Westminster Hall

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 2 March 2022

[Mrs Maria Miller in the Chair]

High-rise Buildings: Remediation

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

00:00

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of remediation works on residents in high rise buildings.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Miller. As the Member for Ipswich, I have been involved on the issue of cladding in more ways than one. My first surgery appointment was with a leaseholder from St Francis Tower, which is an incredibly prominent building on the Ipswich skyline; it is right in the heart of the town. The appointment had to do with making sure that leaseholders did not have to pay for the remediation works. On that particular issue, we have come quite a long way. St Francis Tower was one of the first beneficiaries of the building safety fund, and in that respect we have moved forward.

St Francis Tower was built in the 1960s. There were extensive refurbishment works between 2005 and 2008. In August 2018, a decision was made that the cladding needed to be replaced, and in September 2018 the work began. In many respects, St Francis Tower was a precursor to the many other buildings in Ipswich where leaseholders were affected. Those leaseholders have had significant periods of huge anxiety and concern about being chased for bills to do with fire defects that the leaseholders had absolutely nothing to do with. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) for the work that he has done on that issue.

Although I appreciate that some hon. Members will believe that we still have a way to go in providing full support for all leaseholders and making sure that none is left behind, the debate today is specifically to do with the impact of remediation works on the residents who are expected to live in those buildings while work is taking place. It was good news that St Francis Tower was one of the early beneficiaries of the building safety fund, but in some respects it has almost become a victim of the fact that it was such an early beneficiary. The residents of the tower have had to endure something that I hope, if we continue to shine a spotlight on what has happened through debates like this, residents in other high-rise buildings like the 17-storey St Francis Tower will not have to experience.

In Ipswich, almost overnight, it seemed, a giant shrink-wrap emerged and covered the entirety of St Francis Tower—I was absolutely astonished. A very large number of my constituents assumed that the residents of St Francis Tower had been relocated somewhere else; they could not actually believe that any human beings would be expected to live in those conditions. Of course, in short order I visited my constituents in St Francis Tower. I went to four or five of the flats—some on the top levels, some on the bottom levels—and I was astonished by what I saw. What I came across were conditions that I would feel guilty about an animal living in, never mind human beings, my constituents. The shrink-wrap was put on the building in June 2021, leading to virtually no natural light at all in the building. Bars across the windows were added, meaning that even getting fresh air was very hard. Of course, that was in the midst of the pandemic. There were concerns and anxieties about potential periods of self-isolation, lockdowns and having to work from home. The flats have no balconies.

I will always remember one of the conversations that I had with a constituent. She spends a huge amount of time in her flat. To her, it was a precious place—her home. She derived enjoyment from her plants, which were on the window, and the view that she had across the town. Those plants died. I know that some might say, “They were just plants,” but they were important to my constituent. I will remember that conversation with her in particular.

Block Management UK is responsible for the building, and Oander is the company that is carrying out the work. My constituents were given very little notice that the shrink-wrap was even going to go up—very little notice at all. Initially, those companies were incredibly difficult to get hold of, or for residents to meet, so I got involved and met the residents, and I was incredibly vocal in the media. I thank the East Anglian Daily Times, the Ipswich Star and BBC Radio Suffolk, because they got their teeth into this issue. Emily Townsend, who is a former journalist from the East Anglian Daily Times, was particularly passionate about it, and I honestly think it was only the front pages that ran in the local media that brought Block Management and Oander to the table at all.

I have to be honest: I have long given up expecting these companies to act in a moral way. I have essentially come to think of it like this: on the one hand, they could have the inconvenience and cost of potentially replacing the shrink-wrap; on the other, they have the reputational risk of me continuing to bang on about it in this place, and the local media rightly continuing to cover it.

Residents were told that this shrink-wrap would be up for 12 months—12 months of living in those conditions—which has led to serious anxiety and mental health problems for many of my constituents. It is very sad that this has been the case. I have raised the issue at Prime Minister’s questions and in different departmental debates. In fact, I remember talking about it in a summer Adjournment debate to which the Minister, in his previous role, gave a very positive response, so I know that even before this debate—even before his current role—the Minister had some understanding of this issue and how important it is for me.

In essence, St Francis Tower covered in that shrink-wrap has become a scar on our landscape, and it is incredibly visible every day. In a sense, as the local MP, I also see it as a little bit of a sign of failure on my part every time I get back to the town and see that tower. I think of the people living inside it, and of the fact that the shrink-wrap is now going to be up not for 12 months, but for around 18 months, because there have been delays, as is often the case. My current understanding is that the shrink-wrap is likely to be on the building until December 2022, so even at this point, my constituents are looking at another nine or 10 months of that shrink-wrap being on the building.

St Francis Tower was the precursor in Ipswich to the leaseholder issue; my concern is that it will also be the precursor for issues to do with the living conditions that constituents who live in high-rise buildings are expected to endure. We have had other examples; in particular, there is Orwell Quay, another building in Ipswich. Initially, I was given hope that a different approach would be taken there, one more based on consultation. I heard that a netting material was going to go up, as opposed to shrink-wrap; it would be more breathable and would allow more natural light in. Having seen the material in question, frankly, it is borderline whether it is netting. It is a slight improvement on the shrink-wrap, but it still is not where we need to be.

What is the issue here, in a more general sense? For me, it is recognition that the work that is taking place is vital. We need to ensure that everybody lives in safe buildings, particularly in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy; we all accept and understand that. We want that work to happen as quickly as possible, and to be as effective as possible. We also recognise the moves that the Government have made, and we appreciate the building safety fund. However, the point I am trying to make is that we need to balance the need to carry out that work with the mental health of those who are expected to live in those buildings while the work is carried out, and I do not believe that a single Member in this place would think it acceptable that any human being has to live in the conditions that my constituents in St Francis Tower have had to live in for well over a year. We need to get to a position where the work is carried out, but in a way that is sensitive to people’s needs and their mental health.

I have been told by Block Management that the shrink-wrap is 100% necessary—that there is no other way to do it. I simply do not believe that, Minister. I do not believe that there is not another way of carrying out this work, one that is more sensitive to the mental health of my constituents. I put it to the Minister that we should work up a better way to do this, whether that is by introducing new regulations that stipulate the use of more breathable material that lets in natural light, or by making available relocation funds to ensure that it is an option for those in buildings such as St Francis Tower to live somewhere else. I am loth to say that, because I appreciate the huge pressures on the public finances.

That is my ask today. There are examples like St Francis Tower across the country; I am aware of similar case studies, so I know this is not an issue just for Ipswich. During the recent storms, the shrink-wrap was partially ripped off St Francis Tower. I have wanted that shrink-wrap off since the moment I saw it, but not in that way, which caused significant distress to a number of my constituents. Yes, we welcome the building safety fund. Nobody disagrees that the work needs to be carried out, but it must be done in a way that is sensitive to the mental health and welfare of the individuals expected to live in that building while the work is carried out.

09:41

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate with you overseeing it, Mrs Miller, and I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for securing it. I join him in paying tribute to the work done by his colleague, the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), throughout this entire debacle. I have seen the former’s comments about St Francis Tower on Twitter and elsewhere. He is right to highlight the issue because many of our constituents will face similar problems as this crisis reaches the next stage. He rightly describes this as a precursor.

Along with the hon. Members for Ipswich and for Stevenage and others, I have made representations on behalf of many constituents in buildings affected by the scandal. Part of the scandal is that in the vast majority of cases, we are still so far off remediation, but for those who are at that stage, there are real problems of the sort described by the hon. Member for Ipswich.

I have recently been in touch with leaseholders in Mandale House in the heart of Sheffield, who are in exactly that position. After all the other traumas that they have faced—the uncertainty over so long; the waking watch costs; the trebling of insurance costs—they now face the problems of remediation work. Their building is to be clad—understandably and necessarily—in scaffolding, which requires the removal of balconies. We all know that in recent times, any piece of outdoor space has been precious. Losing a balcony is bad enough, but the work also involves blocking the opening of the window by the balcony. In many of those flats, that is the only window. People have been condemned to live in a space with no source of natural light and no ventilation. They anticipate that they will be in that position for two and a half years, but as we know, it could be longer, given the way these things unfortunately go.

Mandale House residents will lose access to their car park, as will those in other buildings in the same situation. That might be a comparatively small issue, but in city centre complexes, having somewhere to park a car is important. Residents paid for those spaces, but there is no sense of what alternative provision might be available—provision that they will have to pay for. There are issues about coming back late at night; young women will have to walk through the city, when they would rather park in their building and have direct access to their flats.

There is a range of problems, and in any other situation in which people were facing these sorts of difficulties, they would have someone to turn to for compensation, or perhaps to facilitate their relocation while the work was taking place, but none of that is available to these people. People might want to move temporarily, but their flat will be unrentable. People might want to move in order to move on with their life—we know that is a big aspect of this crisis—but their flat is also unrentable. The remediation work is directly impacting not only how they live, but how they can take their life forward. As the hon. Member for Ipswich suggested, that adds to the stress that many leaseholders have long suffered while anticipating the difficulties that they will face in living without access to their balcony, and with no source of natural light or ventilation.

Leaseholders recognise that that the remediation work is necessary—vital, as the hon. Member described it—but they are being asked to pay substantial amounts of money to repair faults for which they have no responsibility, and will, through those repairs, experience a substantial reduction in their quality of life over a long period. What is happening to them is obscene. It is having a very significant impact on their mental health, as the hon. Member pointed out; and as I have said, these people have already been traumatised.

The impact on mental health has been explored in a report by Dr Jenny Preece of the University of Sheffield, who also works with the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. It published the report, entitled “Living through the building safety crisis”, at the end of last year. Dr Preece started her research before many leaseholders started to make payments or faced the impact of remedial work, but they were, at that stage, facing all the other worries, and were having to pay out for a waking watch; at Mandale House, they had to pay a substantial amount for a new alarm system. They were paying for interim measures while still uncertain about their future. It has to be said that the Government’s recent proposals will not lift the worries of most of these people.

Many leaseholders have had their whole life taken over by this crisis. One is a GP. This has completely affected his career development, because he has become almost a full-time organiser, helping the voices of those across the city who are suffering these injustices to be heard. Dr Preece’s report points out the practical impact of the worries that many people face. There are leaseholders who have a bag packed by their front door in case their building reaches the point of unsafety and they have to move out in a hurry. Another building in my area, Wicker Riverside, was evacuated before Christmas 2020 with three hours’ notice, so these are real worries.

However, the continued lack of support from the Government has meant that, for most leaseholders, the financial worry has overtaken the question of safety. That came through very powerfully in Dr Preece’s report. From her extensive interviews with leaseholders, she concluded that the negative impacts on mental wellbeing ranged from constant worry and an inability to concentrate and focus on work, to anxiety, depression and suicidal feelings. One mother wrote to me to say that her son was seriously contemplating suicide because he felt so blocked in by the crisis imposed on him.

There is real fear of a dangerous fire breaking out, but that fear, as I have said, is eclipsed by the financial impacts. The anticipation or receipt of bills that are simply unaffordable—that break people financially—has created enormous stress, alongside the day-to-day attrition of increasing costs for insurance, a waking watch and other things. All the participants in Dr Preece’s survey

“reflected on the impact…on their ability to control their own lives”.

That is a point worth reflecting on for a moment: their inability to control their life and plan for their future. Many are young people at the start of their life, planning careers and families, who are unable to move or to commit to having an extra family member in the household. That is an important point about all those life stage transitions—family planning, moving to a larger home, retirement. Some of these people have invested savings into a retirement plan and are similarly trapped. For many people, the pressures have challenged their self-perception and self-confidence, and have put a strain on relationships.

I do not want to score a party political point here—there has been a lot of cross-party unity on this issue—but the Prime Minister was recently asked on ITV about the concerns expressed by one of my constituents in Wicker Riverside, Jenni Garrett. He said she had

“a frankly unnecessary sense of anxiety”.

I challenged the Prime Minister on that point at Prime Minister’s questions, and asked him to meet Jenni so that they might explain why she and so many others were worried. I was surprised by his response. He doubled down on the assertion, and told me that it was my responsibility to tell her that her building was safe. That is shocking, but is perhaps an insight into why the Government are still failing to treat the issue with the urgency it deserves, and in the appropriate way.

Although I recognise that the recent announcement was a step forward, it does not address the commitment that the Prime Minister previously made, and which we should be committed to as parliamentarians. These people have faced an extraordinary injustice. The solution that the Government are proposing will lead to a long road of resolution for many of those affected, heaping more worry on them, as well as potential litigation that they will not be able to afford or organise. We should be taking responsibility for fixing the buildings quickly and then using the full resources of the state to hold those responsible to account and to recover the public money that we need to put in to secure the situation, so that we can live up to the commitment that the Prime Minister made at one stage—that every affected building is fixed without delay, and at no cost to leaseholders. That is what will lift their worry.

09:52

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. I am grateful to be following the wonderful speech by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who gave an emotional account of the GP who has had to put his whole career on hold. That is something we have seen up and down the country. Lots of people have had to become experts on building safety.

There is a grave misunderstanding of how many people are affected. There is still no register of how many buildings and people are affected. The estimates vary, but they suggest that up to 5 million people are affected, and that hundreds of thousands of buildings are currently deemed to be unsafe in one way or another.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for securing this important debate. Since the emergence of this issue, he has led the way on a range of points. Once again we are celebrating the Government’s wonderful intervention, and my hon. Friend is moving us on to the next stage of the debate and the next stage of the campaign by leading the way, as he always does—standing up for his constituents and making sure that they get the best possible service they can from their Member of Parliament and the Government.

I welcome the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), to his place. This is our first opportunity to debate this issue and I am grateful that he is here. I feel this will be a positive relationship. It is quite well known that we did not always see eye to eye with the previous Ministers and Secretary of State, but we feel we are now in a much better place, and that everybody is listening and working together. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), is also working with us incredibly well, as did his predecessors. This is all about working cross-party and making sure that we represent our constituents up and down the country.

In terms of remediation, my constituency has a building called Vista Tower, which has been iconic during this campaign. Leaseholders paid about £200,000 for their properties and the remediation bills they received were £220,000, so the remediation costs are more than the value of the properties. That is why my constituent Sophie Bichener reached out to me. At the beginning of the campaign I found it difficult to understand what the issues were, because I am not a building safety expert; neither was Sophie. We worked on the issue, and that was when we got the ball rolling some 18 months ago, but it remains incredibly difficult.

I thank the Minister because the Government’s intervention means that those leaseholders will not face costs of £220,000. At most, they would be capped at £10,000. As the Minister knows, I am keen that the £10,000 cap is a waterfall, so the developers were first, then the freeholders, and in the last possible scenario it would be the leaseholders, but with a cap of £10,000. The cap should take into consideration costs, such as a waking watch, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central mentioned, where my constituents were paying more in waking watch costs every month than they were paying on their mortgages—and that was just one fire safety cost.

On mental health, as the hon. Member for Ipswich said, residents were told to work from home because the global pandemic made it not safe to go outside, but they were in a building that was not safe to live in, so they had nowhere to go. They had to lay their child’s head down to sleep every night in a building that was unsafe. The fire department and everybody else were talking about how unsafe the building was and how anything could happen. People are having to walk up and down the building 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure that it does not catch fire and that if it did, everyone would be able to get out in time.

The impact on leaseholders’ mental health, during a global pandemic, was intolerable. As the hon. Member said, animals would not be treated like that in this country. It is incredibly important to understand how those leaseholders feel. I welcome the Government’s commitment of over £9 billion. They have done the waterfall that we suggested. We are trying to get a commitment from Government that any costs incurred to leaseholders over the previous five years would be taken off that £10,000 cap. If that was the case, my constituent would not be facing a bill of £220,000; it would be zero. That is the level of the Government’s intervention on the issue. I welcome that and thank the Government, who have tried to work with us.

Now we need to move towards remediation. We are winning the debates and the arguments, but the reality is that none of the buildings up and down the country are being made safer. A dialogue is still taking place. People are still living in those buildings. One building that I visited during my campaign that is also iconic is New Providence Wharf, where a fire took place. It had a waking watch, but they could go up only so many flights before they had to leave themselves because it was so difficult.

Again, it was very hard meeting people who lived there. I met NHS consultants and a lady who had a number of children. During the fire, she was sitting on the floor because she did not know which child she had to leave behind, and the neighbours came and picked the other children up and got them out of the smoke. It was the people in the building who rescued each other. Everything failed—the smoke alarms and fire doors. They had all the kit, but none of it worked.

At the moment the building is shrink-wrapped in Monarflex. It has to be Monarflex because it is weatherproof. Those people have been living in this shrink-wrapped, weatherproof place, which currently looks like shredded toilet paper because the storms have shown that it is not remotely weatherproof and it has been ripped apart. They have been living in darkness for 12 months, and working from home during that time. As the hon. Member said, animals would not be allowed to be kept in darkness for 12 months.

Residents have reached out and given me a few examples. They came up with a wonderful idea, which we would like the Minister to take away and think about. It is something that the hon. Member for Ipswich and I have talked about, which is to develop a code of practice for remediating buildings. If a building is going to be shrink-wrapped in Monarflex, what needs to be done to prove that is the right material? How long can it stay up for, and what measures can be put in place instead? Cladding rightly had to be removed quickly, so the scaffolding went up, the cladding was removed and the building was shrink-wrapped. Then there is a 26-week delay as everybody works out what to do, but people live in that building during that 26-week delay.

People gave me examples of security. Obviously, the buildings are accessible if people climb on scaffolding. One lady had somebody peering into her flat in the early hours of the morning—they had climbed up the scaffolding. I was given examples of noise. People often do not understand how intrusive the remediation works are. We are talking about knocking walls down and the noise is intolerable, especially when having to work from home. There is probably a health and safety issue. If we put a noise monitor in a flat, would we find that the noise exceeded acceptable levels?

Another issue is the scheduling. We have talked about the huge delays. That does not sound like much of an issue, but it is. I have been told about tiles that had to be removed and then they were going to go back up, but five months later the tiles are still being removed because of the need to fix the firebreaks. The tiles insulated the properties, so people now have no insulation and their heating bills have gone through the roof. They are in a concrete box shrink-wrapped in darkness. Those are the conditions that people currently live in.

I am incredibly excited that we have more than £9 billion from the Government. They have accepted that leaseholders are the innocent parties. We have to remediate the buildings now, but no one has been prepared. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich has seen it at first hand in his constituency, but none of us is prepared for what will actually happen. That is something else that I would like the Minister to take away and think about, and it might help him. Some of the buildings are probably so bad that leaseholders do not consider them to be homes any more; they consider them to be millstones. So will the Minister consider compulsorily purchasing some of these buildings from the leaseholders, or give them the opportunity to sell them to the Government? We could knock the buildings down, hand them over to housing associations and allow them to be rebuilt properly as new affordable homes. We would be replacing stock. Instead of remediation, we would be starting afresh and creating huge affordable housing stock up and down the country, and people would not have to live in buildings that had been remediated because they were so bad.

Oddly, the more remediation work the building needs, the more intrusive and difficult it is for the leaseholders living in the building. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich mentioned, we need to find a balance around mental health and living in those buildings. Perhaps we could offer leaseholders the opportunity to sell and allow the housing associations to go in and provide affordable homes. Many leaseholders want to have a child—or another child—and move on with their lives away from those buildings. Will the Minister consider that?

Another thing I want the Minister to consider is a building safety-type register. The Building Safety Bill creates a new regulator. According to the insurance industry, one reason why premiums are so high is that they do not know what the buildings are made of, so they assume the worst-case scenario, and as a result the premiums have to stay high and could go up at any time. Although a lot of the buildings are safe, insurers do not know what materials have been used. If the Building Safety Bill stated that there had to be a register of all new buildings and what exactly they were made of, as in Scandinavia, in the case of any new buildings built from, say, January 2024, we would know exactly what they were made of and we would not be in this position, going forward.

In the case of applications to the building safety fund for support or remediation works, we could say that the buildings had to be analysed to identify what they were made of. We would then have a database of buildings in the country and could identify which were the worst affected. We would know that buildings are made of x, y and z. That could help with insurance costs and would allow the Department to prioritise which buildings need to be fixed quickly, because we would know which were the most dangerous. I urge the Minister to talk to the insurance companies. It is in their interests because they do not want to pay out, and they know which of their insurance products are the most effective for insurance purposes.

We need to work with each other to try to resolve these issues on a cross-party basis, as we have done throughout the campaign, and we need to continue to listen and try to move forward. I am grateful that we have £9 billion to end our cladding scandal, and I thank the UK Cladding Action Group and the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership for all the work that they have done to get us to where we are today. As we move into the remediation of buildings, however, it will be very much as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich has described: it will be a living hell for a number of people who are already close to breaking point because their mental health has suffered. I urge the Minister to consider those points, and I look forward to meeting him a number of times to discuss them.

10:05

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for securing the debate. As he always does, he set out an excellent viewpoint, as have other speakers, whom I thank for their contributions. I welcome the Minister to what I believe is his first Westminster Hall debate as the Minister for Housing, and I look forward to his contribution. I have already asked him for a meeting on a separate issue; I thank him for agreeing to that meeting and look forward to our working together. As always, I look forward to the speech by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook).

This issue is of some importance to me, and I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on healthy homes and buildings. It is an issue that has been discussed numerous times in the main Chamber and in Westminster Hall over a long period. I believe that the right home, built in the right way, with all remediation work having been carried out, contributes to a person or family’s wellbeing; that is why the debate is so important. It is not just about the structural work that the hon. Member for Ipswich mentioned; it is about the effect it has on the wellbeing of the people who live in the properties. If we get this right, we improve their wellbeing as well, which is really important.

Remediation works have a number of positive effects on residents and our constituents, and it is great to be here today to highlight those and discuss how we can move forward with remediation works and building safety for high-rise buildings. Not one of us in the Chamber or across this great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was not affected by the Grenfell tragedy in 2017. It was horrendous to watch, and it was even worse to see the effect on the bereaved families and others. It has had implications for those who own or rent properties in high-rise buildings, including the need for remediation works.

I want to put it on the record that the Government have rightly introduced a building safety programme with the aim of ensuring that residents of high-rise buildings are safe and feel safe from the risk of fire; but there are still many who want to know exactly what that means. What is the Government’s plan? When will the strategy get to those people, and when will they feel safer in their homes? No one can deny that remediation works come at a significant cost, and someone has to pay for them, so there has to be system in place whereby we can draw some succour from a safety point of view and know that properties are okay to live in.

The proposed cost of remediation works for high-rise buildings is £15 billion. The Government funding allocated to date is £5.1 billion, so there is still a shortfall and there is still a strategy and timescale to put in place to make sure that we are getting there. There is no doubt whatever that developers have a responsibility to ensure that the correct remediation work is carried out on cladding. We look to the Government, the Minister and the Department for a response, but the developers have a role to play and must be actively engaged. I am sure the Minister will discuss the role of developers and the Government’s expectations of them and what they should do. There must be the correct remediation works for cladding, which is ultimately what made the Grenfell disaster spiral out of anyone’s control.

Remediation works for cladding should be at the forefront of our priorities. I refer specifically to ACMs—aluminium composite materials—which have been proven to be ineffective for high-rise buildings. Many residents are unaware of that type of cladding, which is used on their buildings. The Minister will undoubtedly have done a lot of homework for this debate, so I hope he can give an indication of where that issue sits in the system. Have there been checks and assessments on ACM cladding, and if so, what have they said? After seeing the devastation that cheaper alternatives can cause, there must be more onus on repair and replacement. Could the Minister or his officials give us an indication of where we are with that?

The Minister has no responsibility in this area for Northern Ireland—which he will be glad to hear—but I always like to bring a Northern Ireland perspective to debates to show how important such issues are to us back home. In Northern Ireland specifically, a £1 million fund to remove potentially dangerous cladding from residential high-rises opened this September past. For example, the Victoria Place apartments in Belfast still had the ACM cladding but, unfortunately, there is no legal requirement in Northern Ireland to replace cladding. Given that the funding is focused on the most high-risk buildings, what sort of reassurance is provided for residents, who know that the developers of their homes have no legal responsibility to ensure they are safe?

The Minister for Communities back home must do more to ensure residents are protected. I would be pleased if the Minister here today would see whether any discussions have happened to ensure that Northern Ireland is in line with the Building Safety Bill here. I do not expect an answer on that today, even though his civil servants are incredibly energetic and studious and would be able to provide one. I have had discussions with the Minister on this matter, so it should not come as a shock that I would be grateful if he could let me know if discussions have taken place and how they have gone.

The moral responsibility to replace dangerous cladding should not be down to the leaseholder alone, who may already be struggling to make ends meet. The fear of not feeling safe is unnecessary. It was reported last year that 75 high-rises across the United Kingdom that still use ACM cladding will not have had any remediation work done by the end of 2021. We are now a couple of months into 2022, so will the Minister provide an update to the House—in this debate or afterwards—because it is important to all Members who are contributing? We are in the third month of 2022, and I hope that some of these works have now been completed. Has that happened?

Surely, five years on from Grenfell, lessons surrounding building safety must be learned. The real sufferers are the residents, who are worried about their properties, the remedial work that has to be done, which has to be done with the developer’s contribution, and their wellbeing and peace of mind. We must take steps to ensure that another disaster like Grenfell does not occur. We must also put on record our thanks to the developers who have taken the extra step for the benefit of their tenants, as their efforts have undoubtedly reduced the risk of danger. There is a clear commitment by many to voice the importance of remediation works. While it is a costly and time-consuming process, the assurance of our constituents’ safety makes it worthwhile.

To conclude, I put on record my thanks to Government and the Minister for the funds allocated so far, but there is still work to do. I urge the Secretary of State and the Minister to have conversations with the necessary developers to ensure the safety of all high-rise buildings across the United Kingdom and to ensure that there is a strategy in place for all of them. I asked the Minister earlier to have those discussions with the relevant Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is not a measure included in the Building Safety Bill, and to ensure that the regulations that are in place are fit for purpose and have positive effects for the residents living there. I believe, as we all do in this House, that our responsibility is to look after our constituents and residents who need help. We are privileged to have the opportunity, in this House, to put forward the case on their behalf. The hon. Member for Ipswich and others have done that, and I very much look forward to the shadow Minister and Government Ministers’ responses.

10:15

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Miller. This has been an incredibly worthwhile debate on an issue that we all agree deserves more attention. That will only increase in significance in the months and years ahead as more and more buildings compromised by historical cladding and non-cladding defects undergo remediation.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) on securing the debate. He spoke forcefully on behalf of his constituents in St Francis Tower. I add to the general and well-deserved praise bestowed on the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their contributions, and for bringing to the attention of the House the plight of constituents in Mandale House, Vista Tower, and other affected buildings.

Each Member has touched on this, but any hon. or right hon. Member whose constituency contains buildings with historical cladding or non-cladding defects will know of the abject misery that the building safety scandal has caused to residents. At the point that they learn that the home they believed to be safe is a fire risk, they are immediately trapped—physically, mentally and financially.

The point at which remediation works finally begin—particularly when the full cost has been met by either the freeholder or the building safety fund—should be the moment at which that misery begins to somewhat dissipate. However, as the hon. Member for Ipswich brought home in his introductory remarks, and as others have argued on the basis of cases in their constituencies, those vital remediation works, for too many residents, are a continuation of the distress that they have been experiencing.

Whether it is the psychological damage of having their home shrouded in plastic sheeting for months on end, if not years, the associated physical and mental health implications of being denied natural light or fresh air, the security risk, which we have touched on, or the financial impacts of buildings being exposed to the elements, there is no doubt that remediation works that are not undertaken with the appropriate sensitivity can and do have a detrimental impact on residents in high-rise buildings.

We have heard several suggestions this morning about how the issue can be tackled. I think that the hon. Member for Stevenage raised the idea of a digital register of new and remediated buildings. I think that is absolutely unarguable, and I hope that the Minister will give it serious consideration.

Several hon. Members raised the idea of relocating residents from buildings. That may be necessary in some cases, but the idea that all affected residents could be provided with alternative accommodation for the duration of remediation works is deeply problematic, not only because of the astronomical cost, but the practical difficulties that would be involved in such an undertaking, given the thousands of buildings that must be made safe over the coming years.

I actually agree with the hon. Member for Stevenage: surely the simplest way to minimise the impact of remediation works on residents in these buildings is for the Government to look to introduce some kind of code of practice that would seek to ensure that remediation works are carried out as sensitively as possible. There may be a standard alternative to that opaque plastic sheeting, which we can encourage developers to take on board. Even if that is not possible, and plastic sheeting is required, there are ways, and examples around the country, of how freeholders, managing agents and those they contract, can undertake those works in a more sensitive manner, often as a result of extensive consultations with residents about their particular needs.

He is sadly not in this morning’s debate, but my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) was telling me about a block in his constituency just the other evening. The landlord, Plymouth Community Homes, has ensured that a young boy with autism who loves looking out of his window at the ships coming and going from the dockyard—an important part of his daily routine, I was told—can still do so, despite the cladding remediation works, because the builder installed see-through plastic sheeting around his family’s flat.

That is just one example, taken at random, of what considerate remediation could look like. We know that there are many others across the country. It would surely be an incredibly low-cost initiative for the Government to bring forward that code of practice to ensure that all building owners and managing agents properly engage with residents in drawing up remediation management plans. I very much welcome the Minister’s views on the matter, as I once again welcome him to his place.

Remediation works are not being carried out as sensitively as they could be, and there is an additional problem related to that. As has been raised, residents are having to endure for longer than necessary the inevitable daily noise, dust and general inconvenience that come with building works, often because of a shortage of skills, personnel and materials. We know that there are many obstacles to the building safety crisis being resolved any time soon. However, shortages of suitable replacement materials and appropriately skilled remediation experts have been known about for some time.

All the evidence suggests that the sector is working at full capacity, with many of the firms able to undertake remediation works being booked up years in advance. There is anecdotal evidence that the constraints on people and materials are impacting on the duration of works on individual sites. That is why there is a need to ensure that the remediation works are carried out not only as sensitively as possible, but as quickly as possible. The need for both those things, I would argue, reinforces the case for the Government to look to establish a new building works agency, as Labour has proposed: a single body, accountable to Ministers, that could go block by block to determine which works are necessary under the new PAS 9980 guidance, commission those works, look at the ways in which the impact might be mitigated and certify buildings as safe at the end of the process.

At present, the debate around the building safety crisis is, for completely understandable reasons, focused almost entirely on the issue of who pays. However, if—and I do say if—and when that issue is finally resolved, as we hope it will be if the Building Safety Bill is overhauled as required in the other place, Ministers will have to confront the very real problem of tackling the remediation challenge across the country at pace, and in a way that best limits the harm to the blameless residents caught up in this scandal.

To ensure that, Labour argues that the Government will need to be more interventionist; otherwise, the work will simply never get done. The hon. Member for Stevenage argued that none of us have prepared for the scale of the forthcoming remediation challenge. However, it has been on a lot of our minds for some time. As the Minister will know, various professional bodies have for some time been urging the Government to grip this issue, whether by the Department chairing a taskforce or by creating a body of the kind for which Labour has advocated.

Labour remains of the view that the Government could learn many lessons from the model adopted in Victoria, Australia. As the Minister may know, Cladding Safety Victoria provides a dedicated officer for each affected building, who then appoints a project manager directly. It is obvious how that arrangement could help ensure remediation works are carried out swiftly and considerately. I urge the Minister to look again, if he has not already, at the Australian experience and at what might be learnt from it.

This has been a valuable debate and I welcome the opportunity to hear the concerns of hon. Members from across the House on the effect of remediation works on residents in high-rise buildings. Labour has long pressed the Government to bring forward a comprehensive solution to the building safety crisis that will restore common sense and proportionality to the system, resolve the fundamental issue of leaseholder liability, clear the backlog of building safety fund applications and accelerate the agonisingly slow pace of remediation. However, mitigating the impact of remediation works on residents should not be an afterthought in all this, and I look forward to hearing what the Government will do to ensure that it is not.

10:24

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mrs Miller. It is also a pleasure to take part in this important debate, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for securing it. As he mentioned, he has raised this issue with me before, even before I was in this new role as Minister. I know that he is passionate about trying to resolve many of the issues that his constituents face.

Other hon. Members have also raised important experiences that their constituencies have faced. One of the many things that struck me when I took on this role was the challenge that many of those constituencies have faced. Residents of high-rise buildings across the country probably went into those buildings with the dream of home ownership and the prospect of living in a nice new apartment, which rapidly turned into a nightmare the day they discovered that their flats were clad in dangerous and unsafe materials. That is why the contributions of hon. Members this morning have been so very important. I am deeply aware of the harrowing cases that many have discussed.

Although I am very new in post, I know and have known about the importance of remediation. I am obviously keen to get a grip of it during my time in this role, but I am also very keen to work with colleagues and to continue the cross-party relationship that has clearly delivered some important results for constituents. My door is always open to any colleagues who want to speak to me.

I will in a moment address some of the specific points that were raised. I want to reiterate that I hope that the announcement made by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), will indicate to the House how seriously the Government take this issue. The whole package of measures that has been announced and the amendments being introduced in the other place as we speak show that there is a shift in addressing the issue. Those who live in high-rise properties can be assured that this matter is being taken seriously, and that we will address their safety concerns. We will also bring a good deal of proportionality into the issue; there are some people living in perfectly safe accommodation who are also feeling very frightened, so we need a sense of proportion.

To come to some of the points that were made, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich talked specifically about St Francis Tower and other buildings in the town. The lack of consultation with residents is, frankly, unacceptable. It does not cost any money to consult with the people who live in those buildings and to explain the processes that have to be undertaken. There are some elements that are necessary: some of the shrink wrapping ensures that residents do not face astronomical heating bills as a result of the cladding coming off. That said, we perhaps need to look at the types of wrapping. He says that he does not believe that there are any other ways. Lord Greenhalgh is dealing with the detail of those things, and I will speak to him when I get back to the Department about the really important points that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich raised.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) talked about Mandale House and the lack of natural light. I do not think any of us could understand how that would feel—lacking the only source of natural light in one’s building. Those are the sorts of experiences that we have to listen to and learn from, because this will become a bigger problem as remedial works happen all over the country.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I know that when he gets his teeth into a subject, he does not let go—he is like a terrier—and he gave me a bit of a Christmas list of asks. He talked about developing a code of practice, and I will speak to Lord Greenhalgh about the merits of that. My hon. Friend raised the issue of compulsory purchases. That is a big ask, but these things are always worth exploring. I obviously cannot commit to that here, but it is an interesting point.

On the issue of a building safety register, for the high-risk buildings and buildings over 18 metres that are about to be occupied, there will be a register under the new Building Safety Regulator. However, if my hon. Friend has other concerns about that issue, perhaps we can talk about them later. Of course I will happily speak to my counterpart in Northern Ireland. Sharing best practice is right, as it is for the benefit of all the people of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland: it is important that we share the vital lessons that have been learned.

I hope that we have come a long way in recognising that this is an important issue that needs addressing and that that gives people confidence that the places they live in will have the remedial works that they need, so that they can get back to enjoying the houses and the accommodation that they are living in and enjoying the things in them. I get the point about my hon. Friend’s constituents’ plants; such things are important to people. Someone’s home is the most important place in their life and they want to ensure that they are able to enjoy it safely.

I will touch on the pace of remediation, because that is an important point. We are forcing industry to step up to the plate and take responsibility, of course, but we are also pressing ahead with getting dangerous cladding removed from buildings without delay. As I have said, we have provided the £5.1 billion to address fire safety risk caused by unsafe cladding on these buildings in order to protect residents and we have made great progress in making safe high-rise buildings with the most dangerous form of cladding—ACM cladding, the type that was on Grenfell Tower. Some 93% of all high-rise residential buildings identified with unsafe ACM cladding have now been remediated or have workers on site as we speak, finishing the job, and that rises to 100% in the social sector. For high-rise buildings with unsafe, non-ACM cladding, £1.073 billion has already been allocated from the building safety fund, with £945 million relating to the private sector and £128 million relating to the social sector. So, in total, 892 private sector buildings and 123 social sector buildings are proceeding with a full application to the building safety fund.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will not put the Minister on the spot with a question, but I will just request that he go away and consider how we can speed up that application process, because far too many buildings without ACM cladding that have applied to the building safety fund face, even with the portal and the information on it, inconsistencies about the information that is said to be required and submitted, as well as very severe delays in receiving that funding. We are talking about remediation works that can take a year or two, but these buildings are not even at that point because they are still being held up in terms of getting a final award or final decision on remediation. Can he consider what more he can do to speed up that application process for all the buildings across the country that are affected?

[Stuart Andrew]

I will happily commit to go away and look into that issue for the hon. Gentleman, and I will get in touch with him afterwards to update him on that. It is important to say that we have also improved the information available to leaseholders and residents about the building safety fund, with the new online services that provide real-time updates, but I take the point that he has just made.

Clearly, the mental health aspect is a very important issue. I have outlined the steps that the Government are taking to meet a lot of the financial costs of removing the cladding and how we are doing everything within our power physically to speed up remediation. However, in response to the points that hon. Members have made today, I will also say that we also recognise that the building safety crisis has taken a very heavy toll on people’s mental health. Of course, my Department regularly engages with leaseholder groups who have shared with us terrible examples of people being sick to the stomach with stress over the last few years because they are trapped in homes that they are unable to sell or that they cannot afford to fix. We believe that bringing these matters to a swift conclusion through the measures that I have spoken about today is the best way to alleviate the stress and concerns of so many leaseholders.

We know that many residents living in these buildings, including many who have had to endure 24/7 waking watches or who have faced acute financial difficulties, understandably need access to proper mental health support. That is one reason we are working across Government to ensure that all people, regardless of their residential situation, get that help and support they need. Where residents in buildings fitted with flammable cladding need specific mental health support, we are encouraging them to contact their GP to discuss these issues and ensure they are referred to appropriate mental health services. I recognise that we have to look at that in greater detail.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage asked about the contribution of costs to waking watch being offset under the £10,000 cap, and I confirm that is the case. I am sure his constituent will be happy with that.

[Stephen McPartland]

On behalf of my constituents, especially those in Vista Tower, I would like to say thank you to the Minister.

[Stuart Andrew]

That is very kind. I want to conclude by saying that I know there is a united desire across the House to ensure that people are safe and that, more importantly, feel safe in their own homes. Debates such as this are incredibly important, as we work together to achieve that goal, protecting leaseholders while pursuing ambitious reforms, to create one of the strongest building safety regimes in the world. In doing so, we will ensure public confidence in the sector and bring about lasting change, to ensure that the industry always puts residents’ welfare first.

I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich and everybody who has taken part in the debate that the Government will not take their foot off the gas in making buildings safe. We are determined to ensure that residents’ concerns are properly allayed, by driving meaningful change in the building industry, and ensuring that residents know that they are being properly supported and, more importantly, listened to. We can help drive the biggest improvements to building safety for decades, which will restore public confidence in our housing sector and create a robust, strengthened building safety system that places the welfare of residents at its heart. I conclude by praising again my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich. I know he will not rest until his residents feel that they are being properly listened to, and have those remediation works done as quickly as possible. I look forward to working in this role with him in future.

10:37

[Tom Hunt]

I thank everyone for contributing to the debate: the Minister, shadow Minister and all hon. Friends and Members who have made powerful contributions. In many senses, I have got what I wanted from the debate, inasmuch as it has been not only an opportunity to talk at length about specifics of St Francis Tower and Ipswich, but has put a spotlight on the issue.

More experienced colleagues have been able to share their experiences, teach me and explain various matters that I perhaps did not know. Being more experienced, they have come up with potentially workable solutions for some of these problems. This debate in itself has been a positive development. Lord Greenhalgh will visit Ipswich and St Francis Tower, though I will be coy about the date.

I welcome the Minister in his post. The impact on the mental health of leaseholders and residents, such as those in St Francis Tower, has come up a lot in the debate. Because of that, it is incredibly important that the Minister in charge shows good levels of emotional intelligence. The Minister has that in spades and, having got to know him since I became an MP, I think that the start he has made in his role is promising. I am confident that he gets the seriousness of this issue and the extent to which my constituents have suffered. I am very pleased about that.

I think we all agree that this work needs to be carried out, like the work that is happening at St Francis Tower, and I think that my constituents are realistic: they expect some disruption and disturbance. They accept that, and are happy that the building is being made safe and that those works are being paid for through the building safety fund. They expect a degree of disruption, but not to the extent that we have seen and in a way that has had such a negative bearing on their mental health, so clearly with St Francis Tower, the right balance has not been struck.

I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook): if relocating people were a general policy, it would be incredibly expensive and not ideal, because people want to stay in their homes. However, in relation to the cases in St Francis Tower, it would be preferable to what they are having to endure, or have endured. I think there is a third way, for want of a better phrase, that would mean that residents could stay in their homes but not be as adversely impacted in terms of their living conditions and mental health.

As such, my advice to the Government is to get ahead of this issue, because it will not go away. There will be many more St Francis Towers, and many more colleagues who will come to these debates, talk about this issue and share their experiences. Today, we have had a small number of colleagues present, but a similar Westminster Hall debate in three or four months’ time could have many more colleagues sharing similar stories, so my advice to the Government is, “Let’s get ahead of it.” What my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage has suggested with regards to a code of practice sounds very sensible, looking in detail at what is needed and what kind of material could be used that does not have such a negative impact.

Since I have been a Member of Parliament, very few issues have been as point blank and black and white to me as this one. I will always remember the day I went to St Francis Tower. Sometimes in politics, things are not always this black and white—they are not this clear cut, in terms of what the morally right thing to do is—but that day, it really was black and white to me, and I made a pledge to the residents that I would do everything I could to get that shrink wrap off. I hope that even though I have been unsuccessful in that goal so far, by having this debate, those people at least know that their plight is getting the attention it deserves, and hopefully feel that they are not alone. It is not just me who feels very strongly about this: it is everybody in town.

I pay tribute to the Ipswich Cladiators, who are the campaign group in Ipswich on this issue, and in particular Alex Dickin, who heads up that group. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) mentioned a constituent who is a GP, who has dedicated so much of his time to this issue: Alex is very much in that category as well. He has been so effective because he is incredibly committed, dedicated and passionate about this issue, but is also incredibly polite, lovely and understanding. Yes, we have sometimes had discussions in which he has felt that the Government have not gone far enough, and on certain occasions he perhaps thinks that I could have done more, but he has always been an absolute pleasure to work with. I thank him, and the Ipswich Cladiators more generally.

That code of practice could be what we are really after here. It will require some Government action, because sadly, we have seen in Ipswich that we cannot always rely on the companies in question to take the responsible and morally right decision. They certainly have not done so in Ipswich, and I do not think that Block Management UK has covered itself in glory. I say that with some reticence, but I think it is necessary that I say so.

I thank everybody for contributing to this debate, and particularly the Minister for the comments he has made. It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Miller—I do not think it is the first time, and hopefully it will not be the last. Have a very good rest of the day.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the effect of remediation works on residents in high rise buildings.

10:45

Sitting suspended.

What Works Network: Centre for Food

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

I will call Alex Norris to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as that is the convention in 30-minute debates.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the addition of a centre for food to the What Works Network.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Miller. I have brought today’s debate to bring attention to what would be a terrific addition to the What Works Network and a significant opportunity for the Government to help make the national food strategy report a success. I suspect that the Minister might be glad that for once I am taking a break from pressing her on fish mawl, although I am grateful for all the work she has done in that area. So we will move on to food more generally.

The agrifood sector is a crucial part of British life. It is a major driver of our economy. In 2018, the wider system employed 4.3 million people and contributed £121 billion—nearly 10%—to our national gross value added. It is an anchor sector in our economy and it touches all of us every day. However, we are living in a challenging period when it comes to food.

People are struggling to meet their living costs, of which food is a major part. According to the Food Foundation, 4.9 million adults, or 9% of the population, are affected by food insecurity. In comparison, 5.6% of the population experienced food insecurity five years ago, based on the threshold set by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. At the time, the FAO also considered that 2.5% of the UK population would be considered undernourished, with 1.8% facing severe food insecurity.

We know from global trends, as stated in the food strategy report, that the food we eat and how we produce it can damage both the planet and our health. Globally, 37% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system. Here in the UK, the sector engages 70% of our land, contributes 45% of the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in our rivers and creates 2.2 million tonnes of plastic packaging every year, less than half of which is recycled. Turning to our own bodies, 80% of processed food sold in the UK is unhealthy and we get 57% of our calories from processed foods rich in fat, salt and sugar, with 35% of the population overweight, 27% obese and nearly 5 million people suffering with diabetes due to the over-consumption of processed foods.

Market factors end up turning this into a vicious circle—the junk food cycle. The market for processed foods makes them cheaper and more accessible, which makes them more desirable. All the while, we get unhealthier and unhealthier, and the planet suffers. I am a sinner in this regard, so I do not cast the first stone on policing my constituents’ diets—I do not feel that that is my role, and I am not sure that I would have complete credibility—but it is hard not to see that we live in an obesogenic environment.

We owe our constituents leadership that tackles the situation and gives them true, informed choice and a range of options. We see elements of that in the Government’s obesity strategy. I was keen to support that strategy as shadow Public Health Minister, but it remains quite modest and what I am suggesting today could turbocharge that approach. The incredible contribution the sector makes to our economy, as well as some of its challenges, shows both positively and negatively why it is vital that we have an understanding of the best developments in food, so that we can harness them to improve the system. That is why I am enthusiastic about a What Works centre for food.

The network of nine independent What Works centres, three affiliate members and one associate member currently cover policy areas that account for more than £250 billion of public spending, to allow decision making to be supported by an evidence base worthy of the decisions that have to be made in this place and will be made, going forward, across the country. As gov.uk puts it:

“What Works is based on the principle that good decision-making should be informed by the best available evidence. If evidence is not available, decision-makers should use high quality methods to find out what works.”

That is a very noble principle that commands cross-party support.

Examples of such centres include the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth and the What Works Centre for Wellbeing. The current network of What Works centres has transformed the use of evidence in public services across medicine, policing, schools, hospitals, GP practices and care homes. The Government have been wise in listening to them in the way that they have.

I feel that I am in good company, because the Early Intervention Foundation is also part of the network, and my predecessor, Graham Allen, was instrumental in its development, so we are perhaps re-establishing a tradition for Nottingham North MPs today.

The networks follow the six impact principles: they are independent, methodologically rigorous, practical, accessible, capacity-building and transparent. Those are noble pursuits that would enhance our food policy.

As with most ideas, I have stolen this one from someone else: the Government’s own food strategy report recommended that the Government establish two What Works centres, modelled on the Education Endowment Foundation, to collect and analyse evidence on the effectiveness of food-related policies and business practices. One would focus on diet, and the other on farming methods. Although my instinct and preference would be to have a single centre, I am concerned not with minutiae today but with the wider importance of the principle of establishing such a centre.

People far more qualified than me are already working on the details. Academics from the University of Nottingham, the University of Leeds and the University of Newcastle, led by Professor David Salt of the University of Nottingham’s School of Biosciences, have recently proposed a project to blueprint such a centre, in line with the recommendation. There is significant interest in this space. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board is also working on some of these ideas in a farming context. The Food Standards Agency is thinking about a What Works centre in the diet space. That shows the traction that the idea is getting, and that there is great interest in it across academia, business and industry. My view is that it should be under one roof.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and thank him for giving way. He mentioned the University of Nottingham, which is doing fantastic research into food sustainability, and its Sutton Bonington campus, where lots of that work takes place, is in my constituency. He makes a compelling argument for evidence-based policy that gives us healthier food and is better for our planet. I am sure he will extend an invitation to the Minister to visit, and I will take this opportunity to second that invitation and to invite her to see the fantastic research and work being done at Sutton Bonington.

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I absolutely endorse such a visit. I went on a half-day visit to the Sutton Bonington campus to meet David Salt and colleagues and to hear about all sorts—it was a kind of speed dating with different academics to hear about their research. It was absolutely fascinating. I extend such an invitation to the Minister and I hope she will feel able to accept it. I know that the hon. Lady wants to be there, and I am more than happy to be there myself. My first visit to Sutton Bonington was 19 years ago, when I went to play football. It is an agricultural mechanical school so they were bigger than those of us from the school of history and politics, funnily enough. I nearly had my head taken off by a centre back who was about 10 feet taller than me, but I can promise the Minister that that will not happen to her.

This is probably a good moment to reference the work of the University of Nottingham’s Future Food beacon, which is led by Professor Salt. It is a cross-discipline programme to bring together the highest-quality academics from across the world, working with industry, to resolve the thorniest problems in our food systems. The research themes include future-proofing agricultural systems, which is so important in the context of climate change; food for sustainable livelihoods, which I think we in this place are all concerned about, at home and abroad; food for health, which as I have mentioned is a major area of public policy interest; and smart manufacturing for food. That is not the sort of stuff that gets the newspaper headlines, but it is really fascinating. As I said, I spent half a day there and it was great, so I really hope the Minister will do the same—she would really enjoy it. I will not go off on a tangent about my love of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, but that beacon project is an example of where we want Nottingham and Nottinghamshire to be: at the forefront of crucial development to change our world. Our two universities do a great job in that, and I am proud to have the chance to showcase that.

I am conscious of time, so I will use the remaining time to align what I have said with what I think the Government also want in the broader context of the national food strategy. The report was a massive wake-up call to fix our food system. The Government’s reaction to it should be to make sure that every family can afford a healthy hot meal for their children every day, protect our high food and farming standards in law, make our food system environmentally friendly, deliver a radical obesity strategy that ensures that families can access healthy food, support access to local leisure facilities and tackle rising child poverty. What we are talking about today is a really good part of being able to do that. This is an area of significant change, so staying ahead of some of the trends is really valuable.

The Government commissioned the national food strategy, which provided key recommendations to fix the food system, reduce food inequality, make the best use of land and improve health. I have no doubt that in those endeavours the Government will have Opposition support. I hope that the Minister will clarify that ideas on the recommendations in the food strategy report, and perhaps a White Paper in that area, will be brought forward soon.

The report’s 16 recommendations broadly fit into four areas: escaping the junk food cycle, reducing diet-related inequality, making the best use of land and creating a long-term shift in our food culture. I have picked up on one recommendation, recommendation 11, which is a lynchpin for fulfilling all those strategic objectives, increasing the pace of change towards fixing our food system and going a long way towards protecting our health and our planet.

We know that consumers are the key to driving change, and a shift in consumer behaviour to more plant-based foods and fewer foods from animals will be beneficial for both our health and our environment. I am on my own journey on that, as I know other people are. We have shown in the past that, when we lean into public policy changes that we know will have a positive impact on health—such as the sugar tax or changes to smoking laws—they can have great success. Consumer behaviour will perhaps not be an area for significant legislation; rather, saying that the policies need to follow the evidence will have the greatest impact. We know that consumer behaviour does not exist in a silo. There are three factors to be considered: dietary change, sustainability, and social and economic priorities. All of those have to work together for people to be able to sustain the changes that they wish to see.

In changing consumer behaviour, there is a really big place for food and agriculture. The centre or two centres—whatever the preferred model—would provide precisely the scope needed for food, as well as the ability to gather, assess and synthesise the evidence needed to develop the right policies, practices and standards, which would pull all that together and subsequently drive the required food system change towards more healthy and sustainable diets.

I mentioned the work of Professor Salt and his colleagues earlier. At the moment, they have a project proposal awaiting review from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The proposal provides a blueprint for how a centre will work, and I hope it will be successful. Obviously, I am not asking the Minister to intervene on that individual project, but I hope to hear that there is support and a keenness to bring in experts and academics on a What Works model. They are doing great work and can make a really significant difference.

I end with a really important point. A What Works centre for food is something that academics want. It is something for which there is growing political support. It is something that business and industry are really into—they want to be part of this partnership too. There is a really exciting partnership growing behind the concept, and as such we can make a big difference. I look forward to welcoming the Minister, if she is minded to visit, and I hope to hear a little more about her views on a What Works centre.

11:13

[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) on securing the debate. I very much hope that it will be part of a wide series of debates about quite specific but important issues around the publication of the Government’s White Paper in response to Henry Dimbleby’s food strategy. The good work that the Government will do in response to his work will be in the details. Yes, there will be headlines, but I suspect that most of the nudge behaviours that change the way in which we as a nation eat, and that help us to eat more healthy and sustainable diets, will come in the kind of work that we are discussing this morning and in careful, thoughtful policy making of the sort that the hon. Gentleman has set out.

It is a great delight to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), whose constituency I had the great pleasure of visiting recently, when we were able to taste some delicious cheese. I would be delighted to come again, as long as the quality of the lunch is as good as it was last time.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North is clearly passionate about the need for a What Works centre for food. I am convinced that What Works centres can add real value in increasing the supply and demand for evidence, tailoring outputs to the needs of the respective decision makers and helping Departments and stakeholders access and interpret evidence to inform policy questions, as well as longer-term strategic priorities. Really good examples, as the hon. Member said, include NICE and the Education Endowment Foundation. I share the hon. Member’s passion for making good policy and working out how things work best. I am sure that What Works centres have a place in that, and I too am pleased that the Government are willing to use them. However, I cannot promise that they are the answer to every question.

Let me set out the current Government thinking on this issue. For the past 18 months, we have been working across Government to develop the food strategy White Paper. We have been considering the recommendations of Henry Dimbleby’s independent review into food, setting out the Government’s ambition and priorities for the food system and, we hope, taking a truly one-Government approach to the food system. Some 16 Departments have an interest in food—as do we all, frankly. It is important that we consider food strategy in the longer term in a joined-up way. We will be publishing our strategy in the coming weeks after putting the finishing touches to it.

Our strategy will build on existing work across Government and identify new opportunities to make the food system healthier, more sustainable and, given the enormous challenges we have had to cope with over the last couple of years, as resilient as possible. Issues around governance and data in the food system will be a critical, though possibly not the most headline-grabbing, part of the food strategy White Paper. We want to examine how, in this fragmented landscape, we can ensure that evidence is generated and shared and then becomes part of a greater whole. The gap is often not so much in the generation of evidence—particularly in the food space—but in its effective translation into policy.

In his independent review, Henry Dimbleby recommended that two What Works centres be set up—one focusing on agricultural production and one on diet shift. Turning to the What Works centre on diet shift, we are fortunate enough to benefit from the huge wealth of evidence on healthy and sustainable diets that is already available to us, even if we do not all follow it every day. The key challenge is how we translate and make better use of that existing evidence to encourage a healthier and more sustainable diet shift.

The newly established Office for Health Improvement and Disparities will bring together expert evidence and analysis with policy development and implementation to shape and drive health improvement and equalities priorities for Government. Piloting real-world interventions is the way forward in this space. Professor David Salt is already doing valuable work on the ways in which we can all change our behaviour going forward. The hon. Member for Nottingham North was right to reference the great work being done by academics and universities across the nation in this space, but our priority is to make sure that we use this work properly.

Piloting and interventions are the way to go. In these circumstances, we think What Works is not the answer to this particular issue, but we are keeping the matter under review. I am sure we will be discussing it with the Food Standards Agency and others in the coming weeks when we concentrate on the food strategy.

As for the recommendation for a What Works centre on ag production, the AHDB delivered a pilot known as the evidence for farming initiative in 2020-21. The aim of the pilot was to develop a prototype of the What Works centre for ag and horticulture that would demonstrate how evidence could be brought together to inform best practice uptake in farming. The work is now informing AHDB’s new proposal for a What Works centre in this space, and officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are in close collaboration on that work and are actively considering it.

On production, of course we recognise the importance of supporting farmers to access and adopt best practice. Farmers often work alone, and innovation sometimes needs encouragement from the Government and experts in academia and elsewhere. Indeed, as in industry, as the hon. Gentleman referenced, we are targeting our new work at encouraging real progress. Much of the data work that I talked about earlier will be done hand in hand with industry. The issues are difficult. We are talking about diet shift and accurate and transparent labelling. The Government cannot do this in a top-down way. It has to be done in lockstep with industry at every stage of the food supply chain. We will spend over £270 million across our farming innovation programme to stimulate research and development in agricultural innovation. We are looking at that programme closely and exploring what the barriers are to innovation and how best to address them.

I look forward to updating the House on our plans as they develop, and we in DEFRA will continue to champion the best farming practices and to promote healthier, more sustainable diets. I thank the hon. Gentleman for this discussion. As we publish our food strategy White Paper in the coming weeks, I encourage Members from across the House to engage with DEFRA to help us identify new opportunities for best practice and joined-up working for our food system going forward.

Question put and agreed to.

11:21

Sitting suspended.

Regional Inequalities: Child Poverty

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq in the Chair]

14:30

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered regional inequalities and child poverty.

It is a pleasure, Dr Huq, to serve under you as Chair in this debate on regional inequalities and child poverty. Speaking about child poverty gives me no pleasure at all. In 2022, in the world’s fifth-richest country, we should not need to talk about child poverty or regional inequalities at all, yet sadly too many of my constituents and people living across the whole north of England face real inequalities in all aspects of life. That directly affects our children’s life chances, health, wellbeing and, yes, even life expectancy. I acknowledge that there are huge divides between communities in London, too; there is great wealth in some parts and real poverty in others. It is important to recognise that.

Of course, covid-19 has deepened inequalities; the north was affected by longer lockdowns, a higher number of infections and, sadly, a higher number of deaths. Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s report, “Build Back Fairer: The COVID-19 Marmot Review”, and before that, “Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On”, published in 2020, clearly set out the situation. Covid-19 does discriminate, hitting hardest those people in our communities who are already affected by inequality. It has exacerbated inequalities, hitting hardest those groups and people who were already disadvantaged.

Earlier this year, the Northern Health Science Alliance, or NHSA—a group of academics and health specialists working in collaboration—published a major report, “The Child of the North: Building A Fairer Future After Covid-19”. Sadly, I do not have time to take hon. Members through all its detail, but the findings were that inequality and low living standards are a huge problem across the north, and that this problem is only getting worse.

The NHSA’s report found that today, nearly a third of children in the north live in poverty, and 60% of northern local authorities have above-average numbers of children living in low-income homes. The report found that children across the north spent more time in lockdown than their peers in the rest of England. They are also more likely to grow up in care. Young children in the north are less prepared when they start school than children in the rest of England.

The report clearly shows the many ways that regional inequality blights the lives of children and adults, including through higher levels of poverty, poorer educational attainment, higher levels of infant mortality, lower life expectancy and worse mental health outcomes, both for children and adults.

Finally, the report concludes that

“Poverty is the lead driver of inequalities between children in the North and their counterparts in the rest of the country, leading to worse physical and mental health outcomes, educational attainment, and lower lifelong economic productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made this situation worse. Although the full impact is not yet known, modelling suggests that, without intervention, the outlook is bleak.”

I am pleased that, one week today at 10 o’clock, I will host the report’s authors as they present their findings. I hope that the Minister can call in and speak to some of those involved in putting the report together, as well as to some of the children with whom they worked, to hear at first hand how we can reduce regional inequalities and improve the life chances of our children and young people right across the north.

One of the best parts of our job as MPs is the great opportunities that we get to go into local schools. When I visit schools—primary and secondary—I see children and young people who are full of enthusiasm, and keen to tell me about what they are learning and the things that really interest them. The classrooms are full of their artwork, and they ask loads of questions—very often the questions that adults would be far too polite to ask—and of course there are teachers and other school staff doing their very best to level up the chances of those children, so that they are the best they can be.

There are great things happening in the north, but we owe it to those young people to really address the disadvantages that they face, and to reduce the poverty that holds them back. There are people and organisations on the ground across Blaydon constituency taking positive steps to make things better and ease things for those who are really struggling, such as the Gateshead food bank depots at Blaydon and Birtley, the Blaydon Community Larder, the Gateshead West pre-loved school uniform scheme, the Winlaton Centre, The Bank in Chopwell, the Birtley Hub and so many others right across my constituency. However, it should not have to be like this in this day and age.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She mentions food banks. We have seen a huge increase in food bank usage in Newcastle Central, and had the third highest increase in child poverty in the country between 2015 and 2019; it was almost 13%. Some 100,000 of the children living in poverty across the north-east live in families where one parent is working, and we see that reflected in food bank usage. Does she agree that we have to ensure that parents have enough to feed themselves and their children without going to food banks, and that the Government have been failing on that?

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree. That picture is reflected in my constituency, too. We must make sure that families have enough to live a good and decent life, and to support their children.

On the north-east more specifically, the North East Child Poverty Commission, hosted by Newcastle University, produces valuable research on the prevalence and effects of child poverty across the region. On the latest available data, from 2019-20, the north-east has the UK’s second highest rate of child poverty. An average of 37% of all babies, children and young people in our region grow up poor, whereas the UK average is 31%. Most concerningly for our region, the north-east also experienced the steepest growth in child poverty from 2014-15 to 2019-20—the six years leading into the pandemic; it rose by 11 percentage points from 26% to 37%. By comparison, there was a UK-wide rise of 2 percentage points over the same period.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree on the importance of the relationship between our social security system and the adequacy of working-age support on the one hand, given that £34 billion a year has been taken out of support for working-age people, and the impact on child poverty on the other? Would she like to comment on the fact that for every 1% increase in child poverty, an additional five babies a year out of 100,000 live births will not see their first birthday?

[Liz Twist]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come to the economic aspects of this issue later. We do not yet have child poverty figures for the period during the covid-19 pandemic; I understand that we will not have them until the end of March 2022. However, from some of the available real-time information, it is clear that there has been a significant financial impact on thousands of families in our region. The north-east has experienced the joint steepest increase in the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals during the pandemic of anywhere in England, having already had the highest proportion pre-covid.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and timely speech. She mentions free school meals; another support that many families in the north-east rely on is Healthy Start vouchers. A report by Northumbria University and Feeding Britain recently highlighted that there are incredible struggles with the move from a paper-based system to a prepaid card system. Families are being rejected at the tills in their hour of greatest need, and cannot get any help through the helpline. Does she agree that the Minister should commit today to urgently resolving the matter, so that families, and particularly children, get the support they need?

[Liz Twist]

I thank my hon. Friend for that valid and pertinent point. That is one detail that must be looked at—it is so important for those families. Turning to in-work poverty, the TUC found that 108,775 children living in poverty in the north-east come from homes with at least one parent or carer in work. That is an increase of 52% since 2010. Children growing up in poverty is not about parents who refuse to work, but rather a lack of good, secure and well-paid jobs in the north-east and across the north.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time and making an excellent speech; I am impressed that it is so wide-ranging. She will be aware that 4.3 million children are living in poverty in the UK. According to research by the End Child Poverty coalition in May last year, 20% of children in my constituency of Wirral West were living in poverty in 2019-20. That has increased since 2015. Does she agree that Government policy is having a direct impact in stimulating child poverty? She is talking about parents being in work, but policies such as the cut to universal credit are only making the matter worse.

[Liz Twist]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall come on to that later. The regional inequalities go beyond childhood and affect people in the north-east throughout their life. According to “Health Equity In England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On”, living in a deprived area of the north-east is worse for health than living in a similarly deprived area in London, to the extent that life expectancy for those living in deprived areas of the north-east is nearly five years lower. Life expectancy in the north-east is lower than in any other part of England, and region matters more for people in the most deprived areas. For both men and women, the largest decreases in life expectancy were seen in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in the north-east. That is clearly unacceptable. I thank Jane Streather, chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission, for her work over the last 10 years; she steps down as chair later this year.

Of course, we cannot have this debate without speaking about what the Prime Minister calls levelling up. That phrase seems to mean so many things to so many people, but I would argue that a crucial part of levelling up, reducing inequalities or whatever else we call it is reducing child poverty—giving our children and families the economic means to get out of the poverty trap. It was disappointing to see that the levelling-up White Paper did nothing to address that fundamental issue for families, many of whom are working households. The “Child of the North” report clearly points out the link between tackling poverty and increasing productivity, so it makes sense to take steps to remove those children from poverty. What we have seen with the removal of the £20 per week universal credit uplift is the exact opposite.

Another thing we cannot and must not ignore is the impact of the substantial increase in the cost of living. The families and children we are talking about are hit every bit as much as others, and in many cases more, by increasing inflation, the massively increasing energy costs and other increases. Those effects do not show yet in the figures I have quoted. What can we do? We must urgently work towards a comprehensive, cross-departmental child strategy that includes increasing Government investment in the welfare, health and social care systems that support children’s health, particularly in deprived areas and areas most affected by the covid-19 pandemic. That means raising child benefit by at least £10 per child per week, lifting the two-child limit and the benefit cap and, crucially, reversing the £20 cut to universal credit. We need a welfare system that both prevents and tackles poverty.

We need long-term transformative investment in the services that children, young people and families use, particularly those services that are targeted but universal, such as family and community hubs, in order to build social solidarity and reduce the risk of stigmatisation.

We need to develop area-level measures of children’s physical and mental health in order to better understand place-based inequalities. I ask him to look at those issues and respond to those points. I would be pleased to meet him to discuss these issues further. Can he answer each of those points?

I can do no better than finish with the words of Lemn Sissay OBE in the foreword to the “Child of the North” report, which I hope he does not mind me quoting. He says:

“Childhood is life defining and shaped by factors from before birth through to adulthood. A child’s mother’s health, the care they get, through family or the care system, what house they live in, what food they eat, how often they get to run around, their education, their opportunities. All of these things have a big impact and, as this report shows, the average Child of the North is disadvantaged from the start across all of these measures.”

The children of the north deserve the very best chance to develop, grow and prosper. I hope that the Minister will take action on these issues.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We have done the maths, and we think we can do this. If everyone sticks to three and a half minutes or less, then everyone will get in. I start with Peter Gibson.

14:46

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing today’s important debate.

As a fellow north-eastern MP, I know only too well that the north-east has been left behind by Governments of all colours. In 2019, the people of Darlington and other constituencies across the north-east elected Conservative MPs on the promise of levelling up and realising the full potential of the north-east. Since the election, the Government have faced incredible challenges that no other Government have. They have pressed ahead with their ambitious agenda and have committed to unprecedented investment up and down the country.

The annual “Households below average income” publication, about the number and percentage of children in low-income households, remains the most accurate published measurement of low income. Those statistics show that in the past decade 100,000 children have been lifted out of absolute poverty, and levels of combined material deprivation and low income for children are at their joint lowest level.

We know that the best way for people to find a route out of poverty is through work. That is why I welcome the Government’s lifetime skills programme, which enables people to get the skills they need in order to get the jobs that will help them to provide for their family.

[Liz Twist]

The hon. Member has quoted some measures. As he will be aware, there are different definitions of child poverty; the standard definition refers to 60% of median income. He needs to recognise that there is a difference.

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. The issues around accurate definitions pose part of the problem. I hope the Minister will address that point, as Members on all sides of the House need to agree on an accurate definition of the issue that we are discussing.

The chances of a child growing up in poverty are significantly reduced when both parents are working and when both parents are present. I am proud that this Government are taking an approach to tackling poverty that has employment at its centre. The Government’s plan for jobs has already supported millions of people, and will continue to support people into work, in developing their skills, in making the most of their talents and in achieving their potential.

I recently met the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and it impressed on me that it is in single-parent families or those with absent parents that a child is most at risk of growing up in poverty. We must remember that the state has limited levers for dealing with poverty unilaterally. A responsibility rests on both parents, and I would like to see greater efforts by the Child Maintenance Service to ensure that absent parents pay and meet their responsibilities.

While we know that employment is hugely important, I am glad that we have a robust welfare safety net in place to support people on low incomes; £111 billion has been invested in welfare support for people of working age. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to extend the work allowance for those on universal credit, and the reduction in the taper rate, ensuring that work really does pay. Moreover, I welcome the Government’s £421 million household support fund to help vulnerable people in England with essential household costs over the winter, as our economy recovers.

Improving educational outcomes for children is also key to tackling long-term poverty, and the Government are determined to help people receive the best possible start in life, creating a level playing field for transforming the education system, to ensure that people gain the skills they need to unleash their potential. The Government recognise the current regional differences in schools, meaning that some children do not have access to the same level of education.

I also take the opportunity to praise the Government’s fantastic holiday food and activities programme. Darlington Borough Council received £460,000 to deliver food and activities over Easter and summer, and has already reached more than 2,000 local children. Councillor Jonathan Dulston, the deputy leader of Darlington Borough Council, said:

“This fund came at a crucial time, and this Government support gave local authorities like Darlington the tools to step up and bring communities back together by creating educational, physical and fun opportunities to help our children thrive.”

14:51

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing today’s important debate. There are 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK, with more than half a million in the north-west alone. In my constituency of Bolton South East, two of the postcodes have 50% child poverty, and one in three children in our country are raised in poverty; yet we are the fifth-richest country in the world.

The previous Labour Government took 1.1 million children out of poverty. We now have a situation where a generation of children have had their life chances damaged by poverty. With the rise in the cost of living, including energy costs, the situation is only going to get worse and bleaker for them. There are a number of things that the Government can do, even now, that could make life easier for those children and their families, to take them out of poverty. I received an email from a constituent who said that children do not have to go hungry when they go to school or wear the same uniform for three years in a row.

First, the Government could return universal credit to the level it was under covid. That change has impacted 14,000 of my constituents. They could reintroduce the education maintenance allowance, which the Labour Government introduced for 16 to 18-year-olds. That allowed them to continue in education because that money paid towards bus fares, food and books. We also need more proper social housing. Children and families in poverty often live in squalid and overcrowded accommodation with no heating, where children have to share a room with three or four people.

Instead, the Government have come up with a crazy plan to give households a £200 rebate that has to be returned, to help with energy prices. The scheme will probably cost more than the money given out, which is plain ridiculous. There is a very good option available: tax the energy companies on their unexpected windfall profits, which would raise about £32 billion to help people in real ways. Yet the Government refuse to do that.

I was dismayed to read last week of the Government plan not to give loans to people who do not have GCSEs in maths and English. How does having a maths GCSE help in a degree such as sociology, history, social sciences or management? The vice-chancellor of the University of Bolton told me last week that that will stop children getting into universities. It will also reduce the numbers in universities such as Bolton, which serve particularly vulnerable and marginalised communities.

When the Government talk about levelling up, I am not sure what levelling up they are doing. I am hoping that the Minister has listened to me and colleagues about the actions that could be taken immediately to assist those families.

14:54

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate.

Child poverty has been rising in the UK, with a quarter of all children now living in poverty—more than 3.4 million children. Of those children, 75% are from working families. When children in our society face poverty as they are growing up, society as a whole suffers as a result. Yet, since 2010 there has been little, if any, intervention to stem the insecurities facing many families on the poverty line. As we begin the road to recovery after the pandemic, there is the opportunity for real change, but the perfect storm is coming for families across the UK as we approach the new tax year, with skyrocketing energy bills, an increasingly expensive weekly shop, a hike in national insurance and a cut to universal credit. This complex situation will mean that many more families will face strains on their household budgets and risk falling into food insecurity.

Not every child living in poverty facing food insecurity is eligible for free school meals. In the north-east, one quarter of children in poverty are not eligible for a free school meal according to the narrow £7,400 household income threshold. Meanwhile, 150,000 children across the country with no recourse to public funds live below the poverty line but remain ineligible for free school meals because of their immigration status. There was a temporary reprieve for those children during the pandemic; I plead with the Government to make it permanent.

We will all know that hungry children cannot learn, but this simple phrase is becoming a complex reality for far too many children and young people across the country. The burden of the gaps in the provision of free school meals often rests on schools that are having to subsidise parents who cannot pay—something that is not sustainable. Urgent attention must be paid to addressing the shortcomings in school food provision, to ensure that all children experiencing poverty have access to a hot, healthy and balanced meal each school day.

The recent levelling-up White Paper gave warm words to the importance of school food in combating health inequalities such as malnourishment and obesity. The prevalence of obesity has risen markedly since the start of the pandemic, no more so than for children from deprived and left-behind areas. It is a stark reality that the cheapest food is often the most calorific. It is far more expensive to fill up hungry children with healthy food. To give a quick example, four chocolate muffins are £1 in supermarket; six apples are usually £2.

The warm words of the levelling-up White Paper are not matched by reality. Over 1,300 Sure Starts have closed since the Conservatives got into government. At their peak, Sure Starts prevented more than 16,000 hospitalisations of children every year. We need more than warm words form the Government. Children and families experiencing poverty must be at the heart of levelling up. They need security and real policy changes, so that every child has the opportunity to do well in life. They need a Government who truly believe that poverty is not inevitable and act with passion every day to make it history.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Let me remind Members that the clock is ticking and all speakers have got very near the limit.

14:58

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate.

It is truly shameful that in the 21st century, poverty has become part of everyday life for many in our country. Families are choosing between heating and eating, and food bank usage continues to rise. Where a child is born dictates their future opportunities—a postcode lottery.

While we have heard pertinent points about regional disparities, particularly from northern MPs, we must also consider that there is poverty across the UK and in regions that, overall, would not necessarily be considered deprived. My constituency is in the east, which is a net contributor to the economy. However, according to estimates from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions, in Luton South, a shocking 8,130 children live in poverty, which is 10% above the national average. Free school meal eligibility has risen by 44% since 2015-16. There are constituencies in the eastern region with a child poverty rate below 10%.

With Luton being a super-diverse town, it is important to note the research by the Child Poverty Action Group that found that children from black and minority ethnic groups, as well as those form lone-parent families, are more likely to be in poverty. Let me take this opportunity to say to all children, whatever their circumstances or background, that they are valued and deserve the best opportunities. That is why I am here today, and that is why we are here today.

The Tory Government’s mismanagement of the economy means that work no longer provides a guaranteed way out of poverty. Some 70% of children growing up in poverty live in households where at least one person works, according to Department for Work and Pensions figures. The Tories are culpable for rising child poverty. The Tory austerity programme, which slashed 60p in every pound of local authority funding between 2010 and 2020, led to the cutting of services that are crucial to supporting residents and tackling child poverty in our communities. Tory cuts to Luton Borough Council’s funding over 10 years resulted in key services, such as our children’s centres, being cut. We have heard from hon. Friends about the impact of that on our children’s health.

Child poverty is set to be exacerbated by the Tory Government’s failure to tackle the cost of living crisis. Energy bills, petrol prices, rail fares and national insurance are increasing but wages are stagnant, and in some sectors people are suffering real-terms pay cuts. Responding to a YouGov poll last October, 50% of respondents said that they could not afford an additional £50 a month increase to their cost of living—an additional £600 a year.

This Tory Government had a chance specifically to include tackling child poverty in their levelling-up White Paper. The 12 key missions do not include tackling child poverty or investing in early years, nor does the White Paper focus on wellbeing and health inequalities. As the joint statement from Save the Children, The Children’s Society, Barnardo’s, Action for Children and the National Children’s Bureau said, levelling up is not just about spreading opportunities but about tackling

“the underlying issues that persistently deny children fair access to these opportunities.”

Can the Minister explain what contribution he and his Department made to the levelling-up White Paper and the agenda to tackle child poverty?

15:02

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq; thank you very much for calling me early in the debate. I congratulate my good and hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate. I also thank the North East Child Poverty Commission, which does really vital work and is committed to ending child poverty in the north-east, for providing me with a briefing ahead of the debate.

On the latest data, from 2019 to 2020, the north-east had the UK’s second-highest rate of child poverty, with an average of 37% of all babies, children and young people in our region growing up in poverty, compared with a UK average of 31%. However, I take issue with a point raised by the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), who said that there are limited levers and avenues for Government to address these issues. There is a dramatic example today, in relation to social security. There is a statutory instrument on a deferred Division, and the Government have decided that, even though the forecast suggests that inflation will be 7%, they will limit the increase in social security benefits to 3.1%. Clearly, that will have a negative impact on some of the poorest people in our society; it will increase levels of child poverty.

There are also huge regional disparities and variations, but even within our own region there are huge disparities and variations. In my constituency, in the east of County Durham—the same county represented by the hon. Member for Darlington—the average figure for child poverty is in excess of 40%. Nine of the 11 electoral wards in my constituency have child poverty levels above 40%, and 10 of the 11 wards are above the County Durham average. The level in the Blackhall Rocks ward is 48.2%, and in Blackhall Colliery it is 44.2%. The county average is 25.8%. There are 33 electoral wards, out of 63 in the whole county, with a higher proportion of children living in relative poverty than the county’s average. In those circumstances one might expect that Government policy would be to direct resources, following the rhetoric of the levelling-up agenda, to the areas in greatest need, identified as having the highest levels of child poverty, in terms of children in receipt of free school meals and other established measures, but sadly that is not the case. Resources seem to be distributed on the basis of competitions. On the established consensus of using scarce resources to meet the greatest need, I am afraid the Government have broken with that long-standing tradition.

15:05

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing this important debate and for her articulate and passionate speech.

As we have already heard, recent End Child Poverty coalition research indicated that there were 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK between 2019 and 2020, and now it is set to be much worse. The Government might wax lyrical about the route out of poverty being work, but staggeringly, 75% of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one person works—work that is often insecure and simply does not pay enough to sustain a decent standard of living.

In my constituency of Salford and Eccles, 23% of children lived in relative poverty, whereas the national average was 19%; 19% lived in absolute poverty, and the national average was 16%. Poverty, whatever we call it, relative or absolute, is still poverty, and 42% of children in Salford and Eccles live in poverty. In one of the richest economies in the world, those statistics are a disgrace.

Amid this scandal, the Government are quietly passing their benefits uplift legislation today. Even with inflation expected to hit 7.25% in April, the Government are uprating benefits by just 3.1%. Let us be clear: that is a real-terms benefit cut. With rising living costs, it will push families already stretched past breaking point.

More than 30 charities and organisations have called on the Government to increase benefits in line with rising inflation, so I hope the Minister will heed those calls today. I hope he will also recognise that the two-child limit and benefit cap should be abolished. Although most households will see their benefits increased by a paltry 3.1% in April, capped households will see no increase, just as inflation is set to peak and energy bills soar. That will be catastrophic for those families.

Further energy prices are expected to rise by a whopping 50%, which will cripple many families. In response to the calls to increase benefits, the Government have offered paltry support in the form of a £200 discount that consumers must pay back over the next five years, essentially loading even more debt on to the backs of cash-strapped families. At the very least, the rate of VAT for household energy bills must be cut by the Government as soon as possible, and they must levy a windfall tax on oil and gas companies. They must also expand and increase the warm home discount, not load the cost of supplier failure on to household bills, and must increase universal credit to match inflation, as well as increasing public sector pay to a real living wage.

I say to the Minister: let us not wring our hands today about how much we empathise with those who are struggling. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said:

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

We have the means and the policy ideas to tackle this national scandal, so let us act on that today.

15:08

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for setting the scene so well and for securing this debate, giving us all an opportunity to participate in it.

There is little as heartbreaking as seeing a child in need. As a father and grandfather, it is my purpose in life to see that my family have enough—not that they have everything they want, just that they have enough. I cannot imagine seeing my child go hungry or wearing ill-fitting shoes, and I cannot imagine that there should ever be an excuse that any child in any corner of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should live that way.

Ask any teacher and they will say that children are coming to school who are not well nourished, and that their free school meal does not do enough for them. There are also children who are spotlessly clean, yet their shoes have holes. The number of families who use food banks has risen hugely. More than 31,000 food parcels were provided to children in Northern Ireland between April 2020 and March 2021. The Trussell Trust provided some 79,000 parcels in total to children and adults last year, which was a 75% increase on the 2019-20 figure. In all, 2.5 million food parcels were given out across this great United Kingdom, which was up from 1.9 million in 2019-20.

Just last week in my constituency of Strangford, we had the launch of a Christians Against Poverty group. Christians Against Poverty helps people with their finances. I will just say this: the uptake for that group in my constituency has been enormous. We are very grateful that the churches and other bodies have come together to make that group happen, but it tells me where society is going and that worries me.

It cannot be refuted that people are struggling more than ever, and when a family struggles, the children pay a high price. To be fair, many parents make sure that their children eat before they do, but is that the way it should be? It should not be that way. Although we must be thankful for our charities, churches and other groups in the voluntary sector, the fact is that we in this place are missing a trick when children are in such need.

There are 1.8 million people in Northern Ireland, including 440,000 children, with almost 25% of those living in child poverty. Yet the majority of households in Northern Ireland—61%—have at least one working parent. One in four children in Northern Ireland are living in a family that struggles to provide for their basic needs—a warm and adequate home, nutritious food and appropriate clothing—as well as to pay for childcare costs. Children in poverty are twice as likely to leave school without GCSEs, and they are also more likely to suffer poor mental health and have fewer years of good physical health than other children.

We are not talking about children whose parents cannot afford to take them to Disneyland; we are talking about parents who cannot buy shoes, or parents who cannot afford the internet access their children need to do their homework, or parents who need their 14-year-old boy to dry dishes in the local chippy just to help feed the family. These are the issues and this is the society we live in; others have said that already and others will say it after me.

Consequently, the pressure on young people is incredible, which has seen a rise in mental health concerns as well. Our children are in physical and emotional need. Minister, we have to meet that need. The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) referred to removing the two-child limit on benefits and I would put that case forward, too. Take someone on a wage of £1,200 per month. Last year, their fuel cost £100 a month but it is now double that; similarly, their groceries were £100 a month, but now they are £125 a month. That shows that the wages of 2020 cannot match what the situation is now in 2022.

Children are our greatest resource; I believe that with all my heart. Money spent on giving them the best start is a long-term investment in ourselves and, Minister, it must start right now.

15:12

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

My being here might seem a bit strange, given I am a London MP, but I must set out the problems that we experience in London.

I cannot even fall back on the suggestion that I am from north London. My borough is an outer south London borough, which is home to some of the richest places in the entire country, such as the All England Lawn Tennis Club. However, there is a difference of nine years in life expectancy between people living near the All England Club and people living in the heart of my constituency—places only a 15-minute bus ride apart.

In Mitcham and Morden, 46% of children are regarded as living in poverty. However, there is an issue that is uppermost in my mind—indeed, I may even be relying on this speech to be a bit of therapy for me. In May, I will have been an MP for 25 years. I have worked in housing all my life, and the things that I see happening to children in my constituency today keep me awake at night. I am sure that similar issues in her constituency keep my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), the shadow Minister, awake at night, too.

I will just share two stories. First, Mr and Mrs B have three children. Their eldest son has muscular dystrophy. He cannot walk or use a bathroom; he needs physical help to do those things. He lives in an unadaptable house. His tiny mum picks him up, throws him over her shoulder and walks up the steep steps to get him upstairs to his bedroom. When he needs to use the bathroom, she throws him back over her shoulder and carries him back down the stairs. The space in the bathroom where she has to lay him out, in order to help him to use the toilet, is probably 18 inches by 18 inches. She is in band A on the housing register. I visited her home last week, and took the head of housing with me. I can offer her no help or support. She is at the top of the list, but she will probably not get a house that is adapted or adaptable in her son’s lifetime.

Let me tell hon. Members about Miss T, who lives with her three children in a combined living room and kitchen, while her former partner, who is the tenant of the flat and has multiple sclerosis, is in the bedroom. Of those three children, one is severely autistic. Miss T has a neurological brain disorder. She is in band A on the housing register; there are 32 families ahead of her. Last year, Merton had 32 three-bedroom properties to give to all the bands. Even though Miss T is top of the list, it would be extraordinary if she were to get somewhere else to live within the next five years. By then, all three children, with whom she sleeps on the floor, will be teenagers. In how many cities and how many parts of this country is that acceptable?

15:16

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for her thoughtful introduction to the debate.

Far too often, when regional inequity is discussed, the framing is entirely wrong and misses out the real impacts that that inequality has on people’s lives. Although I accept that child poverty is a disgrace wherever it happens, it is deeply endemic in the north, and I say that as the representative of the wealthiest part of Sheffield. Along the 83 bus route, from my constituency to the other side of the city, there is a 10-year difference in life expectancy for women.

I recently met people from the Trussell Trust food bank network across Sheffield. We discussed the use of the word “poverty”, and they said that we should actually use the word “destitution” when talking about food banks, because that is their client base: people in destitution. Theirs are not the only food banks in our city, but they provided more than 12,000 emergency food parcels between April and September 2021—their highest number on record so far. Of those parcels, more than a third went to families with children.

It should not have to be said in the 21st century, and in one of the richest countries in the world, that there should be no such thing as child poverty, but here we are. It is hard to take the Government seriously on their commitment to levelling up when Conservative peer Daniel Moylan tweeted in response to a Yorkshire Post headline that he sees Yorkshire as

“a county of leftist whingers begging for handouts.”

If he were to visit Sheffield, he would actually find a city where people have waited time and again for the Government to deliver on their promises. The Government are failing to level up our transport—there has been no electrification and no High Speed 2; failing to level up the north’s economy, holding our producers back; and failing to tackle and combat inequality.

According to research by the University of Sheffield, the UK has a higher level of regional inequality than any other large wealthy country. To me, that is not inevitable, but a result of Government policy. It is a political choice to drive people into destitution and to deny them sufficient social security and the services that would prevent that destitution. It is a deeply political choice to invest heavily in some parts of the UK but not in others, and to champion some parts of the economy but leave others to fend for themselves. It is a despicable political decision to then accuse people who are forced into poverty —let alone children—of begging for handouts, when our entire economy is geared towards exploitation, dwindling opportunities and the proliferation of dehumanising zero-hour contract work under a Government who seem simply not to care.

We all know that regional inequalities run deep, but they are reinforced year on year by how much or how little is invested in key public services. According to the Centre for Cities think-tank, national local authority spending fell by half between 2010 and 2019. We all know that major cities in the north were hit hardest. On average, areas such as Liverpool, Blackburn and Barnsley faced twice the cuts of their counterparts in the more affluent south. More recently, analysis of the £4.7 billion allocated for the Government’s levelling-up agenda has shown that the wealthiest areas have been allocated 10 times more money per capita than the poorest. That is astonishing, and the Government must act urgently to ensure that they get those things done better.

15:19

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing this debate. Sadly, during the last 12 years of Tory Governments, the squeeze on wages has meant that in-work poverty has hit new highs, with one in six working households below the poverty line. That has meant that, in my hometown and constituency of Middlesbrough, over the past five years alone, relative child poverty levels have almost doubled, and two out of five children now live in households with an income below the poverty line.

Those in need are now set to be hit by the Tories’ cruel and callous slashing of universal credit, along with their plans to raise national insurance contributions. All the while, the cost of living crisis is shooting up, thanks, in part, to the Government’s catastrophic mishandling of the fuel crisis.

We know that we are one of the most unequal countries in Europe. We have pockets of incredible wealth and of shameful poverty and marginalisation. That is undoubtedly a regional issue, but inequalities also exist within our regions, with obscene levels of wealth alongside destitution. That inequality has widened under this Tory Government. They have frozen pay and benefits while billionaires—Russians included—have flourished.

Shared prosperity funds, towns funds and future high street funds will not do what is fundamentally necessary to close the gap of regional inequality, which is to return power and resources to the communities where they rightly belong. The Tory trick of creating competitions for communities, pitting them against each other for central Government funding, must be exposed as the divisive pork-barrel politics that it really is.

The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talked about making work pay. Okay, let’s do that. If we are really serious about giving workers the security, prosperity and respect that they rightly deserve, then we must have a plan to make it happen. We in the Opposition do. To begin with, we would not increase taxes for working people or cut universal credit. Instead, we would bring in a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants to help with the rising bills. We would give Britain a pay rise and deliver a new contract for the British people.

[Peter Gibson]

The hon. Gentleman is making some important points. As for giving things back to communities, he knows, as I do, that our region, Tees Valley, has had devolution, and our Tory Mayor is delivering jobs and opportunities for our region. The hon. Gentleman talks about the opportunity to serve a windfall tax on energy companies; that windfall tax would prevent those oil and gas companies from investing in and transitioning to the renewables that we so desperately need.

[Andy McDonald]

Well, if that was actually going to happen, the Tory Tees Valley Mayor would have no hesitation in bringing the trade unions into the conversation to ensure that they had good, secure, unionised, well-paid jobs. However, he refuses to do so.

As I was saying, that is why I was so honoured to work with our trade unions chairing our power in the workplace taskforce and produce our party’s Green Paper, “a new deal for working people”. I am delighted that that has been adopted as party policy, because that would mean that we would be raising pay for all, ending the scourge of in-work poverty, and delivering a social security system that provides a safety net for all with decent sick pay.

We would use public procurement for supporting good work, as our wonderful Welsh Labour Government are doing in Cardiff. We would empower workers to act as a collective to secure better terms and conditions. We would establish fair pay agreements, recognised in law, providing a floor across industries and sectors—think about the care workers. We would create a single status of workers and put an end to all the variations thereon, including bogus self-employment, and give all workers day-one rights on the job. We would strengthen the rights of the employed and self-employed, letting working people have a secure, stable income on which to build a good life. We would ban zero-hours contracts and outlaw the tactics of fire and rehire, and so much more. Lastly, we would repeal the trade union legislation, to enable our trade unions to bargain for their members.

We are at a crossroads; we can either return to the status quo of outsourcing, privatisation, exploitation, and extraction of value, which will only extend regional inequality and child poverty, or we can take a different path: one that will deliver for our people, truly bringing an end to the scourge of child poverty and regional inequalities. Poverty is a political choice; let us choose to eradicate it.

15:24

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for having secured this debate. Sometimes we can become numb to poverty and inequality, and we can allow the symptoms of poverty that should appal us to become fixtures in society. Food banks, anti-poverty charities and now clothing banks, although they are great sources of good and bring out the best in us, should not be necessary in 2022, yet in County Durham—as in too many places—the evidence that our communities are becoming ever more reliant on them is all around us. I also read the briefing from the North East Child Poverty Commission, and the figures for poverty in our region are indeed scandalous: the UK’s second highest. That means that in our region, in an average classroom of 30 children, 11 are living in poverty.

Growing up in poverty can have a corrosive effect on a child’s life chances. Their social, educational and health development is likely to be reduced compared with that of their richer peers. Growing up in a poor household can reduce a child’s expectations, and an absence of clear opportunity can reduce aspiration for what can be achieved in life, creating a cycle in which poverty is repeated from generation to generation. Many of us will have witnessed those tragic problems in our own communities. In the village of Witton Gilbert in my constituency, I recently met with volunteers from Children’s Hopes and Dreams, a community group whose food bank and other support activities for children have become a vital community safety network. With the cost of living crisis that is hitting many families at the minute, the work of that charity is needed more and more each day.

However, charity alone cannot eradicate poverty or regional inequality. The Government cannot stand idle and ignore poverty as a natural tragedy; they are not powerless to counter it. The daily decisions of Government can reduce or increase children’s life chances, and as we have heard, poverty is a political choice. We have witnessed this at first hand in the north-east—the region that saw the largest drop in child poverty during the last Labour Government, yet the largest rise since the Conservatives took power over 12 years ago. Consistent policy choices and spending priorities at every level of Government are needed to tackle a decade of worsening regional inequality, which has been exacerbated. We should not forget the view of Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty, who said that the Government’s approach to poverty is

“not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one”.

The levelling-up White Paper should have been the moment at which every lever of Government was seized to counter that tragedy. However, we have been left without a proper industrial strategy for reversing economic decline and, in the opinion of Michael Marmot, we do not have the funding to meet the Government’s goal of reducing health inequalities by 2035. If the Government had committed as much money as they have rhetoric to levelling up areas such as Durham, that goal would be in reach, but sadly, it is increasingly clear that the opposite is true.

15:28

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

I am delighted to participate in this debate on regional inequalities and child poverty on behalf of the Scottish National party. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), who has brought this issue to the Floor of Westminster Hall, although I echo her sentiments that for us to be debating this in the UK in 2022 is an absolute disgrace.

When it comes to child poverty, of course, from Scotland’s perspective it is a tale of two Governments. In Scotland under the SNP, we see a progressive Government on a mission to tackle child poverty, even though 85% of welfare is reserved to the UK Government. Tackling child poverty is at the heart of the new Scottish budget—a budget that, it has to be said, must be balanced every year by law, yet the Scottish child payment has been doubled. Just as the UK Government scrapped targets to reduce child poverty, the Scottish Government set out ambitious targets for eradicating it with the limited powers they have. Just as the Scottish Government doubled the child payment to £20, so the UK Government cruelly cut £20 per week from those same families when they cut universal credit, knowing that when they made that cut they were pushing thousands of families into poverty. The contrast between the Tory UK Government and the SNP Scottish Government could not be clearer. There can be no doubt that the Scottish child payment, delivered by the Scottish Government, is the most ambitious child poverty reduction measure in the whole of the UK.

In contrast, the UK Government delivered overnight the biggest cut to welfare support in over 70 years. It is deeply disappointing that the UK Government have ignored the Work and Pensions Committee report that outlined numerous proposals that the UK Government should implement to tackle the growing scandal of child poverty. There is no strategy from this Government or any measurable objectives against which they can be held to account on this issue. If I am wrong about that, the Minister will be able to tell us, either when he gets to his feet or in an intervention, what the plan is to tackle this and what measurable objectives are in place, against which we can hold this Government to account and measure the progress they are making in tackling this scourge. Perhaps the Government simply hope that child poverty will go away and that we will shut up and stop talking about it, or perhaps it is simply not a priority. It would be good to have clarity on that.

If this Government are genuinely serious about tackling child poverty, then they should reintroduce targets. They should have UK-wide statutory child poverty targets that will allow us to measure the progress that has or has not been made in tackling this problem. In Scotland, plans to tackle child poverty were backed by real action, including a £50 million tackling child poverty action fund. The UK Government could replicate that work, in the absence of any of their own ideas, to confront this scandal.

The Scottish Budget for 2022-23 tackles child poverty and inequality by targeting over £4 billion in social security and welfare payments, including £197 million committed to the game-changing Scottish child payment from next month, which will be extended to all under-16s. It is expected that around 430,000 children living in low income households could be eligible from that point. In line with the Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts, the Scottish Government are committed to over £3.9 billion for benefit expenditure in 2022-23, to provide support to over 1 million people. The extent of the Scottish Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty is illustrated by the fact that this is £361 million above the level of funding to be received from the UK Government through the block grant adjustment, showing that the investment the Scottish Government are making in the people of Scotland is key to the national mission of tackling child poverty.

The latest report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “UK Poverty 2022,” reveals that

“Child poverty continues to rise.”

It reports that almost one in three children across the UK live in poverty. Nearly half of children in single-parent households live in poverty. Larger families and single-parent families have particularly high levels of poverty rates. Across the whole of Ayrshire and in my constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran around one in four children live in poverty, but the numbers are rising as many families find they are overwhelmed with the cost of living crisis, as essential household costs soar.

While welfare support is to increase by 3.1% in April, inflation, as we have heard today, is expected to reach around 7%. That figure shows that there will be a real-terms cut in welfare support. With the best will in the world, parents and families are doing their very best, but for far too many poverty has them in its grip. Poverty in working households is at its highest, and those in work now face not just a cost of living crisis but from next month national insurance hikes, as we already face unsustainable financial pressure. So much for making work pay.

It is shocking that the Government’s response to child poverty simply is not evolving to meet the growing challenges of inequality. That is why we have among the highest levels of inequality in Europe, which is all too evident in my constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran. As support is being eroded by inflation, families are increasingly borrowing to pay essential household bills, leaving them dangerously exposed to unsustainable debt. That has the potential to destroy families.

John Dickie, the director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, agrees that the Scottish Government are doing all they can to tackle child poverty, but we all know that the full range of powers to make proper inroads into this are reserved to Westminster. Like many people in this room, I have participated in a number of debates on child poverty, and I hope the Minister will not do the same thing as always—get to his feet and simply lay out what he believes his Government are already doing. Clearly, as he has heard from every speech today, what has already been done is simply not enough. The numbers are rising. The facts speak for themselves—more needs to be done. What we need to hear from the Minister is what this Government’s plan is. Where are their targets to deal with this social blight?

Until, and unless, the Government seek to seriously grapple with the shame and scandal of child poverty, they can forget about making meaningful inroads into the poverty-related attainment gap. It simply cannot be done. Poverty is a scourge, and hungry children cannot reach their potential. The effect of poverty on those whose lives it has touched is corrosive. I agree with the points made by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) that for children, poverty colours their world view. It impacts on their self-esteem, it limits their ambitions and it imposes limitations on their success in school as well as their social relationships. Poverty’s shadow is a strong determiner of health outcomes well into adulthood. It shortens too many lives, far before their time. Ultimately, poverty kills.

However well a child might do in life against all the odds, having grown up in deep poverty, the shadow of that experience never goes away even as an adult. I know this because I grew up in poverty. That is why I believe that as a society we need to do all we can to protect children from that damaging and corrosive experience, so that they can grow into healthy adults and fully rounded citizens. I am very keen to hear what the Minister has to say in response to this debate. We do not need to hear measures that he thinks have already been put in place. We need to hear what the plan for the future is. What more will be done? We need targets which this Government will work towards to tackle this serious social issue, and against which we can hold them to account. I hope that is what we will hear in the response.

I doubt that the Minister will say anything that will dissuade me from the steadfast view that we in Scotland, who wish to build a fairer, more equal and more just society, can only do so with the full range of powers at the disposal of a Scottish Parliament in an independent Scotland. Then we can build the kind of society that we want to see for our children.

15:38

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for introducing the debate, and also for an excellent speech that set out very clearly a framework for tackling poverty in her constituency and region—a framework against which we should judge other actions in tackling poverty across the country. We have heard a number of excellent speeches in a well-attended debate—on the Opposition’s side— including contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). All of those speeches drew very powerfully from my hon. Friends’ constituency experiences.

Poverty, wherever we experience it, is a grinding, soul-destroying experience. It is a limiter of opportunities and it erodes physical and mental health. That is true in the north-east, the north-west, London, the midlands and Cornwall; it is true wherever people are growing up in poverty. It is true if you own a home that you cannot afford to maintain. It is true if you are a council tenant or if you pay your rent to a private landlord. It is true if you are a parent or if you are collecting your pension, and it is true if you are a carer. It is true if you are unable to work because of a severe illness or disability, and it is true if you are in insecure or poorly paid work. One of the very strong themes that has come through from many contributors this afternoon is the growth of in-work poverty, which is now at a record level. It is true whether we call poverty “food poverty,” “bedding poverty,” or “energy poverty,” whether we talk about it in terms of the inability of parents to send their children to school in a school uniform, or whether we talk about it in terms of their children going to school hungry. Whatever the nature of that poverty, it is all under that same umbrella.

Poverty isolates people. It excludes people. It makes people feel somehow that it is their fault. One of the experiences of people living in poverty that we all hear time and again is this wrong sense—such an incredibly wrong sense—of shame. Poverty drives people into debt. It drives people into insecurity. It also damages communities, which have less spending power and greater need. Larger numbers of people on the lowest incomes make for poorer neighbourhoods, and a levelling-up agenda that fails to take that into account is definitely on the way to failure.

Although, as everybody has said this afternoon, income is absolutely central to the issue of poverty, it also exists in a wider context, particularly of services. We have heard about the experience of the fall in local authority spending power, which has been critical and was so important to us during the years of the Labour Government. One of the particular achievements to which I strongly pay tribute is Sure Start and the work of early intervention. I was most proud of Sure Start, and saw my constituency experience it. Because of the erosion of local authority spending, we saw that early intervention shrivel.

In the 21st century, in what is one of the world’s richer countries, we should now be on our way to eradicating poverty, but we are not. Before the pandemic, in 2019-20, child poverty after housing costs had reached 31% nationally, over 4 million children—a rise of 700,000 since 2010-11. There was no region in England where child poverty was not a major problem. The lowest regional child poverty rate was 24%, in the south-east. In other words, in what is generally regarded as the richest region of the country, nearly one in four children were in poverty.

It is likely that the next set of statistics on households below average income, which we will see very shortly, will show a reduction in the number in poverty, and the Government will point to that as an achievement. It will, of course, reflect the £20 uplift to universal credit and the uplift to the local housing allowance, which were introduced as a response to the pandemic and in recognition of the fact that new claimants would be shocked by the low level of social security. However, by this time next year, we will see the impact of the unwinding of the uplift, which was so unwisely removed in the autumn. During the course of this year, we will see the impact, too, of rising inflation and an energy price shock that will erode the living standards of millions of people already on the margins. That is before the further shock that we are likely to see as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, which is likely to feed through, tragically, into even more expensive energy costs.

As I have said, there was no region in England where child poverty was not a major problem, but there were enormous variations between regions: from 24% in the south-east to 36% in Yorkshire and the Humber, 37% in the north-east and 38% in London. As has been said, there are severe variations within regions, too—even within constituencies. It is good that the Government are finally turning their attention to regional inequalities—assuming that that is what the levelling-up agenda actually means; many interpretations are available. However, levelling up does not include child poverty as an indicator, and that is a very serious weakness in that agenda.

Any attention to regional inequalities would certainly be better than what we have seen over the last decade, when the Government quite cynically exploited regional inequalities for divisive purposes. Given, for example, the extreme inequity in housing costs and thus in benefit payments, it was not difficult to generate headlines about claimants in London receiving what seemed like huge payments. The average weekly private sector rent in the north-east is £117 a week; in London it is £340 a week. It is no wonder that voters in other regions found some of those payments in London incomprehensible, despite the need for support, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden, who spoke about the impact of housing need in London. That has to be addressed in any sensible approach to regional inequalities in child poverty.

The Government’s approach of arbitrary cuts—including the bedroom tax, the two-child limit and the overall benefit cap—has not only led to rises in child poverty in every region in England, Scotland and Wales, but left us with an anarchic benefits system where claimants are hit by an unpredictable barrage of caps, deductions and benefit freezes. That, too, exacerbates regional inequalities.

The Government approach is to cut at national level and then pretend they can make it up through local discretionary pots. We have seen that approach in respect of housing costs; we are seeing it again as households face the energy costs crisis. Labour proposes assisting everyone with rising costs, with most going to those on lower incomes. Instead, £150 is being made available on the basis of 30-year-old property valuations topped up with a discretionary fund that local councils have to administer. Even there, it is rapidly becoming obvious that half of those eligible do not pay by direct debit, so councils do not have a means to pay them; there needs to be a process by which they can be contacted and their bank details obtained. As with all discretionary pots, the likelihood is that large numbers of people in the most acute need will not be able to get the assistance they require.

Before I conclude, I will quote from a letter that I received this morning, coincidentally. We have heard powerful testimonies from Members quoting their constituents about their experience of poverty.

“As a claimant in Westminster North, I am writing to you about my struggle to keep up with the rising costs of living. I have a severely disabled daughter. She has scars all over her face; she lost her eye in a car accident when she was 11 years old. The NHS couldn’t help her so I’ve taken out loans to pay for aspects of her care. Even before the surge in energy prices many people like me have been struggling to afford the essentials. I cannot afford my bills or my food shopping. We cannot actually live. I am a widow with loans to pay since I lost my husband. We limit the heating and we limit the lighting too. It is all too expensive.”

When the Chancellor announced the household support fund in September, he said that,

“Everyone should be able to afford the essentials, and we are committed to ensuring that is the case.”

It is not the case that my constituent can afford the essentials; it is not the case that the constituents my hon. Friends have spoken about can afford the essentials, and that is now. In a few weeks’ time, their ability to afford food, to heat and light their homes and to send their children to school clothed and shod will diminish still further. We have heard about the regional drivers of poverty, the experiences that vary between areas and the different factors helping determine how many fall into poverty, how deeply and for how long. The fact is that we have a deepening crisis of poverty in this country and, in spring 2022, the Government have to wake up and act.

15:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (David Rutley)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this debate. I know that she feels passionate about this subject; it is clear from the contributions made today that other Members across the House do as well. I recognise that Opposition parties are particularly well represented in this debate.

No one wants to see children living in poverty in their constituency, and I understand the passions that drive all the contributions I have heard today. Some of the central missions of this Government are to reduce regional inequality, spread opportunity and increase prosperity right across the United Kingdom. Where someone is born in this country should not be a barrier to what they can achieve. That is why this Government are committed to levelling up, and we at the Department for Work and Pensions are clearly playing our part.

The Government are committed to levelling up across the country. We are creating exciting opportunities, including via the UK’s first freeport in Teesside, which is estimated to create more than 18,000 highly skilled jobs. Our provision of £5 million to create a five-acre business park in Burnley Vision Park will create high-quality manufacturing and engineering jobs in the area. The move of the Treasury’s regional centre to Darlington shows the ambition there, while the DWP has an office in Leeds, which I visit on a regular basis along with other Ministers.

Through the integrated rail plan, we are setting out a £96 billion strategy of rail construction and upgrades for the midlands and the north to be delivered over the next 30 years. That will be the biggest ever single Government investment in Britain’s rail network.

[Peter Gibson]

I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for mentioning my constituency and the Treasury jobs coming to Darlington, but multiple other Government Departments, with 1,700 new jobs, are coming to my constituency, ensuring that people can go far but stay local. That is the real way to tackle long-term poverty.

[David Rutley]

I understand the point my hon. Friend makes.

I want to talk about jobs, because job creation is key to helping more people stand on their own two feet. Our approach to levelling up centres on removing barriers to work, wherever people live in the UK, and on supporting people to find the job that is right for them. That is based on clear evidence that having parents in work, particularly full time, is the most effective way to lift children out of poverty. Children living in households where all adults work were six times less likely to be in absolute poverty before housing costs in 2019-20 than those in workless households. We have been making a difference: there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty before housing costs, and nearly 580,000 fewer children are living in workless households than in 2010.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andy McDonald]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Rutley]

There is a fight there, but I will go with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald)—[Interruption.] He is deferring to the Member for south of the river, the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the Minister clarify the point about 100,000 children brought out of poverty before housing costs? What is the number after taking account of housing costs?

[David Rutley]

I do not have those figures in front of me. There has been some debate about the appropriate measure. Some hon. Members are keen to have a relative measure as opposed to an absolute measure, but there are challenges with that, with some counterintuitive results. For example, relative poverty is likely to fall during recessions, due to falling median incomes. That measure of poverty can decrease, even if people are getting poorer. We need to look at different measures. The measure we think is most accurate is absolute poverty before housing costs. We have, of course, set other key statutory indicators in place as well, around parental worklessness and children’s educational attainment.

[Liz Twist]

I want to touch on the definition of poverty because it is clearly important. I should point out that the people I referred to, who are producing the reports around the north-east and the north, are well-respected academics who look into these issues. I should also point out that the House of Commons Library produces figures on both these measures. It is clearly a difficult area.

[David Rutley]

I know that the hon. Member is very thoughtful about these matters; we have worked together in different capacities over the past few years. Of course, there are different measures. Today I am highlighting that it is difficult to decide which is most appropriate. The Government and t Department believe that absolute poverty before housing costs is the best measure. I have highlighted one of the problems with relative poverty targets at certain times in the economic cycle, and we need to be cognisant of that.

With our economic recovery continuing, it is right now to focus on helping people, wherever they live in the UK, to move into and to progress in work. There are more than 1.29 million—nearly 1.3 million—vacancies across the UK. Payroll employment is at a record high of almost 29.5 million; it is higher now than it was in February 2020 across all regions. Last quarter, there were 14,000 more jobs in the north-east in payroll employment, and 38,000 in the north-west.

Last month, published estimates showed that the number of online job adverts—another indicator of opportunities —across the UK was over 38% higher than the pre-pandemic level. For the north-east, the figure was a staggering 68.9% increase, so there are real vacancies out there.

Hon. Members, particularly Opposition Members, have highlighted challenges for individual families, which I understand, but I am trying to highlight that there are opportunities out there. Hon. Members know from speaking to their businesses that there are shortages of labour. One thing we need to do is ensure that we can match those people who need work with the opportunities available.

[Rachel Hopkins]

The Minister was talking about job opportunities and people being able to access them. When he makes statements such as that, does he take into account the significant cuts to bus services and the fact that many of my constituents are not able to travel far as they do not have a car?

[David Rutley]

There are barriers to work, and that is why we are focusing on issues such as childcare. We have the flexible support fund. I urge constituents of the hon. Member who have challenges such as that to go to their jobcentre, particularly as they start to find new work. The flexible support fund is genuinely flexible. It breaks down all those barriers. It can help with childcare and travel costs as well. I thoroughly recommend that individuals have those meetings, and I can help make introductions if required.

The plan for jobs is a multibillion-pound initiative that will bring targeted tailored support to jobseekers of all ages in all these regions. One of the key initiatives is the job entry targeted support scheme, which helps get people back into work as soon as possible. Over 94,000 people, including 26,600 in the north-east, have started the programme since April last year.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who regularly holds me to account—in a forthright manner, I hasten to add, but I love her none the less—wants to know what is new, and I will reveal to hon. Members some new and important stuff we will be doing to help people into work—indeed, we do not just want to help people into work; we want to help them progress in work as well. We will be going further over the next month. We will be extending the support we provide in jobcentres to a national model of support to help approximately 1.7 million working universal credit claimants in Great Britain to overcome barriers that hold them back from progressing, increasing their earnings and moving into better paid jobs. Across every jobcentre, claimants will be able to access work coach support to address any skills gaps or wider barriers to progression, and we will be appointing specialist progression champions, who will make connections between employers, local authorities and skills providers.

Despite our political differences, I encourage all hon. Members present to engage with their local jobcentres—I know that my shadow, the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), regularly does so—particularly on the issue of in-work progression, because that will be a way to help tackle regional inequality and the challenge of child poverty, which are priorities for all present.

At this point, I have said the things I needed to say in response to much of the debate. I am conscious that the hon. Member for Blaydon wants to come back in as she has a couple of minutes to wind up.

15:57

[Liz Twist]

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in what has been a stimulating and thoughtful debate. I did ask some specific things, and I clearly did not expect the Minister to roll over and agree with some of them, although I wish that he would—particularly whether he might be able to check his diary to see if he can attend the “Child of the North” meeting next week, because it would be worth while to talk to the academics there. I would also welcome the opportunity to speak to him about some of these things in more detail.

There are too many points to respond to, not least the bits about employment and unemployment. Unemployment in the north-east was actually higher; it bucked the trend in some other parts of the country. That is a significant point.

The Minister referred to the integrated rail plan and the expenditure on rail. He will know that across the north, most of us feel that we have lost out. There may be investment, but we have lost out on the opportunities provided by strengthening the east and west coast connection and the High Speed 2 proposal.

What we need in the north is not just jobs; we need good, high-quality jobs that represent real opportunity for people to develop and make the progress he talks about, and we need to do much more to make that happen. Finally, the north is great. The north-east is great.

[David Rutley]

The north-west is great too.

[Liz Twist]

Well, I will speak for the north-east and the rest of the north—they are great. The debate is not about whingeing and saying, “It’s not fair.” It is about saying that the north-east is a fantastic place and our children need the best opportunities to make the best of their lives.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Prison-based Addiction Treatment Pathways

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call Dan Carden to move the motion. The Minister will respond, but there is no right for the mover to respond at the end, as is the norm in 30-minute debates.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered prison-based addiction treatment pathways.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. Too many people with drug dependency

“are cycling in and out of prison. Rarely are prison sentences a restorative experience. Our prisons are overcrowded, with limited meaningful activity, drugs easily available, and insufficient treatment. Discharge brings little hope of an alternative…life. Diversions from prison, and meaningful aftercare, have both been severely diminished and this trend must be reversed to break the costly cycle of addiction and offending.”

Those are the words of Dame Carol Black in her groundbreaking independent review of drugs—a damning observation.

The treatment system and effective recovery pathways from addiction in prisons are in desperate need of repair, yet the effectiveness of evidence-based, well-delivered treatment for drug and alcohol dependence is well established. When it is properly funded, it works: it cuts the level of drug use, reoffending, overdose risk and the spread of blood-borne viruses.

Analysis of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons data from 2019 reveals that 48% of men surveyed by the inspectorate who reported having a drug problem said that it was easy to get drugs. The proportion of prisoners who said that they developed a drug problem while in custody more than doubled between 2015 and 2020.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. This is not the responsibility of the Minister, but in the papers last week it was reported that the drug uptake in prisons in Northern Ireland has risen to an astronomical height. It is therefore clear that what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the UK mainland also applies to us back home. Does he agree that the premise of prison is to rehabilitate and that addiction pathways are the absolute foundation for the rehabilitation that he and I want to see and that, to be fair, I think the Minister wants to see too? That can work only if funding is sourced and allocated UK-wide to make sure that it happens.

[Dan Carden]

The hon. Gentleman is spot on. I will come on to the function of prisons. Modern, progressive society should aspire to something more than having prisons there for punishment. The function of prison should be to rehabilitate, reduce reoffending and help those in prison to build productive and meaningful lives. I think the Minister will agree that without tackling drug dependence, that function cannot be fulfilled.

Part 2 of Dame Carol’s review calls for improved

“transparency and accountability of the commissioning and delivery of substance misuse services in prisons, including through publishing how much money is spent each year on these services”,

and ensuring that

“everyone leaving prison has identification and a bank account and that those who cannot claim benefits online get the opportunity, from the day of release, to access DWP’s telephony service.”

It calls for ending Friday release dates and for making sure that

“prisoners with drug dependence can access and receive drug treatment in the community as soon as possible after release.”

It also calls for additional prison staff to ensure that prisoners’ experience is improved, and for

“earlier interventions for offenders to divert them away from the criminal justice system, particularly prison.”

I am pleased that the majority of Dame Carol’s observations and recommendations have been embraced by the Government in the form of the 10-year drug strategy, “From harm to hope”, and the prisons strategy White Paper. Diversionary schemes are rightly encouraged by Dame Carol and endorsed by the drug strategy and the White Paper, despite the Government’s heavy “tough on drugs” messaging, because we cannot simply arrest our way out of the country’s addiction crisis, we cannot punish the already marginalised into recovery and we cannot end the pointless cycle of harm without evidence-based policy.

One in four people are placed in prison for committing an offence relating to their drug use. They are often given short custodial sentences of up to six months, most commonly serving as little as six weeks behind bars. Those on short-term sentences are the least likely to have access to drug and alcohol treatment, and prisoners serving seven-day sentences almost always pass through the system without support.

There are many innovative diversionary schemes and community sentences in use in different parts of the country. They reduce prison numbers, focus on treatment, recovery and rehabilitation, and stop small-time offenders losing access to housing, employment and family ties, which too often push them only further down the path of addiction, reoffending and homelessness, and exacerbate that vicious cycle of harm. I hope the Minister will touch on that in her reply.

For those who do reach the threshold of a custodial sentence and enter prison, the only answer to deliver change and break the cycle is to ensure there is access to treatment services within prison and on release. Sadly, the sharp decline in recovery services, particularly in prisons, mirrors the sharp decline in recovery services in the community. That has been further exacerbated by the pandemic, where prison regimes have entered strict lockdowns.

One practical challenge is that efforts to tackle drug use in prison are often undermined by the widespread availability of drugs across prison estates. Time, energy and resources end up being consumed by cracking down on the illicit supply. How can policy deal with that challenge, while also dealing with the demand for these substances and the root cause of that? Security can do only so much without a parallel commitment to reducing demand. The Government should ensure that they are committed to acting on both.

I am yet to meet anyone in addiction and recovery who has not experienced trauma. For those fortunate enough to have no personal experience of addiction, it is difficult to comprehend that the drug of choice is, at first, a solution, before it becomes a problem. Prisoners with drug and alcohol problems tend to have high rates of trauma, and trauma begets trauma.

Trauma has been shown to impact on cognitive functioning and on an individual’s ability to build and maintain social relationships. To be drug or alcohol dependent is a harrowing and hopeless ordeal; it is not a choice. To quote Dame Carol, a

“widespread sense of boredom, hopelessness and lack of purposeful activity in custody”,

coupled with little access to meaningful support in prison, is perhaps the worst possible environment the state could create to deal with this growing problem.

We know that, with access to properly resourced, person-centred, trauma-informed care, people can and do make positive changes to their lives. For prisoners, that care cannot stop when they walk from the prison gates. Many prisoners with drug problems are still being released on Friday afternoons, with nowhere to stay, no access to appointments at probation or drug services, no Naloxone and nothing but £46 in their pocket, with predictable results.

Transition between prison and the community must be prioritised to ensure a significant increase in engagement and community treatment on release. Every person in recovery is proof of the transformational change that is possible. For those who doubt whether someone in prison can address their addiction and make positive changes, I recommend taking the time to look at the fantastic “More Than My Past” campaign by the Forward Trust.

The sad reality is that the UK was once a leader in offering accredited addiction and recovery programmes in prisons. At the beginning of the last decade, there were over 100 programmes in England and Wales in prison settings, with over 10,000 prisoners participating. Today, access to accredited addiction and recovery programmes is a prison postcode lottery. There is no national standard, and the latest figures suggest that the number of people participating in accredited services in prisons is below 200 per year.

In 2012, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust—now the Forward Trust—managed 14 intensive accredited addiction and recovery programmes in prisons across England, serving around 1,200 people per year. Independent evaluations showed that those programmes helped thousands of people into recovery from addiction, and that prisoners who completed those programmes were 49% less likely to be reconvicted compared with those who completed other programmes. By 2020, most of those programmes had closed due to lack of funding, and only around 300 people were able to access them. As it stands today, after two years of covid restrictions, only four programmes of this kind are still running, with only one currently operational. Despite the evidence, access is sparse, and prisoners have to transfer in order to access such services.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 transferred responsibility for commissioning health services in custody from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to NHS England. Funding for prison healthcare and substance misuse services fared well compared with the local authority funded services in the community, but there have been other consequences. Physical healthcare services in prisons have improved, but as Dame Carol pointed out, the arm’s length approach to commissioning substance misuse services in prisons has been widely criticised. Contracts are often placed with general healthcare providers, then further subcontracted out, and the system becomes fragmented and unaccountable.

Since that transfer, there has been an alarming reduction in the range of provision in prisons, particularly in recovery-oriented services. Fewer than 200 prisoners are accessing accredited, structured addiction and recovery programmes, and in its “Alcohol and drug treatment in secure settings” report, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities showed that there were 43,255 adults in alcohol and drug treatment in prisons and secure settings between April 2020 and March 2021—a drop of around 3,000 from the previous year. However, that figure of 43,255 prisoners accessing the treatment system does not tell us anything about how many were accessing recovery-oriented services. Can the Minister tell me what that treatment consists of, considering that accredited addiction and recovery course attendance has plummeted so drastically? With this new strategy, will the Minister also commit to restoring accredited addiction and recovery programmes to former levels and making them available in every prison?

When discussing addiction treatment pathways in community and secure settings, there is an unproductive and recurring debate: harm reduction versus abstinence. Each has its own set of benefits, yet they represent completely different approaches to recovery. Both approaches to treatment have their perceived pros and cons, but there is no right choice or correct pathway; after all, addiction has many causes, and recovery can be supported in a number of ways. Opiate substitute treatment, needle exchange, and the life-saving naloxone are important interventions—harm reduction saves lives, but so does recovery. It is time to take seriously the challenge of turning people away from drugs and crime.

I understand that the Secretary of State for Justice’s promotion of abstinence-based programmes in the prisons White Paper has caused confusion and some upset. Some believe that his approach goes against evidence-based research and the Government’s own 2017 “Drug misuse and dependence: UK guidelines on clinical management” document. The guidance is clear:

“any plan for reduction and cessation of OST should be based on the clinical judgement of the prescriber in collaboration with the prisoner and the wider team. Reduction and cessation should not be on an arbitrary or mandatory basis but rather requires careful clinical assessment and review…There should not normally be mandatory opioid reduction regimes for dependence…The purpose of healthcare in prison, including care for drug and alcohol problems, is to provide an excellent, safe and effective service to all prisoners, equivalent to that of the community.”

This should not be an either/or. When we think about recovery from any other health condition, that way of thinking would not be accepted. Clinicians would be focused on combinations that give people the best possible chance to make a full recovery. The Government say in their drugs strategy:

“We will treat addiction as a chronic health condition”.

I welcome that. As with many other health conditions, there needs to be a wide range of interventions and services that provide those in need with real choice.

For many people, harm reduction is the start of the recovery journey, but recovery is much more than, “Are you clean or not?” Recovery is not binary, recovery is not linear, but recovery is possible. To support it, there needs to be greater allocation of physical space on the prison estate to carry out therapeutic interventions that all people can access. That must include space for psychosocial, not just clinical, interventions. Well-designed recovery wings create a much less violent and more co-operative population who are focused on rehabilitation. Every prison should have recovery-focused wings. I wonder if the Minister is considering that possibility.

I welcome the commitment from the Ministry of Justice to expanding the use of recovery-focused areas in prison, which pointed to Her Majesty’s Prison Holme House as an example of good practice. The early outcomes from recovery wings have identified a reduction in violence and substance use, and a link to increased employment opportunities on release. Despite the support from addiction treatment charities for recovery wings, and despite their inclusion in the prisons White Paper, I have been made aware of a growing sense of open resistance in the Department of Health and Social Care to the expansion of recovery wings in prisons.

I would be grateful if the Minister could shed some light on those worrying reports. Is that the case, and if so, will she put a stop to it? Will her Department deliver on the reforms set out in the drugs strategy and the prisons White paper to improve addiction treatment in prisons and not stand in their way? Will the Minister tell us how the new spending allocation will reflect the priorities set out in both papers?

To conclude, I will quote Charlie Taylor, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons:

“To lead successful, crime-free lives when leaving custody, prisoners must change the way they feel about themselves and develop a belief that they can take control of their future.”

I hope that officials in the Department of Health and Social Care take heed of the chief inspector’s words as the final decisions are made on what has the potential to be positive progress under this Government’s reforms. Lives depend on it.

16:18

[The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Dr Huq, and I look forward to doing so on many more occasions. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for raising this important issue, which I know matters to us both. We come from a similar area and have seen similar challenges, which is probably one of the reasons why we are both here to try to help people live their best lives.

Addiction is a chronic condition with damaging and far-reaching consequences for individuals, their loved ones and wider society. A high proportion of the individuals who go into prison already have a substance misuse problem, but some may develop an addiction while in prison, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) outlined. This Government are committed to ensuring that we take the opportunity while people are in prison to get them the treatment they need and to get them out of crime. However, tackling addictions in prison requires a collective effort at both national and local level. The Department of Health and Social Care is committed to working with partners across health and justice to ensure safe, timely and effective care that improves health outcomes and reduces health inequalities for prisoners, as well as reducing reoffending.

In prisons and in the community, the NHS is focusing on integrating substance misuse and mental health services, to ensure that we provide joined-up, trauma-informed care that addresses an individual’s complex and interrelated problems, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, pointed out so eloquently. This is an important blend—to ensure that the mental health services and support are there, as well as substance misuse support. Investment in those services in prisons has increased from £184 million in 2016-17 to £203 million in 2020-21, with NHS England and Improvement committing a further £21 million over the next three years.

The NHS has also just commenced the roll-out of something fundamental—the GP2GP functionality. This will ensure that 100% of GPs working in the adult prison estate will be able to transfer clinical records to and from GPs in the community, allowing greater continuity of care for people entering and leaving the prison estate, and safeguarding health gains made when people go to and from prison. Ensuring continuity of care is vital, but it does not happen well in all cases today. The roll-out is being made in six tranches, with all of the male prison estate to be completed by June 2022.

Providing appropriate intervention and treatment at the right time and in the right place is vital to improving outcomes for people with substance misuse and mental health problems. NHS liaison and diversion services work at police stations and criminal courts to identify and assess people with substance misuse issues so that they can be referred to appropriate services and, where appropriate, out of the justice system all together. We are working with health and justice partners to increase the use of community sentence treatment requirements, which can help to reduce reoffending and custodial sentences by offering drug or alcohol treatment as part of a sentence.

In February 2019, the Government commissioned Professor Dame Carol Black to conduct an independent review of the issues and challenges relating to drug misuse, which exposed the stark scale of the national challenge. The hon. Gentleman referred to that vital piece of work a lot. I thank Dame Carol for her thorough review and for championing this important agenda. The Government accepted all of her key recommendations and are committed to supporting individuals suffering from addictions in prison.

To that end, we recently announced a number of initiatives that focus on recovery and rehabilitation, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The new drugs strategy, “From harm to hope”, was published on 6 December 2021. It sets out how we will significantly increase the number of drug and alcohol treatment places, and therefore increase the number of people in long-term recovery from substance addiction. The strategy aims to reverse the upward trend in drug-related deaths and to bolster the crime prevention effort by reducing levels of offending associated with drug dependency. It is important work. The hon. Gentleman questioned whether the DHSC is in any way reluctant to carry out that work. Not at all; I am very committed to that outcome and, as far as I am aware, we are working well with partners across and in the community.

To deliver the strategy, we have made available an additional £780 million, which represents the largest ever single increase in treatment and recovery investment. Of the £780 million, £530 million will be spent on enhancing drug treatment services, while £120 million will be used to support offenders and ex-offenders to engage with the treatment that they need to turn their lives around. There is specific funding for that purpose.

The hon. Gentleman made a point about abstinence-based treatment versus methadone prescribing or other treatments. Both have their place. Not everyone’s addiction is the same and nor is their pathway to recovery. The clinical evidence guidelines—including National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance—and clinical consensus will support a balanced and integrated approach. Those bodies will be the ones deciding what is best for the individual concerned.

The prisons White Paper, which was published on 7 December 2021, has a specific focus on tackling barriers to rehabilitation and reform by deploying the full range of treatment options to support recovery from drug dependency. For example, we are exploring the benefits of making long-acting buprenorphine available to prisoners by assessing the impact on engagement with treatment, protection from overdose, and relapse after release. We are also supplying life-saving naloxone medication to staff in prisons and approved premises to prevent unnecessary deaths from opiate overdoses.

Crucially, we want continuity of treatment once an offender is released back into the community, so that they do not slip back into using drugs and into the life of crime that they have often followed. The NHS long-term plan introduced the NHS Reconnect service to work with individuals who would otherwise struggle to engage with community-based healthcare services. The service works with such individuals pre-release to ensure that there is no disruption to their care. Reconnect is the largest health and justice investment to be delivered by the NHS long-term plan, with an annual spend of £13.8 million in 2022-23, rising to £20 million in 2023-24.

As well providing health and care support, we need to tackle the wider issues that can hinder a person’s ability to recover and turn back the clock on their crime. Prison programmes for drug rehabilitation, skills and work will be more closely linked to the support services available in the community when offenders are released. We are working with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice on that. Through those initiatives, we are ensuring that every day that an offender spends behind bars involves purposeful reform and rehabilitation to help them to recover and turn their life around, and to ensure that they have the building blocks in place to maintain that recovery and make a positive contribution to society after they leave prison.

Our focus on recovery is unprecedented in its ambition and in the level of funding backing that ambition, and it forms a key part of the Government’s plans to cut crime and make our communities safer as we build back better, stronger and fairer after the pandemic.

Question put and agreed to.

Westminster Foundation for Democracy: Funding

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the funding of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. 

This debate gives us all a remarkable opportunity to focus on a small and sometimes underknown organisation, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which for 30 years has played a distinguished role in standing up for and representing our values on a global stage.

I must declare an interest as the current Chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Today I will discuss with colleagues here in Westminster Hall, some of whom are governors of the organisation, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which I will call the WFD for short, including why we were created, what our aims are, whether we are succeeding, and what we can contribute that matters to the taxpayers who fund us, to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, to whom we answer, to other organisations that fund us and, perhaps above all, to the nations and peoples of the world, who we exist to serve.

I believe this is a good moment to ask these exam-type questions of ourselves in public, not just because this year is our 30th anniversary and no organisation has a right to exist forever; not just because the delay in confirmation of our funding this year has caused us to question every activity, programme, office and pound of expenditure; and not even because of the events in Ukraine, where I am delighted to say that our two staff members, Halyna and Marina, are now safe, far from the Ukrainian Parliament, where they had been working to bolster and sustain Ukrainian democracy, in a project with partners that is financed by the United States Agency for International Development—USAID.

It is even more fundamental to examine the UK commitment to open societies and the WFD’s contribution because, I suggest, democracy is in recession. That is the issue of our time, the challenge for our Government for a generation and perhaps longer to come, and the cause on which our children and grandchildren may later judge us. Moreover, it is not simply about one side winning and the other side losing, or even about a rise or fall in the various democracy indices, although the latest reading, from The Economist index, is dire; it is certainly the worst for 15 years and arguably for even longer. I believe that it is about something more invidious and longer-term—a view among the young in particular that democracy is no longer assumed to be the best solution and the best form of governance, and that other, more efficient, models might exist.

If Churchill’s maxim that “Democracy is a terrible thing, but I cannot think of a better way of governing” is still true—it is a maxim that the WFD holds close to its heart—then we, like every generation, must remake the case for democracy and against the authoritarian range of alternatives. Right now, we may be tempted to remember that time and time again, authoritarian regimes have few easy ways of replacing leaders who pass their sell-by dates, stop listening to their people or surrender to imperialist fantasies. However, we also need to keep asking this question: how do we keep our systems, processes and use of technology up to date, relevant and effective?

That is where the work that the UK does to help open societies abroad matters hugely. There is, of course, Margaret Thatcher’s great observation that

“democracies do not go to war with each other,”

which is never more valid than today in Ukraine. There is also the hard truth that democracies are fragile plants that need much tending and, untended, decline—first gradually and then, like all gardens, suddenly very rapidly.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

I note my hon. Friend’s concerns about delays in funding from the Foreign Office. I have to say that I saw first-hand the excellent work done by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy when I attended its training workshop in Ghana for female politicians across Africa. So, does he agree that the Foreign Office must continue to fund that vital work, to help strengthen open societies and democracies around the world?

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She makes a very good point and her own work in Africa, which she continues today in her guise as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy in Kenya, absolutely confirms the point that she makes: in every continent in the world, there are countries in which sustaining this fragile plant is incredibly important. We should not be complacent about that in our own country, or across the pond in North America, either.

In this gardening analogy, the WFD is the constant gardener. We are there for the long term, and our projects need time to succeed. Let me give one example. I have seen our programmes in action in four of the countries in which our western Balkans project operates. I have no doubt that in all of them the project has been a success and great value for money. Were we to abandon the project in less than a month’s time when its funding expires, it would be another setback for open societies in the western Balkans. Yet that is precisely the risk, because the funding for the project, which comes from the conflict, stability and security fund—that is, the Cabinet Office—has not yet been decided. The work that the WFD has been able to do there, improving Parliament structures and scrutiny, helping more women into political leadership positions and so—this is the crucial aspect—reducing corruption, which is the scourge of faith in Government, is really important work, done indirectly by Her Majesty’s Government to help nations across the oceans.

Today, every organisation—barring a civil war or invasion—needs certainty in which to operate. During the pandemic, the Government provided that certainty for both businesses and the self-employed. It is therefore extraordinary that, having declared an end to the pandemic, and with departmental budgets agreed with the Treasury some time ago, until 6 o’clock yesterday evening I could not have told this debate what the WFD budget would be in less than a month’s time. Our outstanding chief executive Anthony Smith is here today, and we have roughly 100 staff in many countries around the world, and there are the rest of the governors, both political and non-political. For us to have to say in a board meeting last week that we could not sign off on a budget—only an indicative operational plan—is not an acceptable way for a non-departmental Government body to operate. It was with great relief, therefore, that I took the call last night from the office of the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), for the verbal confirmation of our core funding for 2022-23. I look forward to the written confirmation as soon as possible.

However, I stress that that does not resolve everything, for many of our projects are funded through official development assistance by individual missions. The western Balkans project, pooled by five embassies, is a good example of that. They still do not know what their allocations are. The good news on core funding enables us to complete a budget and a restructure with much greater certainty, and enables us to decide the party political programmes that are arguably the unique feature of the WFD, but it does not mean that all our programmes, or the jobs of the staff delivering them, are secured. I am sure that the Minister will recognise that I speak for many heads of mission and diplomats when I say that, for an organisation well-versed in understatement, the words “frustrating” and “disappointing” are polite ways of describing widespread feelings. I hope that we never have to slog through such agonising budget treacle for so long ever again.

Let me come back to the core purposes of the WFD and our constant reinvention. Our work cannot prevent rogue states from invading others, whether in Myanmar or Ukraine, but we do have the relationships, mentoring and knowledge such that, when freedom returns, we can help those societies to work better. For example, we have an understanding of what is not working in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and beyond. Western democracies want to know why the youth is voting with its feet to leave across the west Balkans, and were they to show the resolve in helping unblock these impediments to more open societies, it would reduce the tensions in that region that exist now and could yet lead to a new round of violence.

All Governments need the tools to help deliver what they believe in. This great country of ours believes powerfully in open societies and democracy—the values on which all of us were elected. Even after temporarily reducing our development spending to 0.5% of gross national income, we still spend over £10 billion a year, the vast majority of which goes on large, multilateral organisations, delivering important work through Save the Children, Oxfam and so on. In that enormous pond of development expenditure, the WFD is but a tiny drop—£6.5 million of core funding this year. However, we do answer to those values and the choice to stand up for them, as outlined in the Queen’s Speech and the integrated review paper that the Government wrote last year, which I still believe to be a very good definition of strategic choices that defend our interests.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful case for the WFD and the work that it does, and through him I want to appeal to the Minister. It is only natural that any large bureaucracy protects itself first and the outsiders last. When there is a cut, it tends to cut off the tentacles, however valuable they are. I hope we will hear from the Minister a personal commitment to ensure that WFD and its work are not allowed to languish, and that they have her full personal support. I know that the Department and the wider civil service will hear that message if it is given clearly by the Minister today.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who was earlier discussing with me the importance of environmental democracy. I hope he will participate in the event that the WFD has organised, which I think is on the last day of March. It will gather colleagues from across the world to discuss the importance of environmental democracy. It is exactly the sort of long-term work he believes in, and that we are trying to deliver. I sense a future role for him in the WFD.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My apologies for arriving after the commencement of the debate; I was still in a Select Committee. I put on record my appreciation for my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for the work that he does in chairing the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. It is not always the most glamorous task, but having been a director myself some 10 years or so ago, I know what incredibly important work it does. It helps to project on a cross-party basis from both Houses of Parliament the importance and the strength of encouraging democracy in some of the emerging democracies—particularly from former Soviet states.

I was in Kyiv with the WFD on my only visit to that, at present, benighted country. I tried to encourage the parties to recognise the importance of democracy and the role they can play in standing up to aggression. It is vital that WFD continues to do that work, not least during these dark days.

[Richard Graham]

I am very grateful for what my right hon. Friend has said. His own experience, both in Ukraine and more widely on the board of WFD, is extremely relevant. I pay warm tribute to Members of Parliament, the Government themselves and our non-political governors for their commitment and voluntary work over the few years that I have been chairing this organisation. It is to them that we owe what I hope is generally seen as a successful organisation, punching, as Douglas Hurd used to say, above our weight.

This is a good moment to come back to when we started, which was in 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a time when optimism was strong about the future of democracy. There was the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and the fall of dictators across eastern Europe. There was the exit of Suharto in Indonesia and Pinochet in Chile. These were heady times for those who believed in the values of democracy. The WFD was created to build those bridges between British political parties and our counterparts overseas, with other Parliaments and civil society, which is not to be underestimated in any of the countries where we run programmes—the role of civil society to help build more open societies and more prosperous countries.

In many ways, when the Foreign Secretary talks about a network of liberty, we can help deliver that, but we can do that only if we get the resources to enable us to deliver. Let me give one very tangible example, which I saw in action last week, in the Bangsamoro region of the southern Philippines, on the island of Mindanao, which I last spent a considerable amount of time in in 1986, when there was a rampant civil war between various Islamic groups, which we would now call fundamentalists or jihadists, as well as communists and the Philippines army. It was a region where everything was decided by the gun.

Today, in the Bangsamoro Parliament, which was set up over the last couple of years, and in the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, which is run by a former freedom fighter, I saw at first hand how the project that we are delivering—sponsored by the British embassy in Manila—can contribute to a series of programmes there, run by those who most strongly believe in democracy, to help deliver real peace and prosperity to that part of the Philippines. It is fragile, but I believe that an extension of it, which I hope will be formally announced fairly shortly, will continue to make a real difference. It is far away from the headlines of the media back here, but it is delivering very valuable progress.

To bring this speech to a conclusion, I hope that today’s debate leads not only to a reconsideration of our budget and a reaffirmation of support from the FCDO and from colleagues, but to a reimagination of what this country can do to support democracy across the world, at a time when democracy itself is under threat. That great challenge of our generation is up for grabs.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

This is quite a popular debate. I will go to the three Front Benchers from 5.8 pm, so I think that equates to around four minutes each for the Back Benchers.

16:47

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Dr Huq. I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for securing this debate, and thanking him for all the work that he has done for the wonderful Westminster Foundation for Democracy as chair.

If there was ever a time when an organisation was needed that crosses Parliaments, parties, electoral bodies and civil societies around the world—a non-departmental body working and empowering everyone—it is now. This debate is crucial because it reaffirms our commitment to democracy around the world. We have heard that every major index of democracy has pointed to a reversal in the spread of democracy—that is worrying—although there is an increase in political participation, which may be something to do with the work of WFD, hopefully, for more accountability.

It was a privilege to see the soft power of the FCDO when I visited Burma Myanmar in 2013, just before the elections. The soft power and the diplomats do not tell people how to vote or who to vote for; they just empower people. I saw the work that Parliament does to support the MPs in Myanmar—building a library and supporting the new MPs. What about the work that is being done now in Ukraine? WFD supported Ukraine’s independent budget committee, and they must be devastated for the people that they worked with to see them under siege at the moment.

Dr Huq, you will know what Gandhi said about democracy. When he was asked about western democracy, he said he thought it was a good idea. It is not about us exporting our version around the world; it is about empowering people.

Gandhi also said that when we educate women, we educate society, so I was pleased to see that the annual report of the Labour party WFD programme had focused on working women and young people. What a success! In Montenegro, 10 of the 24 participants in an academy were selected as candidates. Despite the pandemic, they delivered training sessions with more than 90 representatives from women and youth forums. People in the WFD are committed to the work, and it cannot take place without funding.

In this 30th year, I pay tribute to everyone who has worked for the WFD—including my colleagues who have done so, across parties—for making a difference to democracy. Its funding is uncertain. The organisation cannot plan and redundancies are already being made—a 29% cut, and with no plan or certainty of a budget for 2021-22. I was pleased to hear about the phone call but, as the hon. Member for Gloucester said, we hope to see that in writing soon. I urge the Minister to commit to funding immediately, because this is about the future, which we are seeing every day now on our screens.

The Government’s own integrated review stressed “robust democratic institutions”. I hope that the Minister will meet the chief executive of the WFD to settle on an appropriate level of funding to enable it to promote democracy and therefore peace. Minister, we only had to look at the face of the Ukrainian ambassador today in Parliament to see how important that work is. I note the Minister is dressed in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

We are arming people with the arguments for democracy, for the rule of law and for the accountability and transparency of decisions made in the people’s name, so that they are not subjugated by authoritarian regimes. Surely that is the most compelling reason to make sure that the WFD can function, whether through widening participation of women and young people, election monitoring or—our most pressing issue—the future of the world on environmental democracy. The WFD is a sign to every autocratic Government that we will not be intimidated, but uphold the principles of freedom and justice, democracy and peace—and spread that message across the world.

16:52

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Dr Huq.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing the debate and on his incredible work as the chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I, too, am a governor of the WFD. There can be few dates when it would be more appropriate to discuss the importance of supporting democracy around the world, following the incredibly moving standing ovation for the Ukrainian ambassador at Prime Minister’s questions today.

My hon. Friend set out why we should never be complacent about the role of democracy in our world and about the importance of continually making the case for it. He is absolutely right about the fragility that we should be concerned about at all times. I suggest to him that this is an appropriate time to remind ourselves that no man is an island. Geographically, that is always a difficult concept for people from the United Kingdom, but we are not an island: in a world of globalised interests, everybody is our neighbour, and we should never forget that. The more that we can invest in ensuring that those neighbours are stable and have the values that we have, the safer we all are.

My hon. Friend pointed out that the WFD was established directly after the fall of the Berlin wall to strengthen democracies and, by doing so, to strengthen Parliaments and countries as well. WFD funding is from many different sources. I am a relatively new governor and am still trying to get my mind around all these things, but the core funding, rightly, is from the UK Government. To be diplomatic, planning for the next financial year has been challenging because of the lack of a clear indication of the likely level of the grant for the spending review period.

Having myself been a Minister through a spending review, I can only stare in admiration at this Minister, given the amount of work that she must be doing or have done on this. I do not underestimate the complexities. It is absolutely right that Ministers consider carefully how overseas development assistance is allocated—we would expect nothing less—but this debate is to draw attention to the fact that delay, of necessity, causes uncertainty. That uncertainty and the impact it can have on organisations such as the WFD is what we want to remind the Minister about today, particularly given the WFD’s pivotal role in helping deliver the strategic priority for the Government of strengthening democracies around the world.

Financial uncertainty is affecting our ability to operate at a level that we would expect, given the real and transparent need to strengthen democracies at this time. I hope the Minister can provide clarity today. She knows the WFD through her own work and through my noble Friend Lord Ahmad’s visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he learned about the WFD’s western-Balkans programme. Indeed, the Prime Minister, in his former role as Foreign Secretary, announced the Commonwealth Partnership for Democracy programme and launched the WFD Kosovo programme in Pristina.

The Minister for Europe and North America, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), also learned a great deal about the work of the WFD in supporting women’s political participation and representation, in preparation for his recent visit to Kuwait. It is so often women who are disproportionately affected when democracies are threatened. I could give many other examples, but time is short. Suffice it to say that we need to see that the UK Government are doing all they can to ensure that, through the WFD and organisations like it, Government strategy for a global Britain and the ambition to strengthen democracy around the world can be brought into reality. I pay tribute to the staff of the WFD who, despite all the uncertainty, have continued their extraordinary work in an unstinting way.

16:56

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Dr Huq. Many believe that Putin felt emboldened to act in Ukraine after the Taliban took over Afghanistan last August. That is why now is not the time to cut the support that we give to developing democracies. When one collapses, it emboldens those who have no interest in democracy, and there is a domino effect. We need to double down and reinforce the incredible work that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy has done in the last 30 years, not turn our backs on it, making the last three decades meaningless.

As a WFD consultant when I was not an MP, I spent some time in the Gambia, working to strengthen accountability and democracy, and to increase the number of women, young people and people with disabilities in elected office. Ten of the 11 political parties had come together behind one presidential candidate to oust the human rights-abusing dictator of 22 years. That, in itself, was incredible, as was the fact that they were successful. Unfortunately, the new President got a taste for the lifestyle and decided to renege on the agreement to stand aside after three years. The Opposition parties and numerous human rights organisations are clear that they are not accepting that; they will fight the upcoming elections in the Gambia on that basis. The work that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy did with all those parties has contributed to their determination to ensure a fully-fledged democracy in the Gambia.

The WFD’s in-country rep, Madi Jobarteh, is a shining light in the Gambia, as are so many others who I have met in countries across the globe, including Dinesh Wagle, who is the in-country rep in Nepal. I did a piece of work in Nepal, and the thing about the WFD is that we continue those relationships. Dinesh has brought parliamentarians over here and he is bringing them again in two weeks’ time, not just to Westminster but to my constituency office in Glasgow. The WFD deserves our continuing support. As was said by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who I congratulate on securing this debate, they must be allowed to keep tending those gardens.

I pay tribute to Emma Armshaw, who is the SNP WFD’s head of office—she is with us today. She has certainly kept me busy over the years, but I am exhausted just watching her energy and commitment to the distinct programmes that the SNP office runs. I have been fortunate enough to work with Emma and Ra’edat—the Arab Women Parliamentarians Network for Equality. I was very privileged to engage with some formidable women as they came together in Beirut to talk about violence against women in politics. I wish I had time to say more, but for now I will express my continuing solidarity with them, and with the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus of Malawi, who I also spent some time with through the SNP WFD office.

Those are but two of our projects, and they both demonstrate the SNP’s manifesto commitment to pursuing a feminist foreign policy. The WFD has supported around 600 women parliamentarians across the world; I think I have met most of them. I am very proud of Emma, Madi and Dinesh. I am proud of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy—and, actually, of the UK Foreign Office for setting the foundation up and funding the work done. However, the SNP office alone has had cuts of nearly £100,000 in recent years and the WFD is now looking at further cuts of £1.4 million.

Regardless of the governing party, the WFD’s grants have always been a fraction of those provided to counterparts in other countries, representing perhaps 1% of US funding and 5% of Germany’s funding over the last 20 years. This £1.4 million represents 21% of core funding, so it is massive to the WFD but miniscule to the Government. If the Government had not written off £4.3 billion in fraudulent covid payments, they could have afforded to maintain this budget 3,071 times over.

There is no excuse. I implore the Government to think again. They cannot just keep talking about Britain being the bastion of democracy; they have to walk the walk—that does not mean finding the money, because it is already there, but parting with it. I implore the Minister not to let this wonderful organisation slip through our fingers. It is something we can all be proud of and unite behind.

17:01

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Huq.

I declare that I am also a governor of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. I first became involved with the WFD on one of the programmes I visited in Kenya, which was encouraging, supporting and advising women to get involved in the political process there. I was taken aback by the similarity between the issues they faced and those we face here, and by how useful what we experienced was to them. Today, in common with so many other people, I am taken by the timing of this move, which simply reinforces the need to rethink the cuts to the budget.

We have all mentioned that this is the 30th anniversary of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. It was set up, almost to the day, in 1992, to support and encourage the nascent democracies of eastern Europe—those peoples who had just thrown off the yoke of the Soviet empire and were experiencing for the first time the freedoms that we took for granted. Now, 30 years later, those very democracies, which have flourished, are under threat once more from a Russian autocrat. Those very freedoms, which they cherish, are under threat.

I am from the generation that remembers the cold war. I remember feeling fear as a teenager at every faux pas by an American President and every rumbling of discontent from Moscow. I felt the sheer elation and celebration that went with the crumbling of the Berlin wall and the awakening of democracy in Europe: the end of the cold war and of the Soviet empire.

I am now standing here, 30 years later, considering the future of the organisation set up to protect those democracies, which has gone on to do so much—not just in eastern Europe, but throughout the world, including in Africa and in Myanmar. It has been protecting those democracies. The foundation was working in Kyiv this week until the invasion. If ever there were a moment for the Foreign Office to stop and rethink its funding of this wonderful organisation, it is surely today, when the very thing it was set up to defend is yet again under threat.

17:04

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for securing this important and timely debate.

This should have been an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Since 1992, after offering support for projects across the world, this Foundation has promoted its belief

“that we need strong democracies to prosper and to protect our rights and freedoms.”

And yet—and yet—it is clear that democracy is under threat globally. Over the past week we have seen just how precious but fragile democracy is. It is a simple and unequivocal fact that the spread of democracy that followed the cold war has been reversed. Every major democracy index, such as Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World”, has shown a slide downwards over the past 15 years.

Only 20% of the world’s population live in free countries: 38% live under authoritarian rule, and the rest have restricted freedom. Some say that we are living through a democratic recession—who knows? It may become a depression. Given that the WFD was founded after the fall of the Berlin wall and tasked with supporting pro-democracy political parties and developing democratic processes as countries from eastern Europe emerged from the cold war, it is a particular tragedy that Ukraine—one of the nations that has embraced democracy—should now be the victim of a bloody, brutal and barbaric invasion by Russia under Vladimir Putin’s autocratic and authoritarian regime. Sadly, the Russian regime is not the only one working to diminish freedom of expression and democratic participation. From Belarus to Syria, China to Afghanistan and Myanmar to Eritrea, we have seen that democratic freedoms are by no means guaranteed.

At this time of increased need to be vigilant about these threats and continually defend, promote and improve democracy, the WFD faces cuts that will significantly hamper its ability to operate. That is a consequence of this UK Government’s short-sighted and unimaginable decision to renege on its manifesto commitment and the cross-party consensus to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas development aid, which is not only morally reprehensible, but penny wise and pound foolish.

The WFD’s core funding was cut by 29% during the pandemic—what a time to choose!—without consultation or consideration of the consequences. The result is that programmes are either curtailed or cancelled; staff, with all the expertise they have, are made redundant; and efforts to promote democracy ultimately suffer. The Government can try to argue that there will be a return to 0.7% when fiscal tests are met, but that will not bring back those programmes or those staff, and the likelihood is that democracy will have been eroded in the meantime.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy should be rightly proud of the work it undertakes. It focuses on accountability and transparency, elections, environmental democracy, inclusion, participation and openness, and women’s political leadership, with 74 programmes implemented across 43 countries in the years 2020-21. Key to its work—in many ways, its unique selling point—is its collaboration with party political offices, providing them with the resource to develop their own programmes across the world. The SNP established its own WFD office after becoming the third largest party in the UK in 2015, placing a particular focus on gender equality in political representation and participation. Its two key programmes include the Arab Women Parliamentarians Network for Equality, which the SNP was instrumental in helping build. That network has gone on to develop a policy paper on violence against women in politics—the first of its kind in the Arab world, and something we should all be proud of.

The SNP WFD also supports the Malawi Parliamentary Women’s Caucus, pursuing gender-just politics and legislation, and works to promote the effective participation of women in Parliament. Furthermore, it has recently launched a new environmental democracy project in Pakistan, supporting the Climate Change Committee with post-legislative scrutiny. However, all this important work can be supported only if the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is adequately funded—it is as simple as that. The SNP’s WFD funding has dropped from £260,000 in 2016 to around £156,000 in 2020. There are real concerns that if funding drops any further, this work will simply no longer be viable.

The UK Government recognised the importance of the WFD in its integrated review last year, and made commitments to address democratic governance around the world—given how critical this is for UK interests. I agree, and I am sure every Member present does as well. However, that was on the back of cutting funding for international development programmes at the same time, when the UK Government cut aid spending from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5%, and they subsequently announced that funding for the human rights, democracy and rules-based international system would be cut. That makes no sense: it is a completely incoherent and ultimately self-defeating decision, one that has the likes of Putin and other autocrats around the world laughing at us for being such blind fools.

Not only is this spending the morally right thing to do, but it is in our national interest. A fairer, more democratic world is a safer and more stable world, and any savings made now while making cuts will only cost us more in the long term when vast amounts have to be spent on the crises that subsequently emerge across the world. The UK Government must now see the error of their ways, reverse the reduction in WFD grants and reinstate the commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA if they are to have any credibility in defending democracy at this vital time in the world.

17:10

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Dr Huq. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing such an important debate. It comes at an extremely important time, as Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine’s democracy rages on, becoming more brutal by the day.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has been conducting vital work in Ukraine as part of its inclusive and accountable politics programme, which aimed to help the Ukrainian Parliament strengthen its important role in scrutinising Government legislation. That improves transparency and accountability, which, as right hon and hon. Members will agree, are the bedrock of any democracy.

The WFD has played a part in helping Ukraine to build its democratic institutions. That is everything that Putin fears: democracies working together to prevent the horrific repression and human rights violations that we see in Putin’s Russia today. That is what he envisages for Ukraine, so it is vital that we do all we can in our Parliament to empower organisations such as the WFD, so that they can help prevent that.

In Belarus in 2020, we saw clear evidence of election rigging by the Lukashenko regime. Now that same regime is playing its part in attempting to destroy Ukraine’s democracy. The Opposition welcome the sanctions against those in the Belarusian and Russian regimes who look to subvert democracies. In particular, we welcome the fact that the UK, EU and US have agreed to disconnect some Russian banks from SWIFT, but there is much more that the UK Government can do to cut Putin’s rogue regime out of our financial system.

The hardest possible sanctions must be taken against all those linked to Putin, and against the Russian Government’s interests. We should work in a co-ordinated and unified way with our allies to ensure that the Putin regime faces the severest possible consequences for its unprovoked violence. That is why we, as parliamentarians in one of the world’s oldest democracies, must throw our support behind the WFD and its international partners in the global democracy coalition.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, eastern Europe was suddenly awash with new political parties legalised after the one-party authoritarian system of governance of the Soviet bloc came to an end. Hope was on the horizon, and I am confident that such hope will soon return to eastern Europe, including Ukraine.

The WFD has historically played a key role in protecting that hope. In the western Balkans, for example, it has worked closely with political parties to ensure that they are more policy focused and orientated towards voters’ needs. It has also helped to develop more effective parliamentary practice and, as a result, better legislation. It worked to enhance the democratic culture of formerly undemocratic states by facilitating greater interaction between state and non-state actors on the challenges affecting the everyday lives of citizens.

Properly funding the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is a significant part of Britain’s influence abroad. That influence does not stop at democracy; with it comes freedom of the press, human rights, the rule of law, the right to peaceful protest, and many other freedoms that we enjoy in this country and that, sadly, many others around the world do not. The WFD shows that we can all play a part in changing that. The rights of democracy campaigners are being violated every single day, and we must do all we can to support courageous activists in countries such as Cuba, where the Government continue to limit access to the internet in a desperate attempt to prevent campaigners for democracy having their voices heard.

Today I have highlighted some of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy’s work. Its work to increase Britain’s democratic influence across the world is needed now more than ever, from Nicaragua to Hungary, from Venezuela to Colombia. We are truly fortunate to live in a democracy, and I urge the Minister to commit today to the future of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, so that we may spread hope to the less fortunate parts of our fragile world.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Just a reminder that we have to allow a couple of minutes for Richard Graham to conclude. I call the Minister.

16:04

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for securing this debate and to the Members who have spoken. I join them in their praise of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. This debate has demonstrated that across the House and the nation we share many fundamental values and beliefs. We believe in democracy, free speech, fair treatment and inclusion, but those values are under attack.

The world is watching in horror as Russian tanks roll into their democratic neighbour. Putin’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is utterly reprehensible. The UK condemns his actions, and we stand with the people of Ukraine. As we have been sitting and speaking here today, at the United Nations we have been joined by more than 140 countries, who have voted for the motion condemning Russian actions. A huge number of countries is united. We are showing the strength of feeling across the globe. We stand with Ukraine, and Russian aggression must stop.

Freedom of expression and an independent media are essential. The fundamental rights to freedom of expression; to read, discuss and debate issues freely; and to challenge news agendas and make informed political decisions are precious, but today’s ordinary Russians do not even have that. This morning, the Russians shut down the Russian TV channel Dozhd, and the radio station Ekho Moskvy. The Putin regime has again suppressed independent media and is censoring Russians’ access to independent reporting. That leaves the Russian state media outlets unchallenged and free to peddle their already discredited state propaganda. The actions by the Russian authorities are a further demonstration of the importance of independent media, and that is why we must stand up for democracy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. The Clerk is giving me dirty looks; we cannot veer off the topic of the debate for too long.

[Chris Law]

rose—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Chris Law will intervene, and then we will go back to the suitably attired Minister, who is wearing the correct colours.

[Chris Law]

The Minister is making a very powerful case. I hope she will conclude by saying that there will be full funding and support for WFD. She mentioned state media and the shutting down of media. Last night Google shut down RT. Two days ago, the whole of the EU shut down RT and Sputnik. So far, the UK has not gone anywhere near touching RT in this country. Will the UK Government reconsider their position, because we are isolated in our approach to Russian/Kremlin TV in this country?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. The Clerk has said that it was not a dirty look, but an admonition not to stray from our territory.

[Vicky Ford]

I certainly hear his point, Dr Huq.

Far beyond Russia and Belarus, we are seeing concerted efforts to silence dissent and stifle freedom, and covid has brought that into even sharper focus. Regimes have used the crisis to restrict civil liberties and to entrench repressive measures. The democratic world is facing the starkest of choices. Either we retreat and retrench in the face of assault, or we come together to advance our cause.

The Government believe that now is the time to fight back. That is why we are working with friends and allies to build a network of liberty, to promote democracy and freedom across the globe—an area in which the Westminster Foundation for Democracy will continue to play an important role. That is why the Foreign Secretary agreed to increase the grant in aid by 25%, from £5.1 million this financial year to £6.5 million per annum over the next three years. I know that there are questions about ODA programming in specific areas, and I recognise the urgency of decisions here. The process is ongoing and no specific programme decisions have been made.

Our arm’s length bodies, including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, are very important to supporting our foreign policy, diplomatic engagements and key priorities. We want to continue to support the WFD, so that with partner countries across the world, it can deliver impactful programmes that support democracy, and can counter the rise of authoritarianism.

The WFD is a unique organisation. Funded by the FCDO to strengthen democracy around the world, it works with Parliaments, political parties and civil society groups to make countries’ political systems fairer and more inclusive, accountable and transparent. Through the WFD, the UK projects its own experience and expertise.

Despite funding challenges, together with partner countries all around the world, the foundation has continued to deliver impactful programmes that support democracy, including programmes that support the representation of women, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) knows intimately, and programmes that support young people, people with disabilities and LGBT+ people in the democratic process in more than 20 countries. Many Members have pointed to the foundation’s successes in many countries, and I have heard their comments; the foundation’s work spans the globe.

[Richard Graham]

I wonder whether the Minister could confirm two things. First, will the FCDO pay the redundancy costs of any staff who lose their jobs through the restructuring? Secondly, will the additional national insurance costs be paid by the FCDO?

[Vicky Ford]

I have heard my hon. Friend’s questions; I will make sure that he is written to, and that the foundation receives answers to the questions he has raised.

As set out in the integrated review, the UK will support strong, transparent and accountable political processes and institutions overseas, including Parliaments and political parties, through the work of the foundation and other institutions. As part of that work, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy organised a thematic election expert observation mission to the presidential election in the Gambia on 4 December 2021, which was the first independent UK observation.

On behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, the foundation also delivers UK observers to election observation missions organised by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Following an invitation from the Hungarian authorities, the foundation will send election observers to Hungary on 3 April 2022.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has a strong record on the issue of women’s political leadership. It recently led an event aimed at elevating women’s role and influence in politics. There were participants from more than 30 countries, including women Ministers from countries as far afield and as different as Finland and South Africa.

The foundation is an important part of our soft power network, alongside the British Council, the Great Britain-China Centre, the BBC, Wilton Park and our universities. As the noble Lord Ahmad pointed out in the other place the other day, these institutions play an important role in our democratic reach, as we build a powerful ideological alternative. They are all vital instruments of our influence overseas. They project our strengths and values, as the Prime Minister has said, and they build trust and opportunities across the globe.

Yes, I am wearing the colours of the flag of Ukraine, because right now in Ukraine, missiles and guns are killing innocent people, women and children, and people who just want to live in peace in their own country. That brings into sharp relief the importance of tackling autocracy, strengthening democracy and standing up for freedom. The work of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is as important as ever, and I thank the foundation from the bottom of my heart for what it does.

17:25

[Richard Graham]

I thank everyone who has spoken today, from all four main parties in Parliament, as well as fellow governors and others. All of them paid tribute to the WFD’s work and all its staff, here and abroad; I know our chief executive Anthony Smith will have welcomed that.

I thank the Minister for what she said about reassurance on our funding. She will have noted the two specific questions I asked, and she will also be aware as Minister for Africa that there are programmes and offices in Africa that are under review. I hope that she will involve herself more in the detail of decisions made on the WFD, because they will affect the continent she covers so ably.

I finish by quoting President Reagan, who launched the US organisations that support democracy around the world in 1982 in Westminster Hall, just outside this Chamber. He said then—and what could be more appropriate now?—that

“the ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”

Today’s debate, which is in stiff competition with the debate on Ukraine in the main Chamber, has highlighted the support from all parties represented in Parliament for the work of the WFD. I hope the Minister and her colleagues will give us the tools to support the beliefs and values that she, her colleagues and all of us share.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the funding of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

17:27

Sitting adjourned.