocated to improving parks and urban green spaces, as well as plans to re-green all of our green belt.
We will also invest an additional £560 million in activities for young people, and we will invest in reversing health disparities, tackling obesity and improving life expectancy. We will also ensure that the communities in which we are investing are safer and more orderly. Fighting crime and antisocial behaviour is essential to giving communities new heart, so we will invest an additional £150 million in our safer streets fund and ensure that those who drag down our communities through vandalism, graffiti and joyriding pay back their debt to those communities. They will be set to work on improving the environment, cleaning up public spaces, clearing away the drug debris in our parks and streets and contributing to civic renewal.
Critical to the success of our missions will be giving communities not just the resources but the powers necessary to take back control. That is why our White Paper sets out how we will shift more power away from Whitehall to working people. We will give new powers to outstanding local leaders such as Andy Street and Ben Houchen—[Interruption]—and, indeed, Dan Jarvis. We will create new Mayors where people want them, we will give nine counties including Derbyshire and Durham new powers as trailblazers in a programme of county deals and we will strengthen the hand of local leaders across the country.
We will also take back control of the money that the EU used to spend on our behalf, ensuring that local areas can invest in their priorities through the new UK shared prosperity fund. With power comes responsibility, so we will also ensure that data on local government performance is published so that we can hold local leaders to account.
Central Government will report back to this House on our progress against our missions and on the impact all our policies have on closing geographical inequalities. Because building long-term structures matters, we will also create the institutions, generate the incentives and supply the information necessary to drive levelling up for years ahead.
This White Paper lays out a long-term economic and social plan to make opportunity more equal. It shifts power and opportunity towards the north and midlands, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It guarantees increased investment in overlooked and undervalued communities, in research and development, in education and skills, in transport and broadband, in urban parks and decent homes, in grassroots sport and local culture and in fighting crime and tackling antisocial behaviour. It gives local communities the tools to tackle rogue landlords, dilapidated high streets and neglected green spaces, and it demonstrates that this people’s Government are keeping faith with the working people of this country by allowing them to take back control of their lives, their communities and their futures.
I commend this statement to the House.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
After all the delays, all the slogans and all the big promises, is this it? Is this really it? The sum total of ambition for our proud coastal and industrial—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The Secretary of State was heard with respect. I do not expect the shadow Secretary of State to be shouted out.
Lisa Nandy
Conservative Members do not disrespect us when they chunter and jeer; they disrespect the people of this country.
Seriously, is this it? The sum total of ambition for our coastal and industrial towns, our villages and our great cities is a history lesson on the rise of the Roman empire, and Ministers scurrying around Whitehall, shuffling the deckchairs and cobbling together a shopping list of recycled policies and fiddling the figures. Is this really it?
For some of us, this is personal. We have lived these failures every single day. We have watched good jobs go, our high streets boarded up and young people who have had to get out to get on. The Secretary of State talks about Bury FC. My step-dad was a lifelong supporter of Bury FC, a regular at Gigg Lane and his last words to my step-brother before he died were, “What’s the score?” If he were alive today, he would never forgive the Government for standing aside while this asset at the centre of Bury’s community was allowed to collapse.
This system is completely broken, and the Secretary of State has given us more of the same. This was meant to be the Prime Minister’s defining mission of Government. I am not surprised he was too embarrassed to come here today and defend it himself. It is so bad that even the Secretary of State has privately been saying that it is rubbish. They tell us to wait till 2030, but where have they been for the last 12 years? I will tell them where—in Whitehall, turbocharging the decline of our communities, and cutting off choices and chances for a generation of young people.
The Secretary of State talks about 12 missions, but this is 12 admissions of failure. Let us take one of them. Only two thirds of children leave primary school with the basic skills to get on. Forgive me if I have missed something, but was he not the Education Secretary for four years? What about this? The Government want to tackle crime, but on their watch fewer than one in 10 crimes are solved and nearly all rapes go unprosecuted. No one listening to this would think that he had been in charge of the Ministry of Justice.
This is a Government in free fall—out of ideas, out of energy—with recycled, watered-down ambitions. None of this is new. In fact, some of it is so old that one of the better announcements that caught my eye was actually made in 2008 by Gordon Brown and has been running ever since. Across our home towns, we have seen good jobs disappear and far too many young people who have had to get out to get on. This does nothing to address that.
The Secretary of State talks about a Medici-style renaissance, but can he not see what is happening in front of his eyes? Our high streets are struggling because the local economy is struggling. People do not have money to spend in our shops, our businesses and our high streets, and the Government are about to hike up their taxes. This does nothing to address that. What we needed was a plan to connect our towns and villages to jobs, to opportunities and to our family and friends, but they have halved the funding for buses and scrapped the rail promises to the north, and where is the digital Britain we were promised?
We do not need to look to Rome, Jericho or renaissance Florence for inspiration, because in Preston, Wigan and Grimsby, people are delivering real change for themselves, not because of their Government, but despite them. Imagine what we could do if they would get out of the way and give us back the power that we demand to make decisions for ourselves. [Laughter.] Well, Conservative Members laugh. They do laugh—they have been laughing at us for years—and here it goes again.
It is absurd that we have to go cap in hand to Westminster to do things that we know will work for us. Do not believe me; believe the former Mayor of London, who in 2013 demanded powers that are nowhere to be seen in this report. We asked for powers, and we got a process. Where are the powers we were promised? Seriously, we have the arrogance of a Chancellor sitting in Whitehall, drawing lines on a map, choosing which of us have earned the right to have some say on the decisions that affect not their lives, but our lives, our families and our communities.
The Secretary of State talks about London-style regeneration. My colleagues in London will talk proudly about the London they call home, but not every part of this country wants to be the same. We have our own identities. We are proud of our own places. We believe in our communities and we believe in our people, and we deserve a Government who back us, not the smoke and mirrors that we have been handed today.
The Government have given more to fraudsters than they have given to the north of England. For every £13 they have taken from us, they have given us £1 back. We get a partial refund and they expect us to be grateful. [Interruption.] I will give the House an example. The Mayor of Greater Manchester today raised broken promises on rail, and he was told by one of the Government’s MPs, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
It is not their money; it is ours. Imagine what we could achieve if we had a Government with an ambition for Britain that matched the ambition of the people in it. We could build good jobs in every community. There is a global race to create these jobs, and we will bring them here so that young people in our coastal and industrial towns can power us through the next generation, like their parents and grandparents powered us through the last. In every community in this country, people know that we can do so much better than this, with well-paid jobs and money back in people’s pockets to genuinely transform our high streets. We can reform business rates to back our bricks and mortar businesses. We can be buying, making and selling more in Britain and have an educational recovery plan that stands as a testament to our commitment to the young people who make this country what it is. That is our mission, and today we have learned one crucial thing: for all the spin and all the gloss, the Government will not do it, because they do not believe in this country—we will. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I think you are preventing the Secretary of State from speaking. I suggest that a modicum of silence from those on the Back Benches would be welcome.
Michael Gove
I have enormous respect and affection for the hon. Lady, but at the end of her response, I do not think I heard a single question, nor did I hear her disagree with a single policy that we have put forward. She is in distinguished company; she joins other Labour colleagues who have welcomed the White Paper, such as Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire, who said there is
“lots to be pleased about”
in it, and the Mayor of South Yorkshire, who said on Sunday that he warmly welcomed the support that we were giving to Sheffield and that it was
“much needed recognition of the potential”
of that great city. I am glad that the hon. Lady is in good Labour company in welcoming the White Paper.
The hon. Lady mentioned Bury FC, and she suggested that this Government had stood aside. I am sorry, but this Government provided £1 million to the fans of Bury FC so that they could take back control of the club. It was not Labour Bury Council but Tory Ministers who saved that football club for its fans.
She asks where we have been over the past 12 years and about my time as Education Secretary. My mother said self-praise is no honour, but since the hon. Lady asks, there were more good and outstanding schools as a result. We closed the gap between rich and poor, we extended opportunity and we ensured that illiteracy and innumeracy were tackled.
The hon. Lady also says that we need more good jobs. I completely agree. That is why we have a plan for growth and she has no plan. She says that we need to revive our high streets. I completely agree. That is why we have a plan for investment, and the Opposition have no plan. She says that she wants improved connectivity. That is why we have ensured that gigabit connectivity has gone from 10% to 60% in the past two years, and they have no plan. She says that she believes in devolution. We have nine county deals and powers for Mayors. The only devolution in England that Labour ever offered was to London. It did nothing for the north and midlands when it came to devolution. She said she wants safer town centres. Why is it, then, that every time we have brought forward policies for tougher sentences in this House, Labour has voted against? It has no plans, no idea and no answers.
The Opposition also ask about new money. Do they not remember that Liam Byrne wrote in 2010 when the Labour Government left office that there was no money left? Now, they are so fiscally inconstant that they say they want simultaneously not to have a national insurance increase and to cut other taxes, and at the same time to increase public spending. Our commitment to abolish innumeracy cannot come quickly enough, starting with the Labour Front Benchers. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has committed £500 million to tackling adult innumeracy; we know where that funding should go first. If they had their way, borrowing would go up, interest rates would go up, and the poorest in the north and midlands would lose out; instead of levelling up, they would bring the economy crashing down. That is why we never need to have those Front Benchers in power in this country ever.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. A little reminder that the Secretary of State should not refer to hon. Members by name.
It is going to require a lot of self-discipline if we are to have any chance of getting everybody in, so I ask for very short questions. The Father of the House will provide a marvellous example of that, I am sure: Sir Peter Bottomley.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that those in the south-east hope this will be successful, giving individuals opportunity and changing the economic geography of the parts of this country that need to be connected to the thriving country we hope to create together. Will he heed council leaders such as Councillor Kevin Jenkins in Worthing, who wants Ministers to pay attention to things that they could do that would help and to stop doing things that do not help, because all over the country we need Ministers to pay more attention to local leaders?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and in the levelling-up White Paper there is a commitment to ensure greater devolution all round. I signalled the county deals we are green-lighting for Derbyshire and Durham, but we are also devolving more power to local authorities across the country, including through the new UK shared prosperity fund. He is also right to remind us that, while deprivation is concentrated disproportionately in the north and midlands, there are pockets of genuine poverty in communities such as Worthing and Hastings that we need to pay close attention to.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
This is somewhat underwhelming, is it not? Not so much a dead cat as a damp squib. This might have been an opportunity to bring forward proposals for the modernisation of government in these islands, to devolve further powers and competence to the national Administrations, and to do something about the asymmetric and centralised mess that is the government of England, but, no, what we are promised is that in eight years’ time we will get a better bus service. It is, frankly, insulting given the amount of political capital that the Government have invested in this. This is a Government who have broken trust with the British people, and getting it back will require people and policies of substance, rather than glib soundbites and photo opportunities for Ministers in hard hats and hi-viz vests. The statement literally has nothing in it for the people I represent in this House, but we will watch with interest as this con is perpetrated on the people of the north of England.
Meanwhile, in Scotland we have another Brexit betrayal: the replacement funds for the EU structural funds are falling £900 million short, and control is being centralised to Whitehall. That is what we are receiving from this Government, and that is why more and more people are turning to the option of political independence for their country.
My central question is this: how does this square with the rest of the Government’s policies? We have a chronic and increasing problem with inequality in Britain, yet everything this Government do seems to make it worse: the decision to cut universal credit and the below-inflation increases in other benefits are driving the gap between rich and poor even higher; so, too, is the decision to increase basic rate taxes and not to increase taxes for those who can most afford them; and so, too, is the Government’s inaction and unwillingness to do anything about the cost of living and spiralling energy bills. So my question, Secretary of State, is this: given all of that—given the Government’s policy in the round—is this not just a piece of meaningless window dressing?
Michael Gove
The short answer is no. The longer answer is this: we work in partnership with the Scottish Government, and we recognise their devolved responsibilities, but people in Scotland pay their taxes to have two Governments working together for them, and that is what we have done. The levelling-up fund has ensured that there has been investment in North Ayrshire, in Edinburgh and in Aberdeen, to help communities and councils led by Scottish nationalist councillors, and that has been backed by SNP MPs. The UK shared prosperity fund has also guaranteed funds going to Scotland, ensuring that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Cornwall receive every bit as much outside the EU as they ever did within it, but with our control of that funding, not the European Union’s.
Today, we have announced additional funding for an innovation accelerator in Glasgow. In Glasgow University and the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow has two of the United Kingdom’s leading research universities. We are supporting and backing them. I explained to the First Minister last night how important it was that we worked together, and we will seek to work together.
When it comes to inequality, the Scottish Government have presided over growing inequality in education outcomes in schools in Scotland. We want to work with them to reverse that. When it comes to devolution, rather than devolving more powers to local government in Scotland, as we are doing in England, the Scottish Government have centralised powers. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has been eloquent in complaining about that. Again, that is a devolved matter, but if the critique from the hon. Gentleman is to carry force, it is vital that he recognises the beam in his own eye before pointing out the mote in others.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
What the towns and cities of our country need is ambition, investment and encouragement, not the negativity and neglect that I am afraid they have experienced under the Labour party over the years. As a Teessider born and bred, and as someone who negotiated and signed the devolution deal with Teesside six years ago, I am proud to see it leading this White Paper thanks to the great progress it has made under Ben Houchen.
Does the Secretary of State recognise that building on such successful policy innovations is the best way to go, rather than needing to start from scratch in every case? In that context, does he recognise that the role of universities and scientific institutions, which are strong in the regions, is a good place to invest and to drive further prosperity across the UK?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend was a brilliant Secretary of State both for Communities and Local Government and for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He was, more than anyone else—apart from the former Chancellor, the former right hon. Member for Tatton—responsible for extending devolution across England. He is absolutely right: this is a model that works and on which we can build. He is also absolutely right to say that higher education is critical to the economic future of the north and the midlands, where we have outstanding universities. The increased research and development spending that we are announcing today will be directed towards those excellent institutions. Whether for life sciences in Newcastle, renewables in Teesside or materials in Manchester, we will be working with those universities to revive the north and the midlands.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the White Paper, although I have to admit that I have not quite read it all yet.
When the Select Committee has looked at this issue in the past, we have agreed that local councils have to be key to delivering a levelling-up agenda, and that means a devolution framework, with all councils getting real new powers and real new resources to deliver. When I looked at page 140, I saw the words “devolution framework”, and I was encouraged. Will the Secretary of State confirm, however, that in that list of powers, there is not a single new power? All the powers in there are already available to at least some local authorities, and all this framework does is enable more local authorities to have those powers. What is certainly not set out is a list of new resources that will be available to enable the spread of existing powers to more local authorities to be delivered in practice. Will he confirm those two things?
Michael Gove
It is a typically fair and informed question from the hon. Gentleman. What the framework does lay out is how local authorities that have fewer powers can acquire more, and how we can have a convergence towards a model, which not every part of the country will necessary want to adopt, that is closer to the level of power and autonomy that the Mayor of London exercises. We are completely open, and we have said so, to negotiating with local areas on the acquisition of further powers.
I should also say that the UK shared prosperity fund prospectus that we are publishing today makes it clear that lower-tier local authorities especially will have additional resources, through the UKSPF, to enhance their ability to serve their citizens.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Ind)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his “Levelling Up” paper, but particularly mission 7 to level up health outcomes and wellbeing. Will he meet me to discuss levelling up health and care provision in rural areas as part of that mission, a blueprint for which was published yesterday in a report co-authored by the all-party parliamentary group on rural health and social care, which I chair, and the National Centre for Rural Health and Social Care?
Michael Gove
Yes, I absolutely will. The hon. Lady makes an important point. Of course improving economic productivity is at the heart of levelling up, but we also need to tackle unfair health outcomes. Within the White Paper, we have details of how we are proposing to do so, not least taking forward some of the recommendations of Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy, which outlines how we can effectively tackle obesity—one of the greatest drivers of diabetes, which is one of the greatest drains on NHS resources.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I wrote to the Secretary of State on 19 January and I have not had a response to that letter, but in it I cited research from Utopia, which, after analysing 34 cities and towns, found that Bradford needed the most development and infrastructure support. We have lost out on Northern Powerhouse Rail, stifling £30 billion-worth of investment over the next 10 years. We have been given crumbs. What is he doing for my constituents in Bradford West—he has mentioned nothing in his statement today—after failing them time and again with the NPR?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady is right. Bradford is a fantastic city—it has seen significant investment, not least in cultural renewal, and it has a wonderful university—but it also has areas of real deprivation, not least in the constituency that she represents. I look forward to working with her, and with Tracy Brabin and municipal leaders in Bradford, to ensure that the policies in the White Paper can deliver for her constituents.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I very much welcome this White Paper—a genuinely one-nation Conservative document. I particularly commend my right hon. Friend and his colleagues on the health commitment it makes. Five years’ extra healthy lifespan will be absolutely critical in spreading opportunity not just to disadvantaged people but to disadvantaged communities, because health inequalities hold people back almost more than anything else. Frankly, we can have all the transport infrastructure we like, but if people in middle age are too unhealthy to lead full lives and to stay in work, they cannot benefit from it. Will he go into a bit more detail about how he will achieve that ambition?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. My right hon. Friend is right: this is a one-nation document that is in that Conservative tradition. He is also absolutely right that addressing health inequalities is vital, not just to relieving pressure on the NHS for taxpayers but to giving people the full lives that they deserve. We outline in the White Paper some of the steps that we are taking, not least to deal with obesity, but, in addition, my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary will be bringing forward a health inequalities White Paper a little later this year, and I will be working with him to take forward some of the insights of Professor Michael Marmot and others about what the drivers of health inequalities are and how we can tackle them.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), for the briefing that they gave to the Mayors and myself yesterday. However, it is a shameful indictment of our country that, for too long, where you grow up has determined where you end up. We all know that to address these challenges requires transformational resources. What more can the Secretary of State do and how can we help him to get the Chancellor to provide additional resources to deliver on the plan that he has brought forward?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I hope to have the chance to visit him in Sheffield before too long to discuss how we can use some of the funding that was allocated in the spending review more effectively on his behalf, and how we can ensure that future spending commitments from the Chancellor and from others serve the people whom he serves.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the emphasis on personal journeys and improvement of free enterprise. Freeports can make a great contribution to that, so will the Government bring forward a freeport for Northern Ireland to show that it is properly part of the United Kingdom and, with it, to see off the EU threat to our Union?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are committed to ensuring that we have two additional freeports in Scotland, at least one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland, and announcements on those should be forthcoming shortly.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I welcome the White Paper and the Government’s paying attention to levelling up across the United Kingdom—as a Unionist, I see that as important to assure citizens they are considered part of the United Kingdom. However, many people in Northern Ireland will say that new red tape as a result of the Northern Ireland protocol is strangling our economy. How do the proposals in the White Paper benefit people in Northern Ireland in terms of education, jobs, research, housing, crime and so on? How does the Secretary of State seek to level up Northern Ireland through that?
Michael Gove
The right hon. Member makes a series of good points. First, I absolutely understand the problems with the protocol, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is working incredibly hard to tackle them. Secondly, we recognise that the Northern Ireland Executive exercise devolved responsibilities in a number of areas, but we can help: additional funding for research and development means that Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Ulster can get additional funding to create the jobs that Northern Ireland requires. The broader economic strategy that we outline in the White Paper is designed to help every part of the United Kingdom, and, through the UK shared prosperity fund, there will be additional funding. UK community renewal funding and levelling-up funding has been distributed to communities in Northern Ireland, but we need to do better in ensuring that it reaches those who deserve it most, not least those in areas such as Larne and Glenarm in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Leicestershire and Rutland councils were some of the worst funded in the entire country—until today. Thanks to the Secretary of State, Leicestershire is one of the nine counties that will be negotiating a county deal. Will he please reassure me that when he negotiates a deal for Leicestershire, he will include Rutland, which cannot go for its own county deal? It needs a sidecar deal. Will he also help us level up pride by coming to visit our wonderful area?
Michael Gove
That is an offer too good to resist. I will say two things. First, Leicester and Leicestershire have much to offer, but there are also significant pockets of deprivation not just in the city but in rural Leicestershire that we must tackle. My hon. Friend is right that the county deal that we are proposing will—I hope—help. Secondly, I know that Rutland’s independence is cherished by its people and its Member of Parliament, but on this occasion there can be—how can I put it—a fruitful union between Leicestershire and Rutland, and I would like to see that advance.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know the impact of growing up poor on health, education and life chances, because it is well documented. But, even before the pandemic, two in five children and young people in the north-east were growing up in poverty, so it is hard to understand why the White Paper does not address the lack of cross-Government strategy to tackle child poverty. If levelling up is to mean anything, surely it must address that issue in the north-east.
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady makes a good point. Indeed, there is a commitment in the White Paper to additional funding for the supporting families programme —previously the troubled families programme—which helps to address many of the drivers of child poverty. Of course, I would be the first to acknowledge that there is more to do, and in communities in Newcastle—in Longbenton and elsewhere—there are real challenges that we need to work with Newcastle City Council to overcome. The council’s Labour leader is someone with whom I think we can do business.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I welcome the White Paper. I am sure that the Secretary of State would acknowledge that delivering foreign direct investment is key to levelling up the north and beyond. Would he consider a 13th mission: to double FDI in the north of England by 2030?
Michael Gove
May I thank my right hon. Friend? Many of the best ideas in the White Paper are the fruit of work that he and the Northern Research Group of Conservative MPs have conducted. The paper that he co-wrote for the Centre for Policy Studies, “A Northern Big Bang”, has influenced our thinking in a number of areas, not least unlocking additional private sector investment. My noble Friend Lord Grimstone, the Department for International Trade Minister, now leads the Office for Investment, and one of his missions is to increase FDI, particularly in the north and midlands. I look forward to working with Lord Grimstone and my right hon. Friend to ensure that east Lancashire is at the front of the queue for that investment.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for the White Paper, which is very thoughtfully put together—not least because the foreword by the Prime Minister is on a detachable page. That is great.
One page that appears to have already been detached, however, is the bit that refers to rural Britain. I am really concerned that there is very little concern in the document for levelling up the rural parts of our country. In Cumbria, we have three-hour round trips for cancer treatment and a threat to our local A&E department, and our villages and communities are being cleared by second homes and Airbnb. I would be delighted to work constructively with the Secretary of State, and I would love if it he agreed to meet me so that we can talk about some answers to the housing catastrophe affecting not just Cumbria, but the rest of rural Britain.
Michael Gove
I have to say, I agree with almost everything the hon. Gentleman said. First, it is important that we focus on rural poverty; secondly, there are unique issues in Cumbria. Local government reorganisation, with the creation of one new authority in Cumberland and one in Westmorland and Furniss, will contribute to ensuring that we have a proper focus on those, but we need to go further. He is also right that the issue of second homes and their impact on local economies is a complex one. We are not in the right place yet, and I want to work with him and other colleagues to address it.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
It was wonderful to be able to welcome my right hon. Friend to my constituency this week to see the amount of levelling up that is needed and the work we are doing with our local council to achieve it. Does he agree, however, that it is about not just school education, but technical education for our young and older people—something new Labour was able to decimate very effectively when it was in power, but which is vital to matching up jobs and opportunities to level up areas such as Great Grimsby?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we think about the technical institute in Grimsby, which was a source of pride and high-quality further education, some of the changes that the new Labour Government made undermined that centre of excellence. One thing we are clear about in the White Paper is the importance of ensuring that further education is aligned with the needs of local employers. In Grimsby and north-east Lincolnshire, as part of the renewables revolution led by the Business Secretary, there is now a chance to ensure new jobs, investment in FE and a recognition of the link between the two, so that in Grimsby people can stay local, but go far.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I always enjoy listening to the Secretary of State, who is always very articulate and performs well at the Dispatch Box. I wish him well in the forthcoming Tory leadership election. There is an obsession, which he has illustrated today, with elected Mayors; I understand he has briefed them, but not the leaders of local authorities. In Cheshire West and Chester, the Government have taken £466 million since 2010 from our local authority, and the only way we can win funding back is by bidding to this pot or that pot, which is decided by Ministers. If he is going to increase funding for local authorities, will he please remember those areas that are not covered by directly elected Mayors, but nevertheless have outstanding leaders such as Louise Gittins?
Michael Gove
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Been there, done that, got knocked back twice, so I am afraid I am not going round that course again. I will agree that it is important that we talk to all local leaders. I personally think the devolution of power to mayoral combined authorities has been a good thing, but it is not right for everywhere in this country. There are ways we can strengthen the hands of local leaders, and I look forward to doing so in Cheshire.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Gainsborough South West ward is the 24th most deprived ward in the country. I thank the Secretary of State for awarding us £10 million in levelling up, but does he agree, looking at the overall picture, that the prosperity of northern industrial towns was built not with Government money, but by entrepreneurs in the 19th and early 20th century, when regulation and taxation were a fraction of what they are now? What plans does he have, with his colleagues, to try to reduce the burden of regulation and taxation on towns in the north of England?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend is correct; that is why I sought in my statement to emphasise that levelling up can only succeed if British business and private enterprise succeed. That means the right regulatory framework, outside the European Union, as we spelled out on Monday. There are steps we have taken and can take to ensure that we have smarter and leaner regulation.
More broadly, I think that if we look at the success of great industrial towns in the past, we see that figures such as Joe Chamberlain were driven by the spirit of private enterprise, but by civic pride as well. Chamberlain provided an example of great local leadership, and also of ambition to improve education. The mission that he led in Birmingham to ensure that universal education was extended even to the poorest was the perfect complement to the drive that he showed in generating wealth through the market.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
One of the great inequalities in my constituency is the gap between those who are able to feed their families and those who are not. In every year since the Government took office the use of food banks has increased, and last year 2.5 million food parcels were given out to people who had gone up to a complete stranger and said, “Can you help me to feed my family?” What are the Government going to do to bring an end to this scandal?
Michael Gove
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. We have taken, and continue to take, a series of steps through the supporting families programme. We are also outlining in the White Paper some of the proposals that we are taking forward as part of Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy, which explicitly addressed some of the particular challenges to which the right hon. Gentleman has rightly drawn attention, to ensure that people have the resources and the capacity to put healthy food on the table for their children. I look forward to perhaps visiting Leeds with Henry Dimbleby to talk to the right hon. Gentleman about exactly how we can achieve the change that we need.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I am saddened by the characteristic doom and gloom on the Labour Benches. We should be welcoming confirmation that we will be turbo-charging every single part of the UK, including the south-west, and recognising the importance of the private sector to achieving those goals will be key. In Stroud we have a fantastic town centre regeneration plan, which is backed up by recent private investment in previously long-standing empty buildings such as the Imperial Hotel and Five Valleys, and buildings in King Street. Will my right hon. Friend dispatch his levelling-up Minister to Stroud so that he can see how far the marriage between private and public money that we are hoping to achieve could go for local people?
Michael Gove
The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), is hereby dispatched to Stroud—first class.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
How can we take seriously the Secretary of State’s promise to turbo-charge places such as my city when his Government have spent 12 years draining the fuel tank and slashing the tyres? If his offer of a county deal is to deliver meaningful change, does it not need to start with restoring the £100 million that Nottingham has lost through cuts in council funding?
Michael Gove
Nottingham has a bright future, and Nottinghamshire has an even brighter one, with my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) as leader of that council, leading a programme of urban development and regeneration. I look forward to working with the hon. Lady, and with my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield, to ensure that we make Nottinghamshire great again.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State will know that Herefordshire has one of the smallest and sparsest populations and some of the lowest gross value added in this country. He will also know of my passion for the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, which promises to offer entirely new forms of learning and teaching, lower drop-out rates, lower levels of mental ill health, and much greater inclusiveness for young people in skills-based higher education—it is the small modular nuclear reactor of higher education. Will the Secretary of State encourage this model, and will he consider, call for and initiate a review of higher education in order to regenerate cities and towns across the UK?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. It is important for Members to be very brief, because otherwise we will not get everyone in.
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend’s new model institute is a perfect model of what was envisaged by the former Member of Parliament for Orpington when he was the higher education Minister and introduced reform to ensure that we improved access to higher education, but with a particular focus on skills and jobs. I look forward to working with him and the Education Secretary to spread this model through across the UK.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He announced a county devolution deal for County Durham, which has lost £224 million in Government grants since 2010. At the same time, his own county council’s spending powers have gone up. Will the devolution deal replace anywhere near the £22.4 million a year that County Durham has lost?
Michael Gove
I am looking forward to working with the new Conservative and Liberal Democrat Administration in Durham county—the first non-Labour Administration for many years, following on from the success of my hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Mr Holden), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) and for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) in winning their seats at the last general election. Sadly, the Labour Administration of Durham County Council were responsible for significant maladministration and the waste of resources. I am convinced that the new Administration will spend taxpayers’ money better.
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement. Since 2015, Plymouth has been on an amazing journey, with more inward investment than it has seen for decades. I echo the plea of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) that the levelling up of opportunities—an extension of the life chances agenda that we started back in 2015—becomes a defining issue for this Government. Will he remember the seats in the south-west? We talk about the red wall, which is all brilliant, new and exciting, but we have a real job of work to do to improve life chances in the south-west.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are real pockets of poverty that we need to address in the south-west, particularly around Plymouth. The same is true in parts of the south, particularly in Portsmouth and Southampton. Although there is understandably a focus on the north and midlands, our broader focus is on moving prosperity and investment outside of London and the south-east, precisely to communities such as the one he serves so well.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The Coalfields Regeneration Trust, based in Wombwell, is the only organisation dedicated to supporting former mining towns in the UK. Its vital work includes improving health outcomes, providing employment support and boosting skills for communities where levelling up is needed most. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet the trust to learn more about its work?
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I welcome the designation of North Northamptonshire as an education investment area. Would the Secretary of State be kind enough to explain to my constituents what that will mean for educational outcomes in Kettering?
Michael Gove
Children in Kettering deserve the very best start in life. First of all, that means a relentless focus on standards and discipline. It means ensuring that we have systematic synthetic phonics in primary school, and that children are fully literate, numerate and capable of going to secondary school by the time they reach the end of key stage 2. It means multi-academy trusts, which are delivering higher standards where existing schools have failed. It can also mean—I would be happy to discuss this with my hon. Friend—a new 16 to 19 sixth form like Brampton Manor or Harris Westminster, providing children from working-class backgrounds with the chance to go to the very best universities.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I welcome the creation of the “Islands Forum” referred to on page 132 of the White Paper, and the news that the Secretary of State is to chair its first meeting—it is in his hands to ensure that it is not a talking shop. Item No. 1 on the agenda for that meeting has to be “Island future transport infrastructure needs”. The communities in Shetland are desperate to see the construction of tunnels and fixed links, and he could be the person to get the Scottish Government and the Treasury together to deliver that. Is he up for the challenge?
Michael Gove
I am completely up for it. There are issues of connectivity and access to good quality services and investment in Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles, Anglesey and the Isle of Wight. Although they are very different communities, they have shared interests. I will absolutely do what the right hon. Gentleman says.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and—I say this as a former maths teacher—for his enthusiasm for numeracy. Will he clarify how his plans will deal with large and mostly rural counties such as Devon? On average, we can look as if we do not need much levelling up, but that hides a large variance, with huge disparities in opportunity within the county.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; parts of Devon are relatively economically successful, but there are also areas, not least in South Molton and Barnstaple, in her constituency, where there is real poverty. One thing we are doing with the roll-out of gigabit broadband and better digital connectivity is making sure that businesses in those areas can provide better jobs and greater investment, but we will explore with the local authority in Devon what more we can do to give local leaders the powers they need to make a difference.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Tories have been in power for 12 years, so does the Secretary of State agree that these vague plans to raise school standards in a third of local authority areas, including Bedford borough, is an admission of unforgivable failure and that any promised investment will never make up for the cuts started when he was Education Secretary, which blighted a generation of our children?
Michael Gove
As the hon. Gentleman mentions my time at Education, let me say that we protected, in real-terms, funding for schools from five to 16; we introduced a pupil premium, which meant that £250 million of additional funding was targeted on the poorest; and in Bedford we opened Bedford Free School, an outstanding school that brought opportunity to disadvantaged children in his constituency. What did the Labour party in Bedford do? It fought it every step of the way. So if he wants opportunity for people in Bedford, he should come to this side of the House, because we are the real crusaders.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
May I urge my right hon. Friend not to be downcast by the negativity of those on the Opposition Benches, but to be uplifted by the support he is receiving for his statement today from those on the Government Benches? In the west midlands, we are particularly pleased about the innovation accelerators and the smart city region programme, which can both be really effective through the galvanisation of the private sector. I am also pleased about the brownfield remediation money, which will stop the iniquitous building of houses on the green belt. May I say that we are awaiting transport money desperately needed for the royal town’s centre plans, which are being driven forward by the determination and vision of the Conservative-led Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right on that. I know that he was instrumental in the success of Andy Street’s election as Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, and Andy has shown what a pro-business, pro-free market Conservative Mayor can do. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the innovation accelerator in the west midlands will be a way of harnessing all of the talent in his constituency and beyond. I listened carefully to his plea for better transport to the royal borough of Sutton Coldfield. In my view, the quicker people can get to Sutton Coldfield, the better it is for everyone. It is a beautiful royal borough with a fantastic Member of Parliament.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
I note the intention to pilot an innovation accelerator in Glasgow. It is to be led by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Scotland Office and other UK Government Departments, from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to the Department for International Trade, but no mention is made of the Scottish Government. Can he tell me what consultation there has been with the Scottish Government on the proposal?
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that, despite the regeneration programmes in London over the past 30 years, the deprived wards in London are the same ones as they were 30 years ago. Will he assure the House that this will not be used as a reason to deprive London of money, despite the inaction of the do-nothing Mayor at the moment, but that it will be new investment in the north, midlands and across the UK?
Michael Gove
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right; levelling up is not about dampening down the success of London or overlooking the needs of disadvantaged communities in London. It is striking that when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was Mayor of London the gaps in life expectancy and health outcomes between the wealthiest and the poorest parts of London narrowed. He was a one nation Mayor and he is a one nation Prime Minister.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for meeting me recently to discuss this subject. Sadly, it was a virtual meeting so we were unable to share a packet of Fox’s biscuits together—they come from my constituency. After 12 long years, I welcome any announcement that could result in much-needed, long overdue investment in the towns and villages in Batley and Spen. Does he agree that when it comes to levelling up, it is the reality on the ground that matters and the real-world, tangible differences it makes to communities? With that in mind, will he confirm that he will accept my invitation to come to Batley and Spen, so that I can show him at first hand not only the challenges we face, but the unique opportunities that levelling-up funding could provide?
Michael Gove
First, we have set out clear missions, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that we need to deliver on them. We want to be held to account for that delivery and it needs to be concrete. Secondly, she has been a great champion for community organisations and their capacity to bring people together. A new approach is outlined in the levelling-up White Paper on just that, which is inspired by her work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), so of course I will accept.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Eden Project North gained planning permission on Monday. Five long years, but we got there in the end. I will put it bluntly: how can my right hon. Friend help Eden Project North? The sooner he helps me, the sooner I will shut up about it and the sooner I can get on to the next project in my constituency.
Michael Gove
Eden Project North has two brilliant advocates: my hon. Friend and the Prime Minister. I know I will not be long in this job if I do not deliver for both of them.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
The levelling-up programme should not just be about shiny infrastructure projects. It should be about real people and life opportunities. Life expectancy is not addressed in this hefty document. Life expectancy in Windlesham in the Secretary of State’s constituency is 86.7 years; in parts of my constituency it is 72.5 years. That is staggering and grotesque. What will he do about that?
Michael Gove
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is staggering and grotesque. One of the things we need to do is learn from Professor Michael Marmot and others about the drivers of health inequalities. I know that, in many cases, people such as the hon. Gentleman who worked in mining or heavy industry, even though it is a proud and amazing manufacturing sector, sometimes bear long-term health scars. We need to do more, and I look forward to working with him and others to address it.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
It is brilliant news that small and medium-sized builders will get support to build 42,000 homes. Will the Secretary of State meet me and my Cornish colleagues to make sure those homes are retained by people who live in Cornwall?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The recording that emerged today of the Secretary of State talking of “dirty, toothless northerners” certainly deserves an apology, but is today’s statement not a continuation of that abuse? Having taken away £500, on average, from everyone in the north-east, we get little pots of recycled money and ambitions such as:
“By 2030, local public transport…will be significantly closer to the standards of London”.
That is eight years not even to catch up with London buses. What kind of ambition is that?
Michael Gove
Speaking as an Aberdonian and as someone who was born further north than most people in this House, I can say there is no one more northern than me. Thinking particularly about this situation, one of the things we outlined in the White Paper is our proposal to ensure that the current North of Tyne Mayor can work with local authorities in the south of Tyneside, Gateshead and elsewhere to achieve precisely the goals that the hon. Lady wants.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
I grew up in a northern industrial town, and I politely say to the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) that a plan for levelling-up opportunity is exactly what such towns need. Delivery is key, so will the Secretary of State make sure that we get shovels in the ground?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She grew up in Accrington. Members like her, who know what it is to grow up in an industrial town, know what happened in the past, including under Labour, and know that we need investment, business and ambition. That is what this White Paper has.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The all-party parliamentary group on the UK shared prosperity fund, which I am proud to chair, has been calling on the Government to ensure that not a single penny is lost in the transition from the European structural funds to the SPF, but calculations by the Welsh Government confirm that the SPF will leave the UK close to £1 billion worse off and that Wales will get £750 million less. Will the Secretary of State meet our APPG to discuss how to ensure the nations and regions of our country do not get short-changed?
Michael Gove
That is a fair point. On this occasion, I think that the calculations made by the Welsh Finance Minister, Vaughan Gething, for whom I have great respect, were wrong, but I would be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and others to take them through our approach.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Levelling up in Bosworth uniquely looks like millions of pounds into Hinckley Academy, £28 million into Leicestershire broadband and £19.9 million into Twycross Zoo. On page 235 of the White Paper, the next level of levelling up is about the county deal, which is drastically needed by the seven MPs in Leicestershire. Will my right hon. Friend meet all seven of us to make sure that we can rocket fuel that by autumn 2022?
Michael Gove
We absolutely will. I commend my hon. Friend for getting to page 235 of the White Paper so quickly.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
When he was Mayor of London, the Prime Minister commissioned a report that asked for more tax-raising powers and the ability to borrow money for London, but that was rejected. The current Mayor is asking for powers to be able to raise money. If London cannot pay for its transport system, which city in this country can? Why are the Government standing in the way of devolution in London? Is the Secretary of State not just cherry-picking schemes across the country and standing in the way of devolution in the same way that he is in London?
Michael Gove
No. There are two things. The first is that I had a good conversation with the Mayor of London yesterday. I stressed to him that we wanted to explore what potential there was for further devolution across all the mayoral combined authorities. There is a party political argument about the management of Transport for London which I will not revisit now, but simply saying that greater borrowing powers would solve all of London’s transport problems does not do justice to the scale of the issue. To be fair to the Mayor of London, I want to work with him in order to make sure that we can solve those problems.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his visit to my constituency on Monday. He will recall the excellent fish and chip lunch that we shared. During that lunch, a number of points were raised. First, can he ensure that LNER delivers on its promise of a direct rail service from Cleethorpes through to King’s Cross? Urgent decision making was also referred to, and the way to help delivery of that would be to create a level 3 authority in the county.
Michael Gove
Those are very good points. We do need a direct train service to Grimsby and Cleethorpes. My hon. Friend’s other points are absolutely well made and well understood. I enjoyed the delicious fish and chips from Papa’s, with a side order of what I understand is called guacamole à la Mandelson.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I was interested to read about the national youth guarantee. A total of £500 million was announced by the Government in 2019 for the youth investment fund, but the first £10 million of capital funding was opened to bids only just a few weeks ago. Will the Secretary of State kindly urge his colleagues to turbo-charge the delivery of that funding so that our young people do not have to wait until 2025 to enjoy better opportunities and facilities?
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking back control and on his strategic approach to levelling up across the whole of the United Kingdom. This contrasts so favourably with the billions of pounds of European aid that the Labour party wasted in Wales over the past 20 years. May I ask him to pay particular attention to those areas in Wales that did not qualify for European aid, so that we can be levelled up at last?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to make sure that the additional funding available through the UK shared prosperity fund goes to all the communities in Wales that deserve it.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The Secretary of State bursts with enthusiasm today, yet his plans are not bursting with much new funding. Even the director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership says that
“the government is planning to spend less on English regional development than was the case under Theresa May or David Cameron.”
It said that true levelling up would need long-term financial backing from the Chancellor. When will we see that?
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
I really welcome this statement. I welcome that Kirklees will be an education investment area. I welcome that Kirklees will get extra support from the high streets task force, but can we make sure that it is not just the swanky cities of the north like Leeds that are levelled up, but it is also our towns such as Huddersfield, Milnsbridge, Holmfirth, Marsden, Slaithwaite and, of course, Doncaster, Madam Deputy Speaker?
Michael Gove
I could not agree more. I have nothing against Leeds; I love Leeds. [Hon. Members: “That’s not what it says about you!”] My name is hymned by children in Leeds streets, I know. The serious point is that there is cultural investment in Kirklees, not least in Huddersfield, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that more needs to be done for all the authorities in Kirklees and for the towns in West Yorkshire surrounding them.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The stark reality is that someone who lives in the inner city of Bradford is likely to live 10 years less than someone who lives in an affluent suburb. Although I accept that the Government plan commits to raising health and life expectancy, it does not go far enough. One of the issues is the top-down approach. I sincerely and constructively ask the Secretary of State to meet me to discuss transformative new proposals that are being put forward by local grassroots community groups in Bradford to change health inequalities and to address the real issue.
Michael Gove
I will make sure that, if it is not me, another Minister definitely talks to the hon. Gentleman.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
I remember as a schoolboy watching Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fly into Birmingham by helicopter to say that every job at Longbridge would be saved. Seventeen years on, it is this Conservative Government who have given West Works six million quid to provide the new jobs that are needed locally. This Conservative Government will be helping St Modwen and other developers to make sure that we build on the land at Lowhill Lane. Will the Secretary of State visit, with me, the biggest levelling-up project in Birmingham and the west midlands?
Michael Gove
The west midlands is succeeding at last under Conservative leadership, such as that provided by Andy Street and my hon. Friend.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We really cannot have long preambles: one question to the Secretary of State, please.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
In South Shields: freeport bid—rejected; levelling-up bid—rejected; towns fund bid—rejected; transport funding—rejected. We have suffered Tory cuts of nearly £200 million. Tinkering with our governance alone will not change a thing. The Secretary of State once praised policies that, in his own words, meant
“the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner”.
Is he proud that he has managed to do exactly the same again today?
Michael Gove
I think that South Shields does deserve better. That is why we are going to work with the North of Tyne Mayor to ensure that across Tyneside, both north and south, we have the right structures and the right investment in place.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
In Cumbria, if there is support for a mayoral model but some opposition to it, will the Government take statutory powers to ensure that the mayoral model prevails?
Michael Gove
Yes, and I cannot think of a better mayor for Cumbria than my hon. Friend.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
Six of the nine areas in Ceredigion rank in the bottom 10% of areas across the UK for decent broadband coverage. How will the hardest-to-reach premises, such as those in Ceredigion, be targeted for public investment?
Michael Gove
I will work with the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, with the Senedd and the Welsh Government to ensure that we can roll out broadband. I recognise that lots of small businesses in Ceredigion—in Aberystwyth and all the way up to Machynlleth—need that support, and we will be there for them.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Following this excellent document and having recognised the value of cultural investment, will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss some of the exciting ways in which some of our major arts organisations, including those based in London, are prepared to participate in the levelling up throughout the whole country?
Michael Gove
I absolutely will. My hon. Friend is a keen champion of arts, culture and, in particular, music. The institutions that we have in London are fantastic, but they can play a real part with institutions such as the Hallé and others in the north to improve cultural opportunities for all.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Since 2010, Conservative Governments have cut £2.1 billion in funds to Sheffield City Council. Our annual grant is £288 million lower in real terms. Today, the Secretary of State announced £13 million and described it as transformational. If that is transformational, how would he describe the money we have lost? When will he restore it?
Michael Gove
I do not think that I described it as transformational; I think it was the Labour Mayor of South Yorkshire, who said that it had the “potential” to be transformational. I am looking forward to working with the Labour Mayor of South Yorkshire in order to achieve that transformation.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I welcome this White Paper and the multi-billion pound investments in brownfield regeneration, connectivity, research and development, and especially the innovation accelerators, which in Cheadle and across Greater Manchester will make a real difference to all those businesses that want the extra help to start up. Will my right hon. Friend say whether, as well as civic leaders, business leaders will be part of the design of the accelerator?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. I had the opportunity, thanks to my hon. Friend, to visit Cheadle and indeed other parts of Greater Manchester just a fortnight ago. Thanks to her advocacy, I was also able to meet some of the business figures most interested in making sure that innovation in Manchester succeeds, and I want to continue to work with them because the business voice is critical to the success of the north-west.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
How are people in Scotland supposed to see the UK Government making spending and policy decisions in areas that are supposed to be devolved as anything other than a power grab?
Michael Gove
Oh, the hon. Gentleman did not make it to Glasgow—never mind. He is a graduate of another great university in Glasgow. We are investing money in that university to recognise that the constituency he represents has incredibly talented young people, and we want them to succeed, just like him.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and welcome the radical shake-up contained in this White Paper. My ears pricked up when I heard him mention Warrington and funding for better public transport—120 new electric buses for Warrington. Thank you, Secretary of State. Does he agree that, if we want to get people into jobs, we have to provide the public transport to help them get there?
Michael Gove
That is absolutely, totally, 100% correct, and it is my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary who deserves all the credit.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Hounslow is in the second most prosperous UK sub-region by gross value added, but thanks to 11 years of Government policies, 40% of Hounslow’s children live in poverty, so when will levelling up address inequality within communities as well as between them?
Michael Gove
That is a very important point. What we need to do is to make sure that we work with the Mayor of London, but also with Hounslow Borough Council and those who are involved in providing opportunity for young people in the communities the hon. Member represents, to give them a better chance in the future.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
We are under way, levelling up in Scunthorpe and we are unashamedly ambitious to do more. Can I offer a very strong invitation to my right hon. Friend to come to visit us, so we can show him what we are doing and have a chat about future opportunities?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. I enjoyed visiting Grimsby and Cleethorpes earlier this week. North-east Lincolnshire is great. It is time I visited north Lincolnshire as well.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Wirral Council is facing a budget black hole of more than £20 million. I have pledged to do whatever I can to save the fantastic public services that so many of my constituents rely on, and I am grateful to the Secretary of State for kindly agreeing to meet me and my hon. Friends from the Wirral to discuss this very serious situation. Levelling up will remain nothing more than an empty catchphrase as long as local authorities such as mine are forced to consider closing libraries, leisure centres and swimming pools. Ahead of our meeting, can he tell me if he thinks this White Paper comes anywhere close to undoing the enormous damage done to local authorities’ finances since 2010?
Michael Gove
I am looking forward to a meeting. I recognise that there are real issues in the Wirral, which I hope we can work together to resolve.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State so much for taking forward the islands forum idea. Sadly, I did not get beyond page 132, because that is where it was. Can he assure us that the forum will give a voice to islands such as the Isle of Wight to be part of the prosperity agenda in education and high-quality jobs, as well as in landscape and seascape protection for some of the most unique and beautiful parts of Great Britain?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. The islands forum is an idea developed following conversations with and advocacy from my hon. Friend. We recognise absolutely, as he has consistently pointed out, that island communities face particular challenges as a result of distance and dispersal, and we need to tackle them.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to meet me, my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) and other Wirral MPs. Woodchurch leisure centre and swimming pool and libraries in Greasby, Irby, Hoylake, Pensby and Woodchurch are all under threat of closure because of Wirral Council having to make up to £27 million of savings as a direct result of brutal cuts from Conservative Governments since 2010, so can the Secretary of State make sure that he provides emergency funding to save these vital services?
Michael Gove
I look forward to discussing that at a meeting with the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley).
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
I welcome the enhanced bus service on its way to Derbyshire, the Derbyshire county deal and the fact that Derbyshire is going to be an education investment area, on top of the future high streets £10 million for Buxton, the £137 million for the Hope Valley upgrade and the £228 million Mottram bypass, but there is a democratic deficit I am worried about. The Mayor of Greater Manchester takes decisions that have a huge impact on High Peak, but we have no say in them. What can we say to having more collaborative working, ensuring that levelling up works for everyone across regional boundaries?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an important point. High Peak contains some of the most beautiful and important parts of Derbyshire, but it is also part of the greater economic area around Greater Manchester. I therefore want to ensure, with him, Derbyshire leaders and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, that we are working together in the interests of my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
With this scheme, the highlands are set to lose out on tens of millions of pounds compared with EU funding. The highlands have been placed in category 3—the lowest of all the categories—and face significant financial challenges in accessing the cash. This is the largest local authority area in the UK. Why are the highlands so low on this Government’s agenda?
Michael Gove
The highlands are at the top of the Government’s agenda. The UK shared prosperity funding that we are guaranteeing will ensure that highland communities get the investment that they need, but more than that, the roll-out of 4G and 5G will also help highland communities. It is the case that the Scottish Government have not necessarily rolled out broadband as quickly as those communities would want, as colleagues such as Donald Cameron in the Scottish Parliament have pointed out. I want to work with him and the Scottish Government to serve the people whom he represents.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I know that my right hon. Friend believes that local leaders know best when it comes to regenerating local areas, and when it comes to Buckinghamshire, he is absolutely right. Buckinghamshire Council, which effectively created the concept of county deals, is very disappointed not to be one of the first nine, so will he tell me how soon the second tranche will be announced, because Bucks is poised to not just negotiate, but spring into action?
Michael Gove
I absolutely appreciate that and Martin Tett, the leader of Buckinghamshire Council, is a first-rate local authority leader. I cannot give a timescale at the moment. We want to make sure that the first nine county deals are successful, but we want to move on rapidly thereafter to expand the scope of county deals.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
My constituency is repeatedly overlooked for funding, whether that is for the future high streets fund, the towns fund or the levelling-up fund, but at the same time, bids from other areas that score lower on the Government’s criteria are successful. The Secretary of State will appreciate that there is little trust that the White Paper will deliver anything for my community, so what assurances can he give me that any future bids for funding will be judged fairly and that my constituency will finally get the cash that it deserves?
Michael Gove
There are clear and objective criteria for funding, but it is also the case that some local authorities may need help with building capacity to make sure that their bids are as effective as possible. I extend the resources of the Department to the hon. Gentleman and his local authority to make sure that they put in the best bids possible.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
This is a plan that provides opportunity and growth throughout every part of our country; I am looking particularly at mission 6, on skills training. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is the Conservatives who really help people to get on in life?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, she represents a constituency with one of the finest universities in the country and she recognises the vital importance of higher education, further education and schools working together to extend opportunity.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
Speaking as a former Minister in Northern Ireland, our Executive had far more control over the allocation of structural funds when we were in the EU than they do over levelling-up funds today. Does the Secretary of State recognise that the UK’s approach to levelling-up funds, particularly the shared prosperity fund, means only reduced resource for Northern Ireland and risks duplication and waste, as well as competition in the shared public space over the scarce resources that remain?
Michael Gove
I respectfully disagree, but I recognise that the hon. Gentleman has a wealth of experience in this area, so I want to work with him, his party and his party’s Minister in the Executive to make sure that we minimise bureaucracy and maximise effectiveness.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
The west midlands has some world-leading, innovative companies as well as universities and research institutions doing ground-breaking research, but public research and development investment in the west midlands has been low compared with other areas, even though for every £1 of Government investment, we have seen a private sector return of £4. How will the innovation accelerator help to close that gap?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend brilliantly encapsulates the challenge. The innovation accelerator will bring together representatives from the private sector—from business—as well as those in the outstanding universities that, as he rightly points out, are a feature of the west midlands in order to ensure that its manufacturing strengths can be leveraged more effectively. I look forward to working with him and others to achieve that.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The broken housing market is the bigger driver of inequality across York, with the boom in second homes and holiday lets. Therefore, the aspiration of the people of York is being denied. Rather than throwing us dead cats with the House of Lords, will the Secretary of State throw us a proper agenda to address the housing crisis in York?
Michael Gove
Three important points. First, the hon. Lady is absolutely right that there are things we need to do to tackle the housing market, in particular the second homes issue. It is complex, as she understands, but there is more that needs to be done. Secondly, I hope she will support the proposed mayoral deal for York and North Yorkshire, which I think will give some of the powers necessary to deal with the problems she mentioned. Thirdly, the House of Lords in York, or for that matter Glasgow, would be a great thing.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, as we look forward, levelling up applies to need not geography, and that the most deprived areas in Basildon and Thurrock will see the benefits to allow south Essex to reach its full potential?
Michael Gove
Yes, absolutely. We need to target need. We need to recognise that, in the south-east, London, Oxford and Cambridge are the three crown jewels generating wealth, but that there are communities that do not share in that prosperity. I should point out that one of the poorest areas, if not the poorest, in the country is Jaywick in the borough of Tendring, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling). It is critically important that we work with local government leaders to address poverty wherever we find it.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
If the British Government were serious about levelling up and using Brexit freedoms, as they call them, would they not be devolving key economic levers to Wales, such as powers over VAT and corporation tax?
Michael Gove
That is an interesting idea, but I am not sure the hon. Gentleman’s friends in Plaid Cymru would necessarily take an approach to VAT and corporation tax that was as pro-enterprise as I would like. The key thing is that we need to make sure the UK remains competitive overall. His constituents in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr will benefit thereby.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement today and thank him for Southport’s £38.5 million town deal. But will he ensure that jobs, growth and investment are at the heart of his levelling-up agenda and that vanity projects, such as those proposed under the active travel scheme, do not supersede them?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We of course want to encourage cycling and walking, but we need to balance that with the need to ensure that thriving economic areas such as Southport, which are at the heart of the success of not just Sefton but Greater Merseyside and Lancashire, are given the opportunity to provide the economic growth for which he has been such an effective champion.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talks about shifting power and resources to communities. I think he made one mention of Wales. In the case of Wales, the opposite is true. These proposals ride roughshod over devolution, override our democratically elected Government and short-change us to the tune of £1 billion by 2024. The truth of the matter is that the proposals will result in further hardship and poverty for my constituents in Cynon Valley and throughout the UK. So I implore the Secretary of State to listen to my constituents and the people of this country, respect devolution and restore the missing £1 billion to Wales.
Michael Gove
I respectfully disagree. When I was recently visiting Merthyr and Pontypridd, I found that actually the investment we are making through the levelling-up fund was welcomed by Labour and independent councillors in south Wales. Obviously, we need to do more not just for south Wales but for north Wales, which is why there is a commitment in the White Paper to ensure more civil service jobs move to Wrexham.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I, too, welcome the investment in education and public transport in Derbyshire. While my right hon. Friend is negotiating county deals in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, will he perhaps give a little shove towards full proper devolution and a mayor for the east midlands?
Michael Gove
That is definitely worth exploring. I recognise that there are particular geographical—what is the word?—issues across the east midlands, but I think the success of Andy Street in the west midlands has meant that more options are opening.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Since 2010, £465 million has been cut from Liverpool City Council, with £34 million in this coming financial year. Local government staff have had their pay cut by 20% since 2010 in real terms. Will the Secretary of State, if he is genuinely committed to tackling and reversing inequality, tell us when local government workers can expect a 50% pay increase like the commissioners in Liverpool City Council, or will he agree to meet me and my colleagues to look at that eye-watering decision?
Michael Gove
Liverpool City Council has had a troubled past recently, but it has a new leadership committed to change and reform. The commissioners are a vital part of that process. I am more than happy to talk to the hon. Lady and other Liverpool MPs—[Interruption.] If we did not have those commissioners there, we would not be dealing with the legacy of corruption and incompetence, and whether the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) wants to defend that past or be part of a brighter future is her choice.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Levelling up is as relevant in North West Norfolk as it is in the north, so I welcome the invitation for Norfolk to negotiate a county deal, which I hope will see more local powers and resources. Education is at the heart of spreading opportunity, so will my right hon. Friend confirm that Norfolk’s selection as one of the new education investment areas will mean extra support and dedicated action to give more young people a good start in life?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. For example, we want to ensure that the sort of model used at Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form in Norwich, which provides an excellent opportunity for children denied it in the past, is spread across Norfolk as part of our EIA initiative.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Wales is set to be denied £4.6 billion as a result of the Government classifying HS2 as an England and Wales project, despite the Treasury finding that Wales would lose out on £150 million per annum as a result of HS2. That does not sound like levelling up to me. Does the Secretary of State agree?
Michael Gove
I do not think Wales loses out as a result of HS2. I think north Wales in particular benefits significantly because of increased connectivity. However, I respectfully say to the hon. Gentleman that the Labour party needs to sort out its position on HS2. When the Leader of the Opposition was campaigning to be elected in Camden, he said that one of top priorities was to oppose HS2, and then when we brought forward proposals to extend HS2, he criticised them. There is an inconsistency in the Labour party’s position on infrastructure investment. I know that the hon. Gentleman’s heart is in the right place, but the Labour party’s HS2 policy currently is not.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I represent a London constituency with two of the most deprived wards in the entire country. Does my right hon. Friend agree that levelling up is also about deprived areas in our inner cities? Will he back my campaign for step-free access at Ladbroke Grove tube station?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right. One of the things that the White Paper brings out in a look at the borough of Kensington is the fact that it contains both some of the wealthiest areas in the country and some of the poorest. Without wanting to stray into another important area—although it is important to refer to it—the suffering of Grenfell families and the community around them is a reminder of our need to ensure that opportunity and security are extended to those who have suffered in the past, and they have had no better champion in this House than my hon. Friend.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I am afraid that we must bring this statement to an end. I am sorry that we have not been able to get everyone in, but we did manage about 70 in the hour and a half that was allocated. We have more business to move on to, but I thank the Secretary of State for his statement.
Points of Order
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the past 36 hours, the National Audit Office has reported that the Department of Health and Social Care spent £1.3 billion last year that was not signed off by the Treasury and also incurred £8.7 billion of losses on personal protective equipment. That is a jaw-dropping £10 billion. The report also states:
“The Department was not able to manage adequately some of the elevated risks, resulting in significant losses for the taxpayer.”
Alarmingly, it also says that the Department has still not
“re-established effective controls in all areas.”
Although an Opposition day debate was held yesterday on fraud and Government waste, the NAO report was not released in time for proper questions to be put to the Government. Madam Deputy Speaker, have the Government advised you of whether they intend to make a statement on those damning findings? If not, how may we as Members hold Ministers to account for the waste?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. She knows that the Chair has no power over bringing Ministers to the Chamber, but Members have the power to use the proper means whereby that can be done, such as if a question is considered to be urgent. As the hon. Lady said, there was an extensive debate on this matter yesterday, when the very matters that she refers to were aired fully here in the Chamber, but I appreciate what she says about the timing of the publication of the National Audit Office report. I draw to her attention the ways in which she can ask for advice from the Table Office as to how she might compel a Minister to come to this House. I have at this moment, probably in view of the fact that the debate occurred yesterday, not received any notice of an intention from the Government to bring this matter to the House again in the near future.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Are you aware of a letter from the UK Statistics Authority to the director of data science at 10 Downing Street regarding claims made by the Prime Minister that there are more people in work now than there were at the start of the pandemic? In the letter, the UKSA points out that that claim is incorrect and there are in fact 600,000 fewer people in work than at the start of the pandemic.
I am mindful of what was said by Mr Speaker earlier and that accusations of deceit do not enhance the reputation of this place, but this claim has been made by the Prime Minister on 24 November, 15 December, 5 January, 12 January, 19 January and again today. I believe that the public have a right to expect what is said by the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box to be truthful and accurate. Have you received any notification of an intention from the Prime Minister to correct the record?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for having given me notice of his intention to raise it. As Mr Speaker has said many times from the Chair, and as those of us who occupy the Chair have repeated, the veracity or otherwise of statistics and the interpretation of statistics is the very stuff of political discourse and debate. The hon. Gentleman is right to ask the questions, and I am quite sure that he will find a way of asking those questions directly of Ministers. He is absolutely right to say that it is important that statements made in this House are absolutely correct and true, and if an error has been made inadvertently, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will note the points made by the hon. Gentleman, and his request for the matter to be looked at again will be referred to the appropriate Minister. There is of course a system for correcting errors and mis-statements, which Ministers and others can use if necessary.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—for reasons that will become clear, I was not able to give you advance notice of this—it is well accepted that it is at the discretion of the Chair as to how long they run an individual item of business, but that can sometimes cause difficulties for hon. and right hon. Members who want to take part in the following item of business and have to judge when they need to be in the Chamber. Colleagues can be left with the choice of potentially spending a long time in the Chamber at the previous business and so missing important business such as Select Committee sessions, or alternatively running the risk of being late for the start of the next item of business because they were in Select Committee.
Are you aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, of any consideration being giving to amending the practice of the House, possibly by following the example of other Parliaments, so that the timings of important items of business can be known with a bit more predictability? That would allow Members, who have all got very busy diaries, to plan out their working day with a bit more certainty than they can just now.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. There is no need for him to apologise for not having warned me of his intention to raise it, because I have heard that question put on many occasions over several decades. The fact is, and it would be good for people who pay attention to our proceedings to know this, that Members of Parliament have in one day to undertake a huge variety of different duties: attending Committees, asking questions, taking part in debates, meeting constituents and doing a whole range of other duties that we all do diligently.
I am the first to agree with the hon. Gentleman that it can be very difficult to work out a reasonable balance for the working day and manage to fit in, in a timeous way, everything that has to be done, and I can only say to him that one person’s long statement is another person’s late-starting debate. We are in the middle of exactly that situation at this very moment, which is probably why the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter now. The previous statement could have lasted for another half-hour, but my fellow Madam Deputy Speaker decided that sufficient Members had taken part, and the occupant of the Chair has to balance one item of business against another.
The hon. Gentleman makes a plea that I think will be echoed by most of our colleagues, and I can only say to him that Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers do understand this. If he seriously wishes that the matter be considered, I suggest he raise it with the Chairman of the Procedure Committee; it would not be unreasonable for it to be raised, but I would be very surprised indeed if the problem were to be solved.
Bills Presented
Air Pollution (Local Authority Audits) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Barry Sheerman, supported by Caroline Lucas, Geraint Davies, Luke Pollard, Helen Hayes, Christine Jardine, Neil Parish and Dame Angela Eagle, presented a Bill to make provision for local authorities to conduct annual audits of air pollution in their area and associated emissions by public and private entities; to require those local authorities to prepare reports on those audits; to require the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on those audit reports; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 244).
Ministerial Disclosure (Fixed Penalty Notices) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Alistair Carmichael, supported by Ed Davey, Daisy Cooper, Wendy Chamberlain, Tim Farron, Layla Moran, Christine Jardine, Jamie Stone, Wera Hobhouse, Sarah Olney, Munira Wilson and Sarah Green, presented a Bill to require Ministers of the Crown to disclose that they have been issued with a fixed penalty notice; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 25 February, and to be printed (Bill 245).
Carbon Emissions (Buildings)
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Carbon Emissions (Buildings) Bill 2021-22 View all Carbon Emissions (Buildings) Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text
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
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the whole-life carbon emissions of buildings to be reported; to set limits on embodied carbon emissions in the construction of buildings; and for connected purposes.
This will be known as the part Z regulation.
This country has a long, proud history of creating buildings and infrastructure that have enabled Britain to develop and evolve at a rate envied by the rest of the world, but we should reflect on the fact that during that time it is not just Britain that has developed and evolved, but construction itself. Indeed, construction has come a long way since the industrial revolution caused our towns, infrastructure and industry to burgeon. Back then, it was an industry based on judgment, precedent and trial and error, whereas in modern Britain construction is as much an art and a science, led by our engineers and builders, who are world-renowned for their expertise and experience. However, climate change means that it is time for construction to evolve again: as we go about ensuring the UK’s role as a global leader in decarbonisation we must discuss the decarbonising of construction.
Every year, our buildings and construction are responsible for the emission of 150 million tonnes of carbon—greenhouse gases—which is nearly a quarter of our country’s total carbon footprint. Two thirds of those emissions—yes, the majority—are due to the lighting, power, water, heating and cooling of buildings, or what we call operational carbon, and I am proud that this Government have taken bold steps to ensure that those emissions will reduce as part of our net zero strategy. By 2025 all new homes will be installing low-carbon alternatives to gas boilers, for instance, and by 2035 this country will have decarbonised the electricity network completely. As such, by 2035 we can expect that the emissions related to those services will have fallen to an almost negligible amount. Fantastic! However, that leaves a big piece of the pie—the other third. Where do those remaining emissions come from, and what plan do we have to deal with them?
The other third comes from construction itself, and it is responsible for 40 million to 50 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. For perspective, that is more than the entirety of the UK’s aviation plus shipping. Those 50 million tonnes of carbon emissions are due to the construction, upkeep, refurbishment and demolition of new and existing buildings and infrastructure. Collectively, that is known as embodied carbon, so called because the materials that we build are the physical embodiment of such greenhouse gas emissions. Most embodied carbon emissions are in the construction of the building itself. For a typical new build constructed today, embodied carbon accounts for half the total emissions that the building will be responsible for over its entire lifetime. In some buildings, that same amount is released before the building is even occupied.
Currently, those embodied carbon emissions are completely unregulated. The law places no restriction whatsoever on how much embodied carbon can be emitted when we construct a building. In fact, the 50 million tonnes of carbon due to construction have hardly changed for years—perhaps only altering slightly during a recession. Now, I am not a builder or a developer, but if I was and I desired to build a building that was gratuitously tall or complicated and I said to my architect, “Put as much concrete as you like into the floor slabs”—subject to planning permission, of course—that would be my choice, and there would be no accounting for the carbon impact of those decisions. We are in the middle of a climate emergency, and yet the embodied carbon of our buildings and infrastructure is completely unregulated—there is no requirement by law to do anything about that 50 million tonnes of carbon.
Let us be clear: that is not to say that no one in the construction industry is looking at how to reduce embodied carbon—far from it. I will come back to that in just a moment. However, the regulation and legislation is not there to support such efforts. We are decarbonising our electricity grid and ending our reliance on fossil fuels, but we are leaving ourselves open to a big concrete and steel elephant in the room.
The Climate Change Committee has been advising for four years that embodied carbon needs regulating. During the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into the sustainability of the built environment—I am a part of that inquiry, and I see many Committee colleagues present—the regulation of embodied carbon has come up again and again. Meanwhile, our friends around the world in the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland, the USA and New Zealand are either moving towards introducing embodied carbon regulation or have already done so. The recent net zero strategy set out the Government’s intention to support action in the construction sector by improving reporting on embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure with a view to exploring a maximum level for new builds in the future, so the ambition is clearly there.
Unlike some of those other countries, which had to create standards to implement embodied carbon regulation, we already have the tools to do it. We have standards and guidance that cover the assessment of carbon emissions for construction: they have been in use in the industry for nearly five years on a voluntary basis and are seen across more and more construction sites in the UK. So we have the tools; now we need the leadership and the regulation to bring an extra level of clarity and make low carbon a requirement in all construction projects around the UK.
I understand that that cannot happen overnight. Parts of the industry still need to upskill their teams and incorporate existing guidance into their standard ways of working. However, at an appropriate pace, with clear direction and agreed implementation dates from this Government, embodied carbon regulation can unlock the creative potential of our construction industry. We can see now that embodied carbon regulation is needed; we can see that it is aligned with the Government’s aspirations and we understand that we have all the tools we need to get it done.
Finally, let us talk about the impact it will have on our workforce. What about our engineers, architects, planners and builders? Will they have to change how they design and build the places we call home, the buildings we meet in and the infrastructure that ties us all together? Is such regulation compatible with the industry, and is our industry ready for it? The answer is yes. The industry wants to play its role in fighting climate change—it is calling for it quite loudly now.
In the summer of last year, the construction industry took the proactive move of responding to the Climate Change Committee’s suggestion on its own and producing a proposed building regulation under the name “Part Z”. “Part Z” was drafted by industry experts and shared for comments across the industry. The response was staggering: 120 of the country’s leading developers, clients, contractors, architects, engineers and institutions writing statements calling for the regulation of embodied carbon.
This country’s history is intertwined with the evolution of construction—Robert Stephenson, the Shard, the Gherkin, the channel tunnel, the Forth bridge, even the Palace of Westminster we stand in today—but it is time for construction to evolve again. We can build more sustainably, we can build out of beautiful natural materials, we can retrofit and we can pay attention to all those issues. It is time to stop putting embodied carbon off as a possible future area to explore. It is time now to regulate embodied carbon.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Duncan Baker, Jerome Mayhew, Mr Richard Holden, Anthony Browne, Cherilyn Mackrory, Sir Robert Goodwill, Ian Levy, John McNally, Helen Hayes, James Gray, Dr Matthew Offord and Caroline Lucas present the Bill.
Duncan Baker accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 246).
Finance (No. 2) Bill (Ways and Means) (Freeport Reliefs)
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending sections 45R and 270BNC of the Capital Allowances Act 2001 and paragraph 12 of Schedule 6C to the Finance Act 2003.—(Lucy Frazer.)
Finance (No. 2) Bill (Ways and Means) (Vehicle Excise Duty: Exemption for Cabotage Operations)
Resolved,
That provision may be made conferring a power on the Treasury to make provision for the temporary extension of cabotage rights, as provided by Resolution 41 of the House of 2 November 2021 (Vehicle excise duty (exemption for cabotage operations)), to apply at times after 30 April 2022.—(Lucy Frazer.)
Finance (No. 2) Bill (Ways and Means)
Resolved,
That provision may be made for a new tax to be charged in circumstances where a business for which there is a special administration regime becomes subject to special administration or to other special measures in connection with insolvency.—(Lucy Frazer.)
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Finance Act 2022 View all Finance Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 2 February 2022 - large print - (2 Feb 2022)
18:01 - The House divided: - Ayes: 228 / Noes: 306 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:14 - The House divided: - Ayes: 230 / Noes: 301 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:26 - The House divided: - Ayes: 228 / Noes: 301 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:50 - The House divided: - Ayes: 302 / Noes: 226 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 3—Public interest business protection tax.
New clause 2—Review of impact of section 25 (Tonnage tax)—
‘(1) The Chancellor must review the impact of the changes made by section 25 of this Act (Tonnage tax), and lay a report of that review before the House of Commons, within 12 months of that section coming into force.
(2) The review carried out under subsection (1) must include assessment of the impact of the provisions of that section on—
(a) the training of UK—
(i) cadets and
(ii) ratings, and
(b) the employment of UK—
(i) cadets and
(ii) ratings
by operators of qualifying ships.
(3) The review carried out under subsection (1) must include assessment of the effect of changes to flagging arrangements made by subsections 25(6) and (7).’
This new clause would require the Government to report to the House on the impact of the provisions of clause 25 on the training and employment of UK seafarers.
New clause 4—Reviews of Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy—
‘(1) The Government must publish a review of the operation of the Economic Crime (Anti-Money Laundering) Levy by 31 December 2027.
(2) The Government must publish on 31 December each year until the establishment of a register of beneficial owners of overseas entities that own UK property—
(a) an assessment of the contribution to the effectiveness of the Levy that such a register would make; and
(b) an update on progress toward implementing such a register.’
This new clause would put into law the Government’s commitment to undertake a review of the Levy by the end of 2027, and require them to publish an assessment every year until a register of beneficial owners of overseas entities that own UK property is in place an assessment of what impact such a register would have on the effectiveness of the Levy, and progress toward the register being established.
New clause 5—Review of the impact of the extension of temporary increase in annual investment allowance—
‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within three months of the end of tax year 2022-23, publish a review of decisions by companies to invest in the UK in 2022-23, which must report on which companies, broken down by size, sector, and country of ownership, have benefited from the annual investment allowance; and this assessment must also assess the merits of the existence of the superdeduction in light of the AIA.’
This new clause would require a review of which companies have benefited from the Annual Investment Allowance in 2022-23, broken down by size, sector, and country of ownership, and an assessment of the merits of the superdeduction in light of the AIA.
New clause 6—Review of the impact of this Act—
‘(1) The Government must publish a review of the measures in this Act within three months of its passing.
(2) The review in subsection (1) must consider how the measures in this Act will affect—
(a) the amount of tax working people will be paying in 2022/23;
(b) household finances in 2022/23;
(c) the rate at which the economy will be growing in 2022/23.’
This review would require the Government to review what impact measures in this Act are having in 2022/23 on the amount of tax working people will be paying, household finances, and economic growth.
New clause 7—Equality Impact Analyses of Provisions of this Act—
‘(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must review the equality impact of the provisions of this Act in accordance with this section and lay a report of that review before the House of Commons within six months of the passing of this Act.
(2) A review under this section must consider the impact of those provisions on—
(a) households at different levels of income,
(b) people with protected characteristics (within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010),
(c) the Government’s compliance with the public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, and
(d) equality in different parts of the United Kingdom and different regions of England.
(3) A review under this section must include a separate analysis of each separate measure in the Act, and must also consider the cumulative impact of the Act as a whole.’
New clause 8—Government review of operation of Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy—
‘(1) The Treasury must conduct a review of the Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy.
(2) The review must consider the impact on the effectiveness of the levy that would be made by the following measures—
(a) the establishment of a register of overseas entities as proposed in the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill that was laid before Parliament on 23 July 2018; and
(b) proposals for corporate transparency and reform of the companies register announced in a Ministerial Statement to Parliament on 21 September 2020.
(3) The review must be published and laid before Parliament within two years of the levy coming into operation.’
This new clause would require the Treasury to conduct a review of the economic crime (anti-money laundering levy). In particular, the review would need to consider how the introduction of corporate transparency measures previously announced by the Government would affect the levy’s operation.
New clause 9—Assessment of annual investment allowance—
(a) how much the changes to the annual investment allowance under section 12 of this Act will affect GDP in the event of the Finance Act coming into effect, and
(b) how the same changes would have affected GDP had the UK—
(i) remained in the European Union, and
(ii) left the European Union without a Future Trade and Investment Partnership.’
This new clause would require an assessment of the effects of the provisions in clause 12 on GDP in different scenarios.
New Clause 10—Review of temporary increase in annual investment allowance—
The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of—
(a) the size, number, and location of companies claiming the increased annual investment allowance,
(b) the impact of this relief upon levels of capital investment, and
(c) the percentage of total business investments that were covered by this relief in 2019, 2020 & 2021.’
This new clause would require an assessment of the take-up and impact of the temporary increase in the AIA.
New clause 11—Assessment of Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of the Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of Part 3 of this Act (Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy) on the tax gap and how it has affected opportunities for tax evasion, tax avoidance, and other economic crimes.’
This new clause would require an assessment of the impact of the Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy on the tax gap and on opportunities for tax avoidance, evasion and other economic crimes.
New clause 12—Review of avoidance provisions of sections 84 to 92 on the tax gap—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of the Act coming into effect an assessment of the provisions in sections 84 to 92 of this Act on the tax gap in the UK.’
This new clause would require an assessment of the impact of the provisions on tax avoidance in clauses 84 to 92 on the tax gap.
New clause 13—Review of provisions of section 85 and publication of information on overseas property ownership—
‘(1) The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of the provisions of section 85 about the publication by HMRC of information about tax avoidance schemes.
(2) This assessment must include consideration of the impact of the publication of a register of overseas property ownership upon the promotion of tax avoidance in the UK.’
This new clause would require an assessment of the impact of the provisions of clause 85, and consideration of the impact of publishing a register of overseas property ownership.
New clause 14—Review of reliefs on investments—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into force an assessment of the impact on the tax gap of the reliefs on investments contained in this Act, and of whether those reliefs have increased opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance.’
New clause 15—Effect on GDP of international matters in Act, and of whole Act—
‘(1) The Government must publish an assessment of the impact on GDP of—
(a) the provisions in sections 24 to 28 of this Act, and
(b) this Act as a whole.
(2) The assessment must also compare these impacts to the impacts had the UK—
(a) remained in the European Union, and
(b) left the European Union without a Future Trade and Investment Partnership.’
This new clause would require a Government assessment of the effect on GDP of the international provisions of the Act, and of the Act as a whole, in different scenarios.
New clause 16—Review of impact of Residential property developer tax on the tax gap—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of Part 2 of this Act (Residential property developer tax) on the tax gap, and of whether it has increased opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance.’
This new clause would require a Government assessment of the impact of the Residential Property Developer Tax introduced in this Bill, and of its effect on opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance.
New clause 17—Impact of Act on tackling climate change—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an impact assessment of the changes in the Act as a whole on the goal of tackling climate change and the UK‘s plans to reach net zero by 2050.’
New clause 18—Vehicle taxes: effect on climate change goals—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of sections 77 to 79 on the goal of tackling climate change and on the UK‘s plans to reach net zero by 2050.’
New clause 19—Review of impact of reliefs in Act on the tax gap—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of the Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of the tax reliefs in this Act on the tax gap, and of whether they have increased opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance.’
New clause 20—Uncertain tax treatment—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment comparing the rates of uncertain tax in the UK to those of all other OECD countries.’
New clause 21—Emissions certificates—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of sections 99 and Schedule 16 of this Act on the goal of tackling climate change and the UK‘s plans to reach net zero by 2050.’
New clause 22—Composition of the Office of Tax Simplification—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the composition of the Office of Tax Simplification membership with a view to ensuring it is diverse and representative.’
New clause 23—Capacity of the OTS—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect a review of the membership and capacity of the OTS, including consideration of the capacity the membership would have to deal with an expansion of its remit to include fairness in the tax system.’
New clause 24—Gambling—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the provisions of clause 80 on—
(a) the volume of gambling, and
(b) public health.’
New clause 25—Impact of Act on tax burden of hospitality sector—
‘The Government must publish within 12 months of this Act coming into effect an assessment of the impact of the Act as a whole on the tax burden on the hospitality sector.’
New clause 26—Review of the residential property developer tax—
‘(1) The Government must publish a review of the residential property developer tax within three months of the passing of this Act.
(2) The review under subsection (1) must assess how much money the RPDT would raise at a range of rates at 0.5 percentage point increments.’
This review would assess how the revenue the RPDT would raise at range of rates at 0.5 percentage point increments.
New clause 27—Review of Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy—
‘(1) The Government must publish an impact assessment of the operation of the Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy within six months of Royal Assent to this Act.
(2) The assessment carried out under subsection (1) must include an assessment of the contribution to the effectiveness of the levy that a register of beneficial owners of property would make.’
This new clause would require the Government to produce an impact assessment of the operation of the new Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy, and assess how a register of beneficial owners of property would contribute to the effectiveness of the levy.
Amendment 35, page 2, line 30, leave out Clause 6.
This amendment deletes clause 6 which reduces the rate of the banking surcharge and the level of the surcharge allowance.
Amendment 36, page 10, line 44, at end insert—
“, and at the end of section 32(1) insert “, but eligibility for the increased maximum annual allowance from 1 January 2022 to 31 March 2023 is available only to businesses which can demonstrate that they have taken steps to reduce carbon emissions within their own business models and have set out further steps for how they plan to reduce carbon emissions towards a net zero goal”.”
This amendment would restrict access to the extended temporary increase in annual investment allowance to businesses that support transition to “net-zero”.
Amendment 37, page 10, line 44, at end insert—
“, and at the end of section 32(1) insert “, but eligibility for the increased maximum annual allowance from 1 January 2022 to 31 March 2023 is available only to businesses which do not have a history of tax avoidance”.”
This amendment would restrict access to the extended temporary increase in annual investment allowance to businesses that do not have a history of tax avoidance.
Amendment 38, page 11, line 10, at end insert—
‘(3) In paragraph 2(3) of Schedule 13 of that Act—
(a) after “second straddling period is” insert “the greater of (a)”; and
(b) after “of that sub-paragraph” add “and (b) the amount (if any) by which the maximum allowance under section 51A of CAA 2001 had there been no temporary increase in the allowance exceeds the annual investment allowance qualifying expenditure incurred before 1 April 2023.”’
This amendment would amend the transitional provisions for the reversion of the AIA to £200,000 on 1 April 2023, to ensure that smaller businesses with lower levels of qualifying capital expenditure are not disadvantaged by having their effective AIA limit restricted to significantly less than £200,000 for a period.
Amendment 34, page 19, line 41, at end insert—
‘(10A) The Secretary of State must consult trade unions representing UK seafarers before making any regulations pursuant to subsection (8).’
This amendment would require the Government to consult trade unions representing UK seafarers before making regulations pursuant to subsection (8) of this clause. This subsection extends to ships not registered in the UK the power of the Department to make regulations requiring proof from companies and groups within the tonnage tax regime that their ships comply with safety, environmental and working conditions.
Government amendments 1 to 13.
Government new schedule 1—Freeport tax site reliefs: provision about regulations.
Government new schedule 2—Public interest business protection tax.
Government amendments 14 to 33.
Lucy Frazer
I thank all Members who have taken part in the debates on the Finance Bill so far. Today we are focusing on a number of potential amendments to the Bill. Many of the amendments seek to ensure the proper functioning of the legislation in response to stakeholder scrutiny and feedback. Others take forward responses to substantive issues that have emerged during the Bill’s passage. I will address each amendment in turn.
Amendments 1 to 8 to clause 36 relate to the Bill’s measures to establish a residential property developer tax, or RPDT. These amendments ensure that those holding a specific type of build licence giving them effective control of the land are subject to RPDT. That will ensure that the legislation works as intended, and closes a potential loophole.
Amendments 9 and 10 to clause 58 relate to the Bill’s clauses on the economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy. These amendments seek simply to amend clause 58 by replacing two references to “entities that are” with “persons”, providing further clarity by using terms consistently throughout the legislation.
Amendments 11 to 13 form part of the extensive action that the Government are taking to address the current heavy goods vehicle driver shortage. As Members will remember, at the last autumn Budget, the Government temporarily extended cabotage rights for foreign operators of heavy goods vehicles until 30 April this year to ease supply-chain pressures. That change was made on a short-term basis to support essential supply chains. These amendments seek to introduce an enabling power through the Bill to make temporary changes to vehicle excise duty legislation should the Government decide to introduce a further temporary extension of road haulage cabotage flexibilities beyond April and up to 31 December 2022. These amendments do not, in themselves, extend those flexibilities. The Government have made no decision to extend the cabotage easement. Any such decision would be taken only after consulting with interested parties, and in consideration of wider pressure on supply chains at the time.
Amendments 14 to 17 are technical amendments to clauses 7 and 8, and to schedule 1, which seek to abolish the basis period rules for the self-employed and partners, and introduce the tax-year basis from April 2024. The amendments will ensure that eligible taxpayers are able to benefit from certain tax reliefs, including double taxation relief, that are given as a deduction against tax rather than against profits during the transition to the new tax-year basis. The amendments are required to avoid an unintentional outcome of the basis period reform transition rules.
Amendments 18 to 30 address a number of technical points in the new asset holding companies regime to better reflect the original policy intentions. These amendments follow engagement with industry. They will make the rules of the tax regime clearer for companies that will use it, and will ensure that it can be more effectively implemented.
Amendments 31 to 33 relate to accounting standards. They make minor technical changes to part 2 of schedule 5, which revokes the requirement for life insurance companies to spread their acquisition costs over seven years for tax purposes. These changes will simply ensure that the legislation functions as originally intended.
I turn now to the Government new clauses and new schedules. New clause 1 and new schedule 1 will deal with provisions about regulations regarding freeports. These new provisions seek to build on our existing powers that allow us to introduce, amend and remove conditions to enable businesses to qualify for freeport tax reliefs. The provisions do that by allowing the Government to use secondary legislation to remove and recover those reliefs from individual businesses, if necessary on a prospective basis. This power could be used to enforce compliance. For instance, it would allow the Government to introduce new reporting requirements if needed, and to respond if companies did not adhere to them by removing reliefs or taking other action.
These provisions support our critical freeports programme, which will help to create employment in left-behind areas, and allow them to prosper with additional and much-needed investment. We look forward to seeing them, and the businesses within them, prosper.
New clause 3 and new schedule 2 seek to legislate for a new public interest business protection tax. Energy groups will often enter into derivative contracts to hedge their exposure to fluctuations in wholesale energy prices, and help to ensure that they can supply energy to customers at the prices fixed and under the price cap set by Ofgem. They will typically use a forward purchase agreement to buy energy in the future at a price that is fixed at the time when the contract is entered into.
The Government have been monitoring the global rise in wholesale energy prices very closely. We have a serious concern about certain arrangements whereby energy suppliers do not own, control or have the economic rights to the key assets needed to run their businesses, including forward purchase contracts. It is currently possible for an energy business to derive value from such a valuable asset for its own benefit and the benefit of its shareholders, while leaving its energy supply business to fail, or increasing the costs of a failure. The costs of that failure would then be picked up by the taxpayer or consumers, because it would trigger a special administration regime or a supplier of last resort scheme. These are special Government-funded administration routes that help to ensure that UK customers continue to be supplied with energy.
Ofgem is now consulting on a range of regulatory actions that it proposes to take to ensure that the right protections are in place in these circumstances. That work will ensure the ongoing resilience of energy supply businesses. However, it will take months for these changes to come into effect. The Government recognise that it would be unacceptable for a Government to allow business owners to profit from engineering this kind of outcome in the interim period, at great and direct expense to the taxpayer.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I do not think that anyone would argue with the intention behind the new schedule, but it is not so much a new schedule as a Bill within a Bill. It is 25 pages long, and it introduces a tax that has not existed before. It was tabled less than 48 hours ago, and as far as I can see there has been no consultation with anyone. Given that this issue has been known about for so long, why has it taken until now for the Government to table such a large, complex and unwieldy amendment to their own legislation?
Lucy Frazer
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. The Bill has been tabled at this time because Ofgem has identified a risk related to energy suppliers in the circumstances that I have described. If that eventuality came to pass, there would be a significant loss to taxpayers if we did not introduce the legislation to prevent it. I understand his concern, but it is necessary for the Government to introduce this tax and to introduce it now, to ensure that these risks do not materialise.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
Am I right in assuming that the purpose of the new tax is to discourage certain types of behaviour rather than to raise revenue?
Lucy Frazer
My right hon. Friend is right. We are not seeking to raise revenue; we are seeking to prevent certain circumstances from coming about, and we hope that this deterrent will be sufficient. Of course, if it were not, we would be able to recoup the money by way of tax. He will have spotted that the legislation is only in force for a short period to allow Ofgem to take regulatory action to ensure that we deal with this issue in the appropriate way through regulation rather than by bringing preventive action by way of a tax.
As I was saying, this new tax will have effect where steps are taken to obtain value from assets that materially contribute to a licensed energy supply business entering into special measures or to the increased costs of the business where it is a subject of special measures on or after 28 January this year and before 28 January next year. The tax will apply to the value of the assets that are held in connection with a licensed energy supply business where the assets in scope of the tax exceed £100 million, including assets held by connected persons. This is to ensure that the tax would capture only the very largest energy businesses. The tax will apply at a rate of 75% so as to be an active and effective deterrent against actions that are not in the public interest, and to recoup a substantial proportion of the costs that would otherwise fall to the Government under special administration measures in the event that such action was taken, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) pointed out.
In order to ensure that the tax is robust against avoidance activity, and given the sums at stake, the Government consider it necessary for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to be able to recover the tax from other persons if it cannot recover it from the relevant company. These joint and several liability provisions will apply only to companies under common ownership, as well as investors and persons connected with those investors in limited circumstances. Safeguards are also in place to permit certain affected persons to make a claim for relief to limit the amount of joint and several liability to the amount that they potentially benefit from such transactions. It is our hope and expectation that no business would pursue such action and that the tax will not be charged. The tax is a temporary and necessary safeguard that will protect the taxpayer and energy consumers in the interim period before the regulatory change takes effect.
The Government amendments will ensure that the legislation works as it should and protects the interests of the people of this country. I therefore commend to the House amendments 1 to 33, new clauses 1 and 3, and new schedules 1 and 2, and I urge Members to accept them.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
Any member of the public hearing that the Government were today voting their Finance Bill through the House of Commons might expect such a Bill to do something to help with the cost of living crisis facing families up and down this country. Our new clause 6 makes this simple point. It asks the Government to set out how the measures in the Bill will affect household finances, the amount of tax working people are paying, and the rate of growth in the economy in the coming year.
I suspect that Ministers will want to avoid our new clause 6 because they know what the answers will be. The truth is that whether through this Bill or any other means, the Government are letting energy bills soar, refusing to cancel their national insurance hike, and failing to set out a plan for growth. The Conservatives’ failure to grow the economy over the last decade, and their inability to plan for growth in the future, has left them with no choice but to raise taxes. This low-growth, high-tax approach to the economy has become the hallmark of these Conservatives in power.
Let me make it clear why our new clause 6 might make such difficult reading for Conservative Members. People see their energy bills going up and about to soar, inflation at its highest rate in decades, and their wages falling in real terms—and what do the Tories do? They raise national insurance by £274 for a typical full-time worker. It is the worst possible tax rise at the worst possible time. We warned that it was wrong when the Government pushed it through Parliament last year. Our arguments have only got stronger since then, so instead of digging in, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister should do the right thing and scrap this tax hike on working people and their jobs. Despite calls on the Government from all sides, they are so far refusing to budge. In this Bill, they offer no relief to working people, who face soaring prices and tax bills. They have managed to find time, however, to put into law a tax cut for banks, as we see in clause 6.
Clause 6, which our amendment 35 seeks to delete, would see the rate of the banking corporation tax surcharge fall from 8% to 3%, with the allowance for the charge raised from £25 million to £100 million. That will cost the public finances £1 billion a year by the end of this Parliament. Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has used smoke and mirrors desperately to pretend that the Government are not cutting taxes for banks. She has tried to hide this tax cut under a separate change to corporation tax that may never even come to pass.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Including corporation tax and the surcharge, the taxation of banks is currently at 27%. After this legislation, it will be 28%. Does the hon. Member agree that 28% is higher than 27%, and therefore taxes on banks are actually going to rise, not go down?
James Murray
It is the same tired doublespeak by Government Members trying to hide this tax cut for banks. However they try to present it, in this Bill the banking surcharge is cut from 8% to 3%; it is there in the policy costings from the Treasury that the measure will cost the public purse £1 billion a year by the end of this Parliament. If Government Members do not like this tax cut, they can simply vote with us to delete it at the end of Report, rather than pretend it does not exist.
James Murray
No, I am going to make some progress.
The truth is that this tax cut is going ahead at a time when bankers’ earnings are on the rise, with investment banks’ profits soaring off the back of a wave of takeovers and mergers caused by the pandemic. The UK arm of Goldman Sachs—a business that the Chancellor will know well—boosted its pay by more than a third last year, Barclays is set to raise bonus payments by more than 25% in its corporate investment bank, and boutique banks in the City are expected to do especially well, as they are exempt from rules that limit bonuses.
These measures show just how out of touch this Government and this Chancellor are: they are championing a tax cut for banks while ignoring calls from the TUC, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, Labour MPs, some on their own side, and the British public, to abandon their tax cut on working people and their jobs. If Ministers are still refusing to listen, today we are giving their Back Benchers an opportunity to say, “Enough is enough.” They can vote with us tonight to cancel the banking tax cut and make the Government think again.
The national insurance hike is wrong because it threatens people’s financial security. I will now turn to other aspects of the Bill that relate to wider economic security and the threat of economic crime.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Just before the hon. Gentleman leaves the rise in national insurance contributions—a difficult decision for any Government, particularly given the backdrop of a manifesto commitment—surely he would criticise the Government were they to put the ideology of a manifesto front and centre, instead of trying to find a way of ameliorating what would clearly be growing waiting lists and people queuing at all our advice surgeries and offices, complaining that they could not get the treatment they needed, which they were denied during the pandemic. Surely that is the right thing to do for public health and all our citizens.
James Murray
No one denies that the NHS needs more money, but hiding behind the hon. Member’s intervention is the idea that there is no other way to raise the £12 billion that the national insurance rise will raise. It takes some cheek to hear that from Conservative Members, when just yesterday we heard of £8.7 billion being wasted on PPE procurement and £4.3 billion of fraud being written off by the Chancellor—there is the £12 billion. Frankly, the Chancellor should stop wasting money, stop letting criminals get away with fraud, and stop expecting working people to pick up the bill.
Peter Grant
I commend the hon. Member for reminding the Government just how much of our money they have wasted in the last year. Does he remember a message on the side of a bus that promised a huge cash boost to the NHS if we left the European Union, and has he wondered what happened to that money?
James Murray
I remember many slogans that the Conservative party has used and I would not trust many of them. However, I would like to make some progress and talk about what the Government are doing, or failing to do, to tackle economic crime.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to address the House on the subject of new clause 2, which I am happy to sponsor with the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), with the support of the RMT. I recognise that the Government are reviewing the tonnage tax regime with exactly the right attitude, but I encourage them to think more widely about how we genuinely get a post-Brexit bonus for the entirety of this industry—not just the shipowners, but the workers. I make my comments from my position as chairman of the all-party group for maritime and ports. I am very proud of our maritime sector and I am very proud to represent the ports in Thurrock, particularly in Tilbury and Purfleet, and, of course, the Thames freeport.
The great thing about this Finance Bill is that it shows that the Government are taking advantage of the new freedoms that we have now that we have left the European Union. We now have more tax freedoms, which will encourage more business investment. I am greatly looking forward to watching the Thames freeport grow and grow. There has been a fantastic partnership between Forth Ports, which is based in Scotland, DP World, which invests in London Gateway, and of course Ford at Dagenham. It will bring a whole new lease of life to economic opportunities on the Thames. But I am very keen that workers get a better chance to share in our post-Brexit freedom. It is with that in mind that I have been very happy to engage with the RMT and with the hon. Gentleman to give my support to this sector.
If we are genuinely a maritime nation, which is one of those platitudes that we often trot out in this Chamber, we should have our own maritime workforce, whether it be through ports, or those engaged in shipbuilding—I am very pleased that the Prime Minister has given his personal backing to expanding our shipbuilding sector and getting back to making ships here. But this is also for our seafarers. On a day when we are celebrating levelling up, we should remember that our coastal communities are among those in most need of levelling up. For the workers in those areas, the opportunity to have access to more opportunities for skilled jobs surely should be grasped. With that in mind, I support new clause 2 and the amendment sponsored by the hon. Member for Easington.
Let me tell Members a story about my constituency. I have many retired seafarers in my constituency, as I would, representing what I call the ports capital of the UK—they tell me these great stories of the romantic adventures that they had as young men travelling the world—but I have no seafarers among the current generation. Although the current tonnage tax regime encourages the shipping companies to invest in training opportunities for officers and cadets—all fine and good—I would like to see that extended to encourage more training opportunities for ratings, too. I cannot think of a better way for a young person to enter the world of work than to travel and to see the world while they are learning new skills. Many skills required on a ship can be migrated into employment later in life. To me, it seems like a no brainer if we really want to open up horizons and opportunities for all our young people. It feels a bit elitist to me if, with entirely the right attitude, we use this tax regime and the concessions around it to encourage investment and training and restrict that to the officer class.
We know what has happened in the shipping industry. We are training people to fill senior positions, while shipping companies are recruiting cheaper labour from elsewhere in the world, and we all know where those countries are. At a time when we are encouraging companies to be more virtuous about their supply chains and tackling the issue of modern slavery, it seems slightly hypocritical to me that we turn the other way when we know of companies that are taking advantage of cheap labour in the maritime sector.
To be fair, the Government have done an awful lot of work on this. I congratulate them on making changes to minimum wage legislation, for example, which has improved conditions in our waters, but we are nothing if not leaders by example. I encourage the Government to go further. I am grateful for the conversation I have had with my right hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury about this. As they go through the review, I encourage them to think imaginatively about what more we can do to properly use this important measure to encourage more employment in that industry.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I very much agree with the principles of her new clause 2 because, if this tonnage tax is to mean anything, it should be about more than just changing a flag; it should be about changing the culture, as she mentioned. I am proud to have in my constituency City of Glasgow College, which has trained a lot of seafarers. It is a big hub for maritime education worldwide. It would be a real boon to it if we could encourage that within the UK, as we are at the moment, and in an independent Scotland it will certainly be a beacon to the world as an island nation.
I rise to speak to the amendments and new clauses in my name and those of my colleagues. As we did in the Bill Committee, we want to highlight the points on which the Finance Bill falls short. Last year, we saw COP26—also in the great constituency of Glasgow Central, where the world came to Glasgow—and I feel that the Finance Bill could have been the opportunity to mark in the legislative process in this place how important the climate change agenda is. It should have run through this Finance Bill and this Budget as through a stick of rock, but unfortunately we are left with just a fluffy sweetie in the bottom of someone’s pocket. It is not enough.
We therefore feel that there should be an assessment of the effect of the Bill’s provisions on climate change and how they affect the UK Government’s net zero targets. In Scotland, we have more ambitious net zero targets than the UK does. The Scottish Government are delivering lasting action to secure a net zero and climate-resilient future in a way that is fair and just for everyone. The SNP, in government in Scotland, is committed to a just transition to net zero emissions by 2045, with an ambitious interim target in 2030 of a 75% reduction—targets that form the heart of Scottish Government policies and actions.
An example of how that is already being delivered includes the groundbreaking and truly historic ScotWind announcement. We also already have the equivalent of almost 100% of gross electricity consumption generated from renewable sources in Scotland. We have commitments for the renewal of peatland, for the planting of trees and for the tackling of biodiversity loss, and we are leading the Edinburgh process to ensure that a whole-of-Government approach is adopted globally, while committing to protect 30%—and highly protect 10%—of our land for nature by 2030.
All those things are laudable policies, but we see no actions by the UK Government to incentivise them. Finance Bills are full of tax cuts, tax rises, incentives and different measures, and this Bill could have moved so much further to incentivise net zero through the measures introduced. The Bill does not go far enough. It is important to measure not only what is being done, but what could be done. Were the UK Government serious about their climate change commitments, they would rethink the illogical decision to deprioritise the carbon capture and storage facility in the north-east of Scotland. It was a real opportunity. The Government could have and should have gone further, but they short-changed Scotland yet again.
We support a great number of the new provisions in the Bill to do with economic crime. Members should have read already the excellent report released by the Treasury Committee, on which I sit, and which I came from earlier on this afternoon. The 11th report of the Committee, on economic Crime, is a very compelling and detailed read. It notes:
“Economic crime is a major and rapidly growing problem in the UK”,
and that while there has been a range of different initiatives by the UK Government, economic crime
“seems not to be a priority for law enforcement.”
Ministers came to the Committee and told us that they were “not happy” with the progress the Government have made in tackling economic crime, and I could not disagree with the Government on that point. There is certainly a lot more to be done.
While the economic crime levy is broadly welcome, it strikes me that a lot of taxes here are taxing people who are doing the right thing already, rather than chasing the people who are not. That really ought to be more the priority, because we have seen a Minister in the House of Lords resign because of the Government not doing enough and being frustrated at the lack of action by the Government to tackle fraud in the coronavirus loan schemes. There is an awful lot more that the Government could and should be doing on this.
We seek movement on the economic crime Bill. We want there to be an economic crime Bill because so much of the legislation on this issue is still held at Westminster. On the registration of companies, for example, I have spoken long and weary, and will continue to do so, about the deficiencies in Companies House. The register is complete and utter guff, in that people can put anything in and it is not checked, because there is only an information gathering function, rather than any kind of checking, verification or anti-money laundering organisation at Companies House, and that needs to change. We very much want to see movement on the long overdue registration of overseas entities Bill, and we support all amendments to this Finance Bill to that end. I sat on the Joint Committee, with Members of the House of Lords, on the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, and we took copious information from experts in the field. They said to us, “If you shut down this route, we know where people are going to go next”, and “If you do this, then this will happen.” We made recommendations to the Government, and the Government did not even at that time take up all the recommendations the Committee made.
Since that report was published and the Joint Committee sat, things have only got markedly worse. The criminals are getting away with more, and that has a real effect, because there are implications if those buying up huge swathes of London property cannot be traced. If that property, which should be housing people, is not available to them because it is being used as a means of money laundering, that should worry us all. There are of course implications more widely of the money coming in from Russian oligarchs, with the Government being left vulnerable in dealing with the wider crisis in Ukraine.
If we do not know who owns such property, how can we sanction them and follow them up? How can we take some action against those using the UK as a means of laundering their dirty lucre? We cannot, and it is really important that the UK Government act on this more urgently than they have before. As the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray) mentioned, some of this began in 2016. There were Bills in 2018, including the opportunities in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill in 2018, and all such opportunities have been missed, and they are being missed yet again in the Finance Bill we are discussing this afternoon. I think there needs to be an awful lot more action taken, and an awful lot more quickly.
I have quoted other people talking about economic crime recently, but I want to mention Professor Sadiq Isah Radda, who, as the executive secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption in Nigeria, told our Prime Minister that London was actually
“the most notorious safe haven for looted funds in the world today”.
That really should spur the Government here to action. This has been going on for far too long, and it absolutely must be tackled. It is a stain on the UK and, through things such as Scottish limited partnerships—the legislation those on is reserved to here; it has nothing to do with Scotland—it tarnishes Scotland with a dirty name by association.
Each Finance Bill makes our tax code more complex and, within that, there are more opportunities for people to seek loopholes and ways to reduce the tax that they should pay. For all of us, tax should be regarded not as some kind of burden, but as a duty and the price we pay for living in a civilised society. The more complicated the tax code, the more it can be exploited.
That complexity is hinted at somewhat in the corrective amendments that Ministers have tabled at this late stage. Although this Bill is so complicated, they come to us on Second Reading and in Committee and say, “Oh yes, all things are fine”, but today, at this late stage, we find that things are not quite right and have to be corrected. That makes it all the more worrying that the Government are bringing in this whole new proposal—the public interest business protection tax—without due notice. Again, there may be legitimate reasons for not giving due notice, but there is no consultation or evidence gathering that we get to see before we come here to vote on it today. That goes alongside my general complaint about Finance Bills, which is that their Bill Committees do not take evidence and they should, because that is really important. The public interest business protection tax may well be laudable, but we just do not know sufficiently whether it will be effective, what the evidence is or the Government’s full motivations for introducing it.
I am very grateful to George Crozier of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the Association of Taxation Technicians, who wrote to me last night with some of his concerns about the proposal and the way that it has appeared at this late stage. Some of his questions about bringing in a new tax without due notice are about the mechanisms in the Bill. It is supposedly time-limited to 12 months, so theoretically it could then be extended in time and in scope by regulation. We do not know whether the Government intend to do that if Ofgem do not move as quickly as they want it to. Again, I accept that the proposal may be about getting Ofgem out of a hole. I am sure that is fine, if that is what the Government want to do, but does that not indicate that it is much easier to make tax changes than effective regulatory changes when there is a point of crisis?
I was very glad that, by coincidence, we on the Treasury Committee had Jim Harra of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in front of us this afternoon. I asked him what he felt the impact of this proposal would be, including whether it would have an operational impact. He said, “No, because we hope it raises no taxes whatsoever”. It is unusual for the head of HMRC to say that he hopes to raise no tax from a measure in a Finance Bill, but that is what he said.
As an anti-avoidance, preventive measure, sure, that is fine, but the way in which it has been introduced this afternoon is not very good. We have seen this very late, and we get all the documents, explanatory notes and all the other things that come with it. To introduce something such as this in a Finance Bill seems very suboptimal, as the Minister is wont to say.
Bringing in a policy such as this also misses the wider set of reforms that are needed to the energy system, which the Government are not taking forward with sufficient urgency. My Glasgow Central constituents and households across these islands are urgently crying out for practical support with their energy bills. They need to know that they can afford to put the heating on in the morning. They need to know whether they can afford to use the cooker to heat up their kids’ dinner. They need to know whether they can turn the lights on or whether they all have to huddle in the dark with candles. That is the stark reality for so many people, and it is part of what is missing from this Government’s action. I said at Treasury questions yesterday that it had been almost two months since the Chancellor came to the House. Although he came yesterday, there was still no practical solution for such people; there is no practical solution in this Finance Bill.
While I am here, I want to ask the Minister about a query raised by the former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, who pointed out a change on the HMRC website that says:
“Rates for Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance for the 2022 to 2023 tax year are provisional and may change between now and 6 April 2022”.
I asked HMRC officials why that change to the website was made and they did not know. I ask the Minister whether she knows why that change has been made. Are the Government riding to the rescue of those people, or is it just a change on a website? It would be useful for people to know the full implications.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I hope to bring in the Minister at 5.55 pm at the very latest, because many questions have been asked that hon. Members want the Minister to answer, so it is only fair to give her the time to answer them. Three hon. Members have tabled new clauses to which they must have the opportunity to speak. I must ask for short speeches, please; I hope we can manage without a time limit, but if those who are speaking to their new clauses can keep to five minutes, everyone will have the opportunity, however briefly, to address the House.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I rise to speak on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, particularly on new clause 27, which is tabled in my name.
The Liberal Democrats have concerns about this Bill. People who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules are seeing their incomes squeezed through no fault of their own. They are being crippled by tax hikes, benefits slashes and skyrocketing bills, and today I am afraid the Chancellor is letting them down. He is providing less in extra catch-up funding for children than he is in a tax cut for bankers. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a £15 billion catch-up fund for kids, support for small businesses and protection from energy bill rises for the most vulnerable, and we support all new clauses that help to that end. We live in precarious times and we must do more.
In the context of escalating tensions with Russia, I am also concerned about what is missing from the Bill. New clause 27 has support from both sides of this House. It is similar to new clauses 4 and 11, tabled by Labour and SNP Front Benchers—I am grateful to them for rowing behind this clause—but it also has Conservative Members as signatories, which goes to show the cross-party support for bringing in this measure.
The new clause asks for an impact assessment to be produced on the operation of the new economic crime levy, and would require the Government to assess how a register of beneficial owners of property would contribute to the effectiveness of such a levy. Sadly, due to the scope of the Bill, the new clause cannot introduce such a register, but that does not make the need for it any less urgent.
The register would close the loopholes that allow oligarchs to launder money through British property. Lax regulations have turned London into a playground and a laundromat for Russian oligarchs, with successive warnings from the intelligence and security communities painting the city as “Londongrad”. Prior to the pandemic, Transparency International identified 87,000 properties in England and Wales that were owned by anonymous companies registered in tax havens. A new analysis has found that, of the £6.7 billion-worth of UK property bought with suspicious money, £1.5 billion comes from Russia.
On Monday, the Foreign Secretary spoke about introducing new sanctions, and I welcomed that. It is interesting that The Moscow Times reported on Monday that the Kremlin was “alarmed” at the British threat and vowed to retaliate. The dirty money that oligarchs invest in yachts, football clubs and Belgravia mansions has close ties to Putin’s own wealth. We know how he operates: he gives them the money to buy the assets. If we aim at the oligarchs, we aim at Putin, but there is a problem, because we cannot sanction what we cannot see. Claims from the Government that we are standing up to Putin’s military manoeuvres ring hollow when he and his friends know full well that they have already hidden half the money in our own back garden, and the Government continue to do nothing about it.
Dirty money also undermines our credibility with our allies. The Centre for American Progress, a think-tank closely linked to the Biden Administration, said:
“Uprooting…oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom”.
I am afraid to say that the stench of corruption and dirty money wafts over our political system and the whole country, and it is incumbent on us here and the Government to clean it up. There is a way to do that, and it is through the economic crime Bill, but waiting for that feels like waiting for Godot. It should not be this difficult to get the Government to make good on their own promises, because it was a Conservative Government six years ago who said they would introduce it. Two thousand days later and we have had nothing.
Just this week, the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and announced plans for a register of beneficial ownership, but at this stage it feels like he is the boy who cried wolf. I urge the Minister to accept new clause 27, which has support on both sides of the House, to start those tentative steps, to show Putin we are serious and to make sure that we clean up dirty money from our politics and our country for good.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to new clause 2 and amendment 34. I thank all Members who have co-sponsored or signed the new clause. It indicates extensive support not just from Labour Members, but from Members from across the House and a variety of parties. I must declare my interest as a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers parliamentary group, and I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
New clause 2 is very important to UK-based employment in the maritime sector. The issue has been raised with the current shipping Minister, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who is sympathetic to the arguments we are making, and previously with his predecessors, most notably the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who was enthusiastic about what we propose.
Clause 25 of the Bill makes tonnage tax more flexible for ship owners but no corresponding adjustments for seafarer jobs and skills based in the UK, as eloquently pointed out by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). The tonnage tax’s original purpose—it was introduced by a Labour Government, by Gordon Brown—was to arrest the decline in training and employment opportunities for British seafarers in an increasingly deregulated labour market. We have seen the increasing dominance of flags of convenience.
I remind those on the Treasury Bench that at the time of the Falklands war—unbelievably, 40 years ago—there were 45,000 British-based ratings and officers in the UK. Today, that number is below 23,000. About a quarter of all seafarer jobs in the UK industry are UK-based. The Bill does not seek to improve the mandatory link to train officer cadets or to create a separate mandatory link for the training of ratings.
The comprehensive spending review Red Book commits the Government to
“explore how best to make use of existing powers regarding the training commitment”.
However, I understand from discussions with the maritime unions that the process, which I inform the Treasury Bench is being taken forward by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, is not considering any specific measures to train British ratings or to employ British seafarers, including those who were trained on the tonnage tax vessels. This is a real wasted opportunity. If there is to be a Brexit dividend, we really must address that.
Perhaps it is a case of the Government, without taking action, inadvertently damaging the UK maritime sector, but there is an opportunity to put it right. New clause 2 would require the Government to review the impact of clause 25—tonnage tax—on employment and training for British officers and ratings, including the effect of changes to flagging arrangements on qualifying ships.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Member is making the case persuasively. Does he agree that one of the difficulties is that Government policy is siloed in this area? Perhaps that is why the Government are missing the opportunity. He is right that the maritime Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts)—gets it completely and is sympathetic, but the decision-making capability rests with the Treasury. Does he think that we need to get the Government together to see the right outcome for everyone involved in the shipping industry?
Grahame Morris
I am grateful for that intervention, and of course the hon. Member is right. The new clause’s proposal is not revolutionary; it is common sense. It is joined-up Government and application of the principle of trying to ensure benefits for British-based seafarers from the growth predicted for the maritime sector, particularly in relation to zero-carbon and offshore. That is particularly important, given that the Government could seek to use clause 25 to attract more flags of convenience into the tonnage tax scheme. Tonnage tax is a tax break that has already provided £2.165 billion in relief from corporation tax for UK and international ship owners.
In truth, the new clause would be a modest change. The real measure required to boost seafarer jobs and training, including in some of our most deprived coastal communities—including mine—would be a new mandatory link to ratings training, as well as officer cadet training, as advocated by the ratings’ union, the RMT. I do not propose that, however, because that is beyond the scope of the Bill.
Amendment 34, which is linked to new clause 2, seeks to provide the Secretary of State with the power to consult maritime trade unions over compliance with environmental safety and working conditions on non-UK flagships in the tonnage tax scheme. That would be consistent with the minimum standards on seafarer safety that everyone in the House would seek to support and which are part of the maritime labour convention to which the UK Government are a signatory along with all other maritime nations. I could say a little more but time is short, so, in the interests of progress, I shall leave it at that.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
I rise to speak to new clause 7, on equality impact analyses. The Government’s efforts to date on equality impact assessments overall have been woeful. There should not be a need for me to speak to any detail of the new clause. We cannot talk about sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, poverty and regional inequality properly without talking about the economy, because we know that structural inequality and discrimination hold many of our communities back. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) said, we have a right to know exactly who benefits from the Government’s policy agenda, but their continued refusal to publish proper impact assessments for their Bills speaks for itself.
I want to emphasise how the Government and the Bill are deepening already existing inequalities. For all the talk of levelling up, the Government’s policies amount to a sharp widening of all types of inequality, which are already among the widest in western Europe.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I can see two Members standing and I intend to call the Minister at 5.55 pm. I call you first, Mr Grant, and any time you do not use up before 5.55 can be used by your colleague—no pressure.
Peter Grant
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am pleased to be able to make a brief contribution to tonight’s debate. I commend the three previous speakers, the hon. Members for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). It is unfortunate that the very inadequate time that the programme motion allowed did not give any of them the time they deserved, given the amount of work they put into their amendments.
I mentioned new clause 3 and new schedule 2 earlier, but “schedule” is a misnomer here. We are not talking about a schedule; we are in effect talking about the “Finance No. 3 Bill”, 25 pages long and intensely complicated. This is our one and only chance to get it right and none of us can feel comfortable that it was tabled on Monday, it is being debated on Wednesday and it comes into force on Friday—not next Friday, but the previous Friday. What on earth are the Government playing at?
I do not have an issue with any of the other important business that took up today’s time—nobody could have any issue with any of that. My issue is that when the Government knew they were going to table such a substantial, technical and complicated amendment at this stage, it was up to them to amend the programme motion to give a decent amount of time, because 90 minutes for this debate is ludicrous. Only the Government had the ability to put forward a change to the programme motion; and only the Government had the opportunity to consult with Opposition parties in advance of that amendment being tabled, or indeed to discuss it with outside stakeholders. Not doing so was a failure, unless the Minister can give a very good reason as to why secrecy was so important. Springing it on the House in this way was, I believe, an abuse of the Government’s powers and shows contempt for Parliament.
The aim of the new tax is laudable and nobody would argue against it, but we have been given no indication as to why the tax is the way to prevent the kind of behaviour that we are trying to deter. It appears that it is just because they can change the tax system immediately and make it retrospective, whereas other things would take a bit longer. I ask the Government this question outright: is the urgency because they have picked up intelligence that another major player in the energy market was about to cut and run—to cash in and bail out? If they cannot answer that in public today, I would appreciate it if they contacted me after, on a guarantee of confidentiality. To be honest, I can see no other reason why there was a need for such secrecy and last-minute panic.
The amendment is restricted to energy companies, but it can also be extended to apply to any other kind of company the Treasury chooses to designate. What is that for? Can the Minister explain what other companies might need to be brought in, and in what circumstances that might need to happen? The measure is only to be in place for a year, or for such other time as the Treasury decides it wants to extend it, and it can extend it as often as it wants, although only until 2025. However, given that the Minister has said that the amendment is essentially a stopgap until Ofgem is able to amend the regulatory environment to prevent these abuses in the market, just how lacking in confidence are they of Ofgem and its ability and willingness to fix this long-standing problem if they think it might need another three years before it is fully dealt with?
Paragraph 41 of new schedule 2 gives the Government the power to change the law retrospectively. No Parliament should ever lightly agree to such a power, but tonight we have been given no choice; we simply have not had sufficient time to look at the detail of that or to get the assurances we would usually want about what that power will and will not be used for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) referred to comments from the Chartered Institute of Taxation, and the Association of Tax Technicians told me yesterday:
“We have a brand-new tax without any prior announcement, no consultation, little debate, which will be enacted before the next Budget, and will be effective from 28 January 2022. OK, these are arguably special circumstances, but is this a good way to run a tax system?”
The short answer is no, it is not.
Lucy Frazer
I shall endeavour to answer all the points raised swiftly, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray) began by asking in new clause 6 for us to publish a review of the impact of the amount of tax working people will be paying. He will know that we have already published the “Impact on households” document in the October Budget of 2021 and the Office for Budget Responsibility already produces fiscal forecasts. However, he used the amendment to discuss the issue more broadly, suggesting that the Government were not doing enough to help working families. That simply is not correct, and he knows it.
We have cut tax for low-income families by introducing the universal credit taper rate, saving working families £1,000 a month. The hon. Gentleman will know that we increased the rate for the national living wage, and he will know about the half a billion pounds of household support for the hardest-hit families—not to mention the significant covid support that we have given the families who have needed it over the last 18 months to two years. However, the best way to help people to have appropriate incomes to support themselves is to get them into jobs, and that is why we have spent £2 billion to get young people into the kickstart scheme, and £2.9 billion to help the 1.4 million long-term unemployed to get into jobs, ensuring that we have a lower unemployment rate than comparable countries such as Canada, France, Italy and Spain.
The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) talked about the need to put more money into people’s pockets, and to support services. That is exactly what we did in the spending review, with a cash increase of £150 billion a year by 2024, the largest real-terms increase provided by any Parliament in this century. Only yesterday, I was pleased to see an announcement about levelling up education funding across the country.
The hon. Member for Ealing North mentioned the NHS and social care levy. I am proud that this Government are willing to tackle the really difficult issues that face this country. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) pointed out that if we secure sufficient funds, we shall be able to tackle waiting times and have more doctors. I should point out that it was a Labour Government who, in the same way, increased national insurance contribution rates by 1% in 2003, specifically to increase NHS funding. The hon. Member also mentioned the banking surcharge, but, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), tax rates for banks are going not down, but up—to 28%, when they would otherwise be at 27%.
A number of Members on both sides of the House mentioned the economic crime measures in the Bill, and the beneficial ownership register. I hope that those Members were present for Prime Minister’s Question Time this afternoon and heard what the Prime Minister said, showing that we are committed to introducing this legislation. However, we have already done a significant amount to tackle economic crime. Since 2010 the Government have introduced more than 150 new measures and invested more than £2 billion in HMRC to tackle fraud. We do not want in this country money that has been gained through criminality or corruption—it is not welcome in the UK—and the international Finance Action Task Force concluded in December 2018 that we have some of the strongest controls in the world. Since then, we have strengthened those powers even further.
I will spend a couple of seconds on the new clause relating to tonnage tax, referred to by the hon. Member for Ealing North, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Easington (Grahame Morris). It is important to ensure a fair wage for our seafarers, who are recognised worldwide as some of the most highly skilled. That is why, in 2020, the Government extended the minimum wage entitlement to seafarers on domestic voyages.
The Department for Transport’s “Maritime 2050” strategy shows that we want a diverse and rewarded workforce, so we will continue to engage closely with industry and trade unions to support the training and employment of both British officers and ratings. I understand that the RMT has had recent meetings with the DFT and the Maritime Skills Commission on the training of ratings and has been invited to submit its analysis to inform further discussions. I wish I had more time to deal with that matter, but I will be happy to take it up further.
On the residential property tax, the hon. Member for Ealing North will know that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is actively working on the matter.
Climate change goals were mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, who said that there was not enough investment in businesses to incentivise them. However, in the last financial year, we issued £16 billion-worth of green bonds and set up the UK Infrastructure Bank to invest in net zero, backed with £12 billion of capital, which will also help to unlock more than £40 billion of overall investment in infrastructure.
For all those reasons, and many others, I urge hon. Members to accept the Government amendments, but not the others.
“30 | Public interest business protection tax | (a) Return under paragraph 8 or 9 of Schedule (Public interest business protection tax) to FA 2022 (b) Accounts, statement or document required under either of those paragraphs.” |
“Public interest business protection tax | Return under paragraph 8 or 9 of Schedule (Public interest business protection tax) to FA 2022. |
“Public interest business protection tax | Return, statement or declaration in connection with a claim for a relief |
“Public interest business protection tax | Accounts in connection with ascertaining liability to tax.” |
“1B | Public interest business protection tax | Amount payable under paragraph 8(6) of Schedule (Public interest business protection tax) to FA 2022 | The date falling 30 days after the date specified in that paragraph as the date by which the amount must be paid |
1C | Public interest business protection tax | Amount payable under paragraph 9(7) of Schedule (Public interest business protection tax) to FA 2022 | The date falling 30 days after the date specified in that paragraph as the date by which the amount must be paid |
1D | Public interest business protection tax | Amount payable under paragraph 12(8) of Schedule (Public interest business protection tax) to FA 2022 | The date falling 30 days after the date specified in that paragraph as the date by which the amount must be paid.” |
Lucy Frazer
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
In the autumn Budget, the Chancellor set out a vision to build a stronger economy that would allow this country to bounce back from the pandemic. This Finance Bill takes forward measures that will help to turn that vision into reality and drive growth for our country long into the future. Its measures will support business across the UK, including our banking, creative and shipping sectors. In addition, the Bill will protect businesses and the public by clamping down on tax evasion and economic crime, improving trust and building a fairer UK economy.
I turn first to the measures in the Bill designed to safeguard and strengthen industry and the wider economy. To help businesses invest and grow, we are extending the annual investment allowance at its highest-ever level of £1 million until 31 March 2023. The £1 million AIA level means that more than 99% of businesses will have their plant and machinery expenditure covered.
We are also extending the support offered to the creative industries by providing additional tax reliefs to theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries as the sector recovers. These rates of higher relief will provide a further incentive for new productions, exhibitions and concerts up to April 2024.
Finally, reforms to the UK tonnage tax regime will encourage more firms to base their headquarters in the UK to use our world-leading maritime services industry and to fly the flag of the UK. This will bring jobs and investment throughout the country, and especially to our coastal communities.
I now turn to how the Bill will deliver stronger public finances. The Bill sets the rate of the bank surcharge so that the combined rate on banks’ profits will increase to 28% from April 2023. It also increases the surcharge allowance to £100 million. These changes will ensure that the banks continue to make a fair contribution while encouraging growth and competition for smaller groups within the UK banking market.
The 1.25% increase on dividend income rates from 6 April 2022 will help fund the health and social care settlement, ensuring that contributions are made based on employed and self-employed earnings. The Government are also introducing the new 4% residential developer tax on the most profitable developers. This will raise at least £2 billion over the next decade to help pay for the removal of unsafe cladding, providing reassurance to home owners and boosting confidence in the UK housing market.
At the heart of this Finance Bill is the desire to safeguard taxpayers’ interests and deal with those who avoid paying their fair share. The economic crime levy will help deliver the Government’s objectives to combat economic crime and will raise an expected £100 million per year to fund anti-laundering measures. The levy is calculated by UK revenue and provides the fairest and simplest method for the anti-money laundering regulated sector to contribute further. That will cement the UK’s reputation as a secure country in which to conduct business and solidifies the Government’s ambition to permanently tackle economic crime.
As I mentioned earlier, the Bill’s measures will clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion. It will give HMRC more powers to tackle promoters of tax avoidance schemes by levying penalties on UK entities that enable them. The measures are accompanied by an increase in the duty charge on tobacco products by 2% and a rise in the minimum excise tax to 3% above RPI inflation, alongside new measures to tackle duty evasion. That will help reduce the long-term burden on the NHS and improve public health generally.
By targeting businesses that manipulate electronic records to evade tax, the Bill reinforces the Government’s efforts to tackle unscrupulous businesses that carry out electronic sales suppression. The measures are essential to Britain’s reputation as a global hub for businesses and as a secure and transparent place in which to conduct business.
I thank hon. and right hon. Members for their helpful and insightful contributions to the debates during the Bill’s passage.
To conclude, this Finance Bill supports our efforts to build a stronger economy. It tackles tax evasion and avoidance, and, ultimately, its measures will create a brighter and simpler future for industry, the economy and the UK as a whole. For those reasons, I commend it to the House.
James Murray
When we first debated this Finance Bill on Second Reading in November last year, it was clear to us that it offered nothing to help people struggling with the rising costs of living and facing tax rises this April. Since that time, pressures on people across this country have only become more intense, and the need for the Government to act has only become more urgent.
Inflation is now at its highest rate in decades and energy bills are set to soar in April, just as the Chancellor is set to hike national insurance on working people. That tax rise, when combined with energy price rises and other tax hikes, will leave families on average £1,200 worse off a year. Yet there is nothing in the Bill to help with the cost of living. There is, however, a tax cut for banks in the Bill, despite bankers being widely expected to receive large bonuses this year, as investment banks’ profits have soared off the back of a wave of takeovers and mergers caused by the pandemic. It shows just how out of touch this Chancellor is. At the weekend, he decided to dig in over his tax rise for working people. By the middle of the week, he is using the Bill to cut taxes for banks by £1 billion a year.
In earlier debates on the Bill, we were critical of the Government for not doing enough to combat economic crime. We welcome the principle of a levy, but we are left wondering why on earth legislation that would set up a register of overseas owners of UK property—a critical tool to tackle money laundering—has been left to gather dust. On Second Reading, we challenged the Government over their failure to establish such a register. Our country has earned the shocking reputation as the world’s laundromat for illicit finance. A new public register would bring desperately needed transparency to the overseas ownership of UK properly, and would help to stop it being used for money laundering.
Since that time, the need to bring transparency to the question of who owns high-end property in the UK has only become more urgent. Economic sanctions against Russia will never have the effect that they should as long as our Government let those who are linked to Putin and his regime hide their wealth in the mansions of Knightsbridge and Belgravia.
We also asked what the Bill does for another type of property: buildings with unsafe cladding that need to be remediated. We questioned Ministers on how they had arrived at their decision on the level of the residential property developer tax when so much more was needed to protect leaseholders from bearing the cost. Since we first raised our concerns about the detail of that tax, the Government have realised that they were wrong to make leaseholders in buildings of between 11 metres and 18 metres take out forced loans to cover the cost of cladding remediation in their buildings. The Housing Secretary now says that he is planning to convince developers to hand over £4 billion voluntarily. If he fails, we want to know how leaseholders and those in need of affordable homes will be protected. Despite our questioning earlier today, Treasury Ministers have been unable to offer people the reassurance they need.
Finally, there is no plan for growth in the Bill. We are stuck in a low-growth, high-tax cycle. With strong growth, we would have the chance to create new jobs, with better wages and conditions, in every part of this country. With low growth, it gets ever harder to meet the challenges we face, and the Tories have no choice other than to put up taxes.
The shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has set out Labour’s plan for growth: investing in skills, research and development, and the industries of the new green economy; choosing to buy, make and sell more in Britain; and creating jobs in every part of the country. We would build a stronger economy with our plan to give working people the respect they are due, to give people real economic security, and to ensure prosperity in every part of Britain. That is the approach that our country needs in order to grow and meet the challenges of the future.
Right now, people across the country need the Government to protect them from the cost of living crisis and protect our country from dirty money from Russia. All we have instead is a Prime Minister who does everything he can to protect himself. We opposed the Bill on Second Reading and, as our reasons for doing so have only grown stronger, we will vote against it tonight.
Alison Thewliss
I thank the Government and the official Opposition Front-Bench teams for the way in which proceedings on the Bill have been conducted. We have all learned an awful lot about each other, and it has been a genuinely interesting process. I thank the Clerks, Chris Stanton and Kevin Maddison, for their support, without which we would definitely have struggled to put our amendments forward. I thank Clorinda Luck, one of the SNP’s senior researchers, for stepping in at short notice to cover some of the research on the Bill—I am very grateful to her for that work.
Although some of the measures in the Bill are welcome, we in the SNP have to oppose it because it is such a missed opportunity to do so much more about economic crime and the scourge of money laundering and kleptocracy coming to the shores of these islands. There is a lack of action to tackle the misuse of Scottish limited partnerships and shell companies, and to tackle the money flowing through the very city we are standing in. The Bill is also a missed opportunity to do more on net zero in particular. Given last year’s COP, there should have been a great deal more to focus minds and move to a greener and fairer economy.
The Bill is indicative of a Government who are removed from the problems that ordinary people face and who are without solutions to the challenges that our constituents are seeing right now: the challenges of inequality, the scars of 10 years of austerity, the cost of living crisis, which is making life so very difficult for so many people right now, soaring inflation and energy prices that are spiralling out of control.
Contrast that with the opportunity presented by Kate Forbes in the Scottish Parliament last week. With the limited powers that we have over the Scottish Budget, that Budget offers great hope to the people of Scotland. We look enviously at the powers that we could have as a full, independent, normal nation with the full levers to make the real inroads into inequality, to make life fairer, better and more just for the people of Scotland. So we cannot support this Budget and we wish that very soon we will have that full range of powers to make things better for our own citizens.
Question put, That the Bill be read the Third time.
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Delegated Legislation
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Army Reserve
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Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to have this Adjournment debate on the Army Reserve. I asked for this because I am concerned that a yawning gap is opening up between the laudable ambitions of Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and what is actually proposed for the reserve. Ironically, this debate takes place at a time when large numbers of reservists, on both sides, are central to the darkening military picture in Ukraine.
When I served in the Territorial Army Intelligence Corps in the 1980s, there was not necessarily an expectation of being deployed, because it would have meant that the third world war had started, but the situation has now been quite different for many years. Those joining the reserves now expect to be deployed, and for many reservists it is one of the attractions of joining. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has consistently made it clear that he sees the reserves as an important element of cost-effective armed forces. At the peak, they provided 23% of our forces in Iraq and 13% in Afghanistan. More recently, they have performed further crucial roles in the covid emergency and in dealing with cyber-threats.
Page 19 of the Ministry of Defence document “Future Soldier Guide”, in a section headed “Army Reserve Transformation”, states:
“Our nation’s Reservists will play a vital and pivotal role in delivering Future Soldier. We require a more capable, more ready and more usable Army Reserve, which is assured to deliver against mandated tasks across the UK or overseas. Every part of the Army Reserve will have a clear warfighting role and stand ready to fight as part of the Whole Force in time of war.”
Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
On that point, as a former infantry officer, it strikes me that, if we remove support weapons, we obviously have a less capable unit, but we also lose the interest and the attraction to retain troops.
Mr Bacon
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Part of the way in which the reserves used to be recruited made clear the importance of formed bodies. The building of comradeship and interest and the use of civilian skills in the reserve forces was an important part of attracting people. I will say more about that because we do not want to lose them.
The MOD document continues:
“Over the coming years the Army Reserve will increasingly take responsibility for Homeland Protect and Resilience operations, supported by the regular component.”
That should increase focus and clarity and it should be very exciting. Unfortunately, serious issues on structure and resourcing threaten to blow away those good intentions. My first concern is that, at a time when the Regular Army is being reduced—again—it seems extraordinary that we are cutting the Army Reserve, too. Could the Minister confirm that the MOD plans to cut the establishment of the Army Reserve from 30,100 trained, with a further 3,000 on phase 1 training, to 27,100 trained, with a further 3,000 on phase 1 training? That is a cut of about 10%.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing the debate forward. I concur and entirely support the figures to which he refers, because the figures that I have from within Northern Ireland indicate that the position is similar for us in Northern Ireland. I have been made aware of the proposed restructuring of our Army Reserve, medical units and infantry in Northern Ireland, leading to a 10% reduction in numbers. I declare an interest as a former reservist and part-time soldier for 14 and a half years.
Northern Ireland has a commitment to the reserves, an ability to recruit and a willingness to deploy. Indeed, Northern Ireland has contributed comparatively more to operations overseas than any other region. The reduction that the hon. Gentleman refers to is ludicrous. I fully understand the need to restructure and to meet up-to-date operational needs, but why throw away the willing volunteers that we have in Northern Ireland? I cannot understand where we are going.
Mr Bacon
I very much agree. The hon. Gentleman made the point that Northern Ireland has contributed disproportionately to the reserves. I should declare that when I did my final passing out camp in the intelligence corps, we shared our barracks with the Royal Irish Rangers; indeed, I passed out with a Royal Irish Rangers pipe band. I must say to anyone who has not experienced it that they should not knock it until they have tried it. There is nothing quite like marching in Army formation with an Irish pipe band. As he said, the Northern Irish have contributed hugely to the reserves and we are all in this House grateful to them for what they do.
Much worse than the actual cut in numbers is the way in which the cut is proposed, including the erosion of the already fragile structure of all our combat units, instead of simply closing a few. The essence of effective reserves, both for use in small operations and to form a basis for regenerating a larger army, is putting together a body of officers and soldiers who train, study and socialise together, building links of comradeship that can stand the test of combat.
Britain did that successfully in the two world wars and more recently in Iraq and in the early part of Operation Herrick in Afghanistan, where formed companies of infantry, and sub-units from other elements, were successfully deployed. Unfortunately, in the latter stages of Operation Herrick, that approach was torn up and reserve units were exclusively used to backfill regular ones—“augmentation”, as the Army calls it. That offered no command roles for junior reserve officers, just supporting posts.
The consequences were dire. The “Reserves in the Future Force 2020” report uncovered that the junior officer base of the Army had disintegrated, and applications for reserve Sandhurst courses collapsed. Putting that right and moving back towards formed bodies was at the heart of the rebuilding programme of the past decade. Indeed, in the past two years, we have seen a yeomanry squadron rotate successfully into Operation Cabrit in eastern Europe and two reserve infantry battalions, 6 and 7 Rifles, provide the framework for Operation Tosca in Cyprus.
That is why the widely discussed proposals for the cuts in the Army Reserve are so devastating. Instead of simply disbanding a few reserve units—perhaps from an area such as logistics where there is a successful record of using armed civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—I understand that the plan is to devastate every infantry battalion by reducing the manning in three company battalions to just 340 and in four company battalions to 430. Each company will consist of just two rifle platoons and a single section of support weapons, instead of a support platoon.
Besides the obvious point that this seems a very odd time to reduce our reserves of anti-tank weapons and mortars, that will leave each company much smaller and with no in-house staff for the residual support element. Given that nobody gets a full turnout, even when manning recovers from the devastation of covid, that would leave a sub-unit structure without the critical mass for company-level training. At battalion level, it will become impossible to generate a formed company for an extended deployment, as the proportion of even a well-recruited unit who can take many months off work in peacetime is inevitably limited.
That brings me to the state of the reserves recruiting programme. During covid, the collapse in activity was damaging to units, much of it, I suspect, concealed in the statistics by a failure to discharge non-attenders. So the decision largely to turn off the reserve pipeline for many months was ill judged, but, since it restarted last year, astonishingly, the marketing has been done without consultation or even co-ordination with reserve units, or with the reserve forces cadets associations with their local footprint and knowledge. The Minister will know that that has not produced the surge that the Army Reserve hoped for, and badly needs, after the setbacks of covid. I await the figures for the most recent quarter with some trepidation.
There is now a threat to the progress that has been made on reserve officer courses at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Three years ago, the post of deputy commandant reserves, which had played such a big part in the recovery of reserve officers, was abolished. Now, the decision has just been taken to sideline the reserve colonel at Sandhurst, to whom the various university officer training corps reported. The reserves depend on the OTCs for the bulk of their officer supply and much of their training, and almost all OTCs are commanded by regular officers. Now they will answer to a regular officer, too. So the senior reserve voice has been frozen out of that critical area for the health and regeneration of the Army Reserve. OTCs may become little more than recruiting organisations for the Regular Army.
Those concerns about manning are reinforced by a number of other emerging trends. At a time when covid and the recruiting pause have left such gaps, is it really a good time to suggest that, where units can recruit above strength and their neighbours cannot, they will be forbidden to do so? That would punish those who are successful, and make it a certainty that we will never recruit up to our new, further reduced target.
In a separate “Future Soldier” document, the reserve component narrative states at paragraph 3, line 4:
“An assured and capable Reserve will require a new approach to training, basing and force generation that sets the Army Reserve up for success. Reservists may not need to give more of their time; but making much better use of their time will be essential.”
That is exactly right, but let us look at the detail.
To take training first, many experienced reservists would say that the biggest waste of their time is the approach of many of the arms schools, which insist that reservists are trained at the same slow speed as regulars, despite reservists having a higher educational minimum standard and, crucially, needing to make progress in the short periods they can spare from civilian jobs. Some forward-leaning institutions, such as Chatham and Larkhill, have modularised, pushing out much of their courses to units and making use of distance learning. Others, such as Bovington and Leconfield, continue to insist on courses being almost all delivered on site and frequently at a very slow pace—a considerable problem for reservists whose day jobs and homes are far away.
What is being done to tackle those institutions that simply do not understand that reserves need to be prepared in a way that fits around their civilian work patterns?
Turning to basing, there are plans that elements of the reserve estate will be closed and that units will be grouped in larger, better centres. Although, in principle, this should improve some dire accommodation, we need to be cautious. Most journeys to training take place in the rush hour, so peak traffic journey times are critical in assessing the expectation that recruits with demanding day jobs will be willing to travel after a hard day’s work. This is particularly seen in threats to delete successful sub-units. Unless the alternative location is close, it will simply drive people away, further reducing manning.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I declare an interest of sorts, as a former TA infantry officer during the cold war. On a positive note, I am delighted to report that my godson Alexander Blackwell, who I saw today, recently graduated from Sandhurst as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve.
The Territorial Army did great service in both the first and second world wars. Given that we now have 125,000 Russian troops ringing Ukraine, does my hon. Friend agree that we should never, under any circumstances, take our reserves for granted? Time and again, they have been literally the last line of defence.
Mr Bacon
My right hon. Friend is exactly right, and I fear that, at times, we have acted as if we seem to be taking them for granted, which we absolutely must not do.
One of the best ways of making the slender resources available to the reserve estate go further would be reducing bureaucracy in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation so that the reserve forces and cadets associations can crack on with using their local knowledge and the business acumen of their volunteers, as they used to do so successfully. On that subject, when will the Ministry of Defence publish the 2021 report of the RFCA external scrutiny team?
I am sure the Minister will be familiar with section 47 of the Defence Reform Act 2014:
“On receiving a report…the Secretary of State must lay a copy of it before Parliament.”
Heaven forfend that the Secretary of State would inadvertently break the law, but I understand he has had a copy of this report since last July.
On the question of force generation, right across the English-speaking world, from the National Guard with its presence in every American population centre to the Australian army reserve, reserve forces are proud of their local ties and footprint. Earlier this decade, changes that paired reserve battalions with regular battalions wisely built on that here.
Earlier I stressed the importance of keeping the emphasis on formed bodies, which train, socialise and build comradeship to fight together. It is a shame that the Army’s reserve narrative lists, for conditions short of war, supply individuals to regular units ahead of using formed bodies. That points towards the slippery slope that we went down in the dying days of Operation Herrick, with the destruction of the reserve officer corps.
Returning once more to the reserve component narrative of “Future Soldier”:
“While Army Reserve will play an increased role, the management of the Army Reserve will change to ensure that employers are not adversely affected.”
The greatest barrier to employer support is last-minute changes in call-out plans and arrangements that wreck the plans that employers have generously made to allow their employees to engage in military service. That happened frequently in Operation Rescript at the peak of the covid crisis and continues to happen on other operations. When will steps be taken to ensure that such last-minute changes are identified and recorded, and to ensure that the officers concerned are called to account?
To summarise, I welcome much of the Army’s vision for the reserve, but I believe there is a real danger that the cuts to numbers and resources, and the structures emerging, will undermine them.
Adam Holloway
Given the long list of cuts, does my hon. Friend agree that the time has come to restore a separate vote for the reserves so that Parliament can know where the money is going?
Mr Francois
As I now have the privilege of serving on the current Public Accounts Committee, I entirely endorse the sensible suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway).
Mr Bacon
I hope the Minister is listening, because my right hon. Friend is a man not lightly to be trifled with. Indeed, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), the Chair of that Committee—with whom I co-operate extensively, as I chair the Public Accounts Commission, which provides the budget for the National Audit Office—is a lady not to be trifled with. I hope that the Minister and the Ministry of Defence will take that seriously, otherwise I think they may find that there are questions on it at future PAC hearings.
At a time when regular manpower is being cut, the Army Reserve is rightly being asked to do a great deal more, and it needs the structures, systems and resources that will allow it to deliver.
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) for his thoughtful and constructive speech, and it is my great pleasure to respond to it. I am also very pleased to have heard the contributions of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) and my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), and I pay tribute to their own military service.
Let me establish the context of the debate before answering some of my hon. Friend’s questions. I share his sense of the terrific value of our reserve forces. He outlined correctly their central role in our national security: we have already heard how critical that role has been in the operations in, for instance, Afghanistan and Iraq, and, of course, we have also seen their recent response to the covid pandemic in Operation Rescript. All Members will have seen in their own constituencies the terrific work carried out by both regular and reserve forces in assisting the national health service. In May 2020, a total of 2,300 reservists were in service in Operation Rescript, and we should also acknowledge their current work in delivering support to the Scottish Government in driving ambulances and assisting the NHS in Scotland. We should pay tribute to how they support our national resilience on health, day in and day out.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford rightly drew attention to the international context. Given the remarkable situation on the Ukraine border, we should acknowledge the central importance of the reserves in our defence capability: we see their remarkable range of expertise and professionalism as something that we can readily call upon, and something that is intrinsically valuable. It is part of our contribution to NATO, and it is something that we rightly appreciate. I hope that, despite the criticisms raised, my hon. Friend feels—this is at the heart of our doctrine outlined in Future Soldier, to which he alluded, and at the heart of the integrated review—that our Army Reserve retains a central role in our defence proposition.
Let me now turn to some of my hon. Friend’s specific challenges. The 27,100 figure that he quoted relates only to the Army; it does not include 1,500 reservists in other parts of Defence, and the 300 who are undergoing training. If we look at the numbers in the round, we see that the story is quite positive. Those figures do not illustrate a depreciation in the strength of the Army Reserve, which is currently 26,230. Moreover, restructuring will give it the opportunity to shape itself correctly to enable us to deliver the most effective outcome. This is not just about having a very large establishment; it is about having a very high level—or a higher level—of availability and deployability, which the Future Soldier programme will seek to deliver.
Jim Shannon
The Minister has responded very positively to questions that I have asked in the House about recruitment in Northern Ireland, but, if he does not mind, I will ask him a direct question now. Figures that I have received about the proposed restructuring of the Army reserve medical units in Northern Ireland show a 10% reduction. Can the Minister confirm that that will not be the case?
Leo Docherty
I do not know the answer on that specific unit in Northern Ireland, but I will take that away and write to the hon. Gentleman.
Returning to the point about deployability, what we are seeking to achieve is a more potent and deployable reserve that can help us to respond to the threats we face. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk referred repeatedly to Future Soldier. Although that reduces the structure of a large proportion of Army Reserve units, it does not do so to a size that impacts the overall strength of the Army Reserve. Through the work of the integrated review, we have sought to match the force to the threats and address the historical imbalance in the structure of the Army Reserve by standardising sub-unit numbers, which brings greater coherence. Our units now have a common structure based on whether they have three or four sub-units. By maintaining all our combat units, we have maintained the best possible geographical spread to assist with the increased role in homeland resilience.
The Future Soldier reserve structure places a warfighting demand on combat units for companies, squadrons, platoons and troops to augment regular units. My hon. Friend’s central proposition was that augmentation is a bad thing, but in terms of agility and providing best impact, my judgment, through operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that a very powerful operational outcome was delivered by that system of augmentation, which, on balance, I think is a good thing.
Mr Bacon
On that point, the concern is that if there are no genuine command roles for junior reserve officers, the Minister will devastate the future recruitment for junior officers. They will increasingly understand that they will not have that opportunity if augmentation is all there is. I am not saying that augmentation is always a bad thing, but if the story gets abroad that it is the only thing and that junior reserve officers will not have command roles, we will not have junior reserve officers.
On the numbers, I would like to question the Minister a little further. He mentioned the 27,100 figure and then said there would be 1,500 in addition, taking it up to 28,600, and a further 300 taking it to 28,900. That is still significantly lower than the current establishment, which is 30,100, plus a further 3,000 on phase one training. That does sound to me like a diminution, although I thought I heard him say that it was not a diminution. Can he clarify that?
Leo Docherty
The 27,100 does not include 1,500 Army reserves who are in other tri-service units. It also does not take into account the 3,000 who are undergoing phase one training. Taken in the round, that gets us north of 31,000, which, overall, is very similar to where we are now. I therefore regard that as not a diminution of strength. It is also a case of looking at the deployability rate. We are seeking to drive up availability and deployability, which I think is currently at 60%. Let us drive that up. But I would rather have a higher rate of deployability, which is how we get a better outcome and better lethality from our reserves, than a larger establishment with lower rates of deployability. My hon. Friend will know that traditionally availability and deployability, judged by those who receive their bounty across Territorial or Army Reserve units, has been extremely low and that is something we seek to drive relentlessly upwards.
Mr Francois
Churchill called the Territorials “twice the citizen”, because after a hard day’s work they go home, eat something quickly and dash out for training. When the Minister receives submissions asking him to close Army Reserve centres—I know that, as a Minister, he instinctively understands these things—will he look very carefully before signing them off? If we make the distance unrealistic to, after a hard day’s work, get to the training centre, do the training and then get home, we will lose lots of good-quality people. Does he promise he will bear that in mind before he initials any submissions?
Leo Docherty
I do, and I am grateful for that comment. I will come back to what my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk was saying about that earlier. Proximity of training opportunities is crucial. It is a function of geography, and we take it seriously.
Let me return to what my hon. Friend was saying about opportunities for command for young reserve officers. Establishment laydown notwithstanding, the range of opportunity that the integrated review, the defence Command Paper and Future Soldier bring to young officers, and enlisted servicemen and women, are manifold and extremely exciting. We are entering an era in which we are seeking to be deployed on a wider and more sustained basis right across the world. The offer that we make in terms of operational experience and opportunity at every level, including sub-unit command at a junior level, is extremely exciting. That is the feedback that I get from the reserve soldiers I meet.
Jim Shannon
The Minister has been very responsive to our concerns. He has referred to deployability a couple of times. What will be the impact on deployability if there are 10% reductions in Northern Ireland? It is very important to us to have a Territorial Army—a reserve force—that can actually respond, and I think the Minister wants that. Let us air that issue of deployability for Northern Ireland.
Leo Docherty
I share the hon. Gentleman’s sincere interest in the issue. I will write to him, relaying some information about future establishment strength and current deployability judged on bounty. That will be interesting for me, and I look forward to sharing that information with him.
Adam Holloway
Does the Minister believe that the new structure, in which each infantry company has lost the critical mass for training—barely 80 men—will attract good-quality officers to improve their attendance?
Leo Docherty
I think good people will principally be encouraged to join by the prospect of serving in exciting overseas operations. Look at the opportunities that exist in Kenya, Oman and right across the middle east in a more sustained fashion. The offer that we make—“If you join, you will have the prospect of serving”—is very exciting and should not be underestimated.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk make a good point about officer training corps. Importantly, he talked about estates. I reaffirm our interest, concern and sincere belief that training needs to be proximate to the people who are enjoying those opportunities. The Minister for Defence Procurement, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), takes that very seriously when he is making judgments about the estate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk asked when we would publish the RFCA 2021 report. That will be in due course, but we note his interest sincerely. I am grateful to have answered the debate tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
7.33 pm
House adjourned.
Draft Passenger, Crew and Service Information (Civil Penalties) (Amendment) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing, and to wear masks when they are not speaking. I call the Minister.
The Minister for Security and Borders (Damian Hinds)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Passenger, Crew and Service Information (Civil Penalties) (Amendment) Regulations 2022.
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for being here, and welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Halifax, in particular. I look forward to our working together on matters of national security, and of course being scrutinised and held to account by her on behalf of the official Opposition.
The regulations make two amendments to the Passenger, Crew and Service Information (Civil Penalties) Regulations 2015. First, they delete a sunset clause which would otherwise mean that the 2015 regulations ceased to have effect from the 31 March. Secondly, they extend the scope of the 2015 regulations to include channel tunnel rail operators.
All carriers operating scheduled services to and from the UK are required to provide complete, accurate and timely passenger, crew and service information to the Home Office. Those requirements are made in accordance with paragraphs 27 and 27B of schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971. The same requirements may be made by a constable under section 32 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.
The information, known as advance passenger information and passenger name record data, forms a key component of the United Kingdom’s border security arrangements. Processing of these data allows Border Force and police to carry out border control checks before individuals depart from the UK, before individuals are able to depart to the UK, and before they arrive in the UK. People wanted by police can be apprehended before leaving, while individuals who pose a security or other threat to the UK may be prevented from travelling here, through the no fly scheme, or detected upon arrival in the UK. The same capability enables the effective targeting of individuals carrying illegal drugs and criminal cash, and the disruption of organised immigration crime using scheduled flights.
The 2015 regulations introduced a civil penalty regime whereby the Secretary of State may require a carrier to pay a penalty if the carrier fails to comply with these requirements; the maximum penalty is £10,000 for each breach. Before the introduction of the civil penalty regime, there was only a criminal offence under section 27 of the Immigration Act 1971, with a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment. That criminal penalty remains in place, as it should for the most serious failure to comply with the requirements. The civil penalty was introduced because of the challenge of successfully prosecuting overseas operators in particular for failing to comply with a requirement to provide passenger, crew or service information where that information was being provided from the operators’ systems overseas.
In practice, the approach to civil penalties has been, and continues to be, one of collaborative engagement. To date, no carrier has needed to be given a penalty notice under the 2015 regulations. There have been several instances where the civil penalty regime has been invoked, formal enforcement action for non-compliance has been initiated, and formal notices of potential liability given, but so far, in all cases, that has been sufficient to secure carriers’ compliance, meaning penalties have not been required.
Removing the sunset clause will also preserve the deterrent effect of the civil penalty regime which, alongside the passenger, crew and service information requirements, is a permanent and ongoing element of the UK’s border security arrangements. Extending the civil penalty regime to Channel Tunnel rail operators ensures parity in the application of both criminal and civil penalties to all carriers operating scheduled international routes and required to provide this information.
The amendment maintains the necessary deterrent to help ensure operators continue to meet their obligations to provide complete, accurate and timely information about individuals intending to travel to and from this country, the processing of which is a key component of our border security arrangements.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I thank the Minister for his explanation and his warm welcome to me in this post. As this is our first exchange, I will resist the urge to detain him all day with a barrage of questions. The Committee will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to speak for long. The Minister has outlined the purpose of this statutory instrument, so I will not repeat it.
The Opposition agree that this technical change to prevent the powers the Government currently have in relation to passenger, crew and service information from expiring on 31 March, in line with the seven-year sunset clause. The instrument is proportionate, reasonable and in the national interest.
I was reassured by the explanatory notes and the Minister’s statement just now that, to date, no penalties have had to be enforced. I hope that reflects the recognition by all involved that the passenger, crew and service information required is an important part of our efforts to keep this country safe.
In the same policy space, I will write to the Minister asking a series of questions about this week’s news that officers of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary will be redeployed to assist with security on British ferries and other passenger ships. As those questions are outside the scope of the draft regulations before us today, I will follow up in writing.
We will not divide the Committee today, Mr Twigg.
Damian Hinds
Again, I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their presence here today and for, I hope, their support for the regulations, which will ensure the continued provision of complete, accurate and timely information about individuals travelling to and from the UK, whether by air, rail or sea. I look forward to the hon. Lady’s letter.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Justice
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
James Cartlidge
The shadow Work and Pensions Minister asked for clarity on the issues around the ceiling breaches and so on. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made clear in his opening speech, no member will see a reduction in their benefits as a result of the 2016 valuations. I hope that provides some reassurance to the shadow Minister. UK asset resolution schemes currently pay out benefits of about £530 million per annum; this is a cost the Government already bear. The policy creates a more efficient situation for paying these pensions and ensuring the current schemes will have a stable benefit.
[Official Report, 5 January 2022, Vol. 706, c. 112.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge).
An error has been identified in my response to the debate on Second Reading of the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [Lords].
The correct information should have been:
James Cartlidge
The shadow Work and Pensions Minister asked for clarity on the issues around the ceiling breaches and so on. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made clear in his opening speech, no member will see a reduction in their benefits as a result of the 2016 valuations. I hope that provides some reassurance to the shadow Minister. UK asset resolution schemes currently have total pension liabilities of around £1.5 billion; this is a cost the Government already bear. The policy creates a more efficient situation for paying these pensions and ensuring the current schemes will have a stable benefit.
Petition
Legal protections of cats
Pension Schemes (Conversion of Guaranteed Minimum Pensions) Bill (Morning sitting)
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Pension Schemes (Conversion of Guaranteed Minimum Pensions) Act 2022 View all Pension Schemes (Conversion of Guaranteed Minimum Pensions) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
My selection of grouping for today’s sitting is available online and in the room. No amendments were tabled. We will have a single debate covering all three clauses of the Bill. The formal decisions on the clauses will be taken without further debate at the end.
Clause 1
Conversion of guaranteed minimum pensions
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I am grateful to you and to Committee members for joining me today to look at the detail of this legislation, which, as I said on Second Reading, is very technical in appearance but has a clear and simple purpose.
The Bill will help occupational pension schemes to convert guaranteed minimum pensions, at the same time correcting the basic issue of men and women being treated differently in those schemes because of the impact of having a guaranteed minimum pension. This will ensure that people do not receive less pension income than they would have received had they been of the opposite sex. In other words, the Bill will help schemes to correct a situation that has been judged since 1990 to be fundamentally unfair.
On Second Reading, I was delighted to hear the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham, and the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) voice their support for the Bill. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said,
“We should be doing everything possible to help the pensions industry to fulfil what are now its legal duties to deliver GMP equalisation, and that includes supporting the Bill.”—[Official Report, 26 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 622.]
The Minister helpfully gave a brief history of guaranteed minimum pensions in his speech on Second Reading, but because of the technical nature of the Bill, it is necessary to give some background today.
The state pension used to be made up of two parts: the flat rate basic state pension and the earnings-related additional state pension. However, as many employees were already members of occupational pension schemes provided by their employer, building up an earnings-related additional state pension as well as an occupational pension was seen to be dual provision, so from April 1978 to April 1997, legislation allowed employers sponsoring a salary-related occupational pension scheme to contract out their pension scheme from the earnings-related additional state pension; in return, the scheme was obliged to pay a guaranteed minimum pension to its members. The intention was that the GMP would be broadly equivalent in value to the additional state pension forgone. In a contracted-out scheme, because the scheme was paying the equivalent of the additional state pension, both the employer and the contracted-out pension scheme members paid lower national insurance contributions.
The GMP rules are set out in legislation. GMPs include important rights to survivor benefits, which I will touch on later. However, the way that GMPs work means that men and women in a scheme with the same pay and service history can end up receiving different amounts of GMP. That is obviously not right and needs to be corrected. It is not even as simple as women losing out on GMPs compared with men. Because the rules around GMPs are very complicated, both men and women can lose out.
The requirement to provide equal pensions for men and women in relation to pension benefits accrued since 17 May 1990 is set out in UK legislation—currently through the Equality Act 2010—and has been as far back as 1995 through section 62 of the Pensions Act 1995. Occupational pension schemes with GMPs are therefore required to equalise people’s pensions to correct for the effect of unequal GMPs for pensions accrued since 17 May 1990. That was confirmed by the 2018 judgment of the High Court in the Lloyds Banking Group Pensions Trustees Ltd case. However, as anyone who has had any involvement with this aspect of occupational pension schemes can tell you, equalising pensions to correct for the effects of differences in GMPs is not a simple process.
The Department for Work and Pensions worked closely with representatives from the pensions industry to develop user guidance on a methodology for equalisation, which was published in 2019. The methodology set out in the guidance involves converting the guaranteed minimum pension into other pension benefits that are not bound by the same complex rules as guaranteed minimum pensions. A person’s overall pension income from their occupational pension scheme can then be more easily corrected for the effect of the differences in retirement income for men and women that the complex guaranteed minimum pensions rules produce. The methodology uses what is known as GMP conversion, or the conversion of guaranteed minimum pensions. The law around conversion of GMPs is set out in the Pension Schemes Act 1993.
As ever with pensions, things are rarely straightforward, and true to type this aspect of pensions legislation is not simple. The pensions industry has long expressed concern that the conversion provisions in the 1993 Act contain uncertainties that could expose occupational pension schemes to legal risks if it is used to correct members’ pensions for the differences caused by the complex rules around guaranteed minimum pensions. Because it is about people’s pension income, it is very important that occupational pension schemes have the clarity they need if they are to be able to use GMP conversion to meet their legal requirement to equalise. Clause 1 clarifies and amends the conversion provisions in the 1993 Act to ensure that pension schemes have the clarity they need to use these provisions. It makes consequential amendments to other pensions legislation.
The pensions industry has expressed concern about certain areas of the guaranteed minimum pension conversion legislation. First, the industry is concerned that conversion legislation is unclear as to whether and how conversion applies to survivor benefits. Survivor benefits are extremely important to many people and are a key part of the concept of the guaranteed minimum pension. If a person has a guaranteed minimum pension, after their death a portion of that pension must be paid to their widow, widower or surviving civil partner. It is often a crucial source of income for someone who has been bereaved, and many people greatly value the knowledge that their surviving spouse or civil partner will receive some pension income in the event that they pass away. Providing financial security for those we leave behind is important to many of us.
Less emotive, but equally important, the pension industry is concerned that the conversion legislation does not make it clear what to do in circumstances where the identity of the sponsoring employer is not clear. The legislation requires an occupational pension scheme’s sponsoring employer to give its consent before the scheme converts guaranteed minimum pensions into other scheme benefits. However, the existing legislation does not cover some increasingly common employer circumstances. For example, if there were multiple sponsoring employers in the same pension scheme and one had ceased to exist, the scheme would have no means of getting the consent of all the sponsoring employers. It is unclear what the legislation requires in such cases.
Finally, the 1993 legislation requires occupational pension schemes to notify Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that they have carried out a conversion exercise. However, the introduction of the new state pension means that HMRC does not need to be informed about GMP conversion, because the new state pension no longer contains any kind of contracted-out provisions. That may seem trivial compared with survivor benefits providing a pension income to a person’s survivor, but it results in a lot of unnecessary paperwork for both occupational pension schemes and HMRC.
Clause 1 clarifies the legislation to address these concerns. In subsections (2) to (4), it clarifies both the application of GMP conversion to GMPs paid to a member’s spouse or civil partner, and how survivor benefits must work once an earner’s GMPs have been converted. The clause makes it clear that the GMP conversion legislation can be applied to persons who are survivors at the time of the conversion as well as to the actual earners, and ensures the legislation is consistent in how it refers to that.
Subsection (4) removes the detailed and arguably unclear text in the 1993 Act about what survivor benefits following GMP conversion must look like. Instead, subsection (3)(c) contains a power to set out in regulations the conditions that must be met in relation to survivor benefits following GMP conversion. That means that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is being given the power to set out in regulations conditions governing how, when a member’s GMP has been converted, the converted pension must provide for survivor benefits to be paid to a deceased member’s widow, widower or surviving civil partner. That is appropriate because these issues are very technical and detailed. It is obviously extremely important when dealing with something as complex and emotive as the calculation and payment of survivor benefits from former GMPs now converted into other scheme benefits that the issues are considered in detail. The regulations will be able to set out a clear framework for the provision of survivor benefits after the conversion has taken place.
The other great advantage of regulations, of course, is that the Government can hold a full consultation on draft regulations before they are laid before the House. That will ensure that scheme members, scheme trustees, scheme administrators and anyone else with an interest in GMP conversion and/or the survivor benefits to be provided—many people in the UK, I am sure—can comment on, review and suggest changes to the draft regulations before they are finalised. As the content of the regulations will obviously be a matter for the Government, I hope that the Minister will discuss that further as and when he speaks in support of the Bill.
Subsection (5)(a) removes the reference to “The employer” where the 1993 Act requires
“The employer…to consent to the GMP conversion”.
As I said, this is to resolve the currently unsolvable situation that schemes can find themselves in whereby they want to convert GMPs and then equalise people’s pensions to ensure that everyone gets the pension income they are entitled to, but they find themselves unable to do so, for example because one of the sponsoring employers has ceased to exist or it is not clear whose consent is required.
Such problems are not particularly unusual for occupational pension schemes. Pension schemes have very long lifespans, and it is not difficult to see how a scheme set up in the 1980s may no longer be sponsored by the same employer. Subsection (5)(a) therefore replaces the term “The employer” with
“Each relevant person (if any)”.
Clause 1 then gives the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions the power to set conditions in regulations in order to identify “relevant persons”. Again, I expect that the regulations will be technical and detailed, so that they give more clarity than the existing primary legislation. Making such technical and detailed provisions in regulations is quite normal in occupational pensions legislation. As I have already explained, it is very important to ensure that those whose consent is required can be identified. By proposing to give the Government this power, I am holding them to consult on the conditions that will apply to identify “relevant persons”. It is important that the affected members, trustees, administrators and, of course, employers themselves are able to comment on and make suggestions about the Government’s proposed conditions before they are laid before the House.
Clause 1(5)(d) removes the requirement for pension schemes to notify HMRC when they carry out a GMP conversion exercise. As I said, that information is no longer needed by HMRC. It costs schemes time and money to notify HMRC, it costs HMRC time and money to process the notifications, and there is no need beyond the current requirement in the 1993 Act for any of that time and money to be spent.
In addition, subsections (6) to (12) make some consequential amendments to the Pension Schemes Act 1993, the Pensions Act 2007, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 and the Pension Schemes Act 2015 to take account of the changes I have described.
The hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) said on Second Reading that the Bill is “very technical”. I hope my speeches then and now have clarified what the very complex-looking clause 1 actually does.
Clause 2 replicates clause 1 but for the parallel Northern Ireland legislation. It does everything clause 1 does, but for occupational pension schemes in Northern Ireland. To be strictly accurate, I should say that clause 2 does not quite do everything clause 1 does, as it does not contain amendments equivalent to those made in clause 1(11) and (12) to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 or the Pension Schemes Act 2015. That is because they are consequential, tidying-up amendments. Clause 1(11) amends a provision that is in primary legislation for England, Wales and Scotland, but in secondary legislation for Northern Ireland, so any equivalent amendment for Northern Ireland would also be made in secondary legislation; and subsection (12) refers to legislation that extends a provision for England and Wales to Scotland, so is not relevant to Northern Ireland.
Rather than going through the entire clause again, I should perhaps explain why clause 2 is concerned with Northern Ireland. As hon. Members may know, private pension legislation is a devolved matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly. However, the convention is that the Northern Ireland Assembly makes pension legislation that mirrors the law in England, Wales and Scotland. It would therefore seem entirely sensible to ensure that pension schemes do not have to operate two different systems depending on whether someone is in Belfast, Birmingham, Bannockburn or Bangor. On this occasion, because of time pressures, the Northern Ireland Executive asked for Northern Ireland to be included in the Bill by amending the relevant parts of Northern Ireland’s pensions legislation. The Northern Ireland Assembly has passed a legislative consent motion agreeing that the UK Parliament can legislate on the matters contained in clause 2.
Clause 3 is known as a “back of the Bill clause”. It sets out vital but standard information on how clauses 1 and 2 are to be brought into legal effect. It also sets out the territorial extent of each clause. Importantly, the cluse also enables the Secretary of State to make transitional or saving provision in regulations in connection with the coming into force of clause 1, and for the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland to make transitional or saving provision by order in connection with the coming into force of clause 2. This will enable provision to be made about pension schemes that have already used the conversion legislation or are in the process of doing so when the amendments come into force, to ensure the amendments do not affect what has already been done under the current legislation.
Successive UK Governments since 1990 have made it clear that occupational pension schemes need to equalise pensions to correct for these effects of guaranteed minimum pensions. It seems wrong that people can lose out on even a small amount of pension income purely because of those differences. That is why I am extremely pleased and proud that my Bill will help schemes which want to use GMP conversion to correct for the effects of this issue. I am delighted by the cross-party support I have received again today.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West for her work on this important Bill. As has been said, the Bill has potential repercussions for millions of people’s pensions. We support the measures to simplify a complicated system and make it much fairer.
I will use my time today to ask a series of questions, which I hope the Minister will address. In particular, I want to ask him about communication, consultation, the requirement to notify HMRC and the wider imbalances between men’s and women’s pensions.
On communication, I have a fundamental question. How have the changes been communicated to those affected? Obviously, we are dealing with a large number of people, going back to the cohort who have been saving for their pensions from 1978. I am afraid that the Government do not have a good track record of communicating changes to the state pension. According to many commentators, previous changes to the pension age were poorly communicated, and more recently the Government have been criticised for their work on sorting out the state pension underpayment crisis. I realise that the Minister is trying to address that. The public deserve reassurance on those issues.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West for the hard work she has put in to bring this private Member’s Bill to this stage. Introducing a private Member’s Bill is never easy. It is sometimes arcane and convoluted, but her Bill is genuinely making a fundamental difference to this country and to many of our constituents, and it applies across this country.
As I indicated on Second Reading—colleagues should take it as read that I repeat the entirety of my long speech on Second Reading, albeit I will not do so today—this is a small, discrete but very important piece of legislation and the Government definitely support it. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West outlined the details of the Bill, but I will briefly touch on a couple of key points that I hope will answer some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Reading East.
Clause 1 ensures that occupational pension schemes in England, Wales and Scotland have greater clarity about how to convert GMPs into other scheme benefits, which gives an opportunity to equalise their members’ pensions to correct for the unequal effect of GMPs. Colleagues will understand that Parliament moves quite slowly in some respects, but this problem dates back to 1978 and the last days of the Callaghan Government, so our resolving it is overdue. Clause 2 would achieve the same for occupational pension schemes in Northern Ireland.
Correcting for the unequal effects of GMP is necessary, fair and right. It is important that pension schemes that choose to equalise as part of a conversion exercise are able to do so as easily as possible and are confident that the requirements they are complying with are robust and unambiguous. That is what the Bill delivers.
Clause 1 makes it clear that the conversion legislation can be applied to a person who is a survivor at the time of the conversion and ensures the legislation refers consistently to this group. It also provides the means to set conditions on the survivor benefits provided by the scheme following conversion of a member’s GMP. Those changes are important because survivor benefits provide a crucial source of income to widows, widowers and survivors in civil partnerships. For many people, the knowledge that their surviving spouse or civil partner will receive a portion of their pension is highly reassuring.
Let me be very clear: we will consult on those matters. There will be a full consultation among industry to which, obviously, opposition parties and all parts of industry can make representations; there will then follow regulations, which will be debated in this House.
Clause 1 also makes important changes to the existing legislation requiring the scheme’s sponsoring employers to consent before guaranteed minimum pensions are converted to other scheme benefits. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West outlined, the current legislation creates difficulties for some schemes—self-evidently so when, with the passage of time, an employer has ceased to exist. That is a significant problem. It will therefore help schemes if the legislation is amended, and we do so very much as a result of representation from schemes. Clause 1 therefore removes the requirement for the employer to consent to GMP conversion, and replaces it with a requirement for each relevant person to consent. That, with respect, is unquestionably the right way forward.
Finally, clause 1 also removes the need for pension schemes to inform HMRC when they carry out a conversion exercise. That is because the new state pension does not contain any kind of provision for contracting out, and HMRC no longer has any use for or interest in this information—indeed, it has been asking schemes not to send it in. The clause is, with respect, an excellent example of the simplification and reduction of needless bureaucracy in action—bureaucracy that otherwise would fall upon scheme members and HMRC, which is funded by taxpayers.
Clause 2 closely mirrors clause 1 to amend the law of Northern Ireland. I am devasted that the hon. Member for Strangford is not here to intervene on me, but I have raised this with him in the past and he is very supportive of the measures. It is certainly the case that these necessary changes should be made in one fell swoop across the United Kingdom. I am pleased to confirm that on 24 January the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a motion to consent to the inclusion of the provisions for Northern Ireland in the Bill.
The Bill is an excellent step towards helping pension schemes to confidently correct for the unequal effects of guaranteed minimum pensions. I suggest that the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton East has received support for her Bill in this House because it is clearly necessary.
The hon. Member for Reading East raised a number of particular points, and I will write to him with more detail. On gender inequality, he will understand that the Turner commission was set up under the Labour Government by Tony Blair specifically to address fundamental gender inequality. It resulted in the cross-party success story that is automatic enrolment, which has seen female private pensions saving go from approximately 35% in 2012 to well over 80% in 2019-20. The specific provisions on RAS—relief at source—are a matter for the Treasury, which I understand is consulting on and looking at them on an ongoing basis.
I repeat that these matters will all be consulted on in the appropriate way, and that there will be regulations that will be debated by the House in the usual way. It is unquestionably the case that this will be treated like a normal Act of Parliament, with all due representations.
I thank colleagues for the collaborative way in which they have addressed a long-standing problem that is technical but necessary to resolve, and that impacts so many of our constituents up and down the country.
Finally, I was asked whether the Bill means some people will lose money. The specific answer to that is no: no one will see their pension rights reduced when their pension is corrected for the effects of the rules around GMP. Pension schemes will correct for the effects of GMP rules only by increasing people’s pensions to the higher amount.
With that, I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West. I look forward to following the Bill through its remaining parliamentary stages in the other place and back in this place.
Margaret Ferrier
I thank all those who have contributed to this short, constructive debate and all Members who agreed to serve on the Committee. I also thank all those who contributed more widely to the small but incredibly important changes made by the Bill, and ask that everyone continues that cross-party support until we get the Bill over the line. I also thank the Minister for his support throughout, and I thank the hon. Member for Reading East.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 2 and 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
Westminster Hall
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Bees: Neonicotinoids
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Morning, ladies and gentlemen. May I, before we start, remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks when possible?
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government approval for the use of neonicotinoids and the impact on bees.
It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. First, I declare an interest, in that my family keep bees on our farm in north Cornwall. I am also a patron of Pollenize, which is a brilliant beekeeping community interest company in Plymouth, and I can tell Members that all the honey it produces is delicious.
I bloody love bees. Bees might be small creatures, but their contribution to nature and to food production is huge. Up to three quarters of crop species are pollinated by bees and other pollinators. Bees are a symbol of a healthy environment. Bees, whether honeybees or bumblebees, are iconic British species, too. They are a weathervane species, against which we can chart nature’s recovery or decline.
For me, bee health is non-negotiable. We are in the middle of a climate and ecological crisis. That means that we must not only act faster to cut carbon and do so fairly, creating green jobs; we must also protect nature, and that means taking difficult decisions to protect our natural world. We will never be nature positive if we dodge the difficult decisions or turn a blind eye to our role in the erosion of nature.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the legal requirements in the Environment Act 2021 to halt species loss by 2030 will not be worth the paper they are written on if, at the first hurdle, the Government actually fail and give a licence to something that their own scientific advisers are advising against?
Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Lady for summing up my entire speech in one pithy intervention. She is absolutely correct, and I will seek to explain why, using more words, over the next 10 minutes or so.
Bees are not only in more danger every year; they are also more important every year. According to the UN, the volume of agricultural production dependent on pollinators has increased globally by 300% in the past 50 years. The UN also found that greater pollinator density results in better crop yields, so it is also good for farmers. That is why this is such an important and urgent debate, because bee health in this country is not getting better; it is getting worse. Banning bee-killing pesticides will not on its own reverse the decline in bee populations, but if we cannot deal with this most apparent of ills, how will we deal with the hundreds of more difficult decisions that must follow in relation to protecting habitats and providing a guide to bee recovery?
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important and very well attended debate. Will he join me in thanking and congratulating the local authorities across this country, including Kent County Council, that have put together plans, such as Kent’s Plan Bee, to protect and enhance our bee populations and to do what they can to protect the natural environment across their counties?
Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I agree with what she says. Local government has a really significant role in nature restoration, and bee recovery in particular, because Ministers might be able to set the strategic framework, but it will be local government delivering that on the ground in all our communities. I commend Kent for the work that it is doing.
I am grateful to Buglife, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Wildlife Trusts nationally, and the Devon Wildlife Trust locally, for their help in preparing for this debate. The House of Commons Library has also been superb, producing a great briefing note. I am also grateful to hon. Members from all parties for stopping me so frequently over the past week or so to talk about bees and for asking me to mention their particular concerns in this debate. I hope that my speech will convey the strength of their feeling, on a cross-party basis.
I want to do three things. First, I want to make the case for the ban on bee-killing pesticides to be restored—no ifs or buts. Secondly, I want to challenge the Minister and the industry to do more to help sugar beet farmers, some of whom face financial losses and real difficulties because of aphids. Thirdly, I want to argue that in the middle of a climate and nature emergency, future authorisations of bee-killing pesticides must be subject to a parliamentary vote, rather than being quietly snuck out by Ministers.
Bee species and populations are in decline. Research suggests that a third of the UK bee population is thought to have vanished in the last 10 years, and since 1900 the UK has lost 13 out of 35 native bee species. Those are frightening figures, and the decline is continuing. However, I am concerned that, instead of taking meaningful action to protect our bees, the Government have chosen to temporarily lift the ban on Cruiser SB, a neonicotinoid pesticide that is banned under UK law except for certain emergency authorisations. That is not just a step in the wrong direction for our bees; it is a dramatic erosion of our steps towards being a net zero, nature-positive country.
One teaspoon of neonicotinoid is enough to kill 1.25 billion honeybees, equivalent to four lorry loads, according to Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex. We need more research on the true effects of neonicotinoids on bee populations—not just on every species but on the different types of bee within a population. In particular, beekeepers are reporting that, in areas where neonicotinoids have been used in the past, the behaviour of queens is different from that of worker bees, for instance. More research is needed.
This is not the first time that we have discussed bees. Indeed, I have discussed them many times with the Minister, who is in her place. On 16 December last year, she told the House of Commons that there is a
“growing weight of scientific evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees and other pollinators.”
I agree. The chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that neonic use must be kept to an “absolute minimum” to address bee decline. I agree. However, the Government have not stuck to those words in the actions that they have taken.
When we left the EU, the Government promised to follow the science on bee-killing pesticides. They said that their decisions about emergency authorisations would be guided by two expert bodies, the Health and Safety Executive and the expert committee on pesticides. On 6 September 2021, the Minister told the Commons:
“Decisions on pesticide authorisation are based on expert assessment by the Health and Safety Executive.”
Lord Goldsmith gave the same commitment, word for word, to the Lords on 27 September.
Those words, however, have not rung true in actions. In January last year, both expert bodies recommended that emergency authorisations for neonic bee-killing pesticides should not be given for sugar beets. The expert committee on pesticides said:
“The requirements for emergency authorisation have not been met.”
It said that the risk to bees and freshwater biodiversity outweighed the benefit to sugar beets. That is important. The Health and Safety Executive came to a similar conclusion.
DEFRA has therefore lifted a ban on neonics against the overwhelming advice of its own expert bodies, by which it said it would be guided. That suggests that the decision was a political one, not a scientific one.
I know that some people will look at donations from big sugar to the governing party, but I do not subscribe to that argument. I think that it is more simple than that: when given the option to take bee health more seriously, the Government chose not to. It is not a bigger conspiracy than that. They simply chose not to act to support bee health in the way that they could have done. That sets a dangerous precedent. Neonics are largely banned in this country, but that does not mean anything if the Government are willing to authorise emergency use in circumstances that, frankly, are not emergencies.
I turn now to my asks. First, we know that 12 other European countries have decided to authorise neonics this year, but it is slightly odd that such a hard Brexit Government now hide behind what Europe does. Indeed, the Prime Minister promised to deliver a green Brexit, and the former Environment Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), said in 2018 that Britain would demonstrate “global leadership” on environmental policy after Brexit. Why are we not leading when it comes to saving bees and other essential pollinators?
A commitment to support biodiversity must be delivered through action, not words or press releases. I want the ban on bee-killing pesticides restored and locked in. To do that, we need to look carefully at what alternatives are available to support sugar beet farmers.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Having secured the debate, my hon. Friend must be positively buzzing. I speak as a Mancunian—the bee, of course, being a historic symbol of Manchester. I now live in Frodsham, in my constituency, and the bee is also a symbol of Frodsham because the vicar of Frodsham, Rev. William Charles Cotton, was a beekeeper. I agree very much with my hon. Friend that the Government need to take control now and put deeds and actions, not just fine words, into play to save our bees and nature.
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—perhaps less so for his bee related joke, which I have managed to avoid in my remarks. He is right about the importance that bee populations have to local people, not just beekeepers. Bees are an iconic species—they are built into the fabric of our identity—and because of that, what happens to bees is important not just to scientists, beekeepers and honey lovers but to our entire country.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a great speech setting out this issue. Does he agree that our constituents are really concerned about this issue and do not understand the Government’s reasoning? As far as they are concerned, bees need to be protected, and that must include this issue. Can I also put a plug in for another reverend, Rev. Tom Jamieson in my constituency, who works with an organisation called North East Young Dads and Lads, which is building links and bonds through beekeeping?
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. I am conscious of the fact that, though a number of Members present are not on the speakers list and have not put in to speak, they are taking advantage of interventions to make speeches. Interventions are interventions.
Luke Pollard
I agree with my hon. Friend about how important bees are, but I also agree with her that people do not understand why this is happening. This emergency authorisation is important to the public. Sneaking it out does the Government no favours because it suggests that they do not have a strong argument in favour of its validity. If the case has not been made, I am afraid that the public will be left with only one conclusion, which is that the Government are simply not in favour of bee health, as I think the majority of the British public are.
I will now turn to sugar beet farmers in particular, nearly all of whom are located in the east of England. I want to make sure they are properly supported, because I do not doubt that they have had a difficult time in recent years owing to a number of issues affecting their crop. Sugar is a big business, and it is a high-value crop. British Sugar—one of the big sugar firms that dominate the market—recorded a £100 million profit in 2020. It is big business and I refuse to believe that this granulated money-making machine is unable to provide sugar beet farmers with a fairer deal to help and support them against crop failures. Indeed, the latest sugar contracts put in place over the past 12 months offer considerably more support to sugar beet farmers, a point that I will return to later.
I know that the Minister is keen to explore gene editing to make sugar beet more resistant. Although I am not a fan of the lack of proper regulation and oversight of gene editing that she proposes, I know that DEFRA is quite keen on it, and often cites sugar beet as an example of a target species for gene editing. The Government themselves have said that they expect the sugar beet industry to no longer rely on bee-killing neonicotinoids by 2023—next year—through the development of pest-resistant varieties and greater use of integrated pest management.
As a former lead for Labour on farming, I have spoken up for our farmers when Government policy on subsidy reform, labour or trade deals harms them, but I also feel we need to speak up for their environmental commitments, in particular the National Farmers Union’s hard-won plan to hit net zero by 2040. That is an ambitious policy that means changing the way in which farming works to be more sustainable, in terms of not just carbon but water use, soil health, chemicals and, in particular, nature recovery. We cannot have Ministers speaking of nature recovery on the one hand, while on the other greenlighting the use of bee-killing pesticides, whether as a spray or as a seed treatment, as they have in this case.
That brings me to my main ask of Ministers. I believe that the Government do not have the support of the public, the majority of beekeepers and farmers, or all their own MPs in authorising the use of bee-killing pesticides. As such, my proposal to the Minister is that future authorisations of bee-killing pesticides should be subject to a parliamentary vote, in which MPs would have a genuine opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of using neonicotinoids. I suspect that the Minister would insist on a hard three-line Conservative Whip on such a Bill. Sitting as I am next to the Labour Deputy Chief Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), I would not want to guess what we would do in that situation, but I do believe that MPs would think carefully about what to do. Saving the bees is such an important topic, but so is supporting our farmers, so MPs would consider that decision carefully, and the consequences of their votes would be carried by Members of Parliament with a responsibility to persuade and to explain and listen to their constituents. The climate and nature emergency is one of the defining issues of our time. Responding to it by making it worse should require a democratic mandate and robust parliamentary scrutiny, because we should be trying to resolve it and remove those problems.
I hope that the Minister will set out how she intends to invest in more robust scientific research to monitor the use of bee-killing pesticides by farmers and big sugar, as well as better protections against the need for it. What estimates has she made of how many bees and pollinators will be killed this year by authorisation of these pesticides? What is her plan for nature recovery in those areas where the neonicotinoid Cruiser SB will be used this year? What monitoring will be in place over the next five years to understand fully the impact on bee and pollinator populations, not just in the fields where the pesticide has been used on crops but, importantly, in hedgerows and areas around them? What steps will she take to prevent the active ingredient of the pesticide, as described by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust,
“leaching…from the crop into wildflowers in and around the field margins”?
Some of the protections that have been built into the derogation are welcome. Raising the expected aphid incident level from a projected 7% to 19% before permitting the use of a treated seed is a welcome measure, as is the 32-month ban—up from 22 months last year—on growing flowering crops in fields where treated sugar beet has been grown, but they do not go far enough to justify the use of the pesticides. Frankly, I do not want bee-killing pesticides ever to be used.
If the Minister’s argument is that they are to be used only in emergencies, I want to challenge the assumption that this is an emergency. I expect the Minister will claim that there is no alternative to the authorisation of neonicotinoids. I expect she will say that UK sugar supplies will plummet, sugar beet farmers will suffer hugely and that the nation would be forced to import more from abroad, from countries where neonicotinoids are used.
I want to refer DEFRA to its own modelling, which says that predicted losses from sugar beet this year would have been under £10 million, even if no neonicotinoids were used. That is assuming disease rates of more than double of those predicted last year. It also assumes that farmers would not have used alternative mitigation strategies, as we know many of them have. The Government have themselves said that they expect the sugar beet industry no longer to rely on bee-killing chemicals by next year, through the development of pest-resistant varieties and integrated pest management.
That is welcome but, if it is coming, it will not all come at once. We know that there are strategies that have been put in place this year. Is it really an emergency? I want to see sugar beet farmers supported, but I do not believe that the Government have done enough to demonstrate that this is an emergency. Indeed, the steps that the sugar beet industry—British Sugar and the growers—has put in place have helped the pain share, gain share.
The five tests that the Government use to define an emergency are woolly, and have been hidden away in assessments on the DEFRA website, rather than put in the public domain. That has done the Government no favours. That is why an annual parliamentary vote on the issue is important. We are in a climate and ecological emergency, but I do not believe we are in a sugar beet emergency. I support the farmers. Indeed, they are getting more support this year. That is why it is important that we put the priority correctly on bees and nature. I challenge the Minister to say that now is the time to update the national pollinator strategy, which runs until 2024. It needs updating sooner than 2024, and I would be grateful if the Minister could look carefully at bringing that forward, with a proper consultation on how more ambitious we can be to protect bees and pollinators.
I look forward to other contributions. We all love bees and we all want to back our farmers. The only question is how to do that. The issue is hugely symbolic, not just because bees matter but because it represents one of the first challenges that we have faced since the passing of the Environment Act—whether we can achieve a net zero, nature-positive future. Being nature positive means more than planting a few trees; it means taking tough decisions that may be unpopular with some, because the benefits to nature outweigh the costs to some businesses. If we fall at such an early hurdle, on a species as popular as bees, how will we ever take the necessary steps to realise a future where England’s green and pleasant lands are truly sustainable?
That is why we must take a stand against the use of bee-killing pesticides. I will also say this in political terms, and I make my intention clear. If the Government want to continue to use bee-killing pesticides, we must make it politically impossible for them to do so. We must ensure that the public know that this is an annual decision. MPs from all parties must be clear with their constituents on whether they support it. If we are to protect and save bees, we need to do more than tweet about it—although I do that a lot. We need to do more than say the words; we need to ensure there is action. We need an annual moment of action. If we do not have that, we will not secure the net-zero, nature-positive future. Let us save the bees. Our planet depends on it.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
There are at least 11 Members seeking to participate. There are only two Front-Bench winding-up speeches. By my reckoning, we have about 45 minutes. Do the maths. I am not going to put a time limit on speeches, but if you take more than four minutes, somebody is not going to get in. I call Sir Robert Goodwill.
Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for raising this topic. This is a debate we need to have, and we need to focus on the facts.
I should declare that I am a farmer, though not a sugar beet farmer. I am very fond of bees, not least because we grow field beans on our farm and we understand the role of pollinators. We should not dispute the fact that neonicotinoids are toxic to bees, although in a slightly more complex way than with other toxins—the behaviour of bees can be affected, which can result in hives failing to survive.
No farmer likes using pesticides; they are expensive and have an effect on the environment. In many crops, such as wheat, which can be affected by aphids, the farmer waits until a threshold of aphid attack is reached before using the sprays. A certain degree of predation can be coped with as the aphids feed on the plant and suck the sap. However, although winter barley can have an aphid attack in the growing season, it is also affected by a disease called barley yellow dwarf virus, which is spread by a virus vector. Farmers spray their barley crop in the autumn not because a threshold of aphids has been reached, but because they need to prevent the virus from being spread. The same situation occurs with sugar beet.
The sugar beet virus yellows is caused by three viruses—beet yellows virus, beet mild yellowing virus and beet chlorosis virus—and is spread by an aphid vector. It is a bit like mosquitoes spreading malaria—one bite is enough to infect the plant. Farmers need to protect the crop. In a bad year, the crop can be affected up to as much as 30% on the yield, which is sufficient to make it unviable to grow.
Sugar beet is a biennial crop. It does not flower in the first year. Using a seed dressing when planting the seed—we are not talking about spraying it over the crop and bees that are flying around being affected—renders the plant toxic at that critical stage so that if an aphid feeds on the plant, it dies and does not spread the virus still further. It is our old friend myzus persicae, the peach-potato aphid, that spreads the virus.
This is not a problem only in the UK. Ten European Union countries have applied for similar derogations. France has a derogation that runs until 2023. There are alternatives, but, as the French have said, none of them works well enough on their own compared with the seed treatment. Some may not be good for the environment either. For example, the virus overwinters on many flowering weeds. Many farmers might be discouraged from putting in flower margins around their fields because that could overwinter the virus, which could then be spread into the crop. As farmers, we want our flower margins and a wide diversity on the crop.
I believe that the derogation is sensible. The biennial nature of sugar beet means that we do not have bees feeding on the pollen and nectar on the sugar beet crop in the same way that they would on a crop such as field beans, which is an annual crop.
We have seen a massive decline in oilseed rape in this country because we have lost the same type of seed treatment that controls the cabbage stem flea beetle. It is not a virus vector, but at the very early stage, when the first two cotyledon leaves emerge, the cabbage stem flea beetle will decimate the crop. Many farmers have stopped growing oil seed rape. We are into the law of unintended consequences, because oilseed rape is a massive source of pollen and nectar for the very bees we want to encourage. We need to be very careful that we do not just go with emotion. We all love bees and want to protect them, but we need to ensure that we have a diversity of break crops. As part of our new environmental land management scheme, we want to have more margins, more wildflowers and more diversity, but if we lose our two main break crops in the east of England—sugar beet and oilseed rape—it could unfortunately result in the opposite happening.
Oilseed rape is drilled in mid-August, grows through the winter and does not flower until the following spring, when the residues are not sufficient—I think scientists would make this point—to cause problems for bees. We need to be very careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and it is sensible for the Government to allow a derogation, as 10 EU countries have done, to allow this to happen. I think that that will secure the viability of the UK sugar beet industry and not affect bees. It would be sensible to do more research as we put in place the derogations, which, by the way, are needed only if we have a mild winter and aphids over the winter. I would support that.
As I say, I am a great champion of bees, but many of the emails I get do not really take account of the science. We need to look at the science and the evidence, and I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will look at the science and realise that this is a proportionate change and will help the sugar beet industry in the UK. We can import sugar, and we can stop producing sugar in this country, but I think it is important that we do things in a way that is proportionate and that also does not undermine our bee populations.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing the debate.
I would like to make it clear that I have enormous sympathy for farmers, who have faced unprecedented challenges in recent years in responding to covid, Brexit and increasingly unpredictable extreme weather events, and I completely understand their determination to protect their crops and livelihoods. None the less, I am profoundly concerned about the Government’s emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB for 2022 to tackle the threat of yellow virus. Thiamethoxam is a banned substance for a reason, and this decision is a retrograde move. It is utterly at odds with the Government’s legal requirement to halt species loss by 2030, as set out in the Environment Act. With COP15, the global biodiversity summit, just months away, the Government should be leading from the front to protect and restore nature, not giving a green light to the use of deadly toxins.
Many Members have set out the overwhelming scientific evidence of the harm caused by these pesticides, and I would like to refer them back to December 2020, when I asked DEFRA what assessment had been made of the potential environmental effects of approving Cruiser SB neonic in 2021. As it transpires, the neonic was not used last year, because an especially cold winter led to a fall in aphid numbers. None the less, the then Minister’s reply assured me that the advice of the HSE and the expert committee on pesticides was being sought, and it implied that it would be respected. The Government’s subsequent and continued disregard for the evidence presented by the very experts they have appointed is, at best, mysterious and, at worst, utterly shameful.
I would also like to remind colleagues of the Environmental Audit Committee’s findings in its 2013 report, “Pollinators and Pesticides”. I sat on that Committee and still do, and I particularly recall this recommendation:
“Defra policy on pesticides must be evidence-based. Where the available scientific evidence is either incomplete or contradictory, Defra must apply the precautionary principle.”
The Government’s decision to approve the use of this neonic flies in the face of the evidence we do have, and it is not consistent with a precautionary approach.
The Government should be giving legal protection to bees and other pollinators. As it stands, pre-approval tests for pesticides focus only on the short-term effects on honeybees, ignoring the long-term effects of pesticides on other wild pollinators altogether—the bumblebees, beetles and moths on which we rely. An amendment to the Environment Act sought to rectify that omission but, sadly, did not win Government support. The Minister could right that wrong now and commit to make consideration of the long-term impacts of the UK’s pesticide use on pollinators a mandatory requirement for the assessment process. That would be an important first step towards embracing a new approach to farming and pest management that works in harmony with nature, not against it.
The Government should be investing in innovative and non-chemical alternatives to pest management, including better forecasting, crop rotation, natural predators and the use of resistant varieties, while at the same time supporting farmers to make the transition away from neonics. That could be done, for example, via the sustainable farming incentive in England and by supporting nature-friendly pest control.
In conclusion, I would like to quote from the Secretary of State’s reply to a cross-party letter that I co-ordinated last year, in which he assured me that
“emergency authorisations for pesticides are only granted in exceptional circumstances where diseases or pests cannot be controlled by any other reasonable means.”
What steps have the Government taken over the last 12 months to support farmers to invest in those other reasonable control measures? I would love to know the details of that. Will the Minister stop putting pollinators in persistent danger? Will she cancel the approval and instead spend the next 12 months ensuring that farmers can access non-chemical alternatives? Will she commit to a national action plan to end the use of pesticides, putting UK nature on a genuine path to recovery? We are all saying how much we like bees—we heard from the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) how much he likes bees—but unless we are prepared to take action to make meaningful change, those are just empty words. With a nature and environmental crisis coming down the line at us, we cannot afford to do that.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on bringing forward the debate. I had a rather lengthy speech prepared, but I will raise just a few points to allow others to contribute. However, please do not interpret my brevity as indicating a lack of passion on this issue.
First, it is not just bees that are affected by neonicotinoids; it is also moths and butterflies, which play an equally important role in natural habitats and the food supply by pollinating crops and wild plants. Secondly, since the Government agreed to the moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids, further studies have been published that confirm that neonics can be damaging to pollinators without being fatal. The chemicals may not necessarily result in death, but the impact on the nervous system and the brain can make it difficult for such insects to function, such as the queen bee. That allows the assertion to be made that these chemicals do not kill pollinators, but that is incorrect.
In addition to those unintended consequences, there are further reasons to ban the use of neonicotinoids, including the contamination of the environment and the use of alternatives. Research conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations reported that the persistence of neonics in soil and water is causing large-scale adverse effects on pollinators, and concluded by saying that the organisation is still discovering the harmful effects of neonics.
Research published by Jactel, Verheggen, Thiéry et al in 2019 determined that an effective alternative to neonics was available in 96% of the 2,968 case studies analysed. In 89%, neonics could be replaced with one non-chemical alternative, including micro-organisms, semi-chemicals or surface coating of seed. The relevance of that lies in the pests’ feeding habits. Leaf and flower feeders are easier to control with non-chemical methods, whereas wood and root feeders are more difficult to manage in the same way. The conclusion is that non-chemical alternatives to neonics do exist, but it will take Her Majesty’s Government to promote them through regulation and funding.
The justification for the application of a previous derogation in 2020 was that 25% of the national crop of sugar beet was lost, resulting in a loss of over £65 million for the growers and processors. However, in 2013, the Environmental Audit Committee, which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and I served on, published its “Pollinators and Pesticides” report, which made a very clear recommendation:
“Economic considerations should not form part of environmental risk management decision making, but rather should be a function of a distinct and transparent subsequent political process.”
That approach now appears to have been ignored.
For many years, people have said that DEFRA is not taking a sufficiently precautionary approach, so I appeal to the Minister today: please do not make this further evidence of that assertion true.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on bringing forward this important debate and raising awareness about decisions that are being made in secret—that is the feeling of many of my constituents who have written to me about bees. We may be an urban constituency, but we have beehives on the Granville Road allotments and on Albert Road. We have delicious honey from Southfields, which I have every year.
There is interest in this debate across the country for many reasons. I am concerned about this decision—not only because of the immediate impact it will have on the environment, but because of the way it is being made and what that shows about the attitude towards the Environment Act 2021. I was on the Bill Committee, and the ink is only just dry on the Act, but it is already being set aside. I am also concerned by the attitude towards expert advice. We should be following the science, but this decision has not done that.
In terms of the use of neonicotinoids, I am concerned about the damage to bees and aquatic life and about the damage from the run-off. I am concerned that support for farmers has not been sufficiently taken into account, because it does exist. I am concerned about abandoning the precautionary principle, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members. It is absolutely fundamental to our environmental decision making, but if it is not even being put in place now, after we have passed the Environment Act, what will happen to it in the future? We need to reassert the precautionary approach.
The Government’s case rests on two justifications. First, it rests on the financial impact on sugar beet farmers, and I absolutely sympathise with and understand their situation at the moment. However, the latest contracts between growers and British Sugar include an insurance scheme to offset possible losses due to the occurrence of the virus yellows. That needs to be considered in the context of the case for need, because the impact of the financial loss to sugar beet farmers has been taken into consideration.
Secondly, I am sure the Minister and the Government will say that there is a very limited use for this insecticide, that it will not be used on flowering plants and that there will be restrictions on what can be grown in contaminated soil for 32 months. Although I welcome those restrictions, I think the Government should go further. The UK expert committee on pesticides considered exactly this question and concluded that the environmental risk—especially of run-off into water and back into animals and other flowering plants in surrounding areas—is too great. When it met on 21 September 2021, the committee concluded that the requirements for emergency authorisation had not been met and that it cannot support the recommendation.
The committee was specifically asked to look into the risk to honeybees and any other additional measures that could be implemented to mitigate that risk. Instead of saying that there was a very low impact on honeybees—which there was, directly—and that additional measures could be implemented to mitigate that risk, the committee said no, it could not recommend that the ban be lifted. It said:
“There is new evidence regarding the risk from neonicotinoids globally which adds to the weight of evidence of adverse impact on honeybee behaviour and demonstrated negative impacts on bee colonies…Further evidence has been published on the occurrence of thiamethoxam in honey and of adverse effects on other bee species, and these effects should be considered in addition to chronic effects on honeybees…None of the suggested mitigation measures”,
which I am sure the Minister will be laying out, and which I have been given in response to questions,
“protected off-crop areas and, if the authorisation is granted, further consideration needs to be given to how this could impact on growers involved in agri-environmental schemes which involved planting flowering margins.”
The committee’s conclusion was that it is
“unable to support an emergency authorisation under Article 53 of Regulation 1107/2009”
because of the reasons laid out by the Health and Safety Executive,
“the expected off-crop environmental effects and the impact of grower contract changes on the trigger threshold for use.”
It is absolutely unacceptable that the Government say they will take into account expert panels, set up an expert panel, have the panel met in good time—at the same time as we are hosting COP26 and passing the Environment Act, which has the precautionary impact built in—and then disregard it straightaway.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points and an impassioned speech. It is important that we clearly state that the science has been set out and the panel has been spoken to, but that the Government are being not only not cautious but reckless in their dismissal of the panel’s views.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.
I could go on longer about the precautionary principle, but I do not have enough time. However, it was set out at the 1992 Rio conference on the environment, and it is absolutely essential that we consider it.
The impact on bees has been well documented. Neonicotinoids can damage the receptors to the insect’s nervous system, causing paralysis and affecting learning, feeding, foraging and reproduction, eventually killing the insect. What the public want is for us to save the bees, save our environment and increase biodiversity.
I will conclude with some questions to the Minister. Why did she disregard the advice of the expert panel? What is she doing to stop the effect of run-off if the ban is lifted and neonicotinoids are used? What support is she giving to enable sugar beet farmers to tackle virus yellows without the use of neonicotinoids, rather than coming back year by year asking to lift this ban? What research is she doing into the declining bee population in the UK, and how can we save bees instead of killing them? What research is being done on the effect of neonicotinoids on bees in particular and on the effect of lifting the ban on or around affected fields? When will the Government update the pollinator strategy? And can we have an annual vote on lifting any bans, so that we can absolutely be held to account for decisions we make that have such a big impact on the environment?
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I think we can all agree on three things: that bees are very important and we should protect them; that we have all eaten something containing sugar in the last 24 hours; and that the Government have to consider competing risks and balance them carefully. Given the accepted importance of bees, the Government have developed the pollinator strategy. Their new environmental land management schemes for farmers will encourage the growing of areas in which bees can find safe habitat, increase the number of other areas for habitat for bees, increase public awareness of the needs of bees and increase the understanding of health and disease in bees, so that we can manage those more effectively. I welcome all of that.
We also have to consider the importance of sugar. Sugar production is responsible for 9,500 jobs in the UK, many in my constituency. I should at this stage mention that my husband is a farmer, although this is the first time in 45 years that no sugar will be grown on the farm. There are also 7,000 businesses in the sugar supply chain, and 3 million tonnes of sugar is consumed in the UK every year. I appreciate that the Government are investing in trying to ensure that we have pest-resistant varieties, so that no chemicals will be needed because virus yellows will not be able to attack the sugar beet, but these are not available yet. We had an awful time in 2020, just two years ago. I remember being called by many constituents to look around their fields and seeing whole fields of crops that had turned yellow because of virus yellows. Farmers had spent many months growing and tending to those crops, only to find them failing.
The Government have to look at the various risks and ask what the alternative is. If our sugar crop fails, what do we have to do? We could import sugar beet from Belgium, France, Denmark, Spain or one of the other 12 European countries where sugar beet is grown and where they also use neonics, often without the restrictions that the Government have proposed to impose. I heard Members mention the effect on net zero. Let us think about the alternative—importing sugar cane from overseas. What about the deforestation? Most sugar beet is not irrigated; it is just fed by the rain, but sugar cane, because of where it is grown, usually has to be irrigated. That is a 60% water use saving. What about the food miles? We know that sugar grown in the UK travels an average of 28 miles to the factory to be processed into sugar. It travels many thousands of miles, and is a much greater use of carbon dioxide, if imported for many miles across the world. When making environmental judgments, we cannot take the moral high ground and simply export the harm overseas, because we all live on the same planet, and I am sure we agree that we all need to protect it.
What are the farmers’ alternatives if neonics are banned? Either not to grow sugar and to import it, or to use alternative, legal pesticides, which may be broader-spectrum, and potentially more harmful.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech that also mentions farmers. My constituency of Ynys Môn has a strong beekeeping community represented by the Anglesey Beekeepers Association. We have many local honey producers, including Anglesey Bees, Mêl Môn, Felin Honeybees run by Katie Hayward. Does my hon. Friend agree that our farmers are key and that any chemicals, including neonicotinoids, should be used correctly to protect the bee population?
Dr Johnson
Absolutely. We must remember that bees are very important to farmers, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) made clear. Farmers do not wish to use pesticides that they do not need. Equally, they do not wish to see their entire crop fail, nor do we want the alternative of importing crops from overseas, where worse pesticides might have been used.
The Government need to balance the risk, and I think they have done so very carefully. There needs to be a threshold for virus yellows predictions for the year. Indeed, there was a derogation last year, but the seed treatments were never used because the threshold of virus yellows disease was not reached. The application is a seed treatment, which means it is not sprayed on to a flowering crop, potentially landing on bees as they fly past. It is a treatment put on to the seeds, giving protection in the early growth phase. It is not permitted for flowering plants to be grown in that field for 32 months, thus providing additional protection for the crop.
On balance, it is important that we always take an evidence and science-based approach, looking at the potential risks and benefits. Science will ultimately resolve the problem by providing disease and pest-resistant varieties, but I am glad that in the meantime there has been a proportionate and pragmatic Government response.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing the debate.
The note that the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) ended on was interesting because the whole point of this debate is that the Government are not following the science. The expert committee on pesticides and the Health and Safety Executive have told the Government that the conditions for the use of these pesticides have not been met, and the Government have chosen to exploit a loophole and ignore the experts.
Those of us who were involved in the seemingly endless discussions on the Environment Act 2021, in pre-legislative scrutiny and Committees—at one point there seemed to be a Second Reading every other day—and on the Agriculture Act 2020, were always worried that the Government did not want to support the precautionary principle and did not want to see it embedded in law. That is why Labour Members tried to amend the Environment Act to give Parliament the power to scrutinise these decisions. The case has been made for that parliamentary scrutiny by several hon. Members today, but it was voted down by the Government.
We know how dangerous pesticides are to bees. I do not want to reiterate all the arguments, but we have heard that when exposed to neonicotinoids in low doses the bees’ immune systems are harmed, making them susceptible to disease. Neonicotinoids disrupt bees’ ability to navigate, forage and reproduce, and in high doses they cause paralysis and death. There is also research showing that pesticides become more dangerous when combined, including pesticides that are specifically marketed as safe for bees.
We have also heard why pollinators—as has been said, they include not only bees but flies, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths and bats—are so important. Some 75% of our crop species require pollination. Pollinators are crucial in fertilising plants and sustaining our food systems. In China they have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because pollinators have been nearly wiped out by pesticide use. That should serve as a warning to us. As we have heard, there has been a drastic decline in pollinators here, too, falling by over 50% between 1985 and 2005.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) mentioned agroecology’s approach to farming. Organisations such as the Soil Association, which is based in Bristol, have been highlighting the dangers of pesticides and promoting alternatives for years. They argue that if nature is properly harnessed to pollinate crops organically and to deal with pests, rather than relying on destructive pesticides that harm biodiversity, crop yields would be higher. Evidence has shown that margins with wildflowers for pollinators increase crop yield.
The sugar beet sector has said that there will no longer be a need for neonics by 2023 if integrated pest management approaches can be adopted instead. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, what are the Government doing to support that as an alternative to a reliance on pesticides?
It is not just pollinators that are at risk from the use of pesticides. Otters were nearly wiped out in the 1970s due to pesticide use. Thankfully, otter populations have recovered since those pesticides were banned, but they are still under threat from other so-called “forever chemicals”, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very well-informed speech, as always. There seems to be some doubt between Members as to where the balance of science lies. My hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson) have both said that the science does not back the Government’s position. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Kerry McCarthy
I agree. We have heard from the experts and they have said that the case has not been made. I know that the Government have been quite dismissive of experts in the past, but that is the case. What is the point of asking for expert opinion if the Government do not abide by it? I suspect that in her response, the Minister will tell us that the Environment Act 2021 commits us to reversing biodiversity decline by 2030. Perhaps she could tell us how allowing the use of neonicotinoids in pesticides will help that? The Minister may also point out how the Agriculture Act 2020 rewards farmers who try to increase biodiversity on their farms. However, we heard in yesterday’s debate in this Chamber that the Government are making a mess of introducing ELMS.
Later this year, the convention on biological diversity will meet in China; it is very unclear what the Government hope to achieve from the UK’s participation. Perhaps it would be an idea to go along, promote the precautionary principle, and pledge to ditch the pesticides, protect our pollinators and genuinely promote biodiversity.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Many in the farming community support nature recovery, and they understand that business as usual is no longer acceptable. In striking that balance, they need the support of Government to help them work towards nature recovery. My parents-in-law used to have bees—at one point they had four hives. The bees were very much part of the family; they lived at the end of the garden to protect them from our children’s ball games. I have come to know these wonderful and highly civilised creatures, that work incredibly hard on our behalf. We should put a very high value on them. I know how vulnerable they are to human interference.
The use on crops of pesticides containing neonicotinoids has an extremely damaging effect on the mobility of bees, and their use was banned by the EU in 2018. The Government originally agreed and promised that they would reintroduce them only when the scientific evidence changed. There has been no new evidence, but the use of pesticides has been allowed again. The Government should make the protection of our wildlife and the environment a priority, rather than going back on their word. The Government are using Brexit not, as they would like us to believe, to the advantage of people and the environment, but the opposite. They are reversing important decisions that were made for the protection of the environment.
Many organisations and constituents in Bath have reached out to me with great concerns over this issue, and the lack of consideration behind it. As we have heard, the expert committee on pesticides have warned how damaging neonicotinoids are for bees and aquatic life, but the Government have chosen to ignore them. That is not acceptable. In April 2021, I asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether the Government encouraged the use of alternatives to neonicotinoids; the answer I received was that the Government were completely committed to reducing the use of pesticides. However, in the same debate, 10 minutes later, the Secretary of State said that until a suitable alternative to neonicotinoids was found, the Government would continue to grant dispensations for the use of them. There we have it—words of woolly aspiration, but when it comes to the crunch the Government actively support what I would call the gradual extinction of the UK’s bee population.
The long-term harmful effects of the Government’s careless attitude will be felt by all of us as it has huge implications for our food supplies. It is paramount that this Government wake up and impose much tighter restrictions on the use of neonicotinoids, rather than standing by and being complicit in the degradation of our wildlife, the quality of our environment and the long-term security of our food supplies.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Sir Roger.
As we have heard loud and clear, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) loves bees. I congratulate him on securing this debate and on the passionate, knowledgeable and eloquent case that he made on their behalf. Bees need protection. In the last half-century, half of Britain’s bee, butterfly and moth species have declined; in the last 30 years, three bumblebee species have become extinct; and right now, almost one in 10 species of wild bee face extinction. This situation cannot continue.
Bees are our friends. Almost a third of the food that we eat relies on pollination, mainly by bees. That work—pollinating crops—by these notoriously industrious insects is worth millions of pounds each year. If we did not have wild pollinators to do that vital work for us, it would cost around £1.8 billion each year to replace them.
We need to speak up for our bees because we need them. They are not only essential for our farming system but ensure the diversity of our wild plants, and they also have a vital role in sustaining the natural habitats that we know and love. As my constituent Hilary told me when she asked me to attend today:
“This matter affects all our lives.”
Many of my constituents worry about the ecological emergency that we face. They wanted me to speak up to protect our bees and to oppose the Government plans that threaten the future of bees. My constituent Judith tells me:
“I have a wildlife garden and I have noticed the stark decline in the number of bees in recent years.”
She is right to be concerned. We cannot afford to put our bee populations at additional risk.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Would my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Flourish at Ford Way community gardening project in Upton, in my constituency, which does fantastic work through bee-friendly gardening, keeping hives and producing fantastic honey? Does she share the concern of my constituents, who have drawn attention to research by Professor David Goulson, an academic and author, who has warned that just a single teaspoon of this type of chemical is enough to kill 1.25 billion honeybees—equivalent to four lorryloads?
Lilian Greenwood
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; she made a very important and valuable point.
As many hon. Members have said, bees are already under threat as a direct result of the way we live and the way we farm and use land, including the use of pesticides and particularly neonicotinoids. Although we have known for many years that neonicotinoids have a harmful effect on bees and other pollinators, recent studies have only confirmed and strengthened the evidence. As the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN has said, there is a consensus about the need to restrict the use of these chemicals.
As an EU member, the UK was part of creating a strict regime to regulate the use of these pesticides. An almost total ban on their use was put in place in 2018, because of the damage that they cause to bees. The then Environment Secretary—the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove)—said that the Government supported that move, because we could not
“afford to put our pollinator populations at risk.”
Those protective regulations are still part of retained law in Great Britain, but now the Government are authorising the use of a bee-killing pesticide. That is clearly a betrayal of promises given during debates on the Environment Act 2021, when we were assured that the Government would only strengthen the protection of nature. My constituent Stewart worries that the Government want to rescind that protection to prove that the UK has more freedom after Brexit. I am sure that he is wrong and I am certain that nobody voted for the freedom to kill bees.
Of course, the Government themselves claim that a benefit of Brexit is
“halting the decline in nature”
and
“strengthening our environmental regulation”.
However, for those words to mean something, we cannot allow the use of neonicotinoids, because that is not consistent with them.
Of course, UK farmers need our support. Living in Nottinghamshire, I understand the importance of sugar beet production. However, we cannot afford to take this risk with our precious pollinators, ignoring the Government’s own scientific advice, especially when the Environment Secretary himself has admitted that it is not possible to
“rule out completely a degree of risk to bees.”
My constituent Christopher worries that with the country still entrenched in the battle against covid and the headline-grabbing scandals of the Prime Minister, it will be easy to forget the long-term policies that affect our natural world.
We all share a huge responsibility to protect our environment for future generations. Government must help our food producers to farm sustainably and invest in resistant crops. It is not too late to reverse this bad decision. Ministers can and must think again, maintain the ban on neonics and save our bees.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing this debate. I rise to join the love-in for bees and to highlight the issues faced by sugar beet growers and processors in my North West Norfolk constituency. The growers in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and other parts of the country saw yields hit by 25% in 2020—in some cases, the loss was as much as 80%—because of virus yellows. As has been mentioned, that represents a hit to the sector of £65 million. I have met with growers in my constituency; like my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), I have seen the damage that virus yellows does.
Given the dramatic loss of crop, an emergency authorisation application was made in 2021 and granted, but there is deliberately a high bar for that. Before an application can be granted, the Government have to consider five tests. There need to be special circumstances. There must be a danger. There must be no reasonable alternative. The authorisation must be necessary. And the product must be subject to limited and controlled use. Those are, rightly, tough tests. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) said, it is important to recognise that sugar beet is a non-flowering crop and so is not attractive to bees—the bees that we all love.
In 2021, the conditions attached to the emergency authorisation included a forecast of virus levels of 9%. That condition was not met, so no neonics were used. This year, the Government have toughened that test, so there would need to be a virus level of 19%. Furthermore, no flowering crop can be planted in the same soil for 32 months. Therefore it is a very limited authorisation. It is an insurance policy that may well not end up being used, as was the case last year.
Ultimately, we need to move away from neonics. I think everyone would agree with that. British Sugar, the National Farmers Union and the British Beet Research Organisation are all working on alternatives to tackle virus yellows through non-chemical alternatives, through gene editing, integrated pest management and improving natural resistance in the crop.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I rise to support my hon. Friend and to speak on behalf of the many sugar beet growers in my constituency, which he knows well because we are neighbours. It is absolutely right to say, as he has emphasised, that there can be an agreement between those who want to balance nature and those who want to produce crops but also care about the environment, care about bees and care about the diversity that bees are at the heart of. We should not create a paradox, an artificial distinction between those who farm and grow and those who care about wildlife and nature.
James Wild
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. Farmers in my constituency love bees; they love the pollinators. They are working on alternatives, and I want to see those alternatives come forward more rapidly, so that further authorisations are not needed in the future.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you for calling me, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on bringing this debate forward. As a constituency MP for a rural area, I have worked for some time to raise awareness of this issue; as a landowner, I have been interested in it; and finally, as a grandfather, I am invested in the need to get it right when it comes to our bees and ecosystems. I am very fortunate to have neighbours, Christopher and Valentine Hodges, who have introduced beehives on our farm, in Greyabbey in the constituency of Strangford. They are introducing the black bee. It is a species that is under some threat, so the fact that they are doing that is something that we should be very grateful for.
A consensus is emerging on the need to restrict the use of NNIs—neonicotinoid insecticides. The fact is that without pollinators, we cannot eat and will die. We need to restrict the use of NNIs and that must happen now.
I am conscious of your direction, Sir Roger, but may I quickly say this? The Northern Ireland protocol ensures that Great Britain now operates a separate regime, which began on 1 January 2021, and is able to diverge from EU decisions when it comes to pesticide approval. May I ask the Minister, as I often do, what discussions she has had, and will she enter into discussions with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Minister who has responsibility for the issues in respect of the protocol and with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly?
What this debate, too, explains is that the Northern Ireland protocol is not simply a matter of a little extra postage paid or an additional form to be filled in; it is a matter of grave importance to our regulations and our environment in Northern Ireland. There can and should be no divergence UK wide. We should all take the issue of pesticides seriously, debate it together, as we are doing today, and apply the result UK wide—to everywhere. Currently, my constituents have no vote and no voice as to these regulations that affect their food intake and future security. That beggars belief.
I am a great believer that bees should be appreciated, respected and protected. From my time as a child in the 1960s, in my aunt Isobel’s garden, marvelling at the wonder of honeycomb—where my love of honey came from—to becoming a man and understanding the vital role played by the humble bee, I have learned this lesson. In the absence of indisputable proof to the contrary, NNI pesticides are dangerous and harmful in the long term to our environment, food security and, indeed, our future.
I work with an Ulster Unionist party councillor in Ards and North Down Borough Council. He is also a farmer, and I conclude with his words: when the bees are gone, we are gone. With that in mind, we must do all that we can to prevent that happening. Robust NNI regulations play a massive part in this, and should consequently be retained and implemented in UK law.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I appreciate you calling me to speak in this very important debate, Sir Roger. I have received a great deal of correspondence from constituents about the Government’s authorisation of an emergency application in England for the use of Cruiser SB pesticide, which contains the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam. I share their concerns, not least because the Government have not heeded the conclusions of the Health and Safety Executive or their own expert committee on pesticides, which found that
“The requirements for emergency authorisation have not been met”
and that pollution from the pesticide would damage river life.
As the Wildlife Trusts have pointed out, these neonicotinoids
“will have a devastating impact on pollinators, wildflowers, and waterways—at a time when nature needs to be urgently put into recovery.”
The Government have even accepted, as recently as last December, that there is a
“growing weight of scientific evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees and other pollinators.”
Why have Ministers gone ahead and granted the authorisation?
Some of my constituents have highlighted the crucial role that bees play in maintaining a healthy environment. One constituent made the specific point that, by allowing the use of deadly pesticides, the UK Government undermine the urgency and incentive to invest in and implement alternative, less harmful control methods. That perhaps ties in with a point that the RSPB made concerning the importance of upholding the ban on highly toxic pesticides, such as neonics, and instead working to support our farmers to reduce their reliance on these harmful chemicals. As one of my constituents asks:
“How can the UK government approve using such material, it goes against all common sense and scientific reason?”
Clearly this is something that many Wirral West residents care passionately about, and I share their concerns.
The Wildlife Trusts have been very clear that the Government’s authorisation is “short sighted”. They say that, by authorising the use of neonics, the UK Government are damaging their ability to meet the legal requirement contained in the Environment Act 2021 to halt and reverse the decline of nature by 2030. That is because pollinators such as bees are vital to enhancing biodiversity. Without thriving populations of pollinators in the UK, we will struggle to halt the decline of other species. I would very much welcome the Minister’s comments on that specific point; it is an important one that the Minister should address this morning.
I urge the Government to listen to the concerns of wildlife charities, many of which echo the views of my constituents, listen to the views of their own experts and think again.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I am so grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for securing the debate. We know that his love of bees is legendary, and his introduction to the debate tackled a series of very complicated issues very thoroughly and effectively, as did all the contributions this morning. There is a big question for the Minister to answer: why was the emergency authorisation decision made? I look forward to her answer.
What has come through very loud and clear in the debate is that farming and the environment must not be seen as in conflict. They have to be addressed together, and we have to find ways of making them work. So many of us have had so many emails from constituents on this subject—we can see that from the attendance in the Chamber this morning. I should say at the outset that I am a species champion for the ruderal bumblebee, which sadly I still have not met, but I am looking for one. They are quite rare, and that is a significant point. Like many other Cambridgeshire MPs, I am a vice president of the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers’ Association, and in my first flush of enthusiasm as a newly elected Member I turned up at its annual general meeting, which completely nonplussed the attendees—I have not embarrassed them since. What that shows is that we all care about bees.
I note that one of the first speeches that I made in this place, back in 2015, was a debate on this very subject. One always looks back nervously to see what one said—particularly when one picks up a brief much later on. I was delighted to find that my final words were that we should listen to science and ensure
“that our bees and farmers can flourish.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 236WH.]
Both matter.
I must also say at the outset that I understand how farmers feel at the moment. From my conversations with them, they so often feel that the tools they need for the job are being systematically taken away, and that is very difficult for them, because nature does not compromise. The problems keep coming, and if farmers do not have the tools to deal with them, it is really hard.
However, as I have said from the beginning of this speech and before, for us, pollinator health is just not negotiable. This is not something that can be traded off, which is a theme that has come through in many of today’s contributions. I listened closely to those contributions, particularly from those Members who represent the east of England. I am an east of England MP, and I know how many jobs are at stake. The hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) made that point very clearly: it is a huge number of jobs. It is very important to the local economy, and we have to find ways of making it work.
Looking back on the 2015 debate, I noticed that one speaker who followed me said that the lesson to learn from DDT
“is that we must not take risks…I ask the Minister please not to take unnecessary risks with the environment and with human health”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 238-40WH.]
That was not the Minister here today, but one of her colleagues, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). The Minister also contributed to that debate, which was much more about oilseed rape and cabbage stem flea beetle. The debate has now moved on to thiamethoxam and sugar beet, which shows that a lot has already been done. However, looking back over the past couple of years, I do not think the Government covered themselves in glory last year, because the Health and Safety Executive advice that is available this year was not so easily available last year: it took Friends of the Earth using freedom of information requests and some testy exchanges at DEFRA questions, which the Minister may remember. I appreciate that the bar has been set higher this year, but from talking to the experts at Rothamsted Research, that does not necessarily mean that it will be that dramatically different if the weather is different. Of course, last year we were saved by the cold weather; at this point, it does not look like that is going to come to the rescue this year.
The key point, though, is that the Secretary of State has ignored the expert advice, as we heard clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport in his introduction, as well as from my hon. Friends for Putney (Fleur Anderson), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Virtually everyone has asked why that advice has been overridden, and it is absolutely clear—to those who made their way through the lengthy reports, including the Cruiser SB application, and found their way to page 193—that the test is not considered to be met. I will not take Members through those 193 pages, but there is a simpler account from the expert committee on pesticides, which came to the same conclusion. It also added an extra one, which is worth pulling out given some of the contributions that have been made:
“None of the suggested mitigation measures protected off-crop areas and, if the authorisation is granted, further consideration needs to be given to how this could impact on growers involved in agri-environmental schemes which involved planting flowering margins.”
That point has been made on a number of occasions, and I do not see that it has been properly addressed.
If we look back at some of the history of these debates, many academic studies and reports have been written. I was particularly struck by one produced by Buglife, written by Matt Shardlow—a very detailed account, written a few years ago—which deals with the point about run-off. One point that has not been raised in this debate so far is that this is not just about Cruiser SB: foliar neonicotinoid sprays, Biscaya and InSyst, are also being authorised. There is a real risk of those chemicals getting into the water, and I was particularly struck by the impact on the river Waveney, which that report said was the most heavily polluted river, exceeding the average annual chronic pollution limit. That is relevant, given the interest people have in the water quality of rivers at the moment. The report named not just the Waveney, but the Wensum—for me, that was particularly personal, because that measurement was taken at Ellingham Mill, where my parents used to live. For people in the east of England, this really matters.
Why has the Secretary of State made this decision? The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) made an important point about the economics behind this—it has to be about economics, hasn’t it? That is the only explanation. In fact, DEFRA has produced something that I am not sure most people have seen—a very detailed economic analysis of the impacts of virus yellows on sugar beet production. Again, I do not have the time to go into it in detail, but it shows that over a six-year average, there is a potential loss of £14.4 million, and reference has already been made to 2020, which was a particularly hard year. Of course, there is an economic issue, but as has been rightly said by a number of Members, there are other alternatives too, and clearly people are working on them.
Yes, the peach potato aphid is a real menace—there is no doubt about it—but there are ways in which it can be tackled through integrated pest management, better rotation and better husbandry. None of this is easy, and it is not the same everywhere. Different people get different results, and it is all very unpredictable, but it also has to be put into context—again, the point about the potential threat to pollinator health was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East. Look at the value that pollinators bring to our economy: they are estimated to be worth between £430 million and £603 million to UK agriculture in general.
The issue is not simple, and these are tough decisions for farmers. In many ways, it is a gamble trying judge the weather and when the aphid will fly. If people plant too early, they will lose the sugar beet. It is an economic argument. As we have heard, British Sugar is a very viable business and makes money. Through the virus yellows assurance scheme, it has already gone down the road of providing some compensation and some way of pooling the risk on this issue. At the end of all this, we know that bee health is non-negotiable, so why on earth has the Secretary of State chosen to override all the expert advice? We would make a different decision, and I think that decision would be better not only for bees but for farmers, as we create a nature policy vision for the future.
The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)
Sir Roger, it is great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, particularly as I think you would rather have been speaking in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing the debate, and I thank Members for taking part in this really important discussion.
I should probably declare my interest. We have two hives of bees at home, and they are an integral part of our orchard management, particularly for my apple and pear crop.
Let me set out the problem. We all eat and enjoy sugar—some of us rather more than we should. It is important to remember that 63% of the sugar that the UK consumes is made from home-grown sugar beet, and we had an interesting debate on food security in this Chamber yesterday. Sugar beet seedlings are very vulnerable to aphid predation. The aphids spread the devastating virus yellows, which can seriously reduce both the quantity and quality of the crop. The disease is more widespread in certain years, particularly after mild winters.
As we have heard, neonics were previously used as a pesticide to tackle the problem. We banned their use outside in 2018, at the same time as the EU, because of a growing body of academic evidence that they could be damaging to bees and other pollinators. That affected my farm in respect of growing oil seed rape. We had grown the crop since 1974, but we no longer do so. In this, we are not alone, and the planted area of oil seed rape is not much more than half the level that it used to be before neonics were last used.
Victoria Prentis
I will not, as I have a great deal to get through.
Oil seed rape is significantly different from beet. As we all know, it is a beautiful flowering crop, and its pollen and nectar attract bees. Beet is harvested before flowering, so the crop itself does not pose a direct threat. Protecting bees and other pollinators is a priority for the Government through the pollinator strategy, and this is a way to bring farmers and researchers together in order to improve the status of pollinating insects.
The need to take action to protect sugar beet is not restricted to this country. Twelve beet-producing EU countries have granted emergency authorisations for neonics since 2018. Their authorisation conditions have been less stringent than ours—for example, none has applied a threshold to determine whether the product should be used. There is no doubt that if our crop suffered major damage because of aphid predation and we did not allow the use of a neonic in an emergency, we would have to import beet from countries where these products are used.
We have now had three years to grow the crops without neonics. In 2019, perhaps because of residual levels in the soil, and in 2021, after a cold winter, the virus threat was low. However, 2020 saw severe damage, with about a quarter of the national crop being lost, as we have heard. Some individual growers were even more severely affected. Imports were needed to enable British Sugar to honour its contracts. Partly because of that, a smaller crop was planted in 2021, with some growers understandably reluctant to take the risk.
Taking into account both the scientific evidence and the economic analysis, the decision was taken to grant exceptional temporary use of Cruiser this year. In order to mitigate the risk, conditions of the authorisation include a reduced application rate, as well as a prohibition on any flowering crop being planted in the same field within 32 months of a treated sugar beet crop. Our chief scientific adviser advised us on that mitigation.
There will be an initial threshold for use, meaning that the seed treatment will only be used if the predicted level of virus is above 19% of the national crop. If that threshold is not met, the treatment for the seed will not be used. That is exactly what happened in 2021. It will only be used in an emergency.
I would like to provide what I hope will be some reassurance to Members. The maximum amount of neonics that could be used on English crops, if the threshold is reached, will amount to 6% of what used to be used prior to 2018. In reaching our decision, we were informed by the advice of HSE, and the views of the UK expert committee on pesticides and DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, who has been involved at every stage of the process. We also considered economic issues and were informed by analysis provided by DEFRA economists.
The scientific advice identified risks to pollinators, and the restrictions we have applied for are designed specifically by our chief scientific adviser to mitigate those risks. Some residual risk remains, but we judge that it is sufficiently low to be outweighed by the benefits to sugar beet production of using the product.
In taking this decision, we wanted to be as transparent as possible and give hon. Members, as well as members of the public, access to the information that informed the decision-making process.
Daniel Zeichner
The Minister says the risk is judged to be sufficiently low. Could she say a little more about how that judgment was arrived at?
Victoria Prentis
If I have time, I would be delighted to. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the full set of reasons given by the Secretary of State on gov.uk, because that gives the complete decision.
DEFRA agrees with HSE that it is not possible to completely rule out a degree of risk to bees from flowering plants in or near the field in the years after the neonic use. That is the concern. However, our chief scientific adviser suggests that the risks are reduced to a large extent by the 32-month ban on flowering crops.
The materials have been made publicly available. I was very keen to do that and to make sure that the decision was as transparent as possible. We have published several accompanying documents outlining the key elements involved in making the decision. There is nothing sneaky about the decision. The details are all available on gov.uk.
On the suggestion that we have a parliamentary vote on the issue, I am happy to look again at how the system works. We will be outlining our ideas about the new system in the national action plan, which will be published this summer. I politely say that there are at least 10 to 15 applications for emergency authorisations every year for different products. I see the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) sitting over there—I do not know whether the Whips would be thrilled if we had to vote on each of those, nor perhaps would it be a good use of parliamentary time.
There is no doubt that this is an issue in which parliamentarians take an interest. That is right, and I am always happy to discuss these decisions with anybody who wants to. Please come and talk to me about the specifics of the decision or the science at any point.
Looking to the future, it is of course important that industry works hard on the development of alternative sustainable approaches to protect sugar beet from the viruses. Those include the development of new tolerant seed varieties, measures to improve crop hygiene and husbandry, and modern breeding techniques, such as gene editing. British Sugar and NFU Sugar attended a parliamentary event this week. I was able to talk to them about how they could interact better, telling us about the new products and ideas they can put in place to deal with the problem in future.
Ultimately, our food security relies on a healthy environment and thriving pollinators. Sustainable agriculture and supporting nature go hand in hand. In our agricultural transition, we are already incentivising farmers to do the right thing. This year, we are piloting a standard that will help farmers to transition away from the use of pesticides, and incentivise alternative ways to control pests.
This decision was not taken lightly, and is based on a robust scientific assessment. We will continue to work hard to support farmers and to protect and restore our vital pollinator populations.
Luke Pollard
I thank all speakers in today’s debate. Across parties, Members are clearly passionate about the restoration of bee populations, as well as about supporting our farmers. As the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), said, those objectives need to be shared, rather than in competition. Otherwise, farmers, nature and all of us will lose out.
I am grateful to the Minister for her response, but I do not think she adequately explained why she chose to override scientific advice with this decision. I also note that she did not concentrate on the 2023 date after which neonicotinoids will not be used again. I anticipate that this will be the last debate we need to have on the use of neonicotinoids. Any debate on the subject this time next year would need to be subject to a parliamentary vote on just neonicotinoid use, rather than on other emergency authorisations. The Government have clearly set out a transition to a point where we will not need to use bee-killing pesticides. If bee-killing pesticides are still to be used, we are in danger of not meeting our obligations under the 25-year environment plan, the Environment Act or the declaration of a climate and nature emergency that Parliament passed in 2019.
I am grateful that the Minister said that nothing sneaky was involved in the decision, but nothing science-led seems to have been involved either. That is the problem we have here. I look forward to the action plan coming out and, I hope, the early revision of the national pollinator strategy. A comprehensive consultation starting this year would be a useful way to signal the intention to restore bee populations. I am grateful to you, Sir Roger, for being in the Chair, and for all the contributions, particularly from those who contacted us but were not able to speak in the debate. I hope that the cross-party strength of feeling makes it clear to the Minister and the Secretary of State that bee-killing pesticides should never be used again.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
I thank all hon. Members for managing the time in a manner that has enabled all those who wished to do so to participate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Government approval for the use of neonicotinoids and the impact on bees.
Kettering General Hospital
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and wear masks. I will call Philip Hollobone to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. That is the convention for 30-minute debates, as I know the Member is well aware.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the redevelopment of Kettering General Hospital.
It is a delight to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg.
I thank Mr Speaker for granting me this debate, and I welcome the Hospitals Minister to his place. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), who is kindly here to support the calls for the redevelopment of Kettering General Hospital. I thank the very hard-working, dedicated and loyal workforce at Kettering General Hospital for all they do to address the healthcare needs of the local population across Northamptonshire, particularly north Northamptonshire—in particular, Simon Weldon, the group chief executive, and Polly Grimmett, the director of strategy at Kettering hospital.
The Hospitals Minister knows Kettering hospital well and has always been extremely attentive and courteous to the healthcare needs of the local population in Kettering and beyond. He kindly visited the hospital on 7 October 2019, and he has responded to Adjournment and Westminster Hall debates on the hospital on 23 October 2019, 8 June 2021 and 10 September 2021. We have had regular meetings with him, most recently on 17 January this year.
I welcome the Government’s unprecedented investment in the NHS as a whole, and their commitment to the national hospital building programme. It has resulted in commitments to Kettering hospital of £46 million for an on-site urgent care hub, £350 million in health infrastructure plan 2 funding for 2025-30 and a write-off in 2020 of all the hospital’s £167 million trust debt. That is a total investment package for the hospital of a staggering £563 million, which is the biggest ever investment in Kettering General Hospital.
Kettering hospital is 125 years old this year. It has been on the same site ever since its inception in 1897. It is a much-loved local hospital that I hope will have a bright future. Let me reassure the Minister that I am not asking for more money. I welcome his recent decision that the two funding streams—the £46 million for the urgent care hub and the £350 million HIP2 funding—be meshed together, so that a synthesis of investment can be provided to the hospital. I have said this to the Minister before, and I repeat it today: promises are one thing, but delivery is quite another, and we now need the cash. The hospital needs the £46 million in cash so that works can continue.
In announcing the award of £46 million for the new urgent care hub in the debate on 23 October 2019, the Minister himself said:
“My officials and NHS England will be in touch with the trust to discuss further details, in order to ensure that funds are released and that work starts on the project as swiftly as possible. I am conscious of the urgency that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering highlighted.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 30WH.]
I welcomed those words, but that was over two years ago. While we have been promised £46 million, the hospital has not yet received the cash.
My first main ask is for the imminent provision to KGH of the £46 million sustainability and transformation partnership wave 4b funding, which was first pledged in the debate here in October 2019, so that the initial enabling works for the redevelopment of the hospital can continue to 2023-24. Secondly, I reinvite the Minister to visit Kettering hospital. He has kindly visited before and has promised to visit again. I hope that that visit will take place soon.
Thirdly, can we have confirmation that the NHS’s new hospitals programme team will approve, and give feedback on, the hospital’s strategic outline case for its redevelopment, which was submitted early last year, so that the hospital can develop the next stage—an outline business case—in May 2022? Fourthly, can the Minister confirm that he will look favourably on Kettering hospital’s eligibility for £53 million of slippage from other more complicated and larger hospital development schemes—such slippage will inevitably occur across the redevelopment of 40 hospitals—so that work can continue on the Kettering site all the way through to the 2025 to 2030 HIP2 period?
The hospital is straining at the leash to get the redevelopment project under way. Initial work has already commenced, but the hospital must go through various approval processes to fulfil the NHS’s investment requirements. Essentially, there is a three-stage business case approval process: a strategic outline case, an outline business case and a final business case.
The hospital submitted its SOC early last year, but it has not yet received feedback from the new hospitals programme team to inform the outline business case, which it is keen to submit in May this year. Once the OBC is achieved, feedback is required for the final business case. The big risk is that these various business case approval processes are extended too long, which will mean that substantial development on site will be held up.
The second risk is that the hospital needs the cash from the £46 million to allow the initial enabling work to continue. That work covers things such as the reprovisioning of car parking, clinical and office spaces to create construction space for the redevelopment itself, as well as road and utility diversions and site clearance. Without the cash from the £46 million, the risk is that those enabling works will have to stop, and that would be of extreme concern to local people.
The third risk is that the trust does not receive any slippage money from the other 40 hospital building programmes around the country. The Kettering scheme is relatively small, compared with some of the very large hospitals being rebuilt, but it is flexible. It can respond extremely well to receiving any slippage money from those other projects.
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
My hon. Friend is giving a remarkably impressive run-through of some of the complex bureaucracy and procedures. I want to pick up on his point about integration. Does he agree that Northampton General Hospital and Kettering General Hospital working together more efficiently provides some promising opportunities? While I cannot join him in saying that I will not ask the Minister for more money, because Northampton General Hospital is in the next stage of needing this sort of funding, I join him in asking the Minister to come and look at Northampton General Hospital and Kettering General Hospital as soon as possible.
Mr Hollobone
I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful intervention. How about this as a constructive suggestion? Would it not be wonderful if, on visiting Kettering, the Minister was able to call in at Northampton on the way? We are only 18 miles apart. Northampton and Kettering hospitals work together under the same NHS trust umbrella, and there is a lot of close working between the two hospitals. I recognise the need for more investment in Northampton hospital as well. I congratulate my hon. Friend on all his work for his constituents, which I know is hugely appreciated.
The risk is that, if Kettering hospital is not allowed to begin work on its full business case approval process this summer, the hospital will miss its 2023 target date for substantial construction on the site. The hospital continues to work towards a timetable that sees construction start on site in 2023. This is an accelerated timeline, because the hospital is eager to go on what is a relatively low-risk project. The hospital does not need to do any land deals; it owns all the land. There is strong local support among health system partners and planners. The hospital is keen to use repeatable designs from other hospital projects that have worked well elsewhere.
Can we have feedback from the new hospital programme team on the business case and designs for the hospital, so that the hospital can incorporate national thinking on programme priorities such as digital, net zero carbon and modern methods of construction? Can we have, as early as possible, the selection by the new hospital programme team of an appointed construction partner to work with the trust on developing the final scheme details, and can the hospital have the funding to cover the fees associated with this stage of the design? The risk is that, unless this support from the new hospital programme team is forthcoming, work on the hospital’s main scheme may have to come to a stop, with key resource being stood down and reassigned. I am sure the Minister wants to avoid that.
It is welcome news that the trust has received confirmation that the £46 million can be combined with the £350 million, so that it is a united programme. However, at present, there is no process in place to allow the hospital to start accessing these funds once existing programme budgets run out in March this year. Unless the trust is able to access these funds this year, early enabling work required to prepare the site for construction in 2023 will not be completed and the main build will not be possible on time.
One thing that keeps the chief executive awake at night is the power plant at Kettering hospital: £25 million of the money required for enabling work relates to the need for a new energy centre on site to replace the temporary plant and life-expired distribution system. This is an immediate risk to patient safety due to ongoing shutdowns caused by testing and repair work. If the Minister were kind enough to agree to visit the hospital, I am sure the trust would want to show him the power plant, which is in urgent need of attention. If we get the £46 million, the scheme can progress, enabling works can continue and the hospital will be on track for early construction work beginning in 2023.
I reiterate that Kettering hospital is a much-loved local hospital. It serves all the residents of Kettering, Wellingborough, Corby and others, sometimes including patients form Northampton. We live in one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. Corby has the country’s highest birth rate, and Kettering hospital expects a 21% increase in the number of over-80s in the local area in the next five years alone. The area has committed to at least 35,000 new houses over the next 10 years. The local population is set to rise by some 84,000, to almost 400,000 people. The A&E now sees up to 300 patients every single day in a department that is sized to safely see just 110. Over the next 10 years, the hospital expects the number of A&E attendances to increase by 30,000, up from 100,000; that is the equivalent of almost 80 extra patients every day.
The A&E is full. It was constructed in 1994 to cope with just 45,000 attendances each year. By 2045, 170,000 attendances are expected. Seventy per cent. of the buildings on the main site are more than 30 years old, and there is a maintenance backlog of £42 million. Sixty per cent. of the hospital estate is rated as either poor or bad. Local people know that this investment is needed. The Government have also accepted that the investment is needed. What we need now is the cash to make sure that the works can start on time in 2023.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate. By my tally, this is the fourth debate I have responded to that he has secured on the future of Kettering General Hospital and its redevelopment. That fact reflects his commitment to this issue on behalf of his constituents, and his typically courteous but tenacious approach to the matter. I will put on record, as they are unable to be here, the work done by my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Corby (Tom Pursglove) in this respect. I welcome the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer).
The topic is not a new one for this House to discuss, but it is an extremely important one. I hope that I might move matters a little bit further forward in this debate for my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering. It was a pleasure to meet him, my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Corby and Simon Weldon on 17 January to discuss Kettering General Hospital and receive an update on its plans. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering in paying tribute to Simon and all of the team at Kettering General Hospital and at Northampton General Hospital for the work they have done, not only in the past two years, but day in, day out every year, to support the local community and provide first-class care.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering made, as ever, a generous offer to visit Kettering General Hospital with him. It was a pleasure to do so in 2019, when he gave me a very warm welcome in Kettering. I also take his suggestion of visiting Northampton at the same time. Without setting a specific date, my aim is to try to visit him during the February recess—I will discuss this with him. It is not a long haul for me from my constituency in Leicestershire to his in Kettering or Northampton, so that is what I will hope to do, subject to that working for the trust. Ministers are often surplus to operational requirements in a busy trust at busy times, but I suspect that Simon will welcome me to explain what progress he has made. That is my commitment to my hon. Friend.
As my hon. Friend set out, Kettering General Hospital is part of the broader foundation trust, and continues to work closely with the central programme team in taking forward the rebuild of Kettering General as a new hospital for his community. It is part of the broader programme to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. On 13 January, Natalie Forrest, who is the senior responsible owner for the new hospital programme, and officials attended a virtual meeting with the chief executive and staff from Kettering General to discuss progress and provide an update on the scheme in the context of the programme. As my hon. Friend knows, Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has received £4.4 million of funding to develop its plans for the rebuilding of Kettering General Hospital. They were successful in securing funding back in 2019, at that stage for a new urgent care hub, which would transform the provision of urgent and critical care in the area. I know that officials are in discussion with the chief executive of the hospital trust regarding the trust’s plans for enabling works on the Kettering General Hospital site and have set out what will be required for these proposals to be assessed as quickly as possible, once business cases are received from the trust, which is in line with what my hon. Friend would expect of appropriate processes for spending public money.
I will provide a little background. The Department wrote to the chief executive on 16 June last year to confirm that, at his request, the urgent care hub and new hospital programme schemes could be brought together as a single pot of money, to maximise the benefits that local people could derive.
Essentially, my hon. Friend asked why things have not progressed since 2019. That is largely because the trust changed its plans. That money was ringfenced for an urgent treatment centre. We had discussions about that with the trust and accepted its proposal to merge the two pots of money. That then necessitated their coming forward with proposals about how they would spend that money as part of the enabling works for a broader scheme. If changes are made, it is right that those changes are justified, in the context of the appropriate stewardship of public money.
The hub and the new hospital that are to be built both share a set of common enabling works, which have been factored into the new hospital development plans. As a result, the trust is incorporating the urgent care hub delivery into that broader plan. It means that the hub will now be part of the first stage of the building of the new hospital, enabling the more efficient use of resources to deliver better results.
In respect of the business case for that plan—I know that my hon. Friend is keen that there is progress on that as swiftly as possible—my officials have been in touch with the trust recently, most recently yesterday and before that on 26 or 27 January, asking the trust to put forward its proposals for those enabling works. We need those to progress the business case. My officials continue to nudge the trust gently, saying, “Please submit your proposals for that and the business case for it”. My commitment is that my officials will consider those proposals as swiftly as they can, once they have received them. As I understand it, given the scale of the enabling works, they would not need to go through the full internal approvals process, but the trust needs to submit a business case for that element.
The second element, which I know my hon. Friend and the trust are keen to see being advanced as swiftly as possible, is the new boiler room and power plant. Essentially, that would have to go through the full approvals process, but I understand that the board of the trust is due to meet in April to agree and finalise its proposal and business case on that work. As soon as it submits that, I can commit to my hon. Friend that—assuming that it is up to scratch, which I am sure it will be—it will go before the first joint investment committee of the Department following its submission, so that it can be considered as swiftly as possible.
At the moment, if I may put it this way, the ball is in the trust’s court, for it to send its proposal and business case over. However, my commitment is that as soon as the trust does so, I will task officials with considering them as swiftly as possible.
Mr Hollobone
I thank the Minister for his very helpful comments. I think that the ball, in part, may be in the trust’s court, but there is perhaps another ball with the new hospitals programme team. I say that because the hospital submitted its strategic outline case to the NHS a year ago and what the trust requires is feedback on that, to inform the development of its outline business case. So would the Minister be kind enough to look at that feedback?
Edward Argar
I am happy to look at that. The point I am making to my hon. Friend is that for the moneys that he and the trust wish to draw down from the £46 million, we do not have the business cases from the trust that would enable that work. I suspect that they will be winging their way to the Department pretty swiftly following this debate and as soon as they arrive we will look at them. Regarding the broader business case for the overall scheme, I will turn to that, if I may, in just a moment.
All the new hospitals that will be delivered as part of the programme, including Kettering, are required to work with the central team and, with the support of regional and local trust leadership, to design and deliver their hospitals in keeping with a consistent and standardised national approach. This collaborative approach is intended to help each trust to get the most from its available funding, while avoiding repetition of work and design, and ensuring that adherence to the principles, which my hon. Friend alluded to, of repeatable design, modern methods of construction and net carbon zero, is embedded from the outset, to maximise the potential benefits of the programmatic approach, as well, of course, as providing better value for money for the taxpayer.
All the projects that are part of that 40-hospital programme need to ensure that their approach is consistent with the programme, which that has been developed over the past year and has reached a greater level of maturity. Therefore, there will be individual conversations with trusts about where they align with the programme, or where they may need to adapt to meet that national approach.
My hon. Friend touched on the trust’s desire to go faster and begin the main project construction in 2023. In the spirit of openness, my only caveat to that is that, in the nature of funding through multiple spending review periods, it is not the case that a pot of money is earmarked for each programme and is just waiting to be drawn down; there is a profiling of moneys made available by the Treasury. I appreciate the trust’s eagerness to go faster, and I appreciate my hon. Friend’s clear steer that he believes it is capable of going further and faster, but we need to look at it in the context of all the other schemes and the availability and profile of moneys being made available. I just sound that slight note of caution, so I will not commit to a date, much though he tempts me to do so.
Mr Hollobone
I appreciate the Minister’s comments. I would just highlight that there are some very large new hospital programmes out there that will not be achieved on time. Kettering is a relatively small, flexible and modular scheme that is perfectly placed to pick up on any slippage from some of the larger schemes.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I was about to turn to his final ask, which was whether the Department would look favourably on Kettering’s scheme if there was slippage from other schemes in the course of the spending review period. Although I cannot prejudge in this place that Kettering will be top of the list, he makes a strong case. It is absolutely right that we look at schemes and have a list of schemes that we believe could fill the gap if moneys are not going to be spent in year. It is important that that contingency is built in, and my hon. Friend makes a strong case for Kettering to be one of the hospitals that is considered for acceleration if it is ready and the moneys become available. I will not prejudge the advice that I will be given by officials as to which schemes are most mature, but he makes his case clearly and forcefully on the Floor of the Chamber.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend not only for the opportunity to discuss and debate Kettering General Hospital, but for the opportunity to visit Kettering. On my last visit, I received a very warm welcome from him and the team at the hospital. In what I have said today, I hope I have ensured that I get an equally warm welcome when I come and see him this month. Like him, I am keen to see all these schemes progress, and I am keen to see the benefits that the schemes will realise.
In the context of Kettering General Hospital, my hon. Friend continues to be an incredibly powerful advocate for the interests of his constituents and those in the wider area of Northamptonshire who are served by the hospital. I look forward to continuing to work with him very closely in the future, as well as with the trust’s chief executive and team, other hon. Friends from Northamptonshire and my team in the Department, to help progress these very exciting and important plans, which will make a huge difference to his constituents’ lives in the years ahead.
Question put and agreed to.
Cystic Fibrosis: Prescription Charge Exemption
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and wear masks.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered prescription charge exemption and cystic fibrosis.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to open this debate on a matter that I know is of very great interest to a significant number of people in the country. I am very grateful to all those who have emailed me over the past few days since the debate was announced, not least those who contributed via the Chamber engagement programme that the House of Commons runs. Their comments and insights have certainly deepened my understanding, and I hope that their contributions will enrich the debate in particular. I am also grateful to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust for its members’ contributions, and for the support and briefings that it has given me.
I am sure that hon. Members here today are more than aware of cystic fibrosis. It is one of the few serious, life-threatening, chronic conditions for which people are still required to pay prescription charges. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust estimates that there are around 2,500 people in England who did not qualify for free prescriptions and are faced with a lifelong financial burden. Indeed, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust calculates that there are now more adults than children with cystic fibrosis.
This issue has concerned me not just over the past few weeks but for 25 years, since I was first diagnosed with epilepsy. The consultant told me, somewhat bizarrely, that one upside of the diagnosis was that at least I would now get free prescriptions. I said, “What?” That was news to me; I was not even aware such a thing existed. I had not required medication for my cerebral palsy, and had been a relatively healthy teenager. It had never occurred to me.
At the same time as I had the good fortune to be diagnosed with epilepsy, I had an even weightier burden to carry: I was the health policy officer for the Conservative party, as we languished in opposition. It was a slightly odd time, I have to say—perhaps that gives hope to those opposite that all things change in time. I not only had to deal with the somewhat bizarre queries of Ann Widdecombe at 6 am when I rang her up, but got to see all the briefings and lobbying that came across my desk. One of the early ones was from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, telling me about the particular predicament that its members were in: not being entitled to free prescriptions. I thought to myself, “How perverse! They have a lifelong, life-limiting, chronic condition for which they cannot get prescriptions, yet, for my epilepsy, which is chronic and can have devastating consequences, I do get free prescriptions.”
It is not just a case, like mine, of taking some five tablets over the course of the day to manage epilepsy. As Gayle told me,
“My daughter takes more than 50 tablets a day to treat the condition. When you compare this to other serious lifelong conditions that are exempt from prescription charges it is impossible to understand why CF is not included and this outdated decision needs to be rectified”.
The lack of an exemption leads to some perverse situations. As Sarah told me,
“Thankfully I developed diabetes, which is a horrible thing to be grateful for. As a result of getting another health condition which comes with more challenges for my health, it meant I was exempt from paying all prescription charges”.
Go back to that first word that she used: “Thankfully”. What a bizarre thing to have to say with regard to diabetes.
At this point, I should pay tribute to someone who is not here today: Bob Russell, the former Member for Colchester, whom older Members here will know well. He campaigned non-stop on this issue. It is worth cycling back to what he said in 2013, the last time that we debated this issue in the House. He said:
“Those with long-term conditions do not choose to be ill. They face a daily routine of various types of medication and physiotherapy to maintain any quality of life.”—[Official Report, 10 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 511.]
Those words are as true today as they were back in 2013—and back in 2003, 1993, 1983 and all the other many times that this issue has been discussed.
When I first researched this issue 25 years ago, I was even more surprised by the fact that the exemption list was based on a list of conditions that had not been reviewed since as far back as 1968—before man had made it to the moon—with the exception of the addition of cancer in 2008. My contention to the Minister today is a simple one. It is the one I urged my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), when he was shadow Health Secretary, to pose to the then Health Secretary Alan Milburn in 1999. Why has the list not been reviewed since 1968? People live with cystic fibrosis well into adulthood these days, which was not the case in 1968. Why can we not review matters and take modern medicine into account? In particular, why is it fair for me to get free prescriptions when they cannot?
As Anna told me:
“The exemption list was introduced in 1968 when children born CF were not expected to live to their teens. Now more than ever, with the life-changing personalised medicines that are available to the majority of CF patients, life expectancy will be massively increased. Therefore, CF should be reconsidered for exemption as most patients will now be living relatively normal lives.”
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way; he is making a powerful speech. As a former physiotherapist who used to treat children and young people with cystic fibrosis, I know exactly the point he is making. Living in to adulthood is fantastic and brilliant, but people are being penalised. Is it not right that those people should not have to worry about having to take medication? It should be a right.
Paul Maynard
The hon. Lady is exactly right, and I will demonstrate why with a few examples from people with CF. For those living with CF, medication, physio and general health all have to be considered when planning the simplest activity. Being unwell frequently interferes with work and education. As Sam says:
“Due to the nature of the illness I have been unable to work full time after previously trying. Prescriptions is another cost I have to pay despite barely getting any financial support from the government. To me it shows a lack of understanding the fact the medication ultimately contributes to us staying alive and gives us the best chance of trying to contribute to society.”
We could easily be having a debate about other long-term conditions, such as asthma, which are not included either. I could point to transplant patients, a category that would not have existed in 1968 but who rely on drugs to sustain their lives. If any Scottish National party or Plaid Cymru Members were present, they might have cited the example of prescription charge regimes in Wales and Scotland. Opposition Members might bring up the claims and calls of the wider Prescription Charges Coalition. I will leave it to them to make those points; those views are not necessarily shared by Government Members.
I want to focus, laser-like, on this single issue. We have seen in today’s newspapers the success that such an approach can have. The long campaign on hormone replacement therapy by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) finally got some good news. It is clear that we need to undertake a thoroughgoing review, setting out what conditions have been brought into scope since the Medicines Act 1968, through advances in medical science. Those might be conditions that did not, or could not, have existed in 1968, or conditions where life has now been further prolonged.
I am sure I can predict some elements in the Minister’s reply, because they were made by former Labour Ministers and in 2013. I am sure we will hear of the wonders of prescription prepayment certificates at just £2 a week—what could be better value? That is less than the price of a cup of coffee at Costa. But many living with a long-term medical condition such as CF can be economically disadvantaged by their condition, by prescription charges and by paying for the annual prepayment certificate, which costs £108. That adds to their financial burden.
According to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, about one in 10 people with CF—just under 1,000 in the case of that survey—received emergency grants of about £150 from the trust in 2020-21. More than half of those grants were awarded for daily living costs, such as food. As Tracy told me:
“A few years ago I had to take redundancy due to ill health…I had previously paid for a prepaid prescription certificate but could not afford to renew it when it ran out. After 3 months without medication, I was in a poor state of health, constantly coughing, very weak, unable to lie down or even sleep sat up due to the accumulation of mucus in my lungs. After 4 nights without sleep I saw my GP who gave me a prescription for a strong course of antibiotics and steroid tablets. We had to miss a payment on a household bill so that I could pay for my prescription. The first course of antibiotics didn’t clear the infection, so I needed a further one. I had to borrow money from a family member to pay for it…Eventually, I was able to claim PIP which allowed me to pay for my own prescriptions again. I consider myself lucky to have someone who was able to help me out when they saw how ill I was.”
There is also a serious risk that those who incur prescription charges for their CF may not take their essential medicines, particularly if they are experiencing financial hardship, or in higher education on a limited income. Over a third of those who replied to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust survey said that they had not taken medication because of the cost of prescriptions. As Anna told me:
“During university I didn’t take my medication simply because I couldn’t afford the fees. The blunt fact here is that people with CF take anywhere from 10-30 different medications a month. People with CF have been charged an insane amount of money when there is a system in place meant to protect people with long-term health conditions from being financially penalised—however they are being kept from the exemption list.”
The cost to the Government of righting what I believe to be a moral wrong is £270,000. As a former Minister, I know that that sort of money can often be found with a good rootle down the back of the ministerial sofa—a bit of jingling of the coins. However, there must be darker, deeper and slightly odder reasons why successive Governments—of all colours, and I look across the Chamber as I say that—have refused to review the 1968 list, despite all the pressure and reasonable arguments to do so. I cannot begin to imagine why Ministers are saying no.
If anyone wonders what this change might mean for CF patients, they should listen to Mario:
“My partner would then feel supported by the government rather than left on her own. The relationship to her medicine would change from financial to purely medical. Support, hope and fairness is the minimum we ought to give to people with life-threatening long-term conditions such as cystic fibrosis.”
Or listen to Donna:
“CF patients have enough problems to face, we should do anything we can to help. CF drugs may be expensive, but lung transplants cost even more.”
I will leave the final words to Sharon, another survey contributor:
“I would have more money available to pay for life’s other essentials. It would be pleasing to see the end of an injustice as I have no choice but to take this life lengthening medication and shouldn’t be required to pay for it when if I had been born with another condition, I wouldn’t have to.”
I hope that the Minister listens to those pleas and reasonable questions, and sets out the Government’s agenda to right what I believe to be a wrong.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is always a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Sharma, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this debate.
As some Members might know, I have a personal interest in this issue, as my niece Maisie has cystic fibrosis. She was diagnosed when she was just a few weeks old. Actually, it was during that little period after Christmas: it was her mother’s birthday on 28 December and her dad’s birthday on the 30th, and she was taken to hospital because her progress had started to go backwards. One of the welcome developments since she was born is that there is now a heel prick test, so that newborn babies are screened for CF, which prevents people from having to go through a similar situation.
Maisie is one of those who is benefiting from access to the new drugs that have been developed recently, and at 17 she is doing really well. The same is true of one of my constituents, who is just a little older. His dad tells me that it is as if he had never had cystic fibrosis. That is great news and I congratulate all those who have been involved in developing these drugs—Kalydeco, Orkambi and its version for children, Symkevi, and Trikafta—and in making them freely available on the NHS. The former Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), was obviously instrumental in that process and I thank him for it. Of course, I also thank the Cystic Fibrosis Trust for spearheading that campaign.
I also want us to remember those for whom these medical advances came too late. My constituent Lee Partridge tragically lost both his daughters to CF: Richelle at the age of 26 in 2015, and Lauren at the age of 19 just a few months later in January 2016. Perhaps if they had been born a decade later, the new drugs would have saved their lives. These medical developments happen so quickly. No sooner had the campaign paid off and Orkambi been approved than Trikafta was suddenly around the corner. I must admit that my sister, Maisie’s mother, did not even realise that there was another campaign to mount because it came so quickly afterwards.
I hope this means that cystic fibrosis will eventually become a condition that people live with to a normal age, rather than being something that they die from. We are here today because while it used to be the case that sufferers rarely survived into adulthood, life expectancy has increased almost fourfold since then and, as we have heard, there are now more adults than children with cystic fibrosis. If that had been the case back in 1968, when the list of exemptions from prescription charges was drawn up, there is no doubt that cystic fibrosis would have been on that list. It seems quite anomalous. We ought to treat conditions like for like, based on need. We cannot live in the past with this fixed state from 1968, which has become pretty meaningless.
Today I have received an answer to a written question requesting the figures for how many adults have to pay for cystic fibrosis prescriptions. I was told that those figures are not collected. We know that about 89% of all prescriptions are dispensed free of charge, but we do not know specifically what that means for adult patients with cystic fibrosis. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust estimates their number to be around 2,500 people in England.
Although the three drugs I have mentioned that target CF at its root cause are free to patients, which is obviously good, many patients often need to pay for additional medication to prevent lung and sinus infections, therapies to aid digestion, antibiotics and so on. Those who live in poorer areas are statistically more likely to contract severe lung infections, meaning that they are more likely to have to pick up the bill for antibiotic prescriptions. Having a lifelong condition incurs all sorts of hidden charges, including the cost of traveling to medical appointments or buying specific foods to cater to dietary needs. We are lucky in Bristol to have both an adult and a child cystic fibrosis unit, but someone living in Milton Keynes, as my niece does, has to travel to Oxford for their treatment. As the cost of living crisis escalates over the coming months, disabled people will face increasing energy bills and food costs, and many will experience the burden of stressful work capability assessments—we know that the Government are bringing in tougher sanctions on jobseekers. Shouldering the cost of a prescription-exempt chronic condition can mean a choice for some people between paying the bills and affording essential meds.
I was recently contacted by Martin, a constituent whose 19-year-old son James has cystic fibrosis. James works part time. Last year, his claim for disability allowance stopped when he reached adulthood, and his personal independence payment application was refused. Martin currently pays for James’s prepaid prescription certificate, but he worries that a change in his own financial situation would mean that he would not be able to foot the bill for his son’s prescription. What is ironic is that Martin himself has insulin-dependent diabetes, which entitles him to free NHS prescriptions. He cannot even begin to understand how he is deemed eligible while his son is not, meaning he does not pay for his own prescriptions but does pay for his son’s.
Martin is not alone in his opinion—96% of people who responded to a Cystic Fibrosis Trust survey described the prescription charges as unfair. It certainly gives rise to the question why CF patients should be treated differently from others with other lifelong conditions that exempt them. I asked the Health Secretary last year whether the Government plan to review the list of conditions exempt from prescription charges. A junior Minister responded to confirm that the Government did not plan to do so.
The former Liberal Democrat Member Bob Russell has been mentioned. I always use Bob Russell as an example of why early-day motions are perhaps not all they are cracked up to be. For years on years—it might have been two decades—Bob queued to be No. 1 on the early-day motion list so he could call for an exemption from prescription charges for cystic fibrosis patients. He always got lots of signatures, because his early-day motion was No.1 and first in the booklet, but we are still here debating the issue. When I am trying to explain to my constituents why my signing an early-day motion will not change the world, Bob is the example I use. It would be lovely if we could move on from having these debates and making the same points over and over again. There is no logical reason for it, other than the point that if the Government reopen the 1968 list they will have to review other conditions as well, because people are living longer due to medical advances. I do not think that is a very moral reason for not doing it.
We get told that patients who are not exempt from prescription charges can apply for a prepaid prescription certificate that costs £2 per week. However, that is £104 per year; everything adds up, and I have already mentioned increasing fuel bills and food prices. That is £104 per year that they should not be paying. Grants are available through charities such as the Cystic Fibrosis Trust to support those in urgent need, but they are in high demand. Between 2020 and 2021, one in 10 people with cystic fibrosis received an emergency grant from the trust; the majority of those grants went towards basic living costs.
There is a serious risk that cystic fibrosis patients who incur prescription charges may avoid taking essential medicines, especially if they are already in financial hardship. People living with chronic conditions in Wales do not have to face the same difficult choice between medication and heating their homes, as all NHS prescriptions are free there.
Ruth Jones
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Would she agree with me that, for all of us living in Wales, the fact that all of our prescriptions are free means that people do not have to worry about not having the money to take life-saving medication?
Kerry McCarthy
That is certainly true. I know that some people would say that this would mean that Government money would be used to subsidise the 11% of people who pay for their prescriptions at the moment. However, the figures that we have talked about and the unfairness of the current situation seem totally wrong.
Although I hope that cystic fibrosis becomes a condition people can live with, that drugs can manage the condition and that people do not suffer from too much, I would still not want to be in the situation of having it. It is still a condition where people have to have daily physiotherapy, take drugs such as Creon before eating any food, and make regular trips to the hospital. They have to be very careful to avoid infection and had to shield during covid. When people are paying that sort of price, giving them an exemption from prescription charges is not too much to ask. I hope that the Minister will finally commit to reopening the 1968 list, and make sure that cystic fibrosis patients do not have to pay this amount anymore.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for securing this debate today and for the very passionate speech he gave.
There are 2,500 people in the UK who suffer from cystic fibrosis; my wife, Sinead, is one of them. My wife was really poorly through childhood and up until the age of 18. She never got diagnosed with a condition; it was just considered a bad cough and a few digestive problems. In fact, a local GP thought she was a bit of a nuisance as she kept going back. At the age of 18—imagine this—she was just about to finish her A-levels, go to university and start her journey through life, when she was finally diagnosed with CF. She was told by a GP and people at the hospital that she probably would not live until she was 30. That was a good outcome, back then.
Undeterred, my wife carried on, went to university, did her studies, took her medication, did her physio—she did all the right things—in the hope of becoming a schoolteacher. She qualified with a degree at university and then went on to become a teacher. This was way before I met her. She has told me that paying the prescription charges was a struggle for her, because she had her student loans to pay off and she wanted to buy a house to live independently; she had dreams of living independently because she was fighting against time. She only had a few years to live; she did not think she would be here by the age of 30, so she had to plan her life out. She struggled—she really struggled.
Then, in a sort of blessing in disguise, my wife’s illness took a turn for the worse: she got CF-related type 1 diabetes, which meant that she could get free prescriptions. The irony is incredible: she has a life-limiting condition such as cystic fibrosis, which—let us be honest—is an early death sentence, yet the only way to get free prescriptions is to get another condition that is not as life threatening. I know diabetes is serious—my wife said that, actually, she would sooner have CF than diabetes, because it is a nightmare taking her insulin. However, our brilliant NHS has sorted that: she wears a patch with a sensor that tells her when she needs insulin. That is really good. Nevertheless, it was a real battle.
Living with someone with CF is a struggle. I met my wife 12 years ago. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me, if I am honest. I saw her at night, when she was getting really bad. When she was 32 or 33, she was told she had only a couple of years to live, and she was put on the list for a double lung transplant. We went down to the Royal Papworth Hospital, had the assessment and did all that stuff. I used to be awake with her at night—giving her physio, patting her back—while she was coughing up cups and cups of blood and throwing up.
Sometimes, we would go out for a meal and, as soon as we went out into the cold air, she would throw everything up. Because of the coughing, there is a big struggle for a CF patient to keep their food down. Most people do not know that—I did not even know what CF was before I met my wife. There is a constant struggle to keep their weight on. The heavier they are, the healthier they are and the better their lung capacity. My wife had to eat 4,000 or 5,000 calories a day. That is a lot of food. She had to eat lots of junk food—pizzas, chocolate, chips; every bit of junk food—which totally contradicted her diabetes. It was a battle between two illnesses to keep her fit and healthy.
My wife was on the transplant list for about two years. We had six calls; five were false alarms. We would get the call and get blue-lighted down to Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire. She would get ready for theatre, they would tell us about the donor and, then, about half an hour before surgery, they would come to us and say, “I’m sorry—it’s not a match. You’ve got to go home.” We would have to drive two and a half hours back up to Ashfield—that is a long journey of about 100 miles. There would be deathly silence in the car. We would not talk to one another; we were both upset, thinking, “Well, that’s it. You’ve got just a few months to live.” That happened five times.
On the sixth time, in December 2019, we got to Papworth and they said, “It’s a goer. We’re going ahead.” We got there at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon and she had the surgery that night. The lady whose organs she was receiving was still on a life support machine; she was still alive, but was, sadly, brain dead. When they turn the machine off, they disperse the organs all around the country to wherever they are going. It is a wonderful thing that our NHS does.
When the doctors told my wife that she was going to have the transplant, she broke down in tears and said, “I don’t want it.” We had to have a conversation, which was pretty blunt: “If you don’t have it, you won’t be here in a couple of months.” It did not take long to make her mind up. She is a braver person than me, and she had the surgery. She went into theatre at about 7 o’clock. Halfway through, the surgeon came out and said that they were really struggling; they had got one lung out and one lung in, but they could not get the other lung out. It was not looking good. Her mother and I were there, at Papworth.
Anyway, a couple of hours later, the surgeon came out again and said that they had got the lung out. They were fighting against time, because they only have a short amount of time. After about 14 hours, he came back down and said they had done it and were just sewing her up back up. She was fine after that, although it was a struggle. I think that people do not realise that a patient can get over the physical part—although it is a lot of pain, a lot of painkillers and a lot of medication—but the mental part is very tough. For my wife, knowing that she had somebody else’s organs inside her body, with the fear of rejection, was tough.
I hope that gives hon. Members a little insight into what it is like for a CF patient. It is hard to sympathise and empathise without having been there. That is the journey my wife went through. She always says that she cannot understand why she has this horrible condition but she cannot get a free prescription. Our spare bedroom is like a chemist’s. There are thousands of tablets. She takes over 50 tablets a day and now her transplant tablets as well, and the only reason she gets a free prescription is that she has diabetes. It seems absolutely crazy. I understand the argument that people get PIP or disability living allowance, and I understand that they should use that for extra living costs—I get that—but lots of CF patients out there do not get DLA or PIP. It is a real struggle, and we should take that into consideration.
I read this morning that the Cystic Fibrosis Trust says the cost to the Government would be about £270,000 a year if they waived prescription charges. To put that into context, it is similar to a premiership footballer’s weekly wage or the salary of a newsreader on the BBC—my favourite channel. That amount of money is what we are talking about.
We are limiting chances for people. Obviously, my wife went on to be a primary school teacher and make a fantastic contribution to society. For 10 years, she taught lots of children and made a real difference. She was able to do so not because she was financially secure, but because she did not have the extra debt of prescriptions. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she got diabetes, which made it less expensive for her but resulted in more hassle and more tablets.
However, we have new drugs such as Trikafta, which I thank the Government for introducing about 18 months ago and which, by the way, is a game-changer. A number of parents have contacted me to say, “This is brilliant. My child is going to live a near-normal life.” My wife did not get that chance. She had to have a transplant, so she is on limited time.
It seems now that we have done all this brilliant work and got these brilliant drugs that extend lives and let people live a more normal life—but living longer costs more money. I do not think that is fair, but I get both sides of the argument. It is not “one size fits all”. There are plenty of people with CF who have a few quid in the bank. We are comfortable in my household. My wife and I are all right—I get a decent salary—but there are people with CF who are a lot worse off than me, and I know from experience and talking to the CF community through social media that there are people out there for whom every penny counts and who skip their medication. If people with CF skip their medication, there is a good chance that could put them in hospital. Even worse, it could end up killing them, because skipping medication for a condition like this literally kills people.
I ask the Minister to have a serious think about waiving prescription charges. Like I say, it is not “one size fits all”. I do not personally think that everybody should get free prescriptions, because some people get extra benefits—the DLA, PIP or whatever—that are supposed to help them, but the Minister should take into account that it is a very costly job being a CF patient. They need extra food, and there is all the travel to the hospital and the doctors to have their blood done. It is an absolute nightmare. My wife has many trips to the hospital every single month, and there is the added cost of going down to Papworth once every three months for check-ups and stuff like that. The CF community is very small in this country, and not many people know much about it. I am fortunate that I know a little bit about it through my wife, so I can tell that story. I hope the Government listen, and I hope there can be some compromise.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak on this issue. I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for leading the debate, as he often does, on an issue that is of particular interest to him. Again, he has shown his expertise and knowledge on the subject matter.
I also thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for his personal contribution. There is no better way to tell a story than by recounting personal experience, which he has, and we thank him for disclosing it and making it public. He is right about the ESA and PIP—they are there to help—but those people are not working. Therefore, the money that they have coming in is also to try to keep their household surviving. It is not as though they have a whole lot of extra money to put into things, because they do not. That is a fact of life.
I am the Democratic Unionist party’s health spokesperson, and I am very pleased to participate in this important debate. I think the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and I have been in nearly every debate on this issue in Westminster Hall, for whatever number of years that may be. I cannot remember ever not following her—I am always following in her footsteps. I thank her for her knowledge and for telling her story. We may have heard it before, but it does not lessen the impact on the family.
The issue is quite simple. A list of exempt medical conditions was written by the Government over 50 years ago in 1968, and although in the UK there are now more adults than children living with cystic fibrosis, the Government have never updated the list. I am very clear, as was the hon. Member for Ashfield, that they should change the list of exempt conditions. The Minister is a good man—I am not saying that to pacify him in any way or to be smart: he is a good man. The relationship that he has with every MP, including myself, has always been very amenable, and he tries to solve problems. Not to put the Minister under any pressure, but we look to his good nature to give us some hope on where we are with this issue. It is simple: it is time to get CF on the exemption list.
The Cystic Fibrosis Trust can offer a one-off grant for the first 12 months of prescription prepayment charge, which gives individuals free prescriptions for a year. That does not help with the payments that are due after. As the hon. Member for Ashfield and others have referred to, it is about the ongoing costs. The Government stated in 2021 that they had no plans to review or extend the prescription charge medical exemptions list. That was disappointing; there is no sense in saying otherwise. I felt particularly aggrieved. I do not think it is too late for the Minister to take the issue back to his Department and see whether it is possible to change that decision.
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition affecting more than 10,600 people in the UK. One in 19 people in the UK is said to carry some types of the cystic fibrosis gene. Cystic fibrosis accounts for 9,500 hospital admissions and over 100,000 hospital bed days a year. If we add up those costs and the ongoing visits to the GP, there must be a financial argument to make CF an exempt condition. I would suggest that there might be a cost saving in that process.
Given that cystic fibrosis impacts so many people daily, not only in Northern Ireland but across the UK, I believe there are further steps the Government can take to ensure that prescription charges are waived. I had a debate on asthma here about a month five weeks ago, which raised concerns about why people with lung conditions are not on the Government exemption list. Lung disease is the third-largest killer in the UK, and at least one in five people will develop a lung condition in their lives. A recent survey showed that 57% of people skipped getting their prescriptions for asthma, as they struggled to afford it. In our society, in this day and age, I find it incredible. There are questions that people need answered.
I do not see it as acceptable that people with lifelong respiratory diseases must pay up to £100—or £104, as the hon. Member for Bristol East said, to be exact—for prescription charges each year. Through a series of parliamentary questions, I asked the Government why there are still prescription charges for lung diseases. The Minister knows that I am fond of him, but I am really disheartened that the Government will not take this small step, for a small cost, to make their life slightly easier. There are many leading charities and organisations that provide the best support for people suffering from cystic fibrosis and other respiratory diseases, but it should not be solely down to them to fix the problem.
My request to the Minister is simple. I urge him and his Department to hear the pleas of the hon. Members for Bristol East, for Ashfield and for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, who each gave personal examples of people affected. I have constituents who are affected. In Northern Ireland, they are fortunate enough that their CF drugs are being paid for. I am asking the Minister here, in the mother of Parliaments, to take our case to the Secretary of State for Health or whoever it needs to be presented to.
The fee may not seem like a lot, but it is to families on lower incomes, who simply cannot work due to diseases like cystic fibrosis. Over the years, I have had constituents come to see me. It is tragic to watch people with cystic fibrosis gasping for the breath that we take for granted. My plea is on their behalf. The fee is a large chunk of money for something they cannot control and will never go away. For the one in five that will at some point be diagnosed with a lung disease, I urge the Minister, who is a good man, to take immediate action and follow closely behind Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and remove—immediately if possible, or tell us when it can be done—prescription charges.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I had not intended to contribute to this debate, Mr Sharma. As you know, because I gave you written notice, I could not be here at the outset and I cannot stay for the end, and it is not conventional to contribute on that basis, so I am grateful for your indulgence in allowing me to do so. I decided to contribute only when I heard the superb speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), which was both moving and informed by the most intimate personal experience. Sometimes in this place, that inspires us to contribute, and I will briefly say why.
Long before Bob Russell was invented, in the dim and distant past, and before my 19 consecutive years as a Front Bencher, I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Back Bencher, fortunate in the late 1990s to come up in the ballot for private Members' Bills. It was the only private Member’s Bill I have ever had—we cannot have one as Front Benchers, and I have not had one since. I chose to introduce a Bill to do exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) has requested today, which is to remove prescription charges for those suffering from cystic fibrosis. I did so, believing all that has been said in this debate by all who have contributed.
I went to see the then Labour Minister, a nice man in the House of Lords—Lord Hunt—who was a good, diligent Minister. He gave me a fair hearing as I put the case with all the vehemence but reason that has typified this debate. Unfortunately, I was not able to persuade him, and subsequent Health Ministers have remained unpersuaded. I put the case because I have a personal story too, but it is a story with a less happy ending than that told by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield. I had a close friend who suffered from cystic fibrosis, and her experience catalysed my commitment to try to do something about it.
My friend was a very young woman who worked for me when she contracted cystic fibrosis. She had two lung transplants at the Freeman Hospital, in the days when they were an extreme rarity—very few single lung transplants had been done in the early 1990s. She survived them both and did well, got married and had a baby. Later, she was due to be the godmother to my youngest son, who is now 17 years of age. When I asked her to do it, she said, “You know I won’t be around for his 21st birthday.” Sadly, she was not even around for his christening because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield said, people who have transplants are always likely to die of something other than the condition that originally provoked the transplant. My friend died of cancer in Derbyshire Royal Infirmary when my son was a tiny baby and the day after I had been to see her with the infant in my arms.
Jane, my dear friend, made me know how important this cause is, and made me understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) has done us a great service in bringing it before this Chamber and to the Minister’s attention. Having been a Minister many times—I am sorry to put my hon. Friend the Minister in this position, because he is a personal friend as well as being an hon. Friend—I know that if he were to say today in this debate, “We are going to do this,” it would happen, because in the great scheme of things it is not a huge decision for the Government. But, my goodness, it is an immense one for people such as the wife of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield and my late, dear friend. For that reason, I say to the Minister that he should stand up now and say that the Government will consider this or, better still, that they will do it. He would be remembered forever as the Minister who responded to a Westminster Hall debate on the basis of the strength of a cross-party argument that had such weight and substance—such vehemence expressed on behalf of those who suffer—that it persuaded him to act immediately. I hope that he might at least commit to considering this again, because it is a just and worthy cause. So many people would celebrate a small step for the Government, but a huge step for them.
Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
It was the right decision to let you come in. Thank you very much for your contribution.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Sharma. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for securing this important debate and for his continued campaigning on this issue. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). As has been said, hearing the personal stories of Members brings to the fore the reality faced by CF patients, which is really important, and I thank Members for sharing those personal stories.
As we have heard this afternoon, cystic fibrosis affects over 10,000 people in the UK, with one in 25 people being carriers of the CF gene. CF is a degenerative condition with symptoms that often start in early childhood, get progressively worse and affect people’s quality of life. Although there is no cure, treatments are available to help manage the condition and reduce its effects. Sadly, life expectancy for those living with CF is still shorter than that of the general population. People living with CF are also more susceptible to other conditions, including diabetes, osteoporosis and liver issues.
Despite the debilitating nature of CF, people living with the condition face a complex and discriminatory system when it comes to accessing prescriptions. The system of prescription charges is complex for most people, but for those living with long-term health conditions, it can present multiple challenges.
As all Members have said, there are several exemptions from prescription charges, based on demographics, income and pre-existing conditions. When it comes to pre-existing conditions, the list of conditions that are exempt from prescription charges was first created in 1968, as we have heard. In the 54 years since, we have seen immeasurable changes in our understanding of long-term conditions and the outcomes of people living with them, yet just one addition has been made to that list in those 54 years—just one. That leaves those living with CF in the position of needing to have another long-term condition to access free prescriptions. This two-tier system leaves thousands of people with the same conditions facing different circumstances.
We know the difficulties faced by those living with CF who have to pay for their prescriptions. The costs of prescriptions can put people off taking the medication they need, as we have heard. With the costs continuing to rise, those problems are only going to get worse. That not only leaves people suffering more than necessary but, as set out very eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, will cost the NHS more money in the long term and further increase pressure on primary care.
At a time when the cost of living is continuing to rise, the Government ought to consider what more they can do to support people with these essential costs. The fact that one in 10 people living with CF were given emergency grants by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust to help them fund their medication shows how serious this problem is. No one should be forced to choose between paying for their prescription and risking their lives. Sadly, we know the financial pressures that those with long-term conditions often face. As the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned, surveys have shown that 29% of people living with CF have not taken their prescriptions due to financial pressures. Too many people are forced to make dangerous choices that they should not have to.
The inequality in prescriptions for those living with CF is clearly a cause for concern, and something that the Minister needs to look at. In December, he stated in response to a written question that the Government’s
“policy on entitlement to help with prescription charges in England is based on the principle that those who can afford to contribute should do so, while those who are likely to have difficulty…paying should be protected.”
What weight has he given to the financial difficulties of those living with long-term conditions such as CF when establishing his principles?
Furthermore, as I and other hon. Members have pointed out, the medical exemption list for prescription charges has been updated just once since 1968. Given the Government’s levelling-up agenda, one would assume that this would be a perfect opportunity to bring health policy properly into the 21st century. Given the powerful arguments that we have heard this afternoon, I hope the Minister’s position has progressed from the response he gave to the written question just a few weeks ago. For him to say that the Government have “no plans” to look again at this, despite the overwhelming changes in our health service in the last 54 years, is frankly slightly baffling. What reassurances can he give those living with CF that the Government understand their condition as it is now, not as it was in 1968?
The Minister furthermore suggested that capping charges at £108 for those living with long-term conditions through a prepayment certificate provided support. This highlights a failure to grasp just how serious the financial pressures faced by those living with long-term conditions such as CF are. Those living with CF face an outdated and unfair system that is wholly removed from the world as it is today. If the Government truly believe in levelling up, it is time for the Minister to look at this issue again.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure as always to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this important debate and thank all hon. Members who have taken part. Although this issue falls within Lord Kamall’s ministerial portfolio rather than mine, it is privilege to answer in this place and to engage in this debate.
Nobody here today, and nobody viewing our proceedings or reading them when they are written up in Hansard, can fail to have been moved by the experiences and stories that we have heard. Hon. Members on both sides of the House told moving stories about their constituents—in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who spoke of his very personal experience, it was his wife, Sinead. As hon. Members have said, it is always incredibly powerful and moving in this place when an hon. Member is willing to share their own experiences, not just with this House and colleagues but essentially with the public. It was powerful, it was personal and it was poignant, and I thank him for that.
I also thank the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for her contribution, in which she set out—again, very movingly—very personal stories, to make this real. It is very easy in this place for us to slip into talking about policies and grand strategies and to not always relate that to people and individual lives and experiences. I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. I do not always agree with her on everything in a political context, but I certainly agree with her on EDMs. I share the experience. I remember Bob Russell from the time before I was a Member, when I worked for previous Members in this place. I admire his belief in the power of EDMs, although I have to say that I do not share it and, like the hon. Lady, I occasionally have to explain to constituents and others who understand-ably think that an EDM moves the agenda forward, that it rarely does, but that it may, on occasion, put down a marker.
As ever, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his comments. He mentioned that he has been in just about every debate on this subject, along with the hon. Member for Bristol East. Given his assiduity in attending debates in this House, that could be said for a vast array of subjects, on which he has given well-informed and eloquent contributions, not only representing his constituents, but putting issues of national concern on the agenda.
Jim Shannon
The Minister referred to the former Member, Bob Russell. I recall him standing at the door to be No. 1 on EDMs. I put in at least two EDMs every week. Their purpose is not to change policy, but to raise awareness or congratulate some person or group that has been active in the community. For me, that is what EDMs are about.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his spirited defence of early-day motions, of which he makes powerful use, as he does with every opportunity he has to speak in this place.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is no longer able to be here, but he made a valuable contribution, and I am grateful to you, Mr Sharma, for allowing him to speak—even if, as a former Minister, he should have known better the consequences of seeking to tempt me to make policy at the Dispatch Box without cross-Government agreement, which might have led to an early termination of my ministerial career. He made a powerful point, as all hon. and right hon. Members have done, and I will turn to some of those points in a moment.
Before I do so, I want to recognise the fantastic work undertaken by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, which does a fantastic job on behalf of people living with cystic fibrosis and their families, and in bringing the condition and the needs of people with it to the attention of this House, and more widely. I also acknowledge the work of the Prescription Charges Coalition, of which the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is a member. It has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the help available to patients with the cost of their prescriptions and campaigns on an issue that its members feel strongly about. In our democracy, whether or not we agree on the policy position, it is right that we recognise those who get out there, campaign and seek to drive change and policy. It is important to recognise those who are active in our democracy in that way.
As we have heard, cystic fibrosis is a life-limiting condition affecting many thousands of people in the UK. It is not only a life-limiting disease but, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield, a disease that can impact on the quality of life and the life experiences of those affected and their families. While there is no cure for cystic fibrosis, there are treatments available on the NHS to help reduce the effect of symptoms and make it easier to live with.
It is not that long ago that conditions such as cystic fibrosis saw life expectancy so low that many were advised not to expect to live beyond their teens. Thanks to advancements in treatments, better care and the work of organisations such as the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, people with cystic fibrosis are now living for longer, with a better quality of life, with half of those with the condition living past the age of 40. Children born with cystic fibrosis today are likely to live longer than that. That is a positive story and a reflection on our medical and scientific advances.
I turn to the crux of the debate. When the medical exemption list was drawn up in 1968 in agreement with the British Medical Association, it was limited to readily identifiable, permanent medical conditions that automatically called for continuous, lifelong and, in most cases, replacement therapy without which the patient would become seriously ill or even die. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), alluded to, there has been a review since 1968—only one—which resulted in the addition of cancer in 2009.
When the exemption list was drawn up, decisions on which conditions to include were based on medical knowledge at the time—for instance, children with cystic fibrosis were not expected to live to see adulthood—and it is entirely understandable that, given advances in treatment and increases in life expectancy, those who are now living with cystic fibrosis for a lot longer should wish to pursue exemption from prescription charges to help them maintain their quality of life with the drugs that are essential to their quality of life. The issue of prescription charges was reviewed more broadly in the round in the 2010 Gilmore report, which did not recommend further changes at that stage.
As the hon. Member for Enfield North alluded to, I know that the answers that Ministers have given, stating that the Government have no immediate plans to review the list, will have caused disappointment to right hon. and hon. Members and to those with this condition. We do think it would not be right in this context to look at one condition in isolation, separate from other conditions, because others would rightly argue that their condition was potentially equally deserving of an exemption if it fitted the same criteria. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys has rightly advanced the case of cystic fibrosis, and I entirely understand why, but I know that he will also recognise that other conditions might qualify for consideration in the same way, or for the same case to be made for them by right hon. and hon. Members.
When the exemption list was first put in place in 1968, 42% of items on prescription were free; now 89% are free. There has been considerable change in that space, but to go to the heart of what right hon. and hon. Members have asked for today, were my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings in his place, I would disappoint him by saying that, as he will appreciate, I cannot make policy standing at the Dispatch Box. It is important that everything is considered carefully. Although this is not my policy, I will continue to reflect on the points that have been made by right hon. and hon. Members today and by campaigners on this issue. I will also ensure that I will not only speak to my noble Friend, the Minister with portfolio responsibility for this issue, but draw to his attention the transcript of today’s debate.
Kerry McCarthy
I have just realised that it is groundhog day—I missed an ideal opportunity to weave that fact into my speech, as I think all of us would have done. Is there anything the Minister could say that does not makes us feel like we have been here many times before? He has said that he will reflect on these points, but is there not something a little bit more concrete that he can give us a commitment on, so that we feel that we are perhaps making some progress?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She may or may not always agree with me, but I will always endeavour to be straight with the House, even when the message may not always be the one that Members want to hear. I cannot stand here now and say that there will be a review of that list; it is important for me to be honest with her. What I can say—which she may feel is insufficient, and I entirely respect her if she does—is that I will reflect on the points made today and the issues raised. I will discuss this issue with my noble Friend and ensure that the points that have been made in this debate are conveyed to him, but it would be wrong of me to commit to something that I am not in a position to commit to. The hon. Lady rightly presses her case, but I know that she will appreciate my position, and it is important that I am honest with the House in that respect.
I touched on the help with prescription costs previously, and the number of items. While I know that this is not at the heart of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, it is still important that I put on record the point that I alluded to: when medical exemptions were introduced, only 42% of all NHS prescription items were dispensed free of charge. That figure is now around 89%, and around 60% of the English population do not pay prescription charges at all. Many people with medical conditions not on the exempt list already get free prescriptions on other grounds, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said, with current exemptions providing valuable help for those on the lowest incomes.
Jim Shannon
In my contribution, I referred to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where prescription charges are free. I have knowledge of Northern Ireland, though not of Scotland and Wales, and understand that we follow the rules of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the UK but have some liberty about what we add on. I understand that the Minister is not responsible for this. He is a good man who has been honest with us. What we wish to be conveyed from this debate, to the person who is responsible, is that the same should happen here as in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will finish the point I was making and then respond to his. We have already heard about the annual certificate, which can be purchased by direct debit in instalments, meaning that a person can have all the prescribed items they need for just over £2 a week. I take the point from the hon. Member for Bristol East that that may still not solve the problem for everyone, but that route provides a significant potential reduction in costs.
I shall now respond to the point raised by the hon. Member for Strangford on the devolved Administrations, and the broader approach to prescription charges. Although we have surprisingly managed to stray away from it for quite a while, any debate on this subject will touch on the different positions of England and the devolved Administrations, given the latter’s abolition of charges for prescriptions. I suspect that many people will ask why there is that difference in approach. Health is a devolved matter and the devolved Administrations have full discretion over how they spend their budgets and the choices they make, presumably choosing to spend a proportionately larger share of those budgets on prescriptions.
We have opted for a different approach in England. We also recognise that prescription charges, more broadly, raise significant revenue, which provides a valuable contribution directly to NHS services in England. In 2019-20, they contributed just over £600 million in revenue to NHS frontline services. There is always a balance to be struck, and I suspect that we shall return to this topic, with Members taking different views.
With regard to the key point made by the hon. Member for Strangford, although I am not directly responsible for this area of policy I will continue to reflect on that. In this House, there are times when individual debates or speeches—I look at my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield—resonate, and cause Ministers to turn them over in their head and reflect on the points made. All hon. Members will be able to point to speeches they have heard on different topics in the main Chamber that stay with them. They go away from that debate, still reflecting on what that right hon. or hon. Member has said. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield has had that effect today. I will reflect carefully on what he said, within the context that I cannot make policy at the Dispatch Box. In response to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford, I will pick up that issue and convey the sentiments of Members speaking today to my noble Friend Lord Kamall, and ensure that he has a copy of the transcript of the debate.
I conclude by thanking all hon. Members for their contributions. Often, people judge what goes on in this place by the half an hour or 40 minutes that they see at 12 noon on a Wednesday on both sides of the Chamber and what happens there. Many people do not see what happens in Westminster Hall, where, in a measured and sensible way, people can discuss, debate and sometimes disagree on issues that really matter and impact on the lives of individuals or particular groups of people. This debate is one that those that clears a very high bar for the quality of the contributions, for the importance of the subject and for its ability to cause us to leave this Chamber continuing to reflect on what we have heard.
Paul Maynard
I thank all those who have participated, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). We are all grateful to him for not just speaking on a personal basis, but illuminating a debate far better than I could from my more dry, academic analysis. I thank him for his personal contribution, and I thank all hon. Members for a constructive debate. I recognise the point that the Minister made; making a commitment on the hoof at the Dispatch Box can be career-limiting. I know that myself, as I reflect on what I once said on rail and aviation, which I suspect led to my defenestration. Saving High Speed 2 can be terminal for a career, perhaps. None the less, I hope he will take the issue back to Lord Kamall, and that he might encourage him to meet me and other interested Members to hear what the Gentleman whose brief it is thinks of the matter.
Edward Argar
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that I will certainly convey his request for a meeting to my noble Friend.
Paul Maynard
We have something concrete on which to conclude the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered prescription charge exemption and cystic fibrosis.
UK-Andean Trade Agreement: Human Rights
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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
Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
I remind Members to observe social distancing and wear masks. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered human rights and the UK-Andean Trade Agreement.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. This debate concerns human rights and the UK’s trade agreement with the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. For the benefit of the Ecuadorians present, Ecuador is not one of the countries of concern to me; Peru—though only a little—and Colombia are the objects of my concern.
It is commonly agreed that any trade agreement nowadays should go beyond merely the management of trade flows between different countries. The then Foreign Secretary, who is now the Justice Secretary, said in January 2021 that
“we shouldn’t be engaged in free trade negotiations with countries abusing human rights”.
That is clear and unequivocal. The Minister for the Middle East, North Africa and North America, the right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), told the Commons last July that
“our commitment to human rights is a foundation stone of our foreign policy… We will ensure that we use our trade relationships not just to export products and services but to export our principles and values.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 800.]
That is a strong, powerful statement.
Even in their report to the House on the trade agreement with the Andean countries, the Government stated:
“The UK has long supported the promotion of our values globally and this will continue as we leave the EU. We want to ensure economic growth, development and labour and environmental protection go hand-in-hand.”
There we have it: human rights, labour standards and environmental protection should all be part of any modern trade agreement.
It gets a little better; there are strong statements in the agreement itself. Article 1 states:
“Respect for democratic principles and fundamental human rights…underpins the internal and international policies of the Parties. Respect for these principles constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”
Article 269 commits both parties to
“the promotion and effective implementation in its laws and practice…of internationally recognised core labour standards”.
Sadly, there is no mechanism to enforce that. There are no sanctions and no discussion of what we do when things go wrong. There is an acceptance that we should have domestic advisory groups on both sides to represent civil society, trade unions, employers and so on, which could monitor adherence to labour standards and human rights commitments. I shall be asking the Minister where we are with our own domestic advisory group in the UK.
I will start with Peru, which in many ways is an easier case. Peru generates concern around environmental standards. Back in 2017, Peruvian civil society representatives and their European counterparts filed a complaint before the European Commission against the Peruvian Government for failure to comply with environmental and labour obligations under the free trade agreement with the EU, was then the guiding trade agreement. The Peruvian Government continue to fail to establish clear objectives and indicators to monitor progress on tackling these big environmental issues, so there is concern about Peru.
Colombia is a country I know reasonably well. It had a horrendous civil war, which in a way continues. It reached, in part, a negotiated solution. However, that has not stopped the huge erosion of basic human rights, including the right to life and others.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman often brings human rights issues to Westminster Hall about which he and I are on the same page, as we are today. While respect for democratic principles, fundamental human rights and the rule of law should be an essential part of any agreement, does he not agree that we need not simply words but actions? We should not continue to trade with those whose flagrant disregard for and abuse of human rights is prevalent and persevering. I believe that he will now illustrate, in addressing what has happened in Colombia—land grabs and murders of peasant people—that those in authority there have a disregard for life itself.
Tony Lloyd
I am grateful for the hon. Member’s support. He is absolutely right. I will continue on exactly that theme.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has information about 196 human rights defenders —those who protect the population more generally and go out of their way to act as a human shield—who were killed in 2021. They faced increasing death threats in the aftermath of protests last year. In the first 24 days of this year, 10 human rights defenders were murdered. The International Trade Union Confederation rates Colombia as one of the worst countries in the world for workers’ rights and documents 22 trade unionists who have been murdered in the last year. Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be active in a trade union.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
It is good that an issue as important as international human rights has been brought to this Chamber. Does my hon. Friend agree that we have to start dealing with such issues in Colombia? Only on Monday, José González Marín, an agricultural workers trade union representative, was shot six times and killed, the rationale being that he wanted the UK-Colombia free trade agreement suspended. This cannot continue.
Tony Lloyd
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case. That someone was shot for being a trade unionist going about trade union activities is simply an outrage. The right to life is a fundamental right. The right to protest is a fundamental right. In this country in the past, trade unionists may have faced imprisonment, but rarely death, I have to say. It is shocking that that is still the way things are in this world.
More than 1,200 Colombian social leaders, often representing the indigenous community, are estimated to have been murdered since the 2016 peace agreement was signed. I was involved in supporting the creation of that agreement, so I bow to nobody in recognising its importance, but we recognise that it did not solve the problem of violence. Worse than that, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified that at least 46 people—two of them state agents, the rest civilians—were killed during protests, with at least 28 of those killings attributed to the police. One young woman, who may not count as one of the 28, was gang-raped by the police and took her own life as a result.
State repression and widespread killing of protestors by the police breaches every democratic principle known to us all. Rather like my hon. Friend said, the question arises of what the remedy should be. The problem with the Andean agreement is that it ultimately makes no demand on the authorities in Colombia or, indeed, Peru. The UK did not consider the Colombian Government’s failure to uphold many of their obligations under the peace agreement when negotiating the Andean agreement. I recognise that the agreement is a roll-over of the EU agreement, but the human rights commitments are nevertheless real, despite the violations that contravene the commitments of the Colombian Government, who have failed to live up to their own expressed intentions.
Will the Minister say where we are on this? I recognise that the treaty is in transition. What do we say to the Colombians and to the Peruvian Government about the gross breaches of the standards to which they agreed and to which we as a country are committed to uphold in our trade negotiations?
Like my hon. Friend, the Trades Union Congress has joined the Colombian trade unions in asking for the agreement to be suspended until there are effective measures to ensure that human rights are observed and, in the case of Peru, that environmental and labour standards are upheld. Clearly, in the absence of any capacity to do that, what matters is how we monitor human rights abuse. What do we do in terms of our dialogue with the Colombian authorities?
I mentioned that there is provision in the treaty for the establishment of domestic advisory groups that ought to be able—through civil society, trade unions, employers’ organisations and civil organisations such as non-governmental organisations and the like—to say what the situation is on the ground and to be listened to. Only by listening away from Government sources do we get the real information on the ground.
I have listened over the years. I was a Minister in the Foreign Office years back. As a recipient of Foreign Office advice about Colombia from our embassy, I did not always find it to be as complete as the information that one would get from civil society and from those on the ground who saw the erosion of standards in people’s real lives and, brutally, people’s real deaths. Where are we up to with the establishment of the domestic advisory groups? It is so important that we have the capacity to monitor, to inform and, where appropriate, to give real criticism and look at whether we want to be part of a trade agreement that is so lacking in enforcement.
More broadly, will the Minister comment on our policy with respect to free trade agreements and human rights clauses? If this is the example that we are using with other regimes where we know that there are regular human rights abuses, we will be creating a very difficult future for our commitment to maintain human rights and to maintain pressure on labour standards and, importantly, environmental standards. We are likely to be talking in the near future to Brazil and other Governments in Latin America. I have to say that the present Brazilian Government would probably not pass muster in terms of their commitments on human rights standards, so what does the Andean agreement say about our ability to work in the future where human rights are central to the whole operation?
I know that the Minister is a trade Minister and is not directly responsible for our embassies, although there are trade representatives in them. What kind of information and advice pertinent to the agreement do the Minister and her colleagues get from our embassy in Bogotá? The ambassador is due to speak to groups of MPs in the not-too-distant future, so I hope that we will hear that directly from him, but he will perhaps give a little more information to Ministers than to a Back-Bench MP, however interested in Colombia I am.
Ian Lavery
Does my hon. Friend agree that we expect human rights issues in countries to be discussed and ironed out in free trade agreements, arrangements, discussions and negotiations? He has just explained how many people have been killed only this year, and it continues. I would think that the UK Government do raise this issue, but the fact that they do so and nothing happens is not acceptable. What does he think should happen with these negotiations? We cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
Tony Lloyd
That is almost exactly where I want to end. We have got to an agreement. The Government and the Opposition agree that human rights, labour standards and environmental standards are fundamental. That has been enshrined by the then Foreign Secretary, by Foreign Office Ministers and by trade Ministers too. We are in agreement that Colombia is a very difficult case. Peru is perhaps less difficult, but it nevertheless causes some problems. There are therefore two problem countries out of the three Andean treaty countries. In that context, what is the value of writing human rights clauses into an agreement if, in the end, nothing is done about the erosion of standards?
We have to rethink the way that we do things. We have to rethink whether sanctions or a road map need to be delivered, saying that we expect change and transformation. In the end, we expect to have the capacity, if our interlocuters in Bogotá or other capitals—in Peru, Brazil or wherever—are not conforming, to say, “We really can no longer live with this agreement.” I put it to the Minister that the time has now come to listen to the call, from the Colombian trade unions in particular, for us to suspend this agreement until such time that there is a recognisable road map for human rights, labour standards and environmental improvement.
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
I start by thanking the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this important and well-attended debate. These debates are very helpful to get things on record and to raise awareness about particular issues. They are also very helpful to Ministers, because they enable us to take some time to do a deep dive into areas that we normally would not pay a huge amount of attention to, because of the demands on our time.
The debate has caused me to take some time this week to look at the tragic details of the cases that he and other Members have raised—there are hundreds of cases. These are not just lists of names; there are stories behind them about what those individuals were working towards and what they were trying to secure for their communities. These are people who have been killed and murdered and, as hon. Members have said, been victims of other crimes too, including sexual violence. They were trade unionists, they were protestors and they were environmental campaigners—as well as many other things. Their murders, and the murders of members of their families, including children, are horrific. Colleagues have done the House a service in reminding us about what has gone on and what continues to go on. I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale for that.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for giving way, I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this debate and I apologise for arriving a few minutes late. While the Minister is paying tribute to those who have been murdered, I want to add to the record Dr Luz Marina Arteaga, a social leader from the Matarratón and El Porvenir communities in Colombia. I and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) had the huge privilege of meeting her several years ago during our visit with the ABColombia group. She was found dead towards the end of January, murdered for standing up for the rights of her community. We have written directly to the Foreign Secretary about that—I hope we will hear back soon. I want to add that to the record and emphasise the necessity for accountability mechanisms in these trade deals. As the hon. Member for Rochdale said, these are not worth anything in writing if they are not acted upon.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Member for raising that particular case. If we were to raise every case we would be here for several weeks; there are large numbers of individuals and their families falling victim to this activity. The countries that the hon. Member for Rochdale is concerned about are of concern to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; they are on its watchlist for human rights abuses. As well as the levers that the Government have, which I will come on to, we have a huge amount in the UK that we can deploy to try and improve this situation. Our trade unions are a part of that suite of things that we have to offer as a country. When we talk about global Britain, we often do not talk about what they do, but I know from previous roles that they do a tremendous amount to build capacity and highlight the plight of vulnerable individuals. We have done good work both in the FCDO and in other Departments—the Department for Work and Pensions, for example—to try to use that knowledge and expertise to grow capacity in organisations elsewhere.
Government can be a catalyst for reform and for improving human rights around the world. In formulating our trade policy, for which I hold the brief, I try to balance off what the best way of doing that is. I am very conscious that trade in itself is a force for good. Our trade dialogue gives us a platform to raise human rights issues. Just in autumn last year, I and another Minister from our Department went to Peru to discuss issues related to trade, and were able to raise other issues alongside that debate. Trade is also important for poverty alleviation. I am very conscious that, as we come out of the pandemic and, we hope, recover swiftly from that economic blow, removing barriers to trade is a vitally important component of that.
I am also acutely aware that the communities that hon. Members have mentioned this afternoon have suffered terribly during the pandemic. Many of them have lost millions of jobs, and those individuals have little or no state support, and so are more vulnerable to exploitation. Organisations, civil society voices and trade union voices that we want to strengthen are increasingly important at this time.
We have many other tools in Government outside of our trade negotiations. We shape our official development assistance programmes to reflect concerns about human rights. To give the hon. Member for Rochdale an example from another situation, we reshaped our ODA programming following the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. We still wanted to work there, and there was a need for us to be there, but it was not appropriate to continue as we had been. We do adapt—our policies are not set in stone. They can adapt, and our FTA policies and programmes enable us to do that.
We have spent to date £68 million through the conflict, stability and security fund to support the implementation of a peace agreement in Colombia, as the hon. Member for Rochdale will know. As I said, that country is on the FCDO’s human rights priority country watchlist. Our Minister met with human rights defenders and social leaders in November last year to talk extensively about those issues.
Ian Lavery
There have been 40 community activists killed already this year, and there have been 13 massacres. As I have said twice already, that cannot continue. Can the Minister give this House assurances that, in any discussions with the Colombian authorities, No. 1 on the agenda will be human rights in that country? We should be doing everything that we possibly can to remedy that issue. If they will not listen, if they continue to turn a blind eye, does the Minister have any ideas about how best to progress this?
Penny Mordaunt
When we meet Ministers and other people who can assist us in other countries, that is absolutely part of our core script. On visits, we as Ministers, but also our officials, will listen to organisations in country as well. It is incredibly important that we do that and that we have a good understanding. Of course, through our networks around the globe, and particularly in those countries, we ensure that these things are monitored and reported back to our ministries. I will come on to what we can do, because as the hon. Member and other hon. Members have said, the situation persists.
Crucially, we have also put in place a multi-million pound project to help to transform the approach taken by the Colombian national police on human rights, social conflict and gender. I mention those things because addressing them is part of how we—the UK—can help to resolve the situation, and protect and strengthen civil society.
The hon. Member for Rochdale asked me some specific questions on our engagement. I have mentioned the engagement that my Department has had with Peru recently. Last year, three UK Ministers visited Colombia. In addition, there were regular calls between officials, as well as virtual visits—given some of the restrictions we faced—by Lord Ahmad and the UK international ambassador for human rights. Most recently, a Foreign Office Minister visited Colombia in November to attend an event marking the five-year anniversary of the signing of the 2016 peace agreement, which obviously provided opportunities for her to raise these issues, which she did.
I will respond to some of the questions that the hon. Member for Rochdale asked about our position on monitoring; then I will answer the questions put by the hon. Member for Wansbeck about how we can apply some teeth to such monitoring.
The hon. Member for Rochdale asked about monitoring of the commitment and ensuring that we deal with countries that try to adhere to the core standards of the agreement. We have an annual trade committee, under which we have several specialised committees, with those countries’ partners. That is obviously the successor to the EU structure, which he alluded to. It meets on an annual basis and is due to meet again in March. It helps to ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement, as well as providing a framework for ensuring that commitments are met and that the agreement is functioning effectively. It also supports our objectives, including our human rights objectives.
Regarding the UK’s domestic advisory group—clearly, the countries have their own such groups, but I will talk about ours—we launched a public expression of interest for that in January. It is an independent group of expert organisations that will monitor the implementation of the trade and sustainable development chapters of the UK’s FTAs, including those with the countries that the hon. Member for Rochdale is concerned about. The UK’s DAG is expected to be in place shortly—later this year—and engagement with the UK Government and partner countries will be regular and ongoing. Partner countries to these agreements will also establish their own respective DAGs and we have discussed the issue at the UK’s first trade and sustainable development committees, which began last year and will continue this year. We have regular discussions with those countries at ministerial and official levels, and our annual trade committee and associated sub-committees provide a platform to do that.
The countries’ trade agreements include binding provisions on trade and sustainable development, or TSD, on both labour and environmental standards, and they provide for an annual TSD committee, which I have already alluded to. Those are an opportunity for the UK to raise concerns with partner organisations and we will do so if necessary. However, that is how we will monitor what is happening. What hon. Members want to know is how we will apply some teeth to this process.
Clearly, we take a bespoke approach to our FTAs, but all our FTAs contain either chapters or parts based on human rights. Those provisions differ and have a different focus, depending on the particular needs of the situation that we are dealing with. For example, there may be chapters on gender or indigenous people. That is what “good” looks like in an FTA; that is what we work to. However, the reasons for including such provisions are not just because it is a nice thing to do—
Nationality and Borders Bill: LGBTQ+ People
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the potential effect of provisions in the Nationality and Borders Bill on LGBTQ+ people.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. Before I begin, I would like to refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support I receive from the excellent Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. I also pay tribute to the organisations in my constituency and across Yorkshire—such as the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group, City of Sanctuary Sheffield, ASSIST Sheffield, Time to be Out and so many more—that do such vital work supporting asylum seekers and refugees in my region.
The Nationality and Borders Bill is a wide-ranging piece of legislation. There are so many problems with it that it has been difficult for Members to address them all as it has passed through Parliament. Today, I want to shed some light on the potentially devastating impact this legislation will have on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees.
I have spoken to many campaigners advocating on behalf of LGBTQ+ communities, and every organisation I have contacted is appalled by the Bill. They are appalled because LGBTQ+ people seeking sanctuary are already met with a system full of obstacles and challenges.
In a world where homosexuality is still illegal in 70 countries and punishable by death in 11, it is shocking that across Europe, one in three applications from LGBTQ+ asylum seekers is refused because officials simply do not believe the applicant. According to the University of Sussex, four in 10 people report being rejected because decision makers did not consider them to be persecuted or at risk of persecution in their home country, while more than a third felt interviewers did not listen to their story or ask relevant questions.
In the UK, the story is no less bleak. Around 2,000 people fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation seek asylum here every year, with only about a quarter of those applications granted by the Home Office. However, when those decisions are challenged, almost half of those who have been refused win their appeals. Those numbers alone suggest that something is very wrong at the Home Office. They speak to what researchers at the University of Sussex have described as a “culture of disbelief” that is a symptom of a wider hostile environment for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. As ever, it is the most vulnerable who suffer the most. Ministers should put themselves in the shoes of someone running from violence and abuse for their sexuality or gender identity to truly understand what that is like to go through.
Currently, under UK law, to be granted asylum, a person must demonstrate that if they were forced to return to their country of origin, there is a reasonable degree of likelihood they would be persecuted. They are compelled to prove their sexual orientation to Home Office officials who, as I have said, have been told to be intensely suspicious of anything said to them.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
I had a constituent who was from Venezuela. He was told to return. He had married a British person. He was told that he could be more discreet in Venezuela and have no problem, and then return via the marriage route—he had no problem and should not worry. Is there not a problem in the Home Office looking at technical processes rather than at human beings? It expects people to be able to fit into boxes that are just not them.
Olivia Blake
I completely agree. I have huge sympathy with my hon. Friend’s constituent. I am sure that story has been told many times before.
Imagine being an LGBTQ+ person who lives in one of those countries where homosexuality is illegal, or where it is punishable by death: you live in a constant fear of being outed. Every day is a struggle to erase any evidence of your identity. If you fail or slip up, or accidentally reveal that you are gay or bisexual or do not feel at home in the gender that society has assigned you, you will face horrific consequences. You finally manage to escape, and after what has probably been a very traumatic journey, you find yourself in an interview room in the UK. What will you say when you sit down with Home Office officials and they ask you to produce evidence of your identity—the same evidence that you have been erasing your entire life? How can you prove anything to them? You might think of contacting a former romantic partner from your country of origin, but what if they are unwilling to provide the evidence, for fear of being outed too? Or, even worse, what if they have already been imprisoned or even killed for their gender identity or sexuality? You cannot even rely on family members, who often do not feel safe enough to write a statement for the Home Office. They may even have disowned you for your identity.
Instead of seeking to right those wrongs and to address this impossible situation, the Nationality and Borders Bill increases the burden of proof for asylum applications. Clause 31 says that instead of a reasonable degree of likelihood, the threshold should be far higher and should be based on the balance of probabilities that a person will face persecution if they return.
What if someone does not even have the language to describe their own sexuality and gender identity? What if they come from a culture that describes them in very different terms? I recently heard from a woman who had been accused of witchcraft in her home country for having relationships with other women. After violence and intimidation, she fled to the UK, where she said to officials that she faced persecution for witchcraft. They simply did not understand. They looked on in confusion and denied her application. Only after living here for some months did she have the words to describe herself as a lesbian.
These are not isolated stories. The people who come here have been brutalised and traumatised. They often cannot immediately find the words to describe what they have been through and why. In many cases, they are explaining those difficult and complex experiences in a language that is not their own and that does not easily translate.
Proposals in this Bill make life for people such as that woman and countless others much harder. Under new measures, people could be forced to produce relevant evidence by a fixed date. If they miss that deadline, the Bill allows for the evidence to be given minimal weight.
Evidence is evidence. A person does not stop being LGBTQ+ over time, nor does the threat to someone’s wellbeing in their country of origin diminish. Any legal pretence that it does will have devastating impacts on the most vulnerable LGBTQ+ people. For them, it is already a challenge to gather evidence. For many, proving their sexual orientation or gender identity is impossible. For some, explaining it is difficult. There are also so many reasons why a person simply would not want to disclose their sexuality or gender identity to people they do not know and do not trust.
The asylum system is not a hospitable place at the moment for someone who is openly LGBTQ+. As we process asylum applications, it is bitterly and cruelly ironic that we often incarcerate people who, in their country of origin, face prison sentences for their identity and sexuality.
LGBTQ+ people already face disproportionate levels of abuse in the asylum centre system. Detaining more people who make asylum claims will only make those statistics worse. The new rules for the so-called group 2 refugees also discourage LGBTQ+ people from telling their stories with their genuine claims for asylum. The UN has already said that the distinction in the Bill between group 1 and group 2 refugees undermines the 1951 refugee convention.
I am worried that giving one group of refugees lesser temporary rights and ratcheting up the uncertainty they face could also force LGBTQ+ refugees to continue to hide their identify, for fear of being returned to their home country. After all, why would anyone disclose their sexuality and gender ID if they knew they could be deported? It could be used to press charges against them once they are sent home and put them at further risk.
I know the Government are aware of some of these issues. Organisations such as Rainbow Migration, a group fighting for LGBTQ+ people in the UK immigration system, have been loudly sounding the alarm. In September 2021, the equality impact assessment for the Bill admitted that it risked indirectly disadvantaging protected groups, including LGBTQ+ people. Six days after the publication of that assessment, I questioned the Minister in Parliament. Back then, he said he was new to his role and had to get up to speed before he could comment in full. Now that he has had time to do his homework, I look forward to hearing what he will do. He told me then that he fully expects the Government to be sympathetic in taking proper account of the issues that I raised.
I would like to reach out to all hon. Members here today. The Nationality and Borders Bill will soon return to the House. When we draft and debate such legislation, we write the future stories of countless thousands fleeing the worst of circumstances. Every pen stroke of every amendment can make a difference to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
Every day, LGBTQ+ people flee from violence, threats and abuse, but they cannot flee from who they are. As legislators, we can choose. We can either allow those horrific experiences to follow them here, inscribing yet another chapter of trauma into the lives of people who have already suffered enough, or we can turn the page and write something new. I hope that is what every hon. Member here chooses to do as the Bill comes back to the House in the coming weeks.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing this important debate and on making an excellent speech. Like her, I want to declare the support provided to me in my office by the Refugee Asylum and Migration Policy project.
The Nationality and Borders Bill is a peculiarly awful piece of legislation, designed to solve problems that do not exist, ignore problems that do, and play to a gallery rather than seek to make a difference. The negative impact that this Bill will have on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers is a prime example of what is wrong with the Bill. LGBTQ+ people will be disproportionately affected by clause 11, which is the Government’s choice to differentiate on the basis of method of entry into the United Kingdom. They are much more likely, as we have heard, to be categorised as group 2 refugees, and experience second-class treatment at best. Despite fulfilling refugee criteria, they will have very limited leave to remain, reduced refugee family reunion rights, and no recourse to public funds. That will have a huge impact on their ability to integrate. It will affect their wellbeing, mental health, access to services, and ability to work, settle and fully participate in UK society.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Does the hon. Member agree that the two-track system affects people from different regions differently? I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Kurdistan in Turkey and Syria. Many of the people crossing in the boats are Kurds, because there are no legal ways for Kurds, who may be Syrians in Turkey, to come to the UK. The UK says that Turkey is a safe place for them, but we know that Turkey persecutes Kurds, and the majority of Kurds who come via informal routes get granted asylum here. The Bill would make that much harder for our allies, the Kurds, who fought for us in Syria.
Tim Farron
Spot on. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because it frames how ludicrous it is to have a system that sees people as “good refugees” or “bad refugees”. The reality is that creating a second tier of refugee, which the Government sometimes refer to as “illegal route”—there is no such thing as an illegal refugee—is in contravention of international agreements on the matter.
I will reel of a list of countries myself. Cameroon, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria and Uganda—these are the most common countries of origin for people claiming asylum on the basis of their sexuality. They are also countries where many individuals are persecuted because of their sexual orientation, but they are not seen as areas of conflict or instability and as such do not warrant inclusion in the UK resettlement scheme. As the hon. Gentleman just mentioned, as a result, those people will be treated as second-class asylum seekers. If they can find their way here, it will probably be through very unsafe routes—although safer than staying put, I ought to add. Those fleeing those countries can therefore come here only by the so-called illegal routes—irregular, informal routes.
It is important to recognise that even if those people were in a region where they could access the UK resettlement scheme, they may still remain at risk, due to their sexuality, in neighbouring countries that they would pass through on the way to safety, which for other refugees might be places of safety. They would obviously prefer to move on to safety rather than wait in camps in a country that is unsafe for them. Further to that, it is highly likely that LGBTQ+ people will not feel safe coming forward and identifying themselves as a person eligible for resettlement, because it is quite possible that their families and communities could be the source of the persecution. The Government’s choice to penalise further the late production of evidence will disproportionately impact LGBT people. It is therefore wrong.
There are reasons why, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam, rightly set out, LGBT+ people are less able to access safe routes to the UK than other categories of refugees. It is important, therefore, that refugees are treated the same, regardless of their method of travel. The conditions that refugees are granted should not be dependent on how they reach the UK. There are many valid reasons why people have no choice but to use irregular routes. None of us wants people to have to resort to using criminal gangs to access safety.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Member mentioned Uganda. In 2014, it passed an anti-homosexuality Bill into law, which created a big outpouring of refugee communities. The problem that many Ugandan refugees had was that, although in neighbouring countries the laws were not as strict as Uganda’s, they did not want to identify themselves as LGBTQ and to have it known. Their only option would be to come to a country such as the UK. We need to recognise that.
Tim Farron
The hon. Member is absolutely right. That is what is wrong with the Bill. He sums up the problem of having this nonsense, immoral, two-tier system. We do not want people to use criminal gangs to get here, but if the Government will not provide safe routes for those people, they will have to do that and we should have compassion for them.
Irregular journeys and the fact that we are an island mean that people will travel through other countries before reaching the United Kingdom. Data shows that most refugees remain in neighbouring or other European countries. Many countries take more asylum seekers per capita than the United Kingdom. The international refugee system relies on countries sharing the refugee population. We cannot rely on certain countries to host all the refugees who reach them just because they happen to be the first point of arrival in Europe, for example. It is not fair on Greece, Italy and so on. It does not work. We need to do our bit. Treating certain kinds of refugee as second class or worse is wrong, and likely to be against international law. How can we look Putin in the eye at this terrible moment and challenge him over his breaches of international law when we risk doing so ourselves? It is not just generally about having a second, lower-tier of less worthy refugees, but in particular the way that we make life demonstrably harder for LGBTQ and other marginalised communities. That is wrong; the Government must rethink it.
Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
I will call the Front Benchers by 5.10 pm. We have three speakers, so if you could manage to stick to five minutes, I will not have to cut the debate.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Sharma, for the excellent job you are doing chairing the debate. I extend genuine thanks to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake). I am not just going through the motions of thanking the Member in charge; this is a hugely important debate, and I particularly enjoyed the video that she put on Twitter earlier, which clearly laid out the information and I thought it was incredibly helpful.
My colleagues have covered some of the detail and some of the clauses of the Nationality and Borders Bill. We disagree with the entire Bill, but I want to talk specifically about the issues facing LGBTQ people. I do not get why the UK Government have chosen to take this direction in the Bill. We all agree that life is more difficult for someone who is LGBTQ+. They are more likely to be persecuted or discriminated against. That is demonstrably the case.
It is especially the case for those who live in a country that has systematic prejudice built into the authority systems and also into the family system and the traditions. That makes it is even more difficult for an LGBTQ+ person to live their life. As has been said, it is not something that someone grows out of and they suddenly forget that it is a part of their reality; it is that person’s self for their entire life. Why would the Government decide to make it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to claim asylum in the UK? I cannot get my head around it. I would like the Government to explain why they have chosen to go down this route when so many organisations have raised concerns, made it absolutely clear and provided evidence about how much more difficult things would be as a result of the Government’s actions.
I want to focus on a couple of things. If somebody is coming from a country where they have had to hide their sexuality or gender identity from the Government, officials, and everybody in authority they have ever had a conversation with, how can we expect them to sit down with Home Office officials and openly talk about it? They have spent their entire lives having to hide it from officials for fear of being imprisoned, being killed or facing incredibly serious prejudice and discrimination from those authority figures. How can we expect these people to be able to sit down in a room with Home Office officials and say, “Yes, absolutely. I am gay” when they have spent their entire lives hiding it? I do not understand how the bar can change on this issue when it has been made clear that it is difficult enough under the current route.
I also want to highlight, and I will not talk for terribly long about it, that there is a significant number of asylum seekers in the UK at the moment. That means that a number of non-dispersal authorities have asylum seekers placed in them. In areas, such as mine, and in areas outside Glasgow, which is a dispersal authority that is used to dealing with and supporting refugees, there is not the infrastructure to provide that level of support. We have hardly any immigration lawyers who deal with asylum claims in Scotland—never mind Aberdeen.
We are looking at raising this bar when the situation has already been made more difficult because of the lack of support. Given that in Scotland, we do not have the systems in place outside Glasgow, refugees in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire are finding it more difficult because they cannot access the systems that they would normally get support from, so why are we not cutting them slack? These people should be cut slack at this moment, rather than having the bar lifted and things made more difficult. I appreciate that there is a huge number of organisations, such as Rainbow Migration, that are doing a great job, but they do not have that significant presence in my constituency; they do not have that significant presence in Aberdeen; they do not have the ability to assist the refugees in explaining their case and making that clear.
I would ask the Government, at this moment, particularly where non-dispersal authorities are having to support refugees, what slack will be cut? What support will be given to ensure that people can make the proper claims? We all agree that there are a number of people who should be able to make these claims and should be granted asylum. How will we provide them with the support that they need to make those claims when we are already failing to do so within the current system?
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), who made an excellent speech. In fact, I agree with pretty much everything that has been said all the speeches so far, so I can be pretty brief. Indeed, I can be brief because I have spoken for hours on end on the subject of this Bill, and I do not need to go into every single last detail of why we find the whole measure fairly horrendous. Well, not fairly—it is absolutely horrendous.
Starting on a note of consensus, I think I would say that we agree—or I agree—that the asylum system, if not broken, is at breaking point, but I believe that it can be saved. Unfortunately, far from fixing it, this Bill absolutely breaks it beyond the point where it can be salvaged at all. That is true for all asylum seekers, but is particularly true for those who are LGBTQ+.
As we heard earlier, we should address all sorts of issues that are not addressed in this Bill: the delay in the asylum process; the impoverishment that asylum seekers face because of the appalling levels of asylum support; the ban on work; poor-quality decisions; a failing accommodation system; inappropriate and overused detention; and the lack of safe legal routes, which has already been mentioned. Those all apply to all asylum seekers, including LGBTQ+ asylum seekers.
However, there are particular issues for that group, some of which have been touched on already. Those have not been addressed in this Bill, but they must be addressed. Those issues are, for example, how the Home Office conducts interviews, and the assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices that many claimants face. That applies not just to those doing interviews at the outset, but sometimes to immigration judges and the Home Office presenting officers who appear before them.
There is also still a significant problem with interpreters. Asylum applicants are often supported by people from the very country from which they have fled homophobic and transphobic prejudice. Much more needs to be done to ensure that those people feel safe and secure with the interpreters provided to them.
On analysis of evidence, LGBT claims based on sexuality are often criticised because statements of support from friends and colleagues in this country are described as “self-serving”—whatever that means—yet, if they do not provide those very statements, their absence is criticised as fatal to the application. We have heard about the standard of proof already being too high. It is supposed to be “at real risk” at the moment but, in reality, it is often set way above that thanks to the culture of disbelief, which has been described already.
We still have the problem, which was referred to in one intervention, of the idea that people could simply return to their countries of origin and exercise their discretion. That idea should have been done away with, and we thought it had been by the Supreme Court a number of years ago, but, in reality, it still lingers around in the Home Office system.
On detention, why is it that LGBT individuals are not in the adults at risk policy? There are various other points in Home Office policy where their vulnerability is recognised, but why is that not the case when it comes to detention? The list of issues goes on, but I must stop there so that I can press on.
We have spoken at length about why we object to the Nationality and Borders Bill. In our view, it is illegal and immoral. At heart, it is a Bill about deliberately—intentionally—making life miserable and making life worse for people in this country to try to disincentivise other people from coming here to seek refuge. It is an appalling concept, when we think about it like that. It will cost an astronomical sum of money. I want to see the economic impact assessment, which we have been promised for months on end—we still have not seen it, despite being three quarters of the way through the parliamentary process.
Nothing in the Bill is going to make things better. It is going to make everything worse at every single stage for asylum seekers, including LGBT+ individuals. When they arrive here, they will be criminalised, with an offence that could see them imprisoned for up to four years. It is an astonishing concept. Their claims will be deemed invisible for six months. Essentially, we just add six months on to the already horrendous waiting time. What on earth does that solve?
The Bill seeks to increase the use of Napier-style warehouses for asylum seekers, even offshoring individuals. These measures have particular consequences and challenges for LGBT+ individuals. The Bill also complicates the process. We have heard already that we are going to see the standard of proof increased from real risk to the balance of probabilities. We need to think about what exactly that means. A Home Office decision maker could decide they are 49% sure—
Stuart C. McDonald
I will wind up quickly. We could have a decision maker almost certain that the applicant before them has accurately described the events and the persecution that they suffered in their country, but if they fall slightly short on the balance of probabilities, even if that decision maker is 100% sure that LGBT+ people will face persecution on return, that claim will be refused because of this new higher standard of proof.
The whole Bill is an absolute shambles. We need to hear in detail today, clause by clause, what the Home Office is going to do on each of the provisions to protect LGBT+ asylum seekers. We also need to hear much more about resettlement. It is often said to be the answer to all these criticisms, but how is resettlement going to help anybody in the LGBT+ community?
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her for her tireless work on this issue and on protecting and extending the rights of LGBTQ+ people, regardless of their passport, country of birth or immigration status.
The Nationality and Borders Bill will have a deliberate, devastating impact on the rights of refugees, migrants and people of colour. Refugee Action has described it as
“the biggest attack on the refugee protection system that we have ever seen”.
Approximately 2,000 LGBTQ+ people claim asylum in the UK each year, fearing persecution in their home countries. This Bill will make it harder for any refugee to find safety here, but for this group, it is even more concerning. Many people who have been welcomed into our country’s LGBTQ+ community would simply not be here if the Nationality and Borders Bill had been law at the time they made their claim.
LGBTQ+ refugees are already put through dehumanising so-called tests to prove their identity and are still disbelieved by the Home Office. The Bill increases the threshold to prove that they are LGBTQ+ even further, taking it from the internationally accepted standard of reasonable degree of likelihood to the far stricter balance of probabilities.
If they are granted the new temporary protection status, LGBTQ+ refugees could be forced to hide their identity while in the UK for fear of persecution if they are made to return to their country of origin. For trans refugees, that might prevent them from transitioning—from changing their name, altering their gender expression or undergoing medical treatment—and that will have devastating consequences for their mental health and wellbeing.
The introduction of accommodation and offshore processing centres also poses particular risks for LGBTQ+ people, such as experiencing violence and abuse in these settings. Those seeking asylum should be housed in the community, not far-flung islands, derelict barracks, or unsuitable hotels such as the ones in which many refugees are being housed in my constituency.
The severity of this Bill’s impact cannot be overstated. This Government are risking not only breaching international law, but sending people to their deaths. If LGBTQ+ allyship does not extend to the most marginalised in our community—our refugee siblings—it means very little at all, so I urge the Minister to listen to what all of us have said today; to listen to our words, and those of refugee organisations and refugees themselves; and to please take a stand in his own Department.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. Contrary to everything the Government claim, the Nationality and Borders Bill is not some piece of wonder legislation that will fix a broken system. It will not break the business model of people smugglers or offer any safe and legal routes to these islands, although the Minister is going to say that it will. It is called the anti-refugee Bill for a reason, and, as we have heard in some powerful contributions, the Government have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that it punishes the most vulnerable in the flawed belief that deterrence works.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing the debate. We must keep pushing on this terrible Bill generally and emphasising who it will affect, but I am glad that she has given us the opportunity to look at it through the lens of the LGBTQ+ community, given that there are 70—I had 69, but she told us 70—countries across the globe where being gay is still considered a crime. The hon. Member said something that I found quite moving: you can flee, but you cannot flee from who you are, and why should you?
The former leader of the Lib Dems, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) talked about differential treatment being more likely for people in the LGBTQ+ community. Although the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) did not speak in the debate, his many interventions demonstrated a strong understanding of what is happening. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) talked about people spending their life in hiding, and what happens to them when they get here. She asked why, and I will come on to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), who served on the Bill Committee with myself and the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), as usual showed a forensic understanding of what is going on. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) talked about the devastating consequences for trans people—let us not forget them.
I would like to talk about Bahiru, an extremely brave gay man from Ethiopia, where homosexuality is still punishable by up to 15 years in prison and LGBTQ+ people are at huge risk of violence and persecution. I thank PinkNews for telling his story. Growing up, he suppressed his sexuality to keep himself and his family safe, but eventually managed to connect with a few members of the community, meeting as a secret and underground group. What shocked him was the lack of knowledge of LGBTQ+ issues, especially safe sex, so he took it on himself to change that situation and educate those around him. He managed to get those travelling back to Ethiopia from abroad to bring condoms and other items unavailable in Ethiopia so he could distribute them around the community—a brave, selfless, and noble thing to do—and he did all of this in the knowledge that he was at risk of being found out, criminalised and prosecuted.
It was not long before the word was out, and Bahiru received threats to out him and release his photo and personal information. He knew his life was in danger. He said,
“I had to escape. I could not even hide in my own parents’ house, because the violence could have come from any side.”
He was lucky—he had been to the UK recently, so he had an active visa and the support of organisations that he had been working with—but most people who are forced to flee their homes in fear of their lives have no time or way to access the very few safe and legal routes. When he arrived in the UK, he was put into shared accommodation with people who had brought their prejudices with them from other countries with homophobic laws and he spent months fearing for his safety. That type of communal living for asylum seekers has been described as a powder keg of different views, prejudices, languages, traumatic experiences and lifestyles. Bahiru was scared to challenge the views of others, saying,
“The homophobic tendencies, the tensions, the passing comments that people make and jokes about sexual minorities, it was awful.”
He was mentally, physically and emotionally burnt out.
The Nationality and Borders Bill will warehouse asylum seekers like Bahiru in large-scale detention centres. The Government are already trialling places such as Napier barracks and Penally to see how that will work. I should say at this point that I am to visit Napier barracks tomorrow with the APPG on immigration detention. I was at best disappointed by, and at worst deeply suspicious of, the refusal of Home Office officials to allow us MPs to speak to residents without officials being present. Will the Minister intervene today and allow them the chance to speak with us freely? If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason not to allow that.
It is hard to imagine much worse than warehousing, but the Bill paves the way for asylum seekers to be warehoused and processed offshore—to be shipped around the globe to any country willing to strike a deal with the UK. Who is to say where that might be and what that country’s laws on sexuality might be? At his asylum interview, Bahiru was asked to prove his sexuality. He described the process as “very heteronormative”, saying, “It’s only heterosexuals who could ask you to prove you are gay.” He knows of people who took pictures of themselves having sex with other people as evidence. Imagine how degrading and humiliating that must be.
In addition, people like Bahiru face the prospect of differential treatment, with a requirement to present themselves without delay to authorities, which they are less likely to do for a multitude of pretty obvious reasons; they could lose their rights to public funds and family reunion, and they could be issued with priority removal notices, along with a requirement to provide relevant evidence by a fixed deadline. Bahiru is applying for indefinite leave to remain, but for him the uncertainty is still there.
The experiences I have described should act as a warning. Everything an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker or refugee goes through today will be made much, much worse when the Bill is passed. We should not be considering legislation that aims to strip dignity and basic human rights from people. We should not be talking about legislation that will make it even harder than it already is for an LGBTQ+ person to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity. We most certainly should not be shipping people across the globe for processing.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam for bringing the debate to the House. My experience tells me that we will get very little out of the Minister today, although something tells me he has fixed it so we can see those people tomorrow, without Home Office officials—I saw him typing away. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North asked why it is like this, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said that the Government are intentionally trying to make things worse for people. The Bill is ideologically driven, and although I predict the Minister will say he is hurt and offended that we could think such a thing, the conclusion that the Government simply do not care about these people is the only one I can reach if the Bill proceeds.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Sharma.
I start as others have by thanking and paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake). In her typically powerful opening speech, she shared some bleak statistics on the situation around the world, reminded us that the death penalty still exists in 11 countries and that there are regions of the world where homosexuality is equated with witchcraft, and finished with a really powerful sentiment: you cannot flee from who you are. I thank her very much for securing the debate and bringing the Nationality and Borders Bill gang back together—we spent a lot of time together in the Bill Committee—to revisit some of the really important points that we need to continue to push the Government on.
Attempting to build a cross-party consensus on these issues is incredibly important, especially when we are discussing a Bill that has the potential to affect vulnerable people and those at increased risk of harm in a multitude of different ways. The Minister and I both served on the Committee scrutinising the Nationality and Borders Bill, so we are returning to strongly held and familiar differences of opinion on a great deal of the legislation, but I am sure we all agree on just how many members of the LGBTQ+ community continue to face human rights abuses, gender-based violence and threats across the world, which is utterly unacceptable.
As we have heard, about 70 countries still criminalise same-sex relations. Everyone should feel able to live their life openly and safely, and to be proud of who they are. For those who seek sanctuary in the UK, it may be the first time they feel able and safe enough to express themselves and truly embrace their identity without fear of repercussions. In 2020, there were 1,012 asylum applications lodged in the UK where sexual orientation formed part of the basis of the claim, representing 3% of all asylum applications. In 2020, there were 440 grants of asylum or an alternative form of leave to remain to applicants where sexual orientation formed part of the basis of their asylum claim—7% fewer than the previous year. Furthermore, last year, nearly half of appeals relating to LGB asylum applications were granted. We have a moral obligation to get this right, to recognise why LGBTQ+ people might not be safe where they are and to design an asylum system that recognises that with compassion and understanding.
The Government’s own equality impact assessment accepts that there is a risk of indirect discrimination against this group but says it will be mitigated through monitoring. I am sorry, but, as the Minister knows, we have been here before. I cite Napier barracks as the reason why I do not accept that the Government will do the right thing in looking after particularly vulnerable groups of people. The Government ignored public health and fire safety advice and failed to identify vulnerabilities within the cohort accommodated there. I appreciate that that was before the Minister’s time in office, but the Government had to be dragged to every incremental improvement, very slowly made, at Napier and Penally barracks. Rainbow Migration outlined in its written evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee:
“The “Suitability Assessment for Contingency Accommodation” and the “Allocation of accommodation policy” do not mention LGBTQI+ people at all, thereby deeming them suitable to be accommodated in the barracks, despite the issues that arise for LGBTQI+ people in this type of accommodation.”
The Minister’s thinking that we would have any confidence in the Government marking their own homework on looking after vulnerable people in the asylum system and adapting accordingly is, I am afraid, for the birds. That is why we are here.
The part of the Bill that gives me greatest cause for concern, particularly for to LGBTQ+ people, as others have said, is about the principle of late disclosure undermining credibility in both the asylum and modern slavery provisions. When we debated the specific modern slavery measures in the Bill Committee, I and others made the point that the additional barriers to protection and entry into the national referral mechanism contradicted the Home Office’s statutory guidance that that a victim’s early accounts may be affected by the impact of trauma, which can result in delayed disclosure, difficulty recalling facts or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. These well understood principles must apply to LGBTQ+ people, as acknowledged in the Home Office guidance on sexual orientation in asylum claims. I ask the Minister once again why measures that go against the Home Office’s statutory guidance have been included in the Bill.
The reality and impact of those measures is perhaps best understood when listening to those who have personally experienced our asylum system. Much like the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), who told the story of a young man from Ethiopia, I will share Samir’s story. Samir remembers how hard it was to take the first steps in his asylum process. He had to recount the traumatic things that had happened to him in his home country. He had also never openly discussed the fact he was a gay man before. He said:
“It was the first time talking about my sexuality…just saying aloud the word gay, it was very surreal. I knew that although I was scared, this was my only chance for me to tell my story…and if I didn’t, I knew that my case would be dismissed and they would send me back.”
Samir’s asylum claim was initially rejected, only to be challenged following legal assistance provided to him by Rainbow Migration, which offers free legal advice, and he was eventually granted refugee status. There are a multitude of reasons why someone who is LGBTQ+ might need time and support to disclose their experiences. It is our view that, given the vulnerabilities of those groups and the Government’s own guidance, the clauses will most adversely affect those most in need of protection and undermine our moral and legal obligations.
Before I conclude, I thank and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for his contribution. He made the point that the notion of a good refugee and bad refugee, and the way the Government seek to legislate for that, contravenes international law. He was assisted in making that point with examples from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle).
I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for her typically powerful speech. In a number of cases, a person will have had to hide their identity from their Government, but we ask them to openly share it with ours without that understanding of any difference.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) also made a typically powerful contribution on the difference in the standard of proof, a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) for reminding us of the stark consequences if we return somebody to a country that does not recognise their sexuality or gender identity or, quite frankly, does worse than fail to recognise it.
The Minister understands my concerns about the Bill and its potential to detrimentally impact on those most in need of asylum—those who have the hardest stories to tell. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam is therefore quite right to highlight its impact on LGBTQ+ people. The Bill is currently being debated in the House of Lords, and Labour Front Benchers have tabled an amendment that would disapply late disclosure penalties to those who have made a claim on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. I am aware of several other amendments tabled by Baroness Lister, Lord Etherton and others that all seek to deliver similar safeguards. I hope the Minister can say whether the Government are minded to accept any of those proposals.
In many of our previous exchanges, the Minister has cited the provision of further detail in the statutory guidance. Only today, in response to a written question about the timing, the Minister said to me that any statutory guidance
“will be developed in line with usual process, which includes any requirements to consult. The timetable for implementing the guidance will be dependent on the passage of the Nationality and Borders Bill.”
I thank the Minister for that clarity and if he has anything further to add it will be incredibly welcome.
We do not believe assurances that can be provided only in guidance. We need comprehensive measures that introduce necessary safeguards. I hope the Minister has listened to the concerns voiced today and I strongly encourage the Government to adopt the amendments about to be debated in the Lords.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for securing this debate on what is undoubtedly an extremely important topic.
I want to say at the outset that many of the reforms in the Nationality and Borders Bill are being introduced against the backdrop of these terrible crossings of the English channel. People are putting their lives in the hands of evil criminal smuggling gangs. They are putting themselves at great risk. These groups treat people as cargo, with no regard whatsoever for human life. I make no apology for feeling very strongly—
Tom Pursglove
I am very conscious that we have a lot to get through; a lot of points have been raised in the debate, so I will make some progress. I am very mindful of the need to stop those crossings. That is front and centre of the policy that we are delivering through this Bill. Nobody needs to get into a small boat in order to reach safety. I am also concerned when we debate these issues that I hear a lot of criticism of policy, but I do not hear much by way of a credible alternative.
We have had an extensive debate this afternoon on these matters, and that has also been the case throughout the Bill’s passage through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, where these clauses were debated yesterday. I acknowledge this House’s interest in the issue. As well as the Nationality and Borders Bill, there is a lot of work that is going on internationally to address those issues and to advocate the values we hold in this country and believe others around the world should adopt. A global envoy is dealing with this. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) also has responsibility within the Foreign Office for advancing that agenda.
Several points have been raised in the course of the debate and I would like to deal with each of them in turn. First, on differentiation, currently all those who seek our protection are treated in the same way, regardless of factors such as whether they came directly to the UK or have been illegally present in the UK for a long period before claiming asylum. We will change that by introducing a new form of temporary refugee permission to stay, meant for people who meet the requirements of refugee status in the UK but who may not have come directly to the UK or who have not claimed asylum without delay once here. Decision makers who are considering granting someone temporary refugee protection status will work on a case-by-case basis, taking properly into account all of the relevant factors. That may include taking into account that the delay in claiming asylum may have been as a result of the claimant being fearful of presenting to the authorities as a LGBT+ person.
The Government very strongly believe, and would argue, that all the measures that we are advancing are compliant with our international obligations. With regard to accommodation, centres will build on current capacity while ensuring that individuals have simple, safe and secure accommodation while their claims and removals are being processed. One of the things that I want to see happen—and I am determined to see it happen—is that cases are considered more quickly, that we make sure that those who require our sanctuary are helped and supported as quickly as possible and get that sanctuary, and that those with no right to be here are removed as quickly as possible. To me, that is the safe, decent and humane thing to do.
I would like to clarify that individuals will also have opportunities to disclose the information and supporting evidence as to why they should not be housed in accommodation centres, which could include reasons linked to their sexuality. I should make the point that the accommodation centres are not detention; people are free to come and go as they please. In any event, we do not detain people indefinitely, and various safeguards are built into the arrangements and set-up to ensure that that is the case. Again, I would expect appropriate consideration of all relevant factors when deciding what accommodation is appropriate for any given individual. If people have particular needs, it is right that they are accommodated within the community.
Tom Pursglove
I am afraid I have got a lot to get through.
A lot of points have been raised, and I want to deal with one that was made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin). Knowing colleagues as I do, I think it is fair to say that nobody would walk around anywhere on a visit in silence, and I am pleased to say that everybody on the visit tomorrow will have the opportunity to speak to those at Napier. That is exactly the same arrangement as when I visited Napier a few weeks ago, and I welcome the opportunity for Members to speak to people there.
On safe third country removals, our intention is to reduce the draw of the UK by removing protection claimants to a safe country if they have a connection to a safe country where they could and should have claimed asylum. We will also make it easier to move asylum seekers from the UK to a safe country while their asylum claim is pending. A safe country is one where there is no real risk of persecution or harm to individuals sent there, and which will not send individuals to a country where they could be persecuted. Any vulnerabilities will be taken into consideration, and any representations from the claimant will be considered ahead of any removal to a safe third country. Again, this could include matters that are linked to an individual’s sexuality. Of course, we will only ever work with countries that are compliant with the refugee convention and any obligations under relevant human rights law. I should add that we do not return people if to do so would put them in danger, and the Home Secretary also has discretion to provide sanctuary to individuals if there is a risk to their lives.
On the one-stop process, late evidence and damage to credibility, the Bill will introduce a new and expanded one-stop process to ensure that asylum, human rights claims and any other protection matters are considered at the earliest opportunity. Where evidence is provided late without good reason, that should be taken into account by the decision maker as damaging to a claimant’s credibility; but where there is good reason, there will be no damage. I should add that this is not a new concept: it has underpinned existing immigration legislation under not just this Government, but previous Governments.
I am conscious of the time and that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam will want to sum up, so I will wrap up my remarks. I will very gladly comment on the outstanding matters that I have not been able to reach in the short time we have had available, and I will place that in the Library so that Members can see my remarks.
Olivia Blake
I will use the last two minutes, if colleagues do not mind. Everyone gave such strong and meaningful speeches in the debate, and I am thankful to those who have taken part.
I want to respond with the words of refugees in Stonewall’s 2016 report, “No Safe Refuge”, which is about the current system. One asylum seeker said:
“The interviewing officer was surprised to see a person like me talking about these things. He doesn’t believe I am transgender. ‘You don’t look transgender!’”
Another said:
“I had my head rammed through a door. I was bullied. The guy they put me with was a nightmare, the guy was a bully. I reported that but nothing was done about it.”
Another said:
“The officer didn’t approach the heterosexual couple, she approached the lesbian couple straight away. She didn’t even say to them excuse me. She said: ‘There are different religions in here and different cultures in here I ask you to respect that and there are also children in here.’”
The comments about mental health are probably the most concerning. One asylum seeker said:
“I tried to commit suicide twice. I didn’t know how to do it but I had that urge in me to do it. I broke the mirrors and tried to cut myself.”
Another said:
“I am having very difficult moments. I get flashbacks of exactly what happened—
Written Statements
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2022-23
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), has today laid before the House the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2022-23 (HC 1084). The report sets out the Home Secretary’s determination for 2022-23 of the aggregate amount of grants that she proposes to pay under section 46(2) of the Police Act 1996. Copies of the report are available from the Vote Office.
The allocations that have been laid before the House today are as set out in my statement and provisional Police Grant Report of 16 December 2021.
In 2022-23 the overall funding settlement for the policing system will total up to £16.9 billion, a £1.1 billion increase on the 2021-22 funding settlement. Available funding to Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) will increase next year by up to an additional £796 million, assuming full take-up of precept flexibility. This would represent an increase to PCC funding in cash terms of 5.8% on the 2021-22 police funding settlement. Council tax levels are a local decision and elected Police and Crime Commissioners will rightly want to consider what they are asking people to pay to fulfil their strong desire to keep our streets safe. The council tax referendum principles in England are not a cap, nor do they force local authorities to set taxes at the threshold level. Rather they are an additional local democratic check to prevent excessive increases, determined by the House of Commons.
The table available as an attachment online documents funding to PCCs for 2022-23, including precept.
Attachments can be view online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2022-02-02/HCWS577/ .
[HCWS577]
Trade With Israel Policy Update
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
The call for input on a future trade agreement with Israel has launched today.
The UK is committed to our trade and investment relationship with Israel, one of the Middle East’s most dynamic and innovative economies and the world’s 30th largest economy in 2020. [1] This deal aims to secure more access for British goods and services, opening significant new opportunities for UK business which could boost trade with Israel, worth £4.8 billion in 2020. It aims to cement the UK’s position as a world leader in innovation, and digital and services trade.
The UK signed a trade continuity agreement with Israel in February 2019 which replicated the scope of the EU-Israel agreement. The UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement includes provisions on tariff liberalisation, customs and trade facilitation and public procurement but does not include many key areas of a comprehensive FTA such as services, data, or intellectual property, which we hope to include in the new agreement.
The call for input will provide businesses, individuals, and other interested stakeholders with the opportunity to give valuable feedback and highlight their priorities for our future trading relationship with Israel.
The feedback received from stakeholders will be crucial when shaping our mandate, and will inform detailed negotiations preparation, and policy positions. The Department for International Trade is committed to ensuring future FTAs and their provisions are good for British businesses and the British economy.
The UK aims to begin negotiations for an upgraded trade deal with Israel this year, focused on creating even greater opportunities for UK businesses. These new negotiations would allow us to go further to boost trade with Israel, whose demand for global imports is forecast to grow almost twice as fast as the global average between 2019 and 2030.[2] There is significant scope to expand our trade in services, including digital services—which grew a remarkable 73% between 2010 and 2020. This would complement our services-based economies and cement the United Kingdom as an international services hub.
Following the consultation, the UK and Israel share a desire to launch negotiations during 2022. The call for input will seek to support the goal of greater economic prosperity for businesses and will ensure that their needs are heard. The Government are committed to transparency and will ensure that Parliament, the devolved Administrations, UK citizens and businesses are kept regularly updated on negotiations.
[1] IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2021, 2020 data.
[2] Source GTO September 2021.
[HCWS578]
Levelling up our Communities: Government Response to Danny Kruger MP’s Report
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
I wish to inform the House that the Government have today published their response to the report by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) on levelling up our communities. This response is published alongside the levelling up White Paper, which sets out the Government’s wider approach to levelling up.
The pandemic has shown the significant power of charities, social enterprises, community groups and volunteers in supporting people in their local communities, complementing the delivery of public services, and demonstrating the values of generosity, public spirit and neighbourliness. My hon. Friend’s report contains recommendations to the Government on how to sustain the community response to covid-19, and how to enable civil society’s contributions to levelling up.
The Government would like to thank my hon. Friend for his dedicated work on this issue, and welcome his well-considered and detailed report. We would also like to thank the volunteers, charities, social enterprises and community groups involved in the consultation process.
Our response has been carefully considered and outlines the Government’s position against each of my hon. Friend’s 20 recommendations. Work is already underway to implement many of the report’s recommendations, including the launch of the faith new deal pilot fund and the volunteering futures fund.
The response includes the Government’s commitments to:
Strengthen engagement between faith groups, national and local government through the £1 million faith new deal pilot fund;
Reduce barriers to community organisation and volunteering, including through the £7 million volunteering futures fund;
Promote community ownership and strengthen local institutions through the £150 million community ownership fund;
Strengthen social value commissioning within the public sector as set out in the national procurement policy statement in June 2021; and
Testing the community covenants model to ensure that communities have a greater say in decisions important to their local area, including how local services are delivered.
A copy of the Government response to my hon. Friend’s report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS579]
Grand Committee
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Subsidy Control Bill
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Subsidy Control Act 2022 View all Subsidy Control Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee - (31 Jan 2022)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
My Lords, welcome to the Grand Committee. Members are encouraged to leave some distance between themselves and others and to wear a face covering when not speaking. If there is a Division in the Chamber that we are not expecting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and will resume after 10 minutes.
Clause 10: Subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes
Amendment 14
Baroness Blake of Leeds
“(4A) A streamlined subsidy scheme may be made, in particular, to support areas of relative economic deprivation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would make clear that streamlined subsidy schemes may, among other things, be made for the purposes of supporting areas of deprivation.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 14 was tabled by my noble friend Lord McNicol.
We always know in this environment that timing is everything. We must be extremely mindful when debating these elements of the Bill that today the Government published the levelling-up White Paper. It is critical that we bear that in mind as we discuss these important issues, particularly on economic deprivation. We must go back to the lengthy debate that we had on Monday and focus on the benefit that the work we will do here will bring to our communities across the United Kingdom, and focus on the purpose, on what really matters as a result of the improvements that we can make to the Bill. This is an illustration of the importance of joining up key pieces of legislation. Since coming down to the Palace of Westminster I have noticed that this is a work in process and this legislation is something that we can assist with.
Bearing that in mind and being very much aware that a lot of the work that has gone into the levelling-up White Paper has already been released in the media—many noble Lords, I am sure, have had sight of the proposals—I will concentrate on Amendment 14 and refer to the extended list of amendments that have come into this group since Monday afternoon.
As I said, the third group on Monday facilitated an interesting debate on economic deprivation and a number of related issues. It is worth returning to the topic today as the Minister’s responses were not convincing. There is more work to be done on these areas. Some of the amendments in this group go beyond a laser focus on economic deprivation, allowing us to probe slightly broader issues, such as whether and how the concept of social value, used in relation to procurement, will be applied to the subsidy regime. We are grateful to the GMB union for its input on these texts.
The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made a very powerful contribution on Monday, making the point that areas of high deprivation need a degree of certainty, and that is one of the focuses that we need to bring to bear. Sadly, I have to say that, at first glance, the announcements on levelling up do not provide that certainty. The confirmation of various missions mentioned in the White Paper provides a marginally clearer idea of what the Government want to achieve, but we are still largely in the dark as to how the various 2030 targets will be met.
We have staggering examples of discrepancy in funding. For example, transport in London and the south-east of England received £882 per head in the year 2019-20, while in the north-east it was only £315 per head. Analysis in the Guardian of funds allocated so far through the future high street fund, the community renewal fund and the towns fund also suggests that the wealthiest parts of England are being allocated, in some cases, up to 10 times more money per capita than poorer and, I have to say, often Labour-controlled councils—that point is perhaps best discussed alongside Amendment 35 later today. IPPR North points out that funds allocated to the north thus far amount to an investment of £32 per head, which compares to a £413 per person fall in annual council service spending between 2009-10 and 2019-20. We also have the comments from the National Audit Office, which suggest that grants from two different funds were not based on evidence. We very much want levelling up to be a reality and would support proposals being brought forward that would achieve this end. We have to make sure that, through the work that we are doing in this Bill, we contribute to that end.
Amendment 14 would make clear that streamlined subsidy schemes can be made to support areas of economic deprivation. This would not be a requirement, but would focus the Secretary of State’s mind once the new regime is up and running. Clarity would support the goals of facilitating quicker and more efficient awards of low-risk subsidies. I am sure the Minister will talk up the inbuilt flexibility of the new system, but here is an opportunity to send a signal to the communities that we want to help. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, will make the case for his Clause 18 stand apart amendment, which looks at relocation subsidies through an economic development lens, but I hope that Amendments 27 and 28 will at least give us some clarity on how that prohibition will work. Are we talking about movement within or between local authorities, regions and nations of the UK, or does it depend on context? The current drafting is not clear, and this kind of area should not be left to guidance and therefore to different interpretations.
Amendments 34 and 36 seek to move the discussion on to the social value to be derived from subsidies, which might be an alien concept to some considering this legislation. We must avoid always viewing matters purely in terms of the economic bottom line. We all want to create jobs and fuel economic growth, but there is a need to do that in a fairer manner, ensuring job security, good pay and strong employment rights across all sectors and, of course, as we have already discussed, ensuring that we bring in environmental benefits.
In recent years, the Government have spent billions of pounds subsidising a wind sector that sustains a relatively modest number of jobs and has not always supported UK suppliers, including the steel industry. Wind is an increasingly important part of the energy mix, and key to reducing emissions. It is clearly worthy of subsidies, if that is what it takes to make cleaner forms of energy more attractive, and of course to create new jobs. However, the TCA, and international agreements, give scope for the inclusion of social objectives when giving subsidies. We want to understand whether the Government intend to use that flexibility, and if so exactly how.
Amendment 36 draws on the concept of social value, which authorities are compelled to consider under the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 when undertaking procurement exercises. Do the Government plan to include similar provisions in the Bill?
There are a great many questions for the Minister to answer on this group. I hope that he will be able to address most of the points today, but I would be pleased to receive further written answers if that is more appropriate. I do not wish to pre-empt other contributions this afternoon, but it feels as if there is much more work to be done in these areas before Report.
Lord Wigley (PC)
Amendment 23 in my name has been included in this group. That is a slightly odd grouping, and perhaps I should have pressed for my amendment to be de-grouped. I shall speak to it in a moment, but first may I endorse entirely the comments made in opening this debate? It is vital that we ensure a decent standard of living and income per head throughout these islands. It is not enough to compensate people for being deprived of many of the aspects of life that are valuable to them. We need the economy to be able to sustain populations at a level of income that enables them to get benefits of the sort that are enjoyed in, for example, south-east England.
Let us compare the GDP per head of Kensington and Chelsea and that of the valleys of Gwent, or of Anglesey. Chelsea’s figure is eight times higher. We need economic solutions, not just for Anglesey and Gwent but for the north-east of England, Lancashire and other areas—all the old industrial areas. We need to get the economies working, to ensure that the other benefits that the people of those areas have a right to expect can be delivered.
My Amendment 23 seeks to include in the Bill an assurance that nothing in it prevents a public authority from giving financial support aimed at achieving cultural or environmental objectives. I draw attention to my registered interests with regard to cultural dimensions in which my family is heavily involved. I do not think the amendment should be necessary, for it is a long-standing feature of the cultural scene that grants and subsidies are necessary to underpin activities that otherwise might not be viable. Clearly, in making grant payments to one body, organisation or even company, the Government are in effect giving it a competitive edge over others that do not get such support; the marketplace is hardly designed to support and sustain such activities. Yet many aspects of the arts are inevitably dependent on such interventions, and nothing in this legislation should be open to accusations of undermining cultural viability.
Equally, the objectives of environmental policy must also, surely, be exempt from any restrictive limits placed on public bodies from maximising our ability to reach environmental targets. This is a probing amendment, and I trust the Minister can give me the assurance I seek.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord to pick up, and indeed support, many of the points he made about geographical inequality, and to tease out a bit further from our debate on the first day of Committee the Government’s refusal to link any form of geographical basis to the proposal on deprivation, as with others.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, indicated, we are now going through parts of the White Paper on levelling up, and I am sure that the struggling communities across many parts of England will be relieved to hear that they are going to get more politicians. It brought back some memories. When I was a youngster, there was the proposal for more politicians in the north-east of England but with no extra money—a proposal for what we might call a north-east assembly. There was a very outspoken MEP in that region at the time—one M Callanan, I think he was called. I remember reading him in the Chronicle and seeing him on Tyne Tees telly. He said—I paraphrase—that with more politicians without any budget, the Government were desperately seeking to shore up their flagging regional devolution campaign. How times have changed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
For that campaign, we used a large inflatable white elephant.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
That is what I remember seeing on Tyne Tees telly.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Well, I think the proposals for the White Paper are cheaper, because there is no money attached to them at all.
The Government’s position is that, to maintain the level of EU structural support, £1.5 billion a year must be distributed. I will not quibble about some of the details, but let us take it as read that £1.5 billion a year must be distributed. The Government promised that there would be no shortfall. There were two references in the manifesto that stated so:
“a UK Shared Prosperity Fund to ensure that the people of the UK do not lose out from the withdrawal of EU funding”.
The Minister stated so when he led on the repeal of the structural fund SI, and he stated so again on Monday in Committee.
We, national devolved Governments and local authorities thought that this was a straightforward commitment to replace the previous funds without there being a loss of funds, but no. On page 74 of the spending review, the weasel words “rise to” were inserted. The Government stated that, to ensure that the people of the UK did not lose out from the withdrawal of EU funding, the investment would need to be £4.5 billion in this spending review period, but, as they stated on page 74 of the spending review, it is £2.6 billion over the next three years—a cut of £1.9 billion, cutting support in areas most in need. The cuts in the coming years are a staggering £1.1 billion.
As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, nor has there been any commitment to replicating per-person investment support. Under the previous schemes, investment was £130 per person in England, £180 per person in Scotland, £280 per person in Northern Ireland and £780 per person in Wales, reflecting the areas identified for particular need. I would like the Minister to write to me about what the proposed per-person investment will be for 2022. That is when we will know whether indeed we are losing out from the withdrawal of EU funding.
I was genuinely interested in what the Minister said on Monday about the geographical delineations referenced in Amendment 14 with regard to areas of need. He said, and he was specific in his language, that there was a differing approach from that used by the levelling-up fund. I then looked at the levelling-up fund methodology, which states that the methodology used is
“to develop an index of priority places for the Levelling Up Fund.”
Furthermore,
“any comparison of need between places in different nations should be made using a consistent set of GB-wide metrics only.”
The levelling-up fund is using an index of priority places based on need. To be consistent, that is GB-wide, and all authorities, when they are putting forward their bids for the levelling-up fund, will be clear as to what status they are in with regard to the index of priority.
So far, that is clear. However, the Government have said that there is no link between the two. The conclusion might be that this Bill is not linked with the levelling-up approach, but that is not what the Minister said at Second Reading. He said:
“Under this regime, public authorities at all levels of government will be empowered to give subsidies to help address regional disadvantages, supporting our levelling-up aims.”—[Official Report, 19/1/22; col. 1712.]
So the aims are the same, but if there is no methodology to support a scheme’s aims of addressing regional disadvantage under this Bill—in other words, inequalities —how will levelling up actually be achieved? The CMA will only have the ability to review a scheme’s legality under this Bill; it will have no scope to help to address and support our levelling-up aims. Who will do that? Which body will consider whether this Bill is “supporting our levelling-up aims”, as the Minister said at Second Reading?
The Minister might say that they are completely distinct and that the fund will operate completely distinctly from the subsidy regime. I looked at the levelling up-fund prospectus, which states categorically at paragraph 6.9 that all applicants to the levelling-up fund
“must also consider how they will deliver in line with subsidy control (or State Aid in Northern Ireland) as per Government guidance … This will be tested as part of the appraisal process and monitored thereafter.”
How, and by whom? If every application to the levelling-up fund is to be considered in the context of this Bill, they are linked. If the Government are making the case for having a regional index for that fund, for which all applications have to satisfy this Bill, but this Bill says that there will be no index or any regional aspect, how on earth will this be monitored with regard to meeting the levelling-up aims?
My final point refers to further amendments to Clause 18 on markets. The Minister has been at pains to say that there will be no definition of “local market”. I question how all the Government’s different considerations will be satisfied if there is to be a review of the impact on local markets without there being an index such as the levelling-up fund. I simply do not know why the Government have made the clear distinction between this Bill and the levelling-up approach, which they say has to be consistent with the Bill. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify those points.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I sat here on Monday on the first day of Committee and I wondered how much of the replying Minister’s speech was written already—that is, Ministers were not responding to any of the good sense or good words that they heard from this side of the Room. It struck me that that should be seen as a little more important than it was on Monday.
This is an important group, because it is asking what we want to use the subsidies for, rather than just saying, “How do we want to control subsidies?” Supporting areas of deprivation has to be a core principle in our subsidy schemes and everything the Government do. We are very lucky now; we have a department for levelling up and we have a White Paper. Apparently, the White Paper points out how unequal the UK is. If you measure it on any economic or social metric, it is incredibly unequal. We have to ask: what have the Government been doing for the past 12 years? Of course, they are a Conservative Government, so clearly the levelling-up agenda is to mop up all the damage they have done in the past 12 years. Tackling deprivation and inequality will take a lot more than fine words, and streamlining subsidy schemes that are tailored to overcoming deprivation would be a good start.
Similarly, we should be making it easy for public authorities to support cultural and environmental objectives. I support noble Lords who have spoken so far, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on this point, because it would be a great shame if the Bill were to interfere with achieving cultural and environmental objectives. We should concentrate on calculating social value as articulated in Amendment 36, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, as this is still a fledgling area of procurement practice and was one of the features of David Cameron’s early years as Prime Minister when he was still trying to do some good. The Government seem to have stalled on social value since then. If we can improve the methodology for calculating social value and properly embed it in procurement and subsidy schemes, every pound spent by the public sector will have a much greater benefit for our communities. It will help to tackle deprivation, benefit the environment and create flourishing local authorities. I hope the Minister can explain what the Government are doing to advance the social value agenda.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 25A in my name. I shall not speak to any other amendments, because to some extent I am here as an amateur among experts. I have one point to make, which I hope I can do quite quickly. However, I support the general trend from my noble friend’s introduction and other noble Lords who have spoken.
I was unable to speak at Second Reading, because if I had I would have missed the sleeper to Cornwall, which I have to take. I am sorry about that. Many questions that come up are about how and what can replace the different bits of the EU competition regime. I got to know it quite well and got either to like or love it but at least to deal with it. My amendment covers everything that I think are subsidies, although when one looks at the definition of subsidies in the Bill it is unclear whether it covers a one-off payment or a series of payments or even what in the transport world is called the public service obligation. Perhaps somebody will refer me to where I have got it wrong in that instance.
In all these things, there seems to be nothing in the Bill about whether any particular subsidy, whatever anybody is talking about, is value for money or whether it has gone through the government procurement rules, which, in simple terms, means that it has gone out for three quotes or something like that. There may be many instances where that is not appropriate. I worry about whether this is just giving a blank cheque to Ministers or any local authority that chooses without any of the checks and balances. It may go to the CMA in the end, but to start with it is not there. This afternoon, we have been debating the PPE issue. I am not suggesting that was about the urgency for procurement. On the other hand, the urgency has long since passed, and that leaves a nasty taste in some people’s mouths.
My other reason for raising this is that I have been involved in a levelling-up plan for a ferry to the Isles of Scilly, which some noble Lords know about. The local authority applied for £48 million from the levelling-up fund to be given to one private company without any tendering. The noble Baroness, Lady Vere, has been very helpful and has tried to put my mind at rest that government procurement rules will be looked at here. However, there are two issues. I think they apply to many procurement issues that come into the category of subsidy control.
The first is: should it be given at all, and has the amount applied for been properly calculated? Has the authority gone out for competitive tenders or can it demonstrate that it is value for money? Secondly—this is often more difficult—is there a better way of doing it? I have given the example of Scilly, where a better way would be to do it with one ferry rather than two, for half the price. That is not part of a levelling-up application. On the other hand, somebody should be looking at things like this to make sure that the Government, or the taxpayer, are getting value for money.
That could apply to many projects which noble Lords have mentioned on levelling up, including no doubt the railway projects in the regions which my noble friend talked about. It would help me to understand whether there is any check in the Bill involving value for money and going out to competitive tendering, or not, to demonstrate that that has been done before a decision is taken to go ahead.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I oppose the question that Clause 18 stands part of the Bill. We have had an excellent debate so far on how the Bill fits with assisting disadvantaged areas. It feels quite appropriate to have these discussions on the day the levelling-up White Paper is being discussed in another place.
What runs through all these discussions on disadvantaged areas is that the UK is one of the most geographically unequal major economies. As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, stated in Committee on Monday, that has only worsened over the last three decades. We need to throw everything at this problem, which is why noble Lords are keen to see more definition on how the Bill will help disadvantaged areas, given that subsidies provide a key part of the mechanism to enable levelling up.
Clause 18 relates to the relocation of activities and states:
“A subsidy is prohibited by this section—
I repeat, prohibited—
“if … it is given to an enterprise subject to a condition that the enterprise relocates all or part of its existing economic activities”.
Of course, we need measures to prevent gaming the system and internal competition. However, this clause appears to be rather a blunt instrument to achieve this end and goes against the flexible nature of the Bill. There are many productive relocation projects that could contribute well to levelling up, and that need not be unduly distortive of competition in so doing, but which would be made much more difficult by the presence of this clause in the legislation. We already see government departments moving out of London into the regions. Inevitably, we need the same to happen for some business investments, too, if the Government are serious about levelling up.
I do not see why the Bill would want to prevent subsidies for productive relocation projects moving into disadvantaged areas, which could be a boost in many instances to the levelling-up agenda. This has already given rise to concerns that it will adversely affect the ability of LEPs and local authorities to use grants and other forms of subsidy to relocate. The question then becomes: how do we prevent issues with internal competition if we do not want this to become a free-for-all?
The answer is that the Bill already covers these aspects. I turn to the subsidy control principles in Schedule 1, where principle F states:
“Subsidies should be designed to achieve their specific policy objective while minimising any negative effects on competition or investment within the United Kingdom”,
while principle G states:
“Subsidies’ beneficial effects … should outweigh any negative effects, including in particular negative effects on … competition or investment within the United Kingdom.”
These two principles already cover, in my mind, the issues of negative effects on competition or investment within the UK. I therefore believe there is a case that Clause 18 is not required, because if a relocation subsidy was distortive of competition, it would be caught by those two principles in Schedule 1.
In addition, I want to pick up on Amendments 27 and 28, as spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, on the meaning of area in Clause 18. For example, are moves within the same local authority permitted or not? We may need some more definition of what comprises an area in Clause 18.
I can see the intent behind Clause 18, but there are existing protections to achieve these ends in the Bill. If implemented, it could present a risk to the levelling-up agenda through a blanket prohibition on productive relocation projects. So far in Committee, the Minister has made the point that this is a framework Bill and will support levelling up through the subsidies that it will enable, but surely we do not want it to have a clause within it that could directly work against levelling up. I look forward to the Minister’s response on this and would welcome further discussions with him on this aspect of the Bill to ensure that it is coherent with the Government’s wider strategy.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I appear to have come into this argument about consistency between the noble Lord behind me and my noble friend Lord Purvis. It strikes me that, if this Government are intent on getting a coherent policy, they must have one fitting with the other.
My noble friend just talked about the figure of £780 per head. I will not argue in greater detail what I said during a previous day of debate in Committee, but I also want, in answer to a Written Question and Oral Questions, a statement from this Government that Wales will receive, pound for pound, what it received from the European fund. My target is £780. If the Minister could indicate in his reply whether the Government are still intent on reaching that target—and if so, when —that would be helpful.
It seems to me that consistency is also about the way in which the subsidy regime might work. How subsidies have been applied in the past is important. I quote by way of example the case of both sides of the Severn Bridge. One is in Wales, the other is in England. A major UK company relocated from the Welsh side to England. Having reflected on it, the Welsh Government spent a considerable amount of money preparing the site which the company had vacated and turning it into something that became a possible, and certainly large-scale, logistic hub into which a major British company relocated, again moving from one side of the Severn Bridge to the other. That was allowed, because basically what we were seeing was economic development potential and the available subsidy regime being used to the full.
However, I do not understand how this subsidy Bill will mean that companies can relocate or move, except by indices that, we are told, are now not consistent with the subsidy regime. It is therefore difficult for a member of the public or a public body trying to think how they will sort out their subsidy regimes from now on to make certain decisions about the future. Perhaps the Minister can provide us with some certainty on what relocation means, because without a map, a plan or boundaries, where does it stop? Where does it start? Does it mean that both sides of the Severn Bridge are in the same government economic plan and can be at both ends at the same time?
I want to say a few words about the SPEI schemes and ask the Minister some questions about them. In principle, such schemes are helpful and permissive because they follow on from the EU’s SGEI scheme, but there are two differences between the European scheme and the scheme proposed in this Bill. The first is that the SPEI must reflect the principles in Schedule 1, of which principle F is a new one. This amplifies the question I asked just now about whether, without access to a methodology for location, it will be possible to determine the issues raised by principle F. The second difference concerns the need for public interest objectives to be placed as an obligation for the companies concerned—that is, the companies that provided the delivery of goods and services or actually delivered them—in future.
To understand that need, how are we to measure what public good or public service obligation is? That is not yet reflected in the content of the Bill, and I wonder whether the Government will make it clearer, especially as we are probably not talking about the exempt ones but of that lower limit up to £700,000 and then further to £14.5 million. These are important features of any economic development plan for any area. The schemes currently captured by the SPEI rules include housing, rural transport services and some aspects of health. My question to the Minister is: how much broader could SPEI schemes go? The public good could span a wide regime of operations. In the light of two examples, I will ask the Minister how a scheme could be tested and whether he could treat these examples as a means of achieving an understanding of the intention behind this proposal in the Bill.
The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, are trying to establish a level of detail that we do not yet have. It is essential to have that detail, either in the Bill or in further explanation from the Government, of what schemes could be involved and use these services. Those services could be provided under current expenditure or from capital expenditure for projects that are needed.
I want to work on leisure centres, and arts centres or concert halls. Leisure centres used to be very much a local authority activity, but they are critical to providing a social good in ensuring the good health of communities. Therefore, many local authorities have now turned to the private sector to build, and sometimes to run, these centres. Would an SPEI scheme be available for that sort of operation?
It is similar for arts centres, which are frequently multipurpose halls now. As well as concert halls, they are perhaps homes for orchestras and community centres. Not only concerts but a whole lot of activities occur in them. Having a regime that provides a subsidy means that ticket charging can be affordable across the community. In places such as London, it is possible not to have a subsidy, because the audience will clearly pay far more for their tickets than they would in other parts of the country.
Given the disparities in the regions and nations of our United Kingdom, it is important to understand how these things will work in practice. A number of these multipurpose halls may well have a resident artist, an orchestra, a teaching capability or an education facility. In fact, it would be easy to demonstrate a public good, but they will need support or a subsidy. Will an SPEI scheme apply equally to them, provided that the public good stands up? It could be said that the availability of affordable tickets for the general population is important, no matter where it comes from.
In conclusion, this section of the Bill needs further explanation, simply because it could be used to great effect by local authorities and the devolved Administrations. Unfortunately, it does not mean that they will have a subsidy to offer, certainly not in Wales, unless the Government can match the £780 a head that we had until last year.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, the Government are anxious to reduce regional inequality and to promote greater equality, but it is difficult to understand how that it is going to happen without the economy seeing some relocation. The Government’s plans today involve taking money away from the home counties and transferring it to the north of England. That puts them in a political quandary, because if they do not deliver material results in the red wall seats and they have also alienated their blue wall seats, they may find themselves losing on both fronts. That is a problem for them, but from the country’s point of view we want to see those inequalities being reduced. My question to the Government is how they think this can be achieved if any suggestion of relocation is prevented.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I have a few short points. First, I support the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, regarding Clause 18 not standing part of the Bill. It is always very unfortunate when we have in legislation something that says that a subsidy is prohibited by the sanction if it is given to an enterprise subject to a condition that the enterprise relocates. The Explanatory Notes make it very clear that, by “condition”, something explicit is meant. Does it mean therefore that something implicit is permissible? As the Bill aims to achieve transparency, should we not be open and clear, particularly regarding the enforcement by the CMA, about what precisely we will allow in respect of relocation? The noble Lord may be right about the principles governing it, but a provision that makes it dependent on whether it is explicit or implicit is of benefit only to the lawyers, and we do not need to go down that route.
The second issue goes to the question of how this is to work and be enforced, which is the interrelationship of subsidies, procurement and the levelling-up fund. It seems quite clear that procurement obviously can operate as a subsidy, although there is an exemption—the Minister explained it in answer to Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley—which might exempt certain schemes from it. How does the value-for-money concept in the procurement Bill relate to subsidies?
My last question goes to the levelling-up funds. I assume that something will be done to ensure that they will not be part of financial assistance but, even if they are not for the purposes of the Bill, no doubt the Competition and Markets Authority and the court will have to take into account, in looking at distortion, the cumulative effects of funds from the levelling-up fund and funds from the local authority, because they are both, in essence, forms of state aid. It may be difficult to do it today, but can we have a paper which explains interrelationship of subsidy by way of procurement and how the levelling-up funds relate to the Bill? They are all potentially forms of state aid.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for tabling the lead amendment in this group, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, who ably introduced it. It was great to be reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, of my previous existence in the campaign against the northern regional assembly—I dread to think how many years ago that was. I seem to remember that Mr Cummings was also involved in the campaign; the noble Lord missed his opportunity to have a go at poor Dominic for that. This is an interesting group of amendments which promotes some good questions. I will try to address the points from the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on Amendment 25A, as well as the points from the noble Lords, Lord Ravensdale and Lord Wigley, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, helpfully reminded us, the context for this is the publication of the levelling-up White Paper. In that, we have announced a comprehensive programme of policies that will put the UK on a path towards greater economic prosperity in every region and place—including, I hope, the north-east of Scotland. We will do this through significant targeted investment, such as the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund that has been referred to, which will invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life across the UK, including by regenerating town centres and high streets, upgrading local transport and investing in cultural and heritage assets.
It is not in question that any government subsidy scheme set up in the context of this levelling-up fund or otherwise should be in compliance with the provisions under this Bill, once it is in force. However, as we discussed on Monday and as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, again today, subsidies can of course be an important tool to achieve levelling up, but for reasons of time and efficiency I will focus today on the Bill itself and the amendments tabled. I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities to debate the levelling-up fund and its excellent proposals in this House in future.
Lord Wigley (PC)
Does the Minister accept that cultural levelling up is part of the Government’s aim, and that cultural facility away from London and the south-east is a very important part of life and the economic substructure? Therefore, is it in order for money to be used to attract cultural investment, whether in theatres, concert halls or other aspects, which may attract business away from London and might be caught under the provisions of the later clause which arises in this group? How is that going to work?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I agree. Personally, I am fully in favour of cultural institutions transferring out of London. I will address the relocation point in my later remarks.
This grouping spans several clauses of the Bill but, in responding to the amendments, I will keep coming back to the central refrain that I iterated on Monday as well. The Bill regulates the giving of subsidies where there is a market failure or an equity rationale, with the intention of minimising distortions to competition, investment and trade. It is intended to be a flexible and minimally burdensome regime that applies to subsidies of all types and in all policy areas. As such, my central contention that applies to a lot of these amendments is that there is no need to privilege or exempt certain sectors or highlight certain objectives. Nor is it for the Bill to dictate rigidly the purposes for which public authorities should use subsidies or how they should achieve their purposes.
Clause 10 concerns the creation of subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes. A streamlined subsidy scheme is made by a Minister of the Crown for the purposes set out in the Bill. Amendment 14 would clarify that the Government may create streamlined subsidy schemes for the purposes of supporting areas of relative economic deprivation. Specifying particular policy objectives at this stage on the face of the Bill may in fact lead to the power to create streamlined subsidy schemes being interpreted in an unduly narrow way in the future.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
If a public authority—let us say the Scottish Government—had a scheme and defined for the purposes of that scheme the entirety of Scotland, therefore allowing relocation anywhere within Scotland, is the Minister satisfied that this would come under the Bill?
Lord Callanan (Con)
If it was in compliance with the other principles in the regime, of course it would be in compliance. It would be for the Scottish Government to determine what they would consider—
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
If the Secretary of State decided that the geography was the whole of the United Kingdom, would that be acceptable under the Bill, too?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord is dragging me into hypotheticals, but obviously the purpose of the Bill applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, so the principles would apply across the whole country, yes.
Lord German (LD)
The Minister has mentioned the question of guidance twice. Guidance is not law, of course, unless it is. It exactly what it is meant to be: guidance. Given the importance of guidance to the question of what an area is, would it be possible for this guidance to be issued, even in draft form, before we conclude this Bill, so that we can at least know what is in the Government’s mind?
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
Just to take both earlier points, if the Secretary of State defined an area as the whole of the United Kingdom, and that covers it, part of the subsidies could be used to move businesses inside the whole of that area. If that is the case, it defeats the whole purpose of it, does it not?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I do not want noble Lords getting mixed up. I was referring to the fact that schemes can be designed for the whole of the United Kingdom. The purpose of this clause is to prohibit direct subsidies where a business is paid a sum of money to move from area A to area B—let me finish this point—depending on the definition of the areas that we spoke about previously.
However, that is only for direct subsidies, of course. The attractiveness, training provisions et cetera that could exist or be subsidised in a different area might make it more attractive for that business elsewhere, but the idea is to avoid the situation in the US that I talked about, where they come along and give companies—I will not name them, but noble Lords know the examples I am talking about—huge amounts of money literally to get it to close down its operations in one state and move to another. That is what we are trying to avoid, but we fully accept that it is perfectly in order to increase the attractiveness of an area, show how wonderful it is and show what is available there, including trading provision, sites et cetera. However, we do not accept using direct financial assistance to move from one part to the next.
We have already published illustrative guidance. We will look at enhancing that further with more detail before we commence with the legislation. If it is drafted and ready in time, I will share it with the noble Lord, of course.
Lord Fox (LD)
Without labouring the point, but labouring the point, I want to come back to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, about the grey areas that appear to be here. This is not a hypothetical example—it is a real one without names—but imagine that you have an inward investor, possibly doubling down on an investment that has already been made. As part of the process of negotiating with that investor, government, whether national or local, determines that it is important to have a technology park where the investor’s suppliers are aggregated and work together to support the investor.
The level of support needed to create the system of suppliers that supports the inward investment, which is clearly of benefit to the region, and therefore to the country, is clear. However, it is also clear that, if arms are not twisted, they are also being bribed or given money to create that park, that environment, to make sure that the inward investor gets what they want when it comes to the investment. Is the Minister saying that this sort of process will be entirely legal even if Clause 18 remains in the Bill?
Lord Callanan (Con)
Yes, if they are an inward investor coming into the country and they do not already have an operation in another part of the country.
Lord Callanan (Con)
That is not the example the noble Lord quoted. My understanding is that, if they are just increasing the attractiveness of an area and there is no direct financial payment to the company to move from one area to the next, yes, that would be allowed. If that is not correct, I will write to the noble Lord, but that is certainly my understanding of how that would work.
As I explained, this prohibition puts down a marker that is intended to prevent the small class of disruptive but harmful subsidies, such as poaching and outright bidding wars. I suggest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, that it would not be easy for such subsidies to circumvent this prohibition.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister; he is being very generous. This is just to confirm this point: if a public body is able to self-define an area under this clause, there would be nothing to prevent the Scottish Government from defining the area as Scotland. They could therefore offer relocation subsidies to businesses in England to relocate to Scotland, and vice versa; there would be nothing to stop the Secretary of State from defining the area as England, which would be more worrying, and therefore having subsidies that are specifically for those relocating from, say, Wales.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I think the noble Lord is confusing two different areas. There is the area that would define a particular scheme and the direct subsidies that we are talking about. Yes, clearly there would be a prohibition on the Scottish Government directly financing the relocation of a company from England to Scotland, or vice versa.
Lord Callanan (Con)
It does not matter, because anywhere within the United Kingdom is the area covered by this Bill.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Minister, Clause 18 could say the United Kingdom, but it does not. It says “area”. As the Minister has said on a number of occasions today, the public authority defines the area.
Lord Callanan (Con)
It would be the area of the particular authority that is offering the subsidy. Earlier, I offered a more precise definition of what the area would be, whether it is the Scottish Government for Scotland or the council area that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, referred to in north-east Scotland. They would be the areas of the authority combined. If the Scottish Government, for instance, wanted to offer a direct subsidy for a company to move, or the British Government offered a subsidy for a company to relocate, even within their own area, it would not be permitted.
As I said, indirect attractiveness in enhancing training provisions, for example, would be permitted. This is to prohibit a particular small class of actions. The example that we used was in the United States. We have all seen examples of companies moving from one state to another. They literally close down one operation and move to another because of the enormous subsidies offered. That is what we want to prohibit. We certainly do not want to prohibit areas—indeed, it would be contrary to our policy aims—from making themselves more attractive by offering indirect subsidies, as this would help the levelling-up agenda. I hope I have clarified that.
Amendment 34 was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol. First, I will say a few words about the purpose and effect of Clause 29, which this amendment seeks to change. The clause sets out the specific provisions for giving subsidies for services of public economic interest, which are services provided to carry out particular tasks in the public interest. These are services where, without a public subsidy, a vital public service would not be supplied in an appropriate way by the market—or, in some cases, would not be supplied at all. These could include, for example, ferry links between Scottish islands—no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, would want to quote the example of the Scilly Isles—and a rural bus service.
The provisions in Clause 29 facilitate the subsidies being given while ensuring that this is done transparently, that they are reviewed regularly by the public authority, and that they avoid overcompensating the beneficiary. The Government’s aim in drafting Clause 29 was to provide a simple yet effective framework within which public authorities could confidently provide SPEI subsidies that would allow the continued provision of important services and, in doing so, ensure that the subsidy is limited to what is necessary to deliver that service.
In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord German, about whether a leisure centre would be considered an SPEI, I do not want to comment on that specific scenario. There is no reason in principle why it should not be, but the Bill would absolutely allow a subsidy to a leisure centre, whether it is an SPEI or not—we could probably have lots of debates about the degree to which leisure centres are SPEIs—if the public authority was assured that there was a market failure or equity rationale and the other relevant requirements were met. I will purposefully not comment on his proposition that the residents of London should not benefit from public leisure centres. I am sure that is not what he was trying to imply.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, seeks to add a further requirement on public authorities when considering the cost of delivering the SPEI. They would need to consider the social and economic welfare of users of the service and of those engaged in its delivery. These will be important factors for many, if not all, SPEIs, and I expect that public authorities would regularly take account of these considerations when reviewing these types of services on a case-by-case basis. For example, service providers of rural transport services may be required, by the terms of their contract, to consult service users through annual customer surveys or regular engagement with local stakeholders to show that the service in fact meets local needs.
However, the inclusion of this amendment in the Bill would introduce additional complication and a degree of uncertainty for public authorities in how they undertake this assessment. The defining factor for SPEIs must be the type of service that is provided and the fact that it would not be adequately provided by the market. The provisions in Clause 29 are designed to ensure that those services are designed appropriately and with minimal market distortion. As important as the social and economic welfare of service users and providers is, I do not believe it is at the core of this assessment and of the subsidy control provisions.
More broadly, it is important to emphasise that the subsidy control regime does not sit in isolation, nor should it determine every element of spending decisions taken by public authorities in the UK. They must continue to take into account spending rules and to ensure value for taxpayers’ money. They must also make evidence-based, democratically accountable policy decisions about how and where to intervene, in a way that takes into account the specific characteristics and needs of the geographical area and the subject matter for which they are responsible. It may therefore be appropriate for public authorities to include reference to the social and economic welfare of service users and providers in their own guidance on specific SPEIs.
With respect to the social and economic welfare of those engaged in delivering the services, I remind the noble Lord that the UK has one of the best employment rights records in the world. We continue to build on this record, ensuring that our workers have access to the rights and protections they deserve. I therefore do not believe that it is desirable for the subsidy control regime that we are debating to prescribe how public authorities must account for the social and economic welfare of service users and those engaged in delivering the service.
Finally, I will comment on Amendment 36. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for tabling this especially thought-provoking amendment. I understand that the noble Lord intends it to be a probing amendment and I will treat it as such. It raises some interesting questions about subsidies and the nature of the relationship they create between a public authority and a subsidy beneficiary.
The social value Act, from which I assume his amendment takes its inspiration, requires a public authority that is procuring the provision of services, goods or works to give weight to social value factors in what would otherwise have to be a strict value-for-money calculation. Authorities within the scope of that Act should consider whether it applies where a subsidised contract is awarded. In contrast, and perhaps paradoxically, the giving of public money in the form of a subsidy is not primarily a market-based or economic calculation. Of course there are economic duties, within this regime and in public spending controls, to ensure that a subsidy is efficient and effective.
However, the first requirement of this regime—the first condition that a public authority must satisfy before giving a subsidy—is, in essence, one of social value: what is the equity rationale? Is there a market failure and what is the benefit to wider society in providing this subsidy? I hope this answers the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on the same subject. Moreover, public authorities must conclude their assessment against the principles with the balancing test in principle G: that the beneficial effects of the subsidy should outweigh any negative effects. Of course, these duties fall on the public authority and not the beneficiary directly but, in considering the first and last principles, the public authority must consider the effect of the subsidy in the round.
If it were reasonably foreseeable that, in the actual purchasing of a good or service funded by subsidy, the beneficiary would be undermining the equity rationale for giving the subsidy or that it would somehow worsen another equity objective, then it is hard to see that the subsidy could satisfy either principle A or G. None of this is to say that a public authority cannot impose secondary requirements on a beneficiary, where the size and nature of a subsidy might lead it to do so. Many public authorities award subsidies through a written contractual arrangement that sets out the terms and conditions under which the financial assistance is given, and this would be the way to impose such conditions. But it would be disproportionate to require public authorities to impose social value conditions in all cases, particularly as the questions of equity are already built into the fabric of the regime.
As an aside, the noble Lord has also proposed that public authorities should be able to impose penalties if the use of the subsidy does not deliver the chosen social value purposes. As I have explained, it is not proportionate to require public authorities to impose these secondary requirements. However, let me reassure him that Clause 77 provides that if a subsidy is not used for its intended purpose, it can of course be recovered.
I am grateful to all noble Lords for putting forward their amendments and for the long subsequent discussion that has taken place, but I hope I have set out the reasons why I am unable to accept these amendments on behalf of the Government. In the light of the fulsome explanations I have provided, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank everyone. Given the nature of the earlier discussion, particularly about the cultural venues, perhaps I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA at this point, with apologies for not doing so earlier. I wonder if noble Lords are all sitting feeling relieved that they are not standing here trying to pull all this together. On behalf of the Committee, I thank everyone who has contributed; it has been a very helpful debate. I also thank the Minister for his fulsome response.
However, the nature of the amendments we are considering in this group and their probing nature is such that noble Lords have been seeking reassurance. Although the Minister has attempted to give us reassurance, without looking through the detailed responses that the Committee has given this afternoon I am not convinced that on the matters raised we can all put our hands up and say that that reassurance has been received on all points. I hope there will be opportunities to come back and look at the continuing areas of concern.
I am also struck by the fact that we have not had the opportunity to discuss in detail the evidence submitted by experts during the House of Commons proceedings, including the very serious arguments by Professor Fothergill and Dr Pazos-Vidal about the benefit of defining areas. I confess that I am at a loss as to how the Government can bring this down to the point where the interested parties can make sense of the opportunities available to them, and how we can move this forward in a simple way that would enable areas and businesses to benefit, without the excess bureaucracy that the Minister assured us would not get in the way. I remain to be convinced on some of these points.
“(5) A streamlined subsidy scheme must be made or modified by regulations subject to the negative procedure.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require a streamlined subsidy scheme to be made by regulations, as recommended by the DPRRC.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, they say that a change is as good as a rest, so the Minister should be very sprightly now, as these amendments bring a slight change of gear. The group consists of eight items, mostly on the same theme, with the exception of the clause stand part in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Because that is so different, in the interests of time and clarity I shall not speak to it, so I look forward to hearing more about it from her.
I am tempted to say, “Here we go again”. The pattern we see here is one that we see with every Bill. First, the Government table new legislation absolutely riddled with secondary legislation. There is usually at least one case of secondary legislation allowing the amendment of primary legislation. Then the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee steps forward and issues a report highlighting those issues and recommending remedies. Next, the Minister—in my area it is always the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—stands up, pleads the case for flexibility and sometimes, indeed increasingly, disputes Parliament’s competence to even make some of the decisions that will be required in the future. If we are successful through this process, some, although usually not all, the offending clauses get removed or modified. Lately, however, I detect an emboldened Minister. Increasingly—the ARIA Bill is an example—he uses the Dispatch Box to refute the arguments of the DPRRC.
We should be clear that this committee is an important senior committee of your Lordships’ House, and its report Democracy Denied? The Urgent Need to Rebalance Power between Parliament and the Executive stated that
“the principles of parliamentary democracy, namely parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and the accountability of the executive to Parliament”
should be at the heart of how a department approaches the delegation of legislative powers. The Bill falls far short of that objective, which is why there are so many amendments in my name in this group. I am also pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Thomas, in Amendment 50, which seeks to deal with Clause 47, which is clearly the most egregious example of executive overreach.
I turn to the amendments in order. Amendment 15 would require a streamlined subsidy scheme to be made by regulation. Clause 10 allows Ministers to make streamlined subsidy schemes, which are defined opaquely in Clause 10(4). This demonstrates that Ministers consider that all subsidies within such a scheme comply with the Bill’s subsidy control principles and requirements. In practice, it means that if a public authority keeps within the limits of the scheme it is no longer required to consider the subsidy control principles or requirements when giving an individual subsidy. Streamlined schemes will be laid before Parliament after being made. They will not be subject to the negative or the affirmative procedure for regulations. The DPRRC report sets out a very good rationale for recommending that the power to establish streamlined subsidy schemes in Clause 10 should be exercised by regulation and that then the negative procedure would be appropriate, hence Amendment 15.
Next is a probing amendment to raise concerns about the definitions in Clause 11 being made by regulations, as also highlighted by the DPRRC. Clause 11 allows certain definitions to be defined by affirmative regulations rather than appearing in the Bill. These definitions are
“subsidy, or subsidy scheme, of interest”
and
“subsidy, or subsidy scheme, of particular interest”.
We have touched on this already. These definitions are important in determining the scope of the subsidies or the schemes that must be referred to the CMA under Clauses 52 to 64. The DPRRC is sceptical about the Government’s reasoning for leaving these definitions out of the Bill, and so am I. The DPRRC states:
“The power in clause 11(1) to define in regulations certain key terms is inappropriate and we recommend that it be removed from the face of the Bill.”
As a coda, and this is quite unusual, the DPRCC adds:
“Although we have been critical of the over-use of Henry VIII powers, we prefer to see key definitions appear on the face of the Bill—perhaps with a Henry VIII power to amend by affirmative regulations—rather than not appearing on the face of the Bill at all and always being a matter for regulations.”
That is an interesting twist, and one that is worth debating.
Amendment 26 addresses Clause 16(4) to (7) and seeks to require designations related to marketable risk countries to be made by regulations not by direction. Again, this is recommended by the committee.
Clause 16(4) is subject to neither the affirmative nor the negative procedure. The Government’s reason for having no parliamentary procedure is that they
“want to be able to act rapidly to allow short-term export credit finance where market factors may have rendered the list of marketable risk countries in need of amendment.”
One thing that the Covid crisis has demonstrated is that there is no barrier to the rapid tabling and approval of regulation. One thing that Brexit has demonstrated is that your Lordships’ House has a huge capacity to handle literally thousands of regulations when they are set before it. So any pleading that executive power is needed because Parliament cannot move fast enough is tosh, frankly—or, as the DPRRC puts it rather more politely,
“the Government can make rapid legislative changes by negative regulations or ‘made affirmative’ regulations. The idea that the making of regulations is inconsistent with the need to move quickly is fallacious. Negative and ‘made affirmative’ regulations can be made as quickly as can a direction.”
In other words, it is tosh. This amendment would install a process of regulation rather than ministerial direction.
Amendment 30
“would remove the ability of the Treasury to amend the definition of ‘deposit taker’”.
Amendment 31
“would remove the ability of the Treasury to amend the definition of ‘insurance company’”.
Amendment 32
“would remove the ability of the Treasury to amend the definition of ‘insurer’”.
Clauses 25 to 27 give the Government the ability to revise certain definitions to cater for developments that cannot be anticipated at the time of the Bill’s enactment. By way of example, the definition of “deposit taker” in Clause 25 uses a standard definition found across the statute book. If this definition required amendment in some future primary legislation, it would be perfectly possible for that legislation to contain the necessary consequential provision to enable the definition in Clause 25 of this Subsidy Control Bill to be amended in due course. The same reasoning applies to the definitions of “insurance company” in Clause 26(4) and “insurer” in Clause 23(7). Amendments 30 to 32 would remove the ability to amend those definitions, which, clearly, would not hamper future changes.
Amendment 50, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and signed by myself and the noble and learned Lords I mentioned, would remove Clause 47, which aims to give the Treasury powers
“to keep financial stability directions secret from Parliament and the public, thereby enacting a recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.”
As the committee states,
“clause 47 involves fundamental issues of government accountability and parliamentary scrutiny … Not only does the provision enable the Government to disapply a legislative provision—the Bill’s subsidy control requirements—by a direction that can be kept secret from Parliament, but the justification for the power not being subject to any parliamentary scrutiny procedure includes, according to the Memorandum, ‘the potential for non-approval by Parliament’”.
In other words, this has to be included because Parliament might not agree with it. That should give us pause for thought.
The DPRRC is clear on the malign nature of this clause. It says that
“clause 47 is extraordinary for several reasons … Parliament has no power to scrutinise and reject a Government direction suspending the application of the Bill’s subsidy control requirements … Parliament may be deliberately kept in the dark about the existence of such a direction if the Treasury elects to rely on clause 47(7) … One of the Government’s reasons for having no parliamentary procedure is that the potential for non-approval by Parliament would create uncertainty that the subsidy will continue to be available. In other words, because the Government might be defeated if the direction could be voted upon, there should be no parliamentary procedure and no vote.”
In conclusion, the committee recommends
“that clause 47(7) should be removed from the face of the Bill”,
which is what Amendment 50 would do.
I am sure the noble and learned Lords who follow me, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, will be more erudite, but I leave this set of amendments with a final injunction that we should seek to uphold all the DPRRC’s recommendations, not just the most serious ones. Parliamentary power is being eroded, little by little, one piece at a time. We have to resist this. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, I point out that if Amendment 15 were to be agreed, I could not call Amendments 16 or 17 by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, just said. I liked him shouting “tosh!” at the Government; that was great. That is a very gentle word for it. He also sent me into a mild panic, because I had not realised that my noble friend Lady Bennett had tabled a clause stand part debate in this group. All I can do is repeat her explanatory statement which says that this
“is intended to elicit why Bank of England monetary policy subsidies are excluded from the provisions of the Bill.”
I hope there is an answer on that in the Minister’s speech. I had thought the noble Lord, Lord Fox, was perhaps talking about my Amendment 33 which we have of course already debated. I thank him for his remarks.
On this group generally, I have argued many times about government regulation-making powers, because I am absolutely sick of the Government bringing skeleton legislation that needs little more than a parliamentary rubber stamp for them to make substantive law by future regulations. This is a power grab that most of us absolutely abhor. However, this is a unique case. I want to support these amendments for new regulation-making powers because the alternative envisaged by this Bill is that, instead of making regulations which are passed by Parliament, the Government would simply make a decree and then inform Parliament after the fact. I support the amendments.
Lord Judge (CB)
My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to attend Second Reading. I had other commitments in the House, so ask noble Lords to forgive me.
I put my name down in support of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and was delighted to do so. However, I am sure he will forgive me if I explain that I am actually not supporting him but the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which is what we should be looking at. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, thought there might be some erudition, but there is no need for it; this is a perfectly simple constitutional aberration.
When the Minister comes to reply, I would like him to kindly look at paragraph 16 of the committee’s report, where there are three “extraordinary” provisions—that was the word used—which need attention. Unless he can answer in a way that convincingly refutes their effect, we might as well keep on fighting about this. As I say, it is a constitutional aberration and we should not have it. It is an amazing thing for one of our committees to say that a subsection, in this case Clause 47(7), should be removed from the Bill. We need to know why it should not.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
I shall add two very short points. First, it seems to me absolutely fundamental to a democratic society that the laws made by a legislature permit everything to be done openly and stop anyone prohibiting publication at any time. As the committee said, there is enough discretion in the earlier subsection. Secondly, accessible and open legislation is essential to the rule of law. It seems to me that this clause is an attack on both democracy and the rule of law and has no place in this Bill.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, when the Minister comes to reply, would he explain the purpose of Clause 47(6), which requires that the direction must be published? We need to understand the purpose of that subsection before we look at Clause 47(7) which is the subject of this discussion. As I understand it, it is there in the interests of transparency and clarity. If that is the purpose, it is even more surprising that there is a power to disapply.
After all, the purpose of the direction is to inform somebody. Who is it who is to be informed? It is not subject to parliamentary procedure, but it is there for a purpose. We need to know from the Minister expressly what that purpose is, so that we understand the significance of Clause 47(7).
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Fox and will add a couple of points. First, on the streamlined schemes, there is the potential for them to be very major and, in effect, a policy driver in themselves. But if they are laid and are not in an order, which we would have the ability to scrutinise, they will not necessarily come with an equalities or impact assessment. It will be a fundamental weakness if they are simply laid. It goes against the grain of what we have been trying to argue, which is for good-quality proposals that come with equalities assessments. It will bypass that and that is a retrograde step.
On the ability to amend without there also being scrutiny, I point out, having checked on legislation.gov.uk, that there are 15 references to deposit-takers in other legislation and 34 references to insurers. What the Government propose is simply to amend primary legislation and a suite of other measures. The area of confusion for me is that there is also legislation that relates to Scottish insurance, which could be changed by a Secretary of State without there being proper scrutiny of that either.
My final point relates to the element of secrecy in Clause 47(7). The Government seem to be proposing that we go back to a situation of hue and cry, in which measures by the Treasury that could be supporting individual businesses will never be reported. We will know only if there are whistleblowers, if people are raising concerns and they have that knowledge. We saw to our cost with the Libor-fixing situation what can happen when there is a lack of transparency and reporting. It is simply not good enough. When I was a member of the Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament, we had mechanisms for our committee to meet in private when Finance Ministers were able to say, either on the grounds of national security or during the economic crash, that there were reasons why information would not be made public at that point. We were briefed and there would, subsequently, be a report that Parliament could have. There are other mechanisms for secrecy than this approach.
Finally, I have been a Member of two Parliaments for 18 years now. I never thought I would read a parliamentary committee highlighting this statement:
“In other words, because the Government might be defeated if the direction could be voted upon, there should be no parliamentary procedure and no vote.”
This provision should not progress. It is as simple as that.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for tabling these amendments. As we have heard, they reflect the bulk of the DPRRC’s recommendations. I also thank the noble and learned Lords, Lord Judge and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for signing Amendment 50, even if it was not to support me but the recommendations of the DPRRC.
The DPRRC took the unusual step of voicing its concerns for Clause 47(7) at first, rather than working through the Bill and its clauses in turn. That goes to highlight even further its real concerns, specifically around issues of transparency and secrecy. We will come on to further amendments on transparency and try to open this up because, as we have heard, when you shine a light on the decisions being made, they are put under scrutiny. Issues and concerns can be brought to the fore so that we do not, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, end up relying on whistleblowers.
Taking the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, it may be that the immediate release of certain directions and information could have undesirable consequences in terms of market behaviour, but there must be other ways of taking it forward. The noble Lord has touched on one of them at the Scottish Parliament, where meetings were in private but the information was subsequently released.
At Second Reading, the Minister said:
“However, we will of course take into account the findings from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report and we will review accordingly.”—[Official Report, 19/1/22; col. 1712.]
I know we are all sitting here waiting to see if any of those will be enacted, and I very much look forward to the Minister’s response. The words of the DPRRC have been quoted but it is worth putting on the record points 13 and 14 in its 17th report, which say that:
“We do not recall any other occasion where the Government have argued that one reason why Parliament should not be able to scrutinise delegated legislation is because the Government might be defeated on it … Neither have the Government cited any precedent where the ability to disapply a legislative provision (here, the Bill’s subsidy control requirements) can be achieved by a direction that can be kept secret from Parliament.”
With that, I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments contains a number of amendments tabled in relation to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report on the Bill, which I received and, like all noble Lords, read with great interest. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord McNicol, for their amendments. I was also going to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but sadly she is unable to join us today, which of course is a real tragedy for us all. Nevertheless, we have the benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in her stead, which is wonderful for us.
I wholly echo the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on the vital role that the DPRRC plays in supporting the work of your Lordships’ House. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McLoughlin and his committee for their scrutiny of the Bill.
As I stated at Second Reading, I am very well aware of the strength of feeling across the House on the provisions in the Bill highlighted today. I was expecting many of the speeches that were given. I am sure that noble Lords are aware that my right honourable friend the Lord President of the Council, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has also taken an interest. He recently wrote on this issue to my noble friend Lord McLoughlin and the previous chair of the committee, my noble friend Lord Blencathra, noting that the Government are taking its findings into consideration. While at this stage I cannot commit to changing anything in the Bill, I will take away the comments of noble Lords for due consideration. It is important that we get this legislation right and that the powers are proportionate and measured, as well as conducive to effective subsidy control.
Let me start with some thoughts on Amendment 15 to Clause 10. I previously noted that Clause 10 concerns the creation of subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes. A streamlined subsidy scheme must be laid before Parliament before it is made, or modified, by a Minister of the Crown. Streamlined subsidy schemes offer public authorities a swifter route to demonstrating compliance for categories of subsidies at especially low risk of causing market distortions, that promote UK strategic policy objectives and which the Government judge to be compliant with the subsidy control principles.
This amendment would require streamlined subsidy schemes to be made or modified by regulations subject to the negative procedure. Indeed, the noble Lord’s amendment is in line with the recommendation made by the DPRRC in its report. The Government believe that Clause 10 sets out a proportionate level of parliamentary scrutiny for streamlined subsidy schemes. The regulations will be laid before Parliament both when they are made and when they are amended. I also intend to engage with the devolved Administrations, other public authorities, and the experts in the subsidy advice unit on the development of these schemes.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Is it the view of the Minister that the powers under subsection (6) allow for delayed disclosure?
Lord Callanan (Con)
Yes, that is the subsection which provides the ability to publicise that fact—it is in subsection (6).
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
So the point the Minister is making, which is to have the legal ability to delay disclosure, is afforded under subsection (6). The deletion of subsection (7) then does not affect that power. It would mean only the removal of the ability for there to be no disclosure at all, because the power to delay disclosure would be under Clause 47(6). Is that correct?
Lord Callanan (Con)
We think that subsection (7) is important for financial stability and legal certainty but, as I have said on the other amendments in this group, I am happy to take this away and look at the matter further.
This is the very effect that assistance, and the direction that facilitates that assistance, would be deployed to avoid. Northern Rock serves as a clear example, where the revelation that the firm was in receipt of emergency liquidity assistance led to a run on the bank. That exacerbated its problems and, in the end, hastened its failure. Consequently, if disclosure of financial stability directions cannot be deferred, it would effectively render them unusable in situations where it is necessary to provide lending on a covert basis. Making a direction unusable in this way would be especially problematic if the success of the financial assistance was dependent on the use of a financial stability direction to disapply any of the requirements.
In relation to the specific statement being referenced in paragraph 16 of the report, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Fox, that statement makes it clear that the concern is not about the risk of parliamentary defeat. The concern surfaced in the statement is the perception of stakeholders of a risk that non-approval could result in the rejection or undermining of the proposed subsidy. In that circumstance, the primary concern would not be in relation to a defeat in Parliament but that, as a result of that risk perception among stakeholders, the subsidy would be ineffective in the short term or even rejected by the proposed recipient. This would mean that the use of the power would not even get to the point of a vote.
The current drafting of Clause 47(7) provides a clear mechanism in law for delaying publication and a basis on which the Treasury can make the decision that the publication would undermine the purposes for which the direction was given. When the Treasury considers that publication would no longer undermine the purpose of the direction, it would at that time—this comes to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—be required to publish that direction in accordance with the duty in Clause 47(6). Therefore, subsection (7) simply makes explicit the ability to delay publication where that publication would undermine the purpose for which the direction was given. It does not provide a means for the Government to avoid scrutiny indefinitely.
Lord Judge (CB)
What is the point of Clause 47(7) if the object is to allow, in appropriate circumstances, a deferral or a delay in the publication of the information?
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
Might I add to my noble and learned friend’s question? To whom is the information to be given? Who needs to know about this direction? It is rather important to understand how the scheme is supposed to work. Presumably, the publication is to serve a purpose; one needs to know to whom it will be disseminated.
Lord Callanan (Con)
Ultimately, the purpose is to provide transparency so that, after the fact, the public and Parliament are informed on the subsidy that has been given. However, we maintain that it is important to keep the subsidy under the radar unless it would undermine the purpose for which it was given in the first place if it were publicised. The example of Northern Rock is the one that we quote, as it would potentially cause a run. I recognise the strength of feeling from the DPRRC and among noble Lords on these clauses. As I have said, I will look at them further before we get to Report—[Interruption.] I am happy to have satisfied the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for a change.
Turning to some of the comments on why Clause 11 should stand part of the Bill, this clause enables the Secretary of State to make secondary legislation to define subsidies or subsidy schemes of interest or of particular interest. Again, I recognise that the power set out was criticised in the DPRRC’s report, and that it recommended that these definitions be on the face of the Bill. If I may briefly summarise the purpose of this clause, Part 4 of the Bill establishes the mechanisms for the referral of these subsidies and schemes to the subsidy advice unit. Voluntary referral will be available for subsidies or schemes of interest, while subsidies that are classified as subsidies of particular interest will be subject to mandatory referral. After referral, the public authority’s assessment of compliance with the subsidy control requirements will be evaluated by the unit, and a report containing its findings will be published. This is a pragmatic way of ensuring that additional scrutiny is given to potentially distortive subsidies. The clause therefore allows the Government to define these types of subsidies and schemes.
The noble Lord sought clarity on why the Government intend to set relevant criteria and thresholds in regulations, rather than in the Bill. Let me point out the illustrative regulations that the Government published last week, as well as the accompanying policy statement. I welcome any comments that noble Lords may have on these documents, of course, and stress that the Government will take careful note of the views expressed when developing these draft regulations. I hope that this provides further clarity and assurance on how the Government intend to use these powers.
The reason why the Bill takes a power to define these categories is because it is important that the Government are able to modify the criteria over time in response to market conditions, or the periodic reviews that will be carried out by the subsidy advice unit, to ascertain how the domestic control regime is working in practice. Both Houses will of course have an opportunity to debate any regulations in draft to ensure that the criteria for what constitutes “of interest” or “of particular interest” are robust and capture the right subsidies and schemes for additional scrutiny.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. The Minister said “for the moment”—perhaps for the moment.
I appreciate that the Minister has at least left his door ajar to some of this, but the body language, and indeed the language, still indicate that there is this cultural campaign to make sure that executive power is gathered where possible and that the legislature is pushed to one side. This is what the DPRRC referred to in its report; it is what we have to put up with in every piece of legislation. Actually, as I said, I get the sense that the Government are emboldened and keep going even further with this. I feel that your Lordships will have to consider where we go with this on Report.
I have a couple of observations. When a Minister says that something is too technical, I feel as though I am being tapped on the head and told that I should not worry about such things—this coming from the Minister who tabled the 17 technology areas for the security and investment Bill, which was one of the greatest aggregations of technical information that I have ever seen. The idea that we and Parliament are not capable of handling something that is “technical” is deeply patronising.
Turning the focus to Clause 47(7), nowhere in it are the words “delay”, “temporary” or “otherwise” used. If, as the Minister implied—said absolutely, in fact—the purpose is a temporary delay in what would otherwise be a fully transparent process, that is not what Clause 47(7) says. If that is what the Minister wishes to put to us, that is what it should say in the Bill, but it does not.
Putting those comments to one side, I am sure that we will come back to this unless the Minister mobilises the full forces of righteousness and comes back with some meaningful amendments. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 15.
Amendment 15 withdrawn.
Lord Callanan
“(7) A subsidy scheme or streamlined subsidy scheme may provide for the value of a subsidy to be determined by reference to its gross cash amount or the gross cash equivalent.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes can refer to the gross cash amount or gross cash equivalent amount of the subsidy, as determined by regulations made under Clause 82.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the amendments in this group are technical amendments that would update the Bill to permit regulations made on gross cash equivalent to apply to all parts of the Bill to which they are relevant. These amendments have the same basic purpose so I will take them together.
Subsidies can come in many different forms, from cash grants to discounted contributions in kind. It is important to establish a common methodology for calculating the value of the latter kind of subsidy as this will avoid public authorities taking different, and difficult to compare, approaches to this issue. Clause 82 enables the Secretary of State to make provisions by regulations, which will be subject to the negative procedure, for how the gross cash amount and the gross cash equivalent amount are to be determined for four different clauses that are listed in the Bill. These regulations will set out a methodology for calculating the value of any subsidy or scheme for use by public authorities. This will avoid public authorities using to calculate gross cash equivalent a range of methodologies that may not be wholly or easily comparable with each other.
Clauses 10 and 11 concern the creation of subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes, and enable the Secretary of State to make regulations defining the meaning of subsidies or subsidy schemes of interest or of particular interest. The amendment to Clause 82 would ensure that regulations made under it, which make provisions about how the gross cash amount and the gross cash equivalent are to be determined, are applicable to all regulations and schemes made under the terms of the Bill.
The other amendments to Clauses 10 and 11 would enable the values of subsidies of interest or of particular interest, subsidy schemes and streamlined subsidy schemes to be defined by reference to the gross cash amount or gross cash equivalent amount of the subsidy or scheme. I hope noble Lords will agree that these are minor and technical amendments that will avoid any need for complex cross-referencing in the regulations and reduce any confusion for public authorities; I therefore ask that they be accepted. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I would like to raise a small, technical point; I think that the Minister skimmed over it in the debate on Amendment 33 in my name, possibly because I did not explain it properly. Subsidies for fossil fuels should be calculated using the IMF definition of financial assistance for fuel consumption multiplied by the difference between existing and efficient prices. In his reply, the Minister explained that he would not want to ban subsidies for fossils fuels, but he did not say anything about the merits of the IMF definition of fossil fuel subsidies. This is an important issue because it factors in the negative impacts of environmental and social costs, which are otherwise ignored. When we look at fossil fuel subsidies holistically, we realise just how much more expensive fossil fuels are than renewables. I do not expect an answer today, but it would be good to have an answer in writing whenever possible because the Minister did not mention it.
Lord Callanan (Con)
That issue is not covered by these amendments, but I will come back to the noble Baroness in writing.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, those on this side welcome these three amendments. It is always hard to get those first government amendments out; after then, you can keep them coming, Minister. We have one or two suggestions about what you might like to put in them.
It is good to have a consistent approach; indeed, a consistent approach to how you value a subsidy is a good starting point. Perhaps we can then have a consistent approach to how local authorities evaluate the need for a subsidy, and to how they are regulated and managed within areas. Consistency is what we are calling for. This is clearly the first baby step towards having a control system operated from a level playing field.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
I echo the points of the noble Lord, Lord Fox: it is interesting to see government amendments at this early stage, even though none of these issues was raised at Second Reading. Likewise, we are not going to oppose any of these amendments.
Similarly, not just on consistency but on transparency, a good number of amendments were tabled in Committee on which we are more than happy to work with the department and the Minister to bring them back on Report. This will hopefully deal with a number of issues on which we have concerns, so that we do not object to them at that point.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am happy to see that the Liberal Democrats believe in consistency and to work with the opposition parties when amendments are required, as appropriate.
Lord Callanan
“(2A) Provision under subsection (2)(a) may provide for the value of a subsidy to be determined by reference to its gross cash amount or the gross cash equivalent.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that subsidies of interest and subsidies of particular interest can be defined by reference to gross cash amount or gross cash equivalent amount, as determined by regulations made under Clause 82.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require individual subsidies given under a subsidy scheme to be judged against the subsidy control principles.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, we understand the Government’s desire to keep the subsidy control regime as straightforward as possible so that public authorities at all levels can respond to events as they arise. The Minister knows that we generally support these aims but, as we made clear at Second Reading, we have real concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability. The three amendments in this group have been tabled to look at that. The issue of transparency concerns individual subsidies given under a subsidy scheme not showing as transparently as others on the database or elsewhere.
Amendments 21 and 24 would require individual subsidies inside a scheme to be judged against the subsidy control or energy and environmental principles, as appropriate; I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for putting her name to Amendment 24. The Minister may tell us that removing both Clause 12(2) and Clause 13(2), as the amendments outline, is unnecessary, as Clause 12(3) and Clause 13(3) state that the schemes should not be made unless an authority is “of the view” that the individual subsidies “will be consistent with” the principles. However, being “of the view” that something is consistent with the rules is not the same as specifically stating it or judging that it has been defined within the rules.
More importantly, the lack of transparency arising under the subsidy schemes could be vast. Individual subsidies—large amounts of money or support—could be hidden; they would not be shown and would not be transparent if they are within the schemes. The first two amendments look to set that out.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 24. I also support Amendment 21, which is closely related, and Amendment 68, which has real implications in addressing limits on enforcement for subsidies that may have been misdirected. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, for tabling these amendments and for his very able introduction of them.
To my mind, Amendments 21 and 24 have been tabled to try to establish why the Government wish to disapply the subsidy control principles and the energy and environment principles from a subsidy merely because it has been given under a subsidy scheme. According to the excellent Library briefing on the Bill, the Government have said that a subsidy scheme is a means for public authorities to award a number of subsidies to enterprises on a discretionary basis, as opposed to awarding subsidies on a case-by-case basis to individual enterprises. To use the Minister’s words, the Government want to try to create a “minimally burdensome” scheme. It would make it quicker and easier for subsidies to be given if this were to be the case.
As drafted, the Bill says that subsidy schemes must be made by a public authority only if the subsidies provided for by the scheme will be consistent with the subsidy control principles laid out in Schedule 1—I hope noble Lords are still with me; I think it will make sense in Hansard—or, where relevant, the energy and environment principles laid out in Schedule 2. That is all well and good. A subsidy made under a subsidy scheme must comply with the principles laid out in Schedules 1 and 2, so you would think it would be open to review on that basis and enforceable as such. But you would be wrong, because Clause 12(2) states that
“‘subsidy’ does not include a subsidy given under a subsidy scheme.”
Why? It does not make any sense. Hence Amendment 21 is needed to take out this nonsense, so that the subsidy control principles can apply to all subsidies.
Similarly, Amendment 24 would remove Clause 13(2) so that the energy and environment principles can also apply to all subsidies. Given that there is a threshold for transparency and accountability of about £500,000 for subsidies given under a subsidy scheme, that will very quickly add up to millions of pounds, for which, as the Bill is currently drafted, there will be no scrutiny. That would not serve businesses or the Government.
Amendment 68 is necessary because Clause 70(2) says that the CAT cannot be asked to review a subsidy decision if the subsidy was given under a subsidy scheme; only the subsidy scheme itself can be reviewed. That makes a nonsense of the enforcement regime because no route will then exist to review whether a subsidy complies with the subsidy scheme. To the question of when a subsidy is not a subsidy, the answer is when it is given under a subsidy scheme. Surely the Minister can see the absurdity of such a position. Every subsidy must be available for review if necessary. That is why these amendments are necessary. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, for tabling them.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I follow my noble friend Lady Sheehan and the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, in support of these amendments. Subsidy schemes seem to be designed as monoliths with no granularity at all. Why is that one of the central theses of this Bill? What possible advantage do the Government seek to gain, other than the ability to hide what money is going to whom? To those of us on this side of the Committee, that appears to be what is going on.
Amendment 21 would ensure that subsidy schemes cannot be used to hide subsidies that would, if they were stand-alone subsidies, be reported, as my noble friend set out. It is clear to all three of us that there is huge scope for significant and expensive subsidies to be hidden in these schemes. That seems to be the only reason why this is in the Bill. I am sure that the Minister will want to explain the reasons, because that must be the response to these amendments. I am sure that we will all be happy to throw our hands up if we are wrong and there is a hugely important reason why this is needed for the operation of the subsidies.
Amendment 24, co-signed by my noble friend, would require individual subsidies given under the subsidy scheme to be judged against the energy and environment principles. Once again, we are back to Monday evening, when my noble friend Lord Purvis posed a question regarding principle G in Schedule 1. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, got to answer it; I suppose that this time it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. During that debate, the Minister seemed to make it clear that sustainability considerations are indeed implicit in every aspect of the Bill. He suggested that, by implication, there must be some benefit for these things to be legal, but there is no explicit reference to that. I apologise if I am putting words in his mouth because principle G says the opposite. Therefore, rather than repeat what I have said, I have invented another one of my little examples, for which I apologise in advance.
Let us say that I have won a subsidy to expand my pottery business. As part of the submission, I cite increased employment and increased local sourcing of services as the beneficial effects that investment in my pottery business would bring. Nothing in the schedule or the rest of the Bill says that I have to benefit the environment by using less energy. If I am successful, I employ 30% more people and use 30% more local services, therefore achieving the scheme’s objectives, while also using 30% more energy to fire my products. That would appear to be how the Bill will work. Therefore, we need Amendment 24 to include consideration of the environmental impact that that subsidy would bring. It is very simple.
Amendment 68 would allow individual subsidies given under a subsidy scheme to be reviewed. Once again, it is cracking open the monolith and being able to look at the granularity within a scheme. Again, it follows my initial points: we need to be able to see inside these schemes for transparency to be available.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for tabling Amendments 21, 24 and 68. Perhaps it would be helpful if I started by explaining the status of subsidy schemes in the Bill and why the Government have taken this approach.
Public authorities that seek to give multiple subsidies have three options available to them. First, they can consider each subsidy separately and assess its compliance with the principles and the other requirements in the Bill. Secondly, they can set up a scheme—that is to say, they can identify a group of possible subsidies, with defined parameters, and ensure that any possible subsidy within that group complies with the subsidy control requirements. Thirdly, they can use a streamlined subsidy scheme or another scheme where a public authority—perhaps the UK Government or one of the devolved Administrations—has already assessed that defined group of possible subsidies as compliant with the requirements.
Clauses 12 and 13 place a duty on public authorities to consider the subsidy control principles and the energy and environmental principles respectively before deciding whether to give an individual subsidy or make a subsidy scheme. A public authority cannot go on to give the subsidy or make the scheme unless it is of the view that it is consistent with the principles, including the energy and environmental principles the noble Lord, Lord Fox, emphasised. Once created, public authorities can then award multiple subsidies under that scheme with the confidence that they comply with the subsidy control principles.
By making a scheme instead of assessing multiple individual subsidies against the principles, public authorities will save themselves the administrative time and effort—ultimately equating to taxpayers’ money—it takes to consider any assessment, even one that is light touch and common sense. Schemes also provide a way for public authorities to grant subsidies with greater confidence and security because anyone wishing to make a challenge in the Competition Appeal Tribunal must do so to the scheme itself within the limitation period of one month following publication of information about the scheme on the transparency database. That one month period can be extended by a pre-action information request. We believe that this strikes the right balance between facilitating proper scrutiny of the scheme and removing any perpetual threat of challenge, which can make public authorities more reluctant to give, and recipients more hesitant to accept, beneficial subsidies.
Noble Lords will be aware that this subsidy control regime presents a new approach tailored to the specific needs of the United Kingdom. I do not believe that it is generally useful to justify elements of the Bill on the grounds that they correspond to how things used to be done in the EU state aid system, but it is helpful to underline that public authorities have been making use of subsidy schemes for the purposes of administrative simplicity for a long time. Although the EU mechanisms for decision-making and challenge were quite different, public authorities that gave subsidies in compliance with pre-approved schemes generally did not need to obtain further approval for each individual subsidy under a scheme and could proceed to give those subsidies with confidence.
I also add, as the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, pointed out, that transparency is very important. Subsidies given under schemes over £500,000 must be uploaded on the transparency database under the Bill as it stands. We believe that the £500,000 threshold represents an appropriate balance between minimising the administrative burden and requiring subsidy transparency in the public interest.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
On Amendment 21 to Clause 12, if that amendment was agreed to and the line
“In subsection (1) ‘subsidy’ does not include a subsidy given under a subsidy scheme”
was taken out, it would have no impact on a public authority’s ability to continue to allow subsidies under the subsidy scheme. It would not slow the process up.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I take the noble Baroness’s point on that. I would like to discuss it with the team when I have had a chance to look into it more thoroughly.
As I have just set out, under the terms of Clause 70, an interested party may not submit an application for the Competition Appeal Tribunal to review a decision to give an individual subsidy under a scheme. This is to ensure that scrutiny and challenge occur at the scheme level. The noble Lord’s amendment would enable applications for review to be made to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for individual subsidies granted under a subsidy scheme without the requirement for the broader subsidy scheme also to be reviewed.
Lord Fox (LD)
I am glad that the Minister has come to this point. Earlier on, I think I heard her say that transparency on a subsidy would raise the potential for a challenge to happen, but the whole system of policing this is through challenge, so how can challenge happen if invisibility is the result of this?
The Minister was suggesting that you can challenge only the overall scheme, not the individual granularity of a scheme within it, but that flies in the face of the central principle of the Bill which is that if I am a business and another local business gets a subsidy, I can challenge that through the CMA, assuming that there are grounds for it. If I do not know that my local competitor is getting that money because its subsidy is locked inside one of these schemes, I cannot challenge it. So the Minister is correct: transparency will lead to more challenge and that is the purpose of the systems put in place within the Bill. We need some working through of this from the Minister—it may not be now but perhaps in writing—because it seems that there are two things working in opposite directions.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Given that the whole structure of the subsidy regime is to have the overarching scheme, compliant with all the principles contained in the Bill, and then a series of other subsidies given within that, if you increase the likelihood of challenge and therefore reduce people’s confidence in it, why would a local authority or a government body give a subsidy? Why would there be any incentive for them to give a scheme? While we are wholly appreciative of the importance of transparency, there is a balance to be struck here. Perhaps we could make more progress and I can write to the noble Lord.
Lord Fox (LD)
It was the Government who chose to put the principle of challenge on the face of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and I are coming to the idea of creating a body that can police those things. Perhaps that would solve some of the problems that the Minister suggested—but those problems are central to the way in which the Government have decided that subsidies should be policed under the Bill.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I understand the point the noble Lord is making, but I suggest we would do better to continue this discussion with officials, and come back to him and to the whole Committee in writing.
Making individual subsidies granted in line with the terms of a subsidy scheme eligible for review by the tribunal would undermine a key benefit of creating a scheme—which, as I was saying, would be the administrative simplicity for public authorities, including the security that subsidies can be granted under the terms of a scheme without additional challenge or assessment. However, I fully recognise noble Lords’ underlying concern that schemes could be used to shield unlawful subsidies from challenge. If a subsidy purports to be part of a scheme but does not comply with its terms, an interested party may indeed bring a challenge. This would be on the basis that the subsidy should not enjoy the protection of the scheme but was instead a stand-alone subsidy where the public authority did not consider the subsidy control principles.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
On that point, how would another business or organisation know the subsidy existed if it was part of the scheme?
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
May I intervene too, on the same point? If a business does know about a subsidy and thinks it is unfair, it cannot go to the public authority and ask for a review. The bar is so high that the review can only be at the level of the scheme—which the business had nothing to do with designing. The public authority would have to do it. The business has no comeback.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Every grant made over £500,000 will be visible. Noble Lords may be arguing that that bar is too high, but maybe we will come to that at a later stage.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
The fundamental point remains: how do people know that the subsidy has been given if it is part of a scheme? They cannot challenge it.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
If it is over £500,000 it will be visible.
As I was saying, a challenge would be on the basis that that the subsidy should not enjoy the protection of the scheme but was instead a stand-alone subsidy where the public authority did not consider the subsidy control principles. The CAT could be asked to determine that question. If the CAT finds that the subsidy ought to have been treated as a stand-alone subsidy, it could also be asked to determine whether the relevant subsidy control requirements had been met.
It is also important to note that subsidies given under the schemes may be subject to other obligations and other forms of challenge. A public authority that gives a subsidy in breach of its general public law duties may be challenged through the judicial review process in the general courts, even if the subsidy is given under a scheme. And of course, if the scheme is substantially changed beyond the parameters set out in Clause 81 on permitted modifications, it must be reassessed and uploaded to the transparency database, and can again be challenged. For the reasons I have set out, and with the caveat that we shall return to some of these questions, I ask that, for the moment, the amendment be withdrawn.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
As we have said in the back and forth of the discussion on these three amendments, there are still a number of real concerns about the subsidy schemes: how they operate and, more importantly, how they can be challenged and dealt with. I will withdraw Amendment 21 at this stage, but I seek some conversations with the department and the ministerial team before we progress to Report.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
“(c) must not make the scheme without a statement that the scheme will operate, either in full or in part, under this Act or EU regulations.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require a public authority to make a statement that the scheme will operate, either in full or in part, under this Act or EU regulations before it can be made.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 53 in this small group, which relates to the interaction between this legislation and EU legislation that will continue to apply to Northern Ireland. I do so in the context of the news today that the Agriculture Minister in Northern Ireland has unilaterally ended the checks on the Irish Sea border at midnight tonight. That will inevitably raise more tension in a situation where we would have hoped that, as a result of the Foreign Secretary’s talks with the vice-chair of the Commission, there would be de-escalation of tensions. However, it seems that that the context has changed dramatically.
The Northern Ireland consideration of the Bill is still live. The Government have already taken an approach on the levelling-up agenda that is different from that in Northern Ireland. I am confused about why Northern Ireland was given a distinct status within the levelling-up fund. However, the key element is this legislation. Amendments 22 and 53 are probing amendments and are designed to be constructive because, regardless of any outcome of the negotiations between the Foreign Secretary and Vice-President Šefčovič, EU law will continue to apply in certain areas in Northern Ireland, even if they are limited. There has been a debate about how limited that might be, but in certain areas it may be fairly substantial. Even if the Commission accepts everything in the Government’s Command Paper on renegotiating or resetting the Northern Ireland/Ireland protocol and the Government get everything they want—that is a large if and has probably become much larger after the news today—EU law will still operate and Northern Ireland will still operate under two legal systems for certain areas of subsidy control. These were raised at Second Reading, so I do not need to go into detail on what they are.
The Foreign Secretary said that the UK should never have to notify another power—that is the European Commission—on any decision about setting tax. That will still be the case because part of this provision is on revenue and taxation. The guidance published under Section 48 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, which was designed to clarify the situation, did not clarify it in many areas. I read it thoroughly. Separate guidance was published on 24 June last year. It included an annexe, Public Authorities’ Assessment of How Individual Subsidies Comply with UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement Principles. It had a checkpoint system. There are 18 questions that anybody providing a subsidy in Northern Ireland or GB will have to satisfy in order for them to have a greater understanding of whether EU law applies. Some of those questions are almost impossible to answer, but nevertheless there is a process that must be gone through. The Northern Ireland Department for the Economy states that 14 ongoing subsidy schemes are covered within the GBER and are likely to be in the European Union’s purview. My reading of this legislation is that, in any new scheme put forward by the European Union, Northern Ireland public authorities will be able to choose to operate under a new European Union scheme. That would be under state aid and the purview of the CJEU so, regardless of any negotiation, we are going to be operating under separate and distinct reporting schemes.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has raised a very relevant point; I appreciate that it is a rather awkward point for the Government. As the noble Lord said, it is not simply about the overlap of law and whether EU or UK law applies, but there is also—this is why this is absolutely relevant to this Bill—an issue about state aids, because subsidies are covered in the protocol. Many people in Northern Ireland are afraid that there will be a reach-back and that a subsidy that affects Northern Ireland businesses, even if it originates in the UK, will make that UK subsidy regime subject to EU state aid law. This is potentially a clash of regimes and is extremely important.
The Government’s view in the protocol has been that they think that the EU state aid regime should apply only to state aid that is given specifically in Northern Ireland and not to state aid that was designed for the rest of the UK, even if it reaches Northern Ireland businesses. That still leaves the very difficult issue of where the borderline is. You could imagine, for example, a scheme whereby the UK Government gave help to a motor plant in the north-east of England, which was manufacturing cars that were then transported to dealers in Northern Ireland, who then sold them on to southern Ireland. That is where the whole issue arises, because of the EU’s fear about the single market being undermined by the back door.
This issue is not going to go away. Somehow, the Government have to find a demarcation between state aids in the UK and state aids in Northern Ireland. As I have just tried to exemplify with the issue of the motor industry and motor cars, it is extremely difficult to draw a hard and fast line. I do not know whether the Minister can say anything about this. This Bill will pass, but regardless of what is finally enshrined in law when it becomes an Act, this issue will remain a very great problem.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
We are extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for tabling these amendments and outlining his thoughts on this incredibly complex and very difficult issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, stressed. This needs huge sensitivity in dealing with it. I do not think that we have anything to add at this stage, but we welcome the fact that a light has been shone on this issue. The feeling we had was that it is surprising that more amendments have not been tabled on this topic, but we expect that there will be more as the groups progress. For now, having heard from the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Lamont, we will be extremely interested to hear the Minister’s initial response to the matters being raised.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
It might indeed be an initial response, because the noble Lord has the advantage of me: I was not aware of the announcement made this afternoon by Northern Ireland’s Agriculture Minister, while we have been in Committee. However, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Fox, for tabling these amendments. I appreciate that they are intended to be helpful and generate some discussion about these issues, which I suspect will be ongoing.
I begin with Amendment 22, which would require public authorities to make an explicit statement as to whether a subsidy scheme falls under the new domestic regime or EU state aid rules before it is made. Clause 48 already makes it clear that the subsidy control requirements do not apply to a subsidy given, or a subsidy scheme made, in accordance with Article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol, nor do the requirements apply to a subsidy or subsidy scheme to which Article 138 of the EU withdrawal agreement applies.
It follows that, in the very limited number of cases where public authorities determine that schemes are operating under EU state aid law, the required information will be uploaded to the relevant EU databases on the Commission’s website. All other schemes, which represent the vast majority, will fall under the new domestic regime and be uploaded to the UK transparency database. As such, we do not consider it necessary to include a requirement on public authorities to make a statement as to whether a scheme operates under the Bill or EU state aid rules.
I thank my noble friend Lord Lamont for his comments. I understand his concerns about the interaction between the state aid regime and the subsidy control regime. I assure him that the EU state aid rules under the Northern Ireland protocol currently apply only in certain circumstances to aid that affects trade in goods and electricity between Northern Ireland and the EU. Such subsidies are within the scope of the protocol only where there is a genuine and direct link to Northern Ireland and a real, foreseeable impact on trade between Northern Ireland and the EU. The Commission’s unilateral declaration of December 2020 made it clear that Article 10 could affect a subsidy in GB only if there was a genuine and direct link in Northern Ireland. This would be the case if, for example, the beneficiary had a subsidiary in Northern Ireland.
EU state aid rules also apply under Article 138 of the withdrawal agreement in relation to aid for EU programmes and activities within the multiannual financial framework as a transitional provision. To respond to the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that state aid rules would continue to apply even if the UK’s negotiating position were accepted, these are specific and limited circumstances. I trust that this will allay the Committee’s concerns on this important issue.
Amendment 53 from the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Fox, would require a mandatory referral to the CMA’s subsidy advice unit, or SAU, for any subsidy which the public authority believes has a connection to economic activity in Northern Ireland, but where that authority has decided that the proposed subsidy is not within the scope of Article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol. The SAU would then, as part of its report, determine whether EU rules would apply.
I am afraid that I must reject this amendment as we believe that it is unnecessary. The Government have already provided guidance for public authorities to determine in advance whether the subsidy they are planning to give will be in scope of the Northern Ireland protocol. A requirement for the subsidy advice unit to make a report in advance would needlessly delay the deployment of a large number of subsidies that are clearly not in scope of the Northern Ireland protocol. It would also significantly increase the workload of the SAU and the cost to taxpayers.
The Government have published guidance for public authorities on the Northern Ireland protocol, making it clear where it does or does not apply. This guidance was last updated in June 2021, and we will continue to update it as needed. This guidance supports public authorities to make an informed decision on whether their proposed subsidy is in scope of the Northern Ireland protocol, and there exists in the department an advisory team that any public authority can contact for additional support. We need not bring delay into the system unnecessarily.
I emphasise that this amendment is at odds with the Bill’s position that a measure that would currently fall within the scope of Article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol should not be subject to the rules and processes contained in this Bill. That is the whole purpose of Clause 48. This means that it cannot be referred to the SAU for any reason, and the SAU will not undertake any evaluation in relation to the protocol or the EU state aid rules. It is the responsibility of central government to ensure that the UK is compliant with those rules. As such, any subsidy in scope of the mandatory referral provisions in Clause 52 is, by definition, not in scope of the Northern Ireland protocol provisions for the application of EU state aid.
The SAU has important advisory and scrutiny functions: to evaluate public authorities’ own assessments of compliance with the subsidy control requirements; and to monitor and evaluate the operation of the domestic regime as a whole. However, it is not a regulator with responsibilities for making definitive judgments, including on whether a specific subsidy is in scope of the Northern Ireland protocol.
I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords not to press theirs.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful for the Minister’s response. As much as the Government are asserting that there will not be a challenge or confusion, it is necessary to have greater clarity for those who are putting the schemes together and those who will potentially challenge some of the recipients.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, for raising the issue of reach-back. It will remain an issue. The fact that the Government state that they will take responsibility for notifying the Commission about subsidies given does not necessarily mean that they will be free from challenge. Given the fact, from our discussions with my noble friend Lord Fox, that this is fundamentally a challenge-based system, greater clarity on this matter will be important—particularly given that there could be areas of dual approach.
We all know that Northern Ireland has a high number of intermediary businesses. These are for both businesses that have activity in Northern Ireland and GB and businesses based in Ireland or the European Union that have some form of manufacturing or processing in Northern Ireland as well as in GB. These enterprises will, by definition, operate under dual systems and potentially apply for either state aid or subsidy control operations; indeed, I would be amazed if they did not. This means, therefore, that any of those applications or schemes are potentially open to challenge.
I did not agree with the Minister when she said that increasing the role to provide that certainty will represent an increased cost to taxpayers. I have read the impact assessment. If the Government are right that this applies to limited areas, I do not think that it will be a massive burden on the 19 people in the CMA who will be operating on this anyway. The Government seem to be relying on the fact that any confusion or uncertainty can be resolved by seeking advice from BEIS or Defra and the department’s subsidy control team.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
“Subsidies free from political motivation or influence
For the purposes of this Act a subsidy is only lawful if provided free from political motivation or influence.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prohibit subsidies that are not provided free from political motivation or influence.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Great—we have got here. I rise to move Amendment 35.
“Billions were written off and no one seemed to care but me”
was the headline of the Times interview with the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which made for rather depressing reading. We are regrettably in the context of an enormous amount of money that has been lost through fraud, with the bad cocktail of the allegations made by William Wragg MP of blackmail of MPs with projects in their constituencies. That chair of a Select Committee is speaking to the Metropolitan Police about allegations of blackmail. One of the reasons why this is significant for the Bill was highlighted in one of our previous discussions. The default is that information will not be put in the public campaign but will need to be challenged. That creates a poor recipe.
I was struck when I looked at the prospectus for the levelling-up fund. As we discussed before, this is a separate process, but it is linked to the levelling-up agenda. William Wragg has made allegations of blackmail and funds not being allocated to the constituencies of individual MPs. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, will not want to contribute to this group, but I may talk to him separately as he has great experience—I am not making any allegations, I must say. I will clarify that straight away. I have a dossier here but it is nothing to do with him.
The levelling-up fund introduced an unusual concept: Members of Parliament will back a bid under the levelling-up fund, as a priority. The number of bids received by a local authority will relate to the number of MPs in that area. As GOV.UK states:
“Accordingly, local authorities can submit one bid for every MP whose constituency lies wholly within their boundary.”
I think it is a novel experience in the UK system to ask an MP to nominate a bid for a government fund. That is why I was interested in hearing separately about the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. As the allegations from William Wragg are that there has been blackmail by government Whips, who can then use leverage through this process because this fund specifically gives MPs a role, this is a considerable concern. Rightly or wrongly, this Bill opens up even greater flexibilities for public bodies or individual elected representatives.
We know that, from the Prime Minister downwards, we should all operate under the Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership; I believe that is still the case. On integrity:
“Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that may try inappropriately to influence them in their work.”
On openness:
“Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner.”
For any public body with delegated responsibilities for elected officials, who now could well be directly linked with subsidy schemes whose operations involve billions of pounds, we need a heightened level of audit and transparency so as to avoid political direction, both on individual subsidy decisions under a scheme and on the establishment of the scheme itself—as well as on the power of government Whips.
There is already considerable use of delegated powers for decision-making in local government, on planning and in other areas. Nothing in the Bill would prevent subsidy schemes being operated under local government delegated powers. That could be a positive; the Minister may argue that it would reinvigorate local government. I am not necessarily opposed to the idea, but if that is the case—I think this was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, at Second Reading—with these greater powers, for accountability to be effective, there should be greater transparency.
On our discussion on the previous group of amendments, without that transparency and reporting, the job becomes even harder. If the job on accountability is even harder, the vulnerability in operating against the Nolan principles is heightened. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, conceded at the Dispatch Box in Committee that there was a concern about the shield of scrutiny in this area and suggested that there would be further discussions. I wrote that down. We can check Hansard, but I did write it down, because I thought it would be useful later in Committee. The Minister should not scold herself, because that is a very welcome development.
The cure for all this will be transparency. Already we know that accounting officers operating under local government have to certify that the decisions being made in many areas have been made under fiduciary duties and are legal. That duty will, I hope, still apply to subsidy schemes. There will be other bodies—local enterprise partnerships, for example—that are not directly elected. There will also be bodies authorised under the Bill that will not operate at the traditional levels of accountability of elected bodies. There should therefore be a heightened provision for working free from political motivation or influence.
Surely we do not want to go back to the situation in which there were bridges to nowhere, and decisions were made that we only found out about through scandal. Clearly, we want to protect ourselves from blackmail, fraud and waste. The Government may wish to change some of the language in the amendment—I am open to discussing that with the Minister—but I hope that we will be able to add to some of the principles, so that any decisions involving public money will not be fraudulent or subject to political interference and those with malign intentions will not be able to hide behind the shield of secrecy.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I speak to this amendment with significant experience as a senior local councillor. Obviously, the Nolan principles applied to all of us. Recently, in public-private partnerships such as the LEPs, all members had to declare their interests. Sometimes, because of commercial sensitivity, some of the private sector partners chose to step down from the LEP. That level of transparency is now accepted practice—and quite rightly so. It is an enormous tragedy that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, had to table such an amendment but it reflects the extraordinary times we are living in.
I have to be honest: standards in public life are being severely scrutinised now and, in many cases, found wanting. It is with huge regret that we are in a position where such a requirement has to be brought forward in this debate, but that is where we are. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is absolutely right to draw attention to the current state that we are in.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow that speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. I was reassured by some of things she said about how the Nolan principles are being applied at the local level—that that is her experience is reassuring. Of course, it brings this Bill into focus again.
To some extent the amendment is idealistic, but look at it the other way round. What is the converse of this amendment? It is that we allow a Bill to go through that will be subjected to huge political manipulation and little transparency. We have already seen that the Government are not averse to using political direction to spend literally billions of pounds. I ask the Minister to put himself in the boots of the Opposition, because the Bill that he is creating is one that future Governments will have to use. If the Minister, if he were listening, were to put himself—
Lord Fox (LD)
Sorry; I withdraw that. If the Minister were sitting in the opposition seat and opposing this Bill—or, indeed, opposing its use—he would, I am sure, find it very difficult. That is why it is to the enormous credit of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition that they are standing hard against this Bill. I am sure that they harbour a view that, in time, they will find themselves in government and the temptation for them—indeed, for any Government—to use these powers would be quite high. It is therefore to the Opposition’s credit that, together, we are seeking to put some transparency into this.
At Second Reading, I said that the more flexibility and opacity there is in the subsidy system, the more opportunity there will be for subsidies to be directed for political purposes. I did not use the phrase “pork barrel” but I should have, because there is no other way of explaining how almost seven-eighths of the £1-billion English towns fund goes to Conservative-held seats. There is no way to explain how that money goes there other than political direction. I am sure that the Minister will tell me that there is a formula. There is a formula for almost anything; if you know what you want to create, you build the formula to achieve it. We are already seeing that. I assume that schemes like that will be rolled into a subsidy scheme so that we never see the granularity by seat. This is perhaps our last chance to point to that evidence before it all gets rolled up and aggregated so that we cannot disassemble it.
As we look at this Bill, we should look at the future of subsidies in this country, not the short-term gain for a political party. That is what we are seeing at the moment: a short-term gaming, or potential gaming, of the subsidy system. That is why this amendment was moved and why we have had an interesting short debate on it. I will be interested to see whether the Minister decides to engage at all, because sometimes he just does not. If he does decide to engage, I will be very interested to hear what he has to say.
Lord Callanan (Con)
It is very unfair of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, to suggest that I would not engage with his amendment. In this debate, I particularly enjoyed the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, using exactly the same argument that I will deploy against the amendment to argue somehow that she is in favour of it.
Anyway, let us explore the amendment as it was tabled, because I think we will all agree that it is a particularly ridiculous amendment. However, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Fox, for putting it forward. Essentially, the amendment seeks to prevent subsidies being given where there is a political motivation or influence. I will not engage with some of the broader points noble Lords made about transparency and things like that because we will come on to those points later in the debate, but I will take the amendment as it is printed. I suspect that what both noble Lords actually meant to say is that they seek to prevent improper political influence over subsidy decision-making. On that, we completely agree, of course. However, as I will argue, I do not believe that this amendment is necessary to achieve that.
First, there are already a number of safety nets in the Bill which will help to prevent improper political influence over subsidy decision-making. Any subsidy, unless exempted, must meet the subsidy control principles, including remedying an identified market failure or addressing an equity rationale. In addition, the subsidy must be limited to what is necessary to achieve it. A subsidy which had improper political influence would struggle to meet those principles.
Secondly, Clause 77 prevents the misuse of subsidies, and a public authority may recover a subsidy from the beneficiary where it has been used for a purpose other than the purpose for which it was given. Even outside the subsidy control requirements, a subsidy must meet value-for-money tests, which help to ensure that public spending is being made appropriately. For UK government spending, this is governed by the Treasury Green Book—all those in government who have to engage with the Treasury will know how rigorous it is in implementing that—and, of course, all the principles set out in Managing Public Money. They will be generally applicable to all public authorities in the UK, although the devolved Governments have their own detailed rulebooks, as is right. Finally, a subsidy granted for an improper purpose may give rise to judicial review on public law grounds.
More broadly—this comes back to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, made, even though, bizarrely, she was arguing in favour of the amendment—it is unclear how a public authority might avoid any political motivation whatever. I do not think that that would be desirable. When the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, was in a position of authority on Leeds City Council, her authority, or a devolved Government, for example, was or would have been democratically elected. I assume that when she stood for election with her party she set out her political priorities. She might have said that where a subsidy was appropriate she wanted to stand for election on that basis. It is right and proper that she should have been able to do that where the subsidy met the subsidy control principles. It would be almost impossible for any democratically elected local authority or a devolved Government to avoid any political influence. We are all politicians, some of whom were democratically elected. This applies to central and local government.
All subsidies have a degree of political motivation or influence because they are desired to achieve a public policy objective on which people stand for election and which will have been set by a public authority with democratic accountability. Let us pursue the example from the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. If she stood for election on Leeds City Council with a commitment to, for instance, provide subsidised transport in rural parts of Leeds—I think Leeds has some rural areas—it might have been appropriate to provide a subsidy to a bus operator. That commitment will have been made at a political level as the result of her manifesto in a political election. That would have been a politically motivated subsidy, but I think we would all agree that, in the circumstances, that would have been wholly appropriate and presumably useful for that particular area.
I hope that I have demonstrated that the amendment is unnecessary. The wording is clearly seriously flawed. I therefore hope the noble Lord will be able to withdraw it.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister and to my noble friend Lord Fox and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. This very short debate has been illustrative because, some of the flippancy aside, it addressed the vulnerabilities that could arise from a lack of transparency in certain areas of subsidy schemes. There is absolutely no intention to prevent anybody standing to represent people in their area and to argue the case for their area. That is absolutely fundamental and a positive. I did it. I fought hard to keep structural funds in the south of Scotland. I will fight the fact that that money is now being taken away by the Minister’s Bill. That is something I will fight for. I will be very passionate for it, and I will hold the Conservatives to account for taking those funds away from the Scottish borders.
“(aa) the subsidy database and its contents are subject to routine audit, and” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require regular audits of the subsidy database to ensure its contents are of appropriate quality.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak also to the other three amendments in this group. Without wanting to do the Minister’s job for him, let me start by acknowledging that there is a rolling programme of improvements to the subsidy database which I think all sides would acknowledge does not yet meet the standards one would expect a database of this importance to meet. Irrespective of that rolling programme of improvements, the introduction of a new subsidy control regime affords us an opportunity to look again at how subsidies are reported by public authorities so that they can be looked at by possible economic competitors and the public at large and be held to a higher account. The most obvious and effective way of ensuring the database fulfils its purpose is to ensure that it is subject to periodic audits with any recommendations being acted upon within a reasonable timeframe. We see no reason why the Minister would not want to accept Amendment 37. As the Government have freely admitted, the quality of the data has not been sufficient.
I turn to Amendments 44, 45 and 46. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for putting his name to them. Amendment 44 would require relevant authorities to include in the entry to the database the exact date on which the information was submitted. One of the fundamental differences from the previous scheme, the European state aid scheme, was that agreements were made before the scheme came into effect. The flipside of this is that that obviously speeds it up, but the schemes or the subsidies will already be in place. Putting into the database the specific date on which the information was submitted will again help with the transparency around it. It is hard to think of any case against such a requirement so I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that. It increases transparency and provides clarity for those gathering the information from the database. It may also allow identification of those authorities that are particularly good or bad at submitting their entries.
Amendment 45 would require information on domestically sourced content to be posted on the database. While Clause 17 prohibits subsidies contingent on the use of domestically produced content, nothing in the WTO provisions or elsewhere, including the TCA, would prevent basic reporting requirements. Some organisations, including the GMB trade union, believe that regular reporting of the use of domestic content could drive—but, importantly, not compel—contractors to make better use of UK supply chains. Indeed, in specific cases such as steel procurement, the Government have set a benchmark of 60% domestic content for the offshore wind sector, so some of these requirements already exist. Putting them inside the database and shining a light on them could help encourage more.
Finally, Amendment 46 would require authorities to demonstrate the terms and conditions of their subsidy schemes. When I first read it, I thought Amendment 46 may well have fitted into the group we dealt with three groups previously, but because it is relevant to the database it probably sits within this debate. The argument, however, is very similar to the debate we had three groups ago.
All the amendments are intended to improve the quality of the database and the amount of information available to practitioners operating in that field. Interestingly, Chapter 3 of the Bill is headed “Transparency”, so a bit more transparency may help.
One point not covered by the amendments, but to which we may well come back, is that the chapter on transparency, especially Clause 34, uses the word “may” a lot. To take one example, Clause 34(3), at line 28, says:
“In relation to subsidy schemes, the regulations may require a public authority’s entry to include”.
When the Minister responds, I wonder whether he could give us just a bit more detail. These are partly probing amendments but, on the use of “may”, when would those regulations and requirements on the public authorities have to be followed and when would they not have to be followed? Again, I think the use of “may” in there does not help. With that, I beg to move.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 44, 45 and 46, to all of which I have added my name. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNicol. Amendment 44 requires the date a subsidy scheme is entered into to be put into the database, Amendment 45 is about domestically sourced content and Amendment 46 is about other areas of specifying the date. All three of these amendments come together to play to the word that we have been using in these groups, which is “transparency”.
I shall briefly focus on Amendment 45 because it is an interesting point. The nature of what we are talking about hinges around Clause 17(1), which I assume is a WTO-driven point that we cannot favour domestic content over external content. I accept that we need to follow WTO rules. However, as the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, said, that does not stop us collecting the data. Why collect the data if you do not have an actionable need to use it? Therefore—never mind the subsidy that is running, for which we are collecting the data—if it turns out that all that subsidy leads to imports only rather than domestic benefit to the supply chain, when we come to extending or repeating that subsidy or using it in a similar way in another sector, I assume that it is perfectly legal within WTO for the Government to take the benefit and the learnings of that data, having of course given themselves the power to collect it through Amendment 45, to modify future schemes which would still be legal within WI and benefit the domestic supply chain. WI? Jam for all. I meant WTO.
It is a legal question. The Minister may not have the answer straightaway. That data having been collected, I assume, and I would like confirmation, that it is perfectly legal to use that data to design repeat or future schemes so that the UK economy benefits more from that subsidy. That is my main question on these amendments.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for these amendments. I think we have much more consensus on the principles. I shall start with Amendment 37. I think we agree that the database should be as accurate as possible. There was an extensive debate in the other place about the quality of the database and the requirements on public authorities when uploading to the database. As was set out there, the database is relatively new and, as the noble Lord acknowledged, it continues to be developed. My department has been working on a range of improvements and we continue to review how it operates. I genuinely welcome any feedback that noble Lords have now or in future on how it can be improved.
Since Report in the other place, our officials have launched an initiative to follow up with public authorities where the information on the database is vague or the links provided go to a landing page rather than providing the necessary detail about a subsidy. In addition, where the subsidy control team receives information about schemes that have been made, that information is now cross-referenced with what is on the database to ensure that it is correct. More broadly, the Government are committed to best practice when it comes to public data, and the subsidy database uses the service standards specified by the Government Digital Service.
Lord Fox (LD)
I understand the Minister’s sensitivity, and I thank him for his answer. I was putting it the other way around: having had a scheme that, it turns out, really benefits only the international market, as the data tells you, that data can then be used to decide not to have a similar scheme. So it is a question not necessarily of designing a new scheme but of not committing the same mistake again because the data gives you the ability to make those decisions. That was the point that I was trying to make.
On the previous issue, I am sure that the Minister will already know that the impact assessment says that the cost of adding more data points is minimal, so there is no cost in financial terms, although obviously there is some administrative cost.
Lord Callanan (Con)
We are not necessarily against adding new data points, but it depends what they are. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, all subsidies will need to benefit the British public and be well delivered. But of course there is the WTO provision that we need to be careful about, particularly in the context of the TCA and the action that is being launched against us. I will not go any further into the prohibition because I see that the noble Lord is going to ask me about it.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I have a separate point, on the principle of adding on the issue of local content and domestic goods. I understand and entirely agree with what the Minister said about the WTO prohibition of subsidy schemes that are prejudiced against non-domestic or non-local content. But of course the recipients, if they are manufacturers and exporters, will also have to categorise their own goods under the rules of origin, under both the TCA and the WTO, for all our FTA agreements—so that data will be there. I think that there is a great benefit to having, across key sectors where the Government want to identify whether there is market failure, the knowledge base regarding the level of domestic production. It is not a case of directing the subsidy towards it, which would contravene WTO rules; it is building up that knowledge base that will help overall industrial policy, which would be a positive—especially when it comes to regional production and manufacturing in certain areas.
Secondly, while I agree with the Minister about the discrimination, we can of course use countervailing measures, as the Minister knows—so, in relation to that knowledge base for domestic products, the WTO allows us to particularly support domestic production when it comes to countervailing measures. So, again, that would be information that the Government would find useful to have.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I understand the noble Lord’s point, but I go back to the fact that this prohibition exists for a good reason. I accept his point about additional data points that could be incorporated at very little cost, but of course he is picking on particularly narrow subsidies that might be given to the manufacturing industry. His points about rules of origin are for separate schemes under the TCA. I will think about his points.
But the prohibition exists for a good reason and is reflected in Clause 17. Of course, if all countries were to subsidise local content, world trade would be unduly distorted, and UK firms would suffer as a result, so that is why we as a country have signed up to these agreements at both WTO and EU TCA level. It is essential that all members of the WTO play by the same rules, which include a prohibition of local content and export subsidies. The UK does not provide, and does not intend to provide, subsidies that are prohibited by the WTO or under the TCA. I make that point clear.
I believe in the advantage of global trade—not just the WTO rulebook, but the global connections and markets that promote prosperity and growth worldwide, and specifically in the UK. Global supply chains allow British businesses to use inputs that are the best and most cost-effective in the world. Certain companies and industries may in some cases have their own targets for local content or for something similar—that is indeed what we have done under the contracts for difference schemes, but others are watching these commitments closely—or there may be a commitment to use products from the local area. However, those commitments would not be tied to the giving of a subsidy in any way, and as a result should not be included in a subsidy database entry.
I think I have dealt with most of the points raised. I had some additional points I wanted to make to back up what I have said, but my Whip tells me we are on a hard stop for a couple of minutes’ time. Are there any particular points raised in the debate that I have not dealt with? I think I have dealt with them all and explained our position—so, as we have agreed with most of his points, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his response. It was really nice to hear him agree with many of the points that we raised. I just need to encourage a bit more of a hard commitment to amend the Bill, rather than a verbal agreement. I do not think anyone on this side was arguing in favour of prohibition. I was simply outlining the idea of getting the information on to the database, not about using it for a prohibition. No one was arguing that point. As for the changes, I suppose I should take one out of four, but I hope we will be able to bring forward some more. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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School Trips: Passport and Visa Requirements
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Anderson of Ipswich
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the consequences of current passport and visa requirements on the number of school trips from continental Europe to the United Kingdom.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to answer the Question in my name on the Order Paper.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I think that the noble Lord wants to ask the Question. Before he does so, perhaps I may say to the House that yesterday I was quite insistent that not only had I sent out a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, but that the whole Committee had had a copy of it. I had cleared the letter but it had not gone out. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for alerting me to that this morning and I apologise unreservedly to the Committee and the House.
We no longer accept national identity cards as a valid travel document from EU, EEA and Swiss visitors to the UK. The experience at the UK border since the change has been positive, with EU, EEA and Swiss citizens making the switch to use their passports for travel. We do not plan to change that approach.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
Around 1 million European children, mostly from France and Germany, used to come to the UK each year on school trips. Now that people need passports and, in some cases, visas, bookings for the UK are widely reported to have collapsed. Ireland and even Normandy are stepping in. Will the Government either bring back ID card travel for these low-risk groups or devise a simple group travel scheme that will let us welcome them to this country?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, it is quite early in the implementation to say just which way overall bookings are going but certainly Ireland is reporting positively on this. Of course, there are in existence such things as collective group passports, although they will decline over time. However, we do not plan to bring ID cards back and it is important that we have secure documents such as passports at the border.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, is not the reverse also damaging to our schoolchildren; namely, the fact that school trips from this country to the continent have been enormously cut back, with great harm to the education of our children? Is it not the same process as has happened to universities regarding the Erasmus scheme? The change has done colossal harm to internationalism and the transatlantic views of the British university population. Are our young people not all casualties of Brexit?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, that really is a stretch. We expect tourists who visit the UK from outside the EU to hold a passport and we now expect those from EU and EEA countries, and Switzerland, to do the same.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, we have a problem with people wanting to learn modern languages. There is a declining rate of people studying them. Does the Minister accept that, if we want to encourage their use, the Government should do their level best to encourage school travel—both into and out of this country? If this is not possible, because of some bureaucratic scheme, surely there is a case for changing the bureaucracy.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, this is not about bureaucracy. It is about the security of documents. It is quite early in the implementation process to say whether this has had a declining effect on tourism, but it should not have.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, in December, the Guardian reported the accommodation provider Lingua Stay as saying that schools across the continent had completely abandoned the UK in favour of other countries. Are the Government not concerned about the effect on the economy—including the education economy—of their decision not to allow group passports and IDs as travel documents for schools?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
As I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I think that collective, group passports are still in existence, although we expect them to be phased out at some point. The EU is now in the same situation as the rest of the world.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, in an answer last June, the Minister suggested that collective passports under the 1961 Council of Europe treaty could be used. It turns out that these can be used only for nationals of the country sending the visit; in other words, a Spanish student in a French school could not benefit from this. Will the Minister undertake to talk to the group of tourism blue badge holders in London to try to devise a scheme—for the whole world, not just for Europe—that encourages young people to come to Britain? It is first impressions that often bring a lifelong admiration for a country.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Earl will know that we continue to accept collective passports from countries that have ratified the relevant Council of Europe treaty. Nineteen countries have done so but, in practice, only the UK, Malta and Slovenia actively issue them. As I said earlier, I think they will probably be phased out.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, it is not too early to tell what the results of the Government’s changes have been. Eurovoyages, a French school trip company, reported that, in 2019, 11,000 students were sent to the UK. This year, it will be between zero and 100. CTS Reisen, a German company, sent more than 1,200 school groups to the UK in 2019—some 37,000 pupils. In 2022, there are no firm bookings. This is the consequence of what the Government are doing. What does this say about Britain’s place in the world and the Government’s policy of global Britain?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I think it says a lot about the pandemic. Very few people have actually travelled.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, the Government’s argument that the continuation of this scheme would be a security risk and would discriminate against non-EU students has been taken on board by those administering these trips and by other interested parties, such as the British Guild of Tourist Guides and the Institute of Tourist Guiding. They have put forward some constructive suggestions to find a way through. Is the Minister willing to meet them?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, we have found a way through. It is called a passport.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has twice cited security concerns to justify this change. What new security concerns have arisen since we left the EU?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
Some ID cards are among the least secure documents seen at the border, as they were before we left the EU. As a rule, they are not as secure as corresponding national passports.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I declare a family interest in that my younger daughter is a schoolteacher at a rural lycée in the centre of France in the Sarthe region. Every two years, until recently, she would bring a party of up to 40 of her 16 to 18 year- old students to London for a week’s cultural visit, which gave them an amazing experience and a lifelong love of England and English people. These have all now stopped because very few of the students have a passport; as a result, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, referred to, they are now looking at destinations such as Ireland. Will she take on board the comments of President Kennedy about the value of international exchange students, when he said of foreign students studying in the US:
“I think they teach more than they learn”?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I do not disagree with the noble Lord about the value of foreign travel for students at any age. It absolutely enriches their experience. However, we expect tourists who visit the UK from outside the EU to hold a passport and we will now be expecting those from EU and EEA countries and Switzerland to do the same.
Lord Ricketts (CB)
My Lords, is the issue here not really about maintaining the deep web of human relationships between our country and our near neighbours into the period when we are no longer in the EU? I have had many conversations with French people who have said that coming here was their first contact with abroad, it made a deep and lasting impression and it led to a lifetime’s friendship with the UK. Surely for these children, who are a low security risk, it should be possible to find a pragmatic arrangement to allow them to come on a collective document.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I certainly agree with the noble Lord about a deep web of relationships. In fact, my first school trip was to France; I recall that it took probably five days on a coach and we only had two days there, but nevertheless it was a very enjoyable experience. However, we are now treating the whole of the world in the same way and we do not make any apologies for that.
Independent Office for Police Conduct
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recent work of the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the IOPC’s annual reports provide an assessment of its work, including details of its performance against targets. Such information is available on the IOPC’s website. We expect the IOPC annual report for 2020-21 to be published shortly. A review of the IOPC led by an independent reviewer, announced by the Home Secretary last year, is due to start shortly. It will consider the organisation’s effectiveness and efficiency.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the IOPC for some valuable recent work, but what action has it taken in response to the “profound concerns” voiced by the Home Secretary on 15 June last year about its investigation into Operation Midland, founded on the fantasies of Carl Beech, from which senior Met officers were able to walk away without reprimand because the IOPC could not be bothered to interrogate them? Also, is it not against the public interest to withhold from Parliament the IOPC report on the gross misconduct of Mike Veale, a man discredited for ever by his biased investigation, when he was chief constable of Wiltshire, of allegations against Sir Edward Heath, at a time when the IOPC itself found him guilty of lying?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I agree with my noble friend: I also pay tribute to the recent work of the IOPC, much of which has been in the headlines in the last couple of days. We are not minded to initiate a public inquiry into either Midland or Conifer. It is important that the IOPC is an independent watchdog and essential for the public to have confidence in our model of policing.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, the IOPC has just produced a damning report about misconduct by some Met police officers and the culture that it found. The IOPC says:
“We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’”,
and that officers who challenged or reported unacceptable behaviour were “harassed, humiliated and excluded.” There is clearly a major problem. An inquiry chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini has been ordered in the light of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard, and that has not been the only appalling incident involving police officers that has occurred. In the light of this latest damning IOPC report, will the Government now put the Angiolini inquiry on a statutory footing, with the ability to compel witnesses to attend and have documents produced, in order to provide backing and support for officers who want to blow the whistle on unacceptable behaviour and should not have to face harassment, humiliation and exclusion for doing so? Will the Government now also reconsider their position on regarding misogyny as a hate crime?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord in expressing my absolute disgust at some of the IOPC’s reporting under Operation Hotton. It provides for very painful reading that members of the police could have said such offensive things in any environment. As I have said before, the Home Secretary can decide, in conjunction with the chairman, whether to put the Dame Elish Angiolini inquiry on a statutory footing if it is not meeting its terms of reference. We brought in the duty to co-operate last year, and police and organisations can find themselves sanctioned if they do not.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel reported last June that the IOPC is not properly resourced to do the work it is charged to do? We saw cases going backwards and forwards between the MPS and the IOPC because of lack of funds. Can the Minister assure the House that the IOPC will be properly funded to do the important anti-corruption work it does?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The budget for 2021-22 is £69.6 million and will remain so for 2022-23. The IOPC employs about 1,000 staff, and nearly 30% of them have a police background—so I think it is pretty well resourced.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, wishes to speak virtually. I think this is a convenient point to call her.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]
My Lords, the IOPC does not work alone to deal with investigations. We know that investigations can take time, but can the Minister tell me where delays in the system are occurring and what the Government are doing to help alleviate them?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I think noble Lords would agree that we have seen good improvement in the IOPC’s performance in the last couple of years. We are still keen to see further improvements and greater transparency, so back in February 2020 the Government introduced reforms to the IOPC to streamline its decision-making further and increase its effectiveness. There is absolutely no doubt that there is so much more to do to improve trust in the police complaints system and to raise awareness of the IOPC’s role.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
Does my noble friend the Minister agree with me that questions of transparency and accountability in relation to the conduct of the police have never felt more keenly vital to our well-being as a society? In the light of all the information now available—and going back to the Question originally asked by my noble friend Lord Lexden—is it not disgraceful that the completely discredited Operation Conifer has still not been examined by a fully independent inquiry? Surely no one can have any confidence, in this or any day and age, in the police simply marking their own homework.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I most certainly agree with my noble friend that trust in the police has never been more fragile than it is at the moment. Operation Conifer underwent several rounds of scrutiny, but there is further to go. Today’s report certainly means that the police have a way to go before they regain the public’s trust.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, whatever our differences, I have no doubt that the Minister feels as disgusted as I do—I want to say that. This was horrific hearing and reading for all of us. However, would she like to have just one more go at my noble friend Lord Rosser’s question? The question was not “can” the Home Secretary put these inquiries on a statutory footing but “will” she. This is important for trust in the independence of the inquiry. It should be independent of both the Home Office and the Government, and the police. Will we, please, now have a fully statutory independent inquiry?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness is going to be disappointed because I have said in the past and will repeat that if the Home Secretary feels that the inquiry is not fulfilling its terms of reference, she can put it on a statutory footing. Of course, it is a decision for the Home Secretary.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right to express disgust at the findings of the IOPC against the Metropolitan Police, but why is the Metropolitan Police not being held to account? Why is its leadership not being held to account and why is there not a thoroughgoing review of the structure and leadership of that force?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary said today that there are questions about leadership in this whole horrible affair.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, may I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on Operation Conifer? It really is disgraceful that an honourable Prime Minister, known for his integrity, has been impugned by somebody proven to be a liar.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I note my noble friend’s comment. I do not know what his question was but I would say to noble Lords that it clearly is terrible when someone is investigated for something for which there was no case to answer. I also go back to a point I have made time and time again: there have been well over 4,500 convictions for non-recent child sexual abuse.
Power of Attorney
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Greengross
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle power of attorney being used as a form of economic abuse that disproportionately affects older people.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Stewart of Dirleton) (Con)
My Lords, lasting powers of attorney—LPAs—offer vital protections where someone lacks the mental capacity to make their own decisions. While abuse is concerning, thankfully it is rare. Some 5 million LPAs are registered with the Office of the Public Guardian and in the year 2020-21, that office investigated 1,971, taking action in 675 cases. We cannot be complacent with older people at increased risk of abuse and we recently consulted on modernising LPAs to improve safeguards. The response to that consultation is due in the spring.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, unless stated, there is no obligation to tell family members that a power of attorney has been created and there are no publicly searchable online databases of registered powers of attorney. It can be hard to gain the information from the Office of the Public Guardian concerning powers of attorney in a timely fashion. This facilitates, perhaps, harm and abuse. The charity Hourglass, of which I am patron, supports victims of abuse and last year 144 of its cases reported having a power of attorney in place. What assessments have been made of proposals to introduce a national register of powers of attorney?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, I begin by acknowledging, on behalf of the House, the great work that the noble Baroness has carried out in this very important field, not only as patron but as founder of the charity to which she made reference. The OPG is responsible for maintaining the register of LPAs in England and Wales; that is one of its statutory functions. That register can be searched by any member of the public or third party, using a service called OPG100. Additionally, donors and attorneys can provide third parties with access to OPG’s “Use a lasting power of attorney” service, which allows third parties to check instantly the latest information and status of an eligible LPA. Modernising that process presents us with great opportunities, but we must also bear in mind obligations of confidentiality.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have come across several cases recently where elderly people have been taken advantage of, often by their own relatives, being relieved of thousands of pounds of hard-earned savings as a result of granting power of attorney. As solicitors are involved in this process, is the Minister satisfied that they are sufficiently aware of their duty of care to vulnerable clients during the discussion periods prior to such powers being granted?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, the OPG is working with solicitors, other professional bodies and other bodies within the community to make sure that persons considering becoming donors and taking out powers of attorney are aware of these protections.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, as an MP I had the case of an elderly and very wealthy lady afflicted with dementia who was removed from the luxury home that she had chosen and could afford by her attorneys, who were also her heirs. She was put in a much cheaper home in order to protect their inheritance. The lady was so traumatised that she died within weeks. The Office of the Public Guardian could do nothing, because the new home met CQC standards. Is there a way to give it powers and to look at the misuse of the power, rather than just acting in cases of clear illegality?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
The OPG currently has powers to make reference to the police, in terms of fraud, to instigate investigations, including using other bodies such as local authorities or the National Health Service. Again, on the reference to the consultation that is to report in the spring, we look to strengthen the ability of the OPG to intervene in such cases.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, could the Minister outline what further measures are contemplated to monitor the misuse of the power of attorney, sometimes by relatives of the person involved?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
The noble Baroness poses the question of monitoring the situation. Again, the consultation procedure has been invited to take views as to the use of identification procedures in relation to people becoming attorneys, and there is a range of measures in contemplation to assist banks and other institutions to properly investigate persons taking out such schemes.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, the Office of the Public Guardian has changed its processes so that it writes to donors at their home address to inform them that an LPA is being applied for, but in the consultation on modernising the LPA do the Government anticipate that they will need to bring forward new legislation to strengthen the powers of the Office of the Public Guardian to strike out people who hold an LPA who abuse those powers, as outlined in the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, new legislation will be required. To put matters into perspective, in 2021 there were more than 5 million LPAs on the OPG register, and only nine have been removed from the register because of concerns about fraud by false representation during their creation.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
In Northern Ireland, the Commissioner for Older People can speak on behalf of older victims of economic abuse. The same role exists in Wales, and the Scottish Government have in place a Minister for Equalities and Older People. Can the Minister identify an equivalent here in England, so we can bring these parties all together?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, and I can answer it by saying that in England it is a function of local government to carry out those tasks.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I too would like to acknowledge the lifetime’s work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. There are things we take for granted until we no longer have them: our ability to choose; our ability to make decisions; and our ability to express ourselves. When these abilities fade, we need to have confidence that legal processes will protect our interests. We are all bombarded by attempts at fraud, almost on a daily basis, and more vulnerable people are more vulnerable to those attempts. The Government’s stated aim is to create a lasting power of attorney service for the digital world. My stepfather is 97. He does not live in the digital world. How will his interests be protected?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, I agree with everything the noble Lord outlined, and I can assure the House that a paper means of setting up these mechanisms will continue, even after digitisation.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords—I am looking around carefully to make sure it really is my turn—I wonder if the Minister would agree with me that, while we have to be very concerned about the incidents of fraud and the misuse that has just been revealed in the questions he has been asked so far, there is none the less great virtue in lasting powers of attorney. They are very important ways in which all of us can protect ourselves against the things that may happen to us in the future. People should be encouraged to make lasting power of attorney arrangements early enough, while they still have capacity to understand fully what they are committing to, and to inform the people who will be their attorneys how they wish their wishes to be carried out. Would he agree they are not yet encouraged enough?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I do agree with the noble Baroness, and I can advise her that even very recently OPG carried out engagement with specific groups in society identified as being less likely to avail themselves of the protections offered by LPAs—specifically, people from socioeconomic groups and within ethnic minorities who have been identified as less likely to take up these protections, which, I agree with the noble Baroness, are of enormous importance for the whole of society.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, could I ask the Minister about the increase in predatory marriages, whereby fraudsters target elderly people, usually with dementia, in order to swindle them out of their inheritance, usually by getting into marriage when they do not have the capacity, normally, to make such decisions. Could he say what the Ministry of Justice and his department are doing to put registrars on a statutory training course to ensure that, when they are approached by people who want to get married, they have the capacity to do so according to their own free will?
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I can say, under reference to the Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, which concerned lasting powers of attorney, that the OPC has, after certain recent cases, instituted increased training schemes within its number and introduced a buddying scheme so junior members of staff can learn from senior members of staff. As to the specific question the noble Baroness poses on predatory marriages, I regret to say it is not within my department, but I will speak to the Minister in charge, and it may well be, if the noble Baroness is willing to wait, that we will express ourselves in writing.
Kabul: Pen Farthing
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they received concerning the evacuation of Pen Farthing and his animals from Kabul.
The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)
My Lords, people, not animals, were the priority during the Kabul evacuation. As a British national, Mr Pen Farthing was offered evacuation as part of the organised airlift, which he declined. The decision to call forward the Nowzad staff was communicated by the Defence Secretary publicly, in tweets, on the morning of 25 August, and reiterated to the FCDO via the Cabinet Office later that day. The UK military, with the Defence Secretary’s authorisation, provided practical support for a private chartered plane organised by Nowzad. This flight occurred after the civilian evacuation had come to an end during Operation Pitting. It is worth just saying that 15,000 vulnerable people were evacuated from Kabul.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, that was all very interesting, but it did not answer my Question at all. Did the Minister not hear Dominic Dyer, who was the principal lobbyist for Operation Ark, on LBC last Wednesday—and indeed repeated elsewhere—saying that the Minister, who is answering this Question, and the Prime Minister were involved from the very start? Indeed, he was not at all surprised therefore that the leaked emails confirmed that the Prime Minister had authorised the evacuation of animals from Kabul. He went on to say that he was sad that the Prime Minister was not proud of his part in it. So why are the Minister and Prime Minister so reluctant to accept credit for what they did?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, the email that the noble Lord mentioned says nothing of the sort and confirms nothing of the sort. A decision to call forward the Nowzad team was communicated by the Defence Secretary on the morning of the 25th. The Prime Minister had zero role in authorising individual evacuations from Afghanistan during Operation Pitting. The PM has made this clear, the Defence Secretary has made it repeatedly clear, other Ministers have made it clear and so have I in this House and outside of this Chamber. We got more than 15,000 people out during that process; it was the biggest and fastest evacuation in our history. Animals were never prioritised over people.
Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)
My Lords, I am slightly troubled by the Question, because we run the risk of overshadowing what was an incredibly successful operation in Operation Pitting. I hope that your Lordships’ House will join me in paying tribute to those members of 16 Air Assault Brigade who risked their lives in this operation doing a tremendous job in evacuating some 15,000 people. I simply seek reassurance from my noble friend that there are no circumstances under which animals would take priority over people.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, I can absolutely provide that reassurance. I add that Pen Farthing was on one of the very last flights to leave Afghanistan; he left on his own charter plane rather than on an RAF flight. It was not part of the evacuation effort, and the flight took place after the evacuation effort had ceased. That private plane landed in Kabul on 28 August. Animals were never prioritised over people at any point during the process.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
As a result of the emails that we have seen from the brave Foreign Office whistleblower, either Parliament has been misled by the Prime Minister and the Minister or life and death decisions have been made in the name of the Prime Minister or the Minister but without the authority of the Prime Minister or the Minister. Which would the Minister consider to be most serious?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I do not accept the premise of the question on any level at all. This was an extraordinarily difficult time, particularly for officials in FCDO. There were people who were working two jobs all day and almost all night, dealing with thousands upon thousands of emails with evacuation requests every single day. Their work was heroic. It has been made clear that the PM did not weigh in on the Nowzad case. I do not deny that there is some confusion. It is not uncommon in Whitehall—as anyone who has been a Minister knows—for decisions to be interpreted or portrayed as coming directly from one department or another or even the Prime Minister, even when that is not the case. In this instance, that is not relevant because the decision was made publicly and directly by the Secretary of State, as he has made clear.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I think that the families and children who were left behind would be shocked by the Minister. If there was a plane flying out of Kabul, I know who should have been on it. The simple question is—the noble Lord has to answer it, because I asked a Question last week about the Companion to the Standing Orders—why is it that someone in his private office believed that the decision to facilitate this evacuation of animals was approved by the Prime Minister? It is his private office. Can he tell us why the official believed that? It is a simple, straightforward question that deserves an answer.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I can answer half the question. I cannot tell the noble Lord why the confusion arose, other than that it was a particularly complicated time, but I can say that at the time the email was sent, the staff member who the noble Lord mentions was seconded to that emergency evacuations unit at the FCDO and was emailing in that capacity. The email was not sent under my instruction or with my knowledge; it was part of a wider process.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend say whether any health checks were undertaken on the animals in question before they left Kabul?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, as I said, it was an exceptional emergency situation. In normal circumstances, we do not recommend the movement of consignments of animals, particularly large consignments. We take biosecurity very seriously. On landing in this country, the cats and dogs were transferred to prearranged quarantine facilities where they will have to remain for four months or until they have completed the rabies risk management process fully. The process ensures that animals meet the highest standards and protects our rabies-free status, which of course we value greatly.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord has not actually answered the Question that was put, which was not about authorisation. It quite clearly asked “what representations” the Government received “concerning the evacuation of Pen Farthing and his animals from Kabul.” Will he address that issue? What representations were received by any member of Her Majesty’s Government on this issue?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I suspect that, like every MP, and probably every person in this House, I experienced an extraordinarily effective campaign mobilising people to write emails to their representatives. So, like everyone, I received hundreds, maybe thousands of emails from people on this issue, but my position—in writing, on the record—has always been that animals should never have been, and were not, prioritised over people. The noble Baroness asked about specific representation. I could spend hours, probably, relaying the torrent of emails that was received, but I will add one further thing: at no point did the Government as a whole receive any kind of authorisation on this issue, one way or the other, from the Prime Minister, who had no involvement at all. I think that was the point of the Question that was put to me and I emphasise that again.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, it is coming to something when the Prime Minister has a habit of not knowing what was going on in his department, and it sounds as though the Minister does not know what is going on in his. Can he explain why this individual was allowed to get a private jet in when there were still people we wanted to get out of there? How could he do it when the Government could not for a lot of brave people who will potentially give their lives because Ministers failed?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I think that is a completely nonsense question. The idea that the Prime Minister should be engaged in issues around the welfare of a handful of animals when we were engaging, as a Government, in one of the biggest—indeed, the biggest—evacuations this country has ever been involved in is just absurd. I would be appalled if the Prime Minister had been involved in such minutiae, frankly. As I said, we got 17,000 people out in a very short period of time. That is a record—it has never happened before. I think we can salute our Armed Forces and those officials who worked incredibly hard to pull off an extraordinary feat.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Navy evacuated one-third of a million people from Dunkirk and that that was actually the largest evacuation in our history? I do not know how many animals came, but certainly it was one-third of a million people.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, the Prime Minister has given his absolute assurance that he had nothing whatever to do with any of this. I just wonder how credible is the Prime Minister as a witness?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
In these frenzied days and this feeding frenzy, small things can be perceived as very large things. In the cold light of day, in the months to come, when people look back at this question that has been occupying nearly 10 minutes of this House’s time, we may wonder whether we lost a sense of proportion.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, it is clear, I think, that the Minister is saying that the Prime Minister did not know anything about this. Did his department issue an email or not? I am not asking whether the Prime Minister did it, but did someone in his department in No. 10 issue an email relating to this incident?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I do not know what emails were sent. Millions of emails would have been sent. I can say that there was no email from the Prime Minister’s department, as the noble Lord called it, that authorised in any way this evacuation. That authorisation never came from the Prime Minister. I never said that he did not know about it; I am sure that, like everyone, he would have seen it on the news, but he was not involved in the decision and did not weigh in in any way at all.
Personal Protective Equipment: Accounting
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wood of Anfield
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps are being taken within both the Department of Health and the Treasury to account for the £8.7 billion spent on unusable PPE in the course of the financial years 2020-2021.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice. I remind the House of my interests as a director of the Good Law Project.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
Throughout the pandemic, our absolute priority has been saving lives; £8.7 billion of the personal protective equipment inventory has been written down, not written off. This does not mean that it is unusable. The accounts make it clear that only 3% of the items purchased were not fit for any use. The majority of the impairment reflects the fact that the Government bought in a globally inflated market. It was better to do that than risk running out of PPE and risk lives.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Global inflation was clearly part of this, but of the extraordinary 72% of PPE spend that has now been written down, £670 million was on defective equipment, £750 million was on PPE that was past its expiry date and £2.6 billion was on unsuitable supplies—if you add it all up, that is enough to build more than a dozen new hospitals. Apparently, Ministers now cannot locate a further £3.6 billion in supplies, and a further £1.2 billion is again being written down on advance orders for this year. Can the Minister pledge today to have a full investigation into PPE procurement processes, particularly into how it became possible for some suppliers, funnelled through the VIP lane, to make so much money from the tax- payer for equipment that was not used or unusable?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Lord asks a detailed question, so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I try to respond in some detail. If you look at the breakdown of the writedown, you will see that, first, about £4.6 billion was attributable to changes in global prices following the point of purchase in a highly inflated market—noble Lords will remember that even toilet rolls went up at one time. As the noble Lord rightly says, the £673 million was for stuff that had failed the quality testing or technical insurance. The £2.6 billion was for stock that will not be used for its intended purposes but can be repurposed. We are also looking at stock in excess of the current forecast requirements, which can be stockpiled, and we are also introducing a tender for testing to see whether the life of some of that stock can be extended.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, can I press my noble friend a little more closely on one issue? I speak as president of the UK Warehousing Association. I am grateful to my noble friend for his explanation. What timetable do the Government have to remove this redundant PPE equipment from the warehouses in which it is currently situated to enable stock to be stored in those warehouses which really needs to be at this time?
Lord Kamall (Con)
There are different ways; some of it is about stockpiling stuff that is still useful and which we would use in future anyway. We are looking at research into testing whether the life of some of our stock can be extended—we are working with some of the best scientists on that. We are also looking at where we can give stock away or sell it on, as all the stock we are passing on meets WHO standards. To give noble Lords one example, we bought lots of latex gloves; usually we do not buy latex gloves in this country because of allergies and, now that we no longer need them, we can give them to a country such as Syria.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, those in the VIP lane were 10 times more likely to be awarded a contract, although there was no evidence that they had more expertise than any other company. Of the £8.7 billion-worth of material which could not be used by the NHS, how much went through the VIP channel? What efforts are the Government making to recover public money for material that was unusable for the NHS?
Lord Kamall (Con)
If I could correct the noble Baroness, the £8.7 billion does not refer to material that can no longer be used. As I said earlier, some of it can be repurposed or reused. On the so-called priority lanes, a number of government officials, Ministers’ offices, MPs, Member of the House of Lords, senior NHS staff, departmental staff and others were contacted. They then passed on these emails—I still get emails from people and pass them on to my department. All offers underwent a rigorous financial, commercial, legal and policy assessment. This was led by officials from various government departments as part of the PPE sale. The final decision on whether to enter into contracts sat with the appropriate accounting officer at the Department of Health and Social Care.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I think it would be best if the Minister does not try to justify the VIP list, since he was not there. Consider the answer given by the former Minister for PPE procurement matters, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, to a Parliamentary Question on 1 September 2021:
“As of 27 July 2021, the Department was engaged in commercial discussions (potentially leading to litigation) in respect to 40 PPE contracts with a combined value of £1.2 billion”.
Could the Minister please update the House on the situation with respect to that potential litigation and any attempt to recoup public money in the six months since the date of those official figures? If the Minister cannot provide the information today, could he write to me urgently, and ensure the information is placed in the Library?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The Department of Health and Social Care’s anti-fraud unit has acted quickly to investigate allegations of fraud. Indeed, this question came up when I was on a call with the unit earlier today; I was told that it saved £157 million in prevention and recovery by identifying and preventing high-risk contracts in the early days of the pandemic. There is a single company that is a potential source of loss, where we paid it and then terminated the contract as a preventive measure. I commit to write to the noble Baroness with a fuller answer.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, on Monday, at col. 650 in Hansard, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, promised to write to me and answer my specific questions about the origins of and deficiencies in PPE, some of which originated at the hands of slave labour in the genocide state of Xinjiang—where the Foreign Secretary herself has said a genocide is taking place. Can the Minister confirm that the reply will be with us before Report stage of the Health and Care Bill, and will he ensure that a copy is placed in the Library of the House? Will the Minister reconsider his statement made to me in reply to a Parliamentary Question that no organisation or individuals will be censured—especially bearing in mind what he has just told the House about the continuing inquiry by the fraud squad into allegations of fraud? If such allegations were found to be true, how can that rule out the possibility that anyone will be censured?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his persistence in asking a number of questions. I think all noble Lords appreciate that we want to recognise the huge suffering of the Uighurs in China, and that we should not do anything that can be seen to support it. I would also like to correct the noble Lord, Lord Alton: it was not the fraud squad; it was the Department of Health and Social Care’s anti-fraud unit, which has been investigating these contracts throughout the pandemic. But I will speak to my noble friend Earl Howe and check when the answer will be available. The normal process is to make sure it is available before the next session of Committee.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, what lessons are to be drawn from the difference between the fiasco of PPE procurement and the world-beating success of vaccine procurement? The first was left in the hands of the usual administrative state, that of PHE and NHS procurement; the second was deliberately lifted out of the hands of bureaucracy and placed in those of an individual from the private sector. Would the Minister like to extrapolate or infer from that distinction?
Lord Kamall (Con)
It is important to recognise that, throughout the pandemic, people were in a state of panic and there were people dying every day. What we saw was the coming together of the state and the private sector, working in partnership in the best possible way. The vaccines started in university research but were then commercialised and exported by the private sector. People who stayed at home during lockdown were served by Uber and Deliveroo—hard-working people were serving us. This was the best of the public and private sectors, working together for the best of the British.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, across the Suffolk countryside, vast piles of shipping containers—some up to 60 feet high—full of this PPE are now lodged. Can the Minister say how long people in those areas are going to have to live with these monstrosities, which do not have planning permission? How much are the Government paying for this ad hoc storage on unsuitable sites?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Baroness raises a very important point about storage costs, and we are looking at how we can reduce them. We have managed to reduce weekly storage costs at the moment, but one of the things we are looking at is how we can pass on, donate or sell some of the equipment that is in storage. We have certain standards, other countries have other standards, and we are making sure that we are selling stuff that meets WHO standards.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, in December 2021, Edward Argar reported that the Government were paying £4.5 million a week for storage costs for PPE. Are those storage costs for stuff which is now unusable?
Lord Kamall (Con)
As I said earlier, a very small percentage was unusable, but we are looking at some of the things that are supposedly past their use-by and sell-by dates—rather similar to food; people know about the debate around food wastage. We have put out a tender for scientists to look at the equipment to see whether its life can be extended or it can be used in a useful way.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, it is understandable that in an emergency, huge amounts of taxpayers’ money may need to be written off for contracts that were not viable. I commend the Government on all they have done for the pandemic, but would my noble friend agree with me that, given that this was an emergency, and given where we are on the cost-of-living crisis, it would perhaps benefit the Government to rethink the national insurance increase that is coming in April, as the cost-of-living crisis itself is an emergency?
Lord Kamall (Con)
If you consider how quickly the Government, and all of us, had to act during the early days of the pandemic, it was clearly an emergency. Lives were being lost. This is a stab in the dark, but maybe some noble Lords read a newspaper called the Guardian. One of its headlines from April 2020 read:
“Hospital leaders hit out at government as PPE shortage row escalates”.
Everyone knew that it was essential to get hold of as much PPE as you could in an incredibly challenging market.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, the Minister explained that the ultimate decision on what PPE contracts to issue came from the department, but I think the House would still be interested to know what proportion of the unusable PPE, or PPE that was unfit for purpose, came through the VIP trail.
Lord Kamall (Con)
That seems a reasonable question, but I hope the noble Baroness will understand that I do not have the answer at the moment. This is very much a dynamic situation. Some of the equipment we have may be deemed to be out of date but may be reclassified as usable after scientific analysis.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, on page 201 of the Annual Report and Accounts of the Department of Health and Social Care, the Comptroller and Auditor-General says that
“I have been unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to support the valuation of the Core Department & Agencies’ and Group’s onerous contract provisions of £1.2 billion”.
Why is the DHSC unable to provide relevant and reliable evidence, and which Minister takes responsibility for this shambolic state of affairs?
Lord Kamall (Con)
Interestingly enough, when I had the briefing with the team from the Department of Health and Social Care, I asked a very similar question about the qualification received from the Comptroller and Auditor-General—the C&AG—on limitation of scope. What it meant was that there was not enough audit evidence available for the C&AG to conclude. This stems principally from the fact that we were unable to perform a full stock-take on all items. So many millions of items were bought at the time, there was so much stock that the department could not yet do a full stock-take. The department does have a robust assessment of the risks, but it was important that we got as much stuff as possible, and it was unable to do a full stock-take of the millions of pieces of equipment.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not recognise that some people have very short memories? If we look back, there was huge demand globally for PPE. The press and the public were screaming for supplies to be provided. People worked round the clock, and of course they ended up paying over the odds in such a situation. Politics is fine, but to try to score points against people who did their best in the interests of public health and who were not bean-counters is really unworthy.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My noble friend makes a very important point. We should completely pay tribute to all those who worked as hard as they could during a time of panic. I remember that the leader of the British Medical Association said:
“This really is a matter of life and death. In what is an incredibly challenging time, doctors and healthcare staff should feel as equipped and supported as they need to be able to deliver care for patients.”
You cannot put a price on that. We had to buy equipment from wherever we could to help make sure that we kept our staff safe.
Business of the House
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Ashton of Hyde
That the debate on the motion in the name of Lord Whitty set down for Thursday 3 February in Grand Committee shall be time-limited to 2 hours, and that in the name of Lord Browne of Ladyton to 2 and a half hours.
International Relations and Defence Committee
(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Senior Deputy Speaker
Further to the resolution of the House of 13 May 2021, that the Committee should also have power to appoint a sub-committee for the purposes of any inquiry under section 3 of the Trade Act 2021;
That the Committee have power to appoint the Chair of the sub-Committee;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any member to serve on the sub-committee;
That the sub-committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the sub-committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the sub-committee have power to meet outside Westminster;
That the evidence taken by the sub-committee be published if the Committee so wishes.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, this Motion is consequential on the decision of the House of 1 December last year to designate the International Relations and Defence Committee as this House’s responsible committee for carrying out any inquiry into genocide under Section 3 of the Trade Act 2021. I beg to move.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I am one of those who would be very happy to see this Motion approved. It originates out of an amendment that I moved to the Trade Bill, which became the Trade Act 2021. I am a Member of the International Relations and Defence Select Committee of your Lordships’ House and was involved in the discussions about the creation of this committee. Nevertheless, I hope that the Senior Deputy Speaker will address one or two points about this that I raised and have concerns about.
First, it should be clear to your Lordships’ House that this, of course, goes no way to deal with the specific issue of genocide in Xinjiang, regularly raised by Members of this House, which is the blight of the Uighur people in that province, and that it will not be possible for the committee that is being approved to examine that situation, because there is no free trade deal with the People’s Republic of China currently in the offing. The House should be aware, therefore, that this does not deal with the substantive question that was raised at the time, and that this committee, however worthy, made up of the great and the good, will not even be able to deal with that issue.
Secondly, will the Senior Deputy Speaker give some clarity about what would happen if the identical committee that is also being established in another place were to reach a different conclusion at the end of an inquiry into this issue? Who would actually resolve that, and what would be the mechanism or procedure between the two Houses for dealing with this matter? With those simple questions, I personally am very pleased that we are making some incremental progress, at least, on this issue.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. He obviously had a very considerable input into these matters. Just to confirm, it will be for the International Relations and Defence Committee to decide when there is a need, in line with Section 3 of the Trade Act, to appoint a sub-committee into whether there exist credible reports of genocide in the territory of a counterparty to a prospective free trade agreement with the United Kingdom. These are absolutely the parameters in which this matter relates to the Trade Act 2021.
On the second matter—it is clearly an interesting point in terms of the two Houses—one question that has come across is why there was not a joint committee. My understanding is that the language of Section 3 of the Trade Act appears to preclude this, not least because different procedures apply in each House, as detailed in the Liaison Committee report which the House agreed on 1 December when it designated the IRDC as the responsible committee. Clearly, if and when there was this dialogue between the two Houses, it would be important for the two Houses and their respective committees to reflect on the fact that both Houses had a responsibility to consider these matters. But, with those two questions in mind—
Lord Lexden (Con)
Is there anything in the legislation to preclude a joint sitting of the two committees to resolve any differences that may arise between them?
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My noble friend raises an interesting question. I have to say that the actual construct of the Trade Act is not within my scope of knowledge. Clearly, there may well be occasions when those sorts of pragmatic considerations would, I imagine, be reflected on by pragmatic people in both Houses. I am just saying that my understanding is that the language of the Trade Act appears to preclude a Joint Committee—but the noble Lord raises a pertinent point. Unless there are any further questions, I beg to move.
Motion agreed.
Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Senior Deputy Speaker
Building Safety Bill
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Building Safety Act 2022 View all Building Safety Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 19 January 2022 - large print - (19 Jan 2022)
The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to open the Second Reading debate of this landmark Bill today. I will never forget the events that led us to this moment, nor the 72 people who lost their lives in the most appalling circumstances in the largest loss of life in a residential fire since the Second World War. The fire at Grenfell Tower in the early hours of 14 June 2017 should never have happened. The legislation we are bringing forward today is part of our wider reform to make sure that something like this tragedy can never happen again.
We cannot bring back those who lost their lives on that terrible day, and nothing can undo the errors that led to their deaths. Yet, if anything is to come from this disaster, it must be the lessons that we have learned from the mistakes that were made. That is why the Government appointed Dame Judith Hackitt to review the current building safety regime and recommend wholesale reform. Her findings were unequivocal and clear. Too often, regulations and guidance were misunderstood or misinterpreted. The drive to do things quickly and cheaply—the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned the concept of value engineering—meant that concerns were ignored and safety was not prioritised. There was ambiguity around who is actually responsible for the safety of buildings, with insufficient oversight and enforcement.
Dame Judith called for a complete overhaul of the system, and her recommendations underpin the Bill, with a golden thread that will ensure that, henceforth, people remain safe in the homes that we build for them. The Bill is unapologetically ambitious, creating a world-class building safety regulatory regime that holds all to the same high standard. The Fire Safety Act, which we will commence shortly, was the first legislative step towards delivering meaningful change following that dreadful tragedy. The Building Safety Bill represents the next step, delivering significant improvements to both the regulatory framework and industry culture, creating a more accountable system.
The Bill will deliver improvements across the entire built environment. It will strengthen oversight and protections for residents in high-rise buildings and give them a greater say, and will toughen sanctions against those who threaten their safety. Its focus on risk will help owners manage their buildings better, while giving the homebuilding industry the clear, proportionate framework it needs to deliver better, higher-quality homes. It is proportionate and strengthens fire safety requirements in all premises regulated by the fire safety order. It rightly focuses the new, more stringent requirements on those buildings and issues that pose the greatest risk.
To that end, we are strengthening our regulation of high-rise residential buildings which are over 18 metres or above six storeys in height, whichever is reached first; those buildings pose the greatest safety risks in the event of a spreading fire or structural failure. We are including hospitals and care homes that meet the height threshold during their design and construction. We will establish a robust link between safety, design, construction and occupation, with stringent duties to ensure safety throughout the building’s life cycle.
The Bill provides the framework to ensure that, during the design and construction, defined duty holders have clear responsibilities for compliance with building regulations, including fire and structural safety. They will have to clear a series of hard stops, through the new gateway system for in-scope buildings.
In occupation, every building in scope will have an identified accountable person with clear responsibility for safety matters. Their duties include registering the building with a new regulator, building an evidence and risk-based safety case, and the continued evaluation of potential hazards. Importantly, it will be a criminal offence not to carry out these duties effectively, punishable by an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison.
We are giving residents a stronger voice in the system through the Bill, making it easier for them to seek redress and raise concerns. The Bill will require an accountable person for a high-rise residential building to engage with their residents and establish a formal complaints process for residents to raise concerns. Both the accountable person and the responsible person for premises regulated by the fire safety order will be required to provide residents with access to key building safety information.
These measures will be overseen by the new building safety regulator within the Health and Safety Executive. The regulator will be equipped with robust powers to crack down on substandard practices. It will oversee the safety and standards of all buildings and will provide important independent advice to government on building safety and standards. It will support a significant improvement in the performance and competence of industry and building control professionals.
The Bill ensures that the regulator will regulate in line with best practice principles, being proportionate and transparent and targeting activity where action is needed. Crucially, it will act to ensure that proportionality is embedded within its operations and in its work with accountable persons to assess buildings.
I turn now to construction products. The testimony we have heard at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has been shocking to say the least and has exposed a culture of corner-cutting, Spanish practices and disgraceful behaviour by an industry that has compromised building safety. We intend to put a stop to this. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, we banned the use of combustible materials on the external walls of high-rise residential buildings. The Bill creates powers to strengthen regulatory oversight for firms that manufacture and sell construction products and, crucially, powers to remove unsafe construction products from the market and take action against those that break the rules. The Bill will improve the standards of our construction products oversight regime.
The polluter must pay; developers and construction product manufacturers must be held to account. Residents must be protected against substandard materials, workmanship and practices that make homes unsafe. Our new regime will help address these issues for high-rise residential buildings, but we need to expand legal safeguards for residents wherever they live. That is why the Bill retrospectively extends the period during which compensation for defective premises can be claimed by over double the current period—from six to 15 years prospectively and by 30 years retrospectively —to make sure that the failures of the past can be addressed. This is a significant step forward, and we are going further, expanding the scope of the work for which compensation can be claimed to include future renovations.
We are also strengthening redress for people buying a new-build home through provisions for the new homes ombudsman scheme that will provide dispute resolution and resolve complaints involving the buyers of new-build homes and developers.
We also know that we must go further to protect innocent leaseholders, who are the victims, from bearing the financial burden of this crisis. I thank your Lordships, in particular my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Young of Cookham and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. I could not forget the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, as well for being ever so helpful during these debates. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and, of course, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who has been an inveterate campaigner on behalf of leaseholders. This is a hugely important issue; it is important that we continue to do our best collectively to protect leaseholders.
The Secretary of State in the other place has been unequivocal in his determination that leaseholders living in their own flats in medium and high-rise buildings will not pay a penny to remediate unsafe cladding. We have scrapped proposals for loans and long-term debt for medium-rise leaseholders. We have allocated a further £27 million to help bring the misuse of waking watches to an end, and we are working towards making sure that leaseholders are protected from the risk of forfeiture relating to historical building safety issues, until a new industry-developed system is in place. But we know that more is needed. We will also explore further statutory protections for leaseholders and we will bring forward proposals for this House to consider at the earliest opportunity. I look forward to working with your Lordships on the Opposition Benches, with the Liberal Democrats, with the Cross-Benchers, and even with my own awkward squad, to ensure that this 143-clause Bill perhaps adds the odd extra clause and is the best possible Bill that we can take forward and get on the statute book.
The Government have accepted their share of responsibility and made significant financial provision—over £5 billion—through the ACM remediation programme and the building safety fund. Some developers have already done the right thing and provisioned or are funding remediation works. We are also seeing that among registered providers. But too many others have failed to live up to their responsibilities; in some cases, they are not engaging at all with government. We cannot keep looking to the taxpayer to keep bailing out this failing industry: we must get the polluters to pay.
We have already announced a £2 billion tax on the biggest residential developers through the residential property developer tax and a further levy on developers building tall buildings through the Building Safety Bill, and we are now engaged with industry to ensure that it pays its fair share for fixing cladding problems, rather than the leaseholders. I point out that where both private developers and social housing organisations have developed land, they are equally culpable if they put up unsafe buildings and they must pay. Our expectations are clear: industry and the owners of land, such as registered providers, should fix the buildings they were responsible for. They need to contribute to a wider fund to ensure that remaining buildings are remediated to protect leaseholders.
In a round table held with the Secretary of State, senior executives from the country’s biggest developers agreed that leaseholders should not pay. We continue to engage with them on how they will deliver a fully funded action plan by early March. We are also acting directly to make sure that those who manufactured dangerous products, built unsafe buildings and knowingly put lives at risk are also properly held to account. We have had a similar meeting with construction products manufacturers. I was shocked that Arconic, one of the manufacturers of the material used on Grenfell, did not show up; that is completely unacceptable. We have been clear in our intent: industry needs to develop real proposals to fund this crisis. If it does not agree a solution soon, we will, if necessary, impose one in law.
The Bill represents the most radical revision of our building safety regime in generations. It is a complete overhaul of safety management, putting residents’ safety at the absolute heart of our reform. I commend the Bill to the House.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by saying that we welcome the Bill, which will bring about the long-awaited changes to the building safety regime following Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review. I also thank my noble friend Lord Kennedy for the huge amount of work he has done on the Bill so far.
As the Minister reminded us, we must not forget why Dame Judith’s review and this legislation are so very important. He reminded us that in June 2017, 72 men, women and children lost their lives in an inferno fuelled by the highly combustible cladding system that had been installed on the outside of their tower block. We should remember that that tower block was also compromised by a range of other fire safety defects.
Four and a half years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, thousands of residents across the country continue to live in a state of constant fear over the safety of their homes and the cost of putting right past failures. Although we welcome the Bill and the recent promised government amendments, we have concerns that without further changes to provisions affecting leaseholders, it will still fall short of meeting the objective of learning all the lessons of the Grenfell Tower fire and fail completely to restore public confidence in our building system.
I will outline our concerns to the Minister and I hope that his response will provide further positive reasons as to why we can look forward to government action on the outstanding concerns. First, we believe that the Bill’s definition of “higher-risk buildings” could be strengthened to take into account the vulnerability of residents. The Minister mentioned the fact that the Government have modified the definition of higher-risk buildings to now include care homes and hospitals that meet an 18-metre height threshold. However, that still excludes often vulnerable people living in buildings below that threshold from access to vital protections under the new regulatory system. We believe that all supported accommodation should be included, regardless of its height.
I now turn to funding protections for leaseholders. Does the Minister agree that leaseholders in all affected buildings, regardless of their height, should be protected from covering any costs related to past regulatory failings, and that should include cladding and non- cladding fire safety defects? That protection should be retrospectively extended to leaseholders who have already made significant out-of-pocket investments in remediation works. The Government and the housing and development industries must be prepared to fund, in full, both cladding and non-cladding remediation works. As it stands, the Bill simply does not go far enough to address these issues.
We strongly agree with the Minister that developers must be held to account and I was pleased to hear him say that if this does not happen, law will be brought in to ensure that it does. So I would be interested to hear from him more about how that would take place. The Minister recognised that not all of industry has stepped up. How are the Government going to ensure that industry, right across the board, will play its part and pay the funds that it has been asked to? How will the Government continue to play their part and supply the funds that are needed? The Minister rightly said that a lot of money has been promised but this is a huge issue, with many residents very much out of pocket.
We need to make sure that the twin objectives of fixing the building safety crisis and delivering new and improved social housing can be delivered simultaneously through the Bill. Concerns have been raised that the housing building funds could be plundered. Could I please have some assurance from the Minister in that area?
I mentioned that all remediation costs should be covered retrospectively. Can the Minister advise leaseholders as to how they are expected to go about reclaiming those costs? When will the Government publish their promised amendments to provide concrete assurances to leaseholders that they will not be liable for those remediation costs? Will we be seeing those amendments in Committee?
The provisions of the Defective Premises Act currently stipulate that a leaseholder can make a legal claim for compensation if their dwelling is unfit for habitation, as long as the claim is made within six years of the building being constructed. We welcome the amendment made in the Commons that extends that eligibility period from six to 30 years and that claims can now be made for defects arising from refurbishment works. Another crucial change is that leaseholders will be able to make claims retrospectively if their claims fall within the eligibility period. However, we have concerns that the cost and time implications of making a legal claim against developers will prevent many leaseholders from benefiting from this measure. Will the Minister think about what the Government could do to clarify this because it would be helpful if, in the first instance, they said that they expected building owners and freeholders to make a claim as they are more likely to have the capacity to do so than individual leaseholders? That expectation would also reflect the legal duty for building owners to prove that they have carried out their due diligence on finding all possible sources of funding that do not rely on leaseholders paying.
We also welcome the Bill’s changes to the fire safety order, mentioned by the Minister, which introduce the duty for fire risk assessments to be completed by competent professional, and the improvements to residents’ access to safety information about their buildings. However, it is unclear whether this duty for responsible persons to share fire safety information extends to prospective residents and residents who are not leaseholders but tenants in a building. If the Minister could clarify that, I would be very grateful. This clause could be strengthened by clarifying that responsible persons must proactively share fire safety information, including fire risk assessments in full, with prospective and current residents, including both leaseholders and tenants.
I turn briefly back to the area of most concern to leaseholders: the funding of the cost of cladding remediation and building safety. The Labour Party has been clear in debates both in this House and in the other place that leaseholders should not have to pay to fix this crisis. The Minister confirmed that this is the Government’s point of view as well. Overall responsibility for funding building safety work has to lie ultimately with the Government to ensure that this happens.
It is also clear that industry has played a role in making decisions that have compromised the safety of buildings and has a part to play in shouldering the burden of costs. The Minister spoke about the recent announcement by the Secretary of State, which we very much welcomed, about the Government aiming to recover costs from developers for cladding remediation. But, as has been asked before, how does this help leaseholders who live in buildings with non-cladding-related defects, who also face excessive charges to make their homes safe? The Bill must protect all leaseholders facing costs for fire safety defects that they did not cause.
We recognise the Government’s efforts to increase the building safety fund, but unfortunately the amount allocated is still not enough. Can the Minister reassure this House that the funding shortfall will not lead to a “first come, first served” allocation? This may mean that building owners with less experience of managing large refurbishment and construction projects will lose out, as it could take them longer to get together the information and evidence necessary to properly complete an application to the fund. This could include buildings where leaseholders exercise their right to manage, for example, or where there are projects with additional complications.
The Government need to find a solution that can make all homes safe, regardless of height, without passing on the burden of cost to leaseholders. The residential property developer tax and the building safety levy are very welcome, but will the Government ensure that the right measures are in place to prevent any unintended loss of affordable housing through lower Section 106 commitments?
The cost of waking watch has been a huge concern for many people, and I was pleased to hear the Minister talk about this. It is really good that in December the Government announced a £30 million waking watch relief fund and that this has now been increased. However, the fund still fails to reimburse leaseholders who have already paid out for interim waking watch costs and does not consider those who continue to need a waking watch as well as a fire alarm. Can this be looked at again?
To answer all these outstanding concerns, Labour has called on the Government to establish a new building works agency. This single body, which would be accountable to Ministers, would decide what works are necessary and commission and pay for them, then sign off the building as safe at the end of the process. The building works agency would work closely with local authorities and fire chiefs, who have been gathering data and are well placed to know how to manage projects locally. It would also have the legal powers to pursue those responsible through the courts if necessary. Keeping people safe in their own homes should not be a political issue, so will the Minister at least consider this very practical suggestion, given in good faith from the Opposition Benches? Will he work with both Labour and other noble Lords as the Bill goes forward to Committee so that we can continue to address concerns and improve this important piece of legislation?
In closing, I put on record my huge respect for the survivors and the bereaved of the Grenfell Tower fire and for the wider Grenfell Tower community, who continue to seek not only justice for their families and neighbours but wider change to ensure that everyone is safe in their own home. I know the Minister has worked hard to bring forward this legislation and I thank him for his diligence, yet there are still improvements that could be made. I offer him our full support in making a good Bill even better.
I look forward to listening to the debate today, and in particular to the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester. I wish him well for the future.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I start by declaring my interests as they appear in the register. I am the honorary president of the National Home Improvement Council and an honorary fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers. For two years, I was the Minister with responsibility for building regulations in DCLG.
We must never forget the 72 deaths at Grenfell Tower or the injuries and trauma arising directly from gross failures by professionals at every stage of the construction process, refurbishment and its regulatory oversight. I first aimed to tackle the long-standing dysfunction of regulation in the industry in my Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004. Section 8 on certification and Section 9 on appointed persons gave a power to the Secretary of State to bring in what we now call the “golden thread”. Sadly, those powers remained unused for the following 18 years.
It will not surprise your Lordships that I and my colleagues give an enthusiastic welcome to this overdue Bill. We want to see its speedy passage and quick implementation. My noble friend Lady Pinnock and others will spell out the urgency of all necessary repairs being carried out on the tens of thousands of existing homes that have been found to have fatal flaws in their construction, with full financial protection for innocent leaseholders.
The bold ministerial words uttered so far have cut no ice with leaseholders who face five-figure bills and threats of repossession. Evidence of action is needed. Repairs must be undertaken without delay; bills settled by those who caused the problem, and families made safe in their home. If the developers push back, and the Secretary of State finds himself in the High Court, that must not be a reason to leave leaseholders almost literally swinging in the wind—with no cladding or insulation, and with enormous bills for waking watch and for their basic heating.
Speed is also needed so that the construction industry can get on with the job. It cannot invest in the right skills and training, nor develop competencies without the certainty provided by this legislation.
Of course, not all this can be put into the Bill. We shall certainly vigorously press the Government to explain their intentions more clearly when we consider the draft statutory instruments alongside our further considerations on the Bill. This way, we can assist the Government in producing a coherent scheme of regulation that will be fit for purpose. Such an examination will help to ensure that there is a speedy transition from where we are now to where we must be, so that we do not create another green homes grant fiasco. That landed without notice on an unprepared industry and was scrapped within six months.
The long title of the Bill is helpfully comprehensive and inclusive. It makes,
“provision about the safety of people in or about buildings and the standard of buildings”.
However, the specifics addressed in the Bill are quite narrow. Only a small class of buildings will come under the new rules. Only one aspect of their design, construction and occupation is to be regulated by the building safety regulator. As it stands, the regulations and monitoring of other measures required for the avoidance and mitigation of fire in all other buildings will remain subject only to the existing regulatory regime. This system is certainly not rigorous. The British Woodworking Federation estimates that there are 600,000 unfit fire doors currently installed in the United Kingdom. Is the Minister satisfied with this? Does his department simply accept that regulatory failure of fire protection is acceptable, as long as it is not in a high-rise building? We will want to test these points in Committee and will invite the Minister to bring more buildings into scope.
A further gap in robust regulation is that even in high-risk or high-rise buildings, however defined, the application of all other parts of the regulations will be subject only to the existing failed compliance system, with the failing inspection service still responsible for regulatory oversight of that building’s energy performance and weather resistance or climate resilience—among other things—with no golden thread, no long-term monitoring and no accountability.
So, for instance, when zero carbon is not achieved in a high-rise block and faults in design or construction or subsequent alterations emerge, those leaseholders would be no further forward than they are now. It could even be that the same residents in the same flats in another 10 years face bills for remediation of failed insulation, unless, of course, the building safety regulator is also to take on the monitoring of those other parts of the building regulations. The rule should be “One building, one building regulator” for all aspects of building regulations, and we will want the Minister to face up to that in Committee.
The current regulatory system for building construction is manifestly not fit for purpose, regardless of a building’s height, complexity or fire risk, or whether the building inspector is from the private or local authority sector. This Bill is a necessary response to the tragedy of Grenfell, but it is also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fully reform that failed system and we will put our views about how that might be done to the Minister in Committee.
Finally, the architecture of the Bill is complex, with an array of new structures, new professions and new roles as a means of achieving its ends. It is not by any means simple or intuitive, and we will be seeking clarification and refinement at Committee stage so that we have a workable and understandable structure that will produce safe buildings well into the future.
This complex Bill is very much welcomed on this side. We want to see it proceed quickly and be implemented smoothly. We must guarantee that the terrible tragedy of Grenfell can never be repeated. We must ensure that the innocent are safeguarded from the folly, carelessness and greed of those who have committed the offences and that those thousands of residents already caught up in the nightmare of unfunded remediation are fully protected. Our work on further stages of this Bill will be to work with the Minister to make sure that we achieve that.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, my contribution to this debate relates to the new homes ombudsman, the scheme that will be established by the provisions in Part 5 of the Bill. I declare past interests as the previous chair of the Property Ombudsman and chair of the Government’s working group on regulation of property agents.
Among the catalogue of criticisms of this country’s major housebuilders, redress for buyers of defective properties and victims of shoddy workmanship, scams and dodgy deals deserve our urgent attention. We are all familiar with the long list of ways in which the volume housebuilders have let us down—building safety, yes, but also poor design, low space standards, soulless estates, broken promises to provide affordable homes, exorbitant profits and bonuses for bosses, leasehold scams, sales agreements that contain unfair conditions and excessive charges, lack of investment in training, skills, and apprenticeships, building on greenfield sites when brownfield development would be far more appropriate, and building out only at a speed which ensures continuing scarcity and ever-higher prices. We need also to confront housebuilders’ defective workmanship and dreadful consumer/customer service in responding to entirely justified complaints by home buyers. It is excellent that the Government are seeking in this Bill to address this issue.
The proposal for a new homes ombudsman came from two reports by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment, supported by the Construction Industry Council. I declare my interest as a vice-chair of that APPG alongside my noble friend Lord Lytton. Our first report, in 2015, entitled More Homes, Fewer Complaints, commended the idea of a new homes ombudsman. Our second inquiry, in 2018, spelled out how an ombudsman could drive up standards and improve consumer rights. It was skilfully chaired by Eddie Hughes MP, who is now the very Minister responsible for implementing the initiative. He says in his foreword to our report:
“I have been contacted by many MPs with despairing constituents who have implored them to help achieve redress from housebuilders refusing to rectify poor workmanship … Consumers desperately need greater leverage to drive a change in this culture”.
Submissions received by the inquiry from home buyers described how builders failed them, making buying a new home, as one first-time buyer said,
“the worst decision of their life.”
Surveys show that well over 90% of home buyers have experienced snags or defects when moving in, and in over 70% of those cases the problem has never been fully resolved. We are a very long way from zero-defect construction. It is quite extraordinary that the new house buyer has to expect snagging difficulties, problems with doors and windows not fitting properly, leaks and cracks. If cars—vastly more complicated things than houses, with thousands of working parts and the capacity to travel safely at speed—can be purchased without defects then why not static, solid, basic houses?
So it is very good news that we are now to have an ombudsman to whom the home purchaser can turn. There have been concerns over the suggestion that the industry-based New Homes Quality Board, rather than the Secretary of State, might appoint the ombudsman and write their code of practice. This could undermine public trust and lead to accusations that the housebuilders were pulling the strings.
My short list of questions today to the Minister, whom I congratulate on bringing forward this legislation, relates to the powers that the new homes ombudsman will possess. In essence, I am asking: will the ombudsman have real teeth?
First, could the Minister confirm that the new homes ombudsman will have the power to expel a housebuilder from the redress scheme—for example, for non-payment of compensation to a buyer—and that this would mean, quite properly, the ombudsman having the power to stop any further sales by a builder since they could not continue to sell homes if no longer in the scheme?
Secondly, will the ombudsman be able to award high enough levels of compensation to deter bad practice?
Thirdly, in common with many ombudsman schemes, will this ombudsman have the power to undertake own-initiative investigations around issues likely to justify multiple complaints, without each complainant having to make a separate case, and will it be able to publish guidance accordingly?
Fourthly, to avoid sharp practices and eliminate detrimental clauses in the small print, will the ombudsman be able to require the use of standardised sales contracts?
Fifthly, can it be that the ombudsman will have jurisdiction only for the first two years after a purchase, bearing in mind that defects often emerge after that date and that warranty providers exclude all the builder’s smaller defects that can make life miserable? The Legal Ombudsman, for example, can take action up to six years after a problem has been identified.
Sixthly, will the ombudsman be able to specify that builders use only approved warranty providers that have passed a rigorous assessment?
Seventhly, will the ombudsman be able to ban non-disclosure agreements—“gagging orders”—which some builders, for fear of gaining a poor reputation, have insisted on from buyers whose homes have been subject to remediation?
Eighthly, will the ombudsman publish its decisions, to name and shame offenders and exonerate the others?
Lastly, will the ombudsman be able to extract a sufficient levy from the housebuilders to resource all the work necessary to deal with what I suspect will be a multiplicity of complaints from all over the country?
I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and, I hope, to being able to support this important ingredient in the Bill.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I welcome today’s debate, and I thank my noble friend the Minister for his commitment to this issue. It is appreciated.
We all know the importance of the Bill before us today and we all know what led to its creation: the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower. It was a tragedy that shocked and shamed the country, yet more shocking still has been the evidence that has since come out of the public inquiry. Listening to all those involved makes for a deeply depressing experience. With the notable exception of RBKC, no one is ever to blame. It is always someone else’s fault, someone else’s problem.
Take the architects involved in the refurbishment. Apparently, they did not have design responsibility; that was the contractors’—except the contractors say that they delegated it to the cladding subcontractor. But no, hold on a minute, the cladding subcontractor says that the design compliance was not its job but the job of—wait for it—the architects. As for the companies that made the cladding, Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan —no, none of this was their responsibility. Never mind that the inquiry evidence shows that they manufactured or provided products that they knew or suspected to be dangerous for buildings of above 80 metres. Nor, apparently, was it the fault of the bodies responsible for testing and certification—bodies that have been accused of being too close to their customers and failing to provide the necessary protections.
Worse even than all this is the casual disregard—the flippancy—shown by pretty much everyone involved, at every level, in an industry that is supposed to have safety at its core. It is impossible to convey, so here they are in their own words, as heard at the public inquiry. An email from a senior staff member at Local Authority Building Control about the wording of a certificate, wrongly asserting that Kingspan’s insulation could be used on high-rise buildings, states:
“This issue has been burning for a LONG time though, hasn’t it? (Get it!!!!) Why is it raising its head again all of a sudden?”
An email between the contractors, fire engineers and architects, about the need to install strong fire barriers, says:
“There is no point in ‘fire stopping’, as we all know, the ACM will be gone rather quickly in a fire!”
Messages between employees of Kingspan discussing the rating of their material as class 0, or non-combustible, state:
“Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho. LOL.”
An email from Grenfell’s fire risk assessor to the council’s tenant management organisation, after the LFB contacted them asking for help in identifying vulnerable persons, said:
“I would say you have nobody that this refers to … If you identify anybody now questions like why were they not included in the buildings FRA spring to mind. A good response I believe would be thank you for this information if we find anyone in the future we will let you know.”
For reference, while some updating did later take place, 15 of the 37 residents classed as vulnerable and disabled died in the fire.
This, then, was the culture of a truly broken industry. Within this, I fully appreciate that the role of government must also be looked at, and it will be considered by the inquiry shortly. I also appreciate, however, that that must not take away from the huge strides that the Bill will make.
Before I get on to that, I have one question for my noble friend the Minister. Incredible as it seems, post Grenfell and after all we have learned, the regulations still allow for tall residential buildings with only one fire escape staircase. Last month, it came to light that plans for two such developments in London are being rethought after concerns were raised locally and by the LFB.
Dozens of other countries require two or more escape stairs in such buildings, and I would like to know whether we will consider doing the same. It seems an anomaly when the Bill will do so much to fix the system, including the building safety regulator; new competence requirements for anyone carrying out design or building work; gateway points to ensure that building regulations compliance is considered at every stage of design and construction; and an accountable person who will ensure that residents are given a voice in decisions that concern the safety of their buildings. These changes are all designed to ensure that a tragedy such as Grenfell never happens again. While I understand that there will be improvements to make, regarding cladding remediation in particular, I urge noble Lords to bear in mind the fundamental reason for the Bill: that no one has to endure what the residents endured that night.
I declare my interest as a community adviser on Grenfell. I have worked with many members of the community since the days immediately after the fire. I have witnessed their strength and dignity in the face of so much suffering. I have heard what happened to them. It is not something that they like to talk about but, with kind permission, I want to tell one man’s story.
He grew up in Grenfell Tower and his mother and sister still lived there. On the night of the fire, they were trapped on one of the upper floors. His sister called him, leaving the line open as he rushed from his home in north London. Standing inside the cordon area, he saw his friends at the windows. He watched the flames engulf the building, as he remained on the phone to his sister. Despite her deteriorating situation she kept insisting she was okay, until finally she began to fade away. He heard a banging on the floor and then silence. At this point, he thought he had lost his mum too but, 30 seconds later and for the first time in the early hours of that morning, he heard her voice. She was struggling for breath and said her last words: “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.” He stayed on the phone, unable to cut off the call, hearing only the sound of the fire but hoping against all hope that maybe they would be okay, maybe someone would rescue them. It took him over an hour before he finally managed to switch off his phone.
Can noble Lords imagine how difficult that must have been and how difficult the reliving of that moment must still be? That is the reality of Grenfell. That is why the Bill is before us today—and it is why we must do everything we can to ensure its safe passage through this House.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to join others in welcoming the Building Safety Bill to the upper House and I congratulate the Minister on its introduction. The tragedy of the Grenfell fire four years ago exposed huge concerns about building safety in relation to both fire safety and building standards more generally. The Bill is a hugely important piece of legislation in our efforts to ensure that a tragedy like the fire at Grenfell Tower can never happen again.
Housing associations across the country have been working since June 2017 on assessing and remediating building safety risks in thousands of blocks. As chair of the National Housing Federation, the representative body of housing associations in England—I declare that interest—I have come to understand and appreciate the depth and breadth of the crisis.
It is the priority of the sector to ensure that safety concerns can be identified and addressed as quickly as possible to help residents feel safe in their homes. So many of us will remember from the passage of the Fire Safety Act that progress towards ending this crisis has been delayed and prolonged by seemingly intractable funding challenges, not least for innocent leaseholders facing huge bills.
That is why I very much welcome the announcement that the Secretary of State made in the other place on 10 January that the Government will protect leaseholders from the costs and make developers, contractors and manufacturers pay to fix the building safety issues that they caused. The Government are right to make those who profited from unsafe building practices pay. This important step will enable us to start the process of charting a course out of the crisis.
As I have mentioned many times in this House, housing associations are not-for-profit organisations providing affordable homes for those on the lowest incomes. To cover the costs of remediation on buildings where social renters live, housing associations are already expecting to spend in excess of £6 billion on building safety works. As a consequence, housing associations are now less able to improve their current homes or build new ones.
The National Housing Federation’s 2021 survey found that 12,900 homes, more than 10% of affordable new homes to be built over the next five years, have already had to be cut to prioritise spending on building safety. I welcome confirmation from the Secretary of State that leaseholders of buildings owned by social housing providers will have access to the new funding to avoid these costs spiralling further. However, like others, I would welcome clarity from the Minister on the Government’s approach to non-cladding costs, and whether funding recouped from industry will be allocated for this purpose.
I know that the housing association sector is committed to working closely with the Government to find a fair and sustainable solution to our housing prices that balances both making buildings safe and enabling new homes to be built. I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State refer to building social housing and improving existing homes as a core mission of his department. However, I was worried that correspondence from the Treasury made public at the start of the year suggests existing departmental budgets would need to be used, should it not be possible to recoup money from industry. That is why I hope that the Minister will assure us today that the affordable homes programme will be protected to avoid any further reductions in the delivery of much-needed affordable housing.
I also want to support the Government’s evidence-based approach to assessing and managing risk in buildings. It is right that, where safety issues present an unacceptable level of risk, they are fixed with urgency; it is also right that, if risks can be eliminated and effectively minimised without vast building works, these options should be explored and, where suitable, implemented. I welcome the launch of PAS 9980 to aid this transition. We are in the early stages of implementation, and it is not yet clear how it would truly impact on how mid-rise buildings are treated and, in truth, what impact it will have on the amount and costs of work needed on buildings between 11 and 18 metres. I understand that the Government have already undertaken a survey of such buildings to ascertain a view on this; I also believe that close monitoring of the implementation of PAS 9980 could greatly help the Government, building owners, tenderers and lenders in understanding the evolving situation. Will the Minister commit to publishing the findings of the Government’s recent survey, and what plans does he have to monitor the approach to proportionality?
Finally, I welcome the part of the Bill that introduces a new homes ombudsman scheme—and I declare an interest as the chair of the Property Ombudsman. I wholeheartedly agree with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Best—indeed, I would like to see the ombudsman report directly to Parliament. I just want to emphasise that, at a time when public and particularly home-buyer confidence is so low, the need for transparency and absolute real and perceived independence is crucial if the Government are to reassure homeowners that the ombudsman has teeth. Only that way will they have the trust and confidence in the redress or reassurance that they receive from the ombudsman. This is especially true when property developers do not comply with a decision; there needs to be a clear and transparent mechanism for enforcing decisions, in the worst case removing businesses from membership, and communicating this to existing and potential home-buyers. That enforcement should apply not just to financial redress but to implementation of recommendations to drive better outcomes for all.
This urgently needed Building Safety Bill has the potential to provide safety and security to those whose homes have wrongfully been built with safety risks. I hope that it will create a future in which the horrors of an event like Grenfell are no longer possible. The housing association sector wants to work with government to ensure that the Bill is as effective as possible at delivering that ambition.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. I look forward to hearing the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester. He was formerly general secretary of the Church Mission Society. At that time, I remember an imaginative fundraiser when the then Reverend Graham Kings led a camel from Oxford to Cambridge to raise funds for rural Kenyan schools. I did the last day of that walk, and I have to say that the camel was mobbed as we finished it. Large amounts of funds were raised, and there was lots of media coverage—CMS objective achieved. I wish the right reverend Prelate well in his retirement.
It is worrying that, five years after Grenfell, the necessary cultural changes in the building industry have still not happened. We know that there are too many developers prepared to game the system, despite the Grenfell inquiry and Dame Judith Hackitt’s review. There still is not a level playing field to protect tenants and leaseholders, not only on who should pay the costs, so ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, but more broadly on the other deeply unsatisfactory breaches of safety, beyond cladding, which also make people’s homes unsafe. I also echo her comments about two staircase exits in high-rise buildings—that is absolutely vital.
Other breaches of building regulations are not covered, such as a lack of compartmentation and electrical standards still not being met, both of which are high-level risks for fire and the spread of smoke and fire. Without compartmentation, staying in your flat is worthless. Doors that do not meet fire safety standards have caused deaths in common parts, including on emergency exit stairwells. There was a fire in a block of flats in Tower Hamlets just two days ago, where smoke escaped into the stairwell and residents trying to get out were overcome. As with cladding, leaseholders are having to pay for all this work to be put right, even though developers have a clear responsibility for not building unsafe buildings, and refurbishment companies ignore the original fire and building regulations. This is totally unjust.
Over the last two years, the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group has responded in considerable detail to the plethora of government consultations on fire and building safety, and I am grateful to the Minister for attending our meetings on a fairly regular basis. Last year’s consultation from the DfE proposed to remove the requirement for sprinklers in all but a very small percentage of new schools. Twenty years ago, as a former chair of governors of my local primary school, I saw it burn to the ground. The disruption to the pupils’ education over the next two years cost Cambridgeshire County Council many times more than even the retrofitting of sprinklers would have cost. To not even put sprinklers into new schools is just unacceptable.
The case for sprinklers is compelling in high-rise blocks, as well as non-residential buildings. They save lives, they can save jobs and precious education, and they prevent damage to the environment by reducing the severity of fires. As a result of the multiple-fatality fire in 2009 following the refurbishment of Lakanal House, the London Fire Commissioner told the coroner that automatic fire sprinkler protection would have prevented the deaths of six residents. Subsequently, the coroner recommended to the then Secretary of State that he should encourage social housing providers in high-rise blocks of over 18 metres to consider retrofitting automatic sprinkler protection. Can the Minister say if the Government will now accept this recommendation?
Both the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group and the National Fire Chiefs Council in their previous responses to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 consultation said that there remains a fundamental disconnect between the non-worsening conditions of building regulations and the expectations of continuous improvements through the fire risk assessment process set out by the fire safety order. Regulation 4 of the Building Regulations 2010 states that, where the work did not previously comply with Schedule 1, the new work, when complete, should be
“no more unsatisfactory in relation to that requirement than before the work was carried out”—
meaning that the general fire precautions may never be improved to modern standards. This runs contrary to the principles of prevention outlined in the fire safety order—that premises’ risk assessments should adapt to technical progress and reduce the overall risk within buildings.
The all-party group also noted that Dame Judith Hackitt concluded that the construction industry’s prevalent culture was undermining building safety. She referred to procurement regimes that were not fit for purpose. In relation to building safety, she added that
“unhelpful behaviours such as contract terms and payment practices which prioritise speed and low cost solutions, exacerbate this situation.”
She concluded that poor procurement and payment practice
“provide poor value for money and poor building safety outcomes.”
She recommended that contracts’ payment terms and practices should be recorded as part of a proposed digital building safety file. Does the Minister agree with these conclusions?
I thank the Local Government Association for its briefings on the provision for duty holders to choose their building control regulator. It says:
“By requiring regulators to remain in competition with ‘approved inspectors’ for the majority of buildings, the Bill leaves in place one of the root causes of the current crisis.”
It absolutely does. It is quite extraordinary that it should be allowed to continue. The LGA goes on:
“Compliance with regulation cannot be a commodity and local authority building control should not be left to tackle non-compliance in buildings over 18m while simultaneously having to compete with private businesses for work in out of scope buildings, often owned by the same developers.”
My honourable friend Daisy Cooper MP has repeatedly asked, since the passage of the Fire Safety Act 2021, if the Government will consider the creation of an independent register of qualified fire risk assessors. At the time, she was told it was being considered, and withdrew an amendment from that Bill on that basis, but nothing has happened. Can the Minister say whether this register is now planned, as well as a register of safe building materials?
Finally, what will be in the regulations is critical. Some of the language used in the Bill is not exact enough; what will matter is the regulations that underpin this extremely complicated Bill, which will need to be ironed out before it becomes operational. I hope that during the passage of the Bill, the Minister will be able to clarify some of these key issues at the Dispatch Box to give your Lordships’ House confidence that we will finally see regulations that will protect lives, ensure accountability by those who have not followed the standards and protect buildings.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Building Safety Bill, and its provisions to implement the recommendations of the Hackitt report following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. In particular, I was glad to hear the ambitions stated by the Minister that it should represent a complete overhaul of the culture of the construction sector. In so doing, it presents an opportunity to tackle issues that have bedevilled the sector for many years, with a damaging effect on safety and quality. Many of these affect smaller construction firms and their relationships with the larger contractors for whom they work, as well as their ability to invest in improving their skills, quality, productivity and, of course, safety. I shall focus specifically on the issue of cash retentions.
The Hackitt report states:
“Payment terms within contracts (for example, retentions) can drive poor behaviours, by putting financial strain into the supply chain. For example non-payment of invoices and consequent cash flow issues can cause subcontractors to substitute materials purely on price rather than value for money or suitability for purpose.”
There is broad consensus in the sector that action is needed on retentions, and that this requires legislation. The Government have indeed been exploring the options and have conducted a number of reviews and consultations over the years. But their insistence on seeking
“industry-led solutions, rather than further regulation”—[Official Report, Commons, Building Safety Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 455.]
to quote the current Construction Minister, Christopher Pincher, during Committee in the other place, has resulted in stalemate. With the industry inevitably divided between the beneficiaries and victims of retentions, this makes consensus unrealistic, if not impossible.
There have been some welcome steps forward. The snappily titled Guidance on Collaborative Procurement for Design and Construction to Support Building Safety, produced by the procurement advisory group set up by the Minister’s own department and issued just last month, reiterates the Hackitt report finding. It states:
“The use of cash retentions can also interfere with cashflow and can undermine the principles on which collaborative relationships are based. Arguably, any collaborative relationship should exclude the use of cash retentions. If exceptional circumstances require a retention, then it should be held in an account ring-fenced by a trust arrangement.”
I say amen to that, but it will not happen without government action. Ministers regularly give assurances that they recognise the importance of the issue. To quote Christopher Pincher again:
“I also recognise—I think we all do—the argument that poor, adversarial practices can lead to unsafe, low-quality building safety outcomes, as well as poor value for money.”—[Official Report, Commons, Building Safety Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 454.]
There is work going on in other government departments, notably BEIS, including through the Construction Leadership Council, which it co-chairs with industry, and which has a business models work- stream looking at how to eliminate retentions. The CLC has endorsed the road map produced by Build UK which aims for an end to retentions by 2025, but the road map on its own will not bring this about.
There are other steps that the Government could take. It is disappointing that there is no reference to discouraging retentions in the government-sponsored The Construction Playbook that sets out much positive guidance on procurement. It is hardly helpful that some departments, notably the Department for Education, continue to use retentions. Perhaps the Minister could say whether we can expect any progress in those areas.
We have seemingly endless reports, advisory groups, workstreams, road maps, guidance and good practice models, but without the essential legislative underpinning it seems unclear how the Hackitt report’s warning that poor payment culture leads to poor and unsafe buildings will be addressed. Meanwhile, retentions will continue to impact safety and quality.
I would welcome a clear indication from the Minister about which option the Government now favour: an outright ban on retentions, a trust arrangement such as a retention deposit scheme or some combination of both, and how they see any such approach being implemented, given the need for Government to give a lead. After all these years of reviews and consultations, a clear direction and plan are needed if the aspiration of resolving retentions by 2025 is to be met, so that smaller construction businesses, such as those represented by Actuate UK and previously by the Specialist Engineering Contractors’ Group, can rely on receiving funds due to them and are no longer hamstrung in their ability to invest in the training, skills and technology that are essential to ensuring safety.
I hope the Minister will say something in his response about how the specific concerns expressed in the Hackitt report about the impact of poor payment practices such as retentions on safety and quality will be addressed by the Bill’s new regulatory regime, and indeed how his department will ensure that the guidance provided by its procurement advisory group will be implemented.
This Bill will be—or should be—crucial in changing the culture of the construction sector in relation to safety and quality. Perhaps the Minister will tell us why taking long-overdue action to mitigate the impact of retentions on safety should not be included in it as one of the unsafe industry practices that the Bill seeks to address.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, like others, I welcome the introduction of this Bill, which will help restore confidence in homes built by the UK construction industry after the damaging revelations of recent months. If the Government’s ambitions for home ownership are to be achieved, buyers must have confidence in the homes they are buying and so must lenders.
I join others in wishing a long and happy retirement to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester who, when I was a Member of Parliament for Hampshire, had responsibility for my spiritual health.
I want to refer to the helpful covering letter that my noble friend the Minister wrote to us on 20 January, entitled “Introduction of the Building Safety Bill” and, in particular, to the section headed “Protecting Leaseholders from Unnecessary Costs”; I do so alongside the Statement on building safety made in the other place by the Secretary of State on 10 January. My noble friend’s letter says:
“The Secretary of State recently announced that leaseholders living in their homes should be protected from the costs of remediating historic building safety defects.”
Amen to that, but none of the subsequent paragraphs in the letter, or indeed anything in the Bill at the moment, gives a guarantee that this will be done, nor do they explain how it will be done. Hence the need for further amendments, to which I will return in a moment.
The next paragraph of the letter covers one of the building safety defects—namely, cladding—but not others. It makes it clear that the costs are to be met by a scheme funded by industry, alongside a further push to make sure that developers fix the unsafe buildings they built. Again, amen to that, but it follows that unless and until industry pays, the work will not be done, and the last thing leaseholders want is more delay.
The initiative to get the industry to contribute voluntarily is commendable but the volunteers are not going to pay for other peoples’ buildings; their shareholders would complain if they did. We know that many of the offending companies either cannot pay or will not pay. At the moment, leaseholders have no bankable guarantee that their buildings will be fixed with someone else paying. I welcome all the recent initiatives to help leaseholders and applaud the work of my noble friend the Minister for his tireless campaign behind the scenes but, as he recognised in his opening remarks, we are not there yet.
Now we have to turn to the Statement I referred to earlier, which clearly stated:
“We will take action to end the scandal and protect leaseholders.”
The Secretary of State went on to say:
“We will make industry pay to fix all of the remaining problems and help to cover the range of costs facing leaseholders.”
The Statement concluded:
“I can confirm to the House today that if they do not, we will impose a solution on them, if necessary, in law.”
When pressed by an Opposition MP, the Secretary of State said in reply:
“She specifically requested that we provide amendments to the Building Safety Bill to ensure that there is statutory protection for leaseholders. That is our intention—we intend to bring forward those amendments—and I look forward to working with her and colleagues across the House to provide the most robust legal protection.”
So the Secretary of State must have some idea of the sorts of amendments that he plans to bring forward.
Later, he clarified what he meant by statutory protection:
“First, we will make sure that we provide leaseholders with statutory protection—that is what we aim to do and we will work with colleagues across the House to ensure that that statutory protection extends to all the work required to make buildings safe.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; cols. 285-91.]
Note that that commitment extends to all building work, not just cladding. Again, this is all very good news, and I commend the work of my noble friend for pressing for those commitments. However, it raises some questions—I appreciate that my noble friend may not have all the answers, but he may be able to reply in general terms.
First, many leaseholders are currently threatened with repossession, eviction and bankruptcy because at the moment they are currently legally liable for the bills, which the Secretary of State has recognised are in no way their fault. They have been promised statutory protection—but statutory protection from what, and from when? Are buy-to-let landlords included, and what about private leaseholders in blocks owned by social landlords?
Does this protection cover all the work done for which they have been invoiced but not paid; does it cover invoices only from the date of the Statement? Does it become operative only when the necessary legislation is passed? Does it cover only cladding or—as one of the quotes I just referred to implies—all safety work? Should it be retrospective, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, suggested in her opening remarks? Leaseholders need clarity on these issues, and they need it now.
Then, if both the statutory protection and the legislation to oblige industry to pay are to be included in this legislation—again, as the Secretary of State implied—that is a high legislative hurdle in a very short timescale. What progress has been made in drafting the necessary clauses? They are bound to be controversial if they are to be effective, and the House is allergic to Henry VIII clauses.
I and my noble friend Lord Blencathra—the so-called Awkward Squad; an unusual name for two former Conservative Government Chief Whips—are willing to help tackle the issues that will need resolving. How does one define a delegated powers clause which allows the Government to decide the meaning of “defective construction”, particularly if there has been no breach of building regulations? Will there be an appeals procedure? How do we do this without delaying essential remedial work? Will some sort of credit facility be available until the cash comes in? Will the scheme be proof against ECHR challenge?
How do we enforce against foreign companies domiciled overseas, where they have wound up the offending subsidiaries—and, if we cannot, how will the resulting shortfall be met if no more funds are available from the Treasury?
I hope my noble friend has some of the answers, not just for the sake of concluding our debate this evening but for the sake of leaseholders, who will be hanging on every word of his reply.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I agree very strongly with what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said. First, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I welcome the Bill strongly. I think I will be happier if it includes, in addition to residential buildings over 18 metres, all high-risk buildings, and I hope we will take that further in Committee.
The disaster at Grenfell represents one of the biggest failures of public policy in recent decades. The report of Dame Judith Hackitt in May 2018 said that the current system was not fit for purpose, so it is vital that this new system works. This Bill represents a fundamental reform of the building safety system. It may have taken four years to get to this point—which is a long time—but it seems to me that it is four years well spent. Of course, even the best systems for securing safety will depend on the people who carry out the new processes. I will say something more about that in a moment.
But first, I want to approach the Bill from the perspective of a new occupant of a high-rise residential block. I would want to feel confident that I knew the following before I moved in: is there more than one lift and more than one staircase? Are there secure emergency exits? What are the evacuation rules? Have they been tested and does everyone know what they are—or do we stay put in a fire? Are there high-quality fire doors in common areas that are kept closed, and high-quality fire doors as part of my own property, such as my front door? Are there sprinklers—and if not, why not? Have the building materials been tested properly and are they safe? Who is responsible for safety? Is there a named person monitoring my block to whom I can go with concerns? Are there regular residents’ meetings to raise issues of concern? Are the results of fire safety inspections public for residents to read? Is it clear what I have to do myself to maintain safety, and what penalties might there be for non-participation? Are there regular electrical safety checks, and who undertakes and registers these?
We will explore many of these issues in Committee, and some, of course, lie in the Fire Safety Act 2021. But the success of this Bill will all depend on the people carrying it out: their training, competence and understanding of their role, and the golden thread of information held in one place, which is a such an important part of the procedures in the Bill. In the end, of course, it is everybody’s responsibility to make sure that Grenfell can never happen again.
As the Minister said in his letter of 20 January, this is a complex and technical Bill. Importantly, there are a lot of new roles in it, and they all seem to be necessary. There are responsible persons, accountable persons, principal accountable persons, duty-holders, clients—who will have to approve the competence of the principal designer and the principal contractor—other designers and contractors, building safety managers, registered building inspectors, building owners, insurers, and the new homes ombudsman. And there will be others, not least the national regulator for construction projects. It will be vital that everybody knows who is responsible for what exactly, and that there is a regular review of them undertaken through the building safety regulator and the Government.
The crucial role will be that of the new building safety regulator within the Health and Safety Executive, who will have the key role in bringing together the fire and rescue services and local authority experts, including the building control staff, to make regulatory decisions. It will be critical that the regulator drives ahead with improving competence within the sector and within the unified building control profession common to the public and private sectors. This system will work only if everyone working as part of it has the required set of knowledge and expertise.
Much will depend on the gateway structure—which I strongly welcome—so that the risks are evaluated at every stage of a new building’s design and construction. In particular, in terms of gateway 1, I would like to be clearer about what actions are being taken to improve training. It will matter because it relates in part to the planning system, both in terms of application and the permission itself. I submit that local government planning authorities will need to give some substantial thought to the training of councillors.
I wish the Bill well. It is really important and I commend all those involved in getting us to this position because it is a substantial achievement. I hope that the Minister may agree to some system of annual reporting to Parliament on the working of the new structure, that roles are clear and that the blame culture has been significantly reduced, if not eliminated. I hope he will give further thought, too, to how competence will be assessed and reported.
Perhaps I may raise one other issue, which relates to permitted development rights. Are the Government thinking of restricting those rights when office blocks are converted into residential flats of whatever height?
I hope it will not prove the case that too much is being left to secondary legislation. It would be helpful to see as much further information as can be brought forward in Committee and on Report as possible; otherwise there will be a great deal of work to do in assessing that secondary legislation. That said, I commend the Bill.
Lord Crisp (CB)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, I commend the Bill and very much welcome the concurrent announcements on funding. I come to this from a health background. Health, housing and buildings are intimately connected. However, I have to say that I have been on a learning curve and have talked to a lot of people over the past few days, including architects, builders and others.
I have heard about exactly what the Minister, my noble friend Lord Best and others have commented on: the crisis in construction. As some have said to me, there is a race to the bottom, with people getting away with what they can and a culture in which clients stand back and architects no longer have responsibility for quality. As one person said to me, quality has been devolved to the contractor, so people are marking their own homework or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, said, shifting blame from one to the other. This is a systemic issue and not about individuals. I am delighted that the Minister and the Government have ambitions to address that system.
I recognise that the immediate focus is on high buildings and the response to Grenfell, that the matter is urgent and that this has been a long time coming. However, there is a tension here between that short-term ambition and the wider remit of the Bill. Like other noble Lords, I have enormous sympathy for the families of those who have died and am deeply moved by the stories we have heard in your Lordships’ Chamber and elsewhere—as well as by the pressure and problems that people have faced over the past four years, waiting to know what will happen to their investment, home or whatever. The Bill cannot avoid these wider issues and I do not really think that the Government want to.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and other noble Lords reminded us that the Hackitt report talked at length about culture change and the need to force things to be done differently. I welcome the framework that has been developed around accountability, responsible officers and the golden thread. I should be interested to understand in Committee and on Report how those will be worked out in more detail.
We also need a change in how we think about safety—not as a narrow technical concept about freedom from immediate injury but as something much broader, perhaps more common-sense, linking to health and well-being. It should be a concept that people would recognise. If they were thinking about safety in buildings, they would think about damp, cold, poor air circulation and buildings where falls are likely to happen on the stairs, as well as fire and electrical faults that cause fire, and much more—a wider concept of safety. All that is, of course, appropriate to the Long Title of the Bill, which is to make
“provision about the safety of people in or about buildings and the standard of buildings”.
There are links here to so much else across government and to Bills that are coming or are already in front of your Lordships’ House. That is particularly important at a time when we perhaps move on from the pandemic, when we have seen the importance of people’s homes in their lives. If there is a vision for this country, it must include decent homes and buildings that are safe in all the aspects that I have talked about. After all, homes are part of the fundamental foundation for much of our lives.
There are obvious links with the Health and Care Bill going through the House. A number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of the links between health and housing, recognising that until 50 or 60 years ago health and housing were covered by the same Secretary of State. There is overwhelming evidence of the relationship between people’s mental and physical health, and the design of their homes and neighbourhoods. That is set out by Public Health England and includes a wide range of structural and place-based factors, from the need for active travel and walkable streets to reducing air pollution, and to minimum space, accessibility and light standards. It is said that all that costs the NHS in the region of £1.4 billion a year, but what is the wider cost to individuals and society?
As regards the levelling-up White Paper and other Bills to come, we all know that people on lower incomes tend to live in poorer-standard homes in poorer environments and have poorer life expectations as a result. I will not, at this stage, ask the Minister how this Bill intersects with the new policies for levelling up, although no doubt that will come up again in Committee.
In Committee I will raise an amendment on safety having a wiser definition—something more like freedom from the risk of harm arriving from the location, construction or operation of buildings that may injure the health and well-being of the individual. The Building Safety Bill is an opportunity to change fundamentally the way we deliver homes and places with multiple benefits to people—a real culture change. Putting safety, in the sense that I am talking about it, at the heart of decision-making would be a positive legacy from the challenges of the pandemic and a response to the tragedy of Grenfell, and would match the ambition at the heart of the levelling-up agenda.
On that note, it is my great privilege to hand over to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester for his valedictory speech.
The Lord Bishop of Winchester (Valedictory Speech)
My Lords, by the end of the 19th century, there had been a significant evolution in the quality of housing, particularly in England. The standout feature of this development is the terraced house. In contrast to continental Europe, our towns and cities abound with terraced houses of all kinds, appealing to nearly all levels of income. The Victorians had strict building regulations for terraced housing and in my own diocese there was also the innovation of a cavity wall system in the city of Southampton. Alongside this development came improvements in safe drinking water and sewerage management. The combination of good housing and water management facilitated good health. Put simply, caring for building safety is caring for the health of our nation. Building regulations are crucial.
Positively, safe housing implies shelter, comfort, security and privacy. It also implies protection from people, pests, hazards and disease. Thus building regulations must require the co-ordination of all those involved in housing provision around the core value of safety as an aspect of national health and well-being. My episcopal friend, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, will say more about this in his speech. Here, perhaps I may take this opportunity to offer a short reflection on my time in this House, as I take my leave at the end of this week and retire in Plymouth, where there are many terraced houses.
From these Benches we do not often show our theological workings in speeches. During my time here, I have come to see the importance of a social imagination shaped by what Jesus often talked about and taught us to pray about: that God’s kingdom come and his will be done. With a social imagination of God’s justice, truth, mercy and love, both the weighty concerns of our nation and the minutiae of legislation can be opportunities for the coming of the kingdom. With such an imagination, we may dare to believe that God’s kingdom comes in fashioning good legislation for the better ordering of our national life and its common good. Hence the importance of fair distribution of safety costs, as emphasised by the right reverend Prelates in the recent fire safety debates. As a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have participated using the agreed procedures for our debates, but I am also motivated by a concern that the love of God is made visible in the love of neighbour. My hope is to see God’s kingdom come enacted in practical legislation. It is from this perspective that our daily prayers invoke the wisdom of God in all our decision-making.
During my time, I have been most concerned with the institutions of further and higher education, so it has been a privilege to have participated in debates on Bills on these issues. For many, the institutions of FE and HE, both colleges and universities, become anchor institutions for students’ personal development and flourishing, and in their preparation and skilling to contribute to our society. If we are to “build back better” and “level up” our communities, we must continue to invest in, sustain and hold accountable our FE and HE institutions. I have urged for both a diversity of provision, and a co-ordination of enterprise between FE and HE. Accessible and, I hope, inspirational vision documents for FE and HE have been published by the Church of England during my time. While these are faith documents, they express their perspectives in the language of a social imagination that we may all share: wisdom, community, virtue, common good, vocation, transformation and hope.
I thank all those who have supported me: my episcopal colleagues, particularly the Convenor of the Lords spiritual, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham; the parliamentary support team, led by Richard Chapman; and especially my parliamentary assistants, not least my son, Johnny Dakin, who was seconded on a work placement as part of his first degree, and latterly Madeleine Hayden, who also worked tirelessly to promote FE and HE in church forums. The Reverend Gary Neave has been an outstanding colleague and has supported my FE and HE work. To the doorkeepers who remind Bishops about our forthcoming prayer duties: thank you for the personal nudge. I also acknowledge my unique link with Black Rod in our shared responsibilities as officers of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. I am glad not to have drawn anything other than felicitous attention from that office during my time.
It has been a privilege to be in your Lordships’ company during the years of my tenure. I shall retire with many good memories of informative debates, and of having had the opportunity to play a tiny part in the great traditions of this House as it seeks to inform and revise the legislative programme of Her Majesty’s Government. Deputy Lord Speaker, and through you, Lord Speaker, may God grant you wisdom and strength as you oversee this House. And may the building regulations that apply to our national housing stock be applied to the renovations of this great Palace of Westminster, that the health of all here be enriched and prolonged.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I count it a great privilege to speak following the valedictory speech of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Winchester. He has indeed been a powerful advocate, both in your Lordships’ House and in the Church, for our nation’s further and higher education sector. In that capacity, he has also been a great personal supporter and encouragement for me, in my own rather modest efforts at lifelong learning. Along with this, his passion for the global Anglican Communion and his strong links with Africa will be much missed, both in this House and in the House of Bishops of the Church of England. We all wish him a long, happy and fruitful retirement, and indeed pray that he will be safe in his new home.
In turning to the substance of this debate, I declare my interests as set out in the register, as chair of Wythenshawe Community Housing Group and as deputy chair of the Church Commissioners for England, both of whom are substantial residential landlords. Last year the Archbishops’ commission on housing reported, with recommendations for both Church and State. In the debate in this House, my most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury drew attention to the five principles which underlie the findings of that commission: that every household should have a home that is sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying. As he said in that debate,
“from almshouses to housing associations, (the Church) has for centuries been involved in the provision of decent places to live. We do not do this just to be nice—we are not an NGO with a pointy roof—but because we believe that Christ commands us to love our neighbour.”—[Official Report, 24/3/21; col. GC 38.]
We on these Benches heartily welcome this Bill as a means to progress the principles enshrined in the Coming Home report.
The proposed building safety regulator is particularly welcome. As the chair of a housing association, I am familiar with the work of the regulator in that part of the housing sector, where regulation is seen as not simply about punishing bad practice, but as promoting good practice. I welcome this, not least since theologically I am drawn far more to the advocacy of virtue than the denunciation of sin.
While I accept that the regulator of social housing has a particular role as a consequence of the state funds that support the sector, I struggle to agree that issues of safety are substantially different between different forms of tenure. I hope that as this Bill progresses, we will be able to clarify and, where need be, strengthen the regulator’s role.
Many noble Lords have already drawn our attention to the fire safety scandal in medium- and high-rise buildings. I deliberately do not refer to it as a cladding scandal; while it may have come to our attention through the tragic loss of life at Grenfell Tower, what has been exposed is much wider. It has been my privilege this last couple of years to support the campaigning efforts of the Manchester Cladiators. These are ordinary men and women who purchased properties in good faith, and now find their homes are technically worthless. Not only that, but they face unaffordable costs in terms of remediation works and in paying for interim measures.
I am proud that my housing association has spent a considerable sum to remediate taller buildings, and without requiring leaseholders to pay for the work. But that does not come without a cost. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, has already said, many housing associations are now cutting newbuild plans in order to focus spending on building safety. We need both safe homes and more homes. I urge the Minister, whose understanding and sympathy have helped move matters forward significantly in recent months, to press on his colleagues, perhaps particularly in Her Majesty’s Treasury, that the one-off costs of remediating a crisis that has built up largely unacknowledged and over many years should not be taken from the budgets required for the regular ongoing work of building the new affordable homes that this nation badly needs.
For many of us in your Lordships’ House, this matter will not have been rectified until two things have happened: that all affected properties can be bought, sold and insured at their full, true value, with mortgage providers content to lend against that full value and that this is achieved without the costs being borne by the leaseholders. In that category, I include individuals who have sublet properties that they had to move out of, and now cannot sell. Meeting these two criteria will require the legislation we pass to cover not only buildings of over six storeys or 18 metres in height, but to encompass buildings of four storeys or 11 metres tall, which I believe is the height standard supported by the Fire Brigades Union, whose members attend fires in such properties. I welcome assurances from Her Majesty’s Government that they will seek to bring forward new provisions as the Bill progresses. I and my friends on these Benches will be scrutinising those amendments carefully as well as considering support for other amendments as noble Lords may bring before us.
I will end my remarks by quoting Scripture. On the matter of building safety legislation, Deuteronomy Chapter 22, Verse 8, reads as follows:
“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, otherwise you might have blood guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it”.
If I may be permitted a pun, they were building on biblical foundations—foundations laid in that book around 3,000 years ago. We must consider not only parapets, but the general safety of our building.
For today, we are seeking to find the right legislation that will protect our fellow citizens in their homes. It is a sacred duty—if we fail, we risk drawing that same blood guilt on this House. I welcome this Bill and look forward to supporting and strengthening it as it progresses through your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as recorded in the register.
I am delighted to be making a short contribution to this very welcome Bill. I congratulate the Minister and his team, as have others this afternoon, on the content of this long-awaited and very necessary Bill. I know that all noble Lords taking part today recognise the necessity for the Bill to be passed speedily, and hope that all our contributions bring about a positive outcome. I join others in giving warm wishes for the retirement of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, and hope he recognises that a good life does exist after life in the House of Lords. We thank him most sincerely for his very thoughtful contribution to this very important debate.
Dame Judith Hackitt’s review, Building a Safer Future, recommended a culture change within the construction industry. It also said that this had to be underpinned with more emphasis on competence and regulatory oversight.
A number of noble Lords have mentioned professional compliance. I note from the briefing I received from the Architects Registration Board that Clauses 130 to 132 directly change its responsibilities and powers in a very positive way. Professional regulation has an important role in creating a culture of safety in all buildings. The public, who use the services of professionals such as architects, have the right to expect that, once qualified, they are competent and that they will maintain and develop skills and knowledge throughout their working lives. At present, the only way to assess continuing development is if there is a disciplinary complaint. Clause 130 will give the power to ensure that continuing professional development is carried out throughout an architect’s career. The Bill also gives powers to publish disciplinary orders against an architect on the register. Clause 130 will help promote public confidence in the profession and deter incompetence and poor professional conduct.
Architects are not the only professionals involved in the construction industry. We heard the most alarming tales from my noble friend Lady Sanderson of buck-passing between professionals after the Grenfell tragedy. I am sure the House would value more information from the Minister as to how the Bill will help raise the bar of competence of other professionals, including approved inspectors.
As a member of the RoSPA presidential team, I was shocked to hear the statistics behind stair accidents in the United Kingdom—43,000 hospital admissions every year is a horrifying number. For many, a fall on the stairs will lead to injuries from which they can never fully recover. An accident on the stairs can cause irreparable damage—not only physical injury but also loss of confidence. Such a fall can rob someone of their independence, resulting in the need for residential care. From there, the burden is often passed on to family members and the NHS. Safer stairs would mean safer homes, and that in turn would mean not only that many lives would be saved but also that their quality would be infinitely improved. The numbers clearly show that stair accidents are a more silent, but more preventable, danger than fires. The number of hospital admissions caused by falls, compared to those caused by burns, is in the ratio 235:1. Our staircases are a very real danger, hiding in plain sight.
Simple solutions to complicated problems are hard to come by, but enshrining the most up-to-date industry standard for stairs into law represents genuine low-hanging fruit. It is a cost-free, industry-approved, ready-made measure which would create a 60% reduction in falls in new builds. As the issue of stair safety is of interest and concern to so many, will the Minister support regulations to ensure that the existing British safety standard is incorporated into the Bill?
I know that including regulations on the face of a Bill is sometimes viewed as inappropriate. I believe there is precedent for including standards such as this in primary legislation. For example, the recent ban on combustible materials has come about by updating Regulation 7 of the Building Regulations 2010. Where legislation can be used to make buildings safer at no extra cost to the taxpayer, surely it is wise to do so. Leaving regulations to secondary legislation can be a long drawn-out process.
With such high numbers of accidents on staircases, speed of implementation is essential. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, Grenfell was, and still is, a safety scandal and a tragedy. The subsequent wrangling as to who should be responsible for remedying fire safety in unsafe buildings is an even bigger tragedy and scandal. I commend the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, who really brought home just how tragic the incident was. It is important that this Bill passes your Lordships’ House, though with improvements, and I hope that Grenfell can be a watershed moment for wider safety in homes. Apart from high-profile tragedies, there are daily, small and quiet tragedies taking place in terms of building safety that could, through the simple amendment already suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, be remedied in this Bill to save lives.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, there are clear statistics about the profile of falls on stairs which bear repetition. They claim the lives of more than 700 people in England every year and are the cause of 43,000 hospital admissions. It is estimated that the most up-to-date British standard on stair design, if adopted, would reduce falls in new homes by 60%. Even though this standard has been in place since 2010, it is only guidance and not a legal requirement. In most new homes, it is simply not happening. Housebuilders go in packs. Unless they are all mandated, none of them will stick their head above the parapet—I hope we are not talking about the parapet that the right reverend Prelate the mentioned.
This Bill could make implementation of the standard statutory and save not only lives but misery for many people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, there are precedents for making such standards statutory. The standard is tried and tested and was subject to extensive consultation at the time of its introduction more than 10 years ago. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—which I thank for its briefing—has now taken views extensively on making the standard statutory in new homes. It has spoken to homebuilders, private and social housing providers, local government and fire chiefs, and no one seems to be against such a move.
The risk from falls on stairs is increasing as the proportion of older people in the population grows—I am sure that this phenomenon is of interest to Members in your Lordships’ House. In addition, it is a fascinating fact that, in all age groups, feet are getting bigger. Overstepping traditional stair tread sizes causes falls. Falls on stairs are problematic for fire evacuations, yet modest increases in the size of stair treads, the provision of handrails and slip-resistant measures have a disproportionately beneficial effect. The standard can be implemented in new homes at minimal or no cost. I hope that the Minister will grasp the opportunity to incorporate this affordable, simple and effective measure into the Bill to save lives and reduce life-changing injuries.
In the other place, the Minister deferred the issue to the building safety regulator. We should not have to wait for the regulator to be established, to gather evidence to identify emerging issues in the safety and performance of buildings, including staircases, and to make recommendations to Ministers, who will consider whether change to standards or guidance is needed. That seems to me a rather long and tortuous process, when the evidence of the effectiveness of the measures and the severity of the risk is already available. The standard has existed for 11 years. The guidance has not worked. This Bill provides the opportunity to tackle these hundreds of small, quiet tragedies that happen every year. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register. I congratulate the Minister on his passionate introduction to this important Bill—a Bill that is the result of the terrible tragedy at Grenfell Tower. Dealing with the safety of high-rise buildings, whether they provide homes for families or offices for workers, is vital in a society that prides itself on looking after everyone, no matter their circumstances. The Bill is detailed and complex and, although it deals mainly with high-rise buildings, it has other sections dealing with local government building control.
Fire safety, regardless of cladding issues, has always been an aspect of dwellings that are likely to house occupants, whether this is an HMO or a block of flats designed for family units. Having spent some time in the past sitting on a fire authority, I wonder whether the capacity of the fire service has been considered in relation to the provisions of this Bill. As arson has decreased over the years—thank goodness—the emphasis of the fire service has shifted from mainly firefighting to mainly prevention, which is always better than cure.
There are a number of new regulators and enforcers in this Bill. There is a requirement for a principal accountable person to be specific to each building within scope. Those buildings out of scope will be dealt with by local building control. Will local authorities have sufficient capacity and financial resources to fulfil these new complex conditions? Each building will require a building assessment certificate. There will be duties to co-operate, communicate, co-ordinate and appoint competent people. I will return to this competence shortly. For each building, there are three gateways which must be completed, and certification given, before the building can be occupied. I welcome these stringent measures designed to ensure safety and save lives.
Much of the detail will come forward from the Secretary of State through secondary legislation. Trading standards will have its enforcement powers extended to meet the new regulatory requirements. I welcome this, but I wonder whether trading standards will also have sufficient resources to meet these new demands. This leads me on to whether there will be serious issues, including on construction-product testing, and the inspection, competence and skills of fire risk assessors. Ensuring a sufficient supply of fire-risk assessors, installers, building managers and responsible persons who are competent is key. How will the Government ensure that there are sufficient skilled and competent people to fulfil these vital roles?
There is the FE sector, which uses regulated qualifications to train the workforce, including vocational qualifications, NVQs. There are also many qualifications offered by several awarding organisations that can be mapped and amended to use as a platform for upskilling the workforce and to show competence. Are the right people in place to implement this? The supply of competent people to carry out these roles is vital.
The independent review into the testing of construction products has not yet been published. How can Parliament effectively scrutinise the Building Safety Bill without sight of this report? The House does not know what progress has been made to establish a national regulator for construction products to enforce new rules and ensure that the materials used to build homes are safe. Can the Minister say when is this likely to happen?
There are currently a small number of accredited certification bodies with cladding-testing sites in the UK. This means a limited number of furnaces available to test all combustible building and construction material and products, including fire doors. This has led to a delay in lead time for furnace testing. Will manufacturers, therefore, be able to ensure capacity to service the industry? Certification bodies at testing sites are managed by private sector companies, and the woodworking and joinery sector has serious reservations about the increasing price of testing, as demand increases and there is limited supply. This could lead to increasing prices as the call of shareholders becomes louder, measured against the quality of service and provision?
As I said earlier, fire safety is not just about cladding. On 17 June 2020, the results of the 2019 fire door inspection scheme were published. There were more than 100,000 inspections on more than 2,700 buildings. Of the buildings inspected, 37% had sleeping accommodation, 25% housed the elderly and 5% housed disabled people or people with cognitive needs. From the doors inspected, 76% were condemned as not fit for purpose, and 57% were deemed to need small-scale maintenance. The top reasons for condemning the doors were: excessive gaps around doors that had not been installed correctly; poorly adjusted door closers; poor smoke seals; and non-compatible expanding foam. Only 24% of doors inspected had third-party certification and were installed and maintained correctly.
It would seem that private sector involvement in the fire safety of buildings, especially doors, has led to lower standards, as feared by the FBU. Leaving cladding to one side, properly fitted, effective doors are essential to prevent the spread of fire and provide safe havens and methods of escape during a fire. It is necessary to have sufficient qualified, trained fire inspectors, ensuring that the internal issues around fire safety are dealt with effectively, especially where central staircases are in place, protected by working fire doors. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate, and I fully support the Bill.
Lord Etherton (CB)
My Lords, I also warmly welcome this Bill and the Minister’s introductory words. I am also very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester for his thoughtful comments.
I support the call by many, including the Law Society, for the Government to identify sufficient funding to cover the full cost of cladding remediation to ensure that no leaseholder faces the prospect of picking up the bill themselves, regardless of block height. However, I am concentrating on a situation in which that has not yet happened: a situation that was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. It is probably going to take years for this situation to be resolved, either by payment of compensation to have remediation work carried out or by compelling developers to carry out the remediation work themselves. In the meantime, there is an obviously liability that needs to be addressed by someone on whom it will fall.
In this period of time, when there is still work to be done, and at a cost, the relations between the landlord and the tenant are governed by the terms of their lease. In cases of leases of less than seven years, there is no problem, because the landlord cannot recover the costs of repair and maintenance from the tenant. In the case of leases of more than seven years, there will almost inevitably be obligations on the landlord to repair common parts, including the exterior, but expenses will be recoverable, in whole or in part, by way of a service charge payable by the tenant. That situation is, unless something else comes into play, as I said, likely to continue for a considerable period of time.
My comments are really directed to the position of the landlord in relation to these service charges, and against the background that many small, residential, tenanted blocks of flats are owned not by large, profitable property companies but by private individuals. They are not necessarily wealthy but may have wanted some additional income—people who have bought to let or invested their personal pension in a residential block. There may be a situation in which all or some of the tenants have bought the freehold, or indeed the common parts may be held by way of commonhold.
The issue of how these costs in relation to remediation are to be addressed in this interim period—if I can call it that—is found in Part 5 of the Bill. The effect of Part 5 is to provide for amendments to be made to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. I am concerned with the provisions that require the landlord to, among other things,
“take reasonable steps to ascertain whether monies may be obtained from a third party in connection with the undertaking of the remediation works and, if so, to obtain monies from the third party”.
That is a mandatory requirement, not one dependent on discretion.
New Clause 20D(3), to be inserted into the 1985 Act, says:
“In subsection (2)(b) the reference to obtaining monies from a third party includes obtaining monies … pursuant to a claim made against … a developer … or … a person involved in carrying out works in relation to the building.”
A further new subsection provides that if there is a “failure to comply” with that obligation,
“a tenant may make an application for an order that all or any of remediation costs are not to be regarded as relevant costs to be taken into account in determining the amount of any service charge payable by … the tenant”.
Part 5 envisages that in this interim period the landlord is under a requirement to, among other things, take steps to see whether there is a claim and to pursue it. If the landlord—whether a he, a she or an it—fails to do so, there can be an application to the court for an order that the service charge is abated in consequence. As I see it, the difficulty with this is that it will cause the most enormous amount of dispute. Who is to say how much a landlord of the type I have described should properly spend on a claim?
Everybody is agreed—I certainly agree—that it would be quite wrong to expect leaseholders to undertake costly and complex litigation. This sort of dispute in relation to defective building work is among the most expensive, long-drawn-out and complex of all litigation—there is a special court designed to deal with it, the Technology and Construction Court.
Equally, it seems quite wrong for the landlords I have described—the private landlords, not the large companies—to have to involve themselves in exactly the same type of litigation. Indeed, I expect that, were they to do so, the tenants might well say, “I’m not going to pay because you should never have spent so much money on it”. You are left with a dilemma in which steps must be taken by the landlord in relation to potential third-party claims, but there is no indication at all of what would be reasonable. How much money should be spent? For how long should the claim just be advised upon? How long should it continue?
There is a provision that:
“The Secretary of State may issue guidance about the taking of steps under subsection (2),”
which I have referred to,
“and may revise or withdraw any issued guidance … proof of compliance with any applicable guidance may be relied on as tending to establish that there was no such failure.”
I urge the Minister and the department to consider very carefully indeed whether it is appropriate to require all landlords to take those steps as a mandatory matter in view of all the costs and the absolutely inevitable dispute between tenants and landlords in relation to who is to bear those costs as reasonable service charge costs.
One solution might be to provide in the guidance, if not in the Bill, that the amount to be spent will be reasonable if it is limited to, let us say, a proportion of the annual rents. There must be some kind of qualification to prevent yet more disputes and more distress.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, it has been my privilege to be involved in public and private housing for over 50 years now. I was chairman of the housing committee in the London Borough of Islington from 1968 to 1971 and represented Northampton South—the main, central part of Northampton—on a fourth-generation development plan. I looked back on the Bills that have passed since I got into Parliament in February 1974 and can think of no Bill more important than the one before us. Having done that little bit of research, I am thankful that my noble friend on the Front Bench will take charge of it and see us through the challenging package ahead of us.
I want to pick out one or two areas that have not been spoken about this evening. Property protection is not a consideration of the fire safety building regulations. Currently, the fire safety building regulations are based on a consideration of life-saving only—and quite rightly so. The life-saving limitation means that the sole focus of the fire safety building design is the safe evacuation of all occupants in the event of a fire. While life safety is clearly paramount, the consequence of this approach is that it leads to the design of disposable buildings—not the most technical term in the world—which too often results in disproportionate damage when fire strikes. My understanding is that Her Majesty’s Government have commissioned some research to assess the merits of a property protection consideration. I hope we can discuss that in Committee, and I look forward to taking part in that discussion.
Being at the ripe age of 85, I was going to say something about safer stairs, but my noble friend Lady Eaton covered it more than adequately. I back her up and will be happy to join her if she tables an amendment to enshrine British Standard 5395-1 in law. I will support her on that.
I came relatively fresh to this whole business; obviously, I was well aware of the tragedy of Grenfell. The more I look it, the more I think we now seem to be in slight danger of differentiating one type of leaseholder from another. In a Bill as comprehensive as this, that would not be a sensible move. Fundamentally, all leaseholders—whether owner-occupiers or individual landlords—should be treated equally. Not to do so is not only unfair but, I suspect, unnecessary. Buy-to-let landlords and owner-occupier leaseholders face the same problems with developers, through no fault of their own. We also find certain developments where there is a mixture, so in my judgment it would be invidious to deal with just one category rather than another.
On the Bill as it stands, the “golden thread” referred to by Judith Hackitt in her final report is very welcome. It seems so vital. I have had the privilege of working in the aviation industry and being an RAF pilot. Every plane that is made has a logbook and a life history of that plane. We see how vital that is, even in today’s world with sophisticated engineering, given the tragedy of the recent Boeings that crashed. You need that history to know how to change and develop. I think it will be welcomed by the industry.
I also looked at the construction products and testing facilities. Some industries test at great length, but I am afraid it is very weak in this industry and we really need to toughen that up. The original problem at Grenfell probably lay with that cladding and its combustibility.
That is enough from me, other than just to make one point. The Bill needs to be implemented successfully. There needs to be a situation in which industry is fully prepared to operate under the new regulatory scheme and it is very important for industry to be provided with clarity and timescales. I know the Secretary of State feels very strongly about this but in my experience, as someone who has been in politics a long time, it is no good shouting at people; you have to work with them. You have to be a bit devious and find a way through the back door. I urge my noble friend to persuade his right honourable friend to do just that.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I begin by again offering my condolences to the friends and family of those who died in the tragic Grenfell Tower fire and remind the House that, like my noble friend, I too had a brief stint in DCLG as the Minister with responsibility for building regulations. Like all noble Lords who have spoken already, I am broadly supportive of the Bill so, with the limitations of time, I just want to raise three issues that I think should be included in the Bill and will help the Minister achieve his objective of making it the best possible Bill.
The Bill makes provision for the safety of people in or about buildings and the standard of buildings, so we should be considering the impact of poor-quality homes on the safety of the people who live in them, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and by both right reverend Prelates. However, the Building Research Establishment’s chief executive claims:
“Millions of individuals and families are living in unhealthy housing—a reality that is having a huge impact on the NHS.”
According to one study, that costs the NHS in England alone £1.4 billion a year.
Even more worrying is the number of deaths caused by poor-quality homes. Based on the most recently available ONS figures for excess winter deaths, the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action has estimated that well over 8,500 people died from cold in the winter just two years ago, with the charity’s CEO, Adam Scorer, commenting:
“Low incomes, high energy costs and poor heating and insulation all combined to leave them in conditions which were unfit to help them survive the cold weather.”
Of course, given the significantly rising fuel bills that we now have, we could see even higher death rates in future years unless action is taken.
We still have over 13.5 million homes deemed below band C on the energy performance rating. Over 3 million such homes are occupied by families deemed fuel-poor—people who simply cannot afford to stay warm. Given that the impetus for the Bill was the tragic Grenfell fire, we should also recognise that the number of poorly insulated homes is rising as dangerous cladding, which provided heat insulation, is removed from other blocks, leading to newspaper headlines such as:
“The tower block where they put foil behind the radiators and wear dressing gowns all day to keep warm … this is life in Malus Court”
as that tower block is stripped of its cladding. A major energy insulation programme is urgently needed.
The Government have already set themselves two extremely welcome targets. First, all fuel-poor households should be brought up to EPC band C by 2030 and, secondly, all other households should be brought up to EPC band C by 2035. However, to give the industry the confidence it needs to invest, these targets should be enshrined in legislation. We have heard today, and had it confirmed half an hour ago in the Minister’s letter to us all, that placing targets in law is right for the levelling-up programme, so I certainly believe it is right for the home energy efficiency target. I have a Private Member’s Bill to this effect, but I would be very happy to hand it over to the Minister so that he can include it in this Bill, so that the Government’s promises are turned into legal realities. I look forward to his reaction.
I turn to another issue. The disastrous fires at Grenfell Tower in 2017, Shepherd’s Court in 2016 and Lakanal House in 2009 were all started by faulty electrical goods. Electrical Safety First has calculated that in the last five years there were 1,169 fires in high-rise blocks of flats attributed to faulty electrical domestic appliances. It has undertaken investigations into the safety of electrical products sold online, finding that 14 out of 15 electrical products randomly purchased online were unsafe. It found white goods that had been recalled by the manufacturer because they were potentially unsafe still being sold to consumers on online marketplaces. The Office for Product Safety and Standards reported that of 29 unsafe electrical products it had identified, 27 were listed for sale on online marketplaces.
The Government say in their UK product safety review that they are
“committed to ensuring that only safe products can be placed on the market now and in the future”,
but it seems these fine words do not apply to the increasing number of electrical goods bought online. Electrical Safety First believes the current regulatory provisions are inadequate. The NAO refers to
“gaps in regulators’ powers to regulate online marketplaces”
The PAC shares the same view, noting that
“under current legislation, online marketplaces are not responsible for the safety of products sold by third parties on their platforms.”
Can the Minister explain why
“ensuring that only safe products can be placed on the market”
appears to apply to shopping on the high street but not to online marketplaces? Will he use the Bill to remedy this omission? At the same time, can he explain why, contrary to the promise in the social housing White Paper that standards in social housing should be the same as in private housing, a private landlord has to ensure the safety of electrical installations but a private residential owner or social landlord does not? Does he acknowledge these problems and, again, does he accept that the Bill could be used to solve them?
Finally, picking up on a point just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and earlier by my noble friend Lady Brinton, I suggest the Bill should address the perverse situation under the building regulations whereby if all the occupants of a building escape safely from a fire but the building is totally destroyed, the outcome is considered a success. This “life safety limitation” provided by the regulations, which significantly influences the design of buildings, should be revised. After all, the outcomes of the Worcester Park and Beechmere care home fires in 2019 and the Bolton Cube fire in 2020 were surely not successes as 23 families, 150 residents and 200 students lost their homes and property.
This should be changed by making a proportionate property protection consideration part of the basis of the fire safety building regulations, requiring a legally enforceable but flexible system for fire safety building design, appropriately tailored for all types of building and delivered through guidance on the appropriate use of, for example, compartmentation and active fire suppression systems to restrict fire spread. I am grateful that the Minister has already started a review of that; I look forward to hearing what it says. While many details need clarification and there are omissions that need to be added to the Bill, this is an important Bill and I commend it.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I believe I can make this a full cross-House welcome for the Bill—rather a rare occurrence. I join others in warmly welcoming the tone of the Minister’s speech. With its regular repeats of the campaigners’ hashtag “polluter pays” and the promise to take on board proposed amendments from your Lordships’ House, it truly is a breath of fresh air. I can only congratulate the Minister and the Government.
I note how this shows that campaigning works. After uncountable long hours of effort from affected residents, petitioning, marching, letter-writing and social media campaigning, the people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in unsafe, faulty, terrible standard buildings are today being heard in your Lordships’ House. I hope that they will get some sense of repayment from that. If only the residents of Grenfell —who before the terrible tragedy tried so hard to get officialdom to listen to their safety concerns—had been listened to, then 72 people might be alive today. There is a lesson there that I hope Ministers will take note off. Experts by experience are indeed experts about their lives and environment and need to be listened to.
As so many speeches thus far have demonstrated, there is much to do in improving the Bill, ensuring that it covers all the dangerous buildings that it should, particularly those occupied by vulnerable residents, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, highlighted, as well as the crucial issue of fire doors, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and many others. What could be more basic and surely solvable than that? As many other noble Lords have noted, a lot of the focus has been specifically on cladding, but there are so many other issues, and it is crucial that the Bill does not become overly focused on cladding at the cost of those other issues. Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, who talked about fire suppression systems, there has often been an ideological resistance in the UK to sprinklers, but we really need to rethink that for many types of buildings. On the structure of the Bill, the idea that housebuilders will just hand over their ill-gotten gains to cover the damages at the Government’s request is surely a fantasy. The Bill needs to demand full, complete recompense.
However, rather than running down the already well-travelled list of the ways in which this Bill needs to be improved, I will briefly take a broader view. I cannot help thinking that the Bill Office was perhaps demonstrating a better quality of engineering than many buildings in putting me after the noble Lord, Lord Foster, given the point he made about building safety more broadly and cold homes—I would add to that homes that overheat, given the increasing number of heatwaves that we will experience in the climate emergency—being a risk to life which should be covered in this Bill.
We have the poorest quality housing in western Europe—draughty, poorly insulated and expensively relying on gas for heating and cooking, which has, as we increasingly understand, significant health impacts as well. I foresee long conversations with the Bill Office about scope, but a home that kills its vulnerable resident with excessive heat, or that sickens and kills them through biting cold, is one that is deadly. That has to be a building safety issue. This is an issue that the Government seem astonishingly reluctant to tackle after their green homes grant fiasco. I note that the big announcement today on levelling up fails to address this issue—astonishingly, given how much of a factor it is in the terrible quality of life and the poverty in so many of the areas in this country that the scheme is supposed to address.
The Bill also needs to at least start to address the enormous systems disaster that is the building sector. I have no doubt at all that, this morning, inadequately trained workers were putting the finishing touches on buildings that are dangerous and that will be moved into by unsuspecting residents—or possibly suspecting residents, who still have no choice in the matter. The CEOs of our mass housebuilders should be forced to have the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, embedded on their phones, playing morning and night, to show them what society thinks of them and their companies. They have operated for the profit of the few at the cost of the rest of us, as in so much of our society. That financialisation has to be challenged, treated as morally unacceptable and made legally impossible. I acknowledge that this is something that we cannot fix just with this Bill, however much your Lordships’ House improves it—and I am sure that we will improve it massively.
It is interesting to take a global perspective and see the other parts of the world with building safety crises similar to that in the UK. In the US, in Florida, there was the dramatic, awful, deadly Champlain Towers South collapse, which was recently explored in-depth by the New York Times. It demonstrated that in the building boom there in the 1980s, regulatory corners were not cut but rather bulldozed through, and now there is a legacy of incredibly dangerous buildings in an incredibly difficult and dangerous environment. In Australia, the University of New South Wales’s City Futures Research Centre looked at 635 apartment buildings in Sydney. Its report—called Cracks in the Compact City, if noble Lords want to look it up—found that 42% of blocks had water problems, 26% had cracking problems and 17% had fire safety issues. One building, built just six years ago, was in danger of immediate collapse.
What ties together these countries? Neoliberal politics and, attached to that, a particular ideology that “cutting red tape” is how to set societies on a better way forward. It is important to highlight that because, as we are here in your Lordships’ House today, we see the Government embracing the need for regulation, forced by tragic circumstances and dedicated campaigning. They are accepting the need for so-called red tape, which actually forms the rules that keep us and the environment safe.
At the same time, we have a press release from No. 10 that tells us that a
“‘Brexit Freedoms’ Bill will be brought forward to end the special status of EU law and ensure that it can be more easily amended or removed”.
It tells us there will be a
“Major cross-government drive to cut £1 billion of red tape for businesses”.
Applying that approach is what forces us to be here today, trying to rebuild essential systems of regulation that were slashed away in an orgy of deregulation. We can do much today to force the repair of walls, the replacement of fire doors and the renovation of dangerous balconies. Changing our economic and government system is a much bigger task that this Bill demonstrates is urgently needed.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome the Bill. I say to the Minister opposite that if he takes on board all the wonderful knowledge, expertise and advice that has been offered to him today, he will have a sensational Bill.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
That is okay, we have the time.
I want to illustrate a number of issues by bringing the actualité of one small block of 45 apartments in Guildford that was just completed in 2016. The block is not 18 metres tall, but it is facing a raft of costly issues to do with fire safety. The End our Cladding Scandal group highlighted these problems because, as it said,
“There may be more funding for cladding … but the burden of paying for repairs for other serious safety defects—lack of compartmentation, missing fire breaks, shoddy building work—has still not been lifted from leaseholder shoulders, whatever their building’s height.”
This Bill is such an opportunity to do the right thing.
Leaseholders and shared owners in this block have been aware since early on of several issues—snagging, I guess you would call them under normal circumstances —but then came the tragic and terrifying fire at Grenfell. Since then, there have been many concerns over the fire safety of these apartments. It is the case that Metis Homes wrote to confirm that the cladding material was not the dangerous type used on Grenfell. However, in late 2019, mortgage companies were requesting EWS1 forms—external wall system surveys—in order to grant loans against any property that had cladding. While the legal requirement was only for buildings over 18 metres high, which the block that we are talking about is not, none the less, those same mortgagees required EWS1 forms of the residents of this block. In June 2020, they were given a B2 rating—a fail—because although the cladding was fine, the fixing method and the insulation were not. Also noted were the lack of fire barriers—compartmentalisation—and the wooden balconies. It has been very difficult, nigh impossible, for residents to get clear, detailed information on any fire safety risks to the apartments. The builders, Metis, and John Lewis/Waitrose, which owns the retail space below the apartments, have all completed an invasive survey, but will not disclose the information to the residents. Can we not make access to such information mandatory?
The block of flats had its AGM last week. It is clear from the information provided to residents at that AGM that the fire safety issues for the apartments are extensive and the likely cost of remedial work is £5 million. The developer, Bowmer and Kirkland, is unwilling to accept liability, and therefore the cost of the works is likely to fall on the residents. However, as I said, the fire issues at the apartments relate to insulation and how it has been glued to the building, not the cladding; therefore, I do not believe they will be able to benefit from the remediation funds being made available as part of the Bill. Surely such defects should be covered, not just the cladding: a fault is a fault and danger is danger.
Residents were also informed this week that an enforcement notice has just been served by Surrey Fire and Rescue Service because not enough action has been taken by the management company and, as a result, alarms are going to be installed. Where is the cost to the management company for not taking appropriate action? Where is the forcing mechanism? There must be detriment to the management for lack of proper conduct.
To make matters worse—and this is a relatively small bill—the cheapest quote was £29,000, and that includes 2.5% of managers’ costs, and the residents have been advised that the cost will be split between private and social housing residents, with the former paying £600 and the latter £1,200. The housing association has said that it will cover the £1,200 but has given no assurance that it will not recharge it back to the shared ownership residents via rent or service charges. As a result of the uneven split in charges, there is real concern about how the £5 million remedial bill will be split. Even if the £5 million were split equally between the 45 apartments, that is £104,000 each, which is a massive sum that is likely to be unaffordable for the leaseholders, especially shared-ownership leaseholders, who, on average, paid £200,000 for a 50% share of their apartment and often used all their savings to do so.
In the Commons debate on the Bill, the problem of leaseholders facing other fire defects was raised and the Government were questioned on whether they would extend legal protections afforded by the Bill to them as well. The Minister replied:
“We will work with parties across this House—across both Houses—and with interested parties to ensure that these issues are properly understood and debated.”—[Official Report, Commons, 19/1/22; col. 381.]
I suggest to the Minister that understanding and debating are not enough: that will not change things. The Government must bring forward amendments—assuming they do not accept all of ours—attributing costs to those responsible. That has to be the way forward.
As far as I can tell, nothing in the Bill would address a plethora of other fire defects. More pertinently, some of these residents are terrified. They have already had a fire. How that fire started is unclear, but the automatic opening vents failed. It was only because a resident heard an alarm going off inside a neighbour’s flat and went to investigate that more damage was not done and lives were not lost.
Those residents—and no doubt thousands experiencing the same things across the country—urgently need legal protections within the Bill extended so that they are not left to foot crippling bills that should be paid by those responsible for the defects. The potential economic and human cost of not providing this protection is huge and totally unacceptable.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Bill. I am not a housing expert, but I have been motivated to speak in this debate due to the significant number of disabled people who have been in touch to express their serious concerns. I declare my interests. I am president of the LGA and, when in London, I stay in a block of flats. This debate has made me strongly consider my personal safety.
Like others in your Lordships’ Chamber, I have received many emails about the costs of remedial work and the impact on people’s lives. It has become apparent that many disabled people have become marooned in their flats, which they, like others, bought in good faith. Disabled people spend an enormous amount of time thinking about accessing and egressing accommodation. They have to take account whether there is a fire lift or whether the lift gets turned off in an emergency. They have to think about evacuation procedures, such as whether it is safer to remain in their flat or to leave; whether there is a refuge or place of safety—they are quite different things—and whether to choose to use an evac chair or an evacuation sledge. That is a difficult choice, as the latter means, for me, giving up my only means of mobility. It is not stepping out of a pair of shoes.
I know from personal experience that finding accessible accommodation that is also affordable and vaguely near where you want to live is incredibly difficult, and you can then become tied into it. Any disabled resident living in a flat under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 has been entitled to have a “suitable and sufficient” fire risk assessment, but one disabled resident who got in touch with me told me that the initial advice in case of emergency was to stay in their flat, but when they sought independent advice they were told to leave because, for the particular block of flats they lived in, if they were there for more than 20 minutes, their chance of survival was severely reduced.
A recent article in the Disability News Service stated that the Government had awarded to CS Todd Associates the contract to produce new fire safety guidance. The same consultants stated in 2011 that it was “usually unrealistic” to expect landlords to put in place arrangements for disabled people to evacuate blocks of flats in the case of an emergency. It also wrote the LGA guidance, which had to be withdrawn, and the British standard, which also had to be withdrawn.
I am also very concerned by comments that have been sent to me by a member of the Fire Safety Forum. I apologise if the comments have been taken slightly out of context, but they do need interrogating. A member of that forum wrote about “what fun” they would have
“watching Rudetube videos of the poor disabled people crawling on their hands and knees down smoke filled corridors when the common parts of the fire alarm system operates to tell them to get out in to the corridors because there is smoke in there. It all promotes equality, because the able bodied people will have to go on their hands and knees too when the smoke layer gets too low, rather than staying in the safety of their flats.”
I am happy to share the links with the Minister and his team. The name alongside those comments is Colin Todd. Even if the word “unrealistic” has been misunderstood or poorly defined—because I recognise the complication of providing a plan in what can be difficult and changing circumstances—it feels as if disabled people are being told that they should not get in anyone else’s way and do not have a chance of evacuating the building.
I understand that the Minister has responded to the request to look into this and said that the contract was awarded according to the correct procedure. I learned this afternoon that a letter has been sent on behalf of some disabled residents to the Home Office asking that the award of this contract be rescinded.
On researching for this debate, I was reminded that, many years ago, I was on a plane and—please bear with me—I was going to an athletics competition. Without anyone ever telling me, I always knew that the chance of me getting off a plane in an emergency was virtually zero. That is why I taught my daughter, from the point she could understand—probably about 18 months old—that if we were ever in that situation, she had to get herself off the plane. On this particular trip I had given up my day chair, was in my seat right at the back with other athletes, and a member of the cabin crew came to tell me that if the plane went down, not only was I not going to get off, but I should not get in other people’s way. Furthermore, no one from the crew, whatever the circumstances, was going to come back and help me off. This is how disabled people feel in these circumstances.
I cannot begin to imagine what anyone went through on 14 June 2017, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, for her incredibly moving speech. As reported by Disability Rights UK on 31 March 2021 on the evidence sessions:
“Fifteen of the 37 disabled residents”—
of Grenfell Tower—
“died in the fire that killed 72 people”.
That means that 40% of the disabled people who lived in the tower died.
So I ask the Minister: can he understand why disabled people are so angry, and is it not reasonable that a disabled person should have a plan and have at least a chance of getting out of a building in an emergency? When will Her Majesty’s Government be releasing the outcome of the consultation on personal emergency evacuation plans, which closed on the 19 July last year? Finally, will the Minister offer his reassurance that he will do everything possible to protect disabled people through this Bill as, at the moment, there is little reference to them?
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I feel privileged to follow that speech but also somewhat at sea, so I will default to what I was going to say anyway.
The Government’s Notes describe the Bill as:
“A Bill to make provision about the safety of people in or about buildings and the standard of buildings”.
As we have heard, it was introduced to avoid life-changing horrors such as we witnessed with the Grenfell fire, causing the death of 72 residents. I would not want to diminish the significance of that disaster, but we ignore another issue that has been taking place in homes for years: falls on the stairs. They are a hidden killer, claiming the lives of 700 people in England every year, with a further 43,000 admitted to hospital. Staircase accidents do not make the news. While tragic disasters such as the Grenfell fire quite understandably horrify us when they occur, staircase falls happen so regularly that they go completely under the Government’s radar. I should declare my interest as another member of the RoSPA presidential team.
For every hospital admission caused by a burn, there are 235 caused by a fall. That is why I am tabling an amendment to the Bill to ensure that staircases in our homes are built to the correct industry standard, BS 5395-1. It has existed since 2010. It has been thoroughly tested, evidenced and assessed by industry, and, as the Minister will confirm, it has been tested by government. However, having been introduced, it was never enshrined in law; it exists only as a standard and, as such, is just a recommendation.
RoSPA, which for over a century has led the way in taking an evidence-based approach to mitigating and managing risk, has consulted widely with house builders and industry bodies. The amendment that I will be tabling has the backing of the housing industry, including the Berkeley Group and Orbit Housing, because building firms recognise that the existing British Standard 5395-1 would make stairs safer at almost zero excess cost. It would also create a legal benchmark and a level playing field for everyone.
The difference between staircases built to the British Standard and most other staircases is minimal to the naked eye, but hugely significant. The British standard requires a larger surface area for the foot to tread and places a maximum steepness on the height of each stair. It also mandates a handrail on both sides. These simple changes reduce the risk of falling by an absolutely staggering 60%. The fact that such an industry standard exists but is not widely used is beyond belief. Countless lives would be saved and so much heartache avoided if we simply enshrined this simple standard in law. Very few amendments to Bills are as uncomplicated and straightforwardly beneficial as the one that I hope to table. It would save more lives than anything else in the Bill. I feel privileged to be part of an organisation that has saved thousands of lives over the last 100 years, and it is no exaggeration to say that this amendment could save thousands more.
Stair accidents are a silent killer because by their very nature they do not make headlines; they happen one at a time, usually to older people, and they are so commonplace that we take them for granted. Staircase deaths occur incrementally, so that only by viewing the bigger picture does the scale of the problem become clear. Making stairs safer by design is essential for ensuring that future generations do not die on the stairs at the alarming rate that our generation does. By outlawing the use of unsafe stairs in new builds, the problem would be steadily weaned out and a fresh page turned.
Given the focus on new builds, we think this would be straightforward; it would cost nothing extra but would save countless lives. I would be delighted if the Government supported the amendment that I am going to table, which calls for the Secretary of State to consult on regulations requiring staircases in new builds to comply with the British standard. If the Minister would like to meet me, I would be delighted to discuss this further.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, all these wonderful speeches are a hard act to follow. I declare that I am a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a valuer and a patron of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers, so this is familiar territory. I very much welcome the Bill and the opportunity that it presents to discuss the issues. I thank the Minister for his comprehensive introduction, his engagement, his openness and above all his vigour. However, I believe the Bill needs improvement in scope and function.
First, a bit of advice. The Minister’s letter of 20 January suggests that the department will investigate the governance of RICS. With respect, that ship has sailed. Following a report by Alison Levitt QC, the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, was asked by RICS last December to look into its governance and purposes—so, as ever, we should wait for that report.
The Government should be wary of criticising insurers, managers and valuers for overreaction to safety risks. Proportionality is based on good information and consistent technical advice, so the withdrawal of the consolidated advice note and its replacement with PAS9980 does not necessarily put the genie back in the bottle. Perceptions of risk pervade the property sector. Valuers reflect but cannot uninvent market sentiment. RICS sets standards for consistent analysis and reporting but cannot override the market, which is why, with full support from valuers and the wider industry, it retains the application of EWS1, including low-rise buildings with cladding, and has published a detailed justification.
Noble Lords may recall that a low-rise modern block of flats in Worcester Park was completely destroyed by fire in September 2019—unrelated to cladding, I understand, and, thankfully, nobody was injured. While human life is of first importance, instances of total loss of buildings influence insurance risk. Cladding apart, as we have heard, compartmentalisation, fire stopping and so on are issues regardless of building height, so it is self-evident that low rise does not of itself negate the risk to buildings and occupants, which is why the scope of the problems has grown.
The Bill will create the role of “accountable person”. Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendation that there be a single individual is logical in administrative terms, but people are now nervous about taking on that responsibility. Residents’ management companies are often populated by volunteers, few with knowledge of building construction and maintenance. Collective freehold ownership and commonhold do not resolve this issue, so management professionals are extremely concerned about this.
My next point is about accreditation, particularly of those who have reason to design, specify, supervise or carry out works to residential properties, most especially those forming part of larger buildings. That certainly needs to be tightened. As HSE is now to have oversight of responsible persons, it should be working with all professions and accreditation bodies to ensure consistent standards without excessive cost.
My main point, however, is about financing the remediation of dangerous cladding and other fundamental defects in construction. I welcome the Government’s announcement to protect leaseholders from remediation costs. However, the details and scope are as yet unclear. Without a range of mechanisms for raising the necessary funds quickly, leaseholders may well continue to live in unsellable, risky and high-cost buildings.
The Government demand that industry steps up to the mark and voluntarily pays for its mistakes, but I remain concerned about reliance on that. Whatever welcome pledges of support are made, the Government need to ensure that they are bankable at an early date, so that any necessary fallback measures can be enacted in the Bill.
It is obvious that remediation of unsafe buildings must proceed with redoubled urgency, and unaffected buildings need to be signed off rapidly, so scaling up the inspection capacity is vital. Innocent leaseholders of all types—I make no exclusions—must be protected from the costs of remedying critical construction defects. They have purchased in good faith on the basis of fitness for purpose, and I do not exclude social landlords.
We need to concentrate minds. Responsibility for serious defects in original construction or refurbishment rests squarely with those who designed, specified, constructed or supervised the works, or who made false claims for construction products. Those responsible should not be allowed to collectivise their liability through an overall levy and thus avoid individual blame, or the culture will simply persist. The taxpayer should not fund this, other than to ensure a legislative framework, robust administration and the early generation of remediation funds, and to provide a fallback where all else fails. Funds already allocated should be for bridging and safety-net purposes and not deplete other areas of departmental funding. Protracted legal proceedings and justice according to bank balance must be avoided. This should be overseen by an independent national entity, although the joint inspection team may have a role in assessing buildings and collecting evidence.
These are the principles behind what is known as the polluter pays amendment, which has been gathering momentum for some months. I pay tribute to the Minister for his engagement with this and to those whose persistence has developed the concept to an advanced stage. I hope the Government will adopt it. Polluter pays would create strict liability where it is found that buildings did not meet relevant standards at the time work was carried out. That liability would cover interim safety measures and insurance premium increases. Once defect and involvement are known, liabilities towards owners would be established on a joint and several basis, so blame would not need to be apportioned. It would provide a relatively simple appeals system via the First-tier Tribunal to prevent leaseholders facing an unequal contest with large corporations. These liabilities need to be taken on the chin: no tax breaks, side deals, concessions or sweeteners—just the same transparent rules for everybody.
Successive Governments may have failed to regulate adequately after the Building Act 1984, but that Act did not remove anything from the principles of the building regulations, the British Standards Institution, codes of practice and other documents. Since 1965 the requirements have been clear, but elements of the construction industry have simply evaded obligations and everyone knows it.
We cannot allow the responsibility of the neglectful few to burden society at large or damage the wider industry reputation, or we will never deal with the perverse incentives to cut corners long term. The human toll is acute and practical imperatives need high standards of corporate ethics, shouldering of responsibility to rebuild sectoral confidence and, above all, speed. This need has never been greater. I look forward to working with the Government to seize the opportunity for real and lasting change under the Bill for the relief of freeholders, for national credibility in construction and in the interests of justice.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a pleasure, though daunting, to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who has been a fount of knowledge on the issues in the Bill. It is a significant Bill, one which many have been waiting for, because its provisions will have far-reaching consequences for so many householders and the whole industry of building construction. It is also a very technical Bill, which I have struggled with and am unlikely to be able to contribute to in detail in Committee. However, for Second Reading, I thought my recent experience as a leaseholder might be useful.
In April 2020, in the depth of the first lockdown, there was a house fire in my council block of maisonettes in Haringey. The fire rapidly spread across the roof of the block and created a huge blaze. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but 17 fire engines and a lot of shaken up people later, the whole block had suffered major water damage. I and all the families were evacuated and we thought that would just be for a couple of months. In reality, the due date for return is this April, two years after the fire. This delay has had a devastating impact on many people, my neighbours more than me. The reason I am telling noble Lords this is not for sympathy but to note that sometimes it is not the safety of a building, or even the fire, that causes the suffering, but the officialdom that handles it. In this instance, the context was Covid restrictions and a safety-first approach that became an excuse for inexcusable inaction and inhumane indifference. An atmosphere of excessive precaution over the coronavirus led to a local government housing department seeming to seize up and consign leaseholders and tenants to being made effectively homeless for two years.
I tell this tale because one concern I have is that there are always dangers in responding to something as horrific or emotional as the Grenfell tragedy—a danger that we bend the stick and focus on zero risk and safety first above all other considerations. This can lead to unintended consequences, so now there is a scramble to require building owners to review a fire-risk assessment on all residential buildings. But this can be a time-consuming and expensive business. Most importantly, we need to ask whether it is proportionate or necessary on such a wide scale.
Southwark Council has recently announced extra-intrusive fire safety checks in hundreds of its high rises, involving not only surveys of outside buildings and communal areas but the council being able to
“enter homes with a camera.”
It also
“may need to open up walls and ceilings.”
This is not because of any defined risks; it seems to me that it is an exploratory “just in case” fishing exercise. While it is posed as putting tenants’ safety first, we must ask whether this sort of action, which is massively disruptive for households, addresses the top safety threat to people in south London. The LGA has noted its concerns about these new financial burdens and the impact of such surveys and all the remediation that has to happen on social housing blocks. It warns that the burden for this
“will fall on council housing revenue accounts and housing associations, punishing social housing tenants and those on the waiting list.”
The point is that the vast majority of homes in the UK are safe. The Minister himself noted in his very helpful letter that evidence suggests that only a small proportion of fires in high-risk buildings escape the room of origin, and that there is a general downward trend in the number of deaths from fires in people’s homes over the last two decades. Thank God for that. Overall, the evidence shows that risk is low across all accommodations and buildings. Partly, we need to consider whether blanket mandates affect priorities and resources.
The LGA queries whether height is an effective determinant of risk or too simplistic, sometimes neglecting other factors such as vulnerability of occupants. This catch-all also treats all buildings of over 18 metres as dangerous when they are not, forcing the use of
“scarce resource unnecessarily which could be deployed to life-saving effect elsewhere.”
The mandate to investigate every building and for historical remediation to happen is explained as a way of reassuring residents and leaseholders that their homes are safe, rather than it being a necessity. I worry, however, that sometimes reassuring measures might inadvertently create a disproportionate sense of escalating fear among the public. I suggest, therefore, that we do not allow the horrors of Grenfell and the egregious negligence there to create the impression that we should all be fearful in our homes all the time. That is one reason that I am glad the Bill stresses throughout that the new building safety regime will be proportionate rather than overuse the precautionary principle.
The phrase “health and safety gone mad” might be a caricatured take on those who are cavalier about regulations and whether there are some destructive features of health and safety culture that can lead to, for example, a focus on myriad possible risks rather than clearly defined dangers, and a micromanagement of unknown risks, with everything seen as a potential hazard. This can lead to a defensive focus on compliance and the proliferation of petty regulations that mean we lose sight of the regulations that really matter. In turn, all this might lead to formalised procedures in which box-ticking can usurp human judgment and create an army of new box-ticking bureaucrats and a new industry of layers upon layers of regulators, with new roles that can be very confusing. Already, we can see that these new layers of bureaucracy are creating a skills crisis and a capacity problem.
Of course, I am keen to see more fire engineers, surveyors and so on, but with the new focus on competence and the upskilling of those presently involved in building construction, we must avoid also suggesting that there is widespread incompetence. I worry about inadvertently demonising the 2 million people involved in the construction industry. I urge noble Lords to avoid characterising the majority of contractors, designers, builders and architects as incompetent cowboys cutting corners. Is this name-calling not just another part of blame culture? It might be that I have a disproportionately high number in my family who work in the construction industry, but I do think we need a balance.
This industry is crucial to building the desperately needed new homes, hospitals and factories and to making the levelling-up agenda concrete. We do not want them all demoralised, stuck in endlessly continuing professional development seminars, tangled up in—yes—red tape and treated with suspicion as dodgy, hostile players by the public. We must resist the temptation, therefore, to demonise everybody in this game.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]
My Lords, never again must we be faced with the shocking sight of a tower-block of flats being consumed by raging flames. We watched in horror those devastating scenes, and later listened to the harrowing stories from the survivors of that awful conflagration. Their stories are seared in my memory, and I echo many noble Lords’ comments on this.
This Bill proposes welcome improvements to regulations, which should have been foreseen long ago and acted on. It is to our shame that it has taken the loss of the lives of 72 people for us to see what a terrible dereliction of duty the whole building establishment had allowed to occur over many years. We watch today, almost five years on from the appalling Grenfell tragedy, cladding that was known at the time to be lethal still having to be removed from high-rise buildings, because only now are the Government facing up to their responsibilities and offering help in the shape of a £5 billion fund for those living in the most vulnerable or, as the Bill puts it, higher-risk buildings.
It also proposes revising the regulatory framework for construction products, I therefore hope that we will never see the likes of Kingspan, which provided much of the insulation in the cladding on Grenfell Tower, being a chosen business. That insulation, Kooltherm K15, was known to be lethal and Kingspan’s employees knew it too, as the inquiry found out. Another company, Celotex, used hidden, non-combustible boards to make sure that it got through safety checks—and so it goes on. We can only hope that the Bill will prevent rogue companies such as these getting any building contracts for this type of work ever again. Can the Minister assure me that the new building regulations will root out those contractors long before they can be allowed to build again?
The current Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the right honourable Michael Gove, has finally woken up to the fact that the Government’s proposed loan scheme for all the remediation work was a complete non-starter, and stated that no householder living in their own flat would have to pay a penny to fix unsafe cladding. He gave the building industry, as we have heard from the Minister, two months to agree to a financial contribution scheme, but only for buildings between 11 and 18 metres in height. Has the industry agreed a suitable financial contribution? What is going to happen to the thousands of leaseholders of flats that are less than 11 metres high, who also have to face the cost of removing their unsafe cladding? Will the Government ensure that they, too, are compensated, after years of trying to get housing associations and private landlords of these properties to take responsibility for the removal of the cladding? Those tenants have for far too long been ignored and vilified for asking too many questions and making a fuss.
Reading the Bill, it seems to me that there are large number of scrutineers of future building projects. I worry that it could be a case of too many cooks being able to mask rogue elements of the building trade, allowing them to slip through the regulatory net. As my noble friend Lord Shipley has stated, there are the Building Safety Regulator, registered building inspectors, the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, the Industry Competence Committee, authorised officers, the Health and Safety Executive, duty holders, principal accountable persons—who have to appoint building safety managers—all before we get to the Golden Thread through the gateway regime, which, as I understand it, is supposed to ensure compliance throughout the whole of a new build.
Clauses 80 to 84 explain this, and continuing clauses set out the responsibilities of the accountable persons. Those clauses are interesting to me, and I am concerned to know how they will work in practice. A great deal of responsibility will rest on the shoulders of these people, and I worry that this position could be used as a scapegoat in any future structural failings of a building. Clauses 100 to 103 set this out.
I share the concerns expressed by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors that the Bill may create a two-tier system of regulation—especially, as I mentioned earlier, given that no provision has yet been made for the risks in low-rise buildings. It goes on to emphasise that the industry does not yet have qualified individuals to undertake the onerous duties of the accountable person. What is the Government’s response to that? Where are they going to get those highly skilled people? The Chartered Institute of Building was equally concerned about these issues, which it believes will be crucial to the practical implementation of the Bill.
Overall, we must welcome this Bill as another step in the long journey of holding our building regulators and suppliers to account for past catastrophic failures, but it is in the implementation of all its proposals that we will be watching carefully and assessing whether this Government keep their word and ensure that the awful sight of the Grenfell Tower in flames will never happen again.
Lord Thurlow (CB)
My Lords, I declare conflicts of interest in owning two buy-to-let flats in London and as a member of the RICS for some 30 years. This Bill is long-awaited; Grenfell is nearly five years ago, and the Bill is long overdue. It sets out clear improvements in the system going forward, and I am keen to support it in principle, but I believe that it contains inadequate protections for existing leaseholders, particularly occupiers of existing older buildings, and certainly including those below the 18-metre height restriction or seven-storey levels.
Other noble Lords have talked about this, too. The principal thrust of the Bill is, of course, to protect lives, particularly those of residents. Yet looking at the Bill, I question whether it is not more building focused than people focused. Of course, one leads to the other, but the focus should, I think, be on the people, and that will manifest itself in different ways. One example is in costs of occupation, which are going to rise as a result, through additional service charge recoveries. It is wrong to expect tenants to pay 100% of the annual costs anticipated by the Bill. Another example is access to redress for leaseholders; the process sounds straight- forward but, as we have just heard, for many it will be a formidable mountain to climb, with layers of bureaucratic overlaps, probably requiring costs that many can ill afford. I hope that the Minister will confirm that this will not be the case. I was much encouraged by his remarks at the beginning of this debate.
For those living in older buildings with a heightened fire risk, particularly since Grenfell, the costs have sometimes been crippling. As we have heard, there have been huge remediation costs, soaring insurance costs, waking watch Bills and the mental health consequences for many, to say nothing of being bled dry financially, with no prospect of selling at value. We have all heard of examples. The Minister refers to protecting leaseholders, but will it be comprehensive? If this Bill sets out to protect people, leaseholders should be at the front of the queue.
I would like to touch on building ownership. Excluding social housing, existing private residential blocks may belong to City institutions or public property companies, transparent organisations. Many will belong to private property companies; some belong to private individuals—and this number is likely to be much higher than most people realise. Many are discrete operators attempting to remain below the radar and anonymous. They can camouflage ownership, probably further protected by managing agents to whom the owners themselves will sometimes be very closely linked. This will confuse and frustrate leaseholders, who will easily give up their quest for redress. I know there are provisions for building safety managers, accountable persons and regulators, but without transparent ownership, I do not understand how redress can be effectively enforced in all cases. I think there should be transparent ownership details available, identifying owners or shareholders rather than corporate vehicles often registered offshore, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, referred to in his speech.
Let us consider why investors own these assets. They are investments; they expect to receive rents, net of all costs. Costs are usually redirected to residents via service charges. As I mentioned, the Bill is likely to increase those annual charges to occupiers. I suggest these costs should be paid by the building owners, or at least be shared. It is not enough to assume investors may protect their investments by deflecting unexpected costs on to their residents to protect returns: their assets are, after all, being improved. I repeat: I believe the future costs set out in the Bill should be more equitably shared.
For occupiers, rights of redress are critical. I have mentioned some of the practical difficulties, but the Hackitt report stated that this Bill should reassert the rights of residents. It will not be easy nor cost-free, as items creep into service charge bills. The costs of fire safety works could be shared between freeholders and leaseholders, though there is a strong case to exempt leaseholders altogether. One normal risk of property ownership is things going wrong. Every property owner with an old house or a flat in an old building knows that it goes with the territory. Insurance is available and is the owner’s responsibility. This should not be a tenant risk; however, it usually is.
What of older buildings which fall short on safety grounds, those below 18 metres or the seven-storey threshold? I join many others in referring to this sector—in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, just now. These deserve more attention, particularly to protect leaseholders from risks and costs. I would not want to live in an old building on the sixth floor, just below the 18-metre threshold, which did not make the Bill’s cut, and be trapped up there, six storeys up. If there is to be a height limit, there is a strong case for two or three floors. What then of vulnerable people? We have heard about this too. If this Bill really wants to put the interests of residents first, these out-of-scope buildings should be included but treated differently as circumstances and assessors consider appropriate. I hope the Minister will reconsider the scope criteria.
In summary, I do not have time to add to the comments on defective materials and the laudable “polluter pays” principle, which I support. It is excellent to note that leaseholders are indeed to be protected. The more effective regulatory framework for testing and approving building products is overdue. Nor do I have time to discuss offences set out under the Bill, but I think penalties should be high. I look forward to the forthcoming government amendments, and I hope protection for leaseholders will run robustly as a central tenet throughout.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, first, I declare a personal interest as a leaseholder of a flat near here, which will qualify for some fire remedial works and was built by one of the big four, who collectively raked in almost £4 billion in 2020. I give a warm welcome to the Bill, particularly the creation of a regulator. However, of particular interest to me are the parts on high-risk buildings and other safety measures. While I welcome these, I believe that we now have an opportunity to go much further.
When the Bill left the Commons, we did not have my right honourable friend the excellent Michael Gove as Secretary of State, so the Bill does only half of what it needs to do. Then on 10 January we had the superb Statement from the SoS, repeated here by my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, setting out all the actions the Government propose to take to really sort out the cladding problem and protect leaseholders. We all owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Minister: I know that he has been arguing for all the things that were in that Statement and he had the good fortune to get a new Secretary of State who agreed with him and had the guts to go for it. I congratulate him on his rather feisty introduction of the Bill today. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, on his outstandingly succinct description of today’s construction industry—what the Spectator last year called the house mafia.
What did the Secretary of State say on 10 January? He set out the range of actions and initiatives he wanted to take. These were in two broad categories, which could be classed as leaseholder protection measures and “polluter pays” measures. He said in the Statement repeated by my noble friend that he would take action against those who mis-sold dangerous cladding and insulation and those who profited from the consequences of Grenfell. He would review government schemes and programmes to ensure there were commercial consequences for any company responsible for this crisis and refusing to help fix it. He would take powers to exclude any company from government schemes and impose proportionate risk assessments on organisations such as the RICS and powers to review the operation of the RICS.
He would set a higher expectation that developers must fix their own buildings, and possibly issue instructions to insurance companies. There would be statutory protection for leaseholders from certain building costs and protection of leaseholders from eviction and forfeiture. He would introduce a residential property development tax and a building safety levy, and there would be new collaborative procurement guidance on removing the incentives for industry to cut corners and to help stop the prioritisation of cost over value, and possibly put that on a statutory footing. That is what the Secretary of State said he wanted to do. I am absolutely certain that, if my right honourable friend Michael Gove had been in post one year ago, most of those provisions would be in the Bill today, but now we have the chance to add them.
I do not intend, in Committee, to add just a few new clauses; rather, I have asked the Public Bill Office to draft two whole new Parts to add at the start of the Bill. One Part would be on leaseholder protection, with clauses setting out that no leaseholder will have to pay for any fire-related remedial work. I want leaseholder protection to be first and foremost in the Bill as a new Part 1, or a new Part 2 at the very latest. I want clauses defining what fire-related remedial work is, and what buildings it should apply to; clauses prohibiting freeholders and leaseholders from gold-plating remedial works to add to the value of their property portfolio. For example, if wooden decking balconies have to be replaced, leaseholders must be protected from freeholders replacing them with, say, bronze-covered aluminium or Italian marble flooring, making lease- holders pay.
Then I need clauses setting out alternatives to cladding replacement for low-risk buildings and permitting the Secretary of State to prepare new risk assessments. These could replace those compiled by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors—and I want to put in a legal power to review its modus operandi, since it has not exactly covered itself in glory over the past three years, I submit to the noble Lords behind me. Finally, in this Part, I want a clause creating a scheme similar to the Flood Re agreement between the Government and insurers to keep down the cost of flood insurance, but in this case covering fire insurance.
The other new Part will contain “polluter pays” provisions or schemes for fire hazard remedial works. In it, I want to have clauses setting out that developers will be primarily responsible for the costs of all remedial works. Where they have created special purpose vehicles which they have now wound up, then the holding company will be liable. All contractors who supplied materials which were not fit for purpose, whether or not approved at the time, will be liable. Where we cannot find the developer or their special purpose vehicle, or their holding company, or their contractor, or their supplier, then the whole industry should be liable and pay through a levy system that will raise a lot more than £5 billion. Clause 57 does not go far enough, since it applies to future bills and not to bad ones of the past.
Now, clearly, my proposals—if I lay them before the House—will impact on current company law, laws of limitation, the Building Act and a host of other Acts. There may be ECHR concerns and concerns about retrospectivity. But we have never had a problem such as this before, where companies have made billions from flawed construction in the past. I submit that it is therefore right that we reach back in time to make them pay to remedy it now. They did it, not the leaseholders. Therefore, those parts of the Bill will need to be more skeletal than I would have approved of last week when I was still the chair of the Delegated Powers Committee.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Ahem. We will also need some Henry VIII clauses to make those changes to existing Acts of Parliament. It is a tall order, but in the time we have, we can do it. We cannot at this stage set out all the details in new clauses since we do not know exactly what powers and provisions we will need. However, we can draft sufficiently wide regulatory powers to deal with all eventualities. Naturally, I want these to take the affirmative procedure so that there is some element of proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Simply look at Clause 57. Five out of the eight new subsections begin with the words “regulations may” or similar, so the Government have already taken wide regulatory powers. In any case, no matter when we take forward a primary Act—in this Bill, next year or in two years’ time—we will still need extensive regulation-making powers for all the details. I say let us do it now so that all those who have raked in billions from property deals see that this Government and this Parliament mean business—I have almost finished.
I know that my amendments will have dozens of technical flaws and will need beefing up and filling out. But that is what government lawyers and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel are for. All I want to do is set the parameters of the action we need to take—and we need to take that action because lease- holders, as the innocent parties, demand nothing less. We need to take it so that all developers and contractors see this sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, because that is the only way they will ever pay up.
I look forward to debating this further in Committee and to getting support from your Lordships, if not for the exact details then at least for the concept of my amendments. In the meantime, I warmly support the Bill.
Lord Jordan (Lab)
My Lords, this Bill was born out of a disaster—one that saw many people killed and injured in their own homes. The Bill, which we all support, will enact measures to prevent that happening again. Tonight, however, we have heard that many more needless deaths and injuries are still happening now in homes, which the Bill could and should take steps to prevent.
I too declare my interest as a vice-president of RoSPA, which is leading a campaign to significantly reduce these injuries and deaths occurring in homes across the country by making staircases safer. The campaign’s objective has earned itself a strong base of cross-party support in the other place, and we are now hoping that your Lordships will demonstrate the same unity and bring about the passing of an amendment embedding safe stairs in law.
Your Lordships have heard that the amendment will simply ask the Secretary of State to consult on regulations requiring staircases in all new-build properties to comply with the latest industry standard for stairs. This would not be a case of requiring existing properties to replace staircases, nor would it be a case of inventing a new stair safety specification from scratch. We have an existing construction industry standard that is already proven to be safer and is approved by industry. All we ask is that this standard is legally mandated for new-build homes, putting safety into building design.
We will not find a better or easier opportunity to make houses in this country safer at such a minimal cost. We should not turn it down. Nor should we accept the Government’s excuse that primary legislation is not the right place for this amendment. There is ample precedent for mandating standards in this way. An indefensible argument must not stand in the way of saving lives.
The statistics around staircase accidents, including the human and economic costs, are horrifying and unacceptable. We all take it for granted that falls on stairs will happen, but do we really take on board what that means when we hear that every year 700 people lose their lives and thousands more continue to go through pain, suffering and loss of independence because of bone-shattering accidents? We must not forget that the homes we build today must still be standing long after we are gone. It is certain that, if we do not make stairs safer now, lives will be lost. However, an amendment to the Bill that requires a safer standard for stairs in newly built houses will leave a life-saving legacy for future generations.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate on a Bill that is widely supported across the House. I remind noble Lords of my interests as a member of Kirklees Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
First, a question: why is it that regulation is seen by some as an unnecessary obstacle to business until a tragedy occurs? It has taken, as I think all noble Lords have said, the deaths of 72 people at Grenfell Tower nearly five years ago for building safety to be taken seriously once more. To respect the memory of the 72 and all those whose lives have been scarred forever by that dreadful fire, the Bill must provide the deep-seated reforms that are essential to prevent a repeat of Grenfell. Secondly, the Bill absolutely must ensure that existing leaseholders and tenants do not pay for any of the remediation work, such as replacing flammable cladding and rectifying construction failures such as the failure to include fire breaks.
Noble Lords from across the House have rightly welcomed the Bill, which will make sure that legislation and regulation reflect modern construction methods and materials. It is, as my noble friend Lord Stunell described, “a once in a lifetime opportunity to regulate what is currently a dysfunctional industry”. Unfortunately, the Government have failed to grab that opportunity fully and define new standards of housing construction and accountability for those standards for all new housing. As my noble friends Lord Foster and Lord Stunell pointed out, here was an opportunity to set new standards for energy insulation, expectations for zero-carbon homes and heightened fire safety features; and for a step-change improvement in regulation, inspection, and enforcement. However, the Government have chosen to focus on a narrow element of the housing construction industry: that of so-called higher-risk buildings. That is truly a missed opportunity.
On the proposals in the Bill, Dame Judith Hackitt’s 2018 report, Building a Safer Future—which I have read—proposed a systemic reform of building regulation, and the Bill is incorporating into legislation the safety system that she laid out. The framework, which creates a hierarchy of responsibilities, is a considerable improvement on the existing position. The new building safety regulator will be embedded within the Health and Safety Executive, which seems appropriate and positive. Duty-holders, responsible for different aspects of design and construction, will be accountable to the new regulator. What is not clear are the skills and expertise that are required, as my noble friend Lord Shipley said, and whether these already exist and need to be codified or whether there will be delays in implementation because new training programmes will be necessary.
Once a higher-risk building is occupied, a whole new, and costly, regime is proposed. Leaseholders already pay considerable sums for a managing agent or equivalent posts, which are not regulated—anyone can set up as a managing agent, with no experience of property management. The Bill proposes the role of “accountable person”. Does the Minister anticipate that managing agents will take on that role? As the accountable person will be responsible for appointing a building safety manager, can the Minister explain what qualifications this postholder will have, the anticipated additional cost to leaseholders and the accountability of this postholder to those required to pay for the work?
I was speaking to leaseholders only yesterday. One said to me that she already pays a service charge of £6,000 a year, and that it is estimated she will have to pay a further £2,000 on top of that for a building safety manager. There surely has to be a better way forward than piling costs on to leaseholders—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, who referred to that. Can the Minister explain whether these posts will be expected to report to the building safety regulator?
What powers will residents have in this new regime, either as tenants or leaseholders? I appreciate that there will be a new ability for tenants to refer complaints straight to the ombudsman, but what rights will leaseholders have to ensure that they are getting value for money from these new posts? Will all inspection reports be made available to all residents? Will they have a right to challenge overcharging for these new posts and for any repairs that are deemed necessary? There is the opportunity in this Bill to strengthen the rights of leaseholders, one for which I am sure we will be placing amendments in Committee because, unfortunately, it is an opportunity that is being missed at the moment.
My noble friends Lord Stunell and Lady Brinton rightly pointed to the disaster that is the existing building inspection system. At the heart of this particular problem was the decision, 20-plus years ago, to enable developers to appoint their own building inspectors, under contract to that company and therefore hardly independent. Perhaps some of the construction failings exposed post-Grenfell are a consequence. The part-privatisation of building control also denuded local government of building inspectors. That, combined with the very large cuts to local government funding, meant fewer inspectors and therefore a less tightly regulated system for construction. Light-touch regulation can have dreadful consequences in this sphere.
Many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Harris, spoke about construction materials, and rightly so. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry is exposing some of the irregularities, or indeed worse, by manufacturers and suppliers. A single clause, Clause 128, attempts to remedy this. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could explain the system for testing new products. My noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville highlighted issues around fire doors in this regard.
I would like to know from the Minister what role the British Research Establishment and the British Board of Agrément will have in testing and recommending building products. They are not mentioned in the Bill. It will be good to hear the Minister’s response to that, and to the very interesting suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, of taking a wider view of safety. I look forward to discussing that proposal further. This falls in line with many noble Lords who have raised the issue of safe staircases—that would come into that general sphere. There is room, within the Bill, to make amendments to that effect.
Last of all these issues, but in no way least, is the failure so far of the Government to make practical and realistic responses to the cladding and remediation crisis. Just a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State made a bold announcement, in which he said that:
“Government must take their share of responsibility”,—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; col. 283]
that manufacturers have shown “insufficient contrition”, that those who profited will pay the price, and that leaseholders are “blameless”.
The aim is to extract £4 billion from the companies that developed the buildings in order to pay for the removal of dangerous cladding from blocks between 11 and 18 metres. It is absolutely based on the polluter pays principle. I congratulate those leaseholders who have campaigned tirelessly for four years to get to the position we have today, where everyone across this House has confirmed they are in support of that principle. However, achieving that aim looks increasingly difficult. The noble Lord, Young of Cookham, emphasised how difficult it is going to be. I read in the media, only last week, I think, that developers are already consulting their legal advisers, which undoubtedly means they do not wish to pay and will find a means not to. What then? The Government appear rightly to have turned to materials companies to also contribute. Can the Minister tell the House the total sum that has so far been contributed by both developers and materials companies?
There is an urgent need to know, as invoices for remediation are with leaseholders now. The deadline for payment is this coming April, for many of them, and housing experts expect numerous defaults unless effective action is taken by the Government. Will the Minister let the House know when action will be taken to fulfil the promise made by the Government—which I applaud—that leaseholders will not have to pay a penny piece towards remediation? They need to know; we need to know.
As the Minister well knows, leaseholders face not just the costs of the removal of unsafe cladding—ACM cladding and other types that are flammable as well—but of construction failings, such as the lack of fire breaks. The Government have stated that leaseholders will not have to pay. We need to see essential steps taken to ensure they are not burdened with these totally unaffordable bills. Until we know, this will not do. Leaseholders have done everything right and nothing wrong; they are completely innocent victims in this building safety scandal.
This is a complex Bill with positive intent. Opportunities for more comprehensive reform have been missed and some elements will need to be amended to fulfil the aims that we all have to improve the Bill and, in the words of the Hackitt report, build a safer future. I look forward to working with the Minister and colleagues from across the House to make what is already a good Bill a much better one, and to make sure that leaseholders do not pay a penny towards remediation costs.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is not normal for the Opposition Chief Whip to respond to a Second Reading debate, but Members will be aware that I have been involved with these issues for some considerable time. I have also missed the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, very much, so I thought that with him leading on this Bill and it being such an important issue, I would have to make an appearance. Maybe I will be part of the Chief Whips Awkward Squad from now on. I am not sure that the noble Lord has missed me, or my amendments, as much. I have my Oral Question on Monday on issues very pertinent to this Bill, as he knows.
First, I need to make a number of declarations of interest to the House. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, a non-executive director of MHS Homes Ltd and chair of the Heart of Medway Housing Association. I also own a home on a leasehold basis.
Secondly, I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester for his service to the House. He has been a Member of this House for 10 years, and we have benefited from his wise counsel. I note his interests in Africa and education, and I say to the right reverend Prelate that we enjoyed his wonderful valedictory speech very much and congratulate him on it. We will miss him very much, and we wish him well in his retirement.
Thirdly, can I say how much I welcome the Bill before us? It does much of what needs to be done to improve building safety and the building safety regime that needs to be in place to protect people and give them the reassurance they need to live their lives without feeling constant worry, and without being faced with bills they cannot afford for matters they are not responsible for causing or creating.
For too long, elements of the building industry have had a poor attitude to safety, in terms of construction, materials and the verification processes to ensure safety and compliance. I see this Bill very much as another step along the way to driving that culture out. It is not and can never be acceptable that this culture exists. The tragedy in all this is that the catalyst for change was the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017, with the loss of 72 lives, and the campaign by Grenfell United following that tragedy. Its campaign goes on, and there will be more to be done when we get the report of the second phase of the Grenfell Tower inquiry.
I very much agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, about buck-passing and, importantly, the attitudes she highlighted when she read out some of the comments in those emails. It is utterly disgraceful, and that is the culture that needs to be dealt with. The arrogance of the former leadership of Kensington and Chelsea Council needs to be called out as well.
But, of course, there were heroes. There were heroes on the night: the firefighters who went into the burning building; other emergency responders; the contractor who went in and turned the gas off; the local community that responded; the officials from both local and central government who supported the community; and, of course, the community itself and Grenfell United. They all showed people working together selflessly for the benefit of others. They are the best examples of humanity—but we have also seen the worst examples as well.
I have to say, as I have many times before, that the Prime Minister’s constant attacks on the FBU irritate me. Let us be absolutely clear: the FBU—the firefighters’ union—and the firefighters, the heroes, are the same people. We cannot attack the union and then say what great people the firefighters are. That does annoy me. I have called on him many times before to apologise, and I expect that I will be waiting a long time for that to come along, but I want to put that on record.
As we have heard, many of the proposals contained in the Bill build on the review led by Dame Judith Hackitt and the consultation that followed, which had submissions from the Local Government Association, the National Housing Federation and others. I join with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester in his tribute to the Manchester Cladiators and the other “cladiator” groups around the country. The justness of their campaign has been clear for all to see. They are not going to go away; there is more to be done. Their cause is just, and we support them very much.
I have criticised the Government from the Dispatch Box many times on this issue, often about the speed of all this. We have got here, finally, with the Bill, and that is great. But the Bill is not sufficient. Dame Judith’s report was published in May 2018, nearly four years ago. Looking at the issues in the Bill, you could never accuse the Government of acting in haste. I note that there was a draft Bill in the other place, and important work has been carried out, but we now need to quickly get on, get the Bill through this House and improve things.
Having said that, as the Official Opposition, we certainly intend to table several amendments to seek to challenge the assumptions in the Bill and to make improvements to it where we think it necessary, and we will divide the House if we must. I am aware that the Government made several commitments in the other place to bring forward amendments to address issues raised there. We look forward to having early sight of these amendments and to having constructive discussions around them and the way forward.
Looking at the Bill itself, I welcome the proposal for the establishment of the building safety regulator and the proposal that the Health and Safety Executive should be the regulator. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, to set out whether he himself is satisfied that the funding mechanism is adequate, proportionate and financially robust enough to enable the building safety regulator, local authorities and fire and rescue services to go about their important roles efficiently and effectively and to deliver on the promises and commitments made. I fully support the duty to co-operate that will exist for local authorities and fire and rescue services, but, as I have said, we need to be confident that the funding streams and mechanisms are fit for purpose to deliver what is required.
I am also clear that the Bill cannot be seen as separate from the Fire Safety Act. I ask the noble Lord in responding to the debate to address the issue of the responsible person under the fire safety order, the accountable person under the Building Safety Bill, and how that comes together. We cannot create a situation which will cause more difficulty and confusion. We must have clarity here in terms of roles, responsibilities, obligations and what can and cannot be charged for.
I welcome the changes to the fire safety order, which introduces a duty for a fire risk assessment to be completed by competent professionals. As my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock said, the issue of height in determining risk has been questioned here today, and many noble Lords across the House have accepted the point that many buildings under 18 metres equally have issues and need to be classified as high risk. I hope that the Government can come forward and publish the findings of their report on the recent survey on buildings between 11 metres and 18 metres, so that we can see the points they looked at there.
Issues such as methods of construction, the number of protected means of escape and the number of vulnerable residents in the building have all been raised by other noble Lords, and we need to take them into account. I very much believe that the definition of higher-risk buildings needs to be broadened to cover the points that I and others have raised. Can the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, also comment on those matters in his reply to the debate?
I am conscious that there have been so many questions that the noble Lord cannot respond to them all, so maybe he could take a leaf out of the book of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and write us a round-robin letter covering all the points. That was one of the great things that the noble Lord always did, so maybe the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, could do that to cover all the points raised to make sure that nothing slips by, as it were.
We have talked many times over the past four years about the problems that leaseholders living in buildings affected by either cladding concerns or other building safety issues have faced. While the Government have moved on the issue of cladding—I thank the noble Lord very much for his own work on that—clearly lots more work needs to be done and other issues need to be addressed, and I am sure they will be raised in the course of the Bill going through this House.
I have a few questions for the Government. How will they ensure that industry plays its part and pays for the fund it has been asked to pay for? How will the Government continue to play their part and pay the funds needed to end the crisis while ensuring both that funding is affordable and that social housing supply is protected? It is really important that money is not taken from the social housing fund to fund this work. How can leaseholders who have already paid remediation costs get their money back? That is a really important issue for the leaseholders.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. The Minister’s words and the action for leaseholders are very welcome. I very much support these.
My noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe raised important issues with which I agree and to which I am sure the Minister will respond when he replies to the debate. How can we ensure that housing associations will have access to funding to carry on their important building work, delivering for people as well?
Can we have clarity on for which works additional funding can be recouped, and which the industry will cover? Can the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, confirm that the affordable homes programme will be protected in full and ensure that the existing departmental budget will not, as I said, be used as a backstop for the funding if the building industry does not come forward with the money we expect?
I fully endorse the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. He raised really pertinent questions for the Minister to answer in the course of the Bill’s passage through this House. They are the matters on which we need answers, otherwise we will have lots of amendments on Report to deal with those points, which need answering.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made a very important point about the use of converted office buildings as flats, which need to be fully integrated into the fire safety regime. I welcome the changes to provisions relating to the Defective Premises Act, that claims will be able to be made retrospectively for leaseholders and the eligibility extension to 30 years.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, I support the calls by Electrical Safety First, and I pay tribute to the work of that charity in campaigning for mandatory electrical safety checks in both social rented homes and leasehold properties. It is important to understand that we have mandatory electrical safety checks in the private sector but not in the social sector or leasehold properties. All three types of tenure, however, could be found in the same block of flats. Unless all three types are checked to ensure that they are correct, the building is not safe. It is important that we bring social housing and leasehold properties up to the same standard, otherwise the buildings are not safe. I hope we can discuss this further and get it agreed while the Bill goes through the House.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, I very much support the calls from the British Woodworking Federation on the issues of construction, product testing, inspections and the competence of fire risk assessors, installers and building managers. I could not believe these shocking figures: of the 100,000 inspections carried out, 76% of fire doors failed their inspection. This is an absolutely appalling situation and its own scandal, which needs to be put right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, my noble friends Lady Young of Old Scone and Lord Jordan, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and others raised the campaign for safer stairs. Again, this is a very simple change that we want to get through in the Bill. I look forward to the amendment being tabled; it is one that these Benches will certainly support if the House is divided.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, who has called for home energy efficiency targets to be enshrined in law. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, can take up the offer from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, to take his Private Member’s Bill on board. I am sure that would be welcomed by all sides of the House.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who gave a very powerful speech about building fire safety, highlighted how evacuation procedures are completely inadequate for disabled people. The number of disabled people who lost their lives in Grenfell Tower is absolutely tragic and shocking.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, with his tremendous experience, outlined the problems with leasehold and commonhold. His point about reliance on the industry stepping up and what happens when it does not needs to be addressed by the Minister in his response today. The polluter pays amendment is great and could work well, but what if it does not? Could we examine what would happen? We also need to look at that. What could be the robust mechanism behind it to ensure that it works?
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, highlighted some of the inadequacies in the Bill, particularly in regard to leaseholders and their means of redress for problems. He speaks with great experience and authority on these matters and the Government should listen to his remarks, which would help the Bill through the House.
I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and look forward to considering his amendments. We may well support them and cause more problems for the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh. I very much look forward to that.
In conclusion, there is a general welcome for the Bill. Members right across the House want it to become law quickly. Legitimate concerns have been raised in the House that need addressing. Legitimate questions need answering. The Government need to respond and table amendments quickly in response to the concerns raised and have those discussions. However, as always, I am hopeful of positive engagement with the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh. He always does so and I thank him for that. There is no desire to divide the House but, equally, if we have to do so we will. Finally, as I said, we would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that he will send that round-robin letter because it is impossible to respond to all the points. I would not want anything to slip through the cracks.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I really enjoy the tutorials I get from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I shall do my best to start at a high level because this is a serious debate. There have been a lot of expert contributions and I have, as noble Lords will know, listened carefully to them all. I should start by saying that when I joined the Government I was told that I could have any job I wanted and was then assigned building safety and fire. The offer changes as one goes through the process.
It means that I have spent some time thinking about the root causes of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. I like to think about things and today we are addressing two of the fundamental root causes. That is why the Bill has the support of this House. We saw a corrosive construction industry culture that needs addressing and the Building Safety Bill seeks to do that. That is why it is so important. We also have, as admitted by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place, a building safety regulatory system that is, frankly, broken. That is why we need the Bill and we are all keen to make sure that it gets on to the statute book. That is important.
I also want to respond as Fire Minister to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the ordinary firefighter and the Fire Brigades Union. I engage; I met Andy Dark and Matt Wrack last week and will engage with them again. However, it is important to reflect that, as regards the Manchester Arena attack and the night of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, there are lessons to be learned for fire and rescue services. We must not mistake the need for reform, which should get widespread support from this House. As Fire Minister, I am about to publish a White Paper that will seek to reform professionalism and ensure that we get better people into the fire and rescue service. The paper will also look to improve governance. It should not prove particularly controversial and will, I hope, have widespread support. However, the reform agenda does not take away from the fact that the ordinary firefighter goes forward into danger, rescuing people’s lives. They certainly have my support and, I am sure, the support of everybody in this House.
It is virtually impossible to respond to the contributions of 32 speeches in the time available. We are then going on to Committee, where the Bill will be debated in depth in the unfortunately slightly less well-lit Moses Room—although it is now dark in here without natural light. We will, however, have an opportunity to debate these matters at length during the passage of the Bill.
First and foremost, we need to understand the issues around scope. This Bill affects the whole built environment. The new building safety regulator will be responsible for building regulations, looking at standards and competence and working with the British Standards Institution to set the competence of the professionals involved in the development of all the built environment.
I want noble Lords to realise that it is important to set the high-risk regime at an appropriate level. If we say we want everything in the high-risk regime then, frankly, the building safety regulator will fail. There are 12,500 high-rise and 77,000 medium-rise buildings—the lower one goes, the more buildings there are. It is very important to have an appropriate scope for the high-risk regime and not ask too much of a new fledgling regulator who exists in shadow form. I hope noble Lords will be patient about scope. This does not mean that it will not widen over time, but we need to start in the right place.
I really enjoyed the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester. I do not think I have heard the right reverend Prelate speak before, but I listened to almost every word. While I do not think the Palace of Westminster is an example of remediation at pace, I completely agree that “caring for building safety is caring for the health of our nation.” That is absolutely right. It is one of the reasons why I am passionate about this ministerial brief. It is very important that we get this right, and I thank the right reverend Prelate for raising it in that way.
As someone who loves history, I recognise that the Victorians did not get everything right, but they got the built environment right. They worked off pattern books. They built some of the finest homes that—like the Romans’—will probably last for a thousand years. We must get back to those principles of quality that the Victorians pioneered and that the Edwardians followed. Somewhere along the way, we lost the culture of building quality in this country.
I also single out my noble friend Lady Fox of Buckley—although she is not my noble friend because she is not on these Benches. She raised a very important point. The proportionality needs to be right in both council homes and social housing, as well as in private housing. There are people who profiteer from this stuff; they create a disproportionate approach and people pay for that. I was approached, not about a council home, but about Saxon House—a home in Sutton—where, essentially a cowboy did an EWS1 form and failed it. This caused untold stress and misery. A young man, called George Martin, managed to challenge it. It is important that we stop in their tracks those who are not acting properly. I involved the police in that case and supported the leaseholders in Saxon House. It is important to have a greater sense of proportion when approaching this crisis. We must remember that some people simply want to profiteer from a problem that has effectively been built up over 30 years. It is shameful to see such instances.
I was given a list of everyone who referenced protecting leaseholders and the polluter pays principle. I could spend the next 40 minutes reading out everybody’s names. In trying to answer all the questions, I will pick out those from my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Young. In essence, we have made a commitment to protect leaseholders and make the polluter pay. Voluntary contributions can go so far, but we want this in law. From my noble friend Lord Blencathra I have learned about a framework—a toolkit in my language—for protecting leaseholders and getting the polluter to pay. The Government will bring forward amendments—I think the deadline for Committee is Valentine’s Day, 14 February. We will be ready to debate many of these amendments at the next stage of this Bill, although some may not be ready. Some are not government amendments. I have been working very hard and listening very carefully to Steve Day, whom the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has been championing. I have put him in touch with lawyers with real expertise. Professor Susan Bright of Oxford, a land lawyer of the highest quality, has been helping to draft an amendment —now known as the Bright-Day amendment, which is better than the dark night amendment. I hope that this will be ready for noble Lords to consider, although it has not yet gone through government processes. We want every tool in the toolbox to make sure that we protect leaseholders and make the polluter pay.
The comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, were very interesting. I want to find out more about the statistic she quoted. It is staggering to think that many registered providers put £6 billion towards remediating their own housing stock. The leading developers have made provision of no more than £1 billion for their share of this crisis. I therefore pay tribute to the registered providers who are doing the right thing and making their buildings safe and not relying entirely on the probably £300 million or £400 million of taxpayers’ money that has gone towards remediation. However, that is a small fraction of the amount of money that the noble Baroness referred to. That is a very useful contribution toward resolving this crisis, because of the balance sheets of the G15, whose shoulders are considerably broader than the average leaseholder and shared owners who live in their homes. That is a tribute, and I look forward to having a summit with the National Housing Federation and leading registered providers to see how we can move forward in that vein.
I was a little disappointed when I saw a tweet that a small number of registered social landlords were effectively engaging a lobbying agency to try to promote ways to stop leaseholders being able to pursue claims. That is not the way to go. We have to recognise that there are people who are doing the wrong thing, and we have to encourage them—whether they are developers or registered providers—to do the right thing by leaseholders.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for sharing her speech, but it got to me quite late; it really struck me, and stopped me in my tracks. I got to know some disabled leaseholders who are leading the campaign, Claddag. Sarah Rennie and Georgie Hulme are incredible people, and I want to be pointed to some other examples. When it comes to public procurement —I declare my interest as someone who has been in local government for 20-odd years, although I never became a vice-president of the LGA; I do not know what I did wrong—it is important that we look at that. However, public procurement has the potential for litigation and there are all kinds of things that, as a Minister, I cannot do. I hear what the noble Baroness says, and there is an intention to do all we can to help disabled people to live safely in their home, whether in high-rises or medium-rises. I want to give her that assurance as the Minister responsible.
I have known the noble Lord, Lord Best, for a long, long time. He asked around 15 questions about the new homes ombudsman. I spent the weekend talking to my honourable friend Natalie Elphicke, who is interim chair of the New Homes Quality Board. She assured me that the governance is clear—although they seek contributions from developers to pay for this scheme, they have no say in how it is run. I was reassured by her clear explanation. While the detail of the scheme is going to follow this legislation, I can confirm that the Bill explicitly allows the new homes ombudsman scheme to expel members—that is one assurance that I can give. The scheme must also include provision about the enforcement of determinations made by the ombudsman that may include expulsion from the scheme, alongside setting out the circumstances in which an expelled member would be able to rejoin the scheme. I hope that gives some assurance.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, wanted to know about information for residents. Existing leaseholders and landlord-owners of flats will be able to request building safety information from the accountable person and to share this with prospective purchasers and tenants. Transparency is an essential way of getting this new system to work.
I have not had the benefit of the British Woodworking Federation information about fire doors, but I am pretty shocked by the numbers that have been quoted in this debate. I am aware, of course, that some of the newer fire doors perform far less well than some of the older ones. In many cases, the older the fire door, the better it performed. There is a real fundamental issue with the construction products testing regime carried out by the BRE or the BBA—we have to recognise that it is broken. That is why the previous Secretary of State asked for a construction products testing review. We are not that far away from having the report. We have a draft; I do not know how long it will be, but it is not miles away from being made public. We are looking at it very closely in draft form, but the usual phrase is “in due course”.
I was very struck by the speech of my noble friend Lady Sanderson, someone who has been a community adviser to the Grenfell bereaved and survivors and lived this since the night of Grenfell, along with Nick Hurd, the Prime Minister’s adviser on Grenfell; it is a fantastic way of staying connected with the community. It was a buck-passing culture and a pass-the-parcel approach that led to a lot of the tragedies we have seen. No one takes ownership or responsibility; frankly, that is why we need this Bill. My noble friend rightly questioned whether we should continue to build high-rises with a single staircase. That is a very important point that we need to look at and find out how to address.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I have one thing in common: we were at Procter & Gamble. I was there in the 1980s and 1990s, but he was probably there in the 1960s.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
The 1970s, okay. One of the things it taught you was to really distil your arguments down and to learn things over time. The noble Lord specifically asked whether we could review this on an ongoing basis. I take that suggestion as a very sensible one. Any Government—this Government in particular—need to do things and then see whether they work, review and reflect, and try to take that on board. I do not know whether I have overstepped the mark as a Minister, but I think that is a very sensible suggestion.
We will ensure that we improve competence. One of the things we must recognise is that, to improve competence, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, you need to establish what competence is. That is one of the things we are doing very carefully; it is being done by officials and the shadow building safety regulator. You then have to find out how the accreditation will work, and I know that UKAS and others want to step forward and do that. That will all happen as a result of this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, gave a really thoughtful speech on something that was new to me, so I appreciate his contribution on cash retention. The Government continue to work with industry on the future of retention payments in the construction industry. However, I am told that there is not a clear consensus as to what may replace the practice, so there is more work to be done. I thank the noble Lord for raising an important issue.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, raised Part 5 and the duty on landlords, and asked whether we were going to cause litigation by setting unreasonable demands on landlords. He also came up with a solution. I really appreciate him raising that issue; leaseholders need as much protection as possible. We are requiring landlords to seek claims only where reasonable, but we note the noble and learned Lord’s suggestions for the guidance, and we will take them on board as we continue with the passage of the Bill.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Young of Old Scone, the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, and my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Naseby all mentioned the Safer Stairs campaign. As someone who has an elderly father—sadly, my mother did not survive the first wave of Covid—I worry. The thing I worry most about, as someone gets frailer, is staircases. I almost have to declare a personal interest. It is important that we look at staircase standards and recognise how best to achieve that end point, so that new builds have the right level of minimum standard. That does not mean it has to be enshrined as a maximum standard, but we have to work out what we would be proud of as a minimum standard in regulations. I thank noble Lords for raising this issue.
I think it is ironic that one of the sponsors of this campaign is Berkeley homes, because Richmond House, which someone mentioned, is of course a Berkeley build, as is Worcester Park, which really was a shoddy building, although luckily there was no loss of life there. Some developers who normally build good stuff have built things that they should be ashamed of. It is ironic that Berkeley is sponsoring what is a very noble campaign—none the less, I support it.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, raised electrical safety. I am sure we will work through some of his suggestions—along with pretty much everything else he is interested in—in Committee. I have the briefing and I understand the issue; it is something that we have debated many times.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised building safety managers, and I have the note that was prepared by ARMA and IRPM on this. I hear the concerns about cost, and we take those concerns extremely seriously. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and if you are not prescribing how you do it, we do not see why you cannot have a property manager continue to discharge the functions of a building safety manager, going to the expertise only when it is needed. Think of the equivalent in healthcare: you typically go to a GP but see the specialist only when required. I have some sympathy with the issue, but I think that we are not being prescriptive about it, and so it should not be used as an excuse by managing agents to whack up the prices for leaseholders.
I welcome the clear cross-party support from so many noble Lords. There is broad support for the principles set out in a Statement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place, on 10 January. We will continue to work with your Lordships —even the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—and by working together we will ensure that homes are safe for future generations. It is a worthy ambition. I commend the Bill to the House.
Surveillance Camera Code of Practice
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Clement-Jones
That this House regrets the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice because (1) it does not constitute a legitimate legal or ethical framework for the police’s use of facial recognition technology, and (2) it is incompatible with human rights requirements surrounding such technology.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I have raised the subject of live facial recognition many times in this House and elsewhere, most recently last November, in connection with its deployment in schools. Following an incredibly brief consultation exercise, timed to coincide with the height of the summer holidays last year, the Government laid an updated Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, pursuant to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, before both Houses on 16 November last year, which came into effect on 12 January 2022.
The subject matter of this code is of great importance. The last Surveillance Camera Commissioner did a survey shortly before stepping down, and found that there are over 6,000 systems and 80,000 cameras in operation across 183 local authorities. The UK is now the most camera-surveilled country in the western world. According to recently published statistics, London remains the third most surveilled city in the world, with 73 surveillance cameras for every 1,000 people. We are also faced with a rising tide of the use of live facial recognition for surveillance purposes.
Let me briefly give a snapshot of the key arguments why this code is insufficient as a legitimate legal or ethical framework for the police’s use of facial recognition technology and is incompatible with human rights requirements surrounding such technology. The Home Office has explained that changes were made mainly to reflect developments since the code was first published, including changes introduced by legislation such as the Data Protection Act 2018 and those necessitated by the successful appeal of Councillor Ed Bridges in the Court of Appeal judgment on police use of live facial recognition issued in August 2020, which ruled that that South Wales Police’s use of AFR—automated facial recognition—had not in fact been in accordance with the law on several grounds, including in relation to certain convention rights, data protection legislation and the public sector equality duty.
During the fifth day in Committee on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill last November, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, the Minister, described those who know about the Bridges case as “geeks”. I am afraid that does not minimise its importance to those who want to see proper regulation of live facial recognition. In particular, the Court of Appeal held in Bridges that South Wales Police’s use of facial recognition constituted an unlawful breach of Article 8—the right to privacy—as it was not in accordance with law. Crucially, the Court of Appeal demanded that certain bare minimum safeguards were required for the question of lawfulness to even be considered.
The previous surveillance code of practice failed to provide such a basis. This, the updated version, still fails to meet the necessary standards, as the code allows wide discretion to individual police forces to develop their own policies in respect of facial recognition deployments, including the categories of people included on a watch-list and the criteria used to determine when to deploy. There are but four passing references to facial recognition in the code itself. This scant guidance cannot be considered a suitable regulatory framework for the use of facial recognition.
There is, in fact, no reference to facial recognition in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 itself or indeed in any other UK statute. There has been no proper democratic scrutiny over the code and there remains no explicit basis for the use of live facial recognition by police forces in the UK. The forthcoming College of Policing guidance will not satisfy that test either.
There are numerous other threats to human rights that the use of facial recognition technology poses. To the extent that it involves indiscriminately scanning, mapping and checking the identity of every person within the camera’s range—using their deeply sensitive biometric data—LFR is an enormous interference with the right to privacy under Article 8 of the ECHR. A “false match” occurs where someone is stopped following a facial recognition match but is not, in fact, the person included on the watch-list. In the event of a false match, a person attempting to go about their everyday life is subject to an invasive stop and may be required to show identification, account for themselves and even be searched under other police powers. These privacy concerns cannot be addressed by simply requiring the police to delete images captured of passers-by or by improving the accuracy of the technology.
The ECHR requires that any interference with the Article 10 right to freedom of expression or the Article 11 right to free association is in accordance with law and both necessary and proportionate. The use of facial recognition technology can be highly intimidating. If we know our faces are being scanned by police and that we are being monitored when using public spaces, we are more likely to change our behaviour and be influenced on where we go and who we choose to associate with.
Article 14 of the ECHR ensures that no one is denied their rights because of their gender, age, race, religion or beliefs, sexual orientation, disability or any other characteristic. Police use of facial recognition gives rise to two distinct discrimination issues: bias inherent in the technology itself and the use of the technology in a discriminatory way.
Liberty has raised concerns regarding the racial and socioeconomic dimensions of police trial deployments thus far—for example, at Notting Hill Carnival for two years running as well as twice in the London Borough of Newham. The disproportionate use of this technology in communities against which it “underperforms” —according to its proponent’s standards—is deeply concerning.
As regards inherent bias, a range of studies have shown facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies women and BAME people, meaning that people from these groups are more likely to be wrongly stopped and questioned by police and to have their images retained as the result of a false match.
The Court of Appeal determined that South Wales Police had failed to meet its public sector equality duty, which requires public bodies and others carrying out public functions to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination. The revised code not only fails to provide any practical guidance on the public sector equality duty but, given the inherent bias within facial recognition technology, it also fails to emphasise the rigorous analysis and testing required by the public sector equality duty.
The code itself does not cover anybody other than police and local authorities, in particular Transport for London, central government and private users where there have also been concerning developments in terms of their use of police data. For example, it was revealed that the Trafford Centre in Manchester scanned the faces of every visitor for a six-month period in 2018, using watch-lists provided by Greater Manchester Police—approximately 15 million people. LFR was also used at the privately owned but publicly accessible site around King’s Cross station. Both the Met and British Transport Police had provided images for their use, despite originally denying doing so.
It is clear from the current and potential future human rights impact of facial recognition that this technology has no place on our streets. In a recent opinion, the former Information Commissioner took the view that South Wales Police had not ensured that a fair balance had been struck between the strict necessity of the processing of sensitive data and the rights of individuals.
The breadth of public concern around this issue is growing clearer by the day. Several major cities in the US have banned the use of facial recognition and the European Parliament has called for a ban on police use of facial recognition technology in public places and predictive policing. In response to the Black Lives Matter uprisings in 2020, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon announced that they would cease selling facial recognition technology to US law enforcement bodies. Facebook, aka Meta, also recently announced that it will be shutting down its facial recognition system and deleting the “face prints” of more than a billion people after concerns were raised about the technology.
In summary, it is clear that the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice is an entirely unsuitable framework to address the serious rights risk posed by the use of live facial recognition in public spaces in the UK. As I said in November in the debate on facial recognition technology in schools, the expansion of such tools is a
“short cut to a widespread surveillance state.”—[Official Report, 4/11/21; col. 1404.]
Public trust is crucial. As the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner said in a recent blog:
“What we talk about in the end, is how people will need to be able to have trust and confidence in the whole ecosystem of biometrics and surveillance”.
I have on previous occasions, not least through a Private Member’s Bill, called for a moratorium on the use of LFR. In July 2019, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report entitled The Work of the Biometrics Commissioner and the Forensic Science Regulator. It repeated a call made in an earlier 2018 report that
“automatic facial recognition should not be deployed until concerns over the technology’s effectiveness and potential bias have been fully resolved.”
The much-respected Ada Lovelace Institute has also called for a
“a voluntary moratorium by all those selling and using facial recognition technology”,
which would
“enable a more informed conversation with the public about limitations and appropriate safeguards.”
Rather than update toothless codes of practice to legitimise the use of new technologies like live facial recognition, the UK should have a root and branch surveillance camera review which seeks to increase accountability and protect fundamental rights. The review should investigate the novel rights impacts of these technologies, the scale of surveillance we live under and the regulations and interventions needed to uphold our rights.
We were reminded by the leader of the Opposition on Monday about what Margaret Thatcher said, and I also said this to the Minister earlier this week:
“The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when it’s inconvenient, if Government does that, then so will the governed and then nothing is safe—not home, not liberty, not life itself.”
It is as apposite for this debate as it was for that debate on the immigration data exemption. Is not the Home Office bobbing and weaving and ducking precisely as described by the late Lady Thatcher?
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has given an eloquent exposition of the reasons for supporting his Motion of Regret. The Motion refers to the ethical and human rights considerations that attach to the use of surveillance camera technology, and it is to those two considerations that I shall address my remarks. I especially draw the Minister’s attention to the Amnesty International report of 3 June 2021 about the use of surveillance technology in New York, to which the noble Lord referred, and also to the serious civil liberty questions that that report raised. Concerns were raised in Japan on 28 December, in Yomiuri Shimbun, and in the Financial Times on 10 June, about Chinese technology in Belgrade, and on the Asia News Monitor in November 2021 in a report from Thailand about mass surveillance against Uighurs in Xinjiang, as well as a report in the Telegraph of 1 December, in which the head of MI6, Richard Moore, said that
“technologies of control … are increasingly being exported to other governments by China—expanding the web of authoritarian control around the planet”.
It is not just control—it is also a keystone in the export of truly shocking crimes against humanity and even genocide. Just a week ago, we marked Holocaust Memorial Day, on which many colleagues from across the House signed the Holocaust Memorial Day book or issued statements recommitting to never allowing such a genocide to happen ever again. Yet, sadly, in 2022, as the Foreign Secretary has said, a genocide against the Uighur Muslims is taking place in Xinjiang. As I argued in our debate on Monday, we are doing far too little to sanction those companies that are actively involved, or to regulate and restrict the facial recognition software that has allowed the Chinese state to incarcerate and enslave more than a million Uighurs.
In the 1940s, we did not allow the widespread use of IBM’s machines, or other tools of genocide used in Nazi Germany and manufactured by slave labour in factories and concentration camps, to be sold in the United Kingdom. Today we find ourselves in the perverse situation of having Chinese surveillance cameras with facial recognition software being used in government departments, hospitals, schools and local councils as well as in shops, such as Tesco and Starbucks. It is an issue that I doggedly raised during our debates on the telecommunications Bills that have recently been before your Lordships’ House. As I said in those debates, a series of freedom of information requests in February 2021 found that more than 70% of local councils use surveillance cameras and software from either Dahua Technology or Hikvision, which are companies rightly subject to United States sanctions for their involvement in the development and installation of technology and software that targets Uighur Muslims. Nevertheless, these companies are free to operate in the United Kingdom.
So much for co-ordinating our response with our Five Eyes allies, which was the subject of one amendment that I laid before your Lordships’ House. Far from being a reputable or independent private company, more than 42% of Hikvision is owned by Chinese state-controlled enterprises. According to Hikvision’s accounts, for the first half of 2021, the company received RMB 223 million in state subsidies, while the company works hand in glove with the authorities in Xinjiang, having signed five public-private partnerships with them since 2017. What is perhaps just as disturbing are the recent reports in the Mail on Sunday that Hikvision received up to £10,000 per month of furlough money from United Kingdom taxpayers from December 2020 until February 2021. How can it be right that, at a time when the US Government are sanctioning Hikvision for its links to Uighur concentration camps, the UK Government are giving them taxpayer money and Covid furlough funds?
It is clear that the introduction and use of this type of facial recognition software technology by the police needs substantial regulation and oversight, especially because of the dominance of sanctioned Chinese companies in the UK surveillance market. Hikvision alone has nearly 20% of the global surveillance camera market. Hikvision is working hard to penetrate and dominate the UK surveillance technology sector. In May 2021, it launched a consultant support programme and demonstration vehicles so it could bring its technology
“to all parts of the United Kingdom”.
In October, it became corporate partner in the Security Institute, the UK’s largest membership body for security professionals, and it has launched a dedicated UK technology partner programme. All of this deserves further investigation by our domestic intelligence services.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, as expectations of privacy are lower in public places than at home, overt surveillance, such as by street cameras, is generally seen as a lesser intrusion into our liberties than either covert surveillance by intelligence agencies—the subject of my 2015 report, A Question of Trust—or so-called surveillance capitalism, the monitoring and monetising of our personal data by big tech. However, that assessment has been cast into doubt by automatic facial recognition and similar technologies, which potentially enable their users to put a name to every person picked up by a camera, to track their movements and to store images of them on vast databases that can be efficiently searched using AI-driven analytics.
Those databases are not all owned by the police: the company Clearview AI has taken more than 10 billion facial images from public-only web sources and boasts on its website that its database is available to US law enforcement on a commercial basis. This technology, part of the information revolution in whose early stages we now find ourselves, can now more be stopped than, two centuries ago, could the steam engine, but, as has been said, the abuses of overt surveillance are already obvious in the streets of China and Hong Kong. To show the world that we are better, we must construct for those who wish to use these powers, as our forebears did in the Industrial Revolution, a democratic licence to operate.
We start in this country with a number of advantages. We have a strong tradition of citizen engagement and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, a culture of policing by consent. We inherited strong data protection laws from the EU and we still have legislation that gives real protection to human rights. We even had—almost uniquely in the world—a Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Tony Porter. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work that he did, on a part-time basis and without any powers of inspection, audit or sanction, including the issue of a 70-page document with detailed recommendations for police users of this technology.
I regret that the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice is, by comparison, a slim and highly general document. It is not comparable to the detailed codes of practice issued under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and overseen by the world-leading Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office. The designated bodies which must have regard to it are confined to local authorities and policing bodies; they do not include, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, health, education or transport providers, private operators or, indeed, the Government themselves. Consultation on the latest version made no attempt to involve the public but was limited to statutory consultees.
The recent annual report of Tony Porter’s impressively qualified but thinly spread successor, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Fraser Sampson, commented that his formal suggestions for the code were largely dismissed as being “out of scope”. He added:
“That my best endeavours to get even a sentence reminding relevant authorities of the ethical considerations were rejected on the grounds that it would be too burdensome is perhaps an indication of just how restrictive this scope—wherever it is to be found—must have been.”
I do not know whether the highly general provisions of the code will be effective to improve local policies on the ground and ensure the consistency between them that my noble and learned friend Lord Etherton and his colleagues gently pointed out was desirable in their judgment in the Bridges case. In the absence of an IPCO-style inspection regime, perhaps we never will know. I suspect that the need not to stifle innovation, advanced in the code as a justification for its brevity, is a less than adequate excuse for the failure to do more to develop the code itself against a changing legal and technological background.
The words of the Motion are harsher than I would have chosen but, as the Snowden episode a few years ago showed, public trust in these increasingly intrusive technologies can be suddenly lost and requires huge effort to regain. I hope that the next revision of this code will be more energetic and ambitious than the last.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow three incredibly distinguished speakers in this debate. With reference to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, attributed to the Minister, I must say that if this is a subject for geeks, I am delighted to join the band of geeks.
I fear I shall demonstrate a level of ignorance tonight, because I am a newcomer to the debate. In fact, I emailed the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, earlier today because I had only just realised that it was taking place tonight. I am also speaking in a hybrid capacity—I now understand the true meaning of “hybrid”—so my opening remarks will be personal, but for those that follow, I will need to declare an interest, so I shall do so in advance of making those remarks.
In my opening remarks I have to say just a few things that demonstrate what a parlous state we are in as a country in terms of respect for human rights. The level of permissiveness in the capture—state capture, policy capture—of institutions that operate in authoritarian regimes, a list of which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has given us, is truly staggering. We bang on about how fantastic our sanctions regime is, and so on, yet these companies, many of them Chinese, as the noble Lord described, operate here with complete impunity and we seem entirely content to allow them to do so, while we also recognise, in our foreign policy statements, that some of these countries have very ignoble intentions towards any freedom-loving democracy. I know the noble Baroness represents the Home Office, but I hope it is something the Government at large will take account of, because commercial surveillance, commercial espionage, commercial authority and commercial capture of the economy are all things we need to be incredibly vigilant about. One needs only to look at Russia’s capture of the German political debate, through Nord Stream 2, and what we are facing now with the Ukraine issue, to understand what is being discussed here by the noble Lord, Lord Alton.
Those are my general remarks. My remarks on it as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission now follow. There, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that I am so relieved he managed to secure this regret Motion. Articles 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14—the general article against discrimination—of the European Convention on Human Rights are engaged in this, so the fact that we get a document as thin as this is truly remarkable. I understand why only statutory bodies were consulted—it was a means for the Government to get it through in six weeks without being very concerned about broader concerns—but it is regrettable. The Bridges case directly engaged the public sector equality duty. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the regulator of the public sector equality duty, yet the idea that it was not consulted, post the judgment, on how we might strengthen the code in light of that judgment is a matter of great deep regret to me.
I have a couple of points on the code. In paragraph 10.4 we are told that effective review and audit mechanisms should be published regularly. The summary of such a review has to be made available publicly, so my question to the noble Baroness is: why only a summary? In the interests of transparency and accountability, it is essential that these bodies regularly give a full explanation of what they are doing. The public sector equality duty requires legitimate aims to be addressed objectively, verifiably and proportionately. We, the public, will not be capable of assessing whether those tests have been met if there is only an executive summary to go by.
My other point concerns section 12.3, “When using a surveillance camera” and so on. The third bullet point requires “having due regard” and states that
“chief police officers should … have regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty, in particular taking account of any potential adverse impact that the LFR algorithm may have on members of protected groups.”
Again, no practical examples are provided in this rather thin document. We know from publishing statutory codes that the public, and even the bodies that use this technology, want practical examples. A code is effective, of value and of use, to the providers as well as the public, only when it gives those practical examples, because you cannot test the legal interpretation of those examples until you have that evidence before you.
We, the EHRC, have been unable at short notice to assess whether the code is in compliance with the Bridges judgment—I wonder, myself, whether it is—but we do not take a clear position on the legality of the revised code, and I should say that in clarification. However, we have recommended previously that the Government scrutinise the impact of any policing technologies, in particular for the impact on ethnic minorities, because we have a mountain of evidence piling up to say that they discriminate against people of darker skin colour.
We wanted mandatory independent equality and human rights impact assessments. These should ensure that decisions regarding the use of such technologies are informed by those impact assessments and the publication of the relevant data—this takes me back to my point about executive summaries—and then evaluated on an ongoing basis, and that appropriate mitigating action is taken through robust oversight, including the development of a human rights compliant legal, regulatory and policy framework. That is in conformity with our role as a regulator. We have recommended that, in light of evidence regarding their inaccuracy, and potentially discriminating impacts, the Government review the use of automated facial recognition and predictive programs in policing, pending completion of the above independent impact assessments and consultation processes, and the adoption of appropriate mitigation action. We await action from the Government on the basis of this recommendation.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on securing this debate. Obviously, all who have spoken deserve a response to the points they have raised, but I am particularly interested in what the reply will be to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, who asked who was and who was not consulted and why. The point she made there most certainly deserves a response from the Government.
The Surveillance Camera Code of Practice was first published in June 2013 under provisions in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. It provides guidance on the appropriate use of surveillance camera systems by local authorities and the police. Under the 2012 Act these bodies
“must have regard to the code when exercising any functions to which the code relates”.
As has been said, the Government laid an updated code before both Houses on 16 November last year and, as I understand it, the code came into effect on 12 January this year. The Explanatory Memorandum indicates that changes were made mainly to reflect developments since the code was first published, including changes introduced by legislation such as the Data Protection Act 2018 and those arising from a Court of Appeal judgment on police use of live facial recognition issued in August 2020, which was the Bridges v South Wales Police case.
Reporting the month before last, our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee commented that the revised code reflects the Court of Appeal judgment
“by restricting the use of live facial recognition to places where the police have reasonable grounds to expect someone on a watchlist to be”
and added that the technology
“cannot be used for ‘fishing expeditions’”.
The committee continued:
“The Code now requires that if there is no suggested facial matches with the watchlist, the biometric data of members of the public filmed incidentally in the process should be deleted immediately. Because the technology is new, the revised Code also emphasises the need to monitor its compliance with the public sector equality duty to ensure that the software does not contain unacceptable bias. We note that a variety of regulators are mentioned in the Code and urge the authorities always to make clear to whom a person who objects to the surveillance can complain.”
As the regret Motion suggests, there is disagreement on the extent to which the code forms part of a sufficient legal and ethical framework to regulate police use of facial recognition technology, whether it is compatible with human rights—including the right to respect for private life—and whether it can discriminate against people with certain protected characteristics. Interpretations of the Court of Appeal judgement’s implications for the continued use of facial recognition technology differ too.
As has been said, the use of facial recognition is a growing part of our everyday lives—within our personal lives, by the private sector and now by the state. It can be a significant tool in tackling crime but comes with clear risks, which is why equally clear safeguards are needed. It appears that our safeguards and understanding of and frameworks for this spreading and developing technology are largely being built in a piecemeal way in response to court cases, legislation and different initiatives over its use, rather than strategic planning from the Government. Parliament—in particular MPs but also Members of this House—has been calling for an updated framework for facial technology for some years, but it appears that what will now apply has finally come about because of the ruling on the Bridges v South Wales Police case, rather than from a government initiative.
The police have history on the use of data, with a High Court ruling in 2012 saying that the police were unlawfully processing facial images of innocent people. I hope the Government can give an assurance in reply that all those photos and data have now been removed.
While a regularly updated framework of principles is required, as legislation alone will struggle to keep up with technology, can the Government in their response nevertheless give details of what legislation currently governs the use and trials of facial recognition technology, and the extent to which the legislation was passed before the technology really existed?
On the updates made to the code, it is imperative that the technology is used proportionately and as a necessity. What will be accepted as “reasonable grounds” for the police to expect a person to be at an event or location in order to prevent phishing exercises? As the Explanatory Memorandum states:
“The Court of Appeal found that there is a legal framework for its use, but that South Wales Police did not provide enough detail on the categories of people who could be on the watchlist, or the criteria for determining when to use it, and did not do enough to satisfy its public sector equality duty.”
Can the Government give some detail on how these issues have now been addressed?
A further area of concern is the apparent bias that can impact this technology, including that its use fails to properly recognise people from black and minority-ethnic backgrounds and women. That is surely a significant flaw in technology that is meant to recognise members of our population. We are told that the guidance now covers:
“The need to comply with the public sector equality duty on an ongoing basis through equality impact assessments, doing as much as they can to ensure the software does not contain unacceptable bias, and ensuring that there is rigorous oversight of the algorithm’s statistical accuracy and demographic performance.”
What does that look like in practice? What is being done to take account of these issues in the design of the software and in the datasets used for training for its use? What does ongoing monitoring of its use and outcomes look like? The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee raised the question of who a person should direct a complaint to if they object to the use of the technology, and how that will be communicated.
We have previously called for a detailed review of the use of this technology, including the process that police forces should follow to put facial recognition tools in place; the operational use of the technology at force level, taking into account specific considerations around how data is retained and stored, regulated, monitored and overseen in practice, how it is deleted and its effectiveness in achieving operational objectives; the proportionality of the technology’s use to the problems it seeks to solve; the level and rank required for sign-off; the engagement with the public and an explanation of the technology’s use; and the use of technology by authorities and operators other than the police.
What plans do the Government have to look at this issue in the round, as the code provides only general principles and little operational information? The Government previously said that the College of Policing has completed consultation on national guidance which it is intended to publish early this year, and that the national guidance is “to address the gaps”. Presumably these are the gaps in forces’ current published policies. What issues will the national guidance cover, and will it cover the issues, with great clarity and in detail, which we think a detailed review of the use of this technology should include and which I have just set out? Unfortunately, the Explanatory Memorandum suggests that neither the College of Policing national guidelines nor the updated code will do so or indeed are intended to do so.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for securing this debate and all who spoke in it. Let me clarify that when I referred to those who are interested and knowledgeable about LFR as “geeks”, it was meant as a compliment. Sometimes it is difficult to get people to be interested in some of the things that we do in the Home Office. I am also grateful to the noble Lord for putting on record his views on the revised code, which came into force on 12 January of this year. I understand that it was published in full, and there is more detail in accompanying documents, including the College of Policing guidance and ICO guidance.
As I think the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, the code was established in 2013 during the coalition Government under PoFA—the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012—to provide guidance to local authorities and the police on the appropriate use of surveillance camera systems.
Surveillance in schools is not really for the surveillance camera code of practice. Private use, which the noble Lord also talked about, is of course a DCMS matter. I am not trying to pass the buck, but it is not unusual for people to get those mixed up. In fact, that goes to the heart of what the Government are trying to do—namely, to try to simplify the landscape, which is all too often far too complex.
The principles in the code enable the police and local authorities to operate surveillance cameras in a way that complies with the breadth of relevant law in this area. Because the code is principles-based rather than technology-specific, it has remained largely up to date despite the pace of technological advancement in this area. Therefore, the changes do not increase the scope of the code or, indeed, its intended impact.
There have been a number of legislative developments and a key court ruling since the code was first published, which noble Lords referred to. The reason for updating the code was to reflect those changes, while we also took the opportunity to make the text easier for users to follow at the same time.
The consultees were mainly among policing and commissioners, including the Information Commissioner’s Office. The Surveillance Camera Commissioner published the draft, so it was in the public domain, and civil society groups commented on it, including the NPCC.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down: is the issue of live facial recognition and its use by the police a matter for the police and crime commissioner to decide or for the chief constable to decide?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
It would usually be a matter for local forces in the context in which they are deploying it. In terms of the seniority of the officer who can authorise it, I do not know, actually. I just know it is a matter for local forces to decide when and for what purpose they are using it. But I can write to the noble Lord about that.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I take it, since the noble Baroness did make a reference to democracy and democratic accountability, that surely, at the very least, since the police and crime commissioner is elected and accountable, it must be a decision for a police and crime commissioner, rather than a police constable who is not elected and not accountable in that way.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The PCCs clearly have oversight of what their police forces are doing, and I would be most surprised if the PCC was removed from that sort of operational context.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
The noble Baroness was good enough to reference the statement from the FCDO. Would she be willing to take back to it the specific point I raised this evening about the company Hikvision, which is banned in the United States because of security, human rights and civil liberties concerns, and all the other things I said? I hope, therefore, that the noble Baroness will feel able to ask the FCDO why it has been banned in the US on the same intelligence we have, but not in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I referenced this without mentioning the company’s name. I recognise the seriousness of the issue and I will take the point back.
I have had a note to say that it is at constable level, but of course they are accountable to the PCC.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive reply. This has been a short but very focused debate and full of extraordinary experience from around the House. I am extremely grateful to noble Lords for coming and contributing to this debate in the expert way they have.
Some phrases rest in the mind. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked about live facial recognition being the tactic of authoritarian regimes, and there are several unanswered questions about Hikvision in particular that he has raised. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, talked about the police needing democratic licence to operate, which was also the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has been raising. It was also very telling that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said the IPA code was much more comprehensive than this code. That is somewhat extraordinary, given the subject matter of the IPA code. The mantra of not stifling innovation seems to cut across every form of government regulation at the moment. The fact is that, quite often, certainty in regulation can actually boost innovation— I think that is completely lost on this Government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, talked about human rights being in a parlous state, and I appreciated her remarks—both in a personal capacity and as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission—about the public sector equality duty and what is required, and the fact that human rights need to be embedded in the regulation of live facial recognition.
Of course, not all speakers would go as far as I would in asking for a moratorium while we have a review. However, all speakers would go as far as I go in requiring a review. I thought the adumbration by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, of the elements of a review of that kind was extremely useful.
The Minister spent some time extolling the technology —its accuracy and freedom from bias and so on—but in a sense that is a secondary issue. Of course it is important, but the underpinning of this by a proper legal framework is crucial. Telling us all to wait until we see the College of Policing guidance does not really seem satisfactory. The aspect underlying everything we have all said is that this is piecemeal—it is a patchwork of legislation. You take a little bit from equalities legislation, a little bit from the Data Protection Act, a little bit to come—we know not what—from the College of Policing guidance. None of that is satisfactory. Do we all just have to wait around until the next round of judicial review and the next case against the police demonstrate that the current framework is not adequate?
Of course I will not put this to a vote. This debate was to put down a marker—another marker. The Government cannot be in any doubt at all that there is considerable anxiety and concern about the use of this technology, but this seems to be the modus operandi of the Home Office: do the minimum as required by a court case, argue that it is entirely compliant when it is not and keep blundering on. This is obviously light relief for the Minister compared with the police Bill and the Nationality and Borders Bill, so I will not torture her any further. However, I hope she takes this back to the Home Office and that we come up with a much more satisfactory framework than we have currently.