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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
The Export Control Joint Unit has statutory responsibility for the licensing of controlled exports. In 2020, it administered more than 16,000 licences. The ECJU provides guidance and training on the application process. Work is presently under way to modernise the application process and the technology that supports it, to make it more efficient and more transparent.
Sarah Green
Trying to export goods is currently a slow and inefficient process. One toy business in Chesham and Amersham told me that it now spends significantly more time on the paperwork than it ever did before. A recent survey of businesses in Buckinghamshire showed that 58% have experienced a rise in cost due to an increase in the same red tape. What proactive, practical steps are the Government taking to help businesses of all sizes to export their goods to the rest of the world?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
In 2020, the ECJU administered nearly 16,000 standard individual export licences. It completed 62% within 20 working days, against a target of 70%, and 85% within 60 working days, against a target of 99%. That is why we have brought in work to modernise and streamline the application process so that it will be more efficient and—further to the hon. Lady’s point—will allow businesses to know that they can use the system as effectively and with as little red tape as possible.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
We are negotiating and implementing free trade agreements and removing barriers that British businesses face across the globe. Last financial year, we resolved more than 200 barriers across 74 countries, an increase of 20% on the previous year. We have so far secured FTAs with 70 countries plus the EU, covering nearly £800 billion-worth of bilateral trade in 2020, delivering benefits for communities across the country.
Andy Carter
British produce and food and drink are some of the best in the world, especially when they are made in the north-west of England. What steps are the Government taking to reduce market access barriers for businesses in Warrington South and the north-west? What have they done in the past year to help British exporters?
Mike Freer
The Department is working hard to reduce barriers to trade, including for my hon. Friend’s constituents in Warrington South. For example, I can tell him that we have successfully secured access for British wheat to Mexico, poultry to Japan and lamb to the USA, just to name a few of the barriers that have been removed, boosting food and agriculture among many other products across the globe.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Survey after survey of business owners report unnecessary hassle and difficulty in exporting to European markets, with extra red tape, checks and delays too often the norm. As no one in the Government is getting a grip on this, why does the Secretary of State not get herself down to Dover to understand directly what needs doing to ease the very real difficulties that British businesses face?
Mike Freer
If we could export broken records, I think the hon. Gentleman would be a winner, but I have to say that his description is far from the truth. What are the Government and the Department doing? We have the export support service, the Export Academy, export champions, international trade advisers in the UK and overseas, agri-commissioners, hundreds of staff focusing on specific sectors, the tradeshow programme, UK Export Finance and trade envoys. The key issue is that in-country, where we find specific issues, we liaise country to country to resolve them. It is simply not true that the Government are doing nothing. In fact, we are seeing exports starting to recover and appetite for British goods and services going up ever more.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The Minister is reeling off figures, but he might want to consider this one: 4,300 fewer businesses in the UK are exporting goods and services than in 2018, according to the Government’s own annual stocktake. Why are this Government so anti-trade?
Mike Freer
The information is that exports to the EU are now up. Also, the export support service is now proactively contacting those customers who have stopped exporting, because there can be a variety of reasons why people drop off the radar for exporting. Just seeing the glass half empty is not boosting trade in the United Kingdom. We are proactively contacting those companies to get them back on the pitch and back exporting, and talking up the United Kingdom.
Drew Hendry
They are great at talking the talk but not at walking the walk. The European Union will remain Scotland and the UK’s largest export market for some time to come, yet this Government have done nothing to remove or even ease non-tariff barriers, bureaucracy or Brexit red tape, and they have not done anything about the labour shortages that are hampering exporters. They have spent the past year decimating the fishing industry and its livelihoods. This year, why are they going after farmers, with the Australia and New Zealand trade deals, already roundly condemned by the farming industry, set to result in floods of cheap, lower-quality meat and dairy products being exported into the UK from around the globe?
Mike Freer
All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that it is a good job that I am leading on exports, not him, because all he ever sees is problems. We are doing stuff. We are doing exports. It is simply not true that the Government are doing nothing. I have been out in the markets. I am not sure whether the Scottish lead on exports has done many overseas visits. I am happy to work with the Scottish National party if it would actually come out and do something. We are removing trade barriers. We have already sent poultry to Japan and lamb to the USA. We are working with the Gulf states, increasing halal sales and sales of Welsh lamb. It is simply not true that this country will be flooded with cheap imports. That is pure scaremongering.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
My Department recently published our refreshed export strategy, which has an action-led 12-point plan, and we have introduced a whole range of support measures, as the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) has just set out, to help exporters to thrive in the global market, including, of course, our high-quality steel, internationalising key trading sectors and raising the UK exporting culture across the UK for the long term.
Bill Esterson
We can learn from the United States, of course, where the Made in America Act 2021 and informal targets in Government contracts support US steelmakers. The UK Government have told me that the World Trade Organisation does not allow them to do that, but the US example shows that that is not true. Will the Secretary of State tell her colleagues across Government that we can help boost steel exports if the UK Government give a big vote of confidence to our steel industry and start to make, buy and sell more in Britain?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
UK steel exports across the world are worth nearly £4 billion. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are in very detailed talks to ensure that our UK to US steel exports get back on track and to clear out the issues caused by the section 232 tariffs over the past couple of years. We and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy continue to work with the steel industry to ensure that what is some of the world’s best steel, made across our UK steel yards, will continue to find new markets. We work not only with the US but with all our likeminded allies in the WTO against those market-distorting practices that some nations choose to use, which continue to degrade and devalue the high-quality steel made in the UK. We continue to work very closely with the industry but also with those across the world who want to make sure that the steel market works as it should.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Expanding on that question, could my right hon. Friend explain what progress she is making on resolving the section 232 tariff issues regarding exporting steel to the United States?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
In 2018, the US imposed section 232 tariffs on global imports of steel and aluminium—a defensive reaction at the time to overcapacity in the global steel market and for its own national security purposes. I was able to get the negotiations back on track. My counterpart Secretary Raimondo and I started negotiations to resolve this issue in mid-January. The negotiations are proceeding at pace. Our officials are working flat out to clear through some of the issues, and we hope very much to be able to bring good announcements here in due course.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for her clear commitment to helping the steel sector. In 2021, the UK’s export levels of steel decreased by around £53 million of GDP compared with the previous year. What steps has the Secretary of State taken to ensure that there are no further decreases in 2022 and that small steel businesses, which I have in my constituency, and larger manufacturers are supported in this very uncertain period?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The hon. Gentleman is right. As post-covid markets and industrial sites pick up, the demand for steel across the world is growing at pace. We want to make sure that the high-quality steel that we make across the UK finds the right markets. On my travels in my role, I speak regularly to those across the world who are doing complex infrastructure work where our high-quality steel products will be an important part of their procurement programmes. We are making good progress. As I say, I work very closely with the BEIS Secretary to ensure that we give the steel industry all the support that it needs.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
The free trade agreements that the Government signed with Australia in December and with New Zealand on Monday this week will end tariffs for British exporters and slash red tape, while making it easier for smaller businesses to break into these important markets. The deals with Australia and New Zealand are expected to increase bilateral trade by 53% and 59% respectively in the medium term. These FTAs are also expected to boost the UK economy by over £3 billion.
Andrew Rosindell
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on signing the free trade agreement with New Zealand, which is another positive step in rebuilding the bonds and historic links we have with the Commonwealth nations, but does she agree that we must do all we can to maintain the benefits secured by this deal by ensuring that any changes to alcohol duty will deliver for UK consumers and that they do not see domestic taxes on wine go up as we finally, and rightly, remove the tariffs?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Our deal with New Zealand is indeed very good news for UK consumers, increasing choice and helping to lower prices on all New Zealand products that are going to come into the UK. The deal removes all tariffs, saving up to 20p a bottle on New Zealand wine. As my hon. Friend seems keen, he will be pleased to know that the products that British consumers love, such as Marlborough sauvignon blanc, will be more affordable. The question on domestic taxation continues to be one that the Treasury looks at and decides on the basis of the health of our citizens, and I shall continue to allow the Chancellor to make those decisions.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Earlier this week, I had the privilege to meet the president of the Farmers Union of Wales, who has expressed concerns about both trade deals, specifically in relation to tonnage of imported meat and whether it will be on the bone or filleted, as this will make a significant difference to the scale of flooding of the UK market. The president tells me that he has been unable to get an answer from the Department on what he deems to be a pretty simple question. I used to be a butcher, and I know that there is a significant difference between the weight of something boned and something deboned when anyone buys it in the shops. In all seriousness, could the Secretary of State clarify this here at the Dispatch Box, or get in touch with the Farmers Union of Wales to confirm this important point in terms of supporting our farming industry?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I have learned something new about the hon. Gentleman. I did not know that that was a former career of his, and I look forward to bringing him into future trade deals to discuss the minutiae of these details. I will ensure that my officials liaise with the Farmers Union of Wales in detail, so that it has absolute clarity on what is in that very large document—a treaty is not just a couple of bits of paper—and we will of course be publishing all the paperwork and the relevant support documents for Parliament and the wider community to have a closer inspection. I will make sure that my officials pick that matter up this week.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
It is welcome to see the progress the Government are making with the digital partnership with Singapore, the Australia trade agreement, the New Zealand trade agreement and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. This is not anti-trade but pro-trade—and free trade, for that matter. The Secretary of State has come before the International Trade Committee and told us that she would give us scrutiny. The Trade and Agriculture Commission was given eight days’ advance warning on the New Zealand deal, but the International Trade Committee was not. Can she tell us why the Committee was not given the scrutiny of the New Zealand deal that it should have had?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Minister for Trade Policy answered a point of order yesterday setting out the detail of the communications. We always try to ensure that we are able to provide the information in as timely a manner as we can. I am looking forward to my opportunity to discuss the Australian and New Zealand trade deals in more detail with the International Trade Committee—I think it is already in the diary—and I know that it will hold me to account 100 % when I get there.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
A £150 million hit to fishing, forestry, agriculture and food manufacturing from the New Zealand trade deal was described in this Government’s impact assessment as nothing more than a “process of economic adjustment” and just a
“reallocation of resources within the economy”.
This again exposes the Government’s shock-doctrine, libertarian approach to free trade and the economy. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether she is content for those sectors to just go down with the Brexit ship?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The New Zealand free trade agreement will see bilateral trade increase by almost 60%, which we expect to boost the UK economy by nearly £1 billion in the next few years and to increase wages across the UK. Red tape will be slashed for nearly 6,000 UK small and medium-sized enterprises, with nearly 250,000 people working in those supply chains. UK exporters will no longer pay tariffs on a huge range of foods, and they will now have an advantage over international rivals.
It is exciting that we will be able to offer new opportunities for our smaller businesses to discover and grow into the New Zealand market. Indeed, we will be working very closely with our New Zealand partners as we look to accede to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership later this year, which will open up enormous new markets for all our exporters across every field of opportunity.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
Our aim is to support and promote farmers and producers, to create opportunities for them and to ensure they have the knowledge and support to capitalise on those new opportunities, to be a positive force for improving standards and to ensure that our producers do not face unfair competition.
Kevin Hollinrake
Environmental regulations and restrictions, on pesticides for example, are there for good reason, but they cost our farmers money either in sourcing alternatives or in lower yields. The farmers I speak to are very concerned about the use of chemicals, such as Paraquat in Australia and neonicotinoids in large parts of the European Union, that they are not allowed to use here. Their costs are therefore higher. Will these matters be addressed in the trade deals so that we get a fair and level playing field?
Penny Mordaunt
There are many things we can do to drive international standards, to improve animal welfare and to encourage others not to use particular pesticides that affect insects we are keen to have around a bit more. There are many things we can do outside free trade agreements, and we have done them. As my hon. Friend knows, we have championed many of these issues.
I have a responsibility to understand the opportunities for our farmers not just in volume but in value, and to understand the additional costs they may face in producing very high-quality produce, which is obviously welcome. I have a deep and growing understanding of these matters, and I work closely with our colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We understand the detail, we are talking to agriculture commissioners and Ministers around the world, and we will arrive at the right place in all the trade deals, which are obviously bespoke to each nation.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
In October 2020 the Department for International Trade said that, within five months, up to 77 extra British food and drink products would get protected status in Japan, thanks to the UK-Japan trade deal, highlighting Carmarthen ham, Shetland wool, Yorkshire rhubarb and Lakeland Herdwick lamb among the products that would benefit. Can the Minister confirm that, despite all the time that has passed, during which 56 new EU products have been recognised in Japan, fewer than half the UK products we were promised have even reached the consultation stage, including none of the specific products I mentioned?
Penny Mordaunt
I would be happy to update the hon. Gentleman with the specifics, but our analysis shows that the deal we have done with Japan will, in the long run, increase our trade but also improve our workers’ wages. These are good things. We obviously require other nations to put through legislation, to scrutinise and to get processes through their own Parliaments and committees, but that is what we will work towards. Those things will improve our economy and make a real difference to our workers and producers.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
To support businesses exporting to the EU, the Department launched the Export Support Service in October 2021. The ESS provides businesses with access to answers about exporting their products or services to Europe, routes to other Government services and access to other forms of export support, such as the export academy. Monthly goods exports to the EU for December 2021 are nearly 21% higher than the 2020 monthly average, higher than the 2019 monthly average and higher than the 2018 average.
Sarah Olney
My constituent George Chattey runs a company called LuvJus drinks. He imports his drinks, which are manufactured in Austria. He recently had a consignment stuck in a warehouse for more than two and a half months because he could not get the right advice, either when he placed the order and arranged for the export, or when the drinks were in the warehouse and needing release. Can the Minister tell me what he is doing, or what the Department is doing, to improve the quality and availability of advice to importers, both at the point where they are arranging their imports and when such problems occur? We cannot have perishable goods sat in warehouses for that length of time, and my constituent had an enormous amount of trouble getting the right advice from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and other bodies.
Mike Freer
Actually, no, I cannot tell the hon. Lady, because I am the Minister for exports, not the Minister for imports. What I can do is ensure that the relevant Minister comes back to the hon. Lady with a substantive answer if she wishes to write to me with the details.
Wera Hobhouse
In my constituency, businesses keep contacting me to share details of the detrimental effects that Brexit has had on their business, such as countless zero-sales days, which they had not experienced before. I am not making that up. Will the Government listen to small businesses, stop their Brexit ideological blind spot about this and, for example, reopen the SME Brexit support fund, with a simplified application process and an expanded remit?
Mike Freer
I am not sure I am the one with the Brexit blind spot, but I have to say that the Government are working very hard with our trade industry groups and our representative bodies. I frequently meet those groups, ranging from the Federation of Small Businesses all the way up to the CBI. Officials, both here in London and in post, will work with specific Governments to eradicate any issues inter-country, where there is perhaps an overzealous interpretation of the rules. More deep-seated problems will be dealt with on a Government-to-Government level. If the hon. Lady has details of specific businesses and specific issues that she would care to share, I would be more than happy to ensure that the Export Support Service gets back to her or to her constituents who wish to export.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
UK aid promoted trade in Africa by making borders seamless through digitising all the administrative processes. Is that on our agenda for trade with the EU at all? It is monstrous that we are filling in forms.
Mike Freer
I understand from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy that we aim to have the best border in place by 2025.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Does the Minister accept that the EU is not the whole of Europe, and that a wider Europe is out there open for SMEs? Will he say what he is doing to encourage trade with that wider Europe?
Mike Freer
My hon. Friend is right to say that there is a global market, not just the EU, and the wider European market. The export strategy “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” is there to assist. Specifically on support, we have the ESS, the export academy, the export champions, a network of trade advisers both here and overseas, agrifood and drink attachés, the tradeshow programme and UK Export Finance. If any hon. Member wishes to find out more about the specific support we provide, they are welcome to attend the parliamentary export showcase on 9 March in Portcullis House.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure you would agree, Mr Speaker, that it is hard to concentrate on trade this morning, given the unfolding tragedy we see in Ukraine. But getting down to the earth of trade, may I say that Huddersfield is the beating heart of manufacturing and we also have lots of farmers in our beautiful countryside in my constituency? How have this Government got it so wrong that my farmers are unhappy and my SMEs are unhappy, because exporting, which they are so good at, is so darn difficult now and they do not seem to be getting any direction or support from this Government?
Mike Freer
All I can suggest is that the hon. Gentleman gets his exporters to talk to me and not to him, because we will provide them with an optimistic and enthusiastic support service. He should come along on 9 March to the export showcase and find out the specifics of the practical support that we will give to his constituents.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Recent research from the British Chambers of Commerce shows that over two thirds of SMEs that export say that the EU trade deal is not enabling them to grow or increase sales. Rather than just saying that he is waiting for answers from the EU, as he did at the last International Trade questions, will the Minister tell us precisely what proposals he has made to the EU, and when, to reduce the additional cost of paperwork associated with export health certificates and to eliminate the problem of companies being asked to register for VAT in multiple EU states?
Mike Freer
I will take that question away to my colleagues in both the Treasury and the Foreign Office, and get her a detailed answer.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
Perhaps I should just stand at the Dispatch Box full time. My Department has a strong package of support for British exporters, as I have reiterated several times already this morning, so that they can take advantage of the markets that we are opening through our free trade agreements. From encouraging businesses to export through the “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” campaign to our world-leading UK export finance offer and our on-the-ground support in the UK and overseas, UK businesses are being supported at every stage in their export journey. I repeat that there is an offer to attend the export showcase on 9 March.
Neale Hanvey
UK connectivity is concentrated in England, and particularly in the south-east of England. That presents a growing challenge to Scottish businesses, given the impact of carbon and haulage costs, and queuing at the port of Dover, particularly with perishable export goods. Does the Minister agree that reviewing the port infrastructure, and particularly the reintroduction of ferry links from Scotland to Europe, is of growing urgency, and will he meet me to discuss possible mechanisms to improve that situation?
Mike Freer
I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to look at the specifics, and where necessary to liaise with the Scottish Government on any specific Scottish matters.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The renewable energy sector has been one of the success stories in the UK in recent years, particularly in my constituency where there are many well-paid jobs. What are the Minister and his Department doing to ensure that we can export more from the renewable energy sector?
Mike Freer
First, may I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he does as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys? The work that we are doing on green energy and renewables is at the heart of the export strategy. On any specific issues that my hon. Friend would like to take up to ensure that we can boost that world-beating sector, we would be more than happy to link up his constituents, or any companies that he wishes to put in contact with us, so that they can exploit the opportunities globally, where we are a world leader.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Promoting trade has to be done in the context of protecting British interests. The 2019 Conservative manifesto made a commitment to cover 80% of UK trade with free trade agreements. The unanswered concern of the Farmers Union of Wales about meat on or off the bone raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), who is no longer in his place, shows just the level of scrutiny required to protect the interests of our farmers, as does the protection of our jobs, consumer standards and environmental and welfare commitments. Does the Secretary of State not worry that not only will she be responsible for a broken manifesto promise but, by taking on an “any deal will do” approach, she is undermining UK interests?
Mike Freer
No, the whole ministerial team are absolutely confident that we will continue to deliver world-beating FTAs, and we liaise with all who have interests. The hon. Lady mentioned things such as agriculture and food, and we liaise with representative bodies such as the NFU to ensure that their concerns are fully represented in the FTAs. I am sure that she will join us in celebrating all the FTAs that are opening up new markets so that we can export the best of British products.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
The Government are committed to upholding the UK’s high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards, as outlined in our manifesto. I have regular discussions with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Government will update the House in due course on any future legislation.
Allan Dorans
I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. My constituents in Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, and elsewhere, are very angry that the Government are considering dropping the proposed ban on foie gras and fur imports, when there are perfectly acceptable alternatives to both that do not involve cruelty to animals. Foie gras involves the force feeding of ducks and geese to fatten and enlarge their livers, and fur imports into the UK involve animals being kept in cages that are far too small. How can the Government continue to claim that the United Kingdom is a world leader on animal welfare?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
We have agreed groundbreaking animal welfare provisions in our Australia and New Zealand trade deals, including stand-alone chapters reflecting the importance of animal welfare. As we do more trade deals in the months and years ahead, that will continue to be an incredibly important part of our focus. In relation to the specific issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised, DEFRA ran a call for evidence last year, from 31 May to 28 June, seeking public views on the fur market. A summary of responses to that call for evidence will be published soon.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
The Gulf is an important trading region for the United Kingdom, with an overall trade relationship worth £32.4 billion in 2020. The countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council are among our largest trade partners globally. Having just completed a public consultation, we aim to start negotiations on a free trade agreement with the GCC later in 2022. Work continues bilaterally with countries in the region. In fact, having just returned from a visit to the United Arab Emirates, I can tell my hon. Friend that I have seen at first hand that the opportunities for UK trade in the Gulf are enormous.
Alexander Stafford
Can my hon. Friend the Minister set out some of the potential benefits for the UK, and especially for Rother Valley, of a trade deal with the Gulf Co-operation Council, particularly around jobs and investment?
Mike Freer
I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Gulf represents a massive opportunity for many goods, from education and defence to vehicles, food and agriculture. It is an open market where people want to buy British, where we are a trusted partner and where we are regarded as a seller of high-quality goods. I can reassure him that in food and drink alone, the demand for top-quality British produce is already more than £600 million a year.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
As I told the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) earlier, my Department launched the Export Support Service in October 2021, as a free service to support exporters to Europe. That unified service is just one part of the package of measures—I have listed them a couple of times—that the Department provides to UK exporters.
Gerald Jones
Small businesses in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney continue to tell me the difficulties that they are having with exporting to the EU and the added bureaucracy, and I am really keen to hear from the Minister about further support. I heard what he said earlier, but I do not think the message is getting through. There is a lesson to be learned about communication and how to get that message to businesses, because they are clearly not aware of the level of support that is out there. Perhaps he could give some more detail about the support and grants that are available, and what more the Government will do.
Mike Freer
I will not reiterate the full list of support that is available, but the hon. Gentleman is welcome to come to the export showcase next week to see all that in detail. If he would be interested in becoming a parliamentary export champion for his constituency, to make that line of communication much stronger and direct to him, I would be very happy to facilitate that appointment.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
On 18 February, Japan announced that the UK can move to market access negotiations, the next phase of the accession process. We aim to have concluded negotiations by the end of this year.
David Duguid
I thank my right hon. Friend for her response. The CPTPP is a great opportunity to deal with a growing economy, a growing market, and a market that is precisely for the kind of high-quality food and drink products that are produced in Scotland, and in my constituency of Banff and Buchan. Contrary to some reports in recent weeks, will my right hon. Friend provide a firm commitment that in no future or current trade deal will we allow the import of hormone-injected beef or any other foodstuff that would be illegal to produce and sell in the UK?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to flatten that myth. The UK’s import standards include a ban on using artificial growth hormones in domestic and imported products, and our trade deals do not and will not change that. I hope that he will call out people who are scaremongering about these deals, as the deals are good for our producers and good for driving global standards, and they will be good for our economy and wages in this country.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My right hon. Friend and her Department are to be massively congratulated on having got to the final stages of the CPTPP agreement. It is a market worth £8.4 trillion. Does she agree that it presents an enormous opportunity to propel our exports into a very high growth area of the world in the Pacific Rim and that it will have particular implications for certain sectors such as food and drink and financial services?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. There are indeed many people across the Department and our network around the world who are to be congratulated on getting us this far. He is right: there are massive benefits in market opportunities, but the deal will also have a disproportionately positive effect on sectors here that have high wages. That will really help in creating jobs with above average wages. We will work very hard to ensure that we can realise those opportunities in the shortest possible time.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
Removing barriers to trade is the core business of this Department, and we have plans to introduce the best border in the world by 2025.
Joanna Cherry
I thank the Minister for her answer. Unfortunately, Brexit has erected trade barriers with the European Union, and businesses are struggling with imports and exports. A new business in my Edinburgh South West constituency lost thousands of pounds importing a consignment of honey, because it lacked the correct paperwork. A huge amount of effort went into sorting out that paperwork, which was ultimately unsuccessful. The Scottish chamber of commerce tells me that Scottish businesses are effectively spending twice as much in costs due to inconsistencies in interpreting rules for imports and exports across the European Union and its partnership countries. This situation has been brought about by Brexit, so the Government have a responsibility to help businesses, such as the one in my constituency that I mentioned. Will the Minister reopen the Brexit support fund to help business?
Penny Mordaunt
I would say two things in response to that. First, much of the friction that the hon. and learned Lady is talking about is coming from the EU’s requirements on us. In voting for Brexit, it was not our intention, or the nation’s motivation, to erect trade barriers. The problem was that the price of frictionless trade was too high. That is why the UK has left the EU. What we want to do is remove barriers; we want as frictionless trade as possible. I hope that she will help us make the case to the EU to do that.
We have the Export Support Service which the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) has spoken about, and also the Trader Support Service, which is focused absolutely on these issues. There is also financial support to enable businesses to export or to get their sectors better prepared for some of the challenges that they are facing. Our door—I speak for all Ministers—is always open to the hon. and learned Lady if she wants to raise individual cases. We stand behind our producers, our manufacturers and our exporters, and we will do everything we can to ensure that they are maximising the opportunities available to them.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
We support our farmers and food producers through all stages of their export journey to Europe and across the world. That includes support to exhibit at global food and drink trade events such as Sial in Paris and through the UK trade show programme. We also provide support through our network of agriculture, food and drink trade advisers based across Europe and we are working with the National Farmers Union and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board to establish a mentoring programme for agricultural exporters.
Hywel Williams
The British Veterinary Association reports that over the past two years the number of EU vets registering for work in the UK has fallen by two thirds, while demand for food-related export certificates has increased 12-fold, by 1,255%. Wales was denied a seat at the trade negotiations, of course, and now Welsh farmers face increased competition from New Zealand and Australia. Is the hon. Gentleman really satisfied that his Government here in London are supporting Welsh food exports?
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Secretary of State for International Trade (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
In light of Russia’s outrageous, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine it is more important than ever that we stand together with those who share our values and take swift and firm action against those who seek to overthrow democracy and threaten our allies. Trade between friends and allies promotes growth and prosperity and, in a climate of mutual respect, free and fair trading rules bring a mutual economic and cultural boost between nations.
Last week I was in Singapore to sign our new digital economy agreement, the most innovative trade agreement ever signed. The digital sector alone adds £150 billion to the economy and lifts wages, with workers earning around 50% more than the UK average. The agreement connects the UK to the fastest-growing economies in the Asia- Pacific region and furthers our bid to join Singapore and 10 other nations in the trans-Pacific partnership. Membership will mean access to a free trade area with a GDP of £8.4 trillion and vast opportunities for our UK exporters.
On Monday this week, I signed the UK-New Zealand free trade agreement with my fellow Trade Minister Damien O’Connor. The agreement is the UK’s second trade deal negotiated from scratch since leaving the EU. We are demonstrating that global Britain can achieve as a sovereign trading nation, and we are strengthening ties with a close ally that shares our firm belief in free and fair trade.
Bob Blackman
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the trade deals thus far. Last week we held an excellent debate in Westminster Hall on the UK-India talks, and I congratulate her also on kicking those talks off. Will she update the House on the progress of those talks, and can she ensure that we conclude them by the end of this calendar year?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
On 13 January this year, our UK-India FTA negotiations were launched in Delhi. That first round concluded on 28 January. Discussions were productive and reflected the UK and India’s shared ambition to secure a comprehensive deal that will boost trade for both our nations. The positive discussions laid the groundwork for the UK and India to make positive and efficient progress, and the second round is due to begin on 7 March. I would not wish to give a precise landing zone, but we are working very closely and with optimism and effort on both sides.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
The whole House stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, who are defending the right of sovereign nations to live in freedom with courage, determination and fortitude. Labour supports the toughest possible economic sanctions on Putin’s Russian regime, which is carrying out this barbaric and illegal invasion. I welcome the restrictions on banking and financial measures and the export ban on high-end technical equipment and components in electronics, telecommunications and aerospace, but at the same time we can and must do more. Labour Members have called for a total ban on exports of luxury goods to Russia. Will the Secretary of State heed those calls and commit this Government to that export ban on luxury goods so that Putin and his inner circle cannot live a Mayfair lifestyle in Moscow?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
It is a great reassurance for the Ukrainians to know that in all parts of the House, here in the mother of Parliaments, we all stand together supporting them in every way that we can, and, across the world, bring together those voices that say, without exception, that the unprovoked aggression that Putin is showing Ukraine is unacceptable. We will continue to work across Government to make sure that we are using our UK powers as well as working with allies from across the world to tighten the screw so that Putin and his regime will find it more and more difficult not only to sustain their military campaigns but also find that they will no longer have access to their funds. The Foreign Secretary will continue to work on a number of areas. The impact of the SWIFT sanctions will be dramatic and catastrophic for Putin.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I do of course appreciate that it is vital to work together with friends and allies, but let me push the Secretary of State on this specific point, because cutting off the supply of luxury products would send a further signal to those in Putin’s Kremlin, who have, by the way, often accumulated wealth and possessions at the expense of the Russian people. We can act on this and we can act now. So will the Secretary of State work with her colleagues across Government, and indeed Governments across Europe who have concerns, whether on clothing, jewellery or diamonds, to get a comprehensive ban in place to stop Putin and his inner circle living in luxury while barbaric, evil acts are perpetrated on the people of Ukraine?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
We will continue to work across Government using all the tools I mentioned, but in the meantime I encourage all those who continue to export to Ukraine to use the Export Support Service if they need that support. We will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to make sure that Putin understands fully that the behaviour he is demonstrating is absolutely outrageous. The Foreign Secretary will lead those discussions.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We have already undertaken over 80 virtual Export Academy events in the south-west of England. If she would like to attend the export showcase on 9 March, we can show her the full range of support that we can provide to her companies.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Farmers in Wales and in Gower are rightly angry because the Government’s own assessment shows that it is the beef and sheep markets that are going to suffer in the light of the Australia and New Zealand deals. Farmers in Wales cannot and never will be able to compete on price. How do Ministers and the Secretary of State square that circle and protect the livelihoods of farmers in Wales?
The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)
In all these deals we need to stay focused on what are the actual benefits and what are the actual risks for farmers and producers. To give one example, currently New Zealand does not use even half of its quota, so the notion that this market is suddenly going to be flooded with sheep meat from New Zealand is not correct. We need to look at the facts on this. There will be opportunities for our producers and that is what we need to stay focused on.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Mike Freer
Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing global economies and is strategically important to the UK as part of the Indo-Pacific tilt. DIT is preparing to hold a second trade investment dialogue with Bangladesh this year and there will be a visit by the Prime Minister’s trade envoy later this month. I am more than happy to speak to my hon. Friend, and I will ensure that any specific issues are fed into that dialogue.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Trade rules are so often rigged against women, especially women living in lower income countries. Will the Department commit to carry out mandatory gender impact assessments on all future UK trade deals in order to promote greater gender-just trade?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
As part of the free trade agreements we have negotiated so far, we have specific gender chapters, because we wish to use the authority and the commitments that we make to these issues and work with these friends and allies with whom we are drawing trade agreements together. We want to ensure that we push for those values and for ground-level opportunities for SMEs led by women across the world, so that they can achieve.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue, and it needs to be resolved swiftly. Ministers from across this Department are lobbying to that effect, as are our Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Prime Minister has raised it personally.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It cannot be business as usual. As many countries are needing to divest and diversify their energy supply away from Russia, what trade mechanisms can the Secretary of State put in place to ensure that the UK can be part of that effort to assist those countries achieving that objective?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
As we continue to look at how we can use our sanctions powers and work with allies across the world, things like the new sanctions brought in by the Secretary of State for Transport over the past week will start to bite on energy flows coming out of Russia.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Mike Freer
The Government remain committed to championing export opportunities for our world-class financial services businesses. Through targeted export campaigns and an expansion of existing support services, we are promoting trade opportunities across the financial services spectrum and in specific areas such as asset management, green finance, fintech and insurance. The Government are also signing ambitious free trade agreements that will open new markets and reduce market access barriers for UK financial services, and I am in regular dialogue with the City Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on these issues.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
When the Secretary of State responded to the question about luxury goods by not answering it, it begs the question, why not, and raises the question of whether there are conflicts of interest behind it. The contrast with Syria, where export controls were put in place, is stark. If it was appropriate for Syria, why is it not appropriate for Russia? I remind her of her words. She talked about working with allies and tightening the screw, so will she now, with her colleagues across Government, put in place that ban on luxury goods?
Penny Mordaunt
First, as someone who has been personally threatened by Alexander Temerko, I would just say that the hon. Gentleman is wrong to make insinuations about Members of Parliament in that respect. If we are going to assist this situation, stop those who are enemies of this state and have clean politics at both ends of this House, we need to focus on individuals, their moral obligations and what they have and have not done. The hon. Gentleman caveated his remarks to the Prime Minister yesterday in that spirit, so I caution him to follow his own advice.
On the issue of luxury goods, many products have been exported not only to Russia, but to other countries supporting Russia’s appalling, barbaric war.
There are obviously complex legal obligations surrounding that, which is why the Department has stood up the export support service. There was much criticism of Italy’s carve-out on those products, which I think was wrong. Our objective is clear: Russia must pay the price for this barbaric war and our policies will do that.
Mr Speaker
Order. We ought to be cautious about the language we use against Members. I support the Minister, who is suffering heavily from intimidation from people who I would not support. Let us be a bit more cautious about how we put things in future.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and of the Opposition in condemning the Ukraine invasion and in their criticism of Russia. It goes far wider than that, however, and it certainly cannot be business as usual, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) just said. The free world is now in an existential struggle with despotic regimes such as Russia and China. What does global trade look like in the new era? I invite my right hon. Friend to—
Mr Speaker
Order. They have to be short questions. [Interruption.] In fairness, Sir Bernard, you know better than anybody, which is why you are the Chair of the Liaison Committee. I think the Secretary of State has got the message.
Mr Speaker
Do you want to leave? Seriously, it is not fair to other Members. I have to look after all Back Benchers.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
We will continue to work across Government and with our allies to ensure that Putin’s regime feels the absolute force of all the sanctions that we can bring to bear.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Short question: I have every respect for the Secretary of State. Will she promise to burn the midnight oil and do something very dramatic to take on Russia and those countries that have failed to criticise it?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that not only I but every member of the Cabinet and all our Ministers are indeed burning the midnight oil to ensure that, as we work with our allies across the world, the message is absolutely clear and that pain—economic and other—is felt firmly by Putin.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
This year’s research by Social Enterprise UK has found that social enterprises are overtaking the rest of the private sector in the proportion of firms that are exporting overseas. Does my hon. Friend agree that that shows the value of greater diversity in business?
Mike Freer
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. With my other hat on as Minister for Equalities, I can say that with the full support of the Secretary of State, we are working to ensure that the exporters and their supply chains are fully representative of all sections of society.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
What conversations has the Secretary of State had with her counterparts in the Scottish Government about how to increase Scottish exports to South American countries?
Mike Freer
I am planning to visit our new trade and investment office in Edinburgh and I look forward to a dialogue with my counterpart at the first opportunity.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State update the House on the plans for a UK-Israel innovation summit and free trade agreement, following her recent visit?
Mike Freer
Israel is one of our strongest allies and largest partners in global trade. We are working closely with our Israeli counterparts to deliver a successful summit in the next few weeks.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that although the big landmark trade deals, such as those with Australia and New Zealand, grab all the headlines, of equal importance is the less-publicised work that she is doing to tear down the trade barriers that prevent the export of British goods and services around the world?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Not only do the free trade agreements open the door for new opportunities to take away market access barriers but we continue to work week in, week out to pick off those market access barriers that can release more trade with friends and allies around the world. Some 200 of those have been cleared in the last month and we will continue to work closely on others. I encourage businesses that have particular issues to bring them to the Department’s attention.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
In standing four-square with the people of Ukraine, it is important that we really make sanctions work and the Government have led the world in doing that. Crypto- currencies have been widely used to evade sanctions. Will my right hon. Friend look into that matter?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I will ensure that my Treasury colleagues take note of my hon. Friend’s question.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Steel is hugely important for Rotherham and Rother Valley, which is why it is essential to see the tariffs set by the United States on British steel dropped as soon as possible. Can my right hon. Friend outline what steps she is taking to get a resolution on this to get more jobs for Rother Valley and Rotherham?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
My hon. Friend is a champion for Rother Valley, and he will be pleased to know that our section 232 tariff negotiations are going well. I will be speaking to my opposite number, Secretary Raimondo, in the next few days, and we hope to reach a conclusion very shortly.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In Northern Ireland, there are 123,000 SMEs. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure they are awarded the same trade opportunities as those in the rest of the United Kingdom, and has the Northern Ireland protocol hindered trade opportunities for SMEs?
Mike Freer
I will raise that with my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office to make sure that they have full access to all the trade support mechanisms that I outlined previously to ensure that all Northern Ireland businesses are fully aware of all the support packages available to them.
Business of the House
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mark Spencer)
The business for the week commencing 7 March will include:
Monday 7 March—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill.
Tuesday 8 March—Opposition day. Subject to be announced.
Wednesday 9 March—Estimates day. There will be debates on estimates relating to the Department for Education in so far as it relates to the national tutoring programme and adult education, and the Ministry of Defence. At 7 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
Thursday 10 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill, followed by a general debate on International Women’s Day. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 11 March—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 14 March will include:
Monday 14 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Professional Qualifications Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill.
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business.
It is devastating for us all that we continue to see the consequences of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and unjustifiable attack on Ukraine. It is a heinous violation of international law, and the Labour party stands with our allies, including NATO and our other partners, in condemning it in the strongest possible terms. We have a united House and a United Kingdom. We will continue to strengthen our unity and resolve, and we stand in complete solidarity with the Ukrainian people and with our NATO allies among countries on the border.
On Tuesday, the Home Secretary came to give a statement on the assistance the UK is providing to people fleeing this conflict, and we welcome this. However, there are still some questions about how it is working in practice, and I would be grateful if the Leader of the House took these up. Quite a broad range of family members of Ukrainians in Britain should now be able to come to the UK, but it seems that family migration visas are currently not being administered to people arriving via France, but being administered only from eastern European border countries. Despite what the Home Secretary said here on Tuesday, the guidance on the website is still not quite clear, particularly on whether Ukrainians in the UK who do not have indefinite leave to remain can bring family over. Colleagues have also raised concerns about whether the helpline for this situation—I am afraid that helplines are a bit of a business questions theme—has been fully operationalised. Could the Leader of the House please ask the Home Secretary to come back with some clarifications on these questions?
We know that the toughest possible sanctions must be taken against all linked to Putin and against the Russian Government’s interests. Russia must be fully cut out of the western economic system. The sanctions package so far announced contains good measures, but we believe the Government could go further on banking sanctions, individual asset freeze designations against Putin’s oligarchs and so on. We want to work co-operatively with the Government on this. Will they go further?
There is also the question of the enforcement of sanctions. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation —the body meant to deal with this—appears to have issued only six fines for sanction violations in six years, despite many more breaches. Could the Leader of the House ask the Chancellor to come and explain to the House what he is doing to ensure sufficient resources are in place so that sanctions on dirty Russian money can be properly enforced?
We welcome the progress that the Leader of the House has announced with all stages of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill next week, especially given that last week he and the Prime Minister said it could wait until the next Session. However, in its current form a key plank of the Bill—the register of who truly owns property in the UK—will not come into force for existing owners until 18 months after the Bill passes. That gives Putin’s cronies plenty of time to launder their assets elsewhere, so will the Leader of the House please confirm that the Government will support Labour’s amendments to shorten this timeframe and finally clean up the corrupt Russian money that has been too long allowed to infest the UK?
We will continue to work with the Government to strengthen our support for Ukraine and our NATO allies, but we also cannot ignore the reality of the continuing cost of living crisis. This week we have had a massive rail fare hike that will be a nightmare for millions of passengers. Families already facing soaring taxes and bills will be hit with the highest rise to the cost of the daily commute for almost a decade, pricing passengers out of the railways and undermining urgent action needed to tackle the climate emergency. I am sure the Leader of the House will be aware that for his constituents a season ticket for commuters from Hucknall to Nottingham, a 15-minute journey, has gone up by over £200 under his Government, so may we have a statement from the Transport Secretary on why rail fares are surging, forcing people up and down this country to pay the price for decisions from Downing Street?
Finally, may I wish colleagues and people in Wales and everywhere a happy St David’s Day?
Mark Spencer
I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments about St David’s Day and, more importantly, about Russia and Ukraine. It is vital that this House works together and her co-operation and support for the measures the Government are introducing is vital and should be fully recognised.
The hon. Lady mentioned refugees and I think even she would have to recognise that the way in which the Government are performing and opening our doors to those who find themselves in the most terrible of circumstances is the right way to proceed. We are being very welcoming: we are allowing people who are here already to extend their stay and to stay indefinitely, and our doors are very much open to those who find themselves in those circumstances. I hope the hon. Lady will continue to work with us to improve those measures.
On sanctions, we should recognise the speed with which the Government have worked. We have introduced measures and sanctions that have really taken the pain back to Vladimir Putin. The introduction of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill next Monday is a demonstration of the speed with which the Government are operating, but there is more to come: more sanctions will be brought to this House and another economic crime Bill will be brought forward in the very near future. The Government should be praised for what they are delivering. It is absolutely clear to see that the Prime Minister and the Government are not only leading for us but are leading in the world. We were the first country to call out and say Russia should be removed from the SWIFT banking system; there was resistance in the international community and the Prime Minister has convinced those countries to support us and remove Russia from that system. That is clear global leadership from the Prime Minister.
On the cost of living, the hon. Lady is of course right to recognise that there are challenges. She mentioned the rise in the cost of rail tickets, and even in my constituency people are facing that, but she must also recognise that under a Labour Government the investment in some of that infrastructure was sadly lacking. Labour electrified 11 miles of rail line; this Government are performing much better than that. We are investing in our rail infrastructure. In comparison, the Labour Government did not perform very well; we are still reaping the rewards of their lack of investment even 10 years later.
Another example is our nuclear energy industry. If the Labour Government had invested in our nuclear infrastructure, we would not be facing some of the challenges we face. Luckily, this Government are taking those challenges seriously and investing in our rail infrastructure and our energy infrastructure. The hon. Lady should be supporting us in doing that.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
With everything that is going on in the world, I wonder if the Leader of the House could still find time for a debate on Malvern Hills College. It was taken over by Warwickshire College Group in 2016. There is an education covenant on the site. It was closed during the pandemic and it has not reopened. It appears that Warwickshire College Group is trying to flog the site to the highest bidder and is refusing mediation. Can the Leader of the House find time for a debate on this matter, which matters so much to my constituents?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to this issue. I am sorry to hear of the challenges that Malvern Hills College is facing. I know that she is a champion in her constituency for the next generation and their right to be educated at great establishments. There is an opportunity for her on 14 March at Education questions. I am sure she will be here to ask the Secretary of State directly what he can do to assist.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It has now been a week since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. We can only look in awe at the passionate defence of their country by the Ukrainian people. We can only imagine the horror this morning in the cities now almost completely encircled by Russian forces.
The SNP is grateful to the Leader of the House for the flexibility he demonstrated in arranging the House business last week. I am sure he will want to convince us that he will continue that approach as we go into the business next week. What we need to see as a priority is an increase in the number of people, Putin’s friends, being personally sanctioned. When will we see further, necessary measures to get Russian money totally out of our financial institutions and our politics? When can we expect to see the UK brought into line with the bulk of the rest of Europe in allowing Ukrainian refugees free access to the UK?
I do not usually bring up constituency cases, but I want to mention Gavin Price who runs the Schiehallion hotel in Aberfeldy. He has offered employment to two people who are fleeing Ukraine. He says he will pay for accommodation and flights, and meet the cost of any work visas, and I am sure he is not alone among businesses in making that generous offer. He was told that that could take up to three months. Surely, we must be in a position to set red tape aside and allow people to come here when there are places available for them to do so?
It is right that we are now almost exclusively focused on the darkening situation in Ukraine, but we cannot simply forget the issues around the behaviour of the Prime Minister and the series of parties at No. 10. He is the first sitting Prime Minister to be questioned under caution by the police, for 12 alleged breaches of covid rules. Will the Leader of the House update us on when we might be able to further consider that matter? I am sure he undoubtedly agrees that this is an issue we must return to with utmost seriousness.
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I am genuinely grateful for the support of the SNP in sending a single message to Vladimir Putin about the way he is conducting himself. I am also grateful that he recognises the flexibility the Government are demonstrating in their ability to make available time at the Dispatch Box for questions and debate about what is happening. I think that will continue. I also pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent Gavin Price. That is a true demonstration of what the British people feel and how welcoming we are as a nation to those people who find themselves in the most terrible circumstances.
In that context, when we consider the horrors happening in Ukraine, to try to pivot back to Downing Street events looks a little crass, if I might say that to the hon. Gentleman. We are thinking about families literally fleeing for their lives, with their villages and towns bombed and destroyed. To try to pivot back at this moment in time is a little bit crass. As he is aware, an investigation is taking place. Once it is concluded, I am sure there will be an opportunity for him to make his political points and undoubtedly he will.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Government have very generously supplied £4.5 billion to Transport for London to cover loss of income. The trade unions, for the second day this week, have literally brought London to a halt. There is, of course, one person who is completely silent about that: the do-nothing Mayor of London. May we have a statement from the Transport Secretary on the position of the talks about a long-term deal on the financial basis of TfL? What action will be taken to prevent this happening again?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to this matter. He refers to the do-nothing Mayor, who, of course, when standing for election was vocal in saying that he would not allow strike days on the London underground. Frankly, his record on strikes has been absolutely appalling. I contrast that with his predecessor as London Mayor, who was exemplary in delivering better transport to the people of London. On 17 March, my hon. Friend will have an opportunity to question the Secretary of State for Transport and draw attention to the London Mayor’s lack of performance.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Ian Mearns.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for the statement and announcing the Backbench Business for next Thursday, when we will debate International Women’s Day. I remind him that we have an application on the stocks for St Patrick’s day on 17 March, with a debate on the Irish in Britain.
This morning, I was contacted by my constituent Sarah Thomas, who is head of the Pechersk campus of the British International School in Ukraine. Thankfully, she is now at home in Gateshead, but she is massively concerned about her work colleagues, many of whom are UK nationals with Ukrainian families and family members who are either still in Ukraine or in nearby countries and cannot get visas for their family members to travel to safety here in the UK.
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for his work as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. I hear his plea for St Patrick’s day on 17 March, and we will try to deliver on that. He is right to draw attention once again to the plight of those people facing devastation in Ukraine, and their friends and families. The Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary are working hard to try to ensure that the transport passages to the UK are as free and flexible as possible.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
Measured against World Health Organisation guidelines, 100% of schools, GP surgeries and hospitals in my constituency are located in places with dangerous levels of air pollution. That means that, for 3,000 babies born across Stoke each year, their first breath is toxic. Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation have recently partnered to highlight the impact of air pollution on respiratory diseases. Levelling up Stoke-on-Trent Central must include tackling this health issue, which disproportionately affects constituencies such as mine. Will the Leader of the House secure Government time for a debate on this important issue?
Mark Spencer
The Government take air pollution incredibly seriously. Latest published figures up to the year 2020 show that air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010. Our clean air strategy has been praised by the World Health Organisation as an example for the rest of the world to follow. Our nationally determined contribution commits us to supporting decarbonisation approaches, striving to improve air quality and minimising adverse impacts on human health. We have provided £880 million to help local authorities develop and implement local air plans. There will be Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions on Thursday 10 March, and I hope that my hon. Friend will take that opportunity to question the Secretary of State further .
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
Plans for a west midlands gigafactory in Coventry will result in a £2.5 billion investment in the local economy, creating up to 6,000 new, highly skilled jobs directly alongside thousands more in the wider supply chain in Coventry, Warwickshire and the surrounding region. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the west midlands gigafactory venture so that we can hear how the Government intend to put their full support behind the rapid delivery of this crucial project?
Mark Spencer
I will give the hon. Member every assistance that I can in my role as Leader of the House. She is right to highlight this fantastic plan. I will also write to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that he, too, puts his full weight behind the plan.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend knows that Derby has an exceptional industrial and railway heritage and is at the centre of the UK’s rail network, with connections across England and Scotland. However, those are not the only reasons that Derby would make the best location for the Great British Railways headquarters. Does he agree that Derby has the largest concentration of rail sector employees in the country, and that this provides an incredible opportunity for collaboration between the public and private sector in the rail industry once GBR moves in?
Mark Spencer
The Great British Railways transition team is running a competition on behalf of the Department for Transport. I should be careful to tiptoe through my answer so I am not seen to be favouring one bid over another. The deadline for expressions of interest is 16 March, and I wish my hon. Friend every success in her pursuit of the Derby bid. The UK has a proud heritage in rail. The Government are embarking on the biggest investment in our railway infrastructure, with £96 billion through the integrated rail plan.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
Can we have a debate on the planning laws that allow the conversion of offices into substandard accommodation such as the Imperial Apartments in my constituency?
Mark Spencer
That is an important issue. Local authorities have responsibility to ensure that landlords provide adequate accommodation for their tenants. All conversions of that nature should follow building regs and make sure that standards are upheld for their tenants.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Ruby’s is an award-winning fish and chip shop in the village of Thringstone that has been owned and operated by the same family for almost 50 years. It is one of many excellent fish and chip shops in my constituency, but the owner tells me that the business outlook has never been more volatile. With record price rises for fish, batter, fat, wrapping paper and, of course, energy, many fish and chip shops are worried about whether they will survive. Could we have a statement about what action the Government will take to ensure that they protect the future of our fish and chip shops, which are a great part of British life?
Mark Spencer
I declare my interest in fish and chips, Mr Speaker. Takeaways are recognised as a huge part of the night-time economy. Such businesses provide a service to our communities and should be supported. I wish my hon. Friend’s fish and chip shop and all fish and chip shops well, up and down the country.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I recognise that the Government have held a series of debates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in such cataclysmic circumstances there would usually be full-day debates in Government time. This House is more or less unequivocal in its condemnation of the invasion, but there are certain difficult questions that have to be faced, some of which have been raised already. There are also increasing numbers of press reports, which have not really been answered or dealt with yet, to the effect that Indians and Africans are being turned back at the Polish border. Because such complicated issues need to be raised at length, could we have a full day’s debate in Government time?
Mark Spencer
I think that even the hon. Gentleman will concede that the Government have offered a huge amount of time. Last week, we had not only Defence questions, but three statements on Ukraine, three hours of debate on the Russian sanctions, Prime Minister’s questions, an Opposition day motion, a Backbench Business debate and Friday’s urgent question. This week, we have had three statements, three hours of debate on the Russian sanctions, PMQs and an Opposition day motion. The Government have provided a huge amount of time to debate these matters, and Foreign Office questions on 8 March will be another opportunity. The House will continue to debate and raise questions about these matters.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
In Telford, we have two bridging hotels for Afghan refugees, who have been there for seven months now. When I visited, they told me that they want to work, get settled into communities across the UK and rebuild their lives. I have tried to find out how much longer they must wait in limbo in the two Telford hotels, but I cannot get an answer. As we focus on the crisis unfolding in Ukraine, it is crucial that we do not forget the Afghans whom we welcomed last summer. Would the Leader of the House be kind enough to arrange for the Minister for Afghan Resettlement to come to the House to update us on the progress of the scheme?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. This was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second largest evacuation from Afghanistan carried out by any country. Under Operation Warm Welcome, we are ensuring that Afghans arriving in the UK are able to rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate in their local communities. We are working closely with local authorities to bring forward enough offers of housing to provide every family with a suitable home as soon as possible.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Commenting on people’s personal appearance is dangerous territory, but may I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your wonderful choice of tie?
Wera Hobhouse
In cities such as Bath, Airbnb has had a devastating effect, and not only on the local housing market but on traditional B&Bs and small hotels. The effect is particularly dramatic when whole houses are turned into Airbnb properties. It is a travesty of the original intention behind Airbnb as part of the sharing economy—now it is just big business. Before any further damage is done, could we have a statement from the Business Secretary on how he intends to address the huge damage that Airbnb does to local family life and to local businesses?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Lady raises an important matter that is worthy of debate. She will also recognise, however, that by facilitating people’s ability to visit Bath, Airbnb has a huge beneficial effect on the rest of the economy, with people visiting cafés, restaurants, museums, antique shops—
Mark Spencer
And chip shops, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. It is important to facilitate people’s ability to visit and make use of tourist attractions. I am sure that the Business Secretary will have heard the hon. Lady’s comments, and she will have an opportunity to address them directly to him at the next Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy questions.
Mr Speaker
For the record, this is a Warrington Wolves tie and it really does double up well in showing support for Ukraine.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Everyone in the new city of Southend-on-Sea stands in full solidarity with the people of Ukraine at this terrible time.
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the performance of the UK’s ambulance service? Twice in the past month elderly, vulnerable and frail residents in Southend West have been left, having had a fall, lying in the street, cold and frightened, not knowing when an ambulance will arrive—it then arrives hours later. Despite urgent representations to the chief executive of the East of England ambulance service, we have not even had an acknowledgment. This service is not fit for purpose and must be addressed urgently. Please may we have a debate on the UK’s ambulance service?
Mark Spencer
We are committed to supporting ambulance crews, who work tirelessly to respond to emergencies every day. We have more than 4,000 ambulance crews in operation across the country—an increase of 500 since 2018—and the Government have invested huge sums in our NHS throughout the pandemic. However, where there are performance issues, it is important that Members raise them, and I would be happy to support my hon. Friend in bringing this to the attention of the Secretary of State.
Kevin Brennan
Can we debate support for our artists and musicians? As the Leader of the House will know, many of them suffered greatly during the pandemic, and freelancers often got no support at all. Those who were lucky enough to get a small grant of £2,500 from the Arts Council were assured in ministerial answers and by Treasury advisers that, as that money was for new projects, it would not be taxed. Yet on 20 January, the day after Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tax advisers were still giving that advice, they changed their minds. Why are the Government breaking their promise and picking the pockets of our already hard-pressed artists and musicians?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that Treasury questions are on 15 March, and I am sure he will be present to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer that question directly. He is right to draw attention to those who suffered through the pandemic and whose industries were completely paused for that period of time. We now have an opportunity as a society to get back out there, to visit our restaurants, to enjoy those clubs and venues that provide those services, and to support our artists.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The port of Immingham in my constituency is the largest port in the UK, and therefore a major centre for the logistics sector. The sector is experiencing growing frustration at the delays to customs and the processing of import/export certificates and the like. Could the Leader of the House arrange for a debate in the near future so that we can look at this in more detail?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is right to say that our ports provide an important service not only to his constituents but to the whole economy. This is something that is worthy of debate, and I would encourage him to apply for a Backbench Business debate or even an Adjournment debate to highlight the great work that our ports do.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Many of my constituents are deeply concerned about the standing charges on their energy bills. For those whose energy consumption is low, from next month, when increases kick in, the standing charge will be around a quarter of their entire electricity bill. This means that the poorest are hit disproportionately by these charges. Will the Leader of the House make a statement setting out what discussions he will have with the energy regulator Ofgem about scrapping standing charges on energy bills so that consumers can more easily and simply compare the costs charged by energy providers?
Mark Spencer
Of course I will take up the matter with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whose responsibility it is to negotiate with and talk to the energy providers. The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to it, but the Government have actually put a lot of work into supporting those families who are dealing with the cost of energy increases. Some of the pressures are of course global, but the Government are aware of the challenges we face and will continue to support those families who find themselves in difficult circumstances.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
The Government’s decision to reduce air passenger duty on return domestic flights is a huge boost for regional aviation and will make it easier to restore commercial passenger flights to Blackpool airport. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on how we can support regional aviation and the role it can play in levelling up, delivering economic growth and boosting tourism in resorts such as Blackpool?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is a huge champion for Blackpool and for Lancashire. The Government recognise the important role that the aviation sector plays in the UK economy. The package of reforms announced at the Budget will particularly benefit regional airports, which tend to account for a greater proportion of domestic fights. I would be happy to raise his concerns with the appropriate Minister on his behalf.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
My constituent Anoosheh Ashoori is a British citizen who has been held hostage in Iran since 2017. His prison is well known for the physical and psychological torture of its prisoners. The Government have offered only warm words on getting Anoosheh home, and that is simply not enough. The Iranian nuclear deal negotiations, which will allow hostages to be released, are currently concluding, so will the Government agree to bring a statement to the Chamber on the Foreign Secretary’s meeting last month with her Iranian counterpart on this matter?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Lady is right to draw the House’s attention to this matter. I was appalled to see charges brought against Mr Ashoori, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has raised the matter with Iran. I wish her well, and let us hope that we can get him home as soon as possible.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The fast-moving situation in Ukraine obviously means that the Government are having to move very quickly on our response to the flow of people leaving Ukraine. In the light of the Home Office statement this week and Home Office questions on the changes that the Government are introducing to immigration policy, and following the request from the shadow Leader of the House and other Members for clarification, can the Leader of the House confirm that he agrees with the assurances given by his predecessor in a letter dated 21 December to the Chair of the Liaison Committee about the expectation of engagement of Ministers with Select Committees, so that the Home Affairs Committee can quickly scrutinise the announcements that have been made this week and call the Minister to answer questions? We know that this is important to all Member of this House seeking answers to the queries and questions of their constituents.
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady for her work as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I hope she would recognise that Ministers are very keen to appear before Select Committees not only to defend but to promote their performance. I also hope she would recognise that, while we are in the middle of this crisis and while Vladimir Putin is waging war on the people of Ukraine, several Cabinet Ministers are very busy. I will take up the matter with the relevant Minister on her behalf and encourage engagement with her Committee.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Can we have an update on Evusheld, an important prevention therapy that could protect immunocompromised people who we know are unlikely to have developed an antibody response from the vaccines? This important drug will give immunocompromised people protection from covid that they do not have from the vaccines and, importantly, will allow them to enjoy the same freedoms as everybody else. In whatever form, such as a statement or a letter, we need to know urgently when Evusheld is likely to be available.
Mark Spencer
I am more than happy to assist the hon. Lady’s campaign. I will write to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make sure he is aware of her comments. I recognise her efforts in this area, and I know she is a champion in supporting people who have immune challenges. If I can assist her in any way, I will.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House knows that the people of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire are kind and good friends to have in a crisis. There has been an incredible outpouring of support over the last week for the people of Ukraine, with the Ukrainian centre reporting people coming in with offers of money, support and shelter. Given that desire, which has also been expressed to the local authorities and local Members of Parliament, can we have a debate in Government time on how we can harness this incredible act of community solidarity?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to this, and I saw the vigil held in Nottingham city centre in support of the Ukrainian people. A fund has been set up, and the Government have committed to match funding £20 million of that fund. I will make sure he has the details to advertise to his constituents, and I will do the same.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
People across the highlands, including my constituents in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, continue to pay more per unit for electricity than people anywhere else in the UK, despite seeing clean, cheap, renewable energy being generated in their backyard. Worse still, when the eye-watering price increases come through in April, the many off-gas-grid customers face more misery than ever. This is a UK Government responsibility, so may we have a debate in Government time on the energy crisis facing rural communities, especially in the highlands?
Mark Spencer
I recognise the challenge that the hon. Gentleman highlights. I represent a rural constituency, and there are challenges for those living in rural communities. He is right to recognise that these challenges are best solved by the Union, and we can certainly co-operate together. The British Government can bring to bear the might of the Union to solve the challenges our communities face.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Leader of the House may have seen this week that my campaign to put an end to the marketing of misleading in vitro fertilisation add-on treatments, such as embryo glue and assisted hatching, is gaining traction. For families desperate to have a child, IVF is already an expensive process and is completely unaffordable and out of reach for so many people. Will he therefore agree to a debate in Government time to discuss this important issue?
Mark Spencer
I agree with the hon. Lady that this is certainly worthy of debate. I genuinely feel for those who are going through IVF. It is very expensive, but these couples will be pursuing it in the hope of ending up with a beautiful bouncing baby. I certainly wish the couples facing these challenges all the best. I suggest that she applies for either a Backbench Business debate or an Adjournment debate to highlight these important challenges.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Since the invasion of Ukraine started, the UK has only managed to sanction nine individuals, nearly all of whom have already been sanctioned by other countries—some since 2014. It is only nine individuals, not the hundreds the Prime Minister has referred to. I think everyone in this House wants to see the Government move much faster on sanctioning individuals, because at the moment it feels like we are basically saying to them, “You’ve got a few weeks to sort yourselves out and launder all your money away.” Foreign Office officials and the National Crime Agency are saying, in effect, that they may not be able to do anything, for instance, about Alisher Usmanov for months. He has already been sanctioned in the EU. Can we think of clever ways in Parliament, using parliamentary privilege, to make sure that we can advance these sanctions?
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He will recognise that we have introduced these measures now where we can bring forward those sanctions. He is also right to recognise that that is best done across the international community, so that there is no safe haven. A process is in place. I do not want to get drawn into discussing individual names in the Chamber today, but the Government are looking very closely at what more we can do and drawing up a list of people we can certainly take our sanctions fight to. I am sure that more updates will be given at the Dispatch Box in the near future.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I do not know whether you are aware of this, Mr Speaker, but my Ukrainian club in Huddersfield very much admires you for the leadership you have shown on Ukraine. Can the Leader of the House think of other ways in which we, as a Parliament, across the Benches, can have more impact? Is there room for a delegation to key people in Europe or to Washington? Is there something we as a House can do more of? Could we have the Cabinet Secretary come here? Individual ministries might be doing things, but is there a really joined up process, right across Departments, taking on this dreadful Russian regime and making sure that sanctions and so much else are as effective as possible?
Mark Spencer
I think the hon. Gentleman would recognise that there is joined-up government here, across all Departments. There is co-operation; we are working together to properly take the message and the fight back to Vladimir Putin through our sanctions regime and our messaging, but also through support in military equipment and humanitarian aid. But I am sure that there are more opportunities the House can take to highlight these important issues, and he will be one of the voices drawing the attention of the world to this matter.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I pay tribute to my constituents Bryce Cunningham, from Mossgiel Farm, and Shirley Wallace of Saxen Office Furniture. They organised community collections for aid to Ukraine and the wider community response was astonishing. However, one issue they encountered was that the first lorry going out to Ukraine was impounded overnight in France. May I get a ministerial statement outlining what work is being done to streamline customs arrangements for humanitarian aid and to co-ordinate voluntary aid as well as strategic military and medical supplies, so that the right aid is getting to the right places as quickly as possible? I understand that there are also pressures on supply chains and supply routes in Poland.
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the hon. Member’s constituents, who are trying to assist on the challenges that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people face. I think our response is best done at state level. I would encourage his constituents to engage with the Foreign Office to try to get assistance to unblock the challenges that they face. I shall draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to the matter he has raised.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Yesterday, the children of York lined our city streets to pray for Ukraine, forming a human chain from the Minster to the Bar Convent. On Saturday, the people of York will be standing with Ukraine in St Helen’s Square. As they see Polish families opening up their homes to take in Ukrainian families, they want a response from the Government on whether there can be a reassessment of how we can support refugees in this country, bearing in mind that perfection is often the enemy of the good, to ensure that people can come into homes—not just Ukrainian refugees, but Afghan refugees?
Mark Spencer
I join the hon. Member in paying tribute to the people of York, and to British people up and down the country who are opening their arms in support of Ukrainian people. If I can assist in any way, I shall do so, and I shall write to the appropriate Minister on her behalf.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
2022 marks the centenary of Rutherglen Lawn Tennis Club in my constituency—a huge achievement. I hope that the Leader of the House will join me in congratulating it. Will he schedule a debate in Government time on the contribution of sports to local communities and the benefits for mental and physical wellbeing?
Mark Spencer
I am delighted to join the hon. Member in congratulating the tennis club on its centenary. She is right to highlight the fact that sport plays a really important role in not only people’s physical health but their mental health. On a Sunday morning, up and down our great nation, thousands of kids and parents are engaged in sport. It is good for the nation, good for their health and good for their mental health.
Mr Speaker
Let us hear the weather from Northern Ireland. I call Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
You have a lovely tie, by the way, Mr Speaker. I was encouraged that this week the Islamabad High Court judge Justice Babar Sattar issued a verdict barring girls under the age of 18 from getting married, even of their own free will, and prohibiting parents from marrying off girls who are under 18. It is welcome news and a giant step in the right direction. It is a crucial step forward in ending forced conversion and forced marriage in Pakistan. Will the Leader of the House provide time for a debate or statement on that important topic, and on what more must be done to ensure that no girls anywhere in the world, and especially in Pakistan, face the fear of forced marriage?
Mark Spencer
The hon. Member is right to draw attention to what I would call the crime—I think in effect it is a crime—of forcing girls into marriage. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) has a private Member’s Bill on this matter. I am sure that he will be able to link up with her to work together to end that barbaric practice across the world.
Russia’s Attack on Ukraine
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ms Nadine Dorries)
We have entered the eighth day of Ukraine’s fight for survival. In the week since Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked, premeditated and barbaric attack on a free and peaceful neighbour, the UK has led a united Western response to his brutality. We are working with allies around the world on multiple fronts to ensure that the Russian dictator feels the full cost of his invasion. On the military front, we have provided Ukraine with the weaponry to inflict significant losses on the invading Russian forces. On the economic front, we have worked with international partners to cripple the Russian economy, but as history has shown us, there are other powerful ways of isolating rogue regimes.
Culture and sport can be as effective as economic sanctions if used in the right way, and so in the last week I have been working to mobilise the full might of the UK’s soft power against the Russian state, and applying pressure both publicly and privately across the sectors to use every lever at their disposal to entrench Putin’s position as an international pariah. Culture is the third front in the Ukrainian war. Earlier this week, I brought together governing bodies from across sport and I made the UK’s position clear: Russia should be stripped of hosting international sporting events, and Russian teams should not be allowed to compete abroad.
Across sport, the arts and entertainment, we are ostracising Putin on the global stage. The upcoming Champions League final and Formula 1 Grand Prix will no longer be held in Russia. Likewise, Russia has been banned by UEFA, FIFA, World Rugby, the International Tennis Federation and the International Olympic Committee. Venues across the country have cancelled upcoming performances by the Bolshoi and Siberian ballets. Disney and Warner Bros. have pulled their films from Russia. Netflix has stopped its projects. BBC Studios and ITV Studios have stopped trading with Russia too, and Russia has been banned from taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Putin is now suffering a sporting and cultural Siberia of his own making, and it will be causing the Russian leader real pain. Ask Ukrainian tennis player Sergiy Stakhovsky, who gave a very moving interview on the radio earlier this week. A few weeks ago, he was playing at the Australian Open. Now he is back in Ukraine, preparing to fight for his country’s survival. He said that Putin loves nothing better than watching Russia’s sports teams’ glory on the world stage, his athletes draped in the Russian flag.
Putin needs the kudos of these global events to cover up his illegitimacy and the hideous acts he is perpetrating in Ukraine. The Russian despot is desperately trying to hide the grim extent of his invasion from his own people. That is why I strongly support, and continue to encourage, the kinds of emotional displays of solidarity we have seen across sporting events in the last week, including the Carabao cup final and the Six Nations. Lights and symbols cannot stop bullets and bombs, but when Russians see their favourite footballers wearing shirts emblazoned with the bright blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, it helps to open their eyes to the cold reality of Putin’s actions. Likewise, every time an international organisation or figure publicly stands up against what Putin is doing in Ukraine, they chip away at his wall of lies. I thank and applaud all those who have done so, in this country and internationally, and I continue to push for organisations to exile Putin’s Russia from their ranks.
That is why I have called on UNESCO to bar Russia from hosting its annual world heritage conference in June. It is absolutely inconceivable that that event could go ahead in Putin’s country as he fires missiles at innocent civilians in neighbouring Ukraine. If it does go ahead, the UK will not be attending. That is also why I urged the International Paralympic Committee urgently to rethink its decision to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete. Such pressure works; the IPC’s decision was the wrong call, and I welcome the fact that overnight it has listened and this morning it has reversed that decision. I wish our athletes the best of luck in Beijing over the coming days. Later today, I will be hosting a summit with countries from all over the globe to discuss how we can continue to use the power of sport to isolate Putin at home and abroad. We have to keep ratcheting up the pressure. Putin must fail.
In my Department, we have been working tirelessly to use the power of tech and the media against the Russian dictator and to shut down and counter his propaganda and lies, because they are key weapons in his arsenal. The Department’s counter-disinformation unit has been working to identify and remove Russian disinformation online. Alongside the US and others, we have been working closely with platforms to take pre-emptive action against Putin, and to demonstrate the consequences of his brutality in real time to the Russian people. Apple has paused all sales in Russia, Google has added new safeguarding features to Google Maps and Search, and WhatsApp is hosting a helpline for Ukraine’s state emergency service that sends people information and critical news about the local situation.
While big tech has stepped up in a really positive way, we are also encouraging and supporting platforms to go even further to tackle certain challenges, including disinformation, service disruptions and the humanitarian crisis triggered by the conflict.
In this digital age, the Ukrainian war is being fought on the ground and online, so we need to use tech wherever we can as a force for good to counter Putin’s aggression, to expose his weaknesses and to bolster the people fighting for their survival in Ukraine.
From the very moment that Putin began his invasion, I was very clear that he must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread poisonous propaganda into British homes. RT’s own editor-in-chief has called the network an “information weapon” of the Russian state. That is why I wrote to Ofcom last week, urging it to examine any potential breaches of the broadcasting code. Ofcom has since opened 27 investigations into RT and is now reviewing whether to revoke RT’s licence entirely.
In the meantime, those investigations have been overtaken by events. I was very glad to see yesterday that the channel is now officially off the air on British televisions, after it was shut down on Sky, Freeview and Freesat. I have also written to Meta and TikTok asking them to do everything that they can to prevent access to RT in the UK, as they have done in Europe. I am glad that YouTube has already answered this call and done so.
We are on the side of free media. That is why it was brilliant to see that the audience for the BBC’s Russian language news website has gone up from 3.1 million to 10.7 million in the past week. Despite his best efforts to censor reporting in Russia, Putin’s own citizens are turning to factual, independent information in their millions.
At this point, I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks and admiration to all those journalists, working for the BBC, ITV and other news outlets, who are risking their lives to bring us unbiased and accurate news from a live war zone. We will keep ratcheting up the pressure on Putin, and I will use all the levers in my Department to ensure that he is fully ostracised from the international community.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I associate myself and the official Opposition with the comments that the Secretary of State has made about the courage of the Ukrainian people and those who are returning to fight for their country. I add my support to all the journalists who have travelled from the UK and around the world to report—free reporting, challenging Putin’s agenda and countering his disinformation. Those journalists are heroes and we owe them a great debt.
We are in agreement. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who cannot be here today, has long been calling on the Government and sporting and cultural bodies to take tough action against Russian aggression and Belarusian complicity.
Our thoughts today are with the Ukrainian people and armed forces. We see acts of heroism day after day and courage beyond words in the face of Putin’s illegal invasion. Only a few hours ago, Russian troops took control of the city of Kherson, a stepping stone to the port of Odesa, where Ukraine’s main naval port and navy reside. With each passing day, the situation continues to escalate. This situation requires the fullest and strongest possible international response.
Across this House, we all recognise the importance that Putin and Russia place on participating and succeeding in sporting and cultural events, from chess to ballet, to football. Indeed, in 2010, when Russia won its bid to host the 2018 World cup, Putin spoke enthusiastically about the impact that football had had on his native Leningrad during the second world war and how
“it helped people to stand tall and survive.”
Success in sport buoys a nation, boosts national pride, and offers an unrivalled feel-good factor, bringing people together. Indeed, sport can offer a cloak of legitimacy and deflection. Despots such as Putin crave this international attention and spotlight. We know the value that Putin places on hosting international tournaments and on Russia competing in international competitions. That is why we have been calling for full and immediate sporting and cultural sanctions against Russia and Belarus from the start, and for those countries to be banned from international competitions.
UEFA and Formula 1 moved quickly to cancel events in Russia. Others have now followed suit. Regrettably, though, some have dragged their feet, or are hedging their bets. International sporting and cultural bodies must hit Putin where it hurts and send a clear, immediate and unequivocal message to the Russian people that Putin has turned their country into a pariah state. We welcome this morning’s decision by the Paralympic committee to ban Russia from competing in the winter Paralympics. We should see no fudges, no ifs, no buts—outright bans must be the norm.
We fully support what the Secretary of State has announced today, but we have some questions. What further discussions is she having with sporting bodies on the complete and total boycott of Russia and Belarus? I understand that some, such as FINA, have said that Russian athletes and officials can take part, but with neutral status. She rightly raises tennis, but Russian and Belarusian players will still be able to play at upcoming grand slams, including Wimbledon, under a neutral flag—
Chris Elmore
I can see the Secretary of State shaking her head, so does she agree with me and the Opposition that we must do more to ensure a total ban from tennis tournaments, ensuring that no Russian or Belarusian will play at Wimbledon?
On culture, we have seen British institutions, many of them recovering from covid, left with no clear guidance regarding the cancellation of the Russian touring ballet, for example. It should not be for individual organisations, teams or nations to boycott Russia alone. What guidance will the Secretary of State provide to UK organisations and institutions to ensure that they speak with one voice, and what pressure will she place on international bodies that do not ban Russia and Belarus outright?
What is the Secretary of State doing about those who have bought their way into the fabric of British life, such as Abramovich and others, buying football clubs and gifting to arts and other valued institutions? What is the advice for arts and cultural institutions that have received and do receive gifts from oligarchs and those who prop up Putin’s regime? What about football and sport more widely? Will she act quickly on Abramovich and other oligarchs to ensure that they cannot profit from Putin’s war? Why are the Government allowing oligarchs such as Abramovich time and notice to sort out their affairs and divest any assets that would otherwise be subject to sanctions?
We stand ready to support the Government’s actions, but we want to see them go further and faster on international bans. We also want to see the Government take Russian money out of our world-renowned institutions such as the Premier League and our arts and cultural scene. We have seen sportwashing, culturewashing and artwashing of dirty Kremlin-linked Russian money. We need action to tackle that now.
Finally, on disinformation, we welcome Ofcom’s investigation into RT. Online disinformation and fake news is rife. Russian bot factories are spouting lies and trying to distort the truth of Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine. We welcome the Secretary of State’s announcements this morning, but I ask her to go further. The online safety Bill should include additional measures on tackling that disinformation before it is put to the House for Second Reading. Can she give that commitment today?
It is right that the international response to Putin’s aggression should be exclusion from sporting and cultural events. Words must become deeds, and Putin should feel the consequences of his actions.
Ms Dorries
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He has raised some valid points, all of which are being addressed. He spoke about athletes competing under neutral flags, tennis players coming to Wimbledon and other sporting events. As I said in my statement, I am holding a summit this afternoon with in excess of 20 of my ministerial opposites in countries around the world, and I hope we can take a joint position on this matter. It is important that we take a global approach as far as possible, because that will have more impact and will be a sustainable position for the long term.
Some of these issues are very difficult, involving athletes who have trained all their lives to compete in certain events. As the Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box on Wednesday, we are not anti the Russian people; we are anti-Putin and his regime. However, the actions of Putin have consequences, and at this afternoon’s summit I hope we will reach a position on many of the issues the hon. Gentleman has raised, and release a statement afterwards.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box. In line with her brief, I point out that we now know today that US intelligence has made it clear that President Xi knew about the invasion before it took place—in fact, he had asked the Russians to delay their invasion so that it would not affect the Beijing Olympics. We also know that when the Russian 4G system was attacked, hacked and brought down, it was Huawei, based in Cambridge, that helped to repair the system for the Russians.
I hear that the Government are thinking about a trade deal with China and that they think that China can be an interlocutor with Russia. May I remind my right hon. Friend and the Government that a similar argument was advanced in 1940, whereby Mussolini was going to be the interlocutor with Hitler, and Churchill refused that? When will the lesson be learned?
Ms Dorries
I thank my right hon. Friend for his points. Obviously most of them are not in my brief and I cannot comment, but I am sure his comments have been heard. I cannot comment on his assertion that the invasion was held for the Beijing Olympics, because I do not know that is the case. As I said in my answer to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), we are holding an international summit this afternoon with world leaders —20-plus, I hope, by the time we get to this afternoon—to reach a position, and we will release a statement after that.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement.
Last night people throughout Ukraine were once again subjected to vicious aerial bombardment from Russian forces, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has now confirmed that over 1 million people have fled Ukraine, with countless more displaced within the country. I urge the Government again to reconsider their position, as often we are not remembered for what we have done but for what we have not done, and so far every country in the EU has opened its borders and we are still arguing over that.
This morning, Putin’s propaganda machine was in full force, with schoolchildren throughout Russia to be given a virtual lesson on
“why the liberation mission in Ukraine is a necessity”.
Regrettably, this Government’s inaction has allowed the Russian state-owned Sputnik and Russia Today to spread Putin’s lies into every home across our islands. It is of course welcome that RT is now officially off-air on British televisions after it was shut down on Sky, Freeview and Freesat. However, this is not an action of the UK Government; it is because of sanctions imposed by the EU. I have asked twice this week already and got pithy replies as to why we would not do that. Why did we have to wait for the EU to take action before Putin’s propaganda outlets were taken off TV here? Why are the UK Government waiting for the EU’s sanctions to do their job for them?
Russian state misinformation has undermined western societies’ democracy and security for almost a decade now. The Secretary of State says that we are in the eighth day of Ukraine’s fight for survival. That is not true; it has been eight long years, and we have stood aside and allowed this misinformation on our television stations and our radio channels every single day during that time. Two years on from the Russia report, no action has yet been taken on misinformation and Russian state influence in the UK. Does the Secretary of State not agree that failure to act on Russian misinformation and influence over the past years has left the UK less able to respond to Putin’s aggression now? It is clear that more needs to be done to counter its effect throughout society and it must be done now, so what steps is she taking to crack down on Russian state misinformation online?
Ms Dorries
I do not think the hon. Gentleman actually listened to my statement. We have been very strong in leadership right from day one—from the day Putin launched his illegal action. It is not the case that all roads lead back to Brexit, particularly in war. We, as politicians, are not able to control the free press in the UK, and that is a good thing, and all the organisations and companies that operate the infrastructure and the network that streams Russia Today are based in the EU. Therefore, the EU was able to use its sanctions quite rightly to close down that network of companies and the satellite used, which was over Luxembourg. It is not the case that Russia Today is streamed into British homes. As a result of concerted effort and discussions, Russia Today is no longer streamed into British homes, whether via TV, Sky, Freesat or Freeview. As I said in the statement, we have contacted Meta and TikTok to implore them to stop streaming Russia Today via their online platforms. It is my position that we will not stop until we have persuaded every organisation, based in the UK or not, that it is wrong to stream Russian propaganda into British homes.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
Yesterday, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia for its aggression and to call for it to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. It is now clearly apparent that internationally, Russia is a pariah. Vladimir Putin operates on the basis of the dissemination of lies, so it is excellent news, as my right hon. Friend has said, that as a matter of practice, it is now impossible for British viewers to watch the lies being broadcast by Russia Today. While it is right that Ofcom should be independent, can my right hon. Friend convey to Ofcom what I perceive to be the feeling of this House—that it would be deplored were Russia Today ever to be seen on British screens again?
Ms Dorries
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. He may have seen that I published the letter that I wrote to Ofcom shortly after I wrote it last week. It has launched 27 live investigations into Russia Today. I hope that it expedites those investigations, and that they result in the removal of Russia Today’s licence so that it is never again able to have the platform to broadcast its propaganda into the UK.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly commend the Secretary of State for the statement that she made earlier and on the tears that she was pouring out over journalists such as Clive Myrie, who are doing a fabulous job. I hope she will not be cross with me now—she likes being cross with me—but some of us are anxious about why we are not going further on the sanctioning of individuals. It is a mystery to me why Roman Abramovich has not yet been sanctioned. The Government know that he has been engaged in illicit activity and is a person of concern to the Government, which is why they have not been encouraging him to come to the UK. I do not know why Alisher Usmanov has not yet been sanctioned. He has been sanctioned by the EU, but not by us. He owns Sutton Place. I do not know why we have not seized that asset. I do not know why the UK has not yet seized a single yacht, flat or property of any kind while other countries in Europe are able to do that. Finally, I wonder whether the Minister will condemn John Terry today. I do not know whether she has seen this, but he has posted today a photo of himself with Roman Abramovich, who is one of Putin’s cronies. What will the people of Ukraine think of the former England football captain?
Ms Dorries
I thank my friend the hon. Gentleman for his warm words. I think I just held the tears back—I am a blubberer, as he knows—and I commend him. For Members who have not been on these Benches for many years, he is not a Johnny-come-lately to this issue; he has been campaigning on these issues for many years, including on Magnitsky, and he is a good friend of Bill Browder. He has been raising the issue of Russia for as long as I have been here, which is a very long time. I thank him. It is no surprise to me that he is like a dog with a bone on this, because it has always been one of his passionate interests, and MPs are always at their best and most effective when they campaign in their moment, and his time is here, on this.
I heard everything that the hon. Gentleman said. I heard what he said in business questions. I have heard everything he has said since this happened last Thursday, and I have been watching him carefully—that may disconcert him. Obviously I cannot name individuals in the way that he can, but I know that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is working on sanctioning. He knows that sanctions are its responsibility and that it is working on those sanctions. I also know that he knows about issues around the National Crime Agency and others, and we all know that this is the mother of Parliaments. We are a legislator, and we abide by the principle of law. He knows that, too, and I know he will find that frustrating.
In football, however, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have tolerated the investment of Russian kleptocrats for far too long. Yesterday’s announcement showed that we have reached a turning point. We need to ensure that football clubs remain viable—that is an important point. I will bring forward our response to the fan-led review as soon as I can, as well as an independent regulator and a fit and proper person test for owners. The fan-led review was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and it could not have come at a more opportune time. I see that as a turning point and there can be no arguments against bringing it forward.
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said. He knows that I am limited in what I can do in my Department. I cannot mention names. I hope that we will see the Foreign Office come forward with the sanctions that he is looking for.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I, too, commend my right hon. Friend for her statement. Truth will out. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians are turning to the BBC for their news. May I suggest to her that in the battle for democracy in Ukraine and more globally, we will have to better resource our hard and soft power capabilities. Given what she has said from the Dispatch Box, does she accept that we need to spend more on some of the key components of our soft power capabilities, including the BBC World Service and the British Council, on a sustainable basis, not just a one-off basis? There is no shortage of state-on-state aggressors waiting in the wings.
Ms Dorries
I hear my hon. Friend’s points. The situation in which we find ourselves in the Department is that we are re-evaluating many policies that have been long standing for many years, not having ever believed that we would be in the situation we are in today. I have heard what he said and I can only reassure him that we are having a number of discussions on a number of fronts.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I join the Secretary of State in praising our BBC and the other free independent British journalists who have been proudly providing the finest objective independent journalism and putting their lives at risk, as she noted. That is in direct contrast to the squalid work of Putin’s misinformation organ, Russia Today. I note what she said about the Government not closing down free speech, but my constituents are asking why, in these exceptional circumstances, we could not stop Russia Today being on our TV sets straightaway rather than waiting for the EU to act.
Ms Dorries
Because the infrastructure, the individual companies, the satellite that streamed Russia Today and the framework in which it operated were all sat in the EU, not the UK. The British television screens were in the UK, but the companies that operated Russia Today were in the EU.
As the right hon. Lady will know, the first thing that I tried to do, almost immediately, was to stop Russia Today streaming into UK homes. I was slightly frustrated by the fact that, of course, politicians have absolutely no influence over the free press, and nor should they. That is the responsibility of the regulator Ofcom, so the first thing I did was write to Ofcom and urge it to review the output of Russia Today. It announced that it was launching 17 investigations, which then increased to 27 investigations, but I was equally frustrated to discover that that would take some time.
In the meantime, events took over. The EU provided its own sanctions on those organisations based in the EU and on the satellite above Luxembourg. It ceased the transmission and shortly after that, transmission to Freesat, Freeview and Sky ceased. As I have said, apart from Meta and TikTok, people cannot see Russia Today on their television screens. It was purely due to the fact that those were EU-based companies, not UK-based companies.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
I really welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend. I do hope we hear that UNESCO is withdrawing its conference in Russia, because that is totally inappropriate. If it needs a home, I am sure we could host the conference in Belper in Mid Derbyshire. Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether her Department is planning future cultural and sporting sanctions against this evil Kremlin regime?
Ms Dorries
We do not want to look as though we are being opportunistic in saying we could hold the conference in the UK, but I am sure many Members will have suggestions about their constituencies.
I want to make my position clear: no Russian or Belarusian athletes or sportspeople should be taking part in any sporting competitions. That is why, as I have said, I am meeting, I hope, 20-plus Ministers—my opposite numbers—this afternoon to reach a joint position with other nations, so that we can move forward on a platform of understanding that we all have the same opinion and the same approach, which will make it much easier to deal with such situations as they arise throughout this difficult period.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I want to praise the Secretary of State for what she said about our broadcast journalists, and I would perhaps add Channel 4 News and Sky News to the list she gave. I do hope she takes that into account when considering the future of Channel 4. I also want to praise what she said about my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). However, I do recall attending—and history should recall this—the best ever attended all-party parliamentary group meeting in this House when hundreds of her colleagues were mobilised to depose my hon. Friend as the chair of the all-party group on Russia because of his strong views on Vladimir Putin.
Leaving that aside, on the issue of Everton football club, Alisher Usmanov has been sanctioned by the EU for being a pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Does the Secretary of State think it is acceptable that his assets are currently funding Everton football club?
Ms Dorries
On the hon. Member’s first point, I do not think that my colleagues hit the APPG—
Ms Dorries
Could I just finish the sentence? I do not think that my colleagues hit the APPG because of the views of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on Putin; they did so because they wanted a different chair—and I was not one of them.
I cannot comment on the football club that the hon. Member has mentioned. As he may know, my grandfather was one of the founders of that particular football club. As I have said, we are waiting for the Foreign Office and the sanctions that the Foreign Office is working on. We have reached a turning point in football club ownership in this country, which is why I will use every power I have, in my office and the Department, to ensure that we bring forward a fit and proper person test for football club owners and that we bring forward an independent regulator as soon as possible both to regulate football clubs and to ensure that they have the right ownership in place. It is important that we also protect the viability of those football clubs that are in question at the moment to make sure they remain football clubs and are still there.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for her statement. She is absolutely right that culture is an important front in this war, as sport and the arts are part of any country’s DNA. Russia is spreading lies and disinformation through the media, so will she do all she can to ensure that media platforms counter Russian disinformation and provide the opportunity for brave independent journalists to spread their work both here and around the world?
Ms Dorries
I absolutely agree. My point is that the work of all our journalists—all British journalists—is of vital importance at this time. The work of an independent and free media—free from political interference—is of the utmost importance. We are seeing that now with journalists across all of our media outlets, including Channel 4. ITV has been doing an amazing job, as have Sky and the BBC—I cannot mention them all—and we have freelance journalists out in many countries as well. They are doing an amazing job.
The Russian Government are conducting an aggressive set of information operations against Ukraine and NATO in a transparent and shameful way to justify military action against Ukraine, and the campaign has been escalating. As I have said, this is just as much an online war as a boots-on-the-ground or a tank-stuck-in-the-mud war. Both in broadcasting and online we are doing everything we possibly can, using our disinformation unit, to minimise disinformation and the amount of propaganda that gets into people’s homes, and doing everything we can to ensure the Russian people get to hear about the true situation and what is actually happening in Ukraine.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I also thank the Secretary of State for her comments, particularly on the journalists who are keeping us informed and ensuring the truth about what is happening in Ukraine gets out; we should never forget the threat to their own personal safety and the danger they are putting themselves in so that we can be informed. Can the Secretary of State assure us that such considerations will be taken into account when looking at the future funding of the BBC, Channel 4 and the media, particularly given that the Russian language service listenership has tripled to more than 10 million during this crisis? That shows the importance of the BBC World Service, which in its current format came into being in 1939. Can the Secretary of State assure us that the future funding of the World Service will be looked upon in the light of what has happened?
Ms Dorries
I speak as someone who ran a school in Africa for a year and waited every day to hear the words announcing the World Service. First, it is funded through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, not my Department, and also I have always said that the BBC is a great British global brand and it needs protecting. I have always said it was a polar bear on a shrinking icecap and we needed to review the funding model in order to protect the BBC and the best of the BBC, which includes the World Service.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
On behalf of everyone in the new city of Southend-on-Sea, I welcome the statement and congratulate the Secretary of State on this vital work. She is absolutely right that we must isolate Russia completely and utterly in terms of culture, media and sport, but she is also right that we must lead the international community on this and we will only be successful if we can persuade everybody to join in with her vital work. Can she elaborate on the scope of the summit she is holding this afternoon, and assure us that key players in the G20 will be joining her in this vital work?
Ms Dorries
I welcome my hon. Friend and thank her for her question and comments—and I welcome Southend to its city status, too. On the scope of the summit, we will be discussing all things sporting and relating to the war in Ukraine. There are some very difficult questions. Things are happening very quickly. Only yesterday the International Paralympic Committee issued a statement that Russian and Belarusian athletes could take part, and the change came only as a result of our leading—our pressure—and leading other nations. Rather than dealing with situations as they arise, it is important that we have a coherent position—globally if possible—towards these situations. I hope that, as a result of the summit, we will produce a statement that says, “This is our position” and that it condemns Russia and Belarus on the sporting stage. Do not be in any doubt: sport is incredibly important to Putin. It covers his illegitimacy. There is nothing he likes more than seeing Russian athletes on the world stage draped in the Russian flag. He needs it; we need to take it away from him and make sure that never happens again while this situation continues, and that is what the summit this afternoon will be about.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
I join the voices urging the Secretary of State to look very seriously at how we finance the total UK media effort, which should cut across Government Departments. In particular, I want to return to the point she rightly made about the important role of our incredibly brave journalists. Underlying those incredibly brave journalists are some incredibly brave Ukrainians, people who are frightened to death and who have put up with the most atrocious circumstances of death, destruction, and violence. Will she ensure that those are the voices that are heard across Russia? In the end, they are far more important than British voices. Ukrainian voices speak very, very loudly.
Ms Dorries
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment, because we have not mentioned Ukrainian voices in providing information about what is happening in Ukraine via their own journalism and their own creative and inventive means of getting information out. He is also right to talk about our own journalists who are risking their lives in live war zones. We should, and we do, commend Ukrainians. Each one is a citizen journalist in their own right, doing their bit to bring to the world the horrors of what is happening in Ukraine today. They should be equally commended.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for all the work she is doing to isolate Russia, and Putin in particular, at this time. I am sure she will join me in welcoming the decision by Formula 1, which I think has been made while she has been in the Chamber, to not only cancel the grand prix in Russia but the contract with Russia, so there will not be future grands prix in Russia. Will she send a strong message to the sporting world that sanctions will continue to ratchet up until such time as Putin’s Government are no longer in power, and the Russians are free to choose their own leaders and return to the world of sport?
Ms Dorries
Very well said. I commend my Sports Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), who has been holding conversations day and night since last Thursday. He has been working incredibly hard, along with officials in my Department. They have had no time off since last Thursday and have all worked equally hard. It has taken a huge effort to get to Formula 1 withdrawing from Russia, when all that planning, organisation and money was in place. It takes a huge effort to get the message out from the Department that we find it unacceptable, do not condone it and think it should be withdrawn. It is not just words from me; it is the effort of the whole Department, officials and Ministers alike.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is right. We will not condone any organisation that hosts sporting, cultural or creative events in Russia. We will campaign against that and push against that as much as we can. The purpose of this afternoon’s summit is to ensure that we are not just leading but are part of a wider coalition of Ministers and countries who hold the same position.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is right that we concentrate on sanctions and ostracising the Putin regime, but we will have to look to the future. As people leave their elderly relatives, and children wave goodbye to their parents, generations and decades of hate are being sown. After the last world war, we learned to build up relationships between cities and towns, and Bristol has often led the way in twinning, cultural partnerships and relationships. May I urge the Secretary of State and her colleagues to quickly start thinking about how we can support our towns and cities across the country to build relationships with towns and cities across Ukraine—and, in future, the Russian people?
Ms Dorries
We know about those stories of people leaving their families, the harrowing pictures of fathers leaving their babies behind and mothers leaving for Poland while fathers fight, through our print media, so it is important to mention our print media. As well as our journalists broadcasting from a war zone, our print media and print journalists are telling the stories, giving us the colour, backdrop and human stories behind what is happening. That is how we know so much. Those stories from our print journalists are also disseminated online so that people can read about what is happening. It is important that they get a mention.
The hon. Member is right, but she is talking about the future and, as she will accept, Ukraine is not in a position for that today. However, that will be an important part of the rebuilding, and we will be at the forefront of that. She is right about helping those towns and cities to rebuild, but when will that day come? As I stand here today, we do not know. We can only pray and hope that it is sooner rather than later. However, I reassure her that when that day comes, as we have led in the western world’s response against Putin, we will also lead in the recovery of Ukraine.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and work in ensuring that Putin is in a sporting and cultural Siberia of his own making. Not all heroes wear capes; many wear flak jackets. I thank all the journalists bringing unbiased news, bravely challenging disinformation and helping to make Putin an international pariah. She mentioned stories, and it is particularly pertinent on World Book Day to thank all those journalists sharing important stories. Does she agree that they are heroes?
Ms Dorries
What can I say other than yes? Absolutely. We are all watching every broadcast of the news and we are all reading the newspapers. We all know the danger that journalists in both broadcast and print media are putting themselves in every day. We in the House of Commons are protected; they are in a theatre of war, putting themselves in harm’s way. We cannot commend them enough in this House today.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is acutely aware, as we all are, just how spineless and pathetic football authorities are when faced with people with large amounts of money. In fact, the Football Association’s only fit and proper person test is one question: “How big is your wallet?” If they have enough money, they can buy up whatever they like. The answer to that is already in her hands: the Crouch report, which she mentioned, and it has been with us for months. We had an urgent question on Derby County and the troubles it faces weeks ago, long before the Russian invasion. Will she implement the Crouch report as quickly as possible? That would protect our clubs—the fabric of our sport—against not just Putin’s gangster friends but other international criminals.
Ms Dorries
I thank the hon. Member for his words on the Crouch report, which is incredibly valuable and opportune at this time. Its recommendations involve the establishment of a regulator, which is no easy feat and involves the Treasury and funding. Since the report was published in, I believe, December, my first statement was that, in principle, I accepted the role of an independent regulator. Given the situation that we are in now, we are looking to introduce the Crouch report as soon as possible, which will involve the establishment of an independent regulator and a fit-and-proper-person test. That work is being evaluated. I hope to do it as soon as possible. It is not that we do not want to do it; we are trying to do it as fast as we can.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
Not that I ever watched it, but 206 was the channel number for Russia Today in my office in Westminster—obviously, it is no longer “Russia tomorrow”. Will the Secretary of State give us words of resolve to say that Putin may be Russia today, but he will not be Ukraine tomorrow?
Ms Dorries
What a fabulous statement—well said. What can I say? I can only agree. I cannot top that.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
We are all completely indebted to our British journalists in Ukraine who are serving not just us but the Russian people who are tuning in to hear the truth—often for the first time—about what is happening. For that to continue, we need to ensure that the digital and telecoms infrastructure is intact. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that we make our contribution to keeping that infrastructure in place?
Ms Dorries
My officials have been holding conversations day and night—many operators are based in the US, not the UK—since Putin launched his horrendous war on Ukraine. We are doing everything that we can to assist both with telecoms structure and with ensuring that the messaging gets through to the people in Russia as people in Ukraine about what Putin is actually doing. As I said, as a result of some of those conversations, WhatsApp has launched an end-to-end encryption service that the Ukrainian people can access to find out what is happening in their location on a minute-by-minute, real- time basis and where they can get emergency support and help. All such services happen as a result of international discussions that are ongoing on an hour-by-hour basis.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Science Museum in my constituency has decided not to proceed with an exhibition relating to the trans-Siberian railway. Does my right hon. Friend agree that our cultural institutions have shown great leadership in ostracising Putin and his cronies?
Ms Dorries
I absolutely do. I commend every institution that has taken what some feel is a brave line, but it is the right line and the right position: not to engage with, not to display, not to interact with and not to provide facilities for any Russian cultural institution or exhibition. With all consequences come costs, and we will feel the pain of some of that, but that is nothing compared with the pain that the Ukrainian people are experiencing minute by minute. I urge all cultural organisations across the UK to take that hard line against Russia, knowing that, in doing so, that will help to expediate the end of this illegal occupation of Ukraine and get to a position where we can open those cultural pathways and start to help to build a Ukraine for the future.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Russia’s attack on Ukraine is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. The House has heard frequently about the financial difficulties facing the entertainment industry in the last two years. The Russian state ballet has had performances cancelled around the UK, with ticket holders to be refunded by venues. What support will the Government provide for venues that are now out of pocket due to cancelled performances?
Ms Dorries
Hopefully, those organisations’ insurance policies will kick in as a result, because this is war. At the moment, all of our efforts are focused on helping the people of Ukraine and helping to beat Putin.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for the way in which she has worked with cultural and sporting bodies to ostracise Russia. The premier league is one of this country’s best cultural and economic exports around the world. Does she agree that ending the broadcasting of premier league games in Russia and Belarus will help to expose the horrific extent of this barbaric invasion to the people of those countries?
Ms Dorries
Yes, I absolutely agree. That is our leadership—don’t do it, don’t promote Russia, don’t broadcast Russia. Sadly, local Russians will suffer and pay the cost as a result, but I am afraid that Putin’s actions have consequences. We are holding conversations this afternoon—we have ongoing conversations—with officials and sporting organisations to take that hard line of not broadcasting, not facilitating and not displaying Russian football, Russian goods and Russian shows—anything. We must not do it.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the Secretary of State for her statement, her resilience, her courage and her clear and strong leadership, which we all admire in this Chamber. Some say that politics and sport should never mix, but this is not about politics; it is about life and death. Every way we can, in every aspect of life, we must get the message across that we will not overlook, we will not forget and we will not accept Russia—that is the only way forward. Does she believe that in the present situation, as this House is saying clearly, the art world must consider its exhibitions? Will she allow it to make its own determinations whether those should continue, or will she issue guidance on what should and must be done?
Ms Dorries
The hon. Gentleman is right that sport and politics should never mix, but we are in the theatre of war and it is very different. Sport is a very useful tool in the theatre of war, particularly against someone like Putin—which is why sport and politics will very much be mixing. We are providing, we hope, the clearest leadership we can in our messages to sporting, cultural and creative institutions about what we expect of them.
Will we publish guidance? I hope that over the coming days and weeks, all those institutions will hear the message, heed the guidance that we are giving and make the right decisions themselves. A statement will be issued this afternoon as a result of the summit, and I am sure that more will be forthcoming over the coming weeks, but we hope that everyone gets the message loud and clear.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I very much agree with her approach of allowing the independent regulator to make decisions about who broadcasts in this country, because they are not decisions for politicians. However, may I say gently that next time she speaks to the chair of Ofcom, she might want to suggest that when a mad dictator declares war on a sovereign country, Ofcom could perhaps be a little more proactive in its approach to broadcasting in this country?
May I ask what steps the Department is taking to support UK media broadcasters and print journalists in the theatre of war to ensure that they are kept safe? It is highly likely that Russia will take steps to disrupt the World Service. What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that that free service is available to people in Ukraine and Russia?
Ms Dorries
I am sure that the chair of Ofcom has heard my hon. Friend’s words loud and clear. On his second question, we cannot make any guarantees—it is a theatre of war. We cannot guarantee that the Russians will allow the BBC and British-based journalists in Russia to remain there; we cannot guarantee that we will be allowed to continue to broadcast; we cannot guarantee that we will continue to get messages to the people of Ukraine. The only promise I can make to the House is that we will do our very best to ensure that that is the situation for as long as possible.
Backbench Business
Welsh Affairs
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Welsh affairs.
A belated happy St David’s day, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very pleased indeed that the Backbench Business Committee agreed to the collective request from Welsh Members for this St David’s day debate. It is an important historical event, and I feel that it is a particularly important debate this year, given what is happening. I am pleased that it is taking place and that Welsh Members have turned up in significant numbers despite, let it be said, some strongly competing demands. Good for them.
I will focus on two issues. The first is the shared prosperity fund and the fog around it, which I hope the Secretary of State will sweep to one side; the second is the very real cost of living crisis that people in Wales face today.
As we know, the shared prosperity fund is intended to replace European structural funds, from which Wales in particular derived a tremendous benefit over many years: west Wales and the valleys was designated an objective 1 area because of objective need, and significant resources were allocated from the EU to Wales. The Government said that they intended to replace that funding with a shared prosperity fund, and we have been waiting for the details with bated breath for some time.
We were initially promised the fund last year. We were then told, “Hang on a minute—the details will be in the White Paper on levelling up,” but the White Paper was published with only a passing reference to the shared prosperity fund. A guidance note was published, but that was all. We are now told that we must wait until next month for more details of the fund.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the lack of detail is extremely corrosive, particularly to small community organisations and small businesses? They are trying to plan ahead, but clearly they are being impeded by the Government’s delay—and probably, I am afraid, by their incompetence.
Wayne David
There is a great deal of concern about it, undoubtedly. Many of us were hoping that the Government would be true to their word and that a streamlined system would be introduced quickly and effectively. That clearly has not happened, so one of my questions to the Secretary of State is whether he will provide further clarification in this important debate, in some detail, about what will happen with the shared prosperity fund.
We have heard that the Government’s intention is to match European funding pound for pound. I welcome that statement, but I have to say that I am slightly concerned that that commitment may be more apparent than real. The European funding period was seven years, but we have yet to hear any commitment from the Government beyond the current short-term spending round. That could be as short as two years, so the big question is what happens after that.
Local authorities and other organisations have long-term projections for how their money will be spent. They have fed back to a number of hon. Members their very real concern that they can now commit only to projects that last two years, whereas reality and the needs of their communities dictate that they should have a longer-term perspective. If we are to make the promise of pound-for-pound support real, let us flesh it out. I will give the benefit of the doubt to the Government, but I have to say that there is nothing to substantiate the rhetorical claim that is being made.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the shared prosperity fund, which was debated in Westminster Hall this week. There are other things that we agree on, too. Does he agree that the ties that bind us together as British and Celtic nations are worth celebrating, and that more should and must be done to make the most of our wonderful tourism opportunities through the shared prosperity fund? Between our two nations, I believe we have the United Kingdom’s most beautiful countryside and equally warm-hearted people—the Welsh and the Northern Irish people together.
Wayne David
Indeed. It is extremely important to celebrate the diversity of the United Kingdom and the mutual respect in our communities. That respect extends not only within the United Kingdom—long may it be united—but beyond our borders into other European countries and internationally. It is extremely important to remember that.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. May I pay tribute to him after his announcement that he will retire from this House at the next general election? He will recall that he was very kind to an 18-year-old student from his constituency —that was in the Pugin Room on my first visit here some time ago, on the day of the Conservative leadership challenge.
My hon. Friend will recall the community renewal fund. His county borough and mine were excluded from the planning process for that first fund. It is a systemic problem with the Government: they are not allowing local authorities to plan, they are not allowing them to have the funding, and they are not letting officials at local government level understand the process for applying for the shared prosperity fund. That is simply delaying any bids to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Wayne David
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. On the community renewal fund, he is right that there was tremendous concern in the Caerphilly borough and in his constituency in the Bridgend area that those valley areas were, for some mystical reason, excluded from the Government’s list of 100 prioritised areas. Thankfully, as far as Wales was concerned, that prioritisation list was pushed to one side and all local authorities bar one received support from the community renewal fund.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) on the huge contribution that he has made to this place and to Welsh politics more broadly.
The mess that my hon. Friend is talking about—the community renewal fund, the lack of information and the governance issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore—is symptomatic of a strategy to cut the Welsh Government out of the shared prosperity fund, and that is symptomatic of a broader strategy to completely dismantle devolution in our country. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) agree that it simply does not make sense to cut the Welsh Government out, because we need that strategic overview of what is happening with economic development in Wales? Unfortunately, this is due to a politically motivated aim to dismantle devolution, and the UK Government are using the shared prosperity fund as a vehicle for those purposes.
Wayne David
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has made, and is making, a huge contribution to this debate through his able chairpersonship of the all-party parliamentary group on the shared prosperity fund.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, and I will pay a broader tribute to him when I speak.
I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s description of issues such as the community renewal fund. We secured 23% of that fund for 165 projects in Wales, which is above and beyond the UK share that we would have got from any European project. Will he reflect on that sharing of the fund and hope that we secure more? When I talk to local authorities, they tell me that they are very welcoming of the schemes and the fact that they engage with them directly rather than through third parties.
Wayne David
It is a complicated situation. Initially, we were extremely concerned because, objectively speaking, areas of obvious need were being excluded for no good reason at all. That situation has changed, and I have to say that is because of our strong lobbying. It is very important to recognise that.
If we look across the border, we see that the situation in England is very worrying indeed, because in many cases resources were allocated not on the basis of need, but on the basis of a perverse formula that was concocted to help areas that most of us would agree do not need support. I am concerned about what has happened so far and the implications for the future.
The Government have apparently moved away from a competition mechanism whereby local authorities and others compete against each other. However, given the performance of the community renewal fund, I am worried that we will get another perverse formula that does not recognise what most of us would consider to be objective need. That is what happened with the European funding, but we are concerned that it may not happen with the shared prosperity fund.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) touched on my final point about the shared prosperity fund. He said that he was concerned about how it would relate to devolution. It is extremely important that we ensure that different tiers of government—central Government and the Welsh Government—work together. There must be, to repeat the phrase I used earlier, mutual respect between the two institutions. They need to pull together so that resources are used to maximum effect. It worries me greatly that there is, unfortunately, quite a lot of friction between the Welsh Government and central Government. I have to be honest: it seems to me that that is because central Government refuse to co-operate fully with the Welsh Government on economic development. I plead with the Wales Office and central Government to move away from that approach and to recognise that, at the end of the day, our interest is in the wellbeing of the people of Wales. We need to pull together in the interests of all our people, not indulge in petty squabbles and friction, and the onus is on central Government to do that.
It is very important that the Secretary of State issues a clarification today on the shared prosperity fund and sweeps to one side the fog that has descended over the replacement for European funding. We need clarity on what is going to happen in the very near future.
The second issue that I would like to address is the cost of living crisis in Wales. I referred in the Welsh Grand Committee to the Bevan Foundation’s excellent December report, which gave information on poverty in Wales in winter 2021. Two of its conclusions are very worrying. First, it said:
“Households are struggling to make ends meet—Nearly four in ten Welsh households (39 per cent) do not have enough money to buy anything beyond everyday items, up from 33 per cent in May”.
It also concluded that living costs were still rising, stating:
“Households across Wales have seen their living costs increase. More than half have seen the cost of food increase with more than six in ten seeing the cost of their utilities increase.”
As we all know, since that report was written at the end of last year, things have become much more difficult for many families—for all families, in fact—in Wales.
We all know that the fuel crisis is an important part of the general crisis. Unfortunately, the situation in Ukraine and Russia is making it worse—we cannot get away from that fact. I am extremely concerned about how it impacts directly on my constituents. I will give two examples. One constituent recently got in touch with the constituency office in Bedwas, Caerphilly to let us know that she would usually pay £80 a month for her fuel bill but that it has now jumped to £210 a month. That is a 162.5% increase. She told us that she is going to have to choose between heating and eating for her and her child. That is the reality, and that is just one example.
Another constituent said that his combined energy utility bill was £101 a month, but from this March it will increase to £340 a month. That is a huge increase—it is phenomenal. He is a retired gentleman and says that he has a good pension, but even he will find it difficult to make ends meet.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point. Is not that the reason why the Chancellor’s buy now, pay later scheme is so misguided? These constituents are already going to be potentially getting into debt as a result of those eye-watering rises; they do not need more misery piled on later.
Wayne David
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Unfortunately, people still believe that they are being given money by the Government when in reality we all know that it is a loan that has to be paid back.
As we also realise, this is not a short-term crisis; it is going to continue for some time yet. There has been a slight delaying of the pain but no resolution of the difficulties that many people are facing. There is a need for a wholesale cut in VAT, but we also need to target those people who are in the greatest need again. Everybody is facing a crisis or a problem, but those who will bear the brunt of it are the poorest in our society. I urge the Government to rethink their whole support policy and to have not just a holistic policy, which is absent, but a policy that focuses particularly on those people and families who need support most of all.
For example, I welcome the fact that the Welsh Government’s winter fuel support scheme is making funds available only to those claiming universal benefit. That is a recognition that that is where the need is greatest, and I hope that this Government will learn from their good example. Clearly this is an ongoing situation, and I really hope that the Government will not just acknowledge the situation but revisit what they are doing to alleviate real fuel poverty and poverty generally for many people in Wales.
Finally, I would like to comment on the situation in Ukraine and the support that many people in Wales are giving to the Ukrainian people in their hour of need. I am sure that every single Member has been close to tears when they watch the television, particularly this morning when we saw families and small children crying and leaving their homes to find refuge and sanctuary elsewhere. I think that all of us, irrespective of our political affiliations, would want to do everything we possibly can to help those people in their terrible need. I pay credit to the fact that the Welsh Government, even though they have limited resources, have made some £4 million available in humanitarian aid and declared Wales to be a nation of sanctuary. Good; so it should be. That is something we can all be proud of.
I am pleased that the Government here in London have said that they intend to provide match funding for the resources provided by members of the public to the Disasters Emergency Committee, but the scale of the crisis that we see unfolding is truly enormous and horrifying, and all of us need to do far more. We need to do a lot in this House to encourage and work with the Government so that they can give the greatest possible support. We need to ensure that this Government work with the Welsh Government to ensure that aid and sanctuary are provided to those people who need them. Also, we all have a responsibility to go back to our constituencies and do everything we can to work with local people to provide the infrastructure and mechanisms to ensure that the support they want to give is channelled effectively and quickly. I am sure that we can all commit ourselves to doing that.
Hywel Williams
I am sure that we would not want to forget the brave people in Russia and the Russian people living in this country who are protesting against the war. I organised a large rally in Caernarfon last Saturday, where I spoke to a Russian lady who lives locally. She told me through her tears that this was the first time she had ever felt ashamed of being Russian. She was there with a Ukrainian friend. There are also people in Russia who are standing up and protesting against the war, and we should support them as fully as we can.
Wayne David
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. One thing that is very clear is that the Ukrainian people’s struggle is not with the Russian people; it is with Vladimir Putin, whose actions can only be described as barbaric. It is important that we have that solidarity in place to give our maximum support to the people facing such horrific circumstances.
I will conclude by saying that it is appropriate, on this day and in this debate, to remember something that St David repeated time and again, which is that is important always to be generous to those people in need. That is absolutely right.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
May I belatedly wish you a very happy St David’s day, Madam Deputy Speaker? May I also say what a great pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David)? This is not the first time I have followed him. I also followed him as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Wales Office, and I would like to pay tribute to him for all the hard work he has done over the years for Wales.
We speak today on the important issue of Welsh affairs, and I am delighted that the Backbench Business Committee has facilitated this debate. We speak also against the sombre backdrop of the events in Ukraine. We are living through difficult times—arguably the most difficult times since the end of the cold war. Russia’s unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine has made us all realise the truth of the old adage that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Making a strong contribution to the United Kingdom’s vigilance against the threats posed by an aggressive Russia are the 850 soldiers of the Royal Welsh Regiment who were recently deployed to Estonia as part of the defence of NATO’s eastern flank. The 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh is the successor to the historic regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, one of the most ancient regiments of the British Army, which historically recruited in north Wales. I am sure that we all wish the soldiers of the Royal Welsh and their families well at this difficult time.
As the hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned, sad events such as this tend to bring out the best in the Welsh people. I have no doubt that the tragedy of Ukraine is touching the hearts of the people of all our constituencies. In fact only today, while I have been waiting to speak in this debate, I have received two emails from constituents. One was from Mrs Parry in Llanfair Talhaiarn, who wanted me to advise on how she and her neighbours could get a supply of nappies to the refugees in Ukraine. The other was from Mr Bolton of Abergele, who drew my attention to the activities of Abergele Viewpoint, which is supporting the Disasters Emergency Committee. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I commend the Government for already committing £20 million to that fund and committing to match-fund anything that the public raise.
The crisis in Ukraine is not only a humanitarian one; it has focused attention on a number of issues, not least the issue of energy. Many European countries are heavily dependent upon Russia for natural gas. It has the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Germany, for example, takes over 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Italy takes about 50%. Some of the smaller countries, such as Bulgaria, are virtually entirely dependent upon Russian natural gas. Germany has halted approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as part of its sanctions against Russia. That is a move that is likely to infuriate President Putin, and I would suggest that his retaliation is only a matter of time. Fortunately, we in the United Kingdom rely on Russian gas for only around 3% of our own natural gas supplies, but nevertheless, the potential for energy shortages on the continent should be a wake-up call for all of us. We need to do more to ensure the security of our domestic energy supply, and that means not only gas but the carbon neutral sources of energy that will be crucial if we are to meet our net zero targets.
Kevin Brennan
The right hon. Gentleman rightly mentions the UK Government’s assistance in relation to the Ukraine crisis. During this St David’s day debate, will he acknowledge and praise the Welsh Government for setting aside £4 million of their budget for financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine?
Mr Jones
Obviously we should commend the Welsh Government for doing that, and we should commend everyone who is lending their resources to the Welsh national effort. Wales is a generous nation, and its generosity is demonstrated by all the stories we are hearing in this debate.
North Wales potentially has a huge role to play in helping to secure the energy supply of this country. It is well placed to become an energy powerhouse, and not only in relation to what I would describe as the low-hanging fruit of wind energy. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) would wish me to draw attention to the potential of Anglesey as an energy island, which should be developed as a priority.
The Prime Minister has said it is his ambition to see a new nuclear power station started in this Parliament, and there could be no better location for it than Wylfa on the north Anglesey coast. I was once told by a senior nuclear engineer at Hitachi, which previously had an interest in Wylfa, that it is the best site he has seen anywhere in the world for a nuclear power station, and I strongly urge the Government to pursue the development of Wylfa with appropriate private sector partners as a priority. I am pleased that the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill will soon become law, as it will provide a financing model, the regulated asset base, that should prove more attractive to domestic investors.
Similarly, I suggest that Trawsfynydd should be considered for the location of a new fleet of small modular nuclear reactors. That proposal has the support of the local authority, it has significant local expertise and it has a lot of the necessary infrastructure. Siting an SMR in Trawsfynydd would present the prospect of a new north Wales-developed industry that could relatively quickly be rolled out across the country and, indeed, internationally, putting north Wales ahead of the game.
We should also look seriously at the concept of tidal lagoons. Sadly, as we know, the proposed Swansea lagoon did not proceed.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman congratulate the Labour-controlled city and county of Swansea on how they have turned around the Swansea tidal lagoon to make it a financially viable project that will provide energy at reasonable prices to over 800,000 homes in the Swansea area?
Mr Jones
It would be wonderful if that is the case. If it is happening, it is clearly welcome.
I draw attention to the proposed Colwyn Bay tidal lagoon in my constituency, which would have an installed capacity of around 2.5 GW. That is significantly more than the Swansea lagoon. Frankly, it would have the output of a nuclear power station. It would be completely carbon neutral and would probably require little maintenance throughout its very long lifetime of around 125 years, as a minimum.
Along with my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) and for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), who also have constituency interests, I recently had a meeting with the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change to discuss the proposal, and I am pleased to say that he appeared to be more than interested. Again, I urge the Government to work with prospective developers on producing a feasibility study on what would be a hugely important piece of energy-generating infrastructure off the north Wales coast.
Hywel Williams
I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not want to ignore the flood-prevention function of such a lagoon, which is one of the reasons why I support it, too. Communities along the north-west Wales coast have suffered very much in the past, and we remember the poor people of Towyn many years ago. I am sure that is another benefit of the lagoon.
Mr Jones
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will remember that we discussed lagoons on the Welsh Affairs Committee 15 years ago. I would not want to see another 15 years pass before the Government do something to encourage such a development. He is absolutely right that another important function of lagoons is that they are an additional layer of coastal protection, quite apart from the leisure opportunities they present, so they are extremely important.
The Mersey Dee is a hugely important industrial and commercial area that straddles the north Wales-England border. It is the seat of many nationally and internationally important companies such as Airbus, Toyota and Vauxhall, but it is hampered by the border passing through the middle of it. Part of the area is subject to economic policies developed in Westminster, and the other part is subject to economic policies developed in Cardiff. There is frequently a lack of joined-up economic development policy, which impedes the region in achieving its full potential.
The Mersey Dee Alliance is an important organisation comprised of private sector companies, local authorities, academic institutions and others. Its focus, and that of the all-party parliamentary group on Mersey Dee North Wales, is to maximise growth in this unique cross-border region. I and other officers of the group, together with leaders of the Mersey Dee Alliance, recently had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), to discuss ways in which a more co-ordinated approach to the region might be pursued with the Welsh Government.
There are good reasons to do so. In fact, Dr Elizabeth Haywood, in a 2012 report for the Welsh Government, recommended the creation of a quasi-city region straddling the border between England and north Wales. I strongly urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to work with colleagues in the Welsh Government to reassess that report and to work to create that city region, with a formalised role for the Mersey Dee Alliance, to produce co-ordinated policies for the whole region. I think the proposal has widespread support in north Wales and north-west England, and it would do a great deal to improve still further the economic potential of what is already one of the most important industrial areas of the country.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
I support my right hon. Friend because such cross-border interaction is vital for my Clwyd South constituency.
On north Wales becoming an energy powerhouse, I draw attention to incremental, smaller renewable projects such as the Corwen community hydro project in Clwyd South. The big projects are vital, but it is also extremely important that we increase the incidence and reach of smaller projects that can do so much for our individual communities.
Mr Jones
I am pleased to agree with my hon. Friend. It is welcome that so many innovative smaller projects are now coming forward. As I said, the problem in north Wales is that we have been pursuing the low-hanging fruit of wind power, which I believe has now reached saturation point. We should be considering more developments of the sort he describes to generate the energy we need.
Once again, I am very pleased that Welsh MPs have the opportunity today to debate Welsh affairs on the Floor of the House, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this debate.
Several hon. Members rose—
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I join in the tributes to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), who has announced his retirement at far too young an age? There is plenty of life left in him yet. I wish him and his partner Jayne well when, eventually, in some considerable time, perhaps in a couple of years, he stands down from the House. May I also extend that to you, Madam Deputy Speaker? With both you and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly announcing your intention to leave the House at the next election, we will be poorer on these Benches in the future. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly is not leaving because in one of the last Welsh affairs debates I claimed the title of Tad y Tŷ—the Welsh Father of the House—as the longest serving Welsh Member of Parliament, having sneaked in before everybody else back in 2001 and taken my oath first of the Welsh intake at that time. I know it was dispiriting for all the other Welsh Members to suddenly realise that their hopes of ever being Tad y Tŷ were threatened by my claim to that title.
We meet to celebrate that patron saint of Wales and St David’s Day, and to discuss Welsh affairs, as we usually do each March. As I have said before, this should be a permanent fixture and we should not have to go to the Backbench Business Committee with a begging bowl to ask for this debate each year. As other Members have said, we meet at a time of great peril for Ukraine and for the world. I want to take this opportunity to express the solidarity of the people of my constituency, in Wales’s capital city, with the people of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and the whole of the Ukrainian people. Hon. Members may not be aware, although some will, that one of my predecessors had strong Ukrainian ties. In what can only be described as a temporary historical blip, the voters of Cardiff West broke habits that were decades old and returned a Conservative MP in 1983. I am afraid that the experiment was not a success and after four years they returned to Labour, and have done so ever since, to my considerable benefit. The name of the late Conservative MP for Cardiff West was Stefan Terlezki, who was born in what is now western Ukraine in 1927. I should make it clear that his politics and mine could hardly have been more different, but his extraordinary life story, where he was both enslaved by the Nazis and conscripted into the red army, from which he absconded, is a reminder of the suffering that the people of Ukraine have endured through war in their history. When Ukraine became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he warned of the dangers of maintaining overly close ties with Russia and pressed for Ukrainian membership of the European Union. We now see his fears being realised before our eyes.
Hon. Members also may not be aware of this Welsh connection with Ukraine, but we are learning more about Ukrainian history, perhaps for the first time. For example, the city of Donetsk in Ukraine owes its creation to a man from Merthyr Tydfil, John Hughes. Towards the end of the 19th century, he left the Welsh valleys to start a new life in what was then one of imperial Russia’s industrial centres. In 1869, Hughes, along with dozens of others, embarked on a daunting journey of more than 2,000 miles, boarding eight ships and heading eastwards, ultimately using the opportunity to set up a state-of-the-art steelworks and ironworks of his own in what is now Ukraine. He chose the Donbas region, because of its rich mineral deposits. As word reached the ears of skilled workers, engineers and managers back home, around the site there gradually grew up a thriving town of expatriate Welsh people, which was christened Hughesovka and later Yusovka. It had grown to a population of 50,000 by the turn of the 20th century, although its Welsh influence would come to an end with the Soviet revolution in 1917, after which it was renamed Stalino and later Donetsk. Today, there still remains one part of Donetsk known as Yusovka, and we, as Welsh MPs in the UK Parliament, send a message, across political parties, of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
However, Wales is the focus of today’s debate and I wish to talk a little about Welsh leadership. The past two years of the covid pandemic have highlighted the issue of leadership and styles of leadership, providing a case study in different types of leadership at a Wales and a UK level. There is no doubt that the people of Wales have been glad to have had my friend and constituency colleague Mark Drakeford as First Minister during the past two years of the covid crisis. His thoughtful, serious and empathetic approach has provided a contrast with the shambolic, chaotic and irresponsible behaviour of the UK Prime Minister; while a bevy of drunken parties, in breach of the Government’s own regulations, were proceeding at the heart of the UK Government, in and around No. 10 Downing Street, the First Minister of Wales was devoting every ounce of his efforts and attention to protecting the Welsh people against the deadly virus, even taking the precaution of occupying a small separate building in his garden to avoid spreading it. Throughout, he was prepared to take difficult, potentially unpopular decisions for the good of the nation. In short, he was faithful to the facts, not a hostage to the headlines—that was the approach the UK Prime Minister, in his desperate desire to not upset the right-wing press, pursued.
We see further evidence of that compassionate leadership in Wales’s response to the Ukraine crisis. As I mentioned in an intervention, the First Minister has made it clear that Wales is proud to be a nation of refuge and has set aside £4 million from the Welsh Government’s own budget for financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. I still do not understand why the UK Government were content until recently to provide passports and privileges to Putin’s pals but are still refusing to waive visas for Putin’s Ukrainian victims in their desperate hour of need. The quality of that Welsh leadership has been reflected in the polls. In a recent poll, in January, in Wales, more than 1,000 people aged 16 and over were asked about leadership during the pandemic and the different approaches that were taken in Wales and England. They were asked which approach they preferred, and 60% preferred the Welsh approach, 17% preferred the English approach, 10% did not know and 13% expressed neither opinion. Other polls have shown that even voters in England preferred the Welsh approach to the covid crisis than the one that has been taken in England. We need to reflect on the whole issue of leadership and what it means, and I think that Mark Drakeford been an exemplar of good political leadership.
I also wish to mention the excellent leadership of Wales’s capital city, Cardiff, by council leader Huw Thomas and his Welsh Labour colleagues. During the pandemic they acted so that no one needed to go hungry, setting up an advice line, and co-ordinating with Cardiff food bank and delivering 13,271 food parcels. On refugees, Cardiff hosted one of the highest numbers of people seeking sanctuary per head of any local authority in the UK; 50% of all asylum seekers in Wales have been hosted in Cardiff in recent years, and the people of Cardiff have been generous in doing this. On the environment, Cardiff has been recognised by the Queen’s green canopy, the UK-wide tree planting initiative for the jubilee, as a champion city. Cardiff Council has planted more than 25,000 trees and started work to increase canopy cover from 19% to 25% of the city. This year, 16,000 trees will be planted in a single planting season.
On culture, the post-covid-lockdown “Live and Unlocked” music gigs at Cardiff castle last August, funded by the council and the Welsh Government and curated by grassroots venues and supporting performers, who have struggled during the pandemic, were a huge success. Successive Purple Flag awards for excellence in the night-time economy have been given to Cardiff since 2019, and £130 million of business support was distributed by the council during the pandemic. The council also adopted a new street-naming policy that I particularly welcomed using Welsh language names by default, with an expert panel proposing names that reflect local history and historic place names. Cardiff Council is working towards parity in the number of English versus Welsh language street names across the city.
That kind of leadership needs to be praised, and I hope that it will be added to at the forthcoming local elections in Wales in May by the candidates for Welsh Labour in my constituency, who I think will all make excellent councillors, including Jasmin Chowdhury, Stephen Cunnah and Susan Elsmore in Canton; Leo Thomson, Kanaya Singh and Caro Wild in Riverside; Peter Bradbury and Elaine Simmons in Caerau; Russell Goodway, Maliika Kaaba and Irene Humphreys in Ely; Laura Rochefort and Peter Jenkins in Llandaff; Helen Lloyd Jones and Tyrone Davies in Radyr; John Yarrow in Pentyrch; and Claudia Boes, Saleh Ahmed and Lorna Stabler in Fairwater. I believe that great leadership requires clear vision, integrity, the ability to see round corners and a willingness to take on difficult decisions. Both the Welsh Government and Cardiff Council have shown that.
I will move on to one final point: the pig-headedness of the Home Office post Brexit on certain issues, and its impact on the Welsh economy and, particularly, Welsh tourism and tourism across the UK. I refer in particular to school trips that are undertaken by children from member states of the European Union. I was formerly a chair of Cardiff castle when I was a member of the local authority in Cardiff. It is a wonderful centrepiece of our capital city, and was bequeathed to the city by the Marquess of Bute and the Bute family. It is a major tourist attraction in Wales and in the city of Cardiff, and a big attraction for coach parties of school children from the continent of Europe, particularly from France, Italy, Germany and other EU countries.
As a result of Brexit, the Home Office has decided that any child visiting the UK on a school trip has to have a full passport. Previously they need only have carried an identity card or some group identity passport. That was all that was required to participate in the school trip. As a result of that decision, it was reported in The Guardian at the end of last year—this evidence was confirmed by Bernard Donoghue, the chief executive of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, at a recent meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee—that 80% of some travel companies’ customers are now going elsewhere than Wales, or the rest of the UK, as a result of the policy.
Craig Williams
Would Welsh schoolchildren—British schoolchildren—going into the European Union Schengen area in the past couple of decades have got away with a driving licence, or would they have needed a passport to enter?
Kevin Brennan
I took many school trips over, and they did not require a passport in order to travel because group travel arrangements can be made within the European Union.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making some really important points. The cultural differences around our country are also made great when we can travel to Europe. I had the great opportunity as a member of the national youth choir, orchestra and brass band of Wales to be able to tour Europe as a child. Artists and musicians are now struggling to tour across Europe because of the visa issue. That point desperately needs to be raised for our choirs, brass bands and orchestras.
Kevin Brennan
My hon. Friend and I have raised that point many times in this House, but I want to get to the nub of the issue. This policy is a choice, not a requirement, by the Home Office. It is a choice that is causing significant damage to British business and to our ability to attract these kinds of school trip tours to our country, and it is affecting our visitor attractions. When the Home Office is asked why it is pursuing this particular policy, the answer that it has given to organisations such as the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions is that that is what people voted for in the Brexit referendum. It has a point; I remember seeing that bus, on the side of which was written: “No more French schoolchildren coming to visit our country!” Is that what people really voted for in the Brexit referendum—no more French schoolchildren absconding and taking our jobs; no 12-year-olds stealing British jobs? The Home Office has adopted a ludicrous position, which it needs to revisit urgently.
Mr David Jones
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point that tourism is a vital industry in Wales, especially in north Wales and not least in my constituency. My tourism operator constituents are terrifically concerned about the prospect of a tourism tax in Wales, which the Welsh Government seem to think is a really good idea. Does he think it is a good idea too?
Kevin Brennan
It is a great distraction technique to try to stop me when I was reaching my peroration. It is absolutely irrelevant to the point that I am making. My view has always been, and I have made it absolutely clear, that those sorts of things should be decided locally. People should have the option to decide how best to handle their tourism funding at a local level. That has always been my view, and I would have thought that it is a view that might fit in with Conservative philosophy, rather than centralising everything.
To return to the point that I was making about visitors to Wales, as a result of the policy, as I have said, there has been a significant reduction. It will have a huge impact if we do not have schoolchildren from Europe visiting. As a former teacher, if I had a class of schoolchildren some of whom had a full passport and some of whom had only an identity card, I would do the same as continental schoolteachers are doing now: I would not bring my class, because I would not deprive some of an opportunity to visit while allowing others to take it up, and neither would any teacher worth their salt. Whenever we took a school trip, if someone could not afford it we ensured that, somehow or other, the funds were put together quietly behind the scenes to allow that child to travel. This is a ludicrous example of Lord Frost’s pig-headed Brexit dogma, and it should be stopped. The Home Office should reverse the policy so that children can come and visit Cardiff castle again, and we can have the joy of seeing them on the streets of our capital city.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for bringing the debate to the House. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). I may not agree with all his views, but I certainly have a very high respect for his support for cultural activities and other areas of important activity in Parliament.
I made my maiden speech in this St David’s day debate two years ago, which seems like a different age—before covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and at the very start of my work as the Member for Clwyd South, representing the interests of my constituents and trying my best to help them through numerous problems and upheavals over this dramatic period. Wales has always been the fulcrum of my political views and activities over many years, growing up at Lake Vyrnwy and then serving as a county councillor, town councillor and mayor of my town, before being elected to represent Clwyd South in 2019.
My reaction to the dramatic events of the last two years has always been first and foremost from a Welsh perspective. When I signed the book of solidarity for Ukraine two days ago here in the House of Commons, I signed it on behalf of the residents of Clwyd South. When I stood yesterday with other hon. Members, many of whom are here today, to give a standing ovation to Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, I thought of people across my constituency who have pledged their support for Ukraine and its freedom from the tyranny of Russia. I also thought of two of my constituents: Mr and Mrs Jones, who have managed to bring two members of their family back from Ukraine to safety in their home town of Corwen.
That prompts me to make one remark with regard to the criticism of the Home Office that we have heard from the Opposition Benches. The Home Office, in my opinion, has worked extremely hard to deal with the complicated process of bringing people here from Ukraine when they may have moved over to Romania or Poland. From my point of view, representing my constituents, I can say that the Home Office has gone the extra mile to help those people. I think we will see a very different picture over the coming days as more and more people come over from Ukraine, as the protocols are developed and changed.
I am delighted that this week, we have been able to bring Wales in all its glory to London with numerous events, particularly in Westminster with the raising of the Welsh flag in New Palace Yard; the first ever eisteddfod at Westminster, held in Speaker’s House; a reception at No. 10 Downing Street; and, of course, this debate. Wales is of huge importance to me. I love Wales and its special character, and I feel that that is typified by my amazing constituency of Clwyd South, with its beautiful scenery and heritage, as seen in the Dee Valley, in the Maelor around Bangor-on-Dee, and in Erddig and Chirk Castle; its pioneering industrial heritage in our proud former mining communities, the Llangollen steam railway and the Llangollen canal, with its mighty aqueduct designed by Thomas Telford; the many successful businesses that have started up and replaced the work of the old industrial and mining communities, and which are now thriving in Clwyd South alongside larger and more famous companies, such as Cadbury’s in Chirk, Village Bakery in Coedpoeth and Wrexham, and Ivor Williams Trailers in Cynwyd and Corwen.
The special character of Wales is typified also by the beautiful Welsh language and culture, as showcased by the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod and the Fron and other male voice choirs; our hard-working farming communities and those who love the outdoors—walking our hills, taking a narrowboat along the canal, canoeing on the River Dee or taking part in the many other activities that draw so many visitors to Clwyd South—and, most importantly, by our close, caring communities, where everyone looked after each other during the pandemic, and our frontline workers in the health service, shops, council services and other organisations went the extra mile to keep people safe. In those communities, people do not interfere in each other’s lives, and they bring that special Welsh sense of humour to raise our spirits and keep us sane in difficult times.
Representing my constituents here at Westminster also brings home to me how much Wales benefits from being part of the United Kingdom. Like my Welsh Conservative colleagues here today, I take great heart from the fact that under this Conservative Government, the Union—specifically as it relates to Wales, but also across our whole United Kingdom—has grown stronger and continues to do so.
Our response to the pandemic shows the benefits that the Union brings to people across the UK. To support the booster rollout and wider covid-19 response, we have now confirmed a further £270 million that the Welsh Government can spend in advance of budgets being finalised at supplementary estimates in the new year. This is on top of the £3.8 billion that has been provided to the Welsh Government through the Barnett formula over the recent period, and on top of the extra £5.2 billion that the Welsh Government received in covid funding in 2020-21.
Vaccines have been the way out of this pandemic. The UK Government have secured and purchased vaccines on behalf of the whole United Kingdom, and over 6.5 million doses have been delivered across Wales. I emphasise that the speed and scale of this programme would never have been possible if we had stayed in the EU. We have heard a significant degree of criticism from the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), but if we had followed the Welsh Government’s policies and stayed in the EU, we would never have got the vaccine programme off to the flying start that we did. That would have had a major impact on the health and wellbeing of people in our nation.
Mr David Jones
My hon. Friend has mentioned the vaccine roll-out, which has been terrifically impressive. Will he also commend the men and women of the armed forces, who were called on to help deliver the vaccine roll-out in Wales?
Simon Baynes
Indeed, the armed forces have made a tremendous contribution to helping in the fight against covid. Currently, 411 military personnel are available to support the pandemic response in Wales, and that includes 313 supporting the Welsh ambulance service and 98 deployed to assist the seven health boards across Wales. My right hon. Friend made the point in his excellent speech that the deployment of the Royal Welsh to Estonia is another vital aspect of how the armed forces are helping us to deploy and present our position in the terrible crisis in Ukraine. That is testament to the fact that as a United Kingdom, we are stronger in our defence and in dealing with the health and wellbeing of our country. We can bring the whole strength of the United Kingdom to assist Wales and the rest of the UK. That is why, for me, being a Unionist is vital.
People and businesses in Wales have benefited from direct financial support from the UK Government. The facts are well known, but 475,000 jobs have been protected through the furlough scheme, and £2.4 billion has been provided to 60,000 Welsh businesses through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme and the bounce back loan scheme.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned the shared prosperity fund. It is important to point out that the Government have committed, at a minimum, to matching the size of EU funding in Wales. Over and above that, as a Member of Parliament for a constituency that lies not in west or south Wales, but in north-east Wales, I must make the point that a large part of Wales received no benefit from EU structural funds. The shared prosperity funding and the new ways of financing and helping Wales give us a great opportunity to help all communities, so that we are not stuck to some rigid dogma concerning geographical areas, but we can focus on all areas where there is deprivation and a need for levelling up. The new system will be of huge benefit, and it will be a much improved way of helping communities across Wales.
Overall, Wales receives considerably more funding per head than England—about £120 for every £100 per head spent by the UK Government in England. Furthermore, Wales’s notional net fiscal deficit—the gap between total public spending for Wales and public sector revenues from Wales—amounted to £14.5 billion in 2020-21. This equated to around 18% of estimated GDP for Wales, or £4,556 per head. These are dry details, but in truth they represent an extraordinary Union dividend for Wales.
In Clwyd South, we have historically been starved of investment by the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff bay, but we have seen renewed vigour from the UK Conservative Government to correct this injustice, with unprecedented levels of funding coming into the region. [Interruption]. Would the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) like to intervene?
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He speaks about being starved by the Government, but that is not what the Welsh people say, and it is not what they said at the ballot box in May last year.
Simon Baynes
The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. Part of the issue that we are dealing with is that Labour almost entirely represents south Wales, and it has only one seat north of the valleys, in Alyn and Deeside. Therefore, it does not surprise me that Labour Members really do not understand how much people in north Wales feel left behind and uncared for by the Welsh Government. I am afraid that her remark bears out exactly what I am saying.
The levelling-up fund bid for Clwyd South was developed by Wrexham and Denbighshire Councils and sponsored by me, as the Member of Parliament, and it proved successful. It is vital investment for my constituency, going from the Trevor basin through Llangollen and Chirk and on down to Corwen, and bringing huge benefits to the communities, the Llangollen canal and the Llangollen railway. One central part of it is the world heritage site at the Trevor Basin, which incorporates Telford’s magnificent aqueduct. It is an extraordinary fact, but until now there has been absolutely no public investment in the world heritage site by either the Welsh Government or the UK Government. I am delighted that the UK Government have now put their money where their mouth is and supported these tremendous projects within my constituency.
These projects will have an important catalyst effect on local communities, addressing not only the issue of visitors, but the health and wellbeing of our communities through the use of the canal and so on. Very close to the Trevor Basin lies areas of derelict industrial land. My hope is that this money will not only improve the visitor experience and life for the residents of my constituency along the Dee valley, but act as a catalyst for further development of areas that are in bad need of improvement and regeneration.
It was my pledge in the 2019 election to work constructively to deliver the change and investment that Clwyd South needs. I am proud to have worked with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales and their team at the Wales Office, as well as the rest of the UK Government, to bring improvements to my constituency.
I finish with reference to the comments made by Huw Edwards when he introduced the Eisteddfod on Tuesday in the Speaker’s House and celebrated St David’s famous exhortation:
“Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do.”
I felt that those wise words had an extra resonance this week, as we are almost overwhelmed by the great events that are besetting our world. By focusing on activities that we can control—the little things to which St David referred—such as helping others, working hard, raising money to help people in Ukraine, looking after our family and friends, volunteering and taking an active interest in our community, we will find a way through the darkness and emerge on the other side, and, in the words of St David,
“be joyful and keep the faith.”
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) on securing this debate and thank him for the huge amount of work that he did in government as a Minister in the Wales Office, and also for his work in defence, in foreign affairs, on the constitution, on Scotland and so on. As we all know, he has brought many, many talents to the House and we wish him well for the future.
This year marks 100 years since Labour became the party of the majority of people of Wales, winning 18 out of 35 seats at the general election in 1922, with the Liberals taking 10 and the Conservatives six. For Labour politicians, being an elected representative is about trying to improve the lives of our constituents, strengthening the cohesion of our communities, making sure that we value each and every one, and looking after those who fall on hard times.
The Llanelli constituency has been represented continuously by Labour MPs since 1922. I am privileged to follow three distinguished parliamentarians: Dr J. H. Williams, Jim Griffiths and Denzil Davies. A party can only bring about radical universal change when it is actually in government—be that at UK level, Senedd level or council level.
I pay tribute to Jim Griffiths, who was described by James Callaghan as “one of Wales’s greatest sons”. If we look back at some of Griffiths’ achievements, we can see how relevant they are to some of the problems that we face today. In that radical Government of 1945, he brought in family allowances. They were to be paid to the mother, which is something that campaigners had been wanting for a very long time. He saw the poverty and malnutrition in his constituency and was determined to look after people who fell on hard times. He brought in the National Insurance Act 1946, which ensured unemployment benefit and sickness benefit, and the National Assistance Act 1948, which ensured that those who were unable to make the contributions necessary to be eligible for those benefits—people who had disabilities; people who had been unable to make enough contributions to cover their old age—were covered. He also brought in the Industrial Injuries Act 1946 to look after those who were injured at work, those who needed a disablement pension for life, and indeed money for the dependants of those who were killed at work.
We need to think hard about how we look after the poorest in our society today. It is 12 years since the Conservative Government came to power. In that first year, they broke the benefits link to inflation that had always been there. Even Margaret Thatcher did not break that link. We have seen 12 years of erosion in the value of benefits, plus, of course, the £20 cut that we saw earlier this year. It is all very well to say that that was additional, but we must bear in mind those 12 years of erosion. It was hardly a fair compensation for that, and that money did not even go to those people on legacy benefits. Then there were the cuts in tax credits. It is all very well to talk about the softening of the taper on tax credits, but that does not make up for the amount of cuts that there have been to them.
I fear now that, with rampant inflation, we will see malnutrition return. We are already talking about people having to choose between eating and heating. If that goes on for more than a few weeks, children will suffer—their development will suffer—and, sadly, we will risk returning to a pre-1945 state. I urge this Government to look again at how we treat the poorest in our society, particularly in respect of the cost of living crisis.
Jim Griffiths was also known for his work in developing what we now know as the Wales Office, a precursor to the whole idea of devolution. We have been able to do things differently in Wales with a Welsh Labour Government. Gradually, we have had more powers, and we have developed and implemented policies that reflect Welsh Labour principles. The Development Bank of Wales, for example, has supported many businesses and helped them grow, working to the priorities of the Welsh Government, including growing the missing middle—those medium-sized businesses that we are still short of in Wales.
The Welsh Government have been not only providing support for the foundation economy, which is home-grown local businesses feeding into the local economy, but using public procurement to support the local economy and promote ethical procurement—not using firms that blacklist or trash workers’ right. We also have a social partnership approach—a partnership between Welsh Government, businesses, industry and trade unions. Interestingly, because the Welsh Government gave out more money than usual during the pandemic, they were able to increase the number of firms that are involved in a partnership that has conditionality attached to it for having that money from the Welsh Government. That conditionality is about saying that there will be growth and job provision, about saying that there will be fair work and workers’ rights, about looking after the wellbeing of the workforce, including mental health, and about having a commitment to tackling climate change.
It is very noticeable that the National Audit Office gave the Welsh Government a clean bill of health on the way they had gone about procuring supplies during the pandemic, while the UK Government, sadly, wasted billions by giving contracts to cronies. Frankly, we are all very ashamed of that. It is also shameful because all of us paid for that.
Public transport is a real challenge for us in a very large country. It is vital to help people get better access to education, training and job opportunities. I know that the Welsh Government are committed to building on their work for Transport for Wales, by taking over the railway franchises and by ensuring that we have a better bus service that is more responsive to people’s needs and that looks at ways to make fares more accessible. I know people in rural areas of my constituency who are very dependent on buses with quite high fares to get any job opportunities, because the mining villages that once offered such opportunities now do not, so they have to travel to towns such as Carmarthen and Llanelli for work.
Of course, it is not just the infrastructure that we need to look after; we must also invest in our people. That is something the Welsh Government have taken seriously, with initiatives such as all-age apprenticeships, workplace learning and better digital inclusion. Levelling up is a huge challenge, and I do not pretend that the UK Government have an easy job to do. Working out how to spread power, wealth and opportunity is really difficult. It is not only about getting the appropriate structures in place, but about getting the appropriate ethos and the right relationship between one layer of government and another.
I must say, however, that the way the Conservatives are running the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund shows brazen disregard for the devolution settlement. The Tory UK Government are completely ignoring not only the Welsh Government, but the partnership work done between the Welsh Government and Welsh local government leaders on strategic priorities. Instead, we have an England-focused Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which has not dealt with Wales since pre-devolution days in 1999, and which has allowed previous Tory Ministers to give money to each other’s constituencies, to the detriment of more disadvantaged areas. Will the current Secretary of State be any better?
Again, that contrasts with the close working relationship that the Welsh Labour Government have with the leaders of the 22 Welsh unitary authorities, whatever their political colour, throughout the pandemic, recognising the vital role and burdens that councils have shouldered. We can contrast that with what we hear from council leaders in England about the lack of consultation with the Tory Government. In dealing with the covid pandemic, time after time there was no real consultation, nor even sometimes any communication from the UK Tory Government to the other nations of the UK. Perhaps that should not surprise us, given the poor communication even within the Tory Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s absence from Cobra meetings, but it has serious consequences. It is not only a poor way to run the UK; it also fans the flames of separatism.
It is important that we pin the blame clearly on the Conservative Government for the way they behave, rather than allowing the idea to take hold that it is the existence of a UK Government that is the problem. As we talk about a better balance of power, wealth and opportunity across the UK, we must also celebrate the huge benefit that comes with being part of the UK and being able to tackle big problems such as climate change together.
What is really needed is to put that relationship between the UK Government and devolved institutions across the UK, whatever form they take, on a firm statutory footing. The relationship between areas and different levels of Government should be one of mutual respect. As the Welsh Government have clearly set out, the UK Parliament should not normally seek to legislate for a territory in relation to matters within the competence of the devolved legislature of that territory without that legislature’s explicit consent.
Instead of pitting areas against each other, we should look at ways that different areas can complement each other, perhaps by developing different industrial specialities. That means developing effective funding mechanisms to get away from competitive bidding and ministerial interference—simply creating systems that work better than what we have at present.
The Welsh Government have not grabbed power to themselves; they are using their power to enable local authorities. What we have seen this year in the local government settlement is a very generous settlement to local councils across Wales: a 9.4% increase in core revenue, in recognition of the huge work that local councils have done throughout the pandemic.
On test and trace, Wales used local councils with local knowledge and local people with a public service ethos to provide a service—we might joke that the Welsh are all very nosy, so we would know where so-and-so was on a Saturday night and who he or she might have been meeting. It is so much better to have that ethos than to have the billions wasted in England on contracting out to firms all over the country that did not even manage to train up or employ their people half the time. If we have that ethos and local knowledge, the service can be delivered so much better.
The financial settlement will help to put our local services on a firm financial footing—firmer than has been the case for a long time, as we have had to absorb the swingeing Tory cuts to the Welsh budget. The settlement is the result of months of constructive dialogue between Ministers, leaders and officials in local government and the Welsh Government. Councillor Andrew Morgan, the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, commented:
“Investment in councils is more than figures on a spreadsheet. It’s about investing in our communities, our people and in our vital services that help improve and change lives, whilst continuing to respond to two global challenges: the pandemic and climate change.”
I hope we can all work towards those ends.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
It is a great delight to take part in this debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for opening it. I know we all say that there should be a staged item on the parliamentary programme every year, but through the usual channels we seem to have it on an annual basis, so clearly something works, and I hope that that continues long after his retirement. I pay particular tribute to him; his Unionist credentials have never been in doubt and since I have been elected his sage advice and warm words for our United Kingdom have been incredibly welcome. They will be missed on the Labour Benches—although hopefully there are still years to come before then in which he can move the debate.
I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) on energy policy and in particular the role of nuclear in Wales. I wish him and other colleagues championing it success—I had better mention my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) and her long-haul campaign to deliver nuclear power on Wylfa and Trawsfynydd.
I also echo the points made around the Royal Welsh battle group. We have leaned heavily on our armed forces during covid with military aid in response to civil authorities’ requests, and the strength of the United Kingdom can be seen nowhere better. I know that from my own experience nigh-on two weeks ago, when we called the Welsh Ambulance Service because I was helping a dear lady who had fallen over on Welshpool High Street. Ten minutes later, an ambulance turned up and out jumped a paramedic and a member of our armed forces. It is great to see that support continuing. Clearly it is not sustainable, but that is what our armed forces and the United Kingdom Government are there to do: to provide support where we need it the most.
In this debate more than most, our thoughts are with the armed forces as they forward deploy to support our NATO friends in eastern Europe. The Royal Welsh has done a tremendous job for us in this country during the covid crisis, the floods and other crises; now we lean on it again to ensure the defence of the realm and to support our NATO allies.
I also pay particular tribute, as we have all done this week and in years gone by, to Wales Week. I am sure most Members of the House have been to a Wales Week event this week. Wales Week London—Wales Week world, as it is now—has become a feature of the diary. I pay particular tribute to Dan Langford and Mike Phillips, who are bastions of the championing of Wales, our culture, our heritage and our business and are positive about the opportunities that Wales, the Welsh people and the Welsh business community have. They have brought Governments, communities and businesses together.
I implore the Secretary of State to continue his great work with Wales Week, working with the Foreign Office to ensure that not only is the Welsh flag flying at our embassies around the world every St David’s day, but that business communities and the Department for International Trade are invited and that our businesses are championed at UK level, as they rightly deserve. There were 90 events in London throughout Wales Week—an historic high. I am in no doubt that the whole House will wish Wales Week continued and greater success.
We have heard a bit about the UK shared prosperity fund, and I want to discuss not just the words but the commitments to date surrounding the replacement of European money. I accept the benefit of the doubt given by my hon. Friend—I call him that to reflect St David’s Day—the Member for Caerphilly, and that was kind of him, but this is not just about words. The community renewal fund gives 23% of the UK funding to Wales—way above any Barnettised formula in the past. That is a clear direction of travel. We have secured 7% from the levelling-up fund. Again, that is way above what we would see from a UK Government scheme if we just were just going to honour the commitment.
Craig Williams
I fear that this is the last time I call him my hon. Friend; it will be back to hon. Member.
Wayne David
If it is indeed the direction of travel that the Government should be generous to Wales, why on earth do they not come forward with some hard figures to prove that assertion?
Craig Williams
The hon. Member makes an interesting point given that I have just given him two hard figures. The latest schemes coming out of the United Kingdom Government show that this is not about words, but action—actual funding leaving the Treasury and the levelling-up unit and going into Wales. We have 23% from the community renewal fund going straight into schemes across Wales and 7% from the levelling-up fund—way above any Barnettised formula. The figures are there, so he need not ask for them. Now we need to work together.
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who is not in his place, talked about an attack on devolution. With the objective 1 funding, we qualified once, we qualified twice, and we continued to qualify. That was not a great thing to continue doing, as countries in eastern Europe managed to use the funding programmes organised by the European Union to grow their GVA and so no longer qualify because their prosperity, skills and poverty indicators were all going the right way. In Wales, we are still under the Welsh European Funding Office. This is not just a political assertion from the Conservative Benches. The Audit Wales, Committees of this House and the European Union itself wanted to know time and again why the European funds that were going to Wales were not getting any better outcomes than countries in eastern Europe—the outcomes that our constituents wanted. I remember during the referendum, when we were on the same page, wondering why the response was so bad in the south Wales valleys.
Nia Griffith
Does the hon. Member accept that many of the financial levers are not in the control of the Senedd, including the whole taxation and benefits system, which affects the GVA of the population of Wales very significantly? Therefore, there are 12 years in which the Conservatives share responsibility for whatever deficit he is referring to in terms of where he thinks the development should have gone to? In addition, why is there this aversion to including the Welsh Government together with his Government and local government to talk about the priorities of the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund, instead of just ignoring them?
Craig Williams
I could make a 10-minute speech on the irony of that intervention, but I can see the Deputy Speaker looking at me funny so I will not. Most of those arguments could be made for most of the eastern European regions, as they have different constitutional settlements and local government as well. We could go back and forward on that, on an academic level, for a while.
Going back to the attack on devolution, I have seen the discussions around what mutual respect means for Labour Members. They do not mean mutual respect; they mean that they want the Welsh Government to control all decisions. It is not about putting things together; it is about having a veto over what this Government are doing. I find that completely frustrating, given what I have described as happening with former European programmes. The leader of Powys County Council has been unequivocal in welcoming the levelling-up fund and community renewal fund—schemes that, for the first time ever, provide real investment in mid-Wales. This is hugely significant.
I reflect on the exchange between the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes). Looking at the political map of this place, above the Brecon Beacons there is beginning to be a political discourse of two countries—or three with mid-Wales—where there is a palpable feeling of neglect coming from the south Wales Labour party, as we see it.
Craig Williams
Two speeches are enough.
I would push back heavily on the willingness of communities in north, mid, and, no doubt, south Wales to access funding directly from the UK Government to work with us on strategic issues. Mutual respect is always chucked around in this Chamber, but in the Union connectivity review, for the first time ever, the UK has looked at taking responsibility for connecting the United Kingdom. When the European Union did that through its trans-European network, there was not a single utterance in this place. In fact, there probably were some utterances from the Conservative Benches, for a very different reason. It was absolutely fine for Welsh Labour and the Welsh Government to have the European Union dictating where infrastructure spend should go in the United Kingdom in connecting the whole of Europe, but the second the United Kingdom Government say how to connect our great four nations together, there is outrage, saying it is an attack on devolution. [Interruption.] That intervention from Scottish Members will feature independence, I am sure.
Montgomeryshire has a strongly cross-border population. A good chunk of the workforce, if not the majority, cross the border to work every day. Our district general hospital is in Shrewsbury in England. Our sixth-form colleges are over the border. We are a community that certainly does not see, or want, the huge policy divide that is being asserted on the Opposition Benches.
Simon Baynes
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the bits that is missing from mutual respect in Wales is from the Senedd to local authorities, and that one of the enabling and exciting aspects of the new funding arrangements, particularly with regard to the levelling-up fund, has been to put local authorities in the driving seat and give them the respect that they deserve in this process?
Craig Williams
My hon. Friend is exactly right. We have seen that time and again. It is ironic that anyone should say we are attacking devolution given that those on the Treasury Bench and former Secretaries of State have empowered the Welsh Government and the Welsh Parliament with a plethora of new powers. I well remember when planning powers were devolved and an aspect of those, for energy, was devolved directly to local authorities. The first thing the Welsh Government and the Welsh Parliament did was to take those powers from the local authorities and centralise them. That is the theme of devolution since Labour has been at the helm—power and control. I very much welcome the increase in funding to the local authorities, especially the rural ones. I am big enough to say from the Conservative Benches that the First Minister of Wales got many of the decisions right during covid, and he did a good job in the round, but now is the time to restore the civil liberties to my constituents and to Wales. Now is the time to back off from the day-to-day control and, I am afraid, the nanny state, to a certain degree, that seems to develop around the covid rates.
Let me return to my central point—the great opportunities in trade going forward. Hopefully in the next St David’s Day debate we can leave the old Brexit arguments aside and start really focusing on what is great for our Welsh agriculture and businesses. It was hugely terrific to see the investment go into Randall Parker, one of the biggest sheepmeat abattoirs in the country, through Pilgrim’s UK. Members will reflect that for decades we have been worried about our sheepmeat market, the process, our abattoirs and our capacity. For the first time ever, money is following actions and words, and we are seeing investment, growth and new markets.
I implore you, Secretary of State, in my final concluding remark, to ensure that by the next St David’s day debate, the New York market has access to the most sustainable, net zero meat in the world—Welsh lamb—and we can be championing that success and that emerging, burgeoning market.
I think I have taken enough time in this St David’s day debate. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] If Members would like me to continue, I could move on to page 2 —[Interruption.] The Welsh Grand Committee will, I am sure, meet before long.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for securing this St David’s day debate on Welsh affairs. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams). My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and I went to the same school: Cynffig Comprehensive School in my home town of Kenfig Hill. I was the sporty one, and he was the musician. When I made my maiden speech in May 2015, my hon. Friend sat by my side in the Chamber for many hours waiting for me to be called, and he has been at my side throughout my time in Parliament. I thank him for all he has done for the people of Caerphilly and Wales.
In my maiden speech I spoke about the historical and political aspects of my Neath constituency, and my dear friend Hywel Francis, the former MP for Aberavon, helped me write that speech. My speech was about other people, not Hywel, but today I will speak about Hywel and how he was, in so many ways, involved in creating and recording the contemporary history of my Neath constituency.
Hywel tragically died on 14 February 2021, aged 74. Even though Hywel was the MP for Aberavon, we in Neath only loaned him to Aberavon, because so many people in Neath regard him as one of Neath’s finest, and I do, too. I have spoken with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and he wants me to mention just how much Hywel meant to him, too.
Hywel was born in the village of Onllwyn in the Dulais valley, Neath, and he had a rare childhood. Born into one of the leading communist families in south Wales, he was the son of Dai Francis, general secretary of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. When Hywel was a child, he met Aneurin Bevan, Arthur Horner and Will Paynter, and he lived a lifetime in awe of men like Dai Dan Evans, who Hywel mentioned often. Hywel was a child of the revolution. With that background, Hywel was destined to study history at Swansea University, and he went on to complete a PhD, which was two volumes of intricate, beautifully written historical analysis.
In 1984, Hywel’s PhD was published as “Miners Against Fascism”, one of the finest studies of the international brigades ever written. It pioneered the use of oral history and broke with the long-established tradition within the Communist party regarding what the Spanish civil war was all about. Welsh miners from south Wales made up one of the largest contingents within the British battalion of the international brigades in the Spanish civil war, and they brought with them trade union militancy, extra-parliamentary activity and internationalism. Hywel wrote about the compulsion imposed on some of the volunteers and the effects on the wives and children of those volunteers who joined up. Much of the history of south Wales was dependent on Hywel’s PhD and his subsequent publications. Hywel would probably have had much to say about Putin invading Ukraine.
In 1969, Hywel joined with Welsh academic, cultural historian and author David Burton Smith, known as Dai, and they made a plan to recover the fast-disappearing archives and intellectual material of the south Wales coalfield. This led to the founding of Llafur, which Hywel made sure that I joined, in a Swansea pub in 1970. Llafur brings together people from all walks of life who have a common interest in Welsh people’s history, because history does not just inform us about our past, but can help us understand the present and shape our future. That is what Hywel did—he brought people together, and he was always full of ideas. In fact, Llafur has had such an effect on promoting Welsh history that people are now undertaking historical studies of Llafur.
In that Swansea pub in 1969, the south Wales coalfield history project was also created, and that led to the establishment of the South Wales Miners’ Library in the autumn of 1973. My friend Sian Williams is the secretary and vice-president of Llafur and has been the librarian of the South Wales Miners’ Library since 1985. Before I became an MP, I was national coach for Squash Wales, and I coached Sian’s three sons in squash. Wales is one big family. We shall be celebrating the South Wales Miners’ Library’s 50th anniversary next year. Sian and I cannot contemplate doing that without Hywel.
As a young boy, Hywel was mesmerised by hearing Paul Robeson at the Ebbw Vale Eisteddfod in 1958 and hearing his voice down the transatlantic link to the Porthcawl Miners’ Eisteddfod. Every year between 1952 and 1957, Robeson was invited to attend, but his passport had been withdrawn by the US Government because of his outspoken left-wing and anti-racist views. Hywel was so proud when Paul Robeson Jr. visited the South Wales Miners’ Library in 1989 and again in 2007.
Hywel played a prominent role during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, and in 2009 Hywel collected his earlier writings and memories together to publish a book on the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike in Wales entitled “History on Our Side”. The title comes from the words and actions of the 1984-85 strike, what was happening across the world in 2008, and the words of Tower colliery striking miner Robert True in June 1984, who said to Hywel:
“Surely we can’t lose, history is on our side”.
Hywel started to keep a diary during the strike, but became aware of police surveillance, so went through a gradual process of self-censorship. Phil Thomas and Penny Smith from the Welsh Council for Civil and Political Liberties recorded their experiences for their book “Striking Back”, but they hid their tapes under the floorboards in their house. I became friends with Phil and Penny when I did my law degree at Cardiff University during the nineties. Phil was head of the law department, and I am still in touch with him now.
Hywel believed that his miners’ support group in the Dulais valley was the best, because of the talented and committed people who rose to the challenge of developing what was to become an alternative welfare state. Kay Bowen from Dyffryn Cellwen was the food co-ordinator who organised food for more than a thousand families for 12 months. Dai Donovan from Ynyswen was one of the fundraisers. Dai built strong links with trade unions in London, a range of political organisations and the gay and lesbian community, who donated a minibus. The most successful fundraiser was Alun “Ali” Thomas, the secretary of Onllwyn miners’ welfare club, which Hywel called “the palace of culture”. Ali was away collecting funds in Ireland, north Wales and other parts, and he became known as our roving ambassador or our foreign secretary. Many years later, Ali became the councillor for Onllwyn and leader of Neath Port Talbot Council. He is a great friend and has helped me so much, but when he tugs at his braces and says, “Now look here, lovely girl,” I know that I am in trouble. He is one of the best storytellers, especially after he has had a few sherbets.
The fundraisers organised many concerts which featured the South Wales Striking Miners Choir, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Jimmy Somerville, the Communards and the Flying Pickets to mention a few. The Welsh Striking Miners rugby team went on a fundraising tour of Italy. The funds, some £350,000, were looked after by the support group’s treasurer Christine Powell, whose fearsome dog Butch slept on top of the money until it was deposited in a bank.
The support group also produced its own weekly newspaper The Valleys’ Star, whose editors were Frank Rees from Ystradgynlais and Margaret Donovan from Ynyswen. It was distributed all over the world and was included in striking miners’ food parcels. The wise picket organisers believed in talking rather than fighting and they were so good at it that some people were talked into submission.
Hywel’s support group was different in that it was led by women: the secretary of the group, the formidable Hefina Headon from Seven Sisters, who was courageous on the picket line and a great public speaker and fundraiser; Siân James, who went on to become the MP for Swansea East; and Margaret Donovan, who developed a women’s support group and who travelled to fundraisers to speak and to picket. Since retiring as an MP, Siân has returned to live in Neath.
All of that and more, with a bit of poetic licence, was made into the film “Pride”, which was filmed in the palace of culture and the village of Banwen at the top of the Dulais valley. I have watched the film many times and I always cry when my friend and singer-songwriter Bronwen Lewis from Seven Sisters sings “Bread and Roses”.
Wayne David
I agree with my hon. Friend that it was a remarkable film. If anything, however, it did not give the thanks that were due to Hywel Francis for his role in all those activities.
Christina Rees
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Hywel worked behind the scenes; he did not like to be in the limelight, but I totally agree that there should have been a place for him in the film.
Hywel and the support group organised the annual commemoration of the start of the strike in the palace of culture, which became known as the “Glorious 12th”. He brought together all the people involved in the support group who were still alive, the cast of “Pride” and many of his friends. At the 2019 commemoration, I had the honour of unveiling a memorial plaque for Hefina.
Hywel saw history as a means for social change and his boundless energy and relentless activism had a profound effect on everyone who had the privilege to meet him. I was in awe of him, but he had the gift of making people think that they were the important ones. His networking was the stuff of legend. He had many friends throughout Neath, Wales and beyond who he kept in touch with by text and email, which he signed off as “H”, and by telephone calls that turned from minutes into hours. He would start by asking, “What do you think of this, Chris?”, but by the end of the call, he would have given me far more guidance and advice than I could ever have given him, all delivered with his quick-witted humour and lots of anecdotes along the way.
Hywel could never be accused of rewriting history to portray himself in a better light, because he was our guiding light. He used his charm to find consensus by working behind the scenes, cajoling and persuading—never demanding. He was a man who always had a long-term plan and who drew in many of his friends to achieve a common good. We could never say no to H. We are lost without him and we miss him more every day. After standing down as MP for Aberavon, Hywel and Mair returned to live in the village of Crynant in the Dulais valley, and I spent many hours in their house putting the world to rights.
Many hon. Members may not know that Hywel was an accomplished rugby player. He was president of the Seven Sisters rugby club from 2005 to his death and he was the author of “The Magnificent Seven” about its history. He played rugby from 1972 to 1980 and was awarded the Seven Sisters RFC club badge in the 1972-3 season. He played 78 times for the first 15, and scored 22 tries, with a total points score of 88.
After I had been selected as the candidate for Neath in 2014, Hywel took me to Seven Sisters RFC to watch the first team play against my home town of Kenfig Hill. He introduced me to the chairman Jeff “Jako” Davies, who has become one of my dearest friends. The club’s compère Emyr Lewis, who is well into his eighties, took great delight in reminding the crowd that “Chris is from Kenfig Hill” every time that Seven Sisters scored against them. I must be one of the few MPs who has voluntarily joined a rugby club committee—and I still do not know how that happened.
Hywel was instrumental in me becoming the patron of the Seven Sisters ladies team. My friendship with the club captain, former Ospreys captain and former Welsh international Bethan Howell, has grown over the last seven years. Hywel used to call Beth the gay icon of the Dulais valley just to wind her up, but she never bit. She is a formidable person on and off the field. When she puts her arms around me, I feel loved and safe—and a little bit crushed. I am a squash player and I am proud to have played more than 100 times for Wales, but even though she has tried to persuade me to play rugby—on the left wing obviously—one tackle and I would be done for!
Hywel was a one-off who influenced the lives of many people. His friends will ensure that that is never forgotten and that his ideas are taken forward to influence the lives of future generations. Salud comrade!
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) and her wonderful tribute to Hywel Francis, who I know all hon. Members miss. We send our love to Mair. It is also a pleasure to take part in the annual St David’s day debate, which was so ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), whose wise words, contributions, sage advice and friendship we will all miss following his announcement that he will not contest the next election. There is a while to go yet, but we will miss him when the time comes.
Proceedings in Parliament this week have obviously been dominated by events in Ukraine, and all our thoughts are with the Ukrainian people in these dark times. That was demonstrated yesterday in the Chamber by the reception for the Ukrainian ambassador, which was one of the moving moments of my time in the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said, there are long-standing ties between the people of Wales and Ukraine, with city of Donetsk, which was originally known as Hughesovka, having been founded by the Welshman John Hughes, who made his reputation and fortune as a leading engineer at Uskside Engineering in Newport.
Coalmining and steel production have played just as important a role in the economic and cultural life of central and eastern Ukraine as they have in south Wales. We are all united in our solidarity. As my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said, the scale is enormous and horrific, and our contributions reflect that.
Like other hon. Members, I have constituents with friends and family in Ukraine and at least one constituent who is currently stuck in the country after travelling there to care for dependents before the invasion began. In her case, her family members were refused a visa application for entry to the UK last year by the Home Office. I hope that everything will now be done to ensure that visas for Ukrainians looking to flee the conflict can be processed swiftly and that a robust system to reunite Ukrainians with family members here in the UK is put in place promptly. I note the announcements this week, but I pray that action is swift. That family have been told by a Home Office adviser that they should be eligible, but they now tell me that there may be no safe passage out from Zaporizhzhia, which is surrounded by Russian forces.
With the failures of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, we have seen how not having comprehensive and compassionate structures in place can have real consequences. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, I am grateful to the Welsh Government for voicing their strong support for providing Ukrainian refugees with sanctuary in Wales and for providing £4 million in financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. We are a nation of sanctuary and a nation of compassion, as is demonstrated by the groups and individuals across Wales that are already doing what they can to support Ukraine. Groups such as the Polish Community for Ukraine and the Women of Newport, including my constituent Kamila, have been overwhelmed with support for their emergency appeal just this week.
I know that Newportonians in Prague are raising donations in Newport for refugees on the ground. I am grateful also to the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) who have donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Ukraine humanitarian appeal. I know that we all hope the Government can ensure this money reaches those who have fled their homes to escape the conflict as quickly as possible. Of course, it will again fall to our councils on the frontline to welcome those fleeing Ukraine. I ask the Secretary of State to make sure that the UK Government, working with the Welsh Government, ensure that they have the financial means not just to welcome them, but to support them.
Today’s debate comes at a time when we are looking to the future after the pandemic. That was clearly not the case on St David’s Day in 2020, and two years on from the devastation of the first wave of covid in March 2020, it feels a good time to take stock. I thank all those in Newport East and beyond who have helped us get to where we are now, including the many community groups, charities and volunteers on the ground who helped keep people connected and very supported during the darkest hours of the pandemic.
I also thank our local councils, Newport City Council and Monmouthshire County Council, which kept key services in Newport East running as smoothly as possible in unprecedented times. We should not forget or underestimate how difficult that was. I remember the conversations at the start of the pandemic, the scenarios being anticipated and the very difficult decisions being considered. It was leadership at one of our hardest times, and I certainly will always be thankful for those who step up and are willing to hold those positions at such times. As the Tad y Tŷ, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, said, our councils play a pivotal role, as we all know, right on the frontline of delivering our services—be they the schools our children attend, care for the elderly, keeping the roads safe, waste collection, recycling services, parks and sports facilities and more. It is our councils that are key to—and are—looking ahead with ambition for a much brighter future after the pandemic.
Labour-led Newport council, very ably led by Councillor Jane Mudd, spent the pandemic, among many other things, distributing more than 9,000 laptops and devices to pupils, and administering nearly £55 million of Welsh Government funding to Newport businesses to support them through the pandemic period, including grants that supported over 70 new start-up businesses and targeted support for sectors such as the arts and leisure. I think the council is a leader in many ways. We are the UK’s best city for recycling, employer of the year at the Welsh Veterans Awards, and a hub for sports with the National Velodrome of Wales, the Football Association of Wales’s Dragon Park and other major events venues in our city. They are all world-class facilities that are on our doorstep. Our future plans include a new leisure centre, the reopening soon of Newport market—the largest indoor market refurb in Europe—and a new 4-star hotel over the river in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West, as well as lots of new modern housing developments in the city centre. This is all in the plan for the regeneration of our city.
Monmouthshire council also deserves praise for its work supporting vulnerable residents and bringing people together during the pandemic. A great example of this are those on the Monmouthshire youth council whom I met when they came to Parliament last week. Throughout the pandemic, the council provided a regular virtual forum for young people to discuss the issues that matter most to them at a time when schools, colleges and social activities were restricted. As the mother of two teenagers myself, I very much appreciate the work of people such as Jade Atkins, its participation officer, who convenes the group that puts in that work, and I know the real difference it can make.
Hon. Members have mentioned levelling up, but last year I worked closely with Monmouthshire County Council on its cross-party bid for levelling-up funding for Caldicot. It is a real shame that this strong bid for improvements to the leisure centre and the town centre was rejected by the UK Government, as indeed were all bids from the Gwent area. I hope that future tranches of levelling-up funding will be more inclusive of all regions of Wales, or the accusations of pork barrel politics may ring true again.
May I note, on behalf of the wonderful and dedicated volunteers at the Magor Action Group on Rail, that it has a bid in for a new walkway station for Magor and Undy? I mention to the Secretary of State that its restoring your railway bid is in at the moment, and it would be much appreciated if he could nudge his Department for Transport colleagues for an update on the next steps, as would his taking the lead, following the Burns Commission, to provide the funding to reverse the historical under- investment in rail in Wales by investing in our lines and new stations. We are watching that very keenly.
I want to pay tribute to the work of the Labour group on Monmouthshire council, which has combined constructive opposition to the administration with its continued campaign for better services across the county and improved infrastructure in areas such as Severnside in my constituency to match the rapid growth in house building we have seen locally. It is important that, after the upcoming local elections in May, the council, which this year received the highest increase in its core funding settlement of any local authority in Wales from the Welsh Government, now prioritises this investment where it is needed most. We need to invest in infrastructure where we are building new house developments.
I will cheekily take this opportunity to wish all the candidates standing in Newport East the very best of luck for 5 May. I am very proud of the candidates whom Labour has chosen in the Newport and Monmouthshire wards in my constituency. They are a very enthusiastic and talented cross-section of our community. We have a firefighter, a brewery worker, a nurse, a journalist, a taxi driver, a lecturer and small business owners, and they are all hoping to be given the privilege of serving their communities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) spoke about the benefits of the strong collaboration between our councils and the Welsh Labour Government, and that should never be underestimated. Wales led the way on the vaccine roll-out across the UK and maintained the most generous comprehensive package of support for businesses of any UK nation. Now, as we look beyond the pandemic, the Welsh Government have come up with a £330 million package of extra help for the cost of living crisis—a funding package that, yet again, is significantly larger than the equivalent support provided by the UK Government in England.
Of course, there is only so much that a Welsh Government and local authorities can do with the powers afforded to them. This is true of the steel industry in Newport, where the UK Government must provide our steel industry with the support it needs on decarbonisation and electricity costs. We have talked about that in the House—other members of the all-party group on steel and metal-related industries are here—for over a decade. It is also true of funding for our police, which has been cut by this soft-on-crime Tory Government over the last decade.
On the cost of living, Conservative Members need to acknowledge the part they have played in enabling this crisis. It was the Government who failed to regulate the energy market, failed to invest in home-grown renewables and failed to end our dependence on imported energy. They cranked up national insurance contributions while cutting universal credit, and then responded to the lifting of the energy price cap by marching their MPs through the Lobby to vote down Labour’s motion to cut VAT on household energy bills with a windfall tax. As I highlighted in my Westminster Hall debate last week, the cost of living crisis in Wales and across the UK is now very real, and it is pronounced for businesses as well as for households.
That is especially true for industries such as hospitality which were already dealing with the shockwaves of the pandemic. Hospitality means about £3.6 billion to the Welsh economy each year—that is a major contribution—and, pre-pandemic, the industry trade body UKHospitality Cymru reported that the sector employed 180,000 people in Wales, about 140,000 directly and 40,000 in the supply chain. The challenges that the sector faces are multifaceted, from energy costs to recruitment, which is currently at an all-time low. Representatives from local hospitality businesses tell me that the sector now needs greater support from the Government in their efforts to recruit and retain staff as the recovery opens up the economy. The sector in Wales also wants to discuss the scheduled increase in VAT in April, which UKHospitality suggests could lead to price inflation of around 12.4%, compounding other supply chain cost pressures.
I hope that the Government can work with the hospitality sector in Wales now as it seeks to recover the confidence that has been lost over two challenging years.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am very glad to contribute to this debate, much of which has indeed been a debate—that is refreshing, as the toing and froing is very useful. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for securing the debate. He and I, and the Tad y Tŷ, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), came into Parliament in 2001—clearly I was not as canny as the hon. Gentleman in aspiring to that title. Still, that was 20 years ago and how time flies when one is enjoying oneself—or not, as the case might be. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate in this most momentous of weeks. I would like to pay tribute immediately to the bravery and continued resistance of Ukraine’s armed forces and people in the face of the illegal and criminal Russian aggression. Our thoughts are with them in these dark times, and I hope that, through our collective action against Putin and his cronies, the people of Ukraine know that they are not alone.
On Tuesday we celebrated dydd gŵyl Dewi, St David’s day, the day that brings people together in Wales, and indeed across the world, to celebrate our place in the world. We of course celebrated here in Westminster, and I thank Mr Speaker once again for allowing us to use Speaker’s House to bring some people together for a wonderful programme of events, which I think everybody enjoyed. It was organised by the hon. Members for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and myself, and I am grateful to them for their work. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire is in our thoughts today, she having lost her mother a couple of days before St David’s day. I saw her at the event and she said to me, “Mum would never have wanted me to miss a party,” which was a wonderful thing to say. Our thoughts go out to her today.
The spirit of community was also reflected in the Senedd, where Members of all parties, including the Conservatives, supported Plaid Cymru’s long-standing call for St David’s day to be made a bank holiday. Some 80% of the people of Wales are in favour of that, according to a recent poll by the BBC, and the Parliament of Wales has backed a motion to that effect. The UK Government have a duty to deliver and might follow the lead of my local authority, Gwynedd, which for the first time gave all its workers a day off. Wales has the lowest number of bank holidays of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, so a St David’s day bank holiday is long overdue. We are the only devolved nation without the powers to do this, which represents yet another asymmetry in the treatment of devolved nations by Westminster.
Kevin Brennan
Does the hon. Gentleman have any confidence that the UK Government will listen to their Welsh Conservative colleagues, not least because in a recent business statement the previous Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees- Mogg), who now has another ministerial job, could not even name the leader of the Welsh Conservative party?
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point. I am afraid I could not name the leader either—I never know whether it is our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State across the Chamber or Mr Andrew R. T. Davies, the rather excitable leader of the Conservative group in Wales. Possibly it is the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). He gets my vote, as I really enjoy talking to him, although we rarely agree about anything—he is a very fine man. But the serious point is that we need a bank holiday to celebrate our saint’s day.
This week there was yet more evidence of the other long-standing crisis, that affecting our climate, in the form of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As the UN Secretary-General noted, the severity of the challenges facing our climate, our ecosystems and our way of life mean that the report is, in his words, an “atlas of human suffering”; that is a striking way of putting it. The report underlined in stark terms how those least responsible for climate change will face the worst risks, which is the poor of the earth mainly; how climate change will drive the widespread extinction of life both on land and in the sea; and how these life-threatening events will continue to multiply. We all have a duty and responsibility to mitigate and adapt to these outcomes. As such, I urge the Government to update their net zero commitments and use the upcoming Budget to fiscally empower Wales and the other devolved nations to meet their own net zero and sustainability commitments and targets.
Further to this, the Government must reconsider their position on the Crown Estate in Wales. They devolved the management of the Crown Estate in Scotland to Scotland in 2017, but Westminster retains control of that estate in Wales. This means that revenues from Wales’s natural resources are siphoned off to Westminster and the Treasury rather than staying in the communities where they are generated. This injustice and constitutional asymmetry is particularly pertinent to our net zero ambitions. Were we to get those rights and that power, the opportunities for us in Wales would be breathtaking. For instance, through 17 offshore wind projects, Scotland has secured nearly £700 million for its public finances and attracted a global consortium of developers who will further invest in a Scottish supply chain. This is great for Scotland and the world, and for the environment, and clearly demonstrates how local control is essential to maximise the benefits of the green transition.
While our resources are smaller in Wales, the most recent round of auctions demonstrated the potential wealth of Wales’s offshore wind resources as the Crown Estate’s Welsh marine portfolio increased in value from £49.2 million to £549.1 million—about a tenfold increase. Simply put, we have an opportunity in Wales to better deliver the renewable electricity needed for our net zero transition and for energy security. I urge the Government to reconsider their position ahead of the Budget and to work with Wales, rather than over us, to help meet our net zero commitments.
Finally, I would like to close by considering the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. As I said earlier in the debate, I was deeply moved at a rally I organised in Caernarfon on Saturday. We had between 200 and 300 people there, including people from Ukraine and Russia. I was deeply moved by the commitment shown by local people; we organised the rally overnight essentially, calling it on Friday afternoon and holding it on Saturday lunchtime.
More broadly, I applaud the UN General Assembly meeting yesterday and voting overwhelmingly to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The international community showed itself to be united in the face of Russia’s illegal war and demanded the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. Plaid Cymru also fully supports the sanctions regime introduced by the UK, the European Union and the US, and urges the Government to go further in their pursuit of Russian influence and money in the UK.
Hundreds of thousands of people have already been displaced by this conflict. Wales stands ready to assist as a nation of sanctuary, as has been said—gwlad lloches ydym ni. We are a land that welcomes people and gives sanctuary, and we are ready and willing to take in those displaced by this illegal conflict. As someone said at the rally on Saturday, “Close the door on the thieves, open the door for the refugees”—in a nutshell. That is why I urge the Government to waive all visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees coming to the UK and match the support offered by the EU, and to put in place support for the Welsh Government to implement their nation of sanctuary plan.
I will make one further point on this matter. The Prime Minister, at Prime Minister’s questions, said it was impossible for the UK to do that because countries on the mainland of Europe were within Schengen. Therefore, they had open borders and by necessity had to have a unified plan allowing movement. He neglected to mention, despite the heckles from those on the Opposition Benches, the fact that Ireland is outside Schengen. But Ireland has said, “Come. Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter if you have no contact with us. Come, there is a welcome for you.” That is how we should be in Wales, too.
To conclude, in these times of crisis we must all come together and play our part. Wales can and will do more to further our common future, whether on climate action or on helping those displaced by conflict. I urge the Government to step up, listen to the wishes and aspirations of the people of Wales, and work with everyone to deliver on them.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for securing this Backbench Business debate on Welsh affairs to celebrate St David’s day.
I would like to make my initial comments about Ukraine, because on Sunday we had 400 people gathering in Mumbles in my constituency—I was unable to join, having tested positive for covid. Ukraine Wales organised the event and it was very well and widely attended. I was very upset that I could not be there, but I did speak to my constituents Stuart and Galina Morgan. Galina is Russian and I saw the hurt on her face as she spoke about her disappointment about what is happening in Ukraine. She is half-Ukrainian and feels horrified by Putin’s barbaric actions.
Hearing stories at first hand about the work being done by so many people across Gower and across Swansea to support our Ukrainian community makes us realise that the community is pulling together. I am also very pleased with the work of the First Minister and the Welsh Senedd on Wales being a country of sanctuary, and with Swansea’s Labour council on Swansea being a city of sanctuary.
I am going to take my speech in a little bit of a different direction, and I will be putting some asks to the Secretary of State, which I hope he can help me with. It is an honour to speak in this debate. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), who asked for St David’s day to become a bank holiday. As he said, it has the full support of the Senedd and a Mr David Davies in Penclawdd, who runs a very avid campaign in the South Wales Evening Post to make St David’s day a bank holiday, which I commend him for. Let us be honest: it is about time it happened.
I grew up in Llanelli next to the Gower constituency, but overlooking Stradey Park. I bang on about having represented Wales. I have nine caps for international rugby and my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees), who is not in her place, represented Wales in squash. It is a real honour to be able to represent a country. Rugby in Wales is about identity. Villages and towns and their rugby teams across the Gower constituency are absolutely fantastic. Their communities are at the heart of my constituency, which is made up of small towns. Penclawdd, Pontardulais, Loughor, Mumbles, Swansea Uplands and Fall Bay RFC—this is where the talent in Wales is being grown, with grassroots rugby and the commitment of volunteers. Our communities, our regions and the Welsh Rugby Union are investing in girls rugby. I am very proud to be an ambassador for the West Swansea Hawks team, which has age-grade rugby for girls. It is fantastic. I know the niece of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) plays for them and she is very proud of her achievements —so am I, actually.
Going back to rugby players from my constituency, as today is World Book Day I would like to pay tribute to some rugby greats who have written books. I remember two years ago paying tribute to my friend Lowri Morgan when she was here for an event at Downing Street—which, again, I was not invited to. She is a TV presenter, an adventurer and an ultra-marathon runner. She is also lucky enough to have played rugby with me. She has written a book, “Beyond Limits”. I spent a week in Norway with the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme and the royal marines, which took me to my limits. I cannot imagine what it was like for her running an ultra-marathon in the Arctic Circle. It is really important that we share the experiences of sports people, because they are us and we are sports people. I could never do that, mind you. It is a brilliant book and I commend her for it on World Book Day.
The book by my constituent James Hook, a player for Ospreys and Wales, and David Brayley, another constituent, is absolutely brilliant. It has not only won an award, but he has written a sequel. The book gives young people—boys and girls—the inspiration to pick up a rugby ball and play for their country. Another constituent is Ryan Jones, a recent MBE and a great individual. There are so many and I could go on, but I shall not.
My raison d’être, the whole point of being a Member of Parliament, is to empower women and girls to achieve in their lives, to pull down the barriers that are put in their way, to tell their brothers that they can play for Wales as well, and to fight for the right to do that as we are 51% of the population. As I said, I grew up in Llanelli overlooking Stradey Park. My brother Julian, five years older than me and far more attractive, had it all going for him. [Hon. Members: “No!”] You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s true. He played for Wales under-18s and under-21s, and beat the All Blacks. His advice to me when I went to university was, “In freshers week, make sure you join a club and find yourself something to do, something where you can play to your strengths, Tonia.” I think that was code for, “Find a sport where you can throw your weight around.” I was very proud to play at Exeter for the women’s team in the town and for Exeter University. That afforded me the opportunity to play for Benetton Treviso in Italy. I turned down the opportunity to play for Italy, I’ll have you know. I chose to follow my heart, which is Welsh. In my fourth year of university I had the opportunity to play for Wales, to be awarded full colours at university and to follow my dreams. That is what I wish for all women and girls in sport.
Last year, together with 120 former players and coaches, I wrote to the Welsh Rugby Union, because we felt strongly that women’s rugby in Wales was being badly let down. Many things could be blamed for that. I played back in 1996—a long time ago—and felt that things had not really moved on, and many other former players felt the same way. We saw the captain, Siwan Lillicrap, crying on TV and felt her pain. We knew how the pride to pull on a jersey for Wales is unique but that that pride was being really hurt by a lack of attention and force, and we did not want to see that.
I was glad that the chief executive, Steve Phillips, spoke to a small group of us to explain the WRU’s plans and say how it would turn the situation around. He said that it would review women’s rugby, with the review undertaken by Kevin Bowring, Helen Phillips and Amanda Bennett. That was a very important process. The Secretary of State may be aware that something similar happened in Ireland, where the Irish women’s team put together a letter and went to the Government. However, their report was published—they had their report and saw what it said—and we need that to happen in Wales. The Welsh Rugby Union must publish its review of women’s rugby in Wales. That publication would be groundbreaking in fast-tracking female development in Welsh rugby for the next 10 years.
The WRU is a great organisation that has produced great rugby players, but we can always do better, and it takes a great organisation to be honest with itself and reflect on its mistakes, warts and all. If there is a sexist and misogynistic culture, that needs to be called out and addressed. We need to know why women on the executive board have resigned. We need to know why women are leaving the WRU. In the conversations that I know the Secretary of State will have with the WRU and other governing bodies in Wales, will he press them to ensure that they are stamping out sexism and misogyny in women’s sport in Wales? We are great in Wales, we are proud to be Welsh, and we must ensure that sexism and misogyny is gone. Will he, like the Irish Government, ask the WRU to publish its review into women’s rugby so that we can accept the mistakes of the past and embrace a more equal future for women and girls?
I am a proud Scarlets supporter—much to the chagrin of some of my constituents in Swansea and Gower—but I am pleased to see how the regions are also embracing the women and girls’ regional game and age-grade rugby. That needs to be invested in. I look forward to having a conversation with the Secretary of State on that, because I see the potential for the WRU, the Irish Rugby Football Union and other countries’ rugby governing bodies to come together for a Celtic or European league so that there is another level of rugby for young women and girls—older women as well, if they are good enough—to strive to play in. That would put us on a competitive stage with England, France and New Zealand, and we would be in the right place for the women’s rugby world cup again.
I pay tribute to Nigel Walker, who was brought in by the WRU and has addressed so many of the issues that were haunting the women’s rugby team. He has worked day and night, and that man has a heart of gold—he is brilliant. I also pay tribute to Liza Burgess, who is also part of the WRU set-up—I think she is now the coach or manager of the under-18s women’s team. Women and girls need our support in rugby in Wales. I hope that the Secretary of State will meet me for a conversation on that as well as press the WRU to publish its review and find out why women are leaving. If there is a culture of misogyny and sexism in that organisation and other governing bodies in Wales, I hope that, along with me, he will help to stamp it out.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) in this important debate. She is a vociferous campaigner for women’s sport, not just in Wales, but across the globe. She has given me a brilliant opportunity to humbly brag about my fantastic niece Robyn, who plays for West Swansea Hawks rugby team, is hoping to be capped for Wales in the under-18s girls squad and has just been given a place in the Wales under-17s netball squad. We can clearly see where the talent is in my family.
I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) on securing this important debate. It is my third St David’s day debate in this place—how quickly has the time gone?
It would be remiss of me not to mention what has been happening in Ukraine. The people of Pontypridd and Taff Ely send all their thoughts and prayers to the people of Ukraine. Colleagues have mentioned Wales’s history and proud relationship with Ukraine; we have always stood together. Pontypridd has its own very special link with Ukraine: our Member of the Senedd and Wales’s Counsel General is my very good friend and colleague Mick Antoniw, who is of Ukrainian heritage, as colleagues will know. We stand with him, with all his family and with all Ukraine today.
I would like to make a few important points about the incredible work that is going on in Wales as we head into what I hope will be the road to recovery from the pandemic, once and for all. It has been an extremely busy period for all of us in this place, with the very welcome return of the Welsh Grand Committee only a few weeks ago. Very sadly, I had an unavoidable clash and was unable to speak in the debate, but I look forward to participating in the next one. With any luck, my Welsh learner language skills will finally be showcased on an appropriate stage.
This St David’s day, I want to touch on how the coronavirus has changed lives in Pontypridd and Rhondda Cynon Taf and to celebrate how my community has come together in difficult times. In Pontypridd, we have seen huge physical changes to our town centres, particularly in Ponty town. With the impact of the pandemic, the flooding and changes in how we shop and use our high streets in comparison with the years before, it has been incredible to see people and businesses in our community reimagining what our high streets can be and how they serve our communities.
We have seen a real explosion in the number of cafés, restaurants and bars making use of the space. I cannot list every single one, but I will give a quick shout-out to some incredible places that I have had the great privilege of visiting in recent months. From the award-winning Janet’s Authentic Northern Chinese in Ponty market and the new Gatto Lounge, both of which I visited with my team in the autumn, to the brand-new No 12 cocktail bar, which is very handily located next door to my office, we are seeing a huge growth in what our high streets have to offer. Old favourites such as Alfred’s and the world-renowned The Prince’s are drawing in more people than ever.
Especially in the pandemic, people have been encouraged to support local businesses where they can. Crucial to that success is the hard work of the fantastic Pontypridd business improvement district team, who have done so much to support businesses in recent months. Across my constituency, our many small businesses have had to get creative over the past few years. As ever, there are too many to mention, but I will name a handful: the brilliant Kookoo Madame in Ponty, Pink Zebra in Llantrisant, the Glamorgan brewery, Bragdy Twt Lol in Treforest, Best Buds by Samara florists in Tonyrefail, Bradleys Coffee in Talbot Green, Cortile Coffee in Ponty town and the Deli in Pontyclun. Special mention must go to the incredible efforts of Dawn Parkin, who is up for a St David’s Day award this year in the Senedd; to the team at Interlink, who fundraised to support people at the beginning of the pandemic; and to the team at Beefy’s Baps, who helped the elderly by distributing free food to all those in need.
It is not just small businesses that have been at the heart of our covid recovery. Our fantastic local tourist destinations have helped to take the lead on our road to normality. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Royal Mint in Llantrisant, which the Secretary of State and I had the great opportunity of visiting last year, rapidly went from making coins to making personal protective equipment. It then acted as a major covid testing site for much of the pandemic. It really is a fantastic and fascinating place to visit—I recommend it if you are ever in Pontypridd, Madam Deputy Speaker—and it is busy making coins to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee this year. Also busy is Nantgarw China Works, which I recently visited alongside the Welsh Government Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport, Dawn Bowden MS.
Investing in such local tourist destinations is a crucial part of supporting communities across Wales in their recovery from the pandemic. Long-term, sustainable changes are also crucial to towns and communities like mine if they are to continue to be fit for purpose for our residents in the long run. For example, I have started to see Pontypridd as something of a transport hub for Wales. We play host to the new Transport for Wales offices right in the middle of town, which, combined with our strengths in aviation and engineering and fantastic local coach operators such as Ferris Holidays and Edwards Coaches, are bringing vital jobs and infrastructure to our community.
While the Government’s confusion over devolved responsibilities is clearer now than ever, I want to talk briefly about the importance of devolution to my constituents. All hon. Members participating in the debate understand the importance of devolution and of working closely with our counterparts in Welsh Government. Our Labour Government in Wales have worked hard throughout the pandemic to take a cautious approach. They are leading by example, unlike some people, and are working hard to support everyone through the significant challenges that we have faced. I have been in Parliament for a few years now and my experiences as a Welsh MP and as a former shadow Minister for Northern Ireland have made it clear to me that for much of the UK Government the devolved nations are just a distant second thought.
We all remember well the controversy that surrounded the UK Government’s disastrous attempt to cut free school meals for children in England, a policy that I would hope that Members of all political persuasions could see was an appalling idea from the get-go. Luckily for children and families in my area, our fantastic Labour-led local authority, Rhondda Cynon Taf Borough Council, led by Andrew Morgan, has for some time been providing parents with the vital cash needed to put food on the table for children.
We have also seen the Welsh Labour Government boldly invest in our creative sector in a way that continues to be missed by the Chancellor in Westminster. Recently they announced £15 million from the third round of the cultural recovery fund to support the arts and cultural sector through covid recovery. Clearly, the Welsh Government recognise, in a way that seems to be missed in England, the unique value of our brilliant local creative sector across Wales. In Pontypridd and across RCT we have some incredible musicians, including our Welsh icon Sir Tom Jones, but there are also smaller groups and organisations that have benefited hugely from Welsh Government support. From the world-renowned brass band the Cory Band, to our very own Dance Crazy in Llantwit Fardre and Green Rooms in Treforest, I am pleased to report that our creative industries locally are still alive and kicking, despite an extremely difficult few years. Long may they continue.
To conclude, it is of course undeniable that there is more work to be done, and we are not yet out of the woods in terms of coronavirus and its implications for our local communities across Wales. What is clear, however, is that our Union—our United Kingdom—is at its strongest when we are able to celebrate and respect our differences but unite against adversity. I am confident that the First Minister of Wales and Welsh Labour are the team Wales needs to see us through the pandemic and beyond. I will of course continue to work in partnership with them over the coming months and years, because only by doing so will we be able to truly rebuild a thriving, ambitious and successful nation out of a crisis. For me that really is the very essence and purpose of St David’s day. Long may this work continue. I would like to conclude with the words of St David—his last words:
“Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things”.
Diolch.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
It is wonderful to follow my good and hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who is a fantastic advocate for her constituency, and to take part in what is one of the very few opportunities for Welsh MPs to talk about Wales.
I pay tribute to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), who opened the debate and who, sadly, has said that he will stand down at the next election. When the time comes, we will hugely miss his experience and great talent.
There is never a shortage of pride among the people of Wales. We are a resilient, kind, caring nation—always have been and always will be—and we have witnessed that over the past difficult few years. As we reflect on what has been an unprecedented year—I am sure that in 50 years’ time it will be a very tough history exam to study for—I am struck by one overarching theme: the strength of humanity. The human spirit has proven itself to be unbreakable again and again over these past few years, and it is being tested once more. We have all seen the barrage of distressing images and videos from war-struck Ukraine. The most poignant that I have seen is of an elderly woman whose blue eyes pierce through the blood dripping down her face. I know that we are all united in our support for the Ukrainian people. We are all deeply saddened and it is hard not to get hugely upset as we see those very distressing images.
Our First Minister’s response to Russia’s abhorrent attack on Ukraine was to announce that £4 million would be made available to assist with addressing the humanitarian crisis. In that announcement, Mark Drakeford said that he wanted to go even further. Unlike our Prime Minister, he does match words with actions. The Welsh Labour Government have called for a
“simple, fast, safe and legal route for sanctuary”,
with biometric requirements lifted, and for the deadline for the EU settlement scheme family permit to be extended from 29 March. It is unsurprising that hundreds of Welsh supporters have gathered outside the Senedd over the past few days to show their solidarity with Ukraine. During Tuesday’s rally, my Labour colleague in the Senedd, Mick Antoniw, the Member for Pontypridd and whose family are Ukrainian, as has been mentioned, praised Wales for its “phenomenal” support. Mick echoed my views and those of many others when he described the steps taken by the UK Government to assist refugees fleeing Ukraine as “totally unacceptable” and in stark contrast to Wales being a “proud nation of sanctuary”. Mick began an online fundraising campaign to buy medical equipment for injured people in Ukraine with a target to raise £5,000. This has recently reached £23,500—thousands of pounds in donations given in a true spirit of random acts of Welsh kindness, something that Mark Drakeford referred to in his own St David’s day speech on Tuesday when he said
“let’s all do a little something to brighten up someone else’s day. We can call them random acts of Welshness!”
I hope we can all follow Mark’s example and make sure that we show kindness to those around us during these trying times, just as my constituents have done.
The outpouring of local efforts to collect emergency supplies and give donations has been exemplary and I would like to pay tribute to two brilliant local businesses, Flower Lodge and the Secret Shed in Rhiwbina, who are fundraising and have made some brilliant efforts to progress this. I think all of us on these Benches will agree what a huge difference it makes when we have a true leader in power—someone who leads by example, putting the welfare of his people first, as we have seen in Wales. I also want to pay tribute to the President of Ukraine for this. The sheer depth of his passion and commitment to his country is unwavering, and something I know many of us could learn from.
The Labour Government in Wales are continuing to prove what power looks like in the hands of those who are concerned with their entire population, not just with the top 1% while making the other 99% pay for it. Just yesterday, the Welsh Government confirmed that they will spend more than £1 billion on new social housing over the next three years, £72 million of which will be spent on accelerating the scale and pace of the decarbonisation of homes across Wales, proving once again that they are a true leader on climate change. As a way of combating the Tory-made cost of living crisis, they have also made cash payments available to people on lower incomes to help with their energy bills, as well as providing free prescriptions and free school breakfasts.
In an attempt to break the cycle of poverty, the Welsh Government announced last week what has been dubbed a “brave and imaginative decision” to pilot a basic income scheme. This will focus on a group of around 500 young people leaving care who are turning 18. It will start in the next financial year and each person will receive £1,600 a month, making it the most generous basic income in the world. This group has been chosen because young people leaving care are much more likely to be socially excluded and have poor educational qualifications. It is about giving this group of young people the best possible start to their adult life, and as our Welsh Minister for Social Justice said, we want to support them to thrive, not just survive.
In Wales we look after one another. This is in welcome contrast to those in power here. I am proud that, at local level, we have hard-working individuals, business leaders and community leaders who are prepared to step up in their spare time and bring their experience, knowledge and time to improving our communities. At the risk of echoing my good friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), I want to pay tribute to our local councillors, Dilwar Ali and Jen Burke-Davies for Llandaff North and Graham Hinchey and Julie Sangani for Heath and Birchgrove. I also want to pay tribute to our candidates: Mike Ash-Edwards, Marc Palmer, Jackie Jones, Kate Carr and Jamie Green for Whitchurch and Tongwynlais; Bev Hampson, Morgan Fackrell and Chris Walburn for Rhiwbina; Leo Holmes and Claire O’Shea for Gabalfa; Bethan Proctor and Gary Hunt for Llanishen; David Chinnick, Spencer Pearson and Georgina Phillips for Lisvane and Thornhill; and Khuram Chowdhry and Nicola Savage for Pontprennau and Old St Mellons. I am proud of all of them, and I wish them well in the coming elections.
Finally, I want to say a few words about our language. As our Minister for Education in Wales, Jeremy Miles, reminded us, we should never fail in being proud of our language. It is part of what makes us us, and we have a duty to make sure it thrives. Cymraeg belongs to all of us. Mae’r Gymraeg yn perthyn i ni i gyd.
What we have seen in Wales from our Welsh Labour Government is just that: a clear vision and clear, calm and collected leadership. I am proud of that.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a great honour to speak in such a wide-ranging and overwhelmingly good-humoured annual debate on Welsh affairs. Before I get properly under way, I associate myself with the remarks that all hon. Members have made about the current situation in Ukraine, which distresses us all very greatly. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have used the powers they have to assist as well as they can. In this fast-moving situation, we are all looking to come up with the best possible outcomes for Ukraine. I associate myself with the calls for the UK Government to open routes that allow more people to come to safety and sanctuary in these islands.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) on securing this debate, and I hope everybody in Wales and the Welsh diaspora enjoyed a very happy St David’s day on Tuesday. I assure our Welsh friends that, despite recent events at the Principality stadium—I am sure you share my distress in equal measure, Madam Deputy Speaker—we bear no grudges. Hearing the speech by the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) about the amount of rugby development work going on, particularly in the younger generation, it is perhaps no surprise that Scotland has had such a dismal run of results in Wales recently.
In addition to our sporting links, Wales and Scotland have strong historical and cultural ties going back many centuries. Many of our traditions are shared. If the House will permit me, I offer my own modest example. When I was a student at university, I had a good friend called Carwyn, who achieved some measure of fame going around Wales playing the harp to put himself through his studies.
Carwyn and I met in Cardiff and we decided to go out busking. Carwyn had his harp and I had my violin. We went up to Cwmbran, where we did quite well—we made about £30 in an hour, with which we were very happy. We then headed up to Brecon and made about £70 in an hour, with which we were even happier. The following day I was coming over to see friends in London, so we decided to go busking in Weston-super-Mare once we got over the bridge, and we made the grand total of no pounds and no pence in the two hours we were there.
I bear no grudges against the good people of Weston-super-Mare, and perhaps some day I will go back without my violin. I am not sure where that leaves us, but our combined Scottish and Welsh cultural efforts certainly seemed to find more fertile ground in Wales than on the other side of the Severn bridge.
A debate on Welsh affairs is an opportunity not just to reflect but to look forward. The 2021 Senedd election, for the first time, enfranchised 16 and 17-year-old voters, just as we did in Scotland at the 2014 referendum. It amplified the voices of young people in the political system, allowing them to have their say on important issues. Perhaps just as importantly, it allowed what we might call the devolution generation to pass its verdict on the shared and sometimes competing visions for Wales we have heard expressed this afternoon.
The election late last year yielded a working relationship between Labour and Plaid Cymru. Plaid is not in government, but that cross-party co-operation reflects the relationship that the Scottish National party now has in government with the Green party in Holyrood. It just goes to show how parties’ setting aside differences, establishing their common ground and working together on delivering a common purpose can be an incredibly positive way of working, rather than having some of the crude majoritarianism we sometimes see in legislators closer to where we are now, who are able to press on despite a minority share of the vote.
That agreement, certainly when viewed from Scotland, has resulted in a hugely ambitious policy programme: extending free schools to all primary school pupils; extending childcare to all two-year-olds, setting up an expert group to create a national care service, free at the point of need; taking action on housing—on unaffordable housing and ending homelessness; exploring the creation of a shadow broadcasting and communications authority for Wales to address concerns about fragility in the media and the attacks we have sadly seen on the independence of the print and broadcast media; and, perhaps very significantly, working on plans to reform the Senedd, based on having 80 to 100 Members, to allow for better scrutiny of matters that comes under the auspices of the Assembly, and a voting system that is at least as proportionate, if not more proportionate, than the one that is there now, with some gender quotas, which can really begin to transform the debate in politics. Although I am sure that neither party will have achieved everything out of that agreement that they perhaps desire, all told it is a very broad package of social, economic, cultural and environmental measures, which can help to reinforce the foundations of society in Wales as a modern, prosperous, socially just, confident, inclusive and outward-looking European nation.
The devolution generation might like what they see their Government doing in Wales, just as our devolution generation like what they see in Scotland, but the evidence is mounting that they are far less likely to be enamoured of what they see being done in their name in Westminster, under the current Government. Like most things, that comes back to the problems we are facing as a result of the hard Brexit that has been inflicted on us. Neither Wales nor Scotland were given a seat at the negotiating table and our voices were marginalised. We were told to just suck it up—again, that comes back to the crude majoritarianism I mentioned. That approach displayed a complete lack of respect, not just for the devolved institutions, but for the Union itself—I say that as someone who is avowedly not a Unionist. It seemed to me to tear at the very fabric of what many of us, even if we did not support the Union, thought it had at its heart and what it was all about. Through the likes of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the remit of devolved powers is being undermined by the UK Government, whether we are talking about not transferring, as we were told would happen, all the powers that were invested in Brussels back to the devolved institutions; simply arrogating the ability to spend, overrule and overreach in respect of the properly devolved structures of governance; ignoring the lack of legislative consent motions; tearing up the Sewel convention, which was such an important part of embedding relations between Westminster and devolved Parliaments and Assemblies at the outset; and undermining the strategic approach that comes from having devolved government working closely with local authorities by simply trying to create bypass streams of funding.
Nowhere do we see that more than in the “levelling up” agenda. I have to say that it is going to take a considerably greater amount of money than has been indicated to date to compensate for the loss of economic opportunities as a result of Brexit and for the loss of structural funding and individual grants programmes that were supported by the European Union and were done in partnership with devolved Governments and local authorities, rather than being done to them. It is going to take a great deal more than what we have heard and seen so far to tackle some of the deep-rooted economic and structural inequalities that we see across the UK. Let me give an example on the shared prosperity fund. I am happy to be corrected on it if I am wrong, but I do not think I will be. Seven out of 10 of the most deprived local authorities in Wales have yet to see any funding coming through. The situation is only marginally better in Scotland, where about six in 10 authorities are failing to get anything through that process.
That takes us to a really fundamental problem: the UK is one of the most geographically unequal of all the OECD nations, with a political and economic system that is skewed very heavily towards London and the south-east. Success breeds success, but so many parts of the UK are performing below their potential because of the way that we choose to structure our politics and the economy. To give an example, gross value added per head in Wales in 2018 was just 72.8% of the UK level, which is pulled up considerably by the heft of London and the south-east. It is important to recognise that Wales is not necessarily the outlier; it is London and the south-east, because of the pull of the capital city effect.
There are, however, other long-term reasons for the disparity which are equally applicable to Scotland, such as the legacy of rapid deindustrialisation through the ’80s and the failure of successive UK Governments to use the powers that they possess in order to alter that picture. Research and development is one such area that seeds success for the future. The Office for National Statistics has data that shows that London, the south-east and the east of England accounted for 42% of total UK R&D funding in 2017. In 2019, that share of the cake had risen to 54%. Meanwhile, Wales in 2019 managed to gather in only 4% of that, which is lower than we would expect from the population share. We have to ask some serious questions about why that is and how it will be addressed, because it certainly will not be addressed by levelling up, or by the modest increase to R&D spending that the Chancellor announced in his recent Budget.
Any commitments to invest in infrastructure would carry far greater weight had the Government not, as I said earlier, bypassed aspects of devolution and the established funding formulas. In Wales, we have a particularly egregious example of that when it comes to HS2, the building of which will diminish Welsh competitiveness at the expense of those regions that will benefit. I am happy to be corrected if wrong, but HS2 also sits outside the funding formula, meaning that the Welsh Government will not even get the benefits of the proportionate spend that could be put into extending the electrification to Swansea, electrifying the valley lines, or any of the other major infrastructure investments that could really unlock potential in parts of Wales that are crying out for it, and make transformative changes to infrastructure from north to south. Members might expect me to say this, but I do not think that active interest from Whitehall is really needed in order to do that, or more of the self-serving cant that we sometimes hear that devolution is somehow misused whenever the Welsh or the Scots have the temerity to vote for more non-Conservative politicians than Conservative ones. What is needed is to give our devolved Governments the tools they need to get on with the job.
In that regard, I particularly commend the suggestion of my good friend the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) when he spoke of Crown estate devolution. He spoke of the £700 million that has come to Scotland from the latest licensing round for offshore wind, but that is only part of the picture. A significant part of that, once the offshore wind farms are up and running, is the additional revenue stream per megawatt-hour of electricity generated that will be able to be directly invested in public services. That is exactly the sort of empowerment agenda that could really start to bring benefits to Wales, just as it hopefully will in Scotland, in terms of supply chains—tackling the world’s environmental problems, ensuring an independent funding base for public services in Wales, and giving our politicians the ability to get on with the job.
My party has long argued that the UK’s fiscal settlement is simply not fit for purpose, and the pandemic has really taken that argument out of the abstract and into reality. In his speech, which I listened to closely, the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) spoke of the money that had come in Wales’s direction as a result of the pandemic. What I did not hear him say was that the Welsh Government, like the Scottish Government, had to wait for decisions to be taken on the English response to the pandemic before those moneys were generated through the Barnett formula and transferred. That made it much harder than it ought to have been to plan the public policy response in Wales and Scotland—and, incidentally, in Northern Ireland—to the pandemic. A Government who were confident in their stewardship, not just of government but of the Union, would surely look to see how they could overcome such frictions instead of perpetually demanding gratitude when a sclerotic and creaky system of funding eventually coughs and splutters its way into life to deliver the money that it was always designed to supply.
Scotland and Wales have been on quite a political journey since the Parliaments opened their doors. In my own party, we certainly stand in solidarity with the entitlement of people in Wales to exercise their right to self-determination; to choose the form of Government that is best suited to their needs; to choose their own future; and to have their choices accepted without hesitation or qualification from the UK Government. I hope that we can all agree in this place, as democrats, that how far and how fast Wales and Scotland continue on that direction of travel ought to be a matter for the Scottish people and the people of Wales to express for themselves, and for themselves alone.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for securing and leading this debate. His recent announcement that he would be standing down at the next election took some of us by surprise, and I hope he knows that his wisdom, his counsel and his huge contribution will be missed in this place. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and I thank all colleagues here today for contributing to a wide-ranging and positive debate on Welsh affairs.
With the horrors unfolding hour by hour in Ukraine, I know that it can be difficult to focus our minds closer to home. As we have heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), however, Wales and Ukraine have special historical bonds. One of those is between the town of Merthyr Tydfil in my constituency and the city of Donetsk, which was originally named Hughesovka after the businessman who built it, John James Hughes from Merthyr Tydfil. John Hughes, whose father was a lead engineer at the historic Cyfarthfa ironworks, took a team of around 100 Welsh miners and metalworkers in the 1870s to build the city that is now Donetsk. Our countries have a special link, and we and the people we represent the length and breadth of Wales send solidarity and strength to the brave Ukrainian people as they face Putin’s illegal and barbaric onslaught. The thoughts of all of us are with them today.
Today’s debate has become an important annual event to mark our patron saint, Saint David. In opening the debate today, my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly talked about the shared prosperity fund, and he asked for further clarification on how it would work. After almost five years, I do not think that is too much to ask, and it would allay the deep concern and uncertainty that exists among local authorities and partners in Wales. Those comments were echoed by the hon. Members for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and my hon. Friends the Members for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).
My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly talked about the cost of living, the huge pressures that food and utilities prices are creating, and the folly of the Chancellor’s £200 loan for utilities. He spoke about the need to support people who are in the greatest need, and he referred to the Welsh Government’s winter fuel support scheme, which I will return to a little later.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West again talked about the need for this debate to be a permanent fixture, and he spoke about one of his predecessors in this place, Stefan Terlezki. My hon. Friend paid tribute to the Welsh Government and Labour-led Cardiff Council, led ably by Councillor Huw Thomas, for all the work that it has done in partnership through the recent difficult times. He also highlighted the barriers to cultural exchanges for schoolchildren.
My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli talked about this year being the 100th anniversary of Labour majority representation in Wales, with Labour taking 18 out of the 35 seats in the 1922 general election. She paid tribute to one of her predecessors, Jim Griffiths, and voiced her concerns about the impact that 12 years of Tory Government have had on the poorest families in our communities. She quoted the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, Councillor Andrew Morgan, who said that support and funding for local government were more than figures on a spreadsheet; they represented investments in people and lives.
My hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) talked movingly about the former MP for Aberavon, Hwyel Francis, and his huge contribution to the Labour family, to Welsh life and to his community. She mentioned his role in developing the South Wales miners’ library. She also spoke movingly about the contribution of Councillor Ali Thomas, who was a legend not just in Neath but across Wales.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) talked about her constituents stuck in Ukraine and the compassion needed to support safe passage, and highlighted her pride in Wales as a nation of sanctuary. She also spoke of the frontline work carried out by Newport City Council, led by Councillor Jane Mudd, and the delivery of 9,000 laptops across Newport and the £55 million in Welsh Government funding to support businesses there.
The hon. Member for Arfon talked about the need to make St David’s day a bank holiday, the climate change challenges in delivering renewable energy, and also Wales’s role as a nation of sanctuary.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) talked about the powerful work across communities to unite and offer sanctuary. She spoke movingly about the work being done by rugby clubs across Wales at the grassroots of the sport. She spoke with pride about her own prowess in winning nine Welsh caps, and I know that all of her colleagues are proud of that as well. She also talked about the work being done at grassroots for children, particularly girls, in supporting the foundation of rugby.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) talked about covid through difficult times, on the back of the floods in Pontypridd, and the need to support local businesses more than ever. She also talked about the excellent work of the Labour-led council in Rhondda Cynon Taf, led by Councillor Andrew Morgan, and the support that it has given to families by delivering meals and food.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) talked about the work in unprecedented times, and the role of the Welsh Government in supporting the Ukrainian people. She highlighted the role of our First Minister, Mark Drakeford, and also the work of councillors across Cardiff North in supporting people during these difficult times.
The right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) and the hon. Members for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) and for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) also spoke movingly about the work being done across their constituencies.
One year ago, the then shadow Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), spoke in this debate and said:
“This year has been a most extraordinarily difficult year, and I express our enormous gratitude to all our key workers in Wales. I pay tribute to First Minister Mark Drakeford and the Welsh Government for their skill and commitment in handling the biggest health emergency in a century—keeping people safe, working closely with local government to keep vital services running, providing the most generous support package for businesses anywhere in the UK, and, of course, protecting our NHS.”—[Official Report, 25 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 1198.]
Little did we know then that the most difficult of challenges would continue for another year. I once again want to express our gratitude and admiration to our key workers, to the Welsh Government and to our local councils for everything that has been done to keep Wales safe over the past 12 months.
The contribution of our local councils and councillors, their leadership and all their workforce, often go unremarked on, and so, in the time that I have today, I want to highlight just a few of their achievements. Welsh Labour councils up and down Wales have supported our communities day in, day out over the past year. They have played an integral role in the lives of our constituents. As a former councillor, I know the vital role that locally elected representatives play. Whether picking up prescriptions, delivering food or essential medication to those who were vulnerable or shielding, and also to key workers, Welsh Labour councillors have been at the very heart of our communities.
In Cardiff, Councillor Norma Mackie returned to service in the NHS, alongside her council duties, to vaccinate thousands of Cardiff residents in Wales’s record-breaking vaccine roll-out—I expect she will have vaccinated more people while I am speaking in this debate. The council workforce in Cardiff were superb, adapting to urgent circumstances—all credit to the council leadership, led by Huw Thomas, working with elected members, the workforce and trade unions.
In Wrexham, Welsh Labour councillors including Malcolm King and Dana Davies volunteer at The Venture in Caia Park, a charity set up by Councillor King, which provides extensive play facilities, learning and support specifically for children and young people. It is a real example of community provision while the independent councillors who lead Wrexham Council fight among themselves instead of for the people of Wrexham.
In Torfaen, at Panteg House in Pontypool, an incredible group of local people run a food bank, a community garden and sports teams, among other things. There are 60 community groups active from Panteg House, catering for all ages from babies and toddlers to pensioners. Initially operating as the free school meals pick-up point for Griffithstown and Sebastopol at the beginning of the pandemic, the scheme quickly snowballed into a community food and clothes bank. Seven days a week, amazing volunteers sort, pack and distribute food and essential items to those in need, as well as offering financial, mental health and physical support across Torfaen. Torfaen’s Welsh Labour councillors, led by council leader Councillor Anthony Hunt, are amongst the local residents who make up the volunteers who ensure that households across Torfaen have access to regular food.
Today, however, under the economic management of the Conservative party and the choices it has made, Wales faces the biggest drop in living standards for 30 years: the highest inflation rate for a decade; gas and electricity bills increasing by 54%; a cut to universal credit and working tax credit, with another to come; more people being pushed into higher tax thresholds; national insurance levels increasing by more than 10%, breaking the party’s 2019 manifesto promise; and a real-terms cut to state pensions.
In just a few weeks’ time, the Conservatives’ cost of living crisis will really hurt deeply. Across Wales, the numbers on people’s payslips will go down and the numbers on their bills will go up. As more and more households try to cope with the impact of the decisions the Conservative party has made, food banks such as those at Panteg House will only become busier.
Where the Conservative Government fail, Welsh Labour delivers. In Bridgend, the Welsh Labour council has helped more than 4,600 people into work through its dedicated employability scheme, involving free training, supported job searches and CV development advice, to upskill and support those seeking work. At the height of the second covid wave, Welsh Labour’s Caerphilly Council delivered its millionth free school meal—an astonishing achievement made possible by a great Welsh Labour council, ably led by council leader Councillor Philippa Marsden and local councillors including Carl Cuss and Eluned Stenner, among others, with financial support from our Welsh Labour Government.
Hundreds of council homes are being built at numerous sites by the Welsh Labour council in Caerphilly, and there are plans for thousands of new council homes in Cardiff over the next two years, including the brand-new net zero council homes welcoming their first occupants in Roath in Cardiff Central. They are 90% more efficient than standard homes, tackling the housing shortage and climate crisis and reducing energy costs all at the same time. There are now hundreds of high-quality new homes in Flint, together with newly built care facilities and a superb town centre regeneration that has created more jobs and apprenticeships locally, all delivered by the Welsh Labour-led council in Flintshire.
Locally, in Merthyr Tydfil, Welsh Labour councillors are looking to replace the ruling Independent Group, whose councillors are too busy squabbling among themselves to look after the needs of residents—something they have in common with the independents in Wrexham, it seems. Just yesterday, the Welsh Labour group on Merthyr Tydfil Council launched an ambitious manifesto that plans to deliver for local people, improving local transport, building on the brand new £11 million bus station provided through Welsh Government funding, and pursuing its No. 1 priority of improving education standards after they have slipped backwards under the Independent administration.
Across Merthyr Tydfil and elsewhere, Welsh Labour councillors are at the forefront of our communities. We have community champions such as Councillor Gareth Richards, who was recently involved in the successful campaign to improve the library facility at Treharris; Gareth Lewis and Brent Carter, who have been supporting those affected by floods in their communities; and all those who helped during the pandemic.
As the effects of climate change become ever more pronounced, freak weather events will continue to become more frequent. Significant investment in infrastructure and flood defences has been made by Welsh Labour councils with funding from the Welsh Labour Government, despite little additional support from this Conservative Government. Most importantly for Wales’s future and our future generations, our Welsh Labour Government and Welsh Labour councils are transforming our schools through the 21st century schools building programme, delivering the best possible learning environments for our children and young people. I also pay tribute to the Welsh Local Government Association for the role that it has played and continues to play in supporting local government across Wales, and to the excellent leadership of Welsh Labour’s Councillor Andrew Morgan.
On the whole, we have had a positive debate highlighting Welsh affairs and the contribution of Wales, and Welsh local government in particular.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Simon Hart)
I echo the tributes to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) for bringing this debate to the House—I also thank the Backbench Business Committee—and regarding the fact that since we last met he has announced that he will be standing down at the next election, whenever that might be. I join in and support his warm comments about Ukraine. I do not think there is a Member of the House with whom those comments would not have resonated, whether here or watching these affairs on television.
However, there the agreement may come to a rather abrupt end. The hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned two very important subjects: the shared prosperity fund and the cost of living. On the shared prosperity fund, I think that he and other Members, on both sides of the House, will be pleased that the long wait for clarity and publication is coming to an end, and there will be further details available any day now. I am conscious that I may have said that before on previous occasions, but one day I will be absolutely right, and that day is soon. Like other Members who have raised similar issues, he made perfectly justifiable comments about mutual respect and a desire to minimise petty squabbles—an ambition somewhat thwarted by subsequent speeches—but that only works so long as the shared ambition is about outcomes rather than about power.
Simon Hart
I will not give way for a bit, but I anticipate that the hon. Gentleman will want to intervene when I get on to his speech.
On the hon. Member for Caerphilly’s points about the cost of living, all of us representing seats in Wales will have examples not dissimilar to the ones he has raised in respect of this particularly difficult challenge. While the UK Government have attempted, and continue to attempt, to intervene in all the ways that he suggested so as to be as generous, rapid, thorough, fair and humanitarian as possible, the Treasury must of course balance that with trying to control the inflationary effect of those significant interventions, which, if allowed to run rampant, would end up with greater hardship being suffered by the very families that we both agree need the help that we can all provide.
Wayne David
I would respectfully point out to the Secretary of State that inflation is already very high and that at the same time we have a cost of living crisis for some of our poorest people. The two things go together.
Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. That is precisely why we have to take considerable care with the measures that we are taking, because if we do not, then the already quite pressing inflationary pressures can only get worse. We are in the same place on that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) rightly introduced early on in the debate a tribute to our soldiers of the Royal Welsh currently stationed in Estonia. That was a sobering and passionate reminder of the role that they are playing and have played in many other pressures facing the nation over the past few months and years. He mentioned, as did others, the potential in the renewables sector, especially in north Wales. He is right to have the ambitions, as is our hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), for large-scale and small-scale nuclear at Wylfa. The other day, I met representatives of the floating offshore wind sector to talk about the potential in the Celtic sea, particularly off the west coast of Pembrokeshire. There are unbelievably exciting prospects in that regard, so we need to aim high. When I refer to the comments of the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) about devolution of the Crown Estate, I will explain why that would limit our ambitions rather than enhance them.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West mentioned the tidal lagoon at Colwyn Bay. That was an argument well made. When visiting north Wales with the Prime Minister the other day, we looked out across the potential site for that. I might add that the Prime Minister has been to that particular part of Wales more often than the First Minister, in fairness to him. That is how seriously we take levelling up and the potential in that part of Wales. I resonate with the comments that my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West made about the Mersey Dee Alliance. That can be just as easily extended to mid Wales and its relationship with the west midlands as it can to south and west Wales and their relationship to Gloucester, Swindon, London, the south-west of England and beyond, as represented by the Western Gateway.
I quickly turn to the comments of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who seems to have generated more use of my highlighter pen than any other contribution today, which is probably what he intended to achieve, so full marks for having done that. He made some interesting comments about leadership, most of which I had some sympathy with, but in his glowing tribute to the First Minister, it struck me that if the First Minister’s choice of leadership had been successful, we would be confronting our problems across the globe with the potential of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as Prime Minister. I am not sure that would necessarily have provided the leadership and robust response to Vladimir Putin.
Kevin Brennan
On the issue of leadership and mutual respect, will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to clear up confusion in the House? Is he the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, as according to the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), or is it somebody else?
Simon Hart
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the leader of our Conservative group in Cardiff is Andrew RT Davies, and the leader of the Conservative party is Boris Johnson. The hon. Gentleman should know that by now, I would have thought.
I have to resist the hon. Gentleman’s attempt to talk about an English approach or a Welsh approach to the covid response. If anything epitomised a UK approach, it was our response to the covid pandemic, and what better example of that than the vaccination programme, which was originally conceived, researched, contracted, delivered and paid for by the UK Government. It was then distributed, with some professionalism, I might add, by a combination of the Welsh Government—tick that box, we can credit our opponents when necessary and appropriate—with the huge help of the Ministry of Defence, as represented rather conveniently by the Minister for Defence Procurement, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), who is sitting next to me on the Front Bench, and NHS Wales. The suggestion that there was either an English approach or a Welsh approach is demonstrably untrue.
I add one last thing. The hon. Gentleman made a rather unnecessarily snide comment about integrity, but when it comes to promises to the electorate, the First Minister and the leader of Plaid Cymru both said just before the Senedd elections that the one thing they would not do is get into bed with each other. Within months of making that pledge to voters in Wales, they did precisely the opposite.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), with rather good timing—it was a relief at that moment—decided to celebrate everything that is good about Wales, having been treated for a few minutes before that with apparently everything that is bad. I thought that his message to the outside world about what Wales has to offer, and in particular what his part of Wales has to offer, and the strength, value and opportunities that the Union presents, was incredibly well-timed and reminded me of the visit I paid with him to the Trevor Basin back along, where we were able to see for ourselves the joy on the faces of the people who had received funding courtesy of some of the new initiatives from the UK Government to engage in projects that they have hitherto not been able to do.
The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) rightly made some powerful comments about how we should be helping communities in need at this time, but she went on to mention one or two things that make that more difficult in terms of the relationship with the Welsh Government. The solutions to the very problems that she rightly pointed out are not necessarily always achieved just by dishing out cash. I do not think that the Labour party has a remotely compassionate record to look back on. The undeniable truth is that, every time a Labour Administration have held office for goodness knows how many generations, more people were unemployed at the end than at the beginning. That is nothing to be proud of; it is no sign of compassion at all.
We want to be as fair and as reasonable as we can to as wide a number of people in vulnerable positions as possible not only by making sensible, fair and humane interventions but by creating the best circumstances for job creation and proper well-paid sustaining jobs across the whole of Wales. That is compassionate and that is levelling up. It is not simply about handing out cash, tying people down into the benefits system and offering no hope of being able to move on from that position to a different state of their lives.
My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), again, echoed the armed forces’ contribution and made some great comments about the levelling-up fund and how Powys County Council had never been able to qualify for funding of that nature before. I thought he was going to launch into a lengthy speech, because I have heard it often before, on the subject of the Montgomery canal.
Simon Hart
I do not think I will.
That initiative, provided courtesy of the UK Government, unleashed private sector funding at the same time. My hon. Friend put his finger on what devolution really means. It is not whether power is held in Cardiff or Westminster; it is about how many people in frontline decision-making positions, who live and feel the opportunity and challenge every day, are brought into the decision-making process in the way we have in Powys—and I hope it will be reflected across the rest of Wales as well.
I was overjoyed that the speech of the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees), unlike others from the Opposition, did not talk down the fortunes of our country, but talked up the record of her great friend Hywel Francis. He was the first and about the only Member of her party who came up to me after my maiden speech in 2010 and, probably through gritted teeth, congratulated me on what I had said.
Christina Rees
I am glad that the Secretary of State is in such a celebratory mood. I am sure that he is as excited as I am that the global centre of rail excellence is coming to Wales, in fact to Onllwyn in my constituency. When will the Government release the funds so that we can get on with it?
Simon Hart
I am delighted that the hon. Lady is delighted that we have been able to put £30 million into that project. That shows what levelling up is capable of and it shows that collaboration and co-operation—all the things that apparently do not happen—are happening in her constituency. I cannot tell her exactly when, but I will find somebody who can put her out of her misery. Her reference to Siân James reminded me of many happy hours, which other hon. Members might have shared, in Patagonia on a trip of the Welsh Affairs Committee courtesy of my absent hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). I can see the odd smirk of Opposition Members who also remember it.
Nearly finally—somebody once said to sprinkle one’s speech liberally with “And finally” to retain a sense of optimism in those listening—the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who I have known for a long time and who I like to think of as a friend, made a speech that started brilliantly and ended disappointingly. It almost sounded as though the first half was written by her and the second half was written by a Labour policy wonk obsessed with scoring cheap political points.
The good points were brilliant, however, and I very much take on board the hon. Lady’s comments about the visa situation and the spirit of co-operation with local authorities. There was a call this afternoon between the UK Government and the Welsh Government on the subject of Ukraine refugees, so that level of co-operation is already in place. In response to her point, I hope that she will be as pleased as I am that we have now recruited 479 additional police officers in Wales. It is however difficult to get the oxygen into the hospitality sector, which she rightly raised, when the Welsh Government are about to impose a tourism tax and a second home tax on people who like to go and spend money in the hospitality sector in Wales.
The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) made a warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones), which this week of all weeks was much appreciated, and I know it will be appreciated by her, too. When it comes to additional bank holidays, I have to say that the lobbying I tend to listen to the most is not from politicians, I regret to say, but from the business community in Wales. I will probably now have a few emails within a few minutes, but I have yet to hear any such requests from anybody who is actually striving to make their business work, to encourage investment into Wales and to create long-lasting jobs. The last thing they have been knocking on my door and asking for is an additional bank holiday. They have asked for lots of other things, but that is not one of them.
On the question of the Crown Estate, and to deal with the comments of the hon. Member for Gordon, I have to say—this is similar to my last answer—that very few people who are, I hope, on the cusp of investing significant sums of money and creating many thousands of very good, long-lasting and well-paid jobs in Wales are saying to me that the blockage, or the only thing stopping them doing so, is devolving the Crown Estate. It is quite the opposite. In fact, I think the potential opportunity for income to come into Wales is enhanced by not devolving the Crown Estate, and that is the official Government position.
I loved the quick whip around the world of rugby from the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi). It reminded me of how many members of the national side came from Bancyfelin in one particular game, and although I cannot remember the number, I think it exceeded the number who came from Gower. However, we can argue about that another time. I would love to meet her to talk about the youth element of the sport. That is a source of frustration and ambition, as far as I am concerned, but it is of course devolved. We discovered that when we tried to get some money for the WRU at the beginning of the pandemic, only to get sucked into the whole devolution settlement and it became almost impossible to do a reverse Barnett and get in the money that was necessary.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I appreciate the Secretary of State’s comments about sport being devolved, but I would like to draw his attention to my main request, which was that he press the WRU for the release of its report last year on the review of women’s rugby. That is my key ask.
Simon Hart
Absolutely, and when we undoubtedly meet in Cardiff for a rugby-based evening, I think in a couple of weeks’ time, we can with any luck carry on that conversation.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made some strong comments about culture, but again failed to mention that this is a devolved area and that the investment she referred to was brought to her courtesy of the UK Government’s investment in the cultural sector, Barnettised and made available for those very opportunities in her own constituency. I was surprised she did not mention—I am sure it was an oversight—the £5.3 million that the UK Government have put into the Muni in Pontypridd, which I have visited twice, or the £20 million that her local authority, Rhondda Cynon Taf, has successfully bid for under that particular scheme. Anybody who points a pork barrel politics finger at me gets promptly referred to the hon. Lady, whose local authority came out of that process better than any other in Wales.
And finally, the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) mentioned random acts of kindness—that was her expression—which gave me a sense of false hope, I suppose, about what was coming next. If we are to be able to operate with the Welsh Government, local authorities and other stakeholders in the form she described, we somehow have to wean ourselves off this pathological inability to recognise that we all have a stake in this game, and not everything that goes well in Wales is down to Labour and not everything that goes badly is down to UK money. We have to prise ourselves off that ridiculously lazy generalisation if we are to make progress and if we are to be able to have a proper, mature conversation about how we level up Wales in the way that I think we both want to do. For all the warm words, there is never an opportunity missed to make a snide comment about some party political point that puts us all back to where we started. I do ask her, with the greatest respect, if we can possibly try to move ourselves away from that rather 1970s model of political exchange.
Anna McMorrin
I cannot let that rest while the right hon. Gentleman attacks my speech. Yes, it was about focusing on random acts of kindness within the Welsh people and the stark contrast with the current UK Government, who are damaging the Welsh people time after time after time. If we speak to my constituents, we hear that they do not get anything from the UK Government. The right hon. Gentleman speaks about outdated 1970s politics; he should speak to his own Prime Minister.
Simon Hart
I rest my case. My son is a constituent, so I will refer to him. It also might have been an oversight in the spirit of the warm relationship the hon. Lady and I are now forming that she has not mentioned the 9% increase in funding for S4C as a bastion of the Welsh language. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady looks astounded; this is a major contribution to our ambitions on the Welsh language.
Finally—last, and least—the hon. Member for Gordon referred to a number of what I thought were slightly predictable points around devolution. Again it reminded me of the fact that it is difficult to make the progress we all want if every single thing we debate in this House is seen through the prism of independence rather than the prism of jobs and ambition. The big difference between his country and our country is that in Wales 54% of people on average voted to leave the European Union back in 2016, and it is brave for somebody of the hon. Gentleman’s record in this area to suggest that somehow the voters of Wales were not bright enough to make a decision on this.
Richard Thomson
The Secretary of State is nothing if not prescient, on that point at least. Of course there may have been a slim majority in Wales for Brexit, but does he honestly think that has exempted Wales from any of the problems that have afflicted the rest of the UK from that, and if a referendum were held tomorrow would he truthfully expect that result again?
Simon Hart
The obvious statement to make in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s claim that somehow Wales and Scotland were not involved in the negotiations is that I was one of the lucky ones who had to sit and listen to his colleague Mike Russell putting the case, as he did loudly and persuasively in the numerous meetings we had on the Brexit negotiations. It is simply not correct to say that the devolved Administrations did not play a very full and active part in those discussions.
Today’s debate has had its moments of optimism, its moments of hope and many moments of respect for our friends and colleagues in Ukraine. I hope it has also served to show what we have in store on levelling up, and also the huge amount of funding. People sometimes question the amount of funding coming to Wales and make an erroneous comparison with what might have been the case had we remained in the European Union, but actually the numbers and the facts show that there is everything to be cheerful about. I want the relationship with local authorities and the Welsh Government to be positive, because if it is, and if we do not get strung up on the minutiae of power and instead concentrate on our important jobs and inward investment agenda and are prepared to enter those negotiations in the spirit intended, we have a real opportunity of the Welsh Government being able to demonstrate they are good and competent at what they do and the UK Government demonstrating we have an important strategic and economic role to play in Wales as well. That is the challenge that faces us, and today’s debate has enabled us to move just a few small steps towards achieving it.
Wayne David
This afternoon’s debate has been good and extremely worthwhile. It is particularly good that many Members referred to Ukraine and the solidarity the Welsh people are demonstrating to the people of Ukraine; I thank everyone for that.
My only hope is that the St David’s Day debate does not have to be applied for every year but becomes automatic. I ask the powers that be in Parliament for the St David’s Day debate to be a permanent feature of our parliamentary calendar.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Diolch yn fawr, a hwyl fawr i chi gyd. Wasn’t it a very close match on Saturday? If there had only been a third half we would have won.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Welsh affairs.
UK Shipbuilding
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
It is great to speak to a packed House.
It is a great honour to be able to open this important debate about the future of UK shipbuilding. I am very glad to see the Minister in his place. I know from our previous encounters the depth of expertise and passion that he brings to this debate, and I look forward to hearing his contribution later. I also declare an interest. I am a long-standing member and former north-west regional secretary of Unite the union, which organises workers in the shipbuilding sector, including in my own constituency.
With the national shipbuilding strategy refresh expected shortly, the timing of this debate could not be more appropriate. It is a document that is keenly anticipated across the entirety of the sector and has the potential to define the landscape of British shipbuilding for decades to come. I am sure the Minister knows just how important it is that the Government’s plans live up to the lofty rhetoric of the Defence Secretary and the Prime Minister.
Only yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), the shadow Minister for defence procurement, on a tour of the historic Cammell Laird shipyards in my constituency. It was clear to see the immense pride which every member of the team took in their work, from the stagers to the shipwrights and the senior management. They have much to be proud of. After a challenging few decades for the whole of the industry, Cammell Laird enters the 2020s with a reputation for being at the forefront of innovation in British shipbuilding and for having delivered some of the most technologically advanced vessels afloat. From its slipways sailed the RRS Sir David Attenborough —commonly known as Boaty McBoat or whatever—one of the most sophisticated research vessels ever built. As we speak, that ship is battling perilous Antarctic waters, following in the wake of the Erebus and Endurance, and gathering vital data about the impact of climate breakdown on the polar regions. Capable of operating in temperatures as low as minus 40° and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to study the deepest depths of the ocean, the SDA is a marvel of British engineering in which all of Birkenhead can take pride.
Cammell Laird also continues to play an enormously important role in the local economy. It is easily the largest employer in our town, employing 650 well-paid and unionised workers, with a further 1,500 subcontractors active on the site. Its Marine Engineering College continues to offer high-quality apprenticeships to around 50 people each year across every discipline, with a commitment to doubling that number in years to come. These apprenticeships are so highly valued that last year 880 applications were made for just 25 positions. The shipyard’s success is being felt far beyond the shipyard walls, with £400 million spent in the wider supply chain in the last five years alone, including £130 million in the immediate locality, supporting over 300 local businesses. But for all the passion, enthusiasm, and commitment that I witnessed yesterday, there is still a sense that the glory days are, at least for now, behind us.
Once the shipyards towered over the skyline of our town, as iconic and powerful a symbol of Birkenhead as the Three Graces are still for neighbouring Liverpool. No more. The time when a young person could reasonably expect to walk out of the school gates and into secure, lifelong work at Cammell Laird is long gone. My mother, father and three of my brothers all learned their trades in the yards. Like so many others of my generation, my future and that of my family’s was entwined with the future of British industry. There is probably not a single young person living in our country today who can say the same.
The story of Cammell Laird has been replicated time and again not only in shipbuilders up and down our country but in our foundries, forges and factories. Government Members have told us that the destruction of British industry was inevitable and that we had no choice but to bow to the inexorable tides of history, but, as the UK was cutting its shipyards adrift, Governments in Spain, South Korea and Italy were investing in their shipbuilders, and today they are unrivalled anywhere else in the world.
After many years of decline and industrial neglect, the Government’s recognition that change is needed was warmly welcome. So, too was the decision to expand the scope of the national shipbuilding strategy with the upcoming refresh, but if the Defence Secretary is to earn his title of shipbuilding tsar, it is time for him to prove his commitment to revitalising UK shipyards and building a brighter future for this critical industry. I fear that the cracks in his resolve are already beginning to show.
In December 2020, I held a Westminster Hall debate on defence procurement and was glad to hear the Minister agree that the historic increases in defence spending announced in that year’s spending review should be used to support domestic manufacturers and British jobs and skills. On that day, I also sought a commitment from him that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s new fleet solid support ships would be designed and built in their entirety in Britain. That is a fundamental test of the Government’s commitment to British shipbuilding, and the signs so far are not promising.
Leading figures in the defence sector, including Sir John Parker, have repeatedly called for the need to recognise social value when commissioning new defence projects such as the fleet solid support ships, but despite classifying these new vessels as warships, the Secretary of State has failed to provide a cast-iron guarantee that they will be built in their entirety in Britain.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making a compelling case. Indeed, we have never constructed sovereign warships outside the United Kingdom and it would be a retrograde step for so many different reasons if we were to do so. We must, however, have a shipbuilding industry that goes beyond the construction of warships, where different procurement rules apply. Does he share my frustration at the way in which the Scottish Government’s mismanagement of Ferguson shipyard in Greenock has so fundamentally undermined confidence in the prospect of a non-warship shipbuilding industry in this country?
Mick Whitley
The right hon. Member makes a good point. As well as building for defence procurement, we should be building commercial vessels.
The terms of the competition dictate that the FSS need only be “integrated” in the UK, which means that the lion’s share of the work could be offshored, with British shipbuilders losing out on vital work at a critical time. That would be a tragic betrayal of British shipyards and the thousands of workers that they support.
The Minister will no doubt be aware of my enthusiasm for the bid put forward by Team UK, a consortium of British firms including Cammell Laird, Rolls-Royce, Babcock and BAE Systems. In fact, in the last two years I have inundated his Department with correspondence demanding that the contract be awarded to the consortium, which would truly represent the very best of British engineering, and I repeat my call today. If the Government are serious about supporting shipbuilding, Team UK must be awarded the bid. The benefits are obvious. Instead of allowing non-domestic firms to benefit from billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, we could create or secure at least 6,700 jobs in British industry, including 2,000 in the shipyards, while seeing £285 million of the total spend returned to Treasury coffers through income tax, national insurance contributions and lower welfare payments.
It is also imperative that the revised shipbuilding strategy looks at the wider issue of procurement. For years, Ministers have waxed lyrical about the extraordinary economic benefits that Brexit would bring, but, instead of the Government taking advantage of our departure from the European Union to throw their full weight behind British shipbuilders, they continue needlessly to follow procurement rules that force businesses such as Cammell Laird to compete with state-owned giants including Spain’s Navantia. It is a David-versus-Goliath struggle. Even when British shipbuilders are in the running for lucrative defence projects, Ministers too often expect them to shoulder enormous financial risks, including 100% refund guarantees that many British shipyards can ill afford.
Let me be clear. UK shipbuilders are not looking for handouts, nor are they asking for taxpayers’ money to be wasted. They know all too well the importance of delivering value for money; they just want a level playing field. They are absolutely right to say that a more benign contracting environment is badly needed if we are to achieve the shipbuilding renaissance that Ministers have repeatedly promised. I hope that when the NSS refresh is published, it will include a recognition that the Ministry of Defence must begin to accept more responsibility for the financial risks inherent in commissioning the top-end vessels that the Select Committee on Defence has identified as so vital to guaranteeing our national security in the deeply uncertain years ahead.
As I said, the shipbuilding strategy has the potential to define the future of British shipbuilding for decades to come, but if shipyards across the country are to make the investment in recruitment and training that they so desperately want to make, they will need guarantees of work in the short term as well. It is not good enough to tell firms that things will get better in 10 years’ time, when so many yards are confronting enormous challenges here and now. We need action now to stem the exodus of jobs and skills from the sector and lay the solid foundations that will be essential if the shipbuilding strategy is to be delivered in full. I hope that the Minister will speak about that issue today.
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman recognises that the resources and commitment that we have given to Royal Navy procurement are a real step change and exactly the kind of support that he expects to see delivered to UK shipyards.
Mick Whitley
I accept the point about the budget for defence and for shipbuilding, but when the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities travelled to my constituency recently, he opted not to visit Cammell Laird. Perhaps he knew that the Government are falling far short in providing shipbuilders with the support that they need; perhaps he knew the welcome he was likely to receive from a workforce who have been failed by central Government for far too long. If levelling up is to become more than an empty slogan, we must recognise the enormous potential of British industry, and of shipbuilding in particular, to drive inward investment, create high-skilled work and build a more prosperous future for left-behind towns like Birkenhead.
As a lifelong trade unionist, I have spoken primarily about what investing in the future of UK shipbuilding means for British workers and industry, but national security must not be ignored. The stakes could not be higher. Putin’s appalling attack on the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine has shattered the peace that our continent has enjoyed for so long and has caused human suffering on a scale that none of us thought we would see again. We simply do not know what the future holds, but the appalling scenes that we are witnessing on the streets of Kyiv and Kharkiv are a powerful reminder of just how important it is that we build up our defence capacity at home. That must begin in our nation’s shipyards.
Once again, I urge the Minister to do everything in his power to ensure that fleet solid support ships and all future defence projects in the pipeline are built and designed in their entirety in the UK. That is the very least that our shipyards deserve.
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
May I start by picking up on the remarks that the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) made about Ukraine? His points were well made. In preparing for this important debate, I could not help thinking about my visits to Ukraine on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, which have included discussions about that proud country’s ambitions for its navy and for its shipbuilding enterprises. We are all deeply concerned; our thoughts are with all Ukrainians. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made those remarks.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He spoke passionately about what the industry has meant to his family, to him and to his community. I know that he speaks from the heart. I am glad that we have had this opportunity to speak before the launch of the shipbuilding refresh; I hope that we will speak again when it is brought before the House.
Shipbuilding is not only important to the hon. Gentleman, but vital to the United Kingdom. As he mentioned, his constituency has produced many of our finest ships. The first screw steamship to cross the Atlantic and the first guided missile destroyer in the UK were made in Birkenhead. So was the RSS Sir David Attenborough—I will stick with that name, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind—which is rightly a source of huge pride for Birkenhead as it does its important work in the Antarctic, even as we speak. I was pleased to hear about the number of applications—although I would like there to be more work for more of them—for the training scheme to work in the yard. It is one of the many brilliant training schemes around the country, and I am delighted that the work that we are all putting in for a successful future for our shipbuilding industry is being reflected in the enthusiasm of people coming forward to take those opportunities.
As a maritime nation, ships have long been the guarantors of our defence, the deliverers of our trade and the creators of endless opportunities for growth and expansion. However, we are conscious that the sector needs to be more resilient and more sustainable if it is to thrive in the 21st century as it has done historically. That is why the Defence Secretary was appointed shipbuilding tsar in September 2019. He has gathered the Government together to drive the renaissance in British shipbuilding and to enhance our position as a global leader in ship design and technology. Since his appointment, we have opened the National Shipbuilding Office, which is working closely with industry to drive transformative change across the whole of our shipbuilding enterprise.
We have brought forward plans through the integrated review and defence Command Paper to double Royal Navy investment in its new vessels to £1.7 billion per annum by the end of this Parliament, delivering the defence that the hon. Gentleman speaks of. We have confirmed our commitments for Type 26, Type 31 and fleet solid support ships, and set out our ambition, including for multi-role support ships and Type 32, among other future procurements. We have changed our policy to ensure that all new Royal Navy vessels, not just aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, are actively considered for build, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said. Having sovereign capacity in our country for delivering our own defence needs is absolutely critical. He was right to allude to that. Through the application of social value to tenders, we are making clear the vital importance of driving wider value for the long-term success of our shipbuilding industry.
On exports, I am the first Minister for Defence Procurement in a generation who can help drive success not just in complex warships such as the Type 26, where we are working so closely with our Australian and Canadian friends, but in highly effective vessels such as Arrowhead, or Type 31, and offshore patrol vessels, with contracts already being awarded and opportunities to pursue them globally.
Learning the lessons of the Parker review, to which the hon. Member for Birkenhead referred, our task is to ensure that the existing success of warship procurement in this country is matched with a renaissance that works across the sector. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to the need for us to have successful commercial entities. He is absolutely right. I do a huge amount of work with the Scottish yards, whose input into the defence industry is absolutely vital. It is a pity that he is the only Member from a Scottish constituency present, because we could have had further discussions, but we are talking about the entire UK shipbuilding industry. It is spread right the way across the United Kingdom, and it is important that all of it thrives. I agree with his sentiments.
We will very soon be setting out our plans to go even further, with the publication of our refreshed national shipbuilding strategy. I have no doubt that this strategy will benefit not just our shipyards but the 1,685 registered businesses in this industry spread right across the UK, 99% of which are small and medium-sized enterprises. Our plans have been developed through extensive collaboration with industry, including businesses in the constituency of the hon. Member for Birkenhead, such as Cammell Laird. I would like to thank them for their insight and support.
As part of the strategy, we will be providing a 30-year, cross-Government shipbuilding pipeline, with a huge range of opportunities for UK shipyards. There are vessels of all types, sizes and complexity, creating a baseline of volume to encourage industry investment in facilities, infrastructure, innovation and skills. That means that they will also be geared up to win commercial and export orders as major new global markets emerge, particularly in green shipping.
Given the vast Government order book, other domestic orders and the export prospects being supported by the Department for International Trade, and with the National Shipbuilding Office seeking to maximise UK work wherever possible, I am convinced that British shipyards are likely to be very busy in the coming years.
While the upcoming strategy extends to all types of Government vessels, at its heart remains an ambition to keep strengthening the Royal Navy, and a critical part of that is our fleet solid support ships, to which the hon. Member for Birkenhead referred. That came as no great surprise; I know that this is a subject close to his heart. These ships will not just be a vital part of our formidable future force alongside our new Type 31 frigates, our two magnificent carriers, our next-generation nuclear submarines, our mine-hunting ships and our multi-role support ships; they are also a great example of how taxpayers’ money is being invested in a way that ensures the long-term future of UK shipbuilding.
Our commitment to the fleet solid support programme was outlined in the defence Command Paper published this time last year, and it is supported by the £24 billion uplift to the defence budget over four years. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this project will be delivered very much in line with the new strategy. In other words, it will encourage sustainable investment to ensure the long-term future of our domestic shipyards. I know he will appreciate the fact that, as we are in the midst of a competitive process, I am limited in what I can say, but we have designed the competition to emulate the success of the ongoing Type 31 frigate programme in Rosyth. This means that while we welcome the opportunity to learn from international best practice, we have also been very clear that a substantial proportion of the build, including integration, will be carried out in the UK. We have had a very positive response from industry, and each of the four consortia bidding for the programme includes substantial UK involvement. The bidders are also required to set out plans to help improve the capacity and capability of the UK shipbuilding sector, as well as how they will contribute to wider social value.
Mr Carmichael
On the question of the future strategy, we know that shipping is going to have to tackle its carbon emissions, and some of the most exciting and innovative work in that sector is now being done in relation to hydrogen as a source of power for ferries and other seagoing vessels. Will that sort of future-proofing be part of the Government’s strategy?
Jeremy Quin
The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not reveal the full details of the strategy in this packed Chamber this evening, but I can absolutely assure him that it will cover future-proofing and the future of UK shipbuilding. I have mentioned the greener path ahead for the industry, and for shipping in general, and we absolutely wish to embrace that. I look forward to having an opportunity to say more to him about this.
The fleet solid support strategy will create a further major stepping stone to success for our vital shipbuilding industry so that our shipyards will be ready to win work beyond the life of this project, whether that is for Government vessels of any kind, for foreign exports or for domestic orders.
There is a rich and potent future for the industry, and we will be embracing the trends that will make for a successful industry. I hope that I have been able to reassure the hon. Member for Birkenhead, knowing that he would raise the matter, that the fleet solid support programme is being delivered in line with our wider aims to make the sector more competitive and more sustainable. I hope that I have also been clear that we will take every opportunity we can, not just to increase jobs, bolster skills and secure export contracts in the coming months and years, but to truly ensure that we are bringing shipbuilding home. My colleagues and I look forward to being able to commend to the hon. Gentleman and to this House a refreshed national shipbuilding strategy in what I can assure him will be the very near term.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Repeal of EU Restrictions in Devolution Legislation, etc.) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O’Brien)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Repeal of EU Restrictions in Devolution Legislation, etc.) Regulations 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. As Members will be aware, the draft regulations that we are considering were made under the powers of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The regulations were laid in draft before the House on 25 January 2022 and are subject to the affirmative procedure.
If approved and introduced, the draft regulations will repeal powers in section 12 of the EU (Withdrawal) Act, which gave a regulations-making power to temporarily freeze devolved legislative competence while UK common frameworks were finalised. The draft regulations will also make consequential provisions, including the removal of limits on devolved legislative and executive competence introduced into the devolution settlements, in addition to any cross-references to those powers.
The section 12 powers to freeze devolved competence, which the draft regulations will repeal, were always intended to be time-limited, and they expired on 31 January. The powers provided a useful contingency while common frameworks were being worked out by the Government and the devolved Governments, but they were never intended and never needed to be used.
The fact that the powers have not been used is credit to the collaborative spirit with which the Government and the devolved Governments have worked together successfully to develop common frameworks. Those frameworks now play an essential role in underpinning a common approach across the UK to policy areas that had previously been governed by EU law and that are within devolved competence. I am pleased to report that 30 out of the expected 32 common frameworks are in operation.
The EU (Withdrawal) Act contains an in-built duty on Ministers to consider the repeal of section 12 powers. As the powers were never used and can in fact no longer be used, there was almost no justification for retaining them. On top of removing those redundant powers, the draft regulations will remove the statutory obligation on the Government to report to Parliament on the use of the formal powers. As Members will be aware, the Government have produced 13 such reports and will shortly publish a 14th.
The draft regulations may appear to be little more than housekeeping, but I believe that they are also a reflection of the huge progress that the Government have made with the devolved Governments in developing new common frameworks. As we speak, those frameworks are fostering a consistent approach across the UK to a broad range of policy areas, from fishing to food labelling, and nutrition to hazardous substances planning. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq.
I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation. I do not intend either to divide or to detain the Committee today—[Interruption.] Well, I can do a longer version if colleagues want. I could not tell whether that was agreement or murmurings of massive disappointment; I shall err on the side of caution, because I would wish never to displease colleagues.
We talk a lot about what ought to be on the statute book, but it is right that as custodians of it we should seek to remove redundant powers. Clearly, these were seen as valuable safeguards at the time to ensure orderly transition, but the moment for that has certainly passed. Although we are debating their removal, it is worth reflecting that it is significantly undesirable to put a freeze on the devolution settlement. That was done in pursuit of what was a significant goal at the time, but any such action weakens the settlement, and at a time when we need to build and strengthen our Union, that does not help. As the Minister said, the powers were never needed; instead, we have seen that the operation of the different Parliaments with good faith, good relationships and shared goals is a better way to do it than via regulation. I hope to hear from the Minister that there are no plans for similar powers in other legislation, whether related to transition issues or anything else.
I will stop there because I am not sure that I enjoyed the debates on this matter the first time. I look around the room and see many Members who were not here for those; I envy them greatly. I do not think rehashing those points would serve much of a purpose because, as the Minister and I have said, the provisions have not been used, they will not now be needed and, in any event, they have not been usable since the end of January. On that basis, the Labour party is happy to repeal them.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. The Committee will be pleased to hear that I will not speak for long either because the Scottish National party supports, and indeed welcomes, the UK Government’s removal of the mechanism. We have always opposed section 12 and believe that it completely undermined the devolution settlement, under which consent must be sought and fully respected.
Our Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture said recently:
“One of the fundamental principles of the devolution settlement is that the powers and responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament”—
and indeed the Welsh Senedd—
“and in turn, the Scottish Government, cannot be changed without its consent. This is embodied in the statutory procedures under the Scotland Act 1998 which require the agreement of the Scottish Parliament, as well the House of Commons and the House of Lords, before such changes can be made by secondary legislation…
While they have never been used, the powers in section 12 of the Act for UK Ministers to change that competence, unilaterally and without consent, overrides that fundamental constitutional principle of the devolution settlement, which is why it was rejected by both the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament.
Despite the refusal of legislative consent by the Scottish Parliament”
to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in 2018,
“the UK Government proceeded with the legislation, consciously and deliberately overriding the Sewel Convention for the first time since devolution in 1999.”
That has caused irreparable damage. It suggests that this Government have an extremely worrying disregard for devolution and, frankly, it provides little cause for confidence in their future dealings with devolved Administrations.
In closing, I join the hon. Member for Nottingham North in asking the Minister to provide assurances that that sort of behaviour will not be repeated, and I will ask one final, slightly cheeky question. The Minister mentioned the common frameworks. If 30 out of 32 common frameworks are currently agreed, why did the Government feel the need to pass the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which has caused a great deal of concern among the devolved Administrations?
Neil O’Brien
We are in broad agreement with the hon. Members for Nottingham North and for Edinburgh North and Leith. These were one-time-only measures and were not used. This is probably not the place to relitigate everything to do with UKIM, but I am happy to discuss that further later. For all the reasons that I have set out, I hope that the Committee will support the draft regulations.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Health and Social Care
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Sajid Javid
First, I wish a happy St David’s day to the hon. Member and all those celebrating. I would be happy to meet her on this issue. The Government greatly value the role of physician associates. She knows that they bring new talent to the NHS and act in an enabling role, where they can help healthcare teams with their workload. Physician associates will be regulated by the General Medical Council, and the Department has consulted on draft legislation on just how to do that.
[Official Report, 1 March 2022, Vol. 709, c. 900.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden).
The correct response should have been:
Sajid Javid
First, I wish a happy St David’s day to the hon. Member and all those celebrating. I would be happy to meet her on this issue. The Government greatly value the role of physician associates. She knows that they bring new talent to the NHS and act in an enabling role, where they can help healthcare teams with their workload. Physician associates will be regulated by the General Medical Council, and the Department plans to consult on draft legislation later this year on just how to do that.
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Windrush Compensation Scheme
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Fifth Report of the Home Affairs Committee, The Windrush Compensation Scheme, HC 204, and the Government response, HC1098.
It is a pleasure to serve under you, Dame Angela, and to introduce the debate. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for allocating time for it. I welcome the Minister, who I know will take seriously the matters raised by Members from across the House. In some respects, I am sorry that the Home Affairs Committee has felt the need to hold the debate, because had the Government responded more positively to our detailed and evidence-based report, it might not have been necessary to call the Minister here today to discuss the shortcomings of the Government’s response.
I am delighted to see present my colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has done much to champion this issue over many years, and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) are here today to speak to our report and the distressing evidence we heard from the people affected by the Windrush scandal. I am also pleased to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who will speak from the Opposition Front Bench.
To set the debate in context, the Windrush scandal that emerged in the summer of 2017 revealed the huge injustices and hardships faced by members of the Windrush generation who had been denied their lawful immigration status as a direct result of Home Office policies and practices over many years. Successive Home Secretaries have subsequently promised to right the wrongs experienced by members of the Windrush cohort, and to recognise the financial loss and emotional distress that Government actions caused. The Home Affairs Committee launched our inquiry in November 2020 because of serious concerns about long delays and difficulties in applying for the compensation scheme. The Committee remains seriously troubled that instead of providing a remedy for many people, the Windrush compensation scheme has compounded injustices.
Our inquiry found that the vast majority of people who have applied for compensation have yet to receive a penny. For some, the experience of applying for compensation has become a source of further trauma rather than redress, and others have been put off from applying for the scheme altogether. Despite the initial Government estimate of 15,000 eligible claims, the Home Office had received only 3,387 applications by the end of December 2021. Of those, 940 claims have received payment. Very sadly, when the Committee’s report was published, 23 people were known to have died before their compensation claims had been decided by the Home Office.
I would like to thank all the people who took the time and effort to engage with the Committee’s inquiry and provide the evidence that underpins our recommendations and conclusions. In particular, I thank the individuals who attended the Committee’s roundtable and shared their first-hand experience of the scheme, including Dominic Akers-Paul, Glenda Caesar, Gertrude Ngozi Chinegwundoh, Christian Hayibor, Carl Nwazota, Grace Nwobodo and Anthony Williams. I also thank Thomas Tobierre, a claimant, and his daughter Charlotte, who took part in an interview with Committee staff.
Our report considers people’s experience of the Windrush scheme and our recommendations focus on changes that we believe would have an immediate impact on the scheme’s effectiveness. Before I outline the report, I want to mention two of the heartbreaking accounts we heard during the inquiry. Anthony Williams arrived in the United Kingdom from Jamaica in 1971, aged seven. He served in the British Army for 13 years before becoming a fitness instructor. In 2013, he was wrongly classed as an illegal immigrant and sacked. Mr Williams was left unable to work or access benefits because he could not demonstrate his lawful status. He was also unable to register for a doctor’s appointment or see a dentist, and when a tooth infection began to spread, he consequently lost most of his teeth.
Mr Williams applied for compensation within a week of the scheme’s opening, but was unable to provide documentary evidence of his salary. In total, for the five years in which his life was affected, Mr Williams was initially offered approximately £18,000 in compensation. Mr Williams told us,
“Even now, I’m still having problems. I still don’t sleep. And it’s because of the compensation scheme. In the back of my mind now, because I survived five years of virtually living on nothing, the money is secondary now. My sanity is top of the game now to me”.
Glenda Caesar came to the United Kingdom from Dominica in 1961, when she was just three months old. She worked in the NHS for over 20 years. In 2009, Ms Caesar was wrongly sacked from her job and then denied access to unemployment benefits. She accrued thousands of pounds in rent arrears. In December 2019, following 10 years of being unable to work, Ms Caesar was first offered approximately £22,000 in compensation. She rejected that initial offer, describing it as “insultingly low”.
I wish to welcome the few recommendations that received a positive response from the Government. The Home Office responded most positively to the Committee’s recommendations on outreach and engagement. I am grateful for the Department’s acknowledgment that more needs to be done to reach eligible claimants. Will the Minister provide an update on progress with the campaign to target non-Caribbean Commonwealth communities, with a particular focus on Ghana, Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? Has he noticed any increase in applications from those countries as a result?
I am pleased the Government agreed with our recommendation that they should provide the number of full and final impact on life payments at each level of award as part of their regular data releases. Will the Minister confirm when we can expect the first data release? The Home Office confirmed that it would recommence holding face-to-face engagement events; will the Minister take this opportunity to announce in public when the first of those events will take place?
Over the course of our inquiry, we identified a litany of flaws in the design and operation of the Windrush compensation scheme, including the excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they suffered; the long delays in processing applications and making payments; the inadequate staffing of the scheme; a failure to provide urgent and exceptional payments to individuals in desperate need; delays in launching and adequately supporting grassroots campaigns to reach eligible claimants; and failure to rebuild confidence in both the Department and the scheme. Although we strongly welcome changes made to the scheme in December 2020 and again in July 2021, many concerns in the Committee’s report are yet to be addressed.
Fundamentally, many people are still too fearful of the Home Office to apply for compensation. The treatment of the Windrush generation by successive Governments was truly shameful. No amount of compensation could ever repay the fear, humiliation, hurt and hardship that was caused to individuals who were affected. That the design and operation of the scheme contained the same bureaucratic insensitivities that led to the Windrush scandal in the first place is a damning indictment of the Home Office.
In order to increase trust and encourage more applicants, we recommend that the scheme should be transferred to an independent organisation. In their response, rejecting that recommendation, the Government restated their position that transferring the scheme outside the Home Office would cause additional delays and that the Home Office is the appropriate Department for handling the scheme because of the need to access claimants’ immigration history. That is a disappointing response, given the incredibly low number of applicants.
The majority of submissions received by the Committee expressed concerns about the lack of trust in the Department among affected communities and the impact of that on people’s willingness to apply to the scheme. Will the Minister think again and consider whether the scheme will have failed if, as a result of that distrust, only a small percentage of the people who have suffered injustice ever come forward and are compensated?
I am disappointed that the Home Office rejected most of our recommendations. I will therefore focus my remarks on the most concerning matters, which relate to our recommendations on compensation, the impact on life, loss of employment and loss of pension. The evidence we received expressed particular concerns about how those categories of claim operate. Despite the concerns raised about the caseworker guidance on impact on life awards, which were outlined in the Committee’s report, the Home Office rather oddly referred the Committee to the same guidance in response to our recommendation that the Department provide greater clarity as to how awards are determined.
The Government committed in April 2019 to ensuring that claimants’ national insurance positions could be corrected, enabling them to receive the correct amount of state pension. Almost three years later, it remains unclear when a solution will be implemented. Will the Minister provide an update on that?
The Committee heard that the loss of occupational pension is a common type of loss among claimants, yet the Home Office restated its position that such losses are excluded from the scheme. The Committee acknowledges the complexity of the issue and included in its recommendations some options that, although imperfect, would enable claimants to receive some compensation. The Home Office’s response did not demonstrate any real engagement with the Committee’s suggestions.
On lifting the £500 cap on compensation for legal fees per immigration application, the Home Office restated its position that
“the immigration system has been designed to make sure people do not require legal assistance to make an application for an immigration product.”
I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the Committee received evidence from one individual whose family member faced multiple court hearings to prevent their deportation and spent £10,000 on legal costs.
The Home Office rejected our recommendation on introducing funded legal assistance to help people to make a claim. The majority of submissions we received said that legal assistance would be beneficial because the scheme is complex and because comprehensive claims submitted by legal professionals may be processed more quickly by caseworkers. Requests for additional evidence are not uncommon and some claimants reported finding that traumatic, given their previous contact with the Home Office. They told us they would have preferred to manage their claim via a representative.
The Home Office did not commit to making any changes to how applications for urgent and exceptional support are handled. Carl Nwazota, whom I mentioned earlier, applied for that type of support. He told us that throughout the entirety of his interaction with the Home Office he was homeless and living on the street, but the Home Office still refused him access to that support. The Home Office told him that until it received a completed compensation form, it could not help him.
Recently released data shows that from 1 October 2018 to the end of October 2021, just 10% of the requests received for urgent and exceptional support were decided within 10 working days of receipt. It is completely unacceptable that individuals facing hardship because of Home Office failures should continue to be let down and left destitute by the Department while they wait for compensation payments. We are therefore deeply disappointed with the Home Office’s response, which does not make any commitment to improving the operation of the scheme.
Sadly, the Home Office’s response to some of the Committee’s recommendations did not demonstrate that the Department had fully engaged with the issues. The responses to the Committee’s recommendations on providing greater clarity as to how compensation for impact on life is determined and on bringing the loss of occupational pension within scope were particularly disappointing, as they did not engage with the real concerns set out in our report.
The Home Office’s response to the Committee’s recommendations on identifying and addressing the causes of delay lacked any detail. Furthermore, although the Department has increased the number of caseworkers throughout 2021, the published data does not yet show that cases are being processed more quickly.
I have not touched on everything in the report, but I hope I have been able to give an overview of what is a substantial report, and of the issues it raised, which have not been satisfactorily answered in the Government response. Ultimately, many of the concerns raised with us about the compensation scheme echo criticisms made of the Home Office by Wendy Williams in her lessons learned review. We can only conclude that, four years on from the Windrush scandal, vital lessons have still not been learned by the Home Office.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The Windrush generation was the generation that came from across the Commonwealth, but largely from the Caribbean, to help to rebuild this country after the war. The point about the Windrush generation—a point that may not be understood by Government Members—was that these people thought they were British. They thought they were coming to the mother country. Many of them had pictures of the Queen in their living rooms. The way they have been treated, first in the Windrush scandal itself and then in the debacle of the compensation scheme, could not be more unfair or more cruel.
The lawyers and many of the people who gave evidence to the Select Committee talked about money and compensation, but for the people of the Windrush generation the real scandal was the humiliation at having it brought home to them, by the many aspects of the Windrush scandal, that this society did not consider them British. They were not treated with the fairness and dignity that they would have liked. For the Windrush generation—I cannot stress this enough—this was not about the money; it was about being respected and being genuinely accepted as British. They were treated completely unfairly, in practical, emotional and subjective ways.
The thing that should have struck the Government about the workings of their scheme was that in 2020 Alexandra Ankrah, who worked as head of policy in the Windrush compensation scheme team, resigned because she lost confidence in a programme that was
“not supportive of people who have been victims”
and
“doesn’t acknowledge their trauma”.
It is their trauma that I want to try to convey in this debate.
The head of the scheme resigned, and they paid no notice—they carried on as before. In that same year, nine law firms wrote to the Home Secretary explaining the complex nature of the Windrush compensation application process and asked that claimants be given access to funded legal assistance. The Government’s response was to say, “Well, the scheme was designed so that people could apply without legal assistance.” What people? People who are known to Government Members, and people who are known to Ministers—not ageing members of the Windrush generation. They cannot deal with the scheme without some kind of legal assistance. I put it to Ministers that it is the complexity of the scheme that has meant we have not had the number of applications that we should have had, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) set out.
In the Select Committee’s hearings, we heard evidence from distinguished practitioners, such as Martin Forde QC, who had been the independent adviser to the scheme and also advised on its consultation and design, and Holly Stow, a senior caseworker at North Kensington Law Centre. The significance of that law centre is that the earliest generation of Caribbean migrants lived in that area long before it was as expensive to buy a home there as it is now, and I knew that area well as a child. Another important person we took evidence from was Jacqueline McKenzie, who at that time was assisting with approximately 200 claims and is probably assisting with more by now.
The policy head of the scheme resigned because she was so appalled at the way the scheme was functioning. Lawyers and others went to the Government to talk to them about the complexity of the system. Above all, given the Government’s original estimate for the potential number of claimants—I think it was 15,000—the number of people applying to the scheme, certainly when the Committee did its inquiry, was relatively tiny. Yet the Home Office has been quite brazen in rejecting the analysis of people who had worked for the Home Office on the scheme and of lawyers and potential claimants.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North pointed out, the Home Office rejected many of our key recommendations, and its response demonstrated that the Department was not engaging with the issues. Above all, the Department’s response to many of our separate recommendations was that it would conduct a review. On almost everything we raised, the Home Office said it was conducting a review. It is all well and good that it is conducting a review on all those separate issues, but it should not need to have a review; it should be prepared to listen to the lawyers, claimants and people working with the community and to look at its own figures. It should be prepared to listen to its own staff members who have worked on the scheme. It should not need to launch a series of reviews.
Meanwhile, because those who came over on the Windrush are an ageing generation, many of them have died or will die before they get the compensation they are entitled to, and I consider that quite shameful. It is hard to believe that the Department does not understand that the more the process is prolonged; the less willing the Department is to take up practical suggestions made in good faith by not just my Committee, but others; and the more the Department is unwilling to listen to people, the longer it will all take and more people will have passed away without justice.
As my right hon. Friend said, many people have argued that the Windrush compensation scheme was inadequate. We know, as my colleague said, that the number of people who have applied for compensation is paltry compared to the number the Home Office originally said were entitled to it. The experience of applying for compensation is traumatic in itself. As I have said, one of the things that is not necessarily factored in when people talk about the Windrush generation is their sense of humiliation, as people who came here to the mother country, at being treated the way they were and having to go through the scheme at all.
As my right hon. Friend said, people have been put off from applying for the scheme partly because of its complexity, which Ministers have been told over and over again. Seeing what happened, seeing how people were treated originally and seeing how some even ended up being deported—seeing all that—the potential claimants of the Windrush generation lacked all trust in the Home Office. That is why one of our key recommendations was that this scheme should be passed to an independent organisation.
The Home Office said, “Well, that might introduce delays,” but it could not have introduced more delays than the Windrush generation are experiencing now. It could not be any slower than what is happening now. There could not be more people dying than now, while the Home Office is processing what it is supposed to be doing. It is preposterous for the Home Office to argue, “We don’t want to pass it to an independent organisation because of delays.” With this scheme, those at the Home Office are the masters of delays.
We called for an independent organisation because we felt that it would be more efficient and that—I come back to this question of confidence—applicants would have more confidence in an independent organisation and would be more willing to come forward, so that we could increase the number of people applying and getting justice before they pass away, as they continue to do. At the time of the Committee’s report, 23 individuals had died without receiving compensation, and I have no doubt that even more have passed away by this point.
Among other things, we pointed out the excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they have suffered. That is a burden. Somebody might have worked hard in the NHS or elsewhere in the public sector, or in manufacturing as my father did, but they are not used to handling that level of paperwork, so it is a burden. In a way, that insistence on finding all the documentary evidence just compounds the pain and misery they have gone through in the Windrush scandal.
Then there are the delays. Like I said, how can those at the Home Office complain that passing the scheme to an independent organisation would cause delays when they themselves have presided over inordinate delays in processing applications and making payments? They themselves have staffed the scheme wholly inadequately. We pointed out the failure to provide urgent payments and the delay in launching and adequately supporting grassroots campaigns, and I think something has been done about that.
It is frustrating for the Committee even to have had to write the report, because many of the systemic faults were highlighted first in the Home Office’s own lessons learned review by Wendy Williams. It is not that we are bringing the Home Office’s attention to such things for the first time; Wendy Williams had set out many of them. The title of her document was “lessons learned”, but the only thing that one can conclude at this point is that the Home Office has learned nothing—lessons have not been learned at all or, if they have been learned, they have not been implemented.
Where do we go from here? It would be good if the Home Office, even at this late stage, listened and implemented some of the findings of the Wendy Williams review, listened to what lawyers and claimants themselves are saying, and listened to the findings of my Committee’s report. The Windrush compensation scheme has to go to an independent organisation, for reasons of increased efficiency and so that people can have some confidence; the Home Office has to look at the level of documentation being insisted on; and, given that Martin Forde QC, has said that applications being completed with legal assistance would speed things up dramatically, the Home Office should guarantee access to legal assistance for all claimants who require it.
It is important that the Home Office understands that what Home Office Ministers and officials see as a minor administrative challenge, as they have so many more important things to do and to think about, is, for the Windrush generation, their lives. This is a signifier of the care and respect that this society holds for that generation. For Ministers to ignore what is said to them, year after year, about the complaints process and to ignore the suggestions that people make in good faith, suggests to me that they do not respect that generation or understand the humiliation that the generation feels. As I said earlier, it is as if they are waiting for this generation to pass away.
Finally, the Windrush generation came not just from the Caribbean, but from other parts of Commonwealth, as we pointed out in our report. They did not all come on the Windrush or on other boats either. My own father came on an aeroplane, which was very dashing of him at the time. He was an impetuous person; no doubt, that is where I get it from. As I said, they came in good faith and I believe that the Home Office should deal with them in good faith. It is not too late for Home Office Ministers and officials to pay attention to our report, and to other statements that have been made and issues that have been raised, including the view of its own head of policy for the scheme. It is not too late for the Home Office to listen to criticism and finally give justice to the Windrush generation.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for setting the scene so well. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I look forward to the contributions from other hon. Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and the Minister.
The thrust of the points made by the right hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull North and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington was about seeking a methodology to address to the large number of people who have not been compensated, or even talked to at this stage. When the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North set the scene, which she did very well, she outlined the report and where the response needs to come from. We all look to our Minister and good friend to give us some positivity in relation to the questions that we are all asking.
This is not the first time that I have participated in a debate about the Windrush generation, because I believe that we have an obligation, which we have not fulfilled and are still not fulfilling, to do right by these people who do, and did, right by us. That is the thrust of where I come from. Not many people in my constituency travelled as part of the Windrush generation, but that does lessen the issue for me. I support the recommendations in the report and the comments made by the right hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull North and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
In 2020, I asked the Home Secretary about the report by Wendy Williams. I asked her:
“How does she believe that these can be implemented to ensure that applications adhere not simply to the letter of the policy, but to the spirit of the policy, which would never have intended for this generation of people, who did so much for the UK when we needed them the most, to suffer so needlessly?”—[Official Report, 21 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 2033.]
Some two years later, we are repeating some of those questions to the Minister, this time hoping that we can get the reassurance that we are looking for. We were assured by the Home Secretary that she was looking to do that, and yet here we are once again, no further forward.
When I read the report by the Home Affairs Committee, I was struck by most of it, but by one paragraph in particular. It said:
“We are deeply concerned that, as of the end of September, only 20.1% of the initially estimated 15,000 eligible claimants have applied to the scheme and only 5.8% have received any compensation”,
as the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said. The report continued:
“It further compounds the Windrush scandal that twenty-three individuals have died without receiving compensation for the hardship that they endured.”
I do not think it would be wrong to ask whether the families of those 23 people would also receive compensation, should they apply to the scheme—I am sure the Minister will come back on that question, as we wish to have reassurance.
Respectfully, I say again that we are still failing here. Rather than another assurance, which I know to be well intended and very well meaning, these people need action in the form of an easily understood scheme that they can apply to in order to get their compensation in a timely manner, and which treats this matter with the respect it deserves. This is not a criticism of the Government; it is a plea to have that scheme in place.
We all know the story of the Windrush generation. I have been greatly moved by some of the TV programmes I have watched on their story. People come up with such hope for the future of this great kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but for some, unfortunately, that hope was not delivered. The Windrush generation answered the call to the Commonwealth and uprooted themselves for the promise of a new life, yet we took what we needed without standing by our duty to them. That has been openly acknowledged. The scale of how remiss we were has meant that a compensation scheme is in place. The Government recognised that it had not been done and that it needed to be done. That is correct and proper. However, what is the point in such a scheme if people are unable to access it, whatever the reason may be? The report sets out some of those reasons.
If only 5% of those eligible have benefited, there needs to be a whole new strategy and way of looking at this issue. The scheme as it is currently operated needs to be better, more focused and fit for purpose. I agree with the Home Affairs Committee that,
“Those who apply face a daunting application process without adequate support; they face unreasonable requests for evidence”,
as was referred to by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, who spoke of the efforts of some of those affected in her introduction. The report goes on to say that
“they are left in limbo in the midst of inordinate delays. Too often, injustice has been compounded rather than compensated. This is unacceptable and must not continue.”
The words of the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington on this matter were appropriate: people came here in good faith and they deserved to have that good faith returned in buckets in every way possible.
I support the calls for the removal of the formal end date and for the 13,800 eligible people to be contacted again and offered support to apply in a more streamlined and accessible format. I hope the Minister is able to respond to that. That might mean working with people one to one, face to face, to work through the system, give them compensation and have their voices heard. I understand that the Home Office is terribly overworked; I know that the Minister, in particular, is most energetic in these matters. We have the Ukrainian crisis at the moment, as well as a number of other issues. There are lots of things to do; I understand that. I am not being critical in any way.
Despite that, I hope that the Home Office finds the funding to allocate for the support and administration of these applications. We have got it wrong for too long; we are past due getting it right. We have to do right by these wonderful people who are very much part of our vibrant British community, and whom we all appreciate, understand and wish to support.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I congratulate the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), on securing this vital debate and on the eloquent and comprehensive way she introduced it. Like her I will start by placing on record my thanks to all who contributed to our inquiry and report. I particularly thank the witnesses she mentioned, who gave evidence of their direct experiences as victims of the disgraceful Windrush scandal, and those who have been working on their behalf to secure justice for them.
The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) spoke powerfully about what this issue means for the Windrush generation—more powerfully than I would be able to. In short, they came here in good faith and had to battle against hostility when they arrived. Decades later, they and their descendants had to battle the hostile environment. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, it is heartbreaking that they still have to battle for justice today through the Windrush compensation scheme. Of course a compensation scheme was required, and it is good that it is there, but there was no other option. It is a tragedy that that compensation scheme is now also a source of controversy and difficulty, rather than a trusted and reliable means of ensuring redress for those who have suffered so much already.
As the Committee Chair highlighted at the outset, the Home Office initially reckoned that around 15,000 people would be eligible for the scheme. It has twice revised its planning assumptions downwards, and the number now stands at between 4,000 and 6,000 eligible claimants, so a vital first question for the Minister is why those downward revisals have taken place. Why does the Department think that far fewer people will apply? Given that almost 14,000 were issued documentation or citizenship through the Windrush scheme and could be described as victims of this scandal, why are so few seeking compensation?
In our report, the Committee put forward a number of reasons that we believe are at the heart of this issue. First and foremost, is it not blindingly obvious that people who have had their lives destroyed by a Government Department will be reluctant, or even terrified, to engage with the same Department again? That is what we argued when the compensation scheme legislation was passing through Parliament, and the argument remains just as strong today. I absolutely appreciate that, having come this far, there is a concern that moving the scheme away from the Home Office could cause yet further delay. There has indeed been far too much delay already, but is it not the case that there is no other option? Surely it is better to have a scheme that has the full trust of Windrush victims and to which they will therefore apply, even if that takes a bit longer. Far rather that than pressing on with the current arrangements, which provide little confidence that the scheme will reach all the victims we need it to reach.
I acknowledge again the work that has been done on outreach, but I echo calls from the witnesses and the Committee that more should be done. I urge the Home Office to listen to the detailed ideas for how further publicity and attention can be given to outreach work. At the end of the day, however, that does not address the fundamental problem of people being asked to contact a Department they feel has destroyed their lives and humiliated them.
Another issue that I have highlighted before, and which has been highlighted by our Committee, Wendy Williams, the Public Accounts Committee and others, is the failure to seek out victims in non-Caribbean Commonwealth countries through historical case review in the way the Home Office did for Caribbean countries. The Home Office has said, pretty vaguely, that that would require too much in the way of time and resources, so will the Minister undertake to set out exactly what the Home Office estimates it would cost to conduct such a review? Otherwise, it is impossible to assess whether the Home Office position is remotely reasonable, and we are left with victims across the globe who will have no idea that they can now seek redress and right the wrongs that were done to them. Again, I welcome the new campaign to target people from some non-Caribbean Commonwealth countries, but we fear that it does not go far enough.
Another reason why people will struggle to apply is, as has been said, the complexity of the scheme. Again, it is only fair to recognise and welcome the efforts that have been made to simplify the forms and guidance. We also welcome the change to the standard of proof required for some claims—something that we raised during the passage of the Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Act 2020. That said, we need assurance that the standard of proof is actually making a difference in practice. What steps is the Minister taking to assure himself of that, given that the Home Office refused our recommendation that Ministers and senior officials should examine a sample of cases to understand how the standard of proof is working in practice? As has been said, much of the evidence that we heard suggested that people will still be required to provide incredibly detailed documentary evidence of events that happened a long time ago, which would not be necessary in a normal civil claim for damages.
Even when taking into account the changes that have been made, quantifying loss, damage and suffering is an inherently challenging process. Every day up and down this country, people employ lawyers to litigate the amount of compensation that they are due—whether that is because they have been unlawfully dismissed, because they have been injured in an accident at work or a road traffic accident, or because somebody has breached a contract. People employ lawyers because documenting and calculating loss is difficult. Legal aid is available to people on a means-tested basis, so I cannot for the life of me understand why it is not available to people who are seeking to access the Windrush compensation scheme. That is the only way in which we can be confident that people are claiming and securing what they are entitled to as quickly as possible.
Even when people come forward and navigate the scheme, it takes too long to process, as we have heard. New caseworkers have been taken on, and that is welcome, but why has it taken so long, and why does the number of outstanding applications continue to rise? As has been said, it is a tragedy that at least 23 individuals have died before compensation was paid to them. Too many cases are still taking too long, with significant numbers of people having to wait more than a year.
Even if someone comes forward, successfully navigates the system and qualifies for compensation, their problems do not end there. I was startled to read that at the end of December 2021 35% of the final decisions issued had been zero awards. People who met the scheme’s criteria were actually being deemed not to be entitled to compensation. Have I understood that correctly? Has the Minister looked into that, and what is his explanation for it?
As the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North set out, the Committee made detailed recommendations on certain heads of claim that are not being properly compensated or are not compensated at all. The Home Office has promised reviews on those claims, which is just about better than nothing, but as the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said, we need more than that—we need action quickly.
The rejection by the Home Office of other recommendations, such as compensation for impact on life, for loss of employment, for loss of pension and for legal fees, is particularly disappointing. At the end of the day, that means that people are simply not being reimbursed for the actual losses they have suffered, and that is just indefensible. People who spent thousands of pounds battling deportation will not get that money back; people who lost occupational pension rights will not get them back. That is not righting the wrongs of Windrush.
There is still a long way to go in delivering meaningful justice for the victims of the Windrush scandal. I pay tribute again to the victims and the campaigners who continue to push for justice and to colleagues on the Select Committee for continuing to press the Home Office on their behalf. We must and will keep doing so, because the Home Office has to go further and it has to go faster.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela. I thank all those who have contributed to the debate. I pay particular tribute the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who is doing such important work on this matter, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who spoke with such passion about these issues, which are personal for her. I also pay tribute to the other hon. Members who have spoken.
Let us be clear: the Windrush generation have been failed twice—first by the Conservative Government’s hostile environment programme, which harassed and discriminated against innocent victims, and secondly by the delays and blockages in delivering compensation to the victims of this terrible scandal.
The National Audit Office has been critical of the Windrush compensation scheme, and the report by the Home Affairs Committee has now revealed the magnitude of its failings, making it clear that the culture in the Home Office has failed miserably to change when it needed to. The report states:
“Many people who have applied for compensation have yet to receive a penny and we have heard too many stories of people struggling with impossible demands for evidence”
and
“poor communication from the Home Office…the experience of applying for compensation from the Home Office has become a source of further trauma rather than redress. Many of the concerns raised with us about the Windrush Compensation Scheme as part of this inquiry have echoes of the same criticisms made of the Home Office by Wendy Williams in her report into how the Windrush scandal occurred. It is a damning indictment of the Home Office that the design and operation of this scheme contained the same bureaucratic insensitivities that led to the Windrush scandal in the first place”.
That is a damning assessment and it further confirms the fears that the Home Office, in its current guise, is not fit for purpose and that the Home Secretary’s leadership can be characterised as a mixture of incompetence and indifference.
The failure proactively to seek out those victims to whom the Home Office had caused so much suffering has only added to the delays. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people are thought to be eligible, but at the end of January only 960 people—about 20% of those eligible for compensation —had applied, and fewer than 10% have received any compensation at all. It is no wonder that the victims of Windrush have lost faith in the Home Office to deliver this scheme. The treatment of the Windrush generation simply has not improved.
Some of the most damning criticism, from the Wendy Williams review through to this Home Affairs Committee report, has been about the culture in the Home Office. Wendy Williams found that the Home Office was characterised by
“a culture of disbelief and carelessness…a lack of empathy for individuals”
and, perhaps most tellingly, by
“institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.
That is why the Labour party, along with voices from across society, including of course members of the Windrush generation, is calling for the compensation scheme to be completely overhauled by placing it in the hands of an independent body, away from the Home Office. Recommendation 3 of the Home Affairs Committee report explicitly echoes Labour’s call, but the Government, shamefully and predictably, have rejected that suggestion. The Labour party believes that the body leading the compensation scheme must have the confidence of victims so as to restore faith in the process and get compensation quickly to people who have been so appallingly treated.
Adding to the lack of trust is the fact that the Home Secretary still has not implemented all the findings of the Williams independent review, despite committing in June 2020 to doing so. Where is, for instance, the migrants’ commissioner? The Opposition are also calling on Ministers to come forward with cast-iron guarantees on when each and every one of the 30 recommendations will be implemented—not just a promise that they will be, but guarantees on when.
There has been a complete failure by the Home Office to put right the damage done to the Windrush generation and to give them the compensation they deserve. In fact, the process of applying for compensation through the scheme replicates many of the issues experienced by victims initially, including long delays and excessive burdens on individuals to provide documentation that it is unrealistic to expect them to provide. It is worth noting that, tragically, 23 people who applied to the scheme have died before receiving their compensation. The Government must act, and must act at speed.
Against that backdrop, I have some questions for the Minister. In January, the Home Office was forced to apologise to hundreds of charities and community groups that were still waiting for decisions on applications for funding needed to support Windrush victims to apply to the scheme. We have seen delays with the scheme itself and now delays with that vital funding. Can the Minister set out today what he is doing to put that right? At the end of January, more than 90% of Windrush victims had yet to receive a penny, and 80% had not even applied. Can the Minister give us the updated figures and explain what the Government are doing to encourage more victims to come forward?
On that note, does the Minister agree that trust between this Home Office and the Windrush generation is irreparably damaged and that this vital compensation scheme must be handed to an independent organisation to ensure that victims come forward and get the redress they deserve? That will surely help to restore faith in the process and get compensation quickly to people who have been so appallingly treated.
As I said, 23 members of the Windrush generation have, tragically, died while waiting for the compensation they deserved from the scheme. This is an ageing group of claimants. What is the Minister doing specifically to speed up the process to ensure that the Windrush generation get the compensation they deserve?
The lack of progress on the Windrush compensation scheme is allowing the shameful failings exposed by the Wendy Williams review to continue. The reality is that the time for warm words is over. There has to be a fundamental change in the Home Office and in the compensation scheme. The Government must get on and deliver the compensation that the Windrush victims are entitled to following the dreadful miscarriages of justice brought about by the Government’s immoral and unlawful hostile environment policy. The former Home Secretary said that the Government,
“will do right by the Windrush generation.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2018; Vol. 640, c. 35.]
We are yet to see the current Home Secretary coming close to that aspiration. The time for platitudes is over. The time for action is now.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela. I thank the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for securing this debate and all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions. This is an important subject and I am pleased we have been able to discuss it today.
The victims of the Windrush scandal suffered terrible injustices, and this Government are determined to ensure we do everything in our power to right those wrongs. This was a shameful episode in our history; as the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) powerfully outlined, it was not just about people losing a job, suffering an inconvenience or not being able to travel; it was about feeling that their very identity had been taken away. For many, it was even harder than that: it was about being reminded, in our modern society, of exactly the type of prejudices they had met when they first came here back in the 1950s. At that time it was, shamefully, still lawful to act in ways that have now rightly been banned for many years.
We fully understand that this is not just about getting a cheque or some financial recompense; this is about something that struck people very deeply as individuals, beyond whatever financial impact it had. While it is hard to respond to that, compensation—making sure we recompense people where we can—is obviously part of the response, but the hurt felt is very much recognised, and we apologise for it and look to recognise what was done.
The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington spoke powerfully about how this is not just a debate about facts and figures on a spreadsheet. These issues had a very personal impact on people, including people whose parents, who brought them over, had fought for this country. Only a few years before their arrival here as migrants, they had been serving in the military, the then imperial forces, at a time when this nation had made a desperate call for people to serve in its defence. Many had stepped forward, particularly those from Caribbean communities and other communities across the Commonwealth, to defend a country they had never seen, but whose values they believed they shared.
I understand very much why this goes beyond being just an issue about an ordinary claim for compensation—for example, where someone’s car has been damaged or a contract has gone wrong. This really struck people quite deeply, which goes beyond what we can do, but paying compensation is an important part of this.
When I visited a community group recently, I was struck by people’s commitment to the community and this country. One individual said thank you for the compensation we had paid—they were very grateful for it. I said, “I am pleased you are grateful, but it should never have been necessary for you to have to go through that. It is what you are owed and entitled to, and not something that you should feel you have to thank us for.”
The situation we are discussing went on for a number of years. I am sure other hon. Members will have noticed, as I did, that the case on the cover of the Wendy Williams’s lessons learned review dated back to 2009. This is not a matter of a particular Government at a particular time—it happened over many years—and the Home Affairs Committee report touches on that.
We are determined to ensure that everyone who suffered because they could not demonstrate their lawful status in the United Kingdom—let me be clear that these people had lawful status in the UK—receives every penny of the compensation to which they are entitled. We are making some significant progress towards achieving that aim and have now paid a total of more than £43 million in compensation.
We remain open to areas for further improvement and welcome some of the constructive challenge we have had from Members across the House. To give credit where it is due, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) referenced his comments in a previous debate, where he highlighted that some of our wording implied a criminal standard of proof—beyond reasonable doubt—when clearly, in this instance, it should be on balance of probabilities, rather than having to reach that threshold. As a result, as he acknowledged, we changed the guidance. We remain open to looking at what needs to be done when such issues are highlighted.
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful that that change was made; I thank the Minister for that. What has he done to assure himself that that is actually making a difference in practice? There was a recommendation in the report about looking at a sample of cases, because there is still evidence coming to us that it has not changed much in reality.
Kevin Foster
I am always happy to further consider evidence. Certainly we have seen higher awards being made, partly because of the quite significant changes we made to the scheme last year but also, unsurprisingly, due to the increase in the number of applications to the scheme, which I will touch on in a minute. The change appears to be having an effect, but, as more cases come to a final decision, particularly as reviews in other areas are done, we are open to making sure that it has made a difference. I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the constructive spirit in which he approached the debate on the Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill, as did the then shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, which helped produce a better outcome all round.
I am keen for Members to see for themselves the work being done in this area. Now that covid restrictions are behind us, I am happy to welcome any parliamentary colleagues who wish to visit the compensation scheme casework team to see for themselves the progress we have made. They can talk to the team working to resolve cases to get people the compensation they deserve. The team is based up in Leeds, separate from some of the other work. For many this is their only role in the Home Office; they are not working on wider immigration matters, although some have experience in those, given the nature of the issues that they deal with. I am certainly happy to welcome people to visit and meet the teams, talk to them and see the work being done. We had hoped to arrange visits at an earlier stage, but with the understandable restrictions during the covid period, it was something we had to consider very carefully. Now that the restrictions are behind us, a visit by the Select Committee would be welcome as well. We would be happy to arrange that.
Although we do not agree with every recommendation, overall we welcome the Home Affairs Committee’s report on the scheme, and we are already making significant progress in respect of several of the Committee’s key recommendations. However, some of the recommendations are complex and we need to consider those carefully to address the issues raised. I anticipate that Members might say, “Let’s have an example, then, of a recommendation you think is complex.” We are committed to ensuring that an individual’s national insurance position is corrected where an inability to demonstrate status has impacted their entitlement to the state pension. For example, someone may have been unable to have employment and therefore unable to make national insurance contributions, meaning that there are missing years when it comes to the calculation of state pension.
We continue to work with the relevant Departments to resolve this complex issue. We are making progress, although unfortunately I cannot give a specific date today as to when we will be able to bring that change into effect.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am just a bit concerned because it is now several years since the issue arose. Getting clarity on what their entitlement to state pension will be is something that will concern an individual. The Minister says he cannot indicate when the issue is likely to be resolved. Does he have a best guess? Will it be a year, two years, five years?
Kevin Foster
We hope it will be quicker than the right hon. Lady has just suggested, and potentially a lot quicker than one of the timeframes that she suggested. I am not in a position today to give a specific date, but we are making excellent progress towards finally resolving this issue. We accept that we need to bring certainty to people, particularly given the age of many of those we are talking about, as touched on by the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Even the children of that generation are well into their 50s and 60s, given that, in many cases, we are talking about people who arrived in the UK before 1 January 1973. We are conscious of the urgency of resolving this issue. I do not want to make a misleading statement today and give a specific date by which it will be resolved, but certainly we believe we are making excellent progress and getting close to resolving it.
The changes we made to the scheme in December 2020 have significantly increased both the amount of compensation awarded and the speed at which awards are made. Since December 2020 we have paid out over £33 million, in contrast to a total of just under £3 million prior to those changes. We now frequently pay out over £1 million a month in compensation, and we recently paid out one of our largest awards to date—a single award in excess of £260,000 to one individual. I hope that Members will understand why I will not give further details of that case, which may identify the person concerned, given the sums involved.
Kevin Foster
That is a very fair question. The £36.3 million that has been paid—I must say that £43.3 million has been offered, but I will stick to the figure that I used for payment—is across a total of 940 claims, out of the 3,490 received. Obviously, the sums vary, but the largest we have paid recently is over £260,000 to one individual, and there have been a number of payments in excess of £100,000.
It is worth remembering that there is not a cap; there is not a maximum compensation amount that someone can hit. That figure gives Members an impression of the scale of the payments now being made to individuals. As I said, I am sure that people will understand why I will not go into the details of that particular case, given that doing so could divulge the identity of an individual who has just received a significant amount of money.
Stuart C. McDonald
Have I understood correctly that there has been an increase recently in the number of people who have been offered zero compensation? Is the Minister aware of why that might be happening?
Kevin Foster
There have been a number of people whose cases have concluded with a nil offer. Part of that is because we are processing more cases and getting more cases towards a final decision. However, with each case, we believe that we have come to the right decision, and decisions can be reviewed and challenged if people feel that they are inappropriate.
Sometimes, people have just been looking for a formal apology for what happened to them, which is absolutely right. However, in other cases, the impacts may not be linked directly to someone’s inability to prove their immigration status. For example, someone may have lost their job due to a criminal conviction rather than because they were not able to demonstrate their immigration status. That would not be covered by the compensation scheme; someone must have lost their job due to not being able to prove their immigration status. That is where a number of the biggest awards have come.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for his positive response. He referred to 900 people having been successful. Might the experience of those 900 who have successfully come to the end of the process help the other 13,400—I think that was the figure—who have not accessed the scheme? Is it possible to use their success to persuade others to get involved in the scheme—to show them how they can access it and reach the same successful conclusion?
Kevin Foster
The hon. Member hits on the point that making people aware that significant amounts of compensation can be received is one of the ways of promoting the scheme. I am aware of at least one other compensation claim that resulted in an offer of more than £270,000. The figure that I gave was not a one-off; it was a recent payment made last month, which is why I used it as an example.
We certainly take on board the hon. Member’s point that making it clear to people that there are opportunities to receive significant amounts of compensation is part of the way to bring people in, although he will of course understand that, at the same time, we wish to ensure that the scheme is paying those who were affected; it is not simply a way of accessing large amounts of money. We continue to offer preliminary payments of £10,000 as soon as we have identified that an individual will be entitled to an award, ensuring that affected people receive compensation as quickly as possible and do not need to wait for their claim to be finally concluded.
Rightly, a lot of Members have asked how we are going to increase the pace of progress. The biggest way in which we are doing that is by rapidly increasing the size of our casework team. We have recruited more caseworkers, expanding the number in post to 90, with 55 in training or in mentoring roles—experienced caseworkers mentoring new caseworkers being trained. That shows the scale of the increased resource that will soon be brought to bear, increasing the number of decisions. We have also recruited a further 30 staff who are going through security clearance. By spring, therefore, we expect to have a total of 120 case-workers in post and to be training them towards all being on the frontline making decisions.
Aside from taking steps to increase our size and the speed at which payments are made, we continue to look closely at any further improvements that can be made to the design of the scheme itself. We are ensuring that it remains responsive to the needs of those making claims.
In the report, the Committee rightly stressed the importance of ensuring that claims are looked at empathetically and that individuals are not required to meet an unreasonable standard of proof—a point well made by my SNP shadow, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. The Department is firmly committed to ensuring that individuals receive the compensation to which they are entitled in all cases, including those where, understandably, there is limited documentary evidence given the timescales we are talking about—the time over which a claim is spread.
As I have touched on, the scheme operates entirely on the balance of probabilities, and decision makers receive in-depth training to ensure that that approach is applied fairly and consistently. We have a quality assurance team and an independent review process in order to ensure that all decisions are subject to a high degree of internal scrutiny. I also confirm that we are reviewing— as suggested by the Committee—the definition of homelessness within the scheme, to ensure that any losses are looked at in as wide a context as possible and are appropriately reflected in compensation awards.
In the light of that, we will ensure that all individuals who were left without a home or suffered a detriment due to poor standards of accommodation receive the full amount to which they are entitled. However, I stress that under the current scheme rules, claimants are not precluded from receiving an award for homelessness if they were forced to stay with friends or family. This is not just about someone not having a roof over their head.
Our efforts to promote new applications to the scheme and to engage with and gain the trust of affected communities continue. We will relaunch our face-to-face work imminently—I am sure that those present in the Chamber realise why over the past two years we have, unfortunately, been able to do a lot less face-to-face engagement than we might have liked, given the covid restrictions and the potential impact of hosting events during that period.
We have, however, worked with other groups. In November, for example, we worked with Bangladeshi communities through the Birmingham Commonwealth Association. That links to a point rightly made by hon. Members: while Windrush is associated mostly with the Caribbean, many other communities were also affected. I checked the records during the debate and, to give an idea of the impact on communities from outside the Caribbean, the Windrush taskforce has made nearly 2,000 grants of documentation to those with Indian nationality. There are also, by the way, small cohorts of European economic area nationals who qualify for documentation but, given the impact of free movement over the past few years, would not have been caught up in the incidents that led to the Windrush scandal.
Stuart C. McDonald
One of the recommendations that the Committee made—I think Wendy Williams recommended this too—was that the historical case review process that was conducted for Caribbean countries should also happen for non-Caribbean countries. The Home Office said that that would require too much in the way of time and resources. So that we can assess that, will the Minister write to us after the debate with a little more detail on why he thinks that exercise would be too difficult?
Kevin Foster
I will take that intervention in the constructive way in which it was presented. I think that it would be impossible to put an exact timescale, cost and things on it, but I am happy to set that out in writing. Given that I have said it in this forum, I will place a copy of my letter in the Library of the House for other Members to refer to and, of course, I will send a copy to the Chair of the Committee.
We are focused on what we can do. I have held meetings with Caribbean high commissioners to discuss how we can better promote this to those communities and we are keen to reach out, via diaspora groups from across the rest of the Commonwealth, to make it clear that this is not just about the Caribbean, even though I recognise that Windrush is very strongly associated with those communities.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East highlighted the difference between the numbers of people who have received documentation versus the numbers who have then gone on to apply for compensation. That has been of interest to us as well, so we are writing to individuals who have been provided with documentation under the taskforce scheme but have not yet applied for compensation. Our goal is to highlight to them the opportunity to apply.
Some people, such as EEA nationals, who were potentially entitled by the taskforce to documentation and who were here before free movement applied rather than since, would be very unlikely to have a compensation claim, given the impact of free movement rules and their nationality, yet we are interested to highlight to individuals the opportunity to apply. We have written to 4,500 individuals so far and we will continue to encourage people who have received documentation to consider applying. Again, we make it very clear that this has no bearing on their ongoing status. That matter has been resolved; this is merely about looking to see whether there has been an impact on their life and to bring them forward. We will certainly analyse the response. At a later stage, I would be happy to share some appropriate data in a way that does not identify individuals who may or may not have replied.
A couple of Members mentioned the second phase of our national communications campaign, which is under way. In partnership with our community media partners, we have launched promotional videos and radio adverts, reaching an audience of over 1 million across priority communities. We are keen to target and work with communities. We are conscious that simply taking out adverts in national newspapers or putting things on TV may not be the best way of getting through to those who were most affected by the Windrush scandal—those who were not necessarily the biggest followers of current affairs or the media, who may well have been affected. So we have been thinking about the best methods of outreach, such as community groups, to reach out to some of those people. That work is now under way and we believe it is starting to have an impact, given the impressions and views that we believe people have had of it.
Jim Shannon
Again, I thank the Minister. He is being incredibly gracious in giving us all the chance to intervene and ask questions. I am encouraged by what he says about the community involvement; that is good news. In my contribution, I suggested that face-to-face or one-to-one follow-ups could be another method of bringing more people into the system. Has he had a chance to consider that?
Kevin Foster
Yes. Some of the community groups that we have funded reached out and did leafleting and face-to-face engagement. Now that we are coming out of the pandemic period, we are happy to relook at what we can do on face-to-face appointments. As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, that was difficult during the past two years, not because of any lack of will but because, understandably, people were nervous, and in some instances the regulations would not have permitted it. Certainly, we are keen to review that.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) also asked whether estates might pursue the compensation that someone who had passed away would have been entitled to, and the answer is a simple yes. We have also changed the scheme to provide some funding to cover the costs of seeking probate. We were made aware that there was a potential barrier for people who were not of large means, of having to secure probate where someone had potentially died intestate. We have responded to that, as we are conscious that when someone passes away with an unresolved claim, that can be difficult for the family. We do not think there should be any financial benefits, if I may put it that way, to the Government when a decision has not been made until after someone has passed away; so their estate can make the claim on behalf of their loved one and receive the full amount of compensation that their loved one would have been entitled to.
I shall now discuss some of the areas that the Committee highlighted. The extra time today is most welcome, Dame Angela, as we can have a more in-depth discussion than is usually possible. Where a claim is accepted under loss of access to employment or benefits, the Government will seek to ensure that the individual’s national insurance position is corrected. We are finalising that work across Government. The scheme’s equality impact assessment has been updated to reflect the assessments that have been carried out for the recent changes to the scheme; it will be published later this month. I am conscious that I am probably about to get an intervention on what the date will be; we are planning to publish it later this month. I know that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North has been here long enough that if I were to say spring or summer she would say, “Those seasons can be interesting.”
We are also reviewing our rules on mitigation of loss and our approach to cases where individuals may charge for immigration applications in order to prove their lawful status. One of the areas where there was the most disagreement with the Government’s response was around whether the scheme should be transferred to an independent organisation. We believe that moving the scheme from the Home Office would risk significantly delaying payments to people. Many of the systems that confirm when immigration status existed are controlled by the Home Office, and inevitably the Home Office would play a very large role in the scheme, regardless of where it was formally based.
I accept that there is a need to build confidence in those communities. It needs to be made very clear that the Windrush team is separate—that it is not part of our overall immigration operation, but works separately—and that there are clear protections around data provided to the Windrush team, to ensure that that data is not available for other purposes in the Home Office.
I pay tribute to the Caribbean high commissioners, who I have spoken to on number of occasions about how they may be able to facilitate events where they make it very clear that they are only there to speak on behalf of the diaspora that they represent. They are seen as well trusted individuals who have no agenda other than seeking to help, and they could facilitate events that would encourage those people to come forward. Similarly, we are always prepared to work with colleagues in their communities and constituencies, particularly those who represent large numbers of people who are potentially affected by the Windrush scandal. We can work with them to reach out to those who want to come in and make the application for the compensation that they so richly deserve.
We are keen to focus on the scheme and getting payments out, rather than structural changes that may delay the process. We continue to work with our independent person, and a recent review that he has done concluded that moving the scheme would not speed up the process.
The other point of most contention was around legal access for claimants. We worked with Martin Forde QC to design the scheme to be accessible to anyone without the need for legal assistance. However, for those who want or need support to make a claim, the Home Office provides free assistance in making applications through our independent claims assistance provider, We Are Digital. Most claims that have been concluded have seen claimants receive compensation without any involvement of legal professionals, and we are continuously evaluating how we can better help claimants through the process of their claim. We are working with We Are Digital to ensure that their service is clearly signposted and accessible. We are also surveying those who have made use of the service to see what their experience was. In due course, we would certainly be happy to share with the Committee some of the details of the reactions that we have had from those who have been through that service—once that is finalised.
We continue to review and make progress on the Committee’s key recommendations. We want everyone to get the maximum amount of compensation to which they are entitled. As I have outlined, we have made several changes and improvements to the scheme to achieve that goal. Those include: the removal of the scheme’s end date, an increase in the minimum award to those claiming impact on life, and an increase in the number of caseworkers to speed up payments and resolution of cases.
We remain open to making further improvements, and we will continue to engage regularly with stakeholders and applicants, both at public events and on a one-to-one basis. The injustices suffered by members of the Windrush generation should never have happened, and we must do all we can to put them right and deliver the maximum compensation to those who are entitled to it, even though we know—as was so eloquently put in the debate —that for many this is not about financial compensation; it is about getting a recognition of the hurt that was caused to them when the identity that they hold as special and at the heart of their character was taken away.
Dame Diana Johnson
I thank everyone who has contributed this afternoon. It is clear from the speeches we have heard that the Windrush generation has been let down and is still battling for justice through the compensation scheme. What concerns me and the Committee most is that the voices of the victims are not being heard by the Home Office. It is not hearing what victims are saying about their experience and how they are finding dealing with the compensation scheme.
The Minister has said a bit about that, but there is a particular problem with a lack of trust in the Home Office. As a Committee, we say that there needs to be an independent organisation to operate the scheme and to give trust and confidence to the people who have not yet applied. It is disappointing that the numbers are still too low. We are also disappointed about the pension issue. I pressed the Minister on when we will have an actual date for that to be resolved by. There was no mention of the occupational pension, which is not part of the scheme.
We look forward to hearing about the engagements that are about to start post-covid, and we would like details of those. The Committee would like to visit the caseworker unit in Leeds, which is, I think, where the Minister said it is. We would like a day out to Leeds to go and have a look at this and see what is actually happening.
Finally, although we have produced a report and the Government have responded, it is my intention as Chair—the same goes for the members of the Committee here today—to follow this very carefully to see what the Home Office does over the next few months, and possibly years. We will not let this rest. We want to ensure that there is justice for the people who have been so badly let down, and that the compensation scheme goes some way to providing the justice that they are seeking and not yet getting.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Fifth Report of the Home Affairs Committee, The Windrush Compensation Scheme, HC 204, and the Government response, HC1098.
Written Statements
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
MiFID and Prospectus Regime Reform
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
In 2021, the Government published two consultations on reforms to our capital markets regime: the wholesale markets review—which reviews the markets in financial instrument directive (MiFID) regime—and the prospectus regime review. These consultations form part of the Chancellor’s broader vision to improve the competitiveness of the UK’s financial services sector and take advantage of our new freedoms in financial services following our withdrawal from the EU. On 1 March, I announced the next steps we intend to take to reform UK capital markets.
Wholesale markets review/MiFID reform
Deep and liquid wholesale capital markets are at the heart of the UK’s prosperity as an international financial centre. With the development of the EU’s single market, much of our regulatory approach was set in Brussels. Now that we have left the EU, we can use our newfound freedoms to reform these rules to ensure they work for UK markets. I do not intend to make changes for the sake of it, but in many areas of our capital markets regime, it is clear we can improve standards and make regulation more proportionate, cutting costs for firms while improving market integrity. In 2021, we consulted on a number of changes to the MiFID framework, which underpins our regulatory regime for wholesale markets.
The consultation closed in September 2021 and HM Treasury received 78 responses. Respondents from across the financial services sector strongly welcomed the objectives of the review and proposals for reform. In the light of this, I have announced the Government’s intention to bring forward legislative changes when parliamentary time allows, to take forward the most important measures that received the strongest support. These include amendments to five key areas of the regulatory framework:
Trading venues and systematic internalisers (Sis): we will remove unnecessary restrictions on where and how trading can happen, to allow firms to get the best price for investors.
Equity markets: we will legislate to simplify how and when firms need to make trading information public before they trade, to reduce costs and burdens for firms.
Fixed income and derivatives markets: we will reform the transparency regime to reduce costs and increase effectiveness, and the derivatives trading obligation to ease burdens for firms when managing risk and prevent market fragmentation.
Commodity derivatives: we will streamline the position limits regime to make it more effective, proportionate and less burdensome to comply with.
Market data: we will bring forward legislation to enable a consolidated tape which would collate and disseminate real time trading data, to reduce data costs and improve quality.
Where changes can be made to the parts of the regime that are already set out in regulatory rules and guidance, the FCA has committed to progress these in line with its normal processes. Where legislative changes are needed but in future would better sit in regulator rules and are not urgent, the Government will wait until the outcomes of the future regulatory framework (FRF) review have been implemented to bring them forward. The Government believe that this step-by-step approach will ensure that the most burdensome and unnecessary regulatory requirements are removed as soon as possible.
The consultation response document is available at www.gov.uk/government/consultations/uk-wholesale-markets-review-a-consultation.
Prospectus regime review
In November 2020, the Chancellor asked Lord Hill of Oareford CBE to lead an independent review of the UK listing regime. Lord Hill made a series of recommendations to help attract the most innovative and successful companies to UK markets and help them access the finance they need to grow. Of particular importance was his recommendation to undertake a fundamental review of the UK’s prospectus regime, which is based on the EU prospectus regulation, now part of retained EU law. This is the regulation which underpins the documents firms must publish when they seek admission to a stock market or raise fresh capital.
Having received widespread support for our proposals from across the sector, I have announced that we will take full advantage of our new regulatory freedoms by repealing the prospectus regulation and replacing it with a regime better tailored to the UK’s position as a global financial centre, when parliamentary time allows.
Our reforms will achieve the following objectives:
The changes will facilitate wider participation in the ownership of public companies, and remove the disincentives that currently exist for the issuance of securities to wide groups of investors—including retail investors.
The changes will simplify the regulation of prospectuses and remove unnecessary duplications, without lowering regulatory standards.
The changes will improve the quality of information investors receive under the prospectus regime, giving them more confidence to make their investment decisions.
The changes will ensure that the regulation of prospectuses is more agile and dynamic, meaning that, in future, the regulation of prospectuses will be better able to respond to innovation and change.
Both of these reforms are core parts of the Government’s commitment to make the most of our new freedoms in financial services. By doing so, we will enhance the functioning and competitiveness of the UK’s capital markets, and ensure they are continuing to help create jobs, support businesses, and power growth across all regions and nations of the UK.
The consultation response document is available at www.gov.uk/government/consultations/uk-prospectus-regime-a-consultation.
[HCWS659]
Transparency Report: Disruptive Powers 2020
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)
I have today laid before both Houses the fifth iteration of the Government transparency report on the use of disruptive powers (CP 621). Copies of the report will be made available in the Vote Office and online on gov.uk.
The Government remain committed to increasing the transparency of the work of our security and intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and this next iteration of the transparency report is a key part of that commitment.
Publishing this report ensures that the public are able to access a guide to the range of powers used to combat threats to the security of the United Kingdom, the extent of their use and the safeguards and oversight in place to ensure they are used properly.
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Trade Update
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)
The Prime Minister has made two new appointments to his trade envoy programme.
The new appointments will extend the total number of trade envoys to 36 parliamentarians, covering 76 markets. The role of a Prime Minister’s trade envoy is unpaid and voluntary, with cross-party membership from both Houses. The role supports the UK’s ambitious trade and investment agenda by championing global Britain and promoting the UK as a destination of choice for inward investment. They also support the UK’s economic recovery through the levelling-up agenda, by helping business take advantage of the opportunities arising in export markets.
The new appointments are:
The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Angola and Zambia.
The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Tunisia and Libya.
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Court Recovery Update
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)
I am today setting out an update on the use of Nightingale court venues.
Since the start of the pandemic, the priority of the Government, working closely with the judiciary and others, has been to ensure the justice system continues to perform its vital role while keeping court and tribunal users safe, in line with public health guidelines.
Hotels, former courts and conference centres were rapidly transformed into courtrooms, known as Nightingale courts, during the pandemic to provide more space when social distancing was in place. These venues have provided our court estate with vital additional capacity as part of our continued efforts to recover from the impact of covid-19.
Combined with other measures—such as removing the cap on court sitting days, the use of remote hearings, and increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers—we are beginning to see the levels of outstanding cases in our courts falling. The latest figures show that in December 2021 the Crown court backlog was under 59,000. This is a fall of over 2,000 cases since its peak in June 2021. Meanwhile, in the magistrates courts, the outstanding criminal caseload has dropped by almost 70,000 cases since its peak in July 2021.
The relaxation of covid-19 restrictions means that courtroom capacity has returned to pre-pandemic levels. But continuing to use some of our Nightingale courts will now help drive court recovery further, tackling the backlog and ultimately helping to secure speedier justice for victims.
So today this Government have confirmed arrangements to extend 13 Nightingale courts from March 2022. This equates to 30 extra courtrooms, mainly dealing with criminal work, but also some civil and family cases.
The following Nightingale courts have been extended:
Prospero House, London
Barbican, London
Croydon Jurys Inn, London
Mercure Hotel, Maidstone
Former court, Chichester
Former county court, Telford
Park Hall Hotel, Wolverhampton
Maple House, Birmingham
Former Magistrates court, Fleetwood
Cloth Hall court, Leeds
Civic Centre, Swansea
Former Magistrates court, Cirencester.
The decision to extend these Nightingale courts was based on operational need and venue availability, ensuring that these extra facilities are in the right place to meet demand and make best use of taxpayers’ money.
Nightingale courts at Middlesbrough, Manchester, Liverpool, Bolton, Chester, Peterborough, Warwick, Winchester, Nottingham and 102 Petty France in London will end as planned at the end of March 2022. Use of the venue at Monument will end in early April, with HM Courts and Tribunals Service seeking a replacement venue.
The sites which are closing as planned are not needed because HMCTS has reopened existing hearing rooms as social distancing measures have eased. We now have sufficient rooms in these areas for all the available Crown court judges. We are continuing to deliver a high volume of judicial recruitment, with a recruitment programme of a further 1,100 judges in 2022-23 planned in addition to around 1,000 recruited during this financial year.
The extensions to Nightingale courts are part of our wider approach to increase capacity in line with local demand, building on measures taken over the last two years in response to the challenges of the pandemic, including:
Legislating to double the sentencing powers available to magistrates from six months to a year to free up an estimated 2,000 extra days of Crown court sitting time each year;
Investing a quarter of a billion pounds to support recovery in the courts in the last financial year, plus over £50 million for victims and support services;
Ensuring there is no limit on the number of sitting days in the Crown court this year;
Opening three rooms at Hendon Magistrates court that are currently being used for Crown court work, with a fourth due to open by the end of March 2022, providing custodial facilities for defendants on remand;
Opening two “super courtrooms” in Manchester and Loughborough, which can accommodate multi-handed trials, and added portacabins at 14 locations to facilitate jury trials; and
Arranging a temporary venue to hear a large trial in Walsall over the next 13 months, avoiding major disruption in the nearby Crown court.
These plans, alongside the decisive action already taken by this Government to date, makes it clear that we remain totally committed to reducing delays in our courts, and pulling every lever available to us to deliver justice for all those who need it.
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Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, Members are encouraged to leave some distance between themselves and others and to wear a face covering when not speaking. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after up to 10 minutes.
Taiwan
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness D’Souza
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking, if any, to support democracy in Taiwan.
Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-chair of the British-Taiwanese All-Party Parliamentary Group.
Taiwan is the Ukraine of the Far East, and it behoves us to note the threats that it endures daily from its neighbours across the strait and its commitment to the democratic process and its democratic institutions. In the last 15 months, there has been an increase of 150% in military intrusions from the PRC over those recorded in 2020. Both the UK Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, as well as G7 leaders, have emphasised the importance of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region, with specific reference to Taiwan, as set out in the integrated review and in communiqués.
The Minister for Asia, Amanda Milling, answering to a recent debate in the other place, affirmed that
“The UK has a clear interest in ensuring peace and stability in the Taiwan strait. Without it, the prosperity and security interests of both the UK and our like-minded partners would … suffer.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/2/22; col. 1150.]
These are welcome words, as are the many shared endeavours that the Minister went on to mention, including increased trade, action against climate change, bilingual education, digital health technology and cultural exchanges. However, today I press the Minister further on the Government’s commitments to Taiwan and its flourishing democracy in the face of increased threats and sabotage of its industry and trade relations.
Taiwan is one of the five semiconductor producing countries in the world and supplies over 50% of the world’s high-end chips, used in the aerospace, bioscience and defence industries. It is a world leader in renewable energy and especially in the development of electronic vehicles. It has joined in the international sanctions imposed on Russia. The world also has much to learn from the success that Taiwan enjoyed in stemming the spread of Covid. These are all promising industries and policies that continue to need further investment. The efforts by the PRC to undermine Taiwan’s production capacity, whether this be in tourism, electronics or agriculture, should prompt a more regional approach to such coercion through trade agreements. Furthermore, Taiwan has submitted its application to the CPTPP, which would be to the advantage of this trade bloc, which has high regulatory standards, as we know. Taiwan hopes for the support of the UK after the UK has itself become a member. In this context, I ask the Minister whether the Government will provide this support and when they will sign and begin meaningful discussions on the bilateral investment agreement.
The US Taiwan Relations Act 1979 guarantees the provision of adequate defence equipment, which is extremely important in maintaining Taiwan’s credible self-defence capability. What contributions is the UK making towards this credible capacity in, for example, bolstering Taiwan’s navy and missile defence systems?
Taiwan is developing its technology on an impressive scale, and this supports the idea of some kind of shared technology network with other countries in the region, such as the US, Japan and South Korea. On her appointment, the Foreign Secretary referred to the notion of such a grouping to deal with issues such as climate change and, importantly, protection against cybercrime—has this idea been taken further? The benefit during peacetime is obvious, but so too is the protection that this network might provide in the event of further imminent threats from the People’s Republic of China.
The UK Prime Minister has himself acknowledged the global impact of events in Ukraine, which may be particularly significant for Taiwan. Following the tragic fall of Hong Kong, Taiwan is now the front line in defending democracy against China’s expanding authoritarianism. While Taiwan’s economic resilience may not be enough to deter further intrusions from the PRC, it commits those nations that hold such investments in the country to protect them robustly. How does the FCDO see Taiwan’s future in the face of increased military threats, not only in the strait but in the region more generally? How does the UK see the protection and strengthening of Taiwan economically and militarily as a key instrument in the declared pivot to the Indo-Pacific?
Due to events in Ukraine, we may find soon that words of encouragement and support are simply not enough. If we are serious about deterring such actions, we need to make strong, definite commitments to those countries that face authoritarian expansion in the immediate future.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who has put the challenge extremely well. I endorse much of what she says.
When I was a junior Minister during the pandemic, extraordinary things happened, and I broke a great many ministerial precedents. However, one thing that I did not manage to do was put a call through to my opposite number in the Taiwanese department for health. Officials were extremely hesitant to make that happen and, despite my best efforts, I never made that telephone call, even though Taiwan had a huge amount to teach the British response to the pandemic. That is a personal example of an outdated, cautious approach to our dealings with Taiwan, one of the world’s most important democracies. That strategic ambiguity and climate of caution around our country’s engagement with Taiwan is suddenly looking out of date and dangerous. In the interests of time, I will not go into the details but we all know what I am talking about.
I echo the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and recommend five of my own easy-to-take measures with which the Government could demonstrate their commitment to Taiwan—commitments that might cause a small amount of discomfort but are essential for demonstrating the strong alliance between our two countries.
First, it is time that a Cabinet Minister went to Taiwan. We have had junior Ministers there since 1994, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. I pay tribute to Greg Hands, who has been three times—once by cyberspace—but he is just a junior Minister. The USA has made Cabinet-level visits since 1994—I remember Alex Azar going, and he made a big impact. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Taipei on Tuesday. I should like to see someone such as Sajid Javid go to Taiwan in the very near future to talk to the Taiwanese about public health; it is the kind of measure from which we could learn a lot and would show our friendship.
Secondly, I pay tribute to the Minister and ministerial colleagues in the FCDO and elsewhere for their support for Taiwan’s membership of international bodies. But they are often blackballed by China and we therefore need to be creative. I recommend to the Minister that we look at the G7, at which Australia, India, South Africa and South Korea are invited guests, and the D10, where Indonesia, Poland and Spain are invited guests. Inviting Taiwan to attend those sessions is not within our gift but the British Government should certainly be pushing actively for that.
Thirdly, on security, the integrated review recognises that coercive economic measures are a real threat. I note the commitment in the recent communiqué with the Australian Government to work together to ensure that when coercive economic measures are put in place, Britain and Australia are linked together to support each other. We should be working equally hard with Taiwan in putting together the protocols to protect each other, particularly for Taiwan, and to bring about a deterrent for anyone thinking of trying it on.
Fourthly, I echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, on CPTPP. Further expansion of the existing investment treaty into a bilateral investment treaty would be good. That should, in time, be expanded to a free trade agreement along the lines we have with New Zealand.
Fifthly, and lastly, on defence, the situation in Ukraine has shown that when NATO members such as Germany and Poland are affected, we are all affected. We know that the USA’s Taiwan Relations Act makes for the USA very strong commitments but we are not clear about the consequential commitments for the UK. I do not think we should be shy of thinking through those consequential commitments. In fact, there are very real benefits from having an earnest and documented discussion of that.
These are five tangible steps which are well within the gift of the Government. I would be enormously grateful if the Minister could commit to all five of them by the end of this Parliament, in order that we have a clear programme of activity to show our support to Taiwan.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for this important debate, particularly in these difficult times, when democracy in some parts of the world is challenged by military forces. The United Kingdom has a stable and sound relationship with Taiwan. It is in our interest to ensure the preservation of peace and stability across the strait and that China ends its coercion against Taiwan.
All democratic nations and those countries in and near the South China Sea must be concerned about the building of the base, which could affect peace and stability, and in particular the navigational facilities there. It is also clear that frequent excursions in invading the Taiwanese airspace is unacceptable. I have visited the coastal region and been shocked to see missiles pointing towards Taiwan.
I have visited this beautiful island on a number of occasions, and strongly recommend its national museum as being of particular interest. It has a fully functioning democracy and, having met the present and previous Presidents, I am impressed with the way its Parliament functions. The Liberal Democrats have a special relationship with the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP; in fact, it is our sister party in power in Taiwan. I was at the inaugural function of President Tsai when she was elected. She knew David Steel, who was leading our delegation. Suffice to say that most of the conversation was about her time at the LSE, when Lord Steel was leading the Liberal Democrats.
I have a request to make of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. Let me declare my interest. I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Abolition of the Death Penalty and have visited a number of countries to promote this cause. On my visit during President Ma’s time in office, and then during that of President Tsai, it was clear that Taiwan was working towards abolition of the death penalty. I want to ensure that Taiwan is now at a very advanced stage on this, and the Minister should open discussions towards this aim.
Let me explain why I say this now. It is some years now since Professor Roger Hood, emeritus professor of criminology at Oxford, produced his report on the abolition of the death penalty in Taiwan. We now have a report on the opinion of Taiwanese legislators on the death penalty. These legislators hold a particularly influential position and the study reveals that the majority of them would like to see the death penalty abolished. The risk of wrongful convictions, the abuse of human rights and a recognition that the death penalty has no unique deterrent effect were the main reasons cited by the legislators. These are the same reasons we advocated when abolishing the death penalty in this country. I have no doubt whatever that these are central to the work of the Minister at the Foreign Office.
I do not wish to cite the statistics reflected in this report. Suffice to say that a nudge at the top level would achieve this aim. I should be grateful for the Minister’s support.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the House is greatly indebted to my noble friend Lady D’Souza for bringing this Question on Taiwan for debate today. I draw attention to the relevant all-party groups of which I am a member, and also my membership of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. I commend its work and that of Luke de Pulford on behalf of the people of China and Taiwan.
I draw a careful distinction between my huge admiration for Chinese people and civilisation and the infamies of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, which is responsible for so many depredations, from the mass slaughter of millions to the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, the subjugation of Tibet, its disfigurement of democracy in Hong Kong, the genocide of the Uighur people in Xinjiang, and the incarceration of journalists, lawyers, religious believers, artists and political dissidents; and which daily threatens the more than 23 million people of Taiwan.
In 2019, in Taiwan, I met Lam Wing-kee and the wife of Lee Ming-che. Lam had been imprisoned in China for selling books—including, I might add, a copy of 1984—and Lee Ching-yu described to me how her husband, a Taiwanese pro-democracy activist, had been arrested in 2017 while on a visit to China. He remains incarcerated to this day.
Is it any wonder that the people of Taiwan—a territory which has never been part of the People’s Republic of China—live in dread of a military invasion by the CCP? That apprehension is underlined by the illegal seizure of a sovereign state, accompanied by war crimes, in Ukraine by Putin, who, as we saw at the genocide Games, is a close ally of Xi Jinping? Of course, the greatest tragedy is that if “two systems, one country” had not been destroyed in Hong Kong, it could have offered enormous hope to Taiwan; instead of which, it demonstrates the deceit of the CCP in upending international treaties.
In a debate in July 2014, I urged the Government to increase our global efforts to strengthen democracy, not least via the BBC World Service, something the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and I have regularly raised with the Minister. I contrasted soft, or smart, power with
“a different kind of power, characterised by visceral hatred and unspeakable violence … a climate in which fragile peace and seedling democracies, from the China Sea to Ukraine, are at daily risk.”—[Official Report, 10/7/14; col. 292.]
Eight years later, in this very Room, I urged the Government to lead other democracies in recognising Taiwan,
“turning the tables on the CCP’s bullying posturing”,—[Official Report, 3/2/22; col. GC 308.]
and warned of the implications for Taiwan and many other seedling democracies if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Have we woken up to these new realities? I particularly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said about the importance of a Cabinet Minister visiting Taiwan. I hope our Minister, the Minister of State, who is hugely respected, will consider adding Taiwan to the list of the many places he journeys to. When will we press for the inclusion of Taiwan in international organisations and institutions, particularly the World Health Organization? Why are we not making a free trade agreement with Taiwan? We must stand in solidarity with Taiwan, which has a free people in a vibrant democracy. It threatens no one and believes in peaceful coexistence. As my noble friend said, authoritarianism is on the march. By standing with Taiwan, we will be leading other nations in defying the CCP.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I respectfully remind everybody of the three-minute speaking limit, because we want to hear from the Minister. I apologise for having to do that, but the first three speakers have overrun.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady D’Souza on securing this debate at such a defining moment for global affairs. I also declare an interest as the co-chairman of the British-Taiwanese All-Party Parliamentary Group.
I have had the honour of visiting Taiwan on many occasions, for business and as a politician, from 1972 onwards. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, it is a wonderful land and the home of countless kind, inspirational and creative people. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index, Taiwan now ranks as a leading democracy in Asia and the 11th worldwide. It also boasts the seventh-largest economy in Asia and the 21st globally. For the post-Brexit United Kingdom, it is a country with which we should be seeking closer ties.
In 1992, shortly after stepping down as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher travelled to Taiwan to celebrate its progress towards democratisation. However, following her death in 2013, and at the insistence of the Chinese Government, the Cabinet Office decided that Taiwan would not be permitted diplomatic representation at her funeral. Just two years later, Chinese President Xi Jinping was honoured with a full state visit to the United Kingdom.
We meet against the backdrop of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Xi has supported Putin’s campaign against allowing Ukraine to join NATO, one of Putin’s prime justifications for his current butchery. President Xi and Putin are increasingly aligned on many issues, and your Lordships can be sure that Beijing is following the horrific events in Ukraine with special interest.
The Chinese air force breached the median line of the Taiwan Strait 950 times in 2021, a 150% increase on the previous year. Taiwanese residents and businesses are subject to countless cyberattacks every day, with the overwhelming number suspected to emanate from China. Similarly, Putin’s Russia has long targeted Ukraine with relatively new forms of warfare, with Ukraine’s electricity grid and communications networks favoured as a means of damaging the country’s ability to function.
This is a short debate, and I will save the Minister the need to remind us that Her Majesty’s Government remain of the view that it is for Taiwan and China to resolve their differences. However, if the United Kingdom truly is the mother of democracies, surely it is our duty to stand strong against the bullying of independent states by aggressive regimes. I am proud of what our country is doing to support Ukraine in its darkest hour, but I say respectfully to the Minister, as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, stressed most ably, that the United Kingdom should also put much greater effort into deepening co-operation and partnership working with our freedom-loving friends in Taiwan. As a first step, Her Majesty’s Government should grant full diplomatic status to Taiwan and to Mr Kelly Hsieh, the excellent representative of Taiwan in the United Kingdom, giving him equivalence with the Chinese ambassador.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, on securing this important debate. I have listened with great admiration to all the speeches so far. It is important to put on the record Taiwan’s commitment to human rights and democracy, its astonishing economic success and the friendship of its people and Government towards the West generally, and to us in Britain particularly.
During my years in this House, I have spoken often about relations with Taiwan. Until 2016 I was an officer of the British-Taiwanese All-Party Parliamentary Group, latterly as its co-chair. I handed that role over to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, who I am delighted to follow in this debate, when I was appointed the British Government’s trade envoy to Taiwan. I shall speak briefly about trade today.
The top five products exported from the UK to Taiwan are beverages, medicinal and pharmaceutical products, cars, mechanical power generators, chemicals and scientific instruments. Last October, I supported the Minister for Trade Policy, Penny Mordaunt MP, at the annual trade talks with our Taiwanese counterparts and made great progress on market access in energy and offshore wind power, financial services, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and Scotch whisky. Taiwan was whisky’s third-largest market by value in 2021 and has a particular liking for single malts. Taiwan is also a top-six market for Scottish salmon.
I attended the trade talks in Taipei in 2018, when we signed the agreement that opened up the Taiwanese market for UK pork. Exports of this are likely to be worth £50 million over the five years from the date the market opened to us. We hope to make progress with lamb and organic products later this year.
There are many other sectors I could speak about if I had time. I will just mention one exciting initiative we are supporting: Taiwan’s bilingualism 2030 strategy to make English an official language. With great help from the British Council, a letter of intent between the British Office Taipei and the Taiwanese Ministry of Education has been signed, focusing on English-language education and assessment collaboration. It will create connections, strengthen the relations between British and Taiwanese people and lead to significant growth in UK-Taiwan trade and investment. I am particularly pleased that the English being learned by the Taiwanese is English English, not American English.
Finally, let us remember what was in the latest Freedom in the World report from the US-based Freedom House: out of 210 countries and territories around the world, Taiwan was in equal 17th place, with 38 points out of a maximum 40 for political rights and 56 out of 60 for civil liberties—one point ahead of the United Kingdom. Norway, Sweden and Finland received full marks in both categories. China, by contrast, was tied in 185th place with a score of nine points and rated as “not free”. It is obvious what lessons we draw from that.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for securing this debate. It is even more timely and relevant than we could have realised exactly four weeks ago, when a number of us here today debated in this very Room the threat to democracy from autocrats and kleptocrats. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inevitably raises concerns about the threat of China to Taiwan, which is also living in the shadow of an overbearing and menacing neighbour. That said, I do not believe that Taiwan will be the next Ukraine, as there are huge geographic, geopolitical, cultural and economic differences.
As we have heard, Taiwan’s democratic credentials are indeed impressive, moving up to eighth in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and first in the Asia-Pacific region. A liberal democracy, and world leader in gender equality in government, Taiwan also boasts a dynamic economy, agile industry and entrepreneurial zest. Yet the UK and especially the US must do more to support Taiwan, given the island’s contested status. As we know, the UK does not recognise Taiwan as a country nor maintain diplomatic relations, but we do lobby for its participation in international organisations, as an observer at the very least. Can the Minister inform us whether the UK is planning to step up such lobbying?
I ask this because the need for Taiwan, with its close cultural and economic relations with China, to fully participate in international organisations was demonstrated to devastating effect by the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan. As we now know, China was very slow to admit to person-to-person transmission—in fact, fatally slow—and it was Taiwan that first alerted the WHO on 31 December 2019. Its warning was largely ignored as it was not a member of the WHO, while China was not just a member but—how can I put it?—a highly influential one. The weeks of denial from China and dithering from the WHO in early 2020 tragically contributed to millions of deaths and trillions in the economic damage that ensued.
The need for transparency has never been greater. Russia and China share a brutal coalition of disinformation and we must do our utmost to support states and countries such as Taiwan and Ukraine, which share our respect for the truth and a belief that freedom of speech is a very basic human right.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I think a theme is emerging. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, has secured a very timely debate, as the noble Lord has just said. The Chinese leadership will be watching this current crisis. Putin claims that Ukraine belongs to Russia, while China claims Taiwan—autocracies threatening to swallow up democracies.
We know the dictum that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are seeing the fruits of that right now in Europe. We recall that Russia took Crimea and there was no prolonged international outcry. It has fought an eight-year war in the Donbass but the world paid little attention. We have seen democratic Hong Kong taken over, if more subtly than is happening in Ukraine. The international community as a whole did not come to the assistance of the people of Hong Kong, so we should take seriously China’s increasing intrusions into Taiwan’s airspace. Are these intimidating measures or do they signal something more?
Few thought that Russia would really aim to take the whole of Ukraine; we cannot be sanguine here. China is assiduous in making sure that no country recognises Taiwan. I note the Government’s position on this, which reflects the concerns at China’s potential reaction—not Taiwan’s interests or those of the wider world.
In China, as in Russia, you have a leader who has supreme power, who wishes to leave a legacy, who feels that their country has been undervalued, who is no doubt more savvy than the brutal Putin and who always applies the lessons from the break-up of the Soviet Union but, nevertheless, is someone who should not be underestimated. We already see that the economic sanctions rightly hurting Russia will also have an effect on us. What happens to Taiwan is also likely to affect us. It is therefore not only right but in our interests that we pay attention.
As others have mentioned, Covid is a stark reminder of how interconnected we all are; not only did a disease travel around the world in weeks and months but fighting that pandemic affected the supply chain so that even the availability of toys at Christmas in the United Kingdom was affected two years later. Taiwan, sitting alongside China, was already acutely aware of that interconnectedness and, in the case of the pandemic, was far better prepared than most other countries, as we have heard. That is another reason why it should be in international groupings. It would benefit from such engagement but so too would we. What are we doing to facilitate that? What progress are we making at the WHO?
Our need for a strong, rules-based international order is overwhelming. Our need to be vigilant is crystal clear. That must include the present and future of Taiwan.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, there is no turning back. The genie is out of the bottle, with the global community having arrived at a crossroads. Accountable governance is showing itself to be sacrosanct and resilient, with democratic ideals that will be defended in a world that will not stand idle nor allow encroachment. Self-serving government by the few, for the few, is reaching the end of the road. Military dominance alone will never prevail in our interdependent world. Russians will know that they have been taken down a cul-de-sac in a world that can cripple a country without the use of lethal force and weapons. China should be encouraged to reflect carefully before it takes the world to the abyss over Taiwan.
During his closing remarks in the debate on Ukraine the other day, the Minister observed:
“Blessed are the peacekeepers”.—[Official Report, 25/2/22; col. 523.]
In Latin, it is “Beati pacifici”; it is the motto of my family, coincidentally. A bridge must be opened to allow for an exit mechanism—a face-saving bridge, if you will. It is being suggested that China could become the Ukraine peacemaker, with the ability to pull Russia in. Nothing would be more welcome at this terrible hour.
While too much is often expected from the United Nations, the Security Council may in part be the problem. Fundamentally, the United Nations is supposed to keep us safe. It has not worked. Urgent reform is required. It needs change. In a world where shared resources and shared responsibilities must become the norm, no single member should be allowed to manipulate the process for self-serving national purposes, yet in its current form, that is exactly what the UN allows. At the very least, majority decision-making is now an imperative. If that be a challenge too far—remembering that both the United Nations and the League of Nations before it came into existence in response to wars that changed the global status quo—the alternative is to now consider a successor to the United Nations that creates a process fit for tomorrow’s world and places world preservation and co-existence first.
Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)
My Lords, this is a very timely debate, for which I thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, against the background of increased military activity around Taiwan, as noted by a number of noble Lords. I declare an interest, having visited Taiwan three times, as declared in the register at the time. I have been privileged to meet President Tsai Ing-wen and former President Ma twice. I have nothing but respect for both, and for Taiwan’s entrepreneurial and intelligent people. I also commend Taiwan’s excellent response to the Covid pandemic, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and others.
As we have heard, Taiwanese-British links in, among other things, wind power, education, cultural exchange and even Scotch whisky, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, are remarkable and growing. Taiwan has a thriving civil society and democracy. Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for the others that have been tried. He also said that to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war. We are witnessing a deplorable, awful tragedy unfolding in Europe, in Ukraine, which once more underlines how conflict should never be resolved by force.
We should never forget that in war, the greatest casualties are always innocent civilians. During the Korean War, in the early 1950s, which I studied a long time ago for my doctoral thesis, 2.5 million Korean civilians died—10% of the entire pre-war population. It was during that war that the US Seventh Fleet moved to protect what was then Formosa and was deployed to the Formosa Strait, as it was then called.
Of course, truth is the first casualty in war. War is not only about military assault but increasingly about disinformation and hybrid warfare. Democracy and freedom of speech are under attack across the globe as never before. Let us work together peacefully to preserve it while we still can.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I also declare an interest. I have visited Taiwan on a number of occasions, both through invitations by the Government of Taiwan and, as the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, indicated, through the auspices of the All-Party Group on the Abolition of the Death Penalty. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, on securing this timely debate. The context, as my noble friend Lady Northover indicated, is a time of great sensitivity within the region and, indeed, the world.
As my noble friend Lord Dholakia indicated, in the past, my friend and former colleague Lord Steel of Aikwood would have contributed to this debate. I recall the very frequent meetings we had in this Parliament when I worked for him, 25 years ago, about the establishment of the DPP, one of the region’s first proper democratic and liberal parties, which is now the governing party. President Tsai is also a beacon for democracy in the region for upholding liberal democratic principles. In 2015, Lord Steel received the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon from the President of Taiwan. My noble friend Lord Foster was there—I think his role was to carry it back for him.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, indicated, relations with Taiwan are deep and should be deeper. Indeed, as has been referenced, Taiwan was a conspicuous leader in the global response to Covid. A very good university friend of mine and his family live in Taiwan and I know at first hand about the immediate response, with the use of technology, proper test and trace, and community action. The noble Lord was very frank, and I commend him for being honest with the Grand Committee, that it was an error that we did not communicate very strongly and share those experiences. I hope the Minister will be able to say that we learned from that experience and that we will not see this repeated.
With my international trade spokesman hat on, I have tried on a number of occasions to have Trade Ministers develop much stronger relations with Taiwan, particularly in the context of what we saw with the Taiwanese delegation to COP in Glasgow, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said. I commend him on his work as an envoy. We saw the very strong and great opportunities for renewable technology in particular, as two island nations with immense opportunities for tidal and wave power.
As vice-chair of the Scotch Whisky All-Party Parliamentary Group, I sometimes find it difficult to come to terms with scotch leaving our shores, but the Taiwanese are an appreciative and very valuable market— the third-highest for value in the world. As an export, it is also enormously important for UK soft power and our culture, standards and tourism.
As has been referenced in this debate, this is an enormously tense time, and the UK needs to be clear in its public statements, with no ambiguity, that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with those who stand for the values that we stand for in Europe. As my noble friend Lady Northover said, the world and the UK can both benefit from greater co-operation with Taiwan. In many respects, it is itself a brilliant star for democracy in the region, and we should say very loudly that we support it.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for initiating this debate and for her excellent introduction.
Taiwan has become a democratic success story—a beacon for others to follow—but, today of all days, we must recognise that that journey was painful and, at times, slow. In considering how we can best support Taiwan in its development of democracy, I ask the Minister what recognition the UK has given to the role of civil society, a key ingredient for the protection of human rights. In visiting Taiwan, I have personal experience of meeting LGBT groups campaigning for same-sex marriage there—this was a successful campaign that would not, in my opinion, have been successful without the engagement of civil society.
With the CPTPP, the region is a focal point for negotiation and important to the UK’s prosperity. An enhanced trade partnership between the UK and Taiwan would be strong evidence of the UK’s commitment to a values-based trade policy. The current tensions across the Taiwan Strait require all liberal democracies to increase their support for Taiwan. China’s recent military flights towards Taiwan and its attempts to push for Taiwan’s international isolation should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Of course, the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, has argued for a peaceful and constructive dialogue between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain today what the UK has been doing to facilitate and encourage such dialogue.
As we have heard in this debate, although our current focus is on Ukraine, we should not forget that the pandemic, climate change and food insecurity are global issues that the international community must address collaboratively. As the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said, the experience and voice of Taiwan’s 24 million people should not be ignored. Although the UK and Taiwan have no formal diplomatic relationships, the ties between us reflect the values that we share. In a week where Taiwan has joined the international effort to sanction Russia, it is clear that there are further areas of co-operation for us to explore.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, I join others in expressing gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for securing this important debate on this date. I also recognise the important contribution that she has made in her role as vice-chair of the APPG. I of course thank other noble Lords for their very insightful and detailed contributions.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, we are meeting during a moment in history, where there is a real challenge to the international world order. The organisations that have kept peace, including the United Nations, are under the severest of challenges, not least from Russia, a P5 member. Very shortly in your Lordships’ House, we will again debate the specific issue of sanctions and their impact on Russia.
I share the concern expressed by a number of noble Lords—including the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who speaks with great insight on these issues—that when there is one aggressor in the world, another watches with great interest what the international community does. I also recognise that, when Crimea was annexed, it was very clear that the response of the international community very quickly assumed a new sense of what was defined as normal. I very much welcome the strong contributions and support for the people of Ukraine from across your Lordships’ House and beyond. We will continue to work in a co-operative manner to ensure that that message is given not just to Russia but to any other aggressor around the world who is watching to see what the international community may do.
The noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Rogan, are right: Taiwan is an important democratic partner in the world to the United Kingdom. Its journey has been remarkable, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, since its first free and fair election just over 25 years ago. Taiwan has an independent media and an energetic civil society, as the noble Lord reminded us. We of course recognise and welcome its decision on the importance of ensuring equality for all in all elements of society. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, also reminded us of the strength of democracy and of civil society. We share common ground in many areas, including Indo-Pacific security, which my noble friend Lord Bethell referred to, and prosperity, climate action and global health. Our relations are built on an increasingly wide range of interests, be they economic, scientific or educational, which were rightly emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Truscott.
I have listened carefully to what was said about engagement from the United Kingdom, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Bethell. Our right honourable friend Greg Hands has visited Taiwan often in his capacity as Trade Minister. Equally, noble Lords will be aware that the UK’s unofficial relationship with Taiwan is unique in our standing on the world stage and international relations. We are not represented by an embassy in Taiwan, rather by the British Office Taipei. I assure noble Lords that our team there drives forward our important relationship with Taiwan.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others mentioned engagement at a more senior level, or from Ministers at the FCDO; our position on ministerial engagement remains unchanged. However, that does not limit us to not representing the interests of Taiwan when it comes to the global stage. I will come on to that in a moment.
Before I do that, the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady D’Souza, in her opening remarks, referred to the question of the current up-front tensions and the increased tensions in the Taiwan Strait. I assure the noble Baronesses and my noble friend Lord Bethell that we are in regular contact with our close partners about the importance of stressing peace and stability in the strait. During our presidency of the G7, the Foreign and Development Ministers’ communiqué in May 2021 underscored
“the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”,
and reiterated that Ministers
“encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.”
My right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have also made clear that the numerous Chinese military flights that have taken place near Taiwan over recent weeks and months are not conducive to the regional peace and stability that we all desire.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and my noble friend Lord Bethell raised the issue of the CPTPP. As a non-member, we are not commenting on the specifics of other economies’ interests in the agreement. This is of course a group of economies that promote free and fair trade, and members are required to meet high standards. Therefore, that issue is very much for the membership, but I acknowledge that this remains an important area of interest for your Lordships.
Many noble Lords rightly mentioned the importance of trade. I recognise the invaluable role of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, as trade envoy. He has given exemplary service to our country in strengthening ties. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, that we are strengthening our relationship and I was delighted that my dear friend the right honourable Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Trade, co-chaired the talks held in October 2021. Those talks deepened the UK and Taiwan’s economic and commercial partnerships across a range of areas and saw progression on market access ambitions in a number of sectors which many noble Lords mentioned, including energy, offshore wind power, financial services, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and of course Scotch whisky. As a teetotaller, I must bow to the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, but I am sure that the quality of whisky is excellent—I will go no further on that point. I assure noble Lords that the Department of International Trade holds annual ministerial talks with Taiwan. As I said, those of last October made real progress on market access in key sectors.
The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and others rightly mentioned the importance of climate. I assure noble Lords that the UK and Taiwan are partners on climate action, increasingly sharing expertise on floating offshore wind and multi-use port development. We collaborate on skills and workforce planning for the renewable energy sector. UK businesses support Taiwan’s ambition to increase its proportion of renewable energy to 20% by 2025. I hope the noble Baroness recognises the importance of us encouraging these efforts, of which we have seen results, with more than 30 of our offshore wind companies having set up operations in Taiwan.
Last year, the third UK-Taiwan energy dialogue promoted our expertise in decarbonisation and offshore wind. It agreed new areas for co-operation, including Taiwan’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050. The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, our leading innovation centre for offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, also signed an agreement with Taiwan’s top research institute to promote new partnerships. In my role as Minister with responsibility for relations with India, I have seen its capacity; it is a leading element of British technology in offshore wind.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Bethell, raised digital and tech. We are keen to build on our flourishing science and technology co-operation with Taiwan. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, rightly talked about learning from each other. Taiwan produces most of the high-performance semiconductors that drive our digital economy. It also plays a critical role in the technology supply chains that underpin global markets and invests heavily in research and innovation, including through MediaTek’s research centres in Cambridge and London.
We have also strengthened co-operation on education. Taiwan has set out plans to become a bilingual society in Mandarin and English by 2030. The issue of soft power has often come up. I am sure noble Lords will join me in recognising and welcoming that, through the important role of the British Council, the UK is a natural partner to help further advance English language education, teaching and assessment.
The noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Faulkner, and others talked of the importance of human rights; I acknowledge the important role that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, has played in this respect on previous visits to Taiwan. We are bolstering co-operation between the British Office and the Taiwanese National Human Rights Commission on democratic principles and values. We will continue to focus on doing more in this respect.
The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and my noble friend Lord Bethell talked of the integrated review. We are of course very much focused on the growing influence of China in this respect. We will work with all key partners in ensuring the strength of our work and operations on the ground in Taiwan, as well as in the Indo-Pacific region.
The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, mentioned the death penalty. This of course remains a focus. We are consistent on this issue and continue to raise it with the Taiwanese at the highest level.
We also encourage Taiwanese engagement with the Equality and Human Rights Commission in England and Wales. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has developed important partnerships with Taiwanese stakeholders, including those emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Collins: civil society groups, universities, political parties and think tanks. Through this work, we continue to deepen our engagement and co-operation with Taiwan in support of democracy.
The noble Lords, Lord Londesborough and Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lord Bethell raised the important issue of our international support for Taiwan. I assure noble Lords that we are working hard with our partners to support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organisations, as a member where statehood is not a prerequisite and as an observer or guest where it is. For example, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that in 2021, for the first time, we named Taiwan in the UK’s national speech at the World Health Assembly and made the case, alongside like-minded countries, that Taiwan’s inclusion benefits global health. That includes Taiwan’s meaningful participation in ongoing technical meetings, allowing its experts to access and participate in relevant facilities and virtual formats, as well as information exchange platforms.
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and my noble friend Lord Bethell talked about the importance of learning from the pandemic. We want to learn from Taiwan’s leading example in tackling Covid-19; it rightly won the world’s admiration for its assured response, based on its experience. This is a two-way process. We have facilitated expert-level dialogues between UK health experts and the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, and will be taking forward plans this year for a UK-Taiwan expert health dialogue.
Finally, the UK’s long-standing position on Taiwan has not changed, and we have a strong and thriving relationship. Enduring peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is a matter not just of UK interest but of global concern. We will continue to work with all international partners to discourage any activity that undermines the status quo. We will also continue to press for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organisations. As we have seen from the debate today, it is not just the UK but the world that will benefit from continued engagement with Taiwan, as a thriving democracy and important economic partner.
Peerages: Recommendations
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the resolution of the House on 31 October 1917 which required that any recommendation for a new peerage sent to the Crown be accompanied by a statement of the reasons for the recommendation, what plans they have to ensure that (1) any person nominated for a peerage has been approved as a proper person by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, or any other appropriate vetting committee, and (2) the assessment of the Commission accompanies the recommendation to the Crown for the grant of the peerage.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this short debate. It is a bit of a raffle, is it not? You put in your subject and about four out of 20 get drawn, so I am probably lucky to be drawn.
This comes out of my long-term interest in history, particularly the history of the way Britain has developed. When I first got here, some nine years ago, I was quite fascinated to be told that we were a self-governing House. I think I have discovered over the last nine years that our definition of “self-governing House” is something like that of a self-governing colony. We have no rights other than the right the governor-general wishes to accord to us, and she does not seem to want us to do very much at all.
When I was looking back in the history books, quite by accident I chanced on a debate from 1917, which quite clearly demonstrates that this House has the right to ask the Government to do something. People have said that we cannot ask the Government and can only petition or request, but we can take a decision. That is why the rather obscure reference to 1917 is at the beginning of this Question.
The second thing is that my studies of history have led me to somewhat different conclusions from many people’s about certain aspects of British history. One of them is that George V is probably the most underrated monarch of the last 200 years. He did a huge amount to bring Britain from Victorian England, which was really his father, to an England of George VI, which was his son. His almost 26 turbulent years transformed Britain. Together with probably our greatest Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, he not only probably saved Britain from revolution but put it on the path it is on today as a constitutional democracy.
We are quite unique in that we survived many buffetings without going down very extreme paths. If you look at the resolution of 1917, and one before it from 1914, you find at the base of it a general perception that the House of Lords was in need of some reform and that the Lords had got out of touch with the people. I think that is the case today.
The Earl of Selborne said in 1917 that the way in which the Lords behaved was
“doing grave damage to the prestige of the Crown”.
I do not think that recent events around honours and peerages have done any good for the Crown—let us put it that way. In the same debate, the Marquess of Lansdowne said that in passing the resolution we were going
“a long way towards allaying suspicion, which may be exaggerated, but which is certainly widespread and very deep-seated.” —[Official Report, 31/10/1917; cols. 847-60.]
There is a widespread and deep-seated perception today that there is a class of people in this country to whom the normal rules do not apply, and I am afraid that one of those people is not far from the head of this particular Administration we have. In short, we are in a situation where respect for the Government is far lower than it needs to be. Many people look at what is happening and say, “It’s okay for them; they live in a different world from us”.
What I am trying to do with this resolution is one little part of the procedure—the nominations of peerages: to ask that, when they are sent to the Crown, they be accompanied by the findings of whatever commission looks into peerages. If that commission rejects the peerage and the Prime Minister still wants to send it, he or she should be obliged to include with that the recommendation of the House of Lords commission that has been appointed to do this job. They should not just be able to sweep it under the carpet and say, “Oh well, I’ve looked at that and don’t agree—sorry”. All I am asking is that a document that would already exist, because the commission would have drawn it up, is forwarded to the Crown. I also suggest that that document be laid before each House. It is surprising to me that a parliamentary system that constantly talks of the need for openness does not even lay before its own House the qualifications that its own committee has approved for membership of it. This is not acceptable.
We need to do all that. It would also open up further areas where we need to look at reform. However, that is deliberately not part of this Question. I would be surprised if, when people start looking at the House of Lords, they do not start asking some questions about the business and other interests of some of its Members.
As many noble Lords know, I was sent to this House by David Cameron because he said that he wanted someone to speak for trade unions from the Conservative Benches. There was not a very long list of competitors for me to defeat but I have done what I said I would. Normally, if there is anything to do with the TUs, I pop up. I meet the TUC; I do not always agree with it but, during my time here, I have attempted to remind people that 30% of all trade unionists vote for the Conservative Party and they deserve to be listened to by our party—that is a jolly good thing. I say that, but of course the other thing David Cameron said was, “I want you to be a regular attender and voter in the House.” Then he stopped, and there was a gap before he said, “Preferably voting on our side.”
This House has to be relevant. Frankly, we have to open up the process, particularly on the question of what someone can contribute to the House of Lords. That question should be asked whether people are political nominations or Cross-Bench nominations. There are too many people in this House—this is not aimed at anyone; I am not naming any names—who, in a great flurry, become Lord or Lady So-and-so but you then have to ask the attendants, “Have you got a picture of them because I have never seen them?” This is not acceptable. This must be a working House, and one where most of the people are here most of the time.
When people ask me what my job is, they say, “Oh, you’ve retired.” I say, “No, no, I’m still working away.” They ask what I do, and I say that I work in the House of Lords. I do not say that I am a Member, which I obviously am—I say that I work here, because I do work here. This is where I come to and intervene and, I hope, do a small amount of good for the country.
I believe that this modest proposal to open up at the margin and shed some daylight on the system would be good for the Crown, which is not looking too good itself in the light of recent stories about nominations, and good for this House.
I close by quoting my dear grandmother—the wisest woman I ever knew—who once, when talking about somebody being given a knighthood, and getting it in properly, said, “Well, I don’t know why he did it, because you can’t eat it, can you, lad?”
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I am very happy to speak in Comrade Balfe’s debate. Now that I know his true provenance, I feel that he has hidden virtues I was unaware of.
I rise to speak wondering why there is a debate about this at all. It seems so self-evident that people who have undergone due process should have what has happened presented transparently in a proper form to the Crown, and if there is a divergence then the alternative case should be put. I cannot really see that anybody could take a position other than being in favour of all that.
I am, of course, completely new to the world of politics. The wiles and Machiavellian goings-on that I have vaguely become aware of over the years will, I am sure, fit me for that final deliberation at the pearly gates, when I wonder whether or not I am going to get in. Granted that I have, relatively speaking, a naivety on these things, I cannot understand how we are where we are. In 2004, when I was admitted to your Lordships’ House, Tony Blair’s Government had a very considerable majority in the Commons. When I came into the House of Lords there were, roughly speaking, 200 Labour Lords and 200 Conservative Lords. I rejoiced at the fact that someone from my background could come into a debating Chamber where cases had to be won, majorities had to be put together and arguments had to be presented that won the approval of those assembled. No Government, simply because it had even a whacking majority, as the Labour Party did then, could simply assume that it would carry the day all the time in the Lords.
Then, of course, we became aware that things were going on that got into the newspapers. We put together a committee, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. Its task was to try to introduce some order as it was sought to bring the numbers in the House of Lords roughly into equivalence with the House of Commons. The formula was simple; it was debated on the Floor of the House and it was agreed, and I thought that we had something that would sort out some of the excesses and wrongdoings of the Chamber as it was.
All these years later, when we look at the figures, we find that there is no longer a rough equivalence between Labour and the Conservatives, but that the Labour Party has, in fact, followed the advice of the Burns committee —one in for two out—that the Liberal Democrats have done the same, but that the Conservatives simply have not. It is not only that: they have grossly inflated the numbers coming in so that instead of a rough equivalence, we now see that there are 258 Peers the Conservatives might expect to count on for their support and 168 Labour Members. I cannot understand how something that was put together out of the deliberations of the House of Lords and which got approval from all sides of the House should end up with us being in a position—self-regulating as we are supposed to be—that leads to an imbalance of this kind.
I know that in our party meetings we can talk about our record in this respect but I must say to Conservative Members, and those taking part in this debate in particular: please tell us that you are as anxious as the rest of us that the things we have agreed in this way are not followed through on. In one case, someone who was rejected by the commission had that rejection overruled by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is under fire for a lot of things at the moment; he should be under the same kind of fire for the way in which this situation has come to pass.
I am new to politics. I hope to find probity and integrity but something like this puts me on the side of the tabloid press, which thinks that we are all a lot of funny people.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
My Lords, one of the glories of this House is the wide range and diversity of its Members. If you wished to divide them up into categories, you would find that difficult. There are all sorts of opinions and views, and hurrah for that.
I recall, when I was on the Opposition Front Bench, going through Bills, and however late in the evening it was there would always be a number of Back-Bench Peers on all sides of the House. They had huge knowledge of the matters being discussed and were articulate in expressing their views. They made huge contributions to debates. Frankly, they made my own attempts to call the Government to account as a Front-Bench spokesman seem rather puny. I mention this because a number of those doing such sterling work would have been extremely unlikely to have passed the rigours of a vetting committee. Almost by definition, they had become such experts in their own fields that, on occasions, they might have appeared slightly odd when not discussing their own subject.
In a recent letter to the Times, Paul Dacre, that most eminent and distinguished newspaper editor said—oh, I have lost it.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
Well, I think he did. He said—the noble Lord will enjoy this:
“To anyone from the private sector, who, God forbid, has convictions, and is thinking of applying for a public appointment, I say the following: the civil service will control (and leak) everything; the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal-left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job.”
I do not think for a moment that the committee suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to give approval to anyone nominated for a peerage, would be in the least bit biased or show anything but the most even-handed and scrupulous attitude, and nor would they be likely to take a year. However, members of committees change and the new members may not always show such admirable impartiality.
Even if that was the case, it is inevitable that, as time goes by, the views of committees are reflected in those selected. This House could end up losing its independent thinkers and eccentrics, and those prepared to challenge the fashionable groupthink of the day. As things stand, there may be appointments that raise eyebrows. But rather that and retain the individuality of the Members of this House, and their willingness to call the Government to account, than the dreary sameness which would result over time from these proposals.
Lord Desai (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome the invitation to wash our dirty ermine in public that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has presented to us. We had a Bill a while ago on the status of the Appointments Commission and why it should be made statutory and so on—I think it was a Private Member’s Bill. I said at that time that one difficulty is that we have no legitimacy; our legitimacy comes from the fact that the Crown nominates us, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.
The Appointments Commission is neither here nor there. It is not statutory; it is there as a respectable front, but it does not matter. What matters is what the Prime Minister recommends to the Crown. That is the only basis of our legitimacy. We are almost like a colony. We have more like dominion status—a little bit further—but we are not self-governing. We may be in our internal affairs, but our appointments are entirely determined outside the House of Lords. That has to be absolutely clear.
Even if we followed the proposition that the noble Lord has assiduously found from reading the history books, it would not be acceptable, nor would it have any constitutional position. His example was of the commission making various recommendations which were completely ignored by the Prime Minister—whoever the Prime Minister, it has been ignored.
In a sense, our problem lies not within us but outside us. The problem of reforming this House is very simple. If the House was reformed, the House of Commons would lose its primacy. The day the House of Lords becomes legitimate would be the death of the primacy of the House of Commons, so the House of Commons has an immense interest in not having us reformed. It is very important for the House of Commons that we be thought of as figures of fun, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said.
Whenever the Daily Mail writes about us, it always uses a picture from when Her Majesty comes to open Parliament, because then we are in our ermine. It says, “These are people prancing around in ermines, they do not do any work, they are called Lords, they get lots of money—millions of pounds—and isn’t it ridiculous?”. I am trying to write a book to tell people what we actually do in our daily work, so they realise that we do not just come on one day of the year.
Our difficulties are deeply structural. They are in the constitution of the United Kingdom, and there is no way that the constitution can be amended. It is in the nature of the constitution that the House of Commons derives its power from the fact that, of all the second Chambers in the world, we are the weakest. We are very good at advising, we have a lot of expertise—go and listen to the health and social care debate, where there is fantastic expertise—but we have no legitimacy.
There is not much we can do about that, so I recommend that we adjust our expectations. I would like our names to be changed from Lords to something else, but that will not happen. On a historical note, what has happened is much more than what happened under George V, who was very much praised. The substantial reform of this House has been under the rule of our present monarch. Life Peers were added, women were able to come and we have a sort of Appointments Commission. We are slightly more in touch with the public, and we have had the House of Lords reform undertaken by the Labour Party in Tony Blair’s first Administration.
Nothing more is possible—nor can I speak any more, so I will sit down.
Lord Cormack (Con)
It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, much as I disagree with a number of the points that he made. We do not have much time, so let me begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Balfe on obtaining this debate and the manner of his introduction. I endorse entirely what he said about George V. In doing that, I commend to your Lordships the recently published biography of George V by Jane Ridley, which is an extremely well-written, well-documented life and completely underlines the points made by my noble friend Lord Balfe.
I must declare an interest in that I am one of the joint founders and the chairman of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. I set it up in 2000, when I was in the Commons and with 10 years in that House still in front of me, with my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who is a great constitutional expert. We were concerned about the way in which reform appeared to be going, because we believed very much in an appointed, non-elected House chosen for its varied expertise and not too party political because of the presence of Cross-Benchers making up around 25% of it. We thought that this was something worth preserving, not least because if we had an elected second Chamber there would inevitably be the constant threat of deadlock between the two Houses.
We have had a reasonably successful run over the last 20 years. Out of our deliberations came the Steel Bill, which allowed for retirements, and the Hayman Bill, which allowed for a rather more serious and sad thing: expulsions, if necessary. I am glad that it has not been needed up to now. We were also very much behind the former Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, setting up the Burns committee. We endorsed its recommendations, as did your Lordships’ House—particularly on numbers. We should not be bigger than the House of Commons, which has 650 Members.
Of course, in effect we are not. Look at the voting figures for this week. Most Divisions had fewer than 400 people vote in them. If we look at those who are active in your Lordships’ House—of whom the noble Lord, Lord Desai, is notably one—we find that there are many who say nothing and just vote. Here we are in the midst of the largest international crisis since the Second World War, and the one Russian-born Peer, ennobled just a few months ago, has not sought to utter a word or make an appearance. This is not a personal attack on the integrity of the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev; rather, it is a regret that he has not used his unique position to come here and talk to his colleagues. He made a maiden speech, but he did not make it here. I am told that he made it on his yacht; I do not know whether that is true, but it was certainly not made in your Lordships’ House. It was remote.
It is important that those who are ennobled come here and play a proper part. A number of the recent appointments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson have barely made an appearance or a contribution. Of course, we have an Appointments Commission. It is not statutory, as the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber has always urged. It is okay that the Prime Minister nominates —that is fine—but the Appointments Commission’s word should be final. If it does not endorse a recommendation, that recommendation should be dropped gently and not with great publicity. We need to get to a House of no more than 650 Peers, and they should be working Peers. That does not mean they should be here every hour of every day; it means they should come at least 20% to 25% of the time, make a contribution and take a real interest in their vocation to public service.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for tabling this Question for Short Debate, as it raises some interesting challenges and thorny dilemmas for all of us, eliciting a range of interesting contributions so far. In its own terms, I rather like the intention of making justifications for appointed peerages more transparent, with all that information published in the public realm. As a believer in sunlight being the best disinfectant, I believe that the more the public can see all the aspects of the inner workings of Parliament the better. However, I will raise several caveats about whether this would really lead to greater public trust in this House.
As someone whose appointment here was relatively recent and, to say the least, contentious and elicited widespread media comment and speculation—although I note that conspiratorial misinformation is not just a preserve of trolls on social media but alive and well in the mainstream—I have every interest in a more open system. But as an outsider before I entered this place, I always thought that the opaque way people were offered peerages inevitably fuelled suspicion. It was always far clearer to me why hereditary Peers were here than appointed Peers.
The truth is that none of us is here legitimately in terms of democracy. I appreciate that the main public concern is often the notion of cash for honours. Buying oneself into the legislature is obviously unconscionable, but even this accusation can be a lazy trope in our cynical times. For example, as we speak, plenty of people are saying that my peerage and those of several other recent non-party appointments were paid for by dirty Russian money—because, you know, Brexit was a Putin plot, et cetera. This conspiracy theory nonsense is confined not just to the crackpot fringes but given respectable support by mainstream commentators. I am equally wary of concluding that if someone happens to be wealthy or Russian and ends up in this House they are inevitably dodgy.
In general, I am suspicious when the corruption of democracy is confined narrowly to “follow the money” critiques. Is it any less distorting of the legitimacy of the legislature that many Peers here lost their seats because the electorate rejected them in elections, yet here they are, still making laws?
Will the proposed solutions help clear up this mess? I am certainly not keen on endorsing statutory appointments commissions with enhanced vetting powers. This sounds more like a dystopian bureaucratic HR department. Who would sit on such a commission: unelected Peers or civil servants? I do not see how that is more legitimate than any Prime Minister, who at least notionally is accountable to Parliament and the voters.
I note that one proposal is about establishing a new criteria for individuals to meet: a “copious merit” test—I am definitely sure that I would not pass that. Who decides what is meritorious? Is it a moral purity test? Would it be expertise? In which case, are we advocating a Chamber of philosopher kings, removing even further decision-making from the plebs?
All these proposals skirt round the main problem: that this House stands on shaky, undemocratic foundations, as we cannot be held to account, removed or sacked by the voters. Any appointments system will always be flawed or open to cronyism or patronage accusations when it is removed from the most important scrutineers—the demos. The very basis of any legitimate parliamentarian claim to wield the power of lawmaking should be the electorate, yet the House of Lords stands above it. Until that is resolved, I am afraid every other proposal might end up as PR and spin.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in the gap. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for bringing this interesting Question before us from 1917, although I do not commend the Question itself because it seems to draw the monarch into vetoing, or not, a proposal put to her.
Unfinished business from 1917 is one thing, but we have unfinished business from 2017 and the Burns report, as the noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Cormack, pointed out. Despite being a believer in more fundamental reform of the House, I happily took part in the Burns committee to try to find a way forward without legislative change, which we all thought was unlikely. That way forward commanded wide support in the House. It was a scheme for new appointments and retirements that depended on trust between the parties and the Cross-Bench group, and an understanding that each would comply with the broad principles. They would provide the retirements to make the numbers right, except in cases where deaths had taken place, and, in the case of the Government, not put the numbers up in defiance of the principles behind the report.
I am afraid that that trust has not remained. We are in a situation whereby, unlike the previous Prime Minister, Mrs May, the present one does not recognise any need for restraint of that kind. That is changing the whole situation and making the Burns proposals non-operative.
I should add that we also had views about the role of the Appointments Commission in making people realise what was involved in becoming a Member of the House of Lords, and asking them questions as to whether they understood what would be required of them—but of course without any power of veto.
If we stay as we are, the Executive get the best of both worlds. They can put unlimited numbers of people into the House of Lords and then discount the opinions expressed by that House on the grounds that it is an appointed House. How does that serve our democracy? We need an effective second Chamber. Quite a lot of the time, our second Chamber is as effective as the limitation that I have just described allows us to be, but it will not continue to be if it becomes a Chamber in which every Government come along and put in a whole lot of new appointments, not even on the basis of the contribution that they can make to this House.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for raising this issue. Issues of probity, trust and transparency in appointments to your Lordships’ House are not new. Indeed, his Question refers to resolutions of this House from back in 1917. Even further back, these issues were being discussed in the 1890s. I looked at the debate of 1894 in the House of Commons. Sir Wilfrid Lawson MP raised the point that many in your Lordships’ House have raised today, which is basically that although these awards are given in the name of the sovereign, they act on the advice of the Government and Ministers, and those Ministers are responsible to the House and Parliament, which is responsible to the public. He said that
“these titles and honours belonged to the public … If, therefore they were not given for national purpose, they were clearly misapplied.”
That is a good starting point for the debate. He said then that
“in the future it should be made more clear why these titles and honours were bestowed”.—[Official Report, 4/5/1894, Commons, cols. 411-12.]
While I do not agree exactly with the resolution of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, he is on to something regarding more information being made available to the public.
The debate in 1917 said that honours were awarded in two parts, only one of which was mentioned in the Question today. The other was that the reasons why somebody was recommended for the honour that they were awarded should be published. If one thinks about honours, whether it is an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood, a few words about someone are always issued, but for appointments to your Lordships’ House just the name and no other information is published. It would be sensible to make available to the public the information on why people have been awarded such an honour.
The second part of the Motion in 1917 was raised again recently. Ministers—the Government—have to be satisfied that no payments to a political party or fund, directly or indirectly, had been made. Again, it is a question of trust, probity and transparency.
I would go slightly further than the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and want to pick up on comments that other noble Lords have made. I am not going to get into numbers, as my noble friend Lord Griffiths and others did, but there is a further point that we can look at. We have had debates in your Lordships’ House about HOLAC being put on a statutory footing. I was not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Howard, was arguing against any committee at all—he seemed to be arguing against HOLAC. I support its work but think it could be refined and be more transparent. We do not want a House of the great and the good but a House that is a little more representative.
At the heart of all this is that we do not have legitimacy because we are not elected. Therefore, probity in appointments is even more important than ever, because the only way in which to have any confidence in those who serve in this House is for people to have confidence in the appointments process. If that confidence goes, there is no role for this House in many ways. That is clear.
The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, about putting HOLAC on a statutory footing, is coming up. I am not sure whether that is necessarily the way forward. Transparency, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, suggested, is possibly a better way, but the issue relates to the integrity of the House.
If you look at the work of the House, particularly this week, it has to be said that we undertake the heavy lifting of legislation. We sit far longer than they do at the other end. Despite the provocation of the Government sabre-rattling at times because they do not like what we do, we always recognise the primacy of the other place. We look at Bills and legislation in far greater detail and have a much more forensic approach to it. However, again I come back to the fact that, because of the way in which we are appointed, the process has to be beyond question and have integrity.
Noble Lords may have heard the Tortoise Media podcast that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, contributed to, which was published yesterday, I think. I recommend it because one of the issues that it talks about is the transparency of the vetting process, so that members of the public, those making the appointments and, indeed, the monarch can be assured that they can have confidence in that process. One of the reasons that it has become such an issue now is the concern about individual appointments that have been made and about the Prime Minister overruling HOLAC, which has never happened before.
I will put on record four suggestions that I think may be of assistance. I hope that I may have another minute, given that we have a bit of extra time. I thank the Minister. First, along the lines suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, giving the public further information about why someone has been appointed is a modest proposal. Secondly, I come back to the second point in 1917 about having no party-political donations. They should not be a qualification or reason for appointing anyone. Thirdly, I cite the point about the vetting process being open and transparent. Fourthly —this may be a little more controversial—I go back to what was said in the 1890s, so I cannot claim this as an original thought. At that time, the MP proposed that “when a man”—today we would add “or a woman”—has
“enjoyed a title or honour for two or three years he would be taken into Court and examined in order to see whether he was still worthy of it, and whether the man had ennobled the title in the same way that the title had ennobled the man.”—[Official Report, Commons, 4/5/1894; col. 412.]
What about some post-appointment assessment to look at the contribution that those who come into your Lordships’ House have made? We welcome people who are prepared to play a full role in the work that we do—I do not think that any of us, from any party, do not, regardless of party politics or of whether we are independents or Cross-Benchers. This is perhaps a bit more controversial, but can we look at post-appointment assessment?
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Balfe for securing this important and very interesting short debate. I was happy to yield the Floor, as they say in the US, to the noble Member from the Labour Party—I cannot precisely remember the phrase from the Senate. Her suggestions were interesting and good to hear but also challenging, because who would carry out this post-appointment scrutiny of performance? It is, of course, a deficit in this House that we are not subject, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, would say, to the ultimate assessment of performance, which is by the electorate. What would the consequence be if a committee said that a person was not doing very well or that it did not like what he or she had said? I am simply saying that those are the kinds of issue that would arise. Who would actually do this assessment?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I am not suggesting for one second that it should be based on what people say; it should be on whether they are able to make a contribution to the work of the House, regardless of what side they are on, how they vote and what views they espouse. We could debate the other issues.
Lord True (Con)
All right. I will stick to the main point of the debate, although there is a serious issue about whether people have to be here day after day, every day, to make a contribution. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising spoke interestingly on that point. There are people who do not come here often but whose voices we hear and listen to very carefully. We all know them.
This was a fascinating debate, and I agree with what was said about King George V and Jane Ridley’s biography, which is outstanding. Of course, one of the things that he recognised was that Lord Curzon could not become Prime Minister, despite his truly outstanding career of public service, because he had a place in what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, would call a less legitimate Chamber and thus could not, among other things, answer to the new Labour Party arising in the House of Commons. The reality is that there are issues of legitimacy, which I will come back to later in my remarks.
The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, made an interesting speech, as he always does. He complained at one point about the number of Peers appointed by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. As I always point out, his rate of appointment is far lower than that undertaken by Mr Blair in his first term in office. That gets to be forgotten. There was talk about the imbalance of the House. I must say that, sitting in the Chamber last night, with eight defeats, defeat after defeat, it did not seem a very unbalanced House. Here we are, night after night, with your Lordships hammering the Government’s proposals to deal with issues such as illegal immigration and crime, and the very things that the Home Secretary seeks to do being challenged. I do not feel that the alleged imbalance is preventing your Lordships asking the House of Commons to think again rather often.
Someone asked what my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising meant. The phrase I noted down was that the views of committees are often reflected in those selected. I thought that was a profound and true remark. If we look at the reflection of some of those appointed—I do not have time to pursue it—I think that that remark would have something in it. We need individuality in the House, and it was exemplified, I may say, by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I do not always agree with her, but she certainly makes an individual contribution, and I find it very welcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke about numbers, as he often does. He rightly said that what we really need to look at it is the people who played an active part in 2019 to 2021. The average number was 471. He has this idea of a ceiling of 600. Does he propose that we should appoint 130 more Peers to bring the House up to that number? If they were to attend only 20% to 25% of the time, as he suggested, that would be 130 times four: another 600 Peers to get that effective number here. The numbers participating—
Lord Cormack (Con)
My noble friend asked for this intervention. That was a complete distortion of what I said, and I ask my noble friend—which he is—to think of rephrasing his remarks.
Lord True (Con)
I shall read very carefully what my noble friend said in Hansard tomorrow. I believe he said that we should pay attention to the numbers actually participating, and he certainly said that he wanted more Peers who would be here for 20% to 25% the time. If he said neither of those things, I will correct my remarks, write to him and publish it to others.
Lord Cormack (Con)
I would have those removed who were not here for 20% of the time. That was entirely implicit in my remarks.
Lord True (Con)
I welcome that clarification.
The Governments of the previous and current Prime Ministers have made it clear that they did not accept the proposal from the Burns committee, which would place a limit on the size of this House. That certainly remains the Government’s position. I point out that my right honourable friend has exercised more restraint than Mr Blair in his appointments.
The House has a key role in scrutinising the Executive and as a revising Chamber, and one of the highest callings one can receive is to sit in this House—we all agree on that, whatever our differences.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I will continue. My noble friend Lord Balfe was right to ask how Governments ensure that nominations are properly vetted. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister, as the sovereign’s principal adviser, has responsibility for recommending to the sovereign those to be appointed to life peerages. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, made a strong and valid constitutional point about a defect in one of the proposals in my noble friend’s Question: one must not put the sovereign in the difficult position of having to make those kinds of decisions.
The Prime Minister asks the House of Lords Appointments Commission to vet life peerage nominations for propriety, including party-political nominees and ministerial appointees. The check on propriety will include checking with relevant government departments and agencies, and other organisations. The Appointments Commission also conducts media and online searches. In my judgment, the House of Lords Appointments Commission carries out its role effectively as it is currently constituted. It will continue to advise on appointments in the same way that it does now.
Although the commission’s role is advisory, the Prime Minister continues to place great weight on its careful and considered advice before making any recommendations to the sovereign. However, as in many areas, elected Ministers may from time to time take a different view to official advice on balancing the competing issues. With regard to my noble friend Lord Balfe’s suggestion that the commission’s advice should accompany any recommendation to the sovereign and be placed in the Libraries of both Houses, as I have said, the Prime Minister places great weight on the commission’s views but it is ultimately for the Prime Minister to recommend, not the commission. I submit that it is reasonable that personal data and free and frank comment relating to an individual who is nominated should be confidential, which would not be the case if documents were laid before Parliament.
In the case of my noble friend Lord Cruddas, who is constantly cited in his absence, as the Prime Minister set out in his letter to the commission, he gave very careful consideration to the points it raised but also weighed these against other factors. This was a clear and rare exception to Prime Ministers considering such opinions from the commission. The Government were fully transparent in taking that different stance by publishing the Prime Minister’s letter to the noble Lord, Lord Bew.
As the commission noted in a letter to PACAC:
“The Commission provides advice but does not have a veto. Ultimately, appointments are a matter for the Prime Minister.”
The noble Lord, Lord Bew, then said:
“We do, however, welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to publish his recent letter, and his indication that he considers this to be an exceptional case.”
Indeed, to ensure the kind of transparency that your Lordships seek, the commission will write to the PACAC chair should a case ever arise again, as on this occasion, where a recommendation is made against the commission’s advice.
So far as the 1917 resolution is concerned, I think time has elapsed a little since 1917. It is true that the House of Lords, as someone put it at the outset, was perhaps a little out of touch at that time—I see on the annunciator that there is another defeat for the Government in the Chamber and rest the case I made in my opening remarks.
On the idea of money and donations, I submit that it is wrong to criticise individuals being ennobled just because they have also chosen to support or donate to a political party. Donations should be transparent, but that is not an excuse to knock people out for broader philanthropic services, enterprise or public service. Volunteering and supporting a political party are part of our civic democracy.
The constitutional position in the country is that the Prime Minister is responsible for advising Her Majesty on appointments to the House of Lords, and receives vetting advice on the propriety of appointments through HOLAC. The Government do not see the case for changing this. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible to Parliament, and the people, for any nominations he makes to this House.
Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Jay of Ewelme
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland on recent political developments in Northern Ireland.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, our minds and that of the Foreign Secretary are, inevitably and rightly, focused on Ukraine at present, but we also need to debate other issues that matter greatly, including Northern Ireland and the protocol, which have their own rhythm and timetable—not least, of course, their electoral timetable—so I am delighted that we are debating the protocol this afternoon.
It is an honour to chair the sub-committee on the protocol in your Lordships’ House. It is not all that long ago that the noble Lord, Lord Caine, as a member of that sub-committee, was interrogating the noble Lord, Lord Frost, as the Minister with responsibility for the protocol. I am delighted that they are both taking part in this debate, and I look forward to discovering shortly whether their change of roles has led to a change of views.
I should also be grateful if the Minister could say to the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, James Cleverly, that the sub-committee, and I as its chair, look forward to his involvement with it over the next few weeks and months. The sub-committee on the protocol has in its membership Members of your Lordships’ House who have long-standing experience of and involvement in Northern Ireland and are actively engaged in its politics. I am glad that a number of the sub-committee’s members are taking part in today’s debate.
The sub-committee has tried not to reach a view on the merits of the protocol, on which there are different views, but to consider what the effects of the protocol are so far and what they might be, were it to be implemented in full. Nevertheless, the effect of the protocol on the political scene in Northern Ireland is plain for all to see, hence today’s debate.
The sub-committee on the protocol has six core tasks. The first is document-based scrutiny of EU legislation applying to Northern Ireland under the protocol, and over the past year we have written nearly 100 detailed letters to government departments on nearly 50 EU legislative documents applying to Northern Ireland. The second is scrutiny of the implications of domestic UK legislation and policy for Northern Ireland; we wrote to the Minister concerned at about the time of Second Reading and have recently written on the implications for Northern Ireland of the Subsidy Control Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Elections Bill. The third is scrutiny of the UK-EU bodies relevant to the protocol, including the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee, which met most recently on 21 February. The fourth is reviewing the impact of the protocol on UK-Irish relations, which has included meetings with the committees of the Oireachtas. The fifth is interparliamentary dialogue, including with the Northern Ireland Assembly; I stress here how much the sub-committee has appreciated and valued our interactions with the Assembly and with the Northern Ireland Executive. Finally, the sixth is monitoring the protocol’s political and socioeconomic impact on Northern Ireland, to which today’s debate is particularly relevant.
The sub-committee agreed an introductory report on the protocol last July, and we have since scrutinised individual aspects of the protocol against the backdrop of the continuing talks between the Government and the European Commission. We have written to Ministers on, among other things, medicines, the rights of individuals and the potential role of the European Court of Justice. We are now completing a report on the importance, in relation to Northern Ireland, of proper parliamentary scrutiny of European legislation. All members of the sub-committee are concerned at the application of European legislation to Northern Ireland without Northern Ireland or Great Britain having the chance to comment effectively before legislation is agreed.
In the course of this work, we have spoken to, among others, commercial interests in Northern Ireland, experts from the pharmaceutical sector in Great Britain, shipping interests, the Equality Commission for the Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and academic experts from a wide spectrum of political views. In a recent seminar, we also spoke to stakeholders from Northern Ireland and Dublin. One inescapable conclusion I have drawn from these contacts is that the protocol is already having an effect. The coming into effect of some aspects of the protocol, particularly on agricultural and veterinary products, has of course been put back but, in other fields, legislation is being passed by the European Union that is having or will have a marked impact on different sectors of life in Northern Ireland.
It is clear, too, that the protocol is affecting economic activity. For example, trade flows between Northern Ireland and Ireland are increasing. To some, this is a sign of the advantages of the protocol and a welcome consequence of Northern Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom’s single market at the same time as remaining a member of the European Union’s single market. To others, it is a matter of serious concern, adversely affecting businesses in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, for whom the extra bureaucratic burden of the protocol is just too great and leading to a diversion of trade that may justify the invocation of Article 16. Views differ, but the impact of the protocol is clear.
So it is not surprising that the protocol will be an important issue in the Northern Ireland elections on 5 May. Personally, I am glad to note from the communiqué of the Joint Committee’s last meeting that discussions between the British Government and the European Commission will continue, at least at a technical level, in the meantime. However, for an agreement to be reached, whether now or in future, clearly there will need to be—I deliberately put this neutrally—movement on both sides. My question for the Minister is simple: does he think that an agreement is achievable? If so, what is his best guess as to timing? I look forward to the debate.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken as a Back-Bencher since I stepped down from the Government in December. I am glad to have the opportunity to do so now and offer my support for the approach that the Government and my noble friend Lord Caine have been taking.
As the Motion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, sets out—and as the work of his sub-committee has made clear, as he said—politics in Northern Ireland have come under ever greater strain since the start of this year. The tension created by the protocol obviously underlies the current difficulties, which stem ultimately from the destruction of the protocol’s moral basis caused by the EU’s attempt to put a vaccine regulatory border on the island of Ireland in January last year.
As has been said, the political situation is now very troubling. We do not have a First Minister or Deputy First Minister in post, and the Executive are effectively inoperative. The courts are looking at fundamental aspects of the protocol. It is by no means clear that a stable Executive can be established after the elections. In short, it is clear that there is political and societal disruption.
This situation plainly cannot be allowed to continue. There needs to be significant change. The protocol could have worked properly only with very delicate handling. It has not had it, so change must come. When it does, it must be in the direction of re-establishing full UK sovereignty and legal normality in Northern Ireland. That has to be the end goal. Reversion to this norm is the best way to provide long-run stability and properly protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
Much the best way forward, of course, would be to renegotiate the protocol, as the Government have proposed, so that it can be supported across all communities in Northern Ireland and so that it respects all three strands of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. I hope that the EU might yet do that in the new spirit of collaboration that currently exists over our common response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. However, if it does not do so, it will be perfectly reasonable for the Government to use the Article 16 safeguard provisions.
Finally, we must also remember that the protocol is explicitly a temporary arrangement. It disappears in 2024 unless the Assembly wishes it to continue. That consent vote is important. It is entirely legitimate for the UK Government to have a view on it, and I personally think that view should be that it is not in the interests of Northern Ireland for this protocol, in this form, to continue beyond that vote. I will certainly support the Government in any action they take to re-establish stability and to secure Northern Ireland’s place in this United Kingdom.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I first thank and praise the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for securing this debate. I declare an interest as a member of the protocol sub-committee. Our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, has adequately addressed the main purpose, remit and terms of reference of our sub-committee: the scrutiny of EU legislation and the interrogation of the business and political interests that bear down on the protocol.
For me, the protocol and the political stability of the institutions in Northern Ireland are intertwined. Unfortunately, as a result of Brexit—of which the protocol is either the son or the daughter—we have had much political instability in Northern Ireland. Political negotiations will be the key. There is a need for political negotiations between the British and Irish Governments and the EU. There should be a separate negotiating process between the two Governments, who are the co-guarantors of the Good Friday agreement, to find some solutions. The Minister said to me in the previous debate on the Northern Ireland Bill that it was the Government’s intention to hold negotiations in the post-election scenario. I said to him then that it was my fear that we may not have institutions at that juncture on 6 May. It is vital for both Governments to get on with it.
I was opposed to Brexit. The protocol was negotiated by the UK Government and the EU, and I have to say that for a former Minister to decry that protocol, when he was directly involved in the negotiations, is a bit much. All that negativity impacted on our political discourse. As somebody who was directly involved in the politics of Northern Ireland and has talked to the public on the doorstep, I can say that they are just sick, sore and tired of it. They want to see a restoration of their political institutions and politicians dealing with health, education and the economy. They want politicians to work together to provide that vision: the framework that will lead to a healthy economy in this post-pandemic phase. They want people to help heal all our ills. They want to build a shared society and see the reconciliation that is reflected in the three-stranded approach of the Good Friday agreement. I hope that can come to pass. Please stop using an international agreement as a bogey person.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, I am a member of the sub-committee. We requested some assistance, through opinion polls, as to the current state of play—with all the limitations that we know about opinion polls. The February 2022 survey of Queen’s University, Belfast disclosed that 50% agree to the proposition that the protocol is on balance a good thing for Northern Ireland. The LucidTalk NI tracker poll carried out in January found that 36% thought the protocol was wrong and should be scrapped, 44% support the protocol but believe it should be reformed or adjusted, and 18% support and have no problems with it. The general picture is that the protocol is supported by perhaps two-thirds of the population, although a large section of those think it should be at least revised.
The problem is that the UK Government agreed to a solution for Northern Ireland which has two fundamental flaws. First, they agreed that the European Union could make laws directly affecting Northern Ireland but without a voice for its people. The second flaw is that they gave to the European Court of Justice, on which there is no longer even a UK representative, jurisdiction to pass judgment in infringement proceedings, or JRs, in certain areas which affect Northern Irish businesses and people, under paragraph 4 of Article 12.
The simplistic approach to these problems is to call for the scrapping of the protocol altogether but Article 16 permits unilateral safeguarding measures only if the protocol leads to
“serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist”
or to “diversion of trade”. However, any action taken must be temporary—
“restricted with regard to their scope and duration”—
and limited to involving only the issues explicitly identified. Article 16 is not intended to allow either party to suspend provisions of the protocol permanently or in their entirety. I was surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, suggested that it could be used this afternoon.
Unless we break the terms of the treaty, we have to swallow our pride, acknowledge our mistakes and seek solutions with our EU counterparts. We have to address the democratic deficit and seek a voice in the making of EU legislation, and while allowing the European Court its fiercely protected right to be the sole arbiter of European law, that must be indirect: we should negotiate to use the arbitration mechanisms provided for in Articles 167 to 181 of the withdrawal agreement. The essential thing is that the protocol must be made to work.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jay, on securing this short debate on an issue which, it appears, will continue to dominate Northern Irish politics for some time to come, at least until 5 May. I supported Brexit and maintain that leaving the European Union will serve the best interests of the United Kingdom in the years ahead. However, as a committed unionist, what I most certainly did not vote for was a dilution of our national sovereignty, with Northern Ireland cut off from the rest of the United Kingdom by a sea border signed off by Her Majesty’s Government. We are now forced to live under a different set of rules and regulations than Great Britain and we have no say over them at all.
Speaking in August 2020, Boris Johnson said:
“'There will be no border down the Irish Sea—over my dead body'”.
But he signed up for one in any case and, the last time I checked, the Prime Minister was very much alive and kicking. The question is: what do we do about the protocol? The answer is to engage—to engage, not to walk away.
The DUP’s decision to pull its First Minister out of the Northern Ireland Executive was a sign of political desperation as the Assembly elections edge ever closer. It was also incredibly selfish, foolhardy and damaging to local people’s lives in Northern Ireland. The fact that the DUP chose to collapse the Executive without knowing for certain whether my colleague Robin Swann, the Health Minister, had the power to make legally binding decisions over the future of Covid regulations tells you everything you need to know about that party’s priorities. It also left him with no long-term health budget to help Northern Ireland’s grotesque waiting lists, which are by far the longest in the United Kingdom.
I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who is in his place—as he says, as a humble Back-Bencher. Following his departure from the Government, I note that his replacement as the United Kingdom’s negotiator, Liz Truss, and her EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, have reported a constructive atmosphere in the talks to resolve the problems the protocol created. Earlier this week my party leader, Doug Beattie, led an Ulster Unionist delegation including my noble friend Lord Empey, Jim Nicholson, a former MEP, and Lauren Kerr to meet Mr Šefčovič in Brussels. Future meetings are planned.
The key to re-establishing momentum in the Northern Ireland political process is more engagement, not grandstanding with walkouts. Most of the problems relating to the protocol are political and will be resolved only with political solutions. I wish Liz Truss well in her endeavours to reach a positive outcome for the betterment of everyone in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for arranging this, and the Government Whips for ensuring that we had time for this very important debate, alongside all that is happening in Ukraine, which is disastrous and devastating for all of us in this Room.
I endorse what my chairman and the other members of the sub-committee have said today—this is how we really feel about the Northern Ireland protocol. What is worrying is that it is not really working alongside the Good Friday agreement in the way that I feel it positively should be. Of course, we know that one of the problems with the Good Friday agreement—this is a lesson to us all—is that no timelines were written into it. That is no one’s fault; these things happen from time to time. Because of Brexit, which has been a difficult decision for Britain, Northern Ireland is just pushed off to the side, I feel—it is part of the United Kingdom, which is not just Britain.
Putting that to one side, the health service in Northern Ireland has long waiting lists and children have to go to Ireland to have operations, as do people who need heart treatment. Some education is also now being taken over by Ireland.
We ought to have change now—I gave the Minister notice of what I will say, but I know that he may not be able to give me a clear answer. We have to have a dedicated Minister who does not have a number of other portfolios; otherwise, we will not get negotiations going properly. This also has to come with a dedicated senior team that works both in Northern Ireland and here. This team should be in the FCDO or the Cabinet Office—my preference would be the latter, because I see that as the machinery of government—and the Minister should report directly to the Cabinet as and when it is necessary. That would ensure that these discussions continue, as they must, regardless of what is going on—especially after the elections, when we will, I hope, have institutions working alongside the new Parliament in Stormont. It is absolutely vital that the talking does not stop, because when we are not talking to each other, all sorts of things happen; it is really important. I refer to my great friend Jonathan Powell, who said this in his books and throughout the very difficult days in Northern Ireland.
That is why I say that the only way forward, besides our sub-committee, which is the only one that is doing full scrutiny now, is to have a dedicated Minister with a dedicated senior team that has an understanding of the issues, as well as perhaps someone from the Irish Government and the European Commission or Parliament. That is the way forward. They should report very regularly—not monthly but perhaps bi-weekly—to the Cabinet Office. The right funding and support should also be in place.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, this is a short debate but it gives us, particularly those of us who live in Northern Ireland, the opportunity to once again warn of the increasing instability and anger in the pro-union communities there. On numerous occasions, the Government have been warned, here in this House, that the protocol was unsustainable and had to go. We said that it was incompatible with the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, and we warned that the institutions were threatened. The resignation of the First Minister was the inevitable consequence of what happens when unionists feel alienated.
The protocol, which was introduced with no consent from anyone in Northern Ireland, has left them feeling significantly disadvantaged, with their rights diminished and their very identity as citizens of the UK being whittled away. When I say “they”, I mean me too. Not a day passes without some new bit of bureaucracy being discovered, stopping a certain type of goods coming into Northern Ireland, or without a business in GB telling me that it cannot deliver now because it is no longer made worth while to send to Northern Ireland. We all know that the border checks are ridiculous: a huge effort of resources and time is put in to check what will be a tiny amount of goods going on to the Republic.
The fundamental and deeply worrying fact is that our union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is being eroded. The Government’s own lawyers in the Belfast High Court said that the protocol impliedly and partially repeals the Act of Union, in so far as that fundamental law ensures unfettered internal UK trade. Of course, the Irish Government love the fact that more people are being forced to buy from the Republic, and diversion of trade patterns is happening. The Irish Government have no qualms about speaking up on behalf of the nationalist communities. As the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, said in this House on 13 September, the EU fundamentally seems to see Northern Ireland through nationalist eyes.
Northern Ireland people, who withstood over 30 years of bombs, shootings and appalling atrocities carried out by the IRA, and who have remained the most staunch supporters of our great country, now see their own Government give in, time after time, to those who wish to destroy Northern Ireland. When Sinn Féin brought down the devolved Government for three years in 2017, I did not see much abuse of Sinn Féin by our Government. They did not even hint at their disapproval of such vandalism, even when the Irish Government made it clear that the Sinn Féin demand of an Irish language Act be met before it would go back in—and now we are going to see that, although other parts of the agreement have not been met.
Just how long does the Minister think these negotiations are going to continue? They are clearly not going to get the EU to change its mind. Just how long are we going to have to put up with this?
Does he really think that the vote on the consent principle in 2024 that one other noble Lord referred to is fair? It is the only part of the Belfast agreement that is going to change the principle of consent to majority will, instead of the principle of co-operation and agreement across community consent.
I warn again that there are now demonstrations every week. There will rallies and campaigns in the lead-up to the election. Northern Ireland is in a fragile position and this Government have to recognise that time is running out, and it is running out now.
Lord Godson (Con)
I join the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for securing this debate and for his broader chairmanship of the Sub-Committee on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, on which I am privileged to serve. I also join the tributes to the efforts of my noble friend Lord Frost in respect of recouping some of the ground lost during his period in office.
I wish to pick up on some of the matters referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, in respect of the impact and tension between the protocol and the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reflect on the conflict between those two and the impact on the ground. To what degree has he witnessed a change in the Commission’s understanding of the problem with the protocol from one centred on operational issues, as experienced by businesses, to one centred on political issues that relate to the compatibility of the protocol as presently designed with the Belfast agreement? The compatibility of the protocol as presently designed with the agreement puts at risk the very aim of the protocol, which is to uphold the agreement in all its parts.
As has been mentioned by many noble Lords and Baronesses, there are three strands to the agreement. We have known for some time that strand 3, which deals with the totality of relationships between these two islands, including between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, was at risk, as was highlighted in the UK Government’s position paper as long ago as August 2017. The risk to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the consequent problems for Northern Ireland consumers in general—for unionists in particular—is to be found in the failings of that strand. However, in consequence of that and the instability caused, we have a failure of strand 1—the devolved internal government of Northern Ireland—and, as a result of the protocol, further difficulties therefore with strand 2 on north-south, cross-border issues. All these of course have to be based on cross-community consent.
All three strands of the Belfast agreement are now in jeopardy because of a protocol supposedly designed to uphold the agreement in all its parts. Even the European Commission in its September 2017 principles—its response to the UK Government’s then position paper—stated as first principle:
“The Good Friday Agreement established interlocking political institutions which reflect the totality of the relationships on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. The institutions, which provide frameworks for cooperation between both parts of the island and between Ireland and Great Britain, will need to continue to operate effectively.”
This protocol has clearly failed the test set by the UK Government. It has not won the necessary cross-community support in Northern Ireland and it has now failed the test set by the European Commission itself.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, debates on the Northern Ireland protocol tend to generate more heat than light. Let us hope that today’s debate will buck that trend; my noble friend, Lord Jay, certainly set us off that way. At the end of this debate, it would be very useful to have a clear picture from the Government of the facts on the ground, the trends of the Northern Ireland economy since the protocol entered into force a little over a year ago, and how those trends compare with the rest of the island of Ireland and the rest of the UK.
However, a few salient political points stand out. First, the supporters of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum grossly misled the public, particularly when the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, assured all and sundry that leaving the EU would have no adverse or destabilising effect in Northern Ireland. Secondly, the vote in 2016 provided no democratic legitimacy for leaving in Northern Ireland since there was a clear majority for remaining. Thirdly, the solution finally enshrined in the protocol negotiated by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, whom I welcome to the Back Benches, was described by the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, as one that no British Prime Minister could accept. Fourthly, there was never at any point and at any time any basis for the assertion by the current Prime Minister that the protocol would require no checks and controls on trade in goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. No wonder there is so much confusion, disinformation and distrust.
Does that mean that the problems that have arisen over the implementation of the protocol are all the fault of one side ? Certainly not. Nor does it mean that the protocol is without blemish and could not be improved—of course it could. The European Commission has recognised that by coming to the table with detailed proposals for improvements. The sooner after the May elections those negotiations can be concluded the better.
What surely must be avoided is inflicting more damage on the structures of the Good Friday agreement by dragging out the process. That agreement was a massive and painful achievement. It needs to be preserved, not used as a pawn in the political manoeuvring over the protocol.
I have one final point. The fate of the Good Friday agreement is a matter of deep concern to our closest ally, the United States, and its current President. The sooner the problems over implementing the protocol can be sorted out, the sooner what has become a serious irritant in UK-US relations can be put behind us. The converse is also true: if the UK-EU negotiations drag on or, worse still, break down in acrimony, there should be no doubt about the negative consequences for our relationship with the United States.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, I too join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Jay, on securing this important and timely debate, and in commending him for the way he chairs our sub-committee, of which I have the honour of being a member. I also endorse what he said about the sub-committee looking forward to hearing from James Cleverly or a government Minister, because it is important to our scrutiny work that we have access to Ministers. We will be publishing a report soon on the scrutiny side of our work, which is extremely important, given that no other body in the United Kingdom is giving attention to laws made for Northern Ireland by Europe.
This has been an interesting debate. Predictable views have been expressed, but one thing that has changed since the last time we debated these matters is that the political situation in Northern Ireland has deteriorated. I fear it will deteriorate further unless we finally grapple with the protocol and get a solution to it. The dragging out of time to get that solution is not helpful. Indeed, the Command Paper of July last year said that the conditions for triggering Article 16 had already been met. We were told in early September that there might be a short three-week negotiation. The decision would then be made as to whether the EU was serious and the UK Government would take unilateral action. Unfortunately, not taking any action has resulted in the deterioration I spoke about on the ground in Northern Ireland.
The fact is that the protocol is incompatible with the Belfast agreement because it does not respect strand 3 or strand 1 of it. It has resulted in the resignation of the First Minister. I do not want to engage in intra-unionist petty politicking—there will be another time and place for that—but I remind my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, that the Ulster Unionists walked out of the Executive in 2015, refused to come into it in 2016 and only recently joined it. Everybody has engaged in a little bit of politicking, but we need to be serious about these matters. There are more fundamental issues at stake.
The protocol is incompatible with Northern Ireland’s constitutional position, for the reasons elucidated in the court case that is ongoing and has yet to reach a conclusion. It is incompatible with democracy. It is unconscionable that in the modern world, in the 21st century, laws are being made over far vast swathes of the economy of Northern Ireland by a foreign body in its interest, without any say or vote by any elected representative of Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom anywhere, either at Stormont or here. We can go into the trade and economic issues, which are all extremely pertinent. Remember that the protocol is being implemented in only a light-touch way at the moment. If it were not for the grace periods, which some in this House ridiculed and condemned at the time, we would face a far worse situation. This is fundamentally an issue of democracy, respect for Northern Ireland’s constitutional position and identity, and respect for the Belfast agreement, as amended by the St Andrews agreement. We need to get back to those fundamental principles.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for securing this timely and extremely important debate. I must confess that my thoughts this week—like most people in this Room, I imagine—have been with the people of Ukraine and the bravery of my many Ukrainian friends in Kyiv and beyond. It rather puts things into context.
I appreciate that the Minister is from the Northern Ireland Office and is almost certainly not in a position to answer my question, but it strikes me as nearly impossible for the Foreign Secretary and James Cleverly, the Minister for Europe, who is also dealing with Ukraine, to give the ongoing negotiations with the EU on the protocol the attention that they clearly deserve. Further to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, does the Minister believe that there is currently sufficient resource—in particular, political resource—available for those negotiations in the Government?
Continuing to threaten to trigger Article 16 in the current context does not strike me as particularly grown-up or sensible politics. Can the Minister confirm that, at least for the time being, triggering Article 16 is off the table? In the absence of the Executive, how are the political parties in Northern Ireland being involved in and consulted on the progress of negotiations? Does he agree that, in this pre-election period, it is particularly important that all parties are properly and fully involved in that process?
My noble friend Lord Thomas referred to the recent survey by Queen’s University, which reveals that attitudes to the protocol remain deeply divided, but there are at least distinct indications of a move towards acceptance of it—accompanied, however, by a desire to see it work more effectively in practice. It is fair to say that the protocol is very far from perfect, but does the Minister agree that it is currently the only solution on the table, which is why it is essential to continue to negotiate with partners in Brussels to find ways to make it work?
Northern Ireland currently faces so many challenges—the healthcare system, delivering integrated education and fulfilling its economic potential to name but three. These require a functioning and effective Executive. It is, frankly, tragic that, once again, the people of Northern Ireland find themselves without an Executive at this critical time. Clearly, these are challenging times at all levels, but can the Minister assure us that brokering solutions and finding a way to see a return to a functioning Executive remains a priority at the very highest level of government?
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for initiating the debate and the invaluable work his committee does. This deserves a longer debate and more Members taking part. The lack of resolution of this issue has the most profound implications for the future of Northern Ireland. The elections in May will undoubtedly be dominated by it, and the great tragedy is that it could have been avoided.
It seems to me that there are three major factors. The first is that the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. The second is that there is a profound difference of view among the people of Northern Ireland over the protocol. The third is that the protocol itself came down not from Moses but from the Government. The protocol was negotiated by this Government, nobody else—no other party, none of the Opposition. Together, the Government of the United Kingdom and the European Union negotiated the protocol that we are debating.
That is the problem, of course. Had the institutions in Northern Ireland been up and running, even to the extent of the paralysed version we have today, the parties in Northern Ireland would undoubtedly have been involved the deep and difficult discussions about how to deal with this matter. They were not; as a consequence, we are where we are. The best—or the least offensive—word I can use is that, over the past few years, diplomacy and negotiations have been unhappy. They have not actually resolved anything. Things are a little better now—they are not as bad as they were—but the negotiations have not gone to the heart of this.
If anybody can suggest for one second that it is too difficult to negotiate, how on earth did those of us who were involved in the Good Friday agreement negotiate it a quarter of a century ago? Look at what happened there. The most difficult issues ever, and yet unionists and nationalists got together and negotiated the Good Friday agreement. It has been mentioned a lot in this debate. Yes, it is important—I chaired strands 1 and 3 of those negotiations and talks all those years ago; I understand what they mean—but the basis is that there must be a consensus. I agree with what many unionists and many nationalists are saying: you have to come to a consensus. You cannot have an agreement on something as significant as this unless both sides agree and get together.
My one message to the Minister is this: talk, talk, talk. Involve the Irish Government more with the British Government; they are co-guarantors of the agreement. Talk to the European Union. Above all, talk to the political parties in Northern Ireland.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Caine) (Con)
My Lords, before responding to the debate, as I am the first Northern Ireland Office Minister to be at the Dispatch Box in either House since the tragic death of Christopher Stalford, I formally place on record the Government’s sincerest condolences to Laura, the rest of Christopher’s family and his DUP colleagues.
First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, for tabling this Motion. As he reminded the Committee, before my appointment last November, I had the privilege of serving under his chairmanship as a member of the Northern Ireland protocol sub-committee of the European Affairs Committee. Like colleagues from all parts of the Committee, I benefited immensely from his wise counsel and was hugely impressed by his ability to reach consensus when faced with a range of divergent views—all, of course, in the best traditions of the Diplomatic Service. I take on board the noble Lord’s comments about my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe; I will take them back. Of course, I commend the ongoing work of the sub-committee and wish it well.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising issues that remain of immense importance to Northern Ireland in particular but also, as we should never forget, to the rest of the United Kingdom as a whole. The Motion in his name asks
“Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland on recent political developments in Northern Ireland.”
I will answer that in two parts, if I may: first, by looking at the situation in Northern Ireland today, including reaffirming the Government’s strong commitment to political stability; and, secondly, making a few more general comments about the problems created by the protocol and the Government’s efforts to resolve them.
I turn first to the current situation in Northern Ireland and political stability. One of the Government’s overriding objectives is, of course, the preservation and implementation of the 1998 agreement, along with its successors, and the enormous benefits that have flowed from it. Our commitment, and my personal commitment, to the 1998 agreement, the constitutional principles it enshrines, including the principle of consent, the institutions it establishes and the rights it safeguards for the whole community, remain unshakeable. It is my firm view and that of the Government that it remains the bedrock of all the progress we have seen in Northern Ireland over the last nearly 24 years.
In that context, I warmly welcome back to his place in the House the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who, as he reminded the Committee, was intimately involved in those negotiations in 1998. I thank him for many of his wise words today.
This Government will never take any risks with the agreement and the relative peace, prosperity and stability it has helped to create. If I might speak personally for a moment, as one who worked in the Northern Ireland Office under Peter Brooke and Patrick Mayhew during a period of direct rule in the early 1990s, while the Troubles were still raging, I need absolutely no convincing of just how important political stability is. It is therefore profoundly regrettable and disappointing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, made clear, that for the second time in recent years we now find ourselves without a properly functioning Executive in Northern Ireland following the resignation of the First Minister on 3 February and the consequential removal from office of the Deputy First Minister.
The Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Act agreed by Parliament last month will provide some greater resilience and continuity of decision-making, including potentially after the 5 May Assembly election. But, as a number of noble Lords made clear, it is simply not an adequate substitute for a fully functioning Executive working for all the people of Northern Ireland and delivering on their priorities—not least, as my noble friend Lord Rogan mentioned, when it comes to the National Health Service, which in terms of outcomes already lagged behind the rest of the United Kingdom before the pandemic and now does so even more as we emerge from it, I hope. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, made a similar reference to the state of the NHS.
Another unfortunate consequence of the current situation is that the Northern Ireland Executive will not now be able to agree and pass a three-year budget this side of the election. That would have given departments such as health greater certainty to enable them to plan ahead and implement necessary reforms. Both in the run-up to and for a period after the Assembly election, Ministers will still be able to take decisions, but nothing that could be regarded as controversial or cross-cutting, which would require executive approval.
I take on board the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. The Government will continue to urge and call for the immediate restoration of a fully functioning Executive and work towards that end: an Executive able to take the necessary steps to reform the delivery of public services; to address structural weaknesses in the Northern Ireland economy, such as skills and productivity; and, of course, to tackle community divisions, which hold back society in Northern Ireland.
However, we are under no illusions that this will be an easy task—as I know from personal experience and as the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, reminded us—either in the run-up to the Assembly election in May or in the period immediately thereafter. That is, unless we can fix the root cause of the current instability in Northern Ireland, and that is of course the other subject of today’s debate: the protocol.
The problems created by the protocol are well documented, including in the Command Paper presented to Parliament by my noble friend Lord Frost last July and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, mentioned, in the first report of the sub-committee, when I was a member, also last July. Many noble Lords who have contributed this afternoon have highlighted a number of particular issues with the protocol, which I acknowledge. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, set out many of them.
I heard for myself the many challenges that businesses in particular are encountering when I met representative organisations and individual businesses, including a haulage company, in Northern Ireland a few days ago. I anticipate visiting a major port in the near future to look at the situation on the ground. I was left in no doubt by the business community in Northern Ireland about the urgent need to deal with these problems.
In addition, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Dodds of Duncairn made clear, there are important constitutional and political issues involved here, as well as issues of identity. It is clear that, in addition to the impact on business, the protocol strikes at the heart of the identity of the pro-union majority in Northern Ireland, who increasingly see themselves cut off from the very United Kingdom of which, on the basis of consent and in domestic and international law, they are an integral part. I assure my unionist colleagues that I never wish to see that position change.
In summary, the protocol has led to a diversion of trade, placed substantial additional burdens on business, disadvantaged consumers and led to societal issues, such as we witnessed in the run-up to—
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving way. Would he, along with ministerial colleagues representing the British Government, work with the Irish Government, to look at the provisions in Article 14(b) of the protocol on the North/South Ministerial Council and the implementation bodies to see whether there are immediate solutions, so that we can get past this interregnum phase and ensure that the institutions are up and running again? It is not solely the Executive that is down but the North/South Ministerial Council.
Lord Caine (Con)
I of course take on board the noble Baroness’s comments. We are willing to look at any pragmatic solutions to this, although I would caution that negotiations on the protocol are between the United Kingdom Government and the European Commission. The Commission represents Ireland in those negotiations, as was made clear to me by Monsieur Barnier in 2018, when I had the privilege—that is probably the wrong word—of an hour with him.
I was saying that, in summary, diversion of trade and societal problems have disadvantaged consumers and placed burdens on business. Although I accept that opinion within Northern Ireland remains divided, as the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Murphy, made clear, a protocol that does not have the support of one part of the community is simply not sustainable and durable, as my noble friend Lord Frost has said on many occasions.
As my noble friend Lord Godson and others highlighted, the blunt truth is that a protocol that was intended to preserve and protect the 1998 agreement in all its parts has now become an instrument for undermining it. Clearly, it does not work for all communities and for business in Northern Ireland, and is having a destabilising effect on politics. That cannot be an acceptable state of affairs.
A number of noble Lords referred to how we got here. If they will forgive me, I wish to focus on the present, but I will pick up on the reference the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made to my former boss, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers. I hold her in the highest regard but it was never a requirement of being a special adviser that one had to agree with one’s boss on every single issue, if I might put it like that.
It is clear that we need to remedy the problems created by the protocol, in both construction and implementation, as a matter of urgency to ensure the proper flow of goods within our United Kingdom internal market while, of course, respecting the integrity of the EU single market. We need to create the conditions in which the institutions established by the 1998 agreement can, across all three strands of that agreement, as my noble friends Lord Frost and Lord Godson made clear, be restored to their proper place and function effectively. That will of course require pragmatism and proportionality on all sides, but principally from the EU itself. For our part, and to this end, the UK Government set out in a Command Paper last year a range of constructive proposals. Of course, the EU published its four non-papers last year, which are, in the Government’s view, a step forward but fall short of what is required.
A number of noble Lords referred to the current negotiations. I am conscious of time and that I am surrounded by a number of seasoned negotiators, all of whom will, at one stage in their careers, probably have advised Ministers not to give a running commentary on current negotiations. It is not my intention to depart from that particular principle. I am sure noble Lords will understand that, although my department works closely with the FCDO, it is clearly in the lead on the negotiations. I am therefore somewhat limited in what I can say or share. Suffice it to say, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned, that intensive negotiations are continuing between my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and the European Commission at both ministerial and official level. While it is the case that some progress has been made, significant gaps remain.
I will finish shortly. The Government’s clear position is that, while the conditions for triggering the safeguards within the protocol were indeed met some time ago, our strong preference is to resolve our differences through agreement, if possible. In response to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, at the outset, we very much hope that agreement can be reached. Unfortunately, I cannot really give him a timetable but, as I said earlier, we are seized of the importance of fixing this, and fixing it quickly. Failing that, the Government reserve the right to take unilateral action, for which the protocol clearly allows.
As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, reminded us, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, our debate today takes place against a backdrop of the greatest threat to peace and stability in Europe for decades, and our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine at this moment and we stand side by side with them. Notwithstanding the attention and commitment that that crisis is rightly taking up—I hope I can assure noble Lords on this point—the Government will continue to engage tirelessly to fix the problems around the protocol and pursue our objectives to build a Northern Ireland where, to use a phrase I have used many times before, politics works, the economy grows and society is more united.
The UK Government have the strongest possible interest in protecting peace and stability in Northern Ireland, and, through our unwavering support for the 1998 agreement and our efforts to fix the protocol, that is what we will strive to achieve.
Older Workers: Job Market Opportunities
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Altmann
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that older workers can secure new opportunities in the jobs market.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I first thank the House of Lords Library staff for their excellent help with the background statistics for this debate. I also thank the Centre for Ageing Better for its helpful briefings. I declare my interest as a board adviser to the not-for profit community interest company Bravestarts, which is already helping many older people to find ways to return to work in later life. I am also an adviser to the International Longevity Centre. I also thank all noble Lords who have attended this short debate today.
For many decades now, average life expectancy has been rising and people have had longer periods in retirement. Recognising the dangers that this would pose to future public finances and growth in a rapidly ageing population, Governments have pursued policies of increasing state pension ages, abolishing mandatory retirement ages and encouraging longer working lives. Indeed, this House is a live example of the value added by the experience, maturity and energy of older people who are still working. Older workers bring valuable talent, skill sets, patience and wisdom, which are often lost when recruitment focuses only on the young.
The ideal scenario for many, as they enter their 60s and even 70s, may be to reduce working hours from full-time to part-time, which is why the trends towards more flexible employment are most welcome. They will allow people to build extra income both now and in the future, as well as boosting their pensions and overall economic growth.
The employment rate for over-50s and over-60s, especially women, had been steadily increasing, boosting the economy. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research showed that people retiring just one year later than previously can add one percentage point to economic growth each year. However, if more older people pull out of employment altogether, this source of economic growth disappears, the economic activity will remain permanently lower and the pension savings of those who are no longer working will be unable to last as long.
This is why there is a concern that, since the pandemic started—since December 2019—the indications are that the employment rate for those aged between 50 and 64 fell from 72.7% to just 70.9%, reversing a well-established long-term trend. Indeed, I argue that the jobs statistics released recently suggest that perhaps the single biggest challenge in the labour market at the moment is how we help older people to stay in or return to work. Despite record numbers of job vacancies—1.3 million—and with labour supply currently lagging behind demand, 600,000 fewer people are in work now than two years ago, and economic inactivity has risen in the past months, largely driven by the over-50 age group, particularly women.
The largest proportion of the economically inactive are the older women who are less likely to have private pensions or have much less private pension. That indicates that the pandemic may be having more worrying knock-on impacts than perhaps have yet been factored into economic forecasts, if it has reduced the ability and perhaps desire of people over 50 to stay in work and may have increased health inequalities in the population, which were already stark, with a 20-year differential in healthy life expectancy across the country. The employment gap for older workers relative to the average in the population and the disability employment gap have both widened. Once again, those trends of concern are reversing the positive gains seen up to 2020. It will be important to see whether those trends will reverse after Covid. I certainly hope so.
I commend the Government on their October 2020 Plan for Jobs programmes offering financial incentives for employers who are considering hiring new staff. I welcome the Restart scheme and the October 2021 expansion of support packages, with the lifetime skills guarantee, the national skills fund, skills bootcamps for adults and the over-50s champions in jobcentres.
We are seeing a potential that needs to be carefully observed by the Government. In our ageing population, commitments to encouraging longer working lives are important for long-term economic growth as well as individual well-being. The coalition Government asked me to be their older workers’ business champion. The plight and needs of the over-50s in employment or wishing to return to work were made clear in my report, A New Vision for Older Workers, with recommendations based around helping employers and individuals with what I called the three Rs: retain, retrain and recruit, which are all the essential ingredients of a successful strategy for increasing jobs, labour force participation and opportunities for the over-50s in the labour market.
Indeed, as work becomes physically less demanding, having the opportunity for people to enjoy working in later life is important. I know that it is also important to my noble friend the Minister and her department. I ask her to take back to her department the need for published evaluation and evidence on the effectiveness of schemes that have commendably been introduced and specifically designed to help the over-50s back into work. What works best? Is her department working on any detailed research projects, perhaps in collaboration with a university or the excellent departmental officials, to understand the interventions that can best assist in retraining, retaining and recruiting older staff who might otherwise be at risk of leaving the workforce?
Might the Government consider incentives for employers to create specific programmes to ensure that older people are seriously considered rather than overlooked when it comes to in-work training? Many older people are willing to accept lower pay in order to participate in training programmes or programmes to help them change career but find that they are not widely available for older applicants. With a number of employers, I organised schemes for older apprenticeships, but older people often did not seem to believe that they should apply because “apprenticeship” relates, in their minds, to younger people. Might the Government consider the same kind of principle but maybe calling such schemes “career changer” incentives or “new career” programmes, to ensure that employers are encouraged to offer opportunities for training to new recruits at older ages? Individuals may be more likely to apply.
I also hope that my noble friend will consider whether companies might be required to report on what they are doing to ensure they are providing an age-friendly environment at work, one that offers the flexibility for part-time, but also includes in retraining those of all ages and career stages, fairer consideration of older applicants when recruiting and proper age audits as part of their diversity, training and recruitment strategies.
Making older workers feel valued is really important for all our futures. In the context of pensions, I have concerns about people pulling out of the labour market early. Are they just using their private pensions to bridge themselves from age 55 to 65, until their state pension starts, but have nothing left later? Will my noble friend encourage the Treasury to monitor and conduct research into what is happening when people are taking money out of their pensions? Making workers feel valued is important. Benefiting from the wisdom that comes with age and being part of a successful workforce can help with our Covid rebuilding programme.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for the opportunity to discuss this important issue. I agree that the central issue here is what we can do to enable older people to choose to stay in work or to return to work.
Over all this discussion, we have the pandemic and what we hope is a move away from it. It has had impacts across our whole social and economic life, not least in its effect on patterns of work for older people. Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen a steep reversal of trends in employment. There had been a consistent increase in employment rates among older workers since the mid-1990s and a fall in inactivity rates, but between 2019 and 2021, the department’s figures for employment show that the rates for 50 to 64 year-olds fell by 2.8 percentage points for men and 3 percentage points for women.
The Institute for Employment Studies has calculated that if pre-Covid-19 trends had continued, there would be almost half a million more older workers in the workforce than we have today. This reversal of the earlier trend clearly comes at a cost for those involved: to individuals who cannot afford to lose either the income or social structure that work provides and to society as a whole, with reduced output of goods and services.
To the extent that this reflects older people choosing of their own wishes to enjoy more leisure, as against income, it can be welcomed but there is little evidence that this is the main or significant driver. The truth is that most of those who have given up employment did not have a choice but were forced out of the labour market through lack of work opportunities, ill-health or family responsibilities. The question, therefore, is what we and the Government can do about it.
In suggesting some policies, I base my remarks in large part on the excellent and timely report from the TUC, published on 23 February, Older Workers after the Pandemic: Creating an Inclusive Labour Market. I urge the Minister to read it, if she has not already done so. The TUC’s report makes it clear that increasing older workers’ participation in the labour market will require major changes in the workplace to ensure that older workers have the skills they need and that jobs and workplaces meet the needs of an ageing workforce. This goes alongside the need to ensure that those who are unable to continue working into their mid-60s are not penalised as a result, which will require an overhaul of working and pension-age benefits.
As pointed out by the TUC, there are class and ethnic dimensions to the challenge we face in offering older people the opportunity to keep working. People in low-paid and manually intensive jobs are at far greater risk of being forced out of the labour market early. Those working with heavy machinery and in elementary occupations such as cleaning or security are particularly vulnerable, closely followed by people in caring and other service occupations, retail and customer service. Together, these occupations account for just three in 10 jobs in the labour market, but almost six in 10 people who leave the labour market come from these sectors. Plans to tackle labour shortages by helping more older people stay in work must tackle the structural discrimination that means workers on lower pay are more likely to be pushed out.
At the same time, while black and other ethnic-minority workers are less likely to retire early than their white counterparts, those who leave the labour market early are significantly more likely to do so because of poor health and more than twice as likely to do so because of caring responsibilities. From an analysis of the Labour Force Survey, the TUC found that just 17% of black and minority-ethnic people between the ages of 50 and 65 who are economically inactive have retired compared with 40% of economically inactive white people, reflecting the wide ethnicity gap in average pension wealth.
So what can we do? First, particularly as we emerge from the pandemic phase of Covid, workplaces must be made safer for all workers through improved health and safety guidance and stronger enforcement. The Government should work with unions and employers to ensure that we address workers and skills shortages and deliver the Government’s stated ambition of a high-wage, high-productivity economy.
Secondly, we need to ensure that older workers have the skills needed to thrive in the labour market by giving them the right to a mid-life career and skills review and to access funded retraining and by providing tailored support for older workers at risk of long-term unemployment or of falling out of the labour market.
Thirdly, we should help older workers to manage disabilities and health conditions by ensuring that employers put in place reasonable adjustments for disabled workers and tackle workplace discrimination and by strengthening flexible working rights to allow older workers to manage workloads.
Finally, we have to look at reforms of the benefits system so that people of all ages who are unable to work can maintain a decent standard of living. We must pay attention in that area, which affects older workers most acutely.
The Earl of Leicester (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Altmann, with whom I find myself sharing an office as of this week. I refer to my interests relating to land-based and tourism businesses in north Norfolk, as recorded in the register.
One of the things I am learning as a new boy in this House is that, prior to speaking, it is a good idea to see who you are up against in the debate. The answer, as a quick whip through Wikipedia led me to discover, is Peers with knowledge and experience on this subject far deeper and greater than mine. I will therefore limit my contribution to my experiences as an employer in land-based and tourism businesses, which I hope will illustrate the benefits that businesses derive from employing older workers and, of course, the benefits that older workers receive from continuing to work into their later years. Both these factors feed into greater benefits for the economy as a whole.
I was concerned that, as a young man of 56, I might not be able to speak authoritatively on older workers. However, I have learned that the Government class older workers as those aged 50 and above. Living longer and in better health, and with the removal of the statutory retirement age, we can expect to continue to see high levels of employment in this group. According to the Centre for Ageing Better’s report The State of Ageing in 2020, one in three workers was 50 or over.
This is borne out in our statistics at Holkham, where I live and work. Some 35% of the staff employed are aged 50 and over; 27% are 55 and over; 16% are 60 and over; 10%, or 27 people out of a workforce of 274 employees as of four days ago, are 65 and over; and 4%, or 11 people—I am rightly proud of this—are 70 and over. The gender split is evenly balanced across the age bands. This trend in our companies towards employing older workers has increased slightly in the last decade.
In the 55-and-over group, staff are employed across a broad variety of positions, including room stewards and guides, car park attendants, visitor services, retail, housekeeping, houseman, tractor and trailer drivers, a gamekeeper, academics and in administration and cafés. I have to admit that the vast majority are in lower-paid positions, but at the real living wage of £9.90 or the next rate, £10.50 an hour. Staff in this age group enjoy the flexible, part-time and/or seasonal nature of the positions, although I have to add that a good number are full-time. They enjoy interaction with people, and are good at it, and being able to make use of their skills and knowledge. While most report needing some form of income, often additional to their pension, they are often more motivated to provide an excellent service in what they do and, frankly, to keep themselves busy and the grey matter working.
Grouping people together from the age of 50 to 70 and over to highlight the pros and cons of employing this age group is done with the caveat that not all are the same, but we believe that the key benefits and advantages are as follows. I am pleased to report that the list of benefits is longer than that of disbenefits. Older workers are dependable, reliable, punctual and trustworthy. They are respectful and recognise that they are here to work and do a good job. They bring a wealth of broad-ranging experience, from ex-police officers to teachers, former senior directors, marketing specialists and, of course, skilled ex-manual workers. Their experience benefits less-experienced, often younger people. It provides excellent insight and ideas into improving work processes and practices. It also leads to us very quickly giving this group of staff accountability. They have the experience and confidence to be trusted to get on with it. Typically, they have excellent customer service skills. They go above and beyond in their knowledge and care. They do not have dependent children and are therefore less likely to have emergency issues, and are more willing to work weekends or bank holidays.
There are disadvantages. Conversely to the above, they might have elder care responsibilities. A lack of compulsory retirement age can lead to the requirement for a performance management process if someone is no longer performing or their health capability impacts on their ability to fulfil the position. This has not been an issue for us yet, but I suspect that it may be in the future. They are also typically less likely to be IT savvy, particular in terms of new functionality or shortcuts with systems. They are probably unlikely to be the people in the organisation who innovate or streamline, as their previous experience and technical knowledge can be somewhat outdated.
I have an observation on interviewing older job applicants. Quite often, candidates will say things like, “I’m really old, so you probably don’t want me”. That is a sad reflection of a lack of confidence or a poor experience when applying for other positions. Having had recent experience of working with DWP work coaches on the Kickstart team, my team is concerned that the DWP needs to ensure that adequate resources are in place to support the further expansion to 50-plus support. Work coaches need to work more collaboratively with local organisations.
I take slight issue with the assertion by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that most people have been forced out of work. My experience is that they have generally retired voluntarily. It may have a geographical influence inasmuch as they might have retired to sunny north Norfolk, but I can think of only one person for whom this was the first job he had had in five years. I hope that this has been a useful illustration for the debate.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for securing this important debate. The Office for National Statistics published data in November 2021 showing that, since the end of the Government’s furlough scheme during the pandemic, many over-50s have fallen out of the workforce. The figures showed that, in September 2021, 362,000 over-50s were unemployed and 3.5 million people aged between 50 and 64 were economically inactive.
As we know, one of the key challenges we face in this area is discrimination and some outdated ideas about age and work. Since the Equality Act was passed in 2010, it has been illegal to discriminate against someone based on their age; this includes age discrimination at work. To be clear, this age discrimination is not just against older workers. It also includes young adults, who often face considerable challenges due to discrimination.
Why am I talking about young workers in a debate about older workers? Since I ran Age Concern England for many years, people believe that my passion and area of knowledge is solely ageing. In fact, much of my earlier career and later voluntary work was in supporting young people. From 2006 to 2012, I had the privilege of being an equality and human rights commissioner. In truth, human rights have always been my main area of interest, rather than ageing or focusing only on a particular stage of life. My work in advocating for older people has always been focused on ensuring that people’s human rights are protected and not changed or diminished after a certain number of birthdays; that is pure discrimination.
Despite being illegal, age discrimination is still rife. One of the key reasons for this is unconscious bias against older people in work—and, in fact, in society generally. This is often reinforced by structural bias, whereby organisations continue to work within structures and policies that assume that the human life course is much the same as it was a century ago. The human life course has changed and continues to change; as we know, it depends on change. A baby born in 2022 will not live the same life as someone born in the 20th century. The idea that we go to school until we are 18, get a qualification so that we can get a job, work until we hit our 60s and then retire is totally out of date. In 2022, someone who is 50 could easily spend another 25 to 30 years in the workforce, yet people in their 50s are too often dismissed as “older” when in fact they may live and work for many more years, often with life experience and talent.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
My Lords, the bells are not ringing for some reason but there is a Division going on in the House. I move that the Grand Committee adjourn briefly. Officially we are meant to do so for 10 minutes, but I suggest that we resume once all noble Lords participating have indicated to me that they have voted successfully.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, too often, even people meaning to do the right thing inadvertently reinforce age discrimination. An example is the campaign by various ageing organisations in the UK and internationally to create a separate UN convention for older persons’ rights. There are two problems with that. First, it is not clear who we count as old. As we know, people age at different rates and the ageing process affects people quite differently. If we are saying that people over 50 are older, when life expectancy in the UK is currently 81 years and an increasing number of people are living to 100, that is, frankly, ridiculous. Worse, it says that when someone is older, having had a certain number of birthdays, their human rights are different and covered by a separate UN convention. Separate conventions may do good work to protect the rights of disabled people, where we can clearly define what is a disability, but with ageing it is much vaguer.
Worse, our understanding of ageing is generally built on a lack of understanding and an unconscious or, at least at times, conscious diminishing of older people’s contributions to society. We do not need a separate UN convention; we do not need to treat people differently. Instead, we need to treat a 73 year-old worker not as an older worker but as a worker, with the same human rights as everyone else. If a 73 year-old worker develops a disability, we should support this worker in the same way as we support a 53 or 33 year-old with a disability. Instead, we label older people pensioners, defining people over a certain age by their eligibility to receive state income and dismissing their potential contribution to society.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that we abolish the state pension, and I believe it was an important part of developing our welfare state in the 20th century, but in 2022, we need to understand that not only do many workers work well beyond the state pension age but it is often good for a person’s health and quality of life to do so. One of the biggest challenges we face is isolation and loneliness, something often experienced by people who have retired or are no longer economically active. This can lead to depression and is a contributing factor towards people developing dementia.
What steps can the Government take to support older workers to secure new opportunities in the jobs market? Our first step is to challenge unconscious bias and outdated ideas about ageing and work. We must do more to enforce anti-age discrimination measures in the Equality Act. This starts with education and challenging those outdated ideas. Crucially, it is also about challenging the idea that older people are to be treated differently, including by those wishing to help them. Instead, we need a strong economy that provides good jobs for all adults, whatever their age, who are willing and want to work, and makes it possible for them to do so.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate on a subject to which I first had to pay attention in the run-up to the millennium, when the organisation for which I was quite a young worker at the time, Age Concern, held a “debate of the age”, looking strategically at big questions to do with an ageing society. One of the advisers to that was the then Ros Altmann, and the driving force and inspiration behind it was the then Sally Greengross. It is a delight, 20 years on, that they are still taking the fight on this subject.
I am glad that we had the very informative briefings from the Library and the Centre for Ageing Better. I found a paper that I think crystallised the issues and speaks in many ways to what the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, said. The Age Smart Employer network in New York produced a paper that came up with a number of lessons for employers in recruiting and retaining older workers. One is that older people have skills and experiences that cannot be readily taught, such as critical thinking. They retain business knowledge, knowledge about networks and the historical memory of the organisations for which they work. It is absolutely true that they tend to have, on average, more technology gaps, but those can be filled and taught. To take Zoom and the House of Lords three years ago as an example, we have moved light years in a short space of time. You can learn that.
But this paper really goes to the heart of what the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, was saying: the best teams are different. They do not have groupthink; they have different skills, and sometimes that comes from different generations. One thing that older people have is an insight into customers, which is particularly important. I have in fact been to Holkham Hall, as a paying customer, and I can testify to the teamwork and atmosphere that the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, talked about.
Perhaps I was having a particularly bad bout of insomnia, because, during Covid-19, I came across one of the most informative programmes, “Farming Today”—skip the “Today” programme and go straight to that. Long before anybody else was talking about shortages of HGV drivers, “Farming Today” was talking about problems with getting milk from farms and so on.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, is right: Covid has brought to the surface a whole load of things that many people have known about but that we have never approached in any kind of coherent fashion. There is a case for looking at sectors of work and the age profiles of people in them—and for not being afraid to take on and address some of the prejudices and what people might be shying away from in looking at that strategically.
This is a subject where we have broadly known for a long time what the causal factors are. Different Governments have brought to the table different initiatives, none of them very coherent or long term. There is a real problem, in that different Governments approach this issue differently: is it a matter of mitigating potential draws on the welfare benefits budget, is it about developing a future plan for work, is it about skills deficits or is it about the fact that we have never really—not for want of trying—got to the very heart of how we get apprenticeships to work, in terms not just of specific skills for specific jobs but of equipping young people for working life, which is something to which older people have quite a lot to contribute?
So I will go back to where I started, which was 20 years ago with the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, trying to take an informed and strategic view of this, listening to academics and doing foresight work with government, as far as was possible, to look at the changes in technology and medical science that were going to affect the health of the population. If we were to do that in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, suggested—not as a knee-jerk reaction but really looking at what has come to the surface post Covid and at the future of work over the next 20 years, when we will not have the influxes of short-term and seasonal labour that we have had in the past—we should have a thoroughgoing look into the demographics of ageing. Apart from anything else, the big tech companies and the people behind them will have something to say on this, because they have begun to look at this area of work because they appreciate that the market of young people, which they have traditionally relied on, is perhaps now changing, and they need to look at that in a different way.
So I very much welcome the contributions in this debate, and I hope that, with the enlightened Minister that we are lucky to have in this House on this subject, we might perhaps take a step towards a new strategy for multigenerational workforces.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for bringing the debate into this forum. I hope that we can move forward together in such an important area. I also thank the staff and all the people who have sent us briefing notes on this important issue, and I particularly thank everyone who has contributed today—the wealth of experience is quite something, and we should really celebrate that and make sure that we pull together.
Perhaps I may add my own humble experience. I had the role of social policy manager for the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly, back in the day when we had such glorious bodies. I remember well the debate of the age, and I helped pull together a document. Moving on through my role in local government—I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA—UNICEF encouraged local authorities to move towards child-friendly cities. That was its big thing. As a consequence, cities—Leeds, in my case, but also many other communities—have moved on to declare themselves as age-friendly towns and cities. It is an interesting development. In reflecting on the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, they have moved on to intergenerational work, which is fascinating. They give all the elements and sections of communities a voice.
I should like to bring to the debate a recognition that no one department or policy area can solve the problems that we are talking about. It is depressing that we are still grappling with issues that were highlighted decades ago when the demographic impact of an ageing population became apparent. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what is working well as a result of the Plan for Jobs programme, what more is being proposed and how new proposals will be successfully implemented, especially in the light—as we have heard, particularly from my noble friend Lord Davies—of recent evidence highlighting the impact of the pandemic on older people. It was a cruel virus that particularly exposed structural weaknesses to a terrible degree for many people.
Linked with that is the rising imperative of dealing with skills shortages and employment needs across all sectors nationwide. We have learned that pre-pandemic, we were already starting to see a drop off in economic activity in the over-50s to the extent that by state pension age, half were not working. That represents a loss to the economy but, importantly for many, as we have heard, a huge loss to them of the financial and social benefits of working. There is poverty for some in old age, and the whole issue of loneliness is a pandemic in its own right.
I echo the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, on the importance to economy. Almost a third of the UK workforce is aged 50 and over, which is reflected in key workers—and how dependent were we on key workers during the pandemic? What does it mean for us as a society that 3.4 million key workers are over 50? What are the most common causes of people leaving the workforce before they are ready to do so? They are ill health, caring responsibilities and disability at an early age. We need to consider carefully all those areas— in particular the socioeconomic factors that highlight chronic inequality. Consider that there is a 20-year gap in disability-free life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas for women and an 18-year gap for men. That all points to the need for a real assessment of the support needs for people with health conditions to enable them to stay in employment. A key factor surely in the levelling-up agenda, which we have not talked about today, has to be how we address those issues. Are we joining up policy areas to achieve an integrated approach to dealing with the problems mentioned?
It is obvious that in the workplace today there is a critical need for retraining and supporting employment opportunities for older women. Skills shortages are being identified across a range of sectors as one of the major obstacles for businesses in planning the future viability of services, as well as the economy. Recognition of the transferability of skills and experience is a sensitive issue and needs to be part of a bespoke, locally based skills programme. Devolving resources and responsibility to local areas will be key to achieving success in these programmes.
We need to recognise upfront that previous back-to-work schemes have not worked, particularly for older people. The outcomes for the over-50s are much lower than for other age groups. A fresh approach is overdue and urgently required. Organisations such as the Centre for Aging Better have undertaken research, as I am sure we have all seen, and highlighted very sensible and practical ways to achieve success in 50-plus employment support programmes. We know is that target-driven approaches do not work. We need to have a real and honest debate, as we have discussed, on real and perceived discrimination against all people and, particularly in this scenario, against older people.
We have had a lot of statistics today and I do not want to repeat them. However, I want to ask about those who have fallen out of the labour market for good, and not through choice. How exactly does this fit with the Government’s stated ambition to extend working lives, increase productivity and level up the UK? I would also look at some of the evidence of the terrible experiences that the WASPI women had.
I have a lot of questions and the Minister will be very pleased to hear that I have run out of time to ask them all. In finishing, can we have confidence that the Government will produce bespoke, evidence-based schemes specifically for the 50-plus cohort? Will they also commit to funding public campaigns, which can be delivered at a local level, highlighting the importance of older workers? With those comments, I look forward to further debate on the matter as we move forward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. They have saved the best debate until the end of the day. It has been one of quality and challenge, which is a good thing.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Altmann on securing this debate. She has been a tireless champion for older people, before and after entering this House, and speaks with great knowledge on the area of older workers, resulting in positive action. Her work as Pensions Minister is well known, but before taking up that post, she had already set the agenda for older workers as their first business champion. Her report A New Vision for Older Workers: Retain, Retrain, Recruit laid the groundwork for the Department of Work and Pensions’ 2017 strategy Fuller Working Lives, which we are still delivering through the 50Plus Choices team. I am delighted to respond to her question today and to provide details of the new and continuing work which the Government are undertaking on behalf of this incredibly important group.
To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, I will run out of time. I am sure she will be happy at that point but, where I have not answered a question, I undertake to write to all noble Lords and place a copy in the Library.
As noble Lords have said, older workers are vital to our economy. The proportion of the population aged 50 and over is projected to increase from 42% in 2010 to nearly 50% by 2035, or 29 million people, so it is essential that the Government and employers make every effort to help and encourage this group with enthusiasm, experience and expertise to enter, stay in and return to work.
Firms with fewer older workers are missing out on the improved productivity, which all noble Lords have talked about, generated by social mixing and a transfer of knowledge between generations. When I ran my charity, I was always delighted when we had more mature members of the workforce with experience because when the younger ones were finding their feet and having those junior moments, rather than senior moments, it was great to be able to get the experienced ones to mentor them. I remember so well that some of them got into pretty deep water and the people with life experience helped them out of it. It kept them in the workforce, so I do understand that.
Dismissing older workers as being past it and allowing them to underestimate themselves is not just damaging to the individuals who are denied access to opportunities to grow, develop and earn. These attitudes are also damaging to individual businesses and to our economy—that was a very important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. We know that age diversity in the workforce is not just the right thing to do but that it can bring benefits to business, and many employers value the experience and loyalty that older workers can bring, as well as broader advantages such as fresh perspectives, knowledge-sharing and improved problem solving. I remember so many times when we had difficulties—which I am sure will resonate with some noble Lords—and someone would pipe up to explain what was done 10 years ago, which was really helpful.
I know that the pandemic caused catastrophe to some people’s employment but it has created particular challenges for the over-50s. Older workers took longer to come off furlough than their younger counterparts, and some of those who left have not returned to the labour market at all. Even before the pandemic, job-seeking presented particular challenges for older people. Evidence shows that those in this age group who lose their jobs are at greater risk of becoming long-term unemployed, and once they return to work, they are likely to earn substantially less than in their previous job. Data suggests that people aged over 50 who lose their jobs are twice as likely as other age groups to be unemployed for at least two years, which can mean that older workers are forced into early retirement that they may not want or are unable to afford. That comes to the point that my noble friend Lady Altmann made about people using their pensions to get them through that period.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that I will find that TUC report. We will read it and see what we can learn from it.
The Government’s older workers agenda, which, as I have mentioned, was influenced and informed by my noble friend Lady Altmann, had been making steady progress in addressing these issues. Pre-pandemic employment levels for older workers were at a record high of 10.7 million and the employment gap between over-50s and the 35 to 49 age group was narrower than ever before. However, the pandemic has sadly reversed this positive momentum and we have seen encouraging trends slip into reverse. The Government are watching the data carefully and are determined not to allow this setback to become a backward slide.
Labour market support and demand is there. We have huge numbers of vacancies and I am sure that, around the country, among our more mature population, there are people who could ably fill them. We must help them to believe that and apply for those jobs. That is why I am delighted that the Chancellor announced a £500 million boost for the Plan for Jobs to ensure that more people of all ages, including those aged 50 and over, get tailored Jobcentre Plus support to help them find work and build the skills they need to get into work.
As part of this, the new Way to Work programme will ensure a laser focus on securing work for every customer. It requires us to use every interaction, every employer relationship and all the work provision we have available to help people achieve their potential by finding a job, and in doing so support our country’s recovery.
I know that there was concern that we were going to use that as a sanctions bonanza. Nothing is further from the truth. All the jobcentres that I have visited have welcomed this programme as a real opportunity to provide tailored support to all ages. I can assure noble Lords that nobody is rubbing their hands together saying, “How many sanctions can I do today?” They are saying, “How many people can we get into work today?” The package will provide more intensive, tailored support for older jobseekers in the first nine months of their UC claim. This extra time will allow work coaches to spend longer with customers, developing strategies to overcome any barriers to work that they might be facing.
My noble friend Lord Leicester mentioned employer engagement, which was of course identified in my noble friend’s report in 2015. If we are to help people enter or re-enter the labour market, our relationship with employers is absolutely critical. They are the ones who create jobs and know the skills they want, and we have to be really good at matching them up and supporting people not just to get a job but to stay in it. I always found that getting someone into work was good, but keeping them there was the best.
The Government send this message out loudly and clearly to employers, including through the current business champion for ageing society and older workers—I am sure that we can come up with a better title than that; I do not know what kind of brand that gives us—Andy Briggs, CEO of the Phoenix Group. The business champion does incredible work in promoting suitable employment practices and measures to support those with disabilities or health conditions to stay in, progress in or remain close to the labour market.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Blake, both raised cross-government co-ordination. I am delighted to say that the DWP works closely with other government departments to bring together and advance the full range of projects that could promote better employment outcomes for older people. We collaborate closely on the mid-life MOT—I know that my noble friend Lady Altmann will be pleased about this—with the Money and Pensions Service, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the National Careers Service. This helps people plan ahead to prevent health, skills and pension challenges for a fulfilling later working life, with information on pensions, skills and health. We work with the Department for Education to highlight the interests of older people in relation to the Government’s lifetime skills guarantee, which provides free courses for jobs and £375 million of funding for new skills boot camps, made available through the national skills fund.
I will answer as many of the questions as I can, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not address them all. My noble friend Lady Altmann asked whether the Government would consider incentives for employers to create programmes. On that, I say: please do not just sit in this House if you have a good idea—let us have it. We will write to my noble friend with any other information we have on that.
My noble friend also asked whether the Government would consider ensuring that ageism in the recruitment process is not tacitly accepted, as appears to be the case now. When our work coaches work with over-50s, they sometimes take them to interviews—they do not let them go on their own sometimes—and do the sales pitch. So we are doing everything we can to make sure that age does not prevent people getting where they need to.
My noble friend asked whether the Government would consider a career-changer scheme. If noble Lords have any suggestions on that, we would love to hear them. I cannot answer all the questions on that. I know that my noble friend has encouraged me to ask the Treasury to do some research about taking money out of pensions. This is in my portfolio as the Minister responsible for research, so I will go back and talk to the team about that to see what we can do.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the number of people who have left work: 41% of the people aged 50 to 65 who have come out of the workforce since the pandemic were using a private pension, savings or investments to fund their retirement, but they decided that retirement was now for them. Some of that is really sad.
My noble friend Lord Leicester, who is a very successful businessman, made the point that older workers are reliable and have a broad range of experience and maturity. As I have said, they also have a good influence on the younger workforce. I am in the bottom class for IT—my Private Secretary will endorse that—but I have found that more mature people are pretty good at it, to be honest. We should not make too many judgments that they are not. They can help young people.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the mid-life MOT. It is a forward-planning exercise that is helpful to the people we are trying to help.
On the Plan for Jobs 50-plus programme, the offer, which my noble friend Lord Leicester raised, will ensure that older jobseekers receive more intensive tailored support, as I said. They will get the support from the work coach that they need in a flexible way. I know that Kickstart was raised in terms of putting more resources into it. I should be happy to have a meeting with my noble friend to learn more about that because we want to learn how it could be enhanced. We have that many programmes that we want to make sure that they have the best resource possible.
I will mention the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who is a noble friend to us all. What an outstanding career she has had in supporting older people. She has made the House richer for her membership and participation. I agree that we should treat everybody and not put them in little silos. I will now get a message saying that I have overrun. Do not worry. We have a national employer team who I meet on a monthly basis. The focus of our next meeting will be older workers. I will try and get back to noble Lords to tell you what the team is doing. There is no place for age discrimination. I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that apprenticeships for older people are working well. I am pleased about that.
I finish by saying that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, absolutely summed it up. Getting people into work is better for the economy and their health, and we must make sure that people are talking about their destiny in the workforce, not what perhaps might have happened. With that, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.
House of Lords
Global Warming
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Sheehan
To ask Her Majesty’s Government further to the finding by the Mauna Loa Observatory that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 419 parts per million in May 2021, what advice they have received from their Chief Scientific Adviser about the implications of global warming for the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
Her Majesty’s Government and advice from their Chief Scientific Adviser are informed by the latest scientific evidence as presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel’s report set out how, as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere rise, global temperatures are also expected to rise, with severe impacts globally. Risks to the UK are assessed in the UK’s climate change risk assessments, which are informed by the Climate Change Committee’s independent assessments.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
I thank the Minister for his reply. The figure of 419 parts per million is the highest ever recorded over the last 800,000 years and it is a direct indicator, based on hard science, of a rapidly changing climate and consequent irreversible damage to our ecosystems. The BBC reports that in January 2020 some hard science was presented to the Prime Minister in the form of a slide show at a teach-in organised by Sir Patrick Vallance and led by Professor Stephen Belcher of the Met Office. It is said to have convinced the Prime Minister to take climate change seriously and that must mean keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Was the Minister present and will he ask for a similar teach-in for all government departments?
Lord Callanan (Con)
No, I was not present, but we have regular meetings with all the advisers who inform government policy on this matter. I know the noble Baroness has a strong view about “leaving fossil fuels in the ground”, but we require gas as a transition fuel. In the context of the recent crisis in Ukraine, surely even the noble Baroness can see the logic of obtaining that transitional fuel from UK sources.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, in 2020 BEIS set up a committee to look at and collaborate on policy development to ensure that individual policies were joined up across government—surely a good move. That committee was disbanded in May 2021. May I ask the Minister two questions? What has replaced that committee as a cross-government body to oversee climate considerations in all departments? If that committee is the one chaired by the Prime Minister, when did it last meet and are we allowed to know what it discussed?
Lord Callanan (Con)
There is a Cabinet committee on climate change chaired by the Prime Minister dealing with cross-government issues. The noble Baroness will be aware individual Cabinet committee meetings are confidential, but she can be assured that there is regular collaborative cross-government working between departments on all these issues.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica is collapsing into the sea, which could raise sea levels by as much as 10 feet if the whole ice sheet falls. In such circumstances, have the Government undertaken an assessment of the likely impact that this would have on coastal communities in the UK and on vulnerable areas around the world?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The Government’s third climate change risk assessment sets out 61 risks and opportunities facing the UK from climate change, with eight priority risk areas identified as requiring action within the next two years. Action already taken includes £5.2 billion in 2021 for flood and coastal defences.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, following the IPCC report, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, on the damage to our ecosystem, can the Minister update the House on what further work is being done to engage the public on climate change and biodiversity issues? I think he agrees with me that evidence shows that, if these issues are understood, far more people are willing to change the way they live to reduce the impact of climate change.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness; of course, we regularly undertake public information activities. The public are well aware of the risks presented by climate change and there is wide public support for action.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that these concerns make it even more imperative that we press ahead with our plans for getting more nuclear power, and that anyone opposing that has no idea of what the risks are?
Lord Callanan (Con)
On this, as with so many issues, I totally agree with the noble Lord; he should, perhaps, be on this side of the House. The noble Lord is, of course, absolutely right. We need to expand our nuclear power provisions and I am delighted that we have the support of the Official Opposition for our Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, which is shortly to come back to the House.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, do the Government plan to take any action to ensure that factually incorrect statements made in your Lordships’ House are corrected, either at the time they are made or subsequently, given that the science behind climate change is incontrovertible?
Lord Callanan (Con)
Individual Members are responsible for their own statements and opinions. This is a debating House, in which there are strongly held opinions on all sides, but if any Member, whether in government or otherwise, gets something factually wrong, I am sure they would want to correct the record.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, this week’s IPCC report suggests increasingly severe climate impacts, with warnings that heatwaves and flooding are highly likely, including in the UK. Firefighters are the primary public service responding to flooding in the UK; heatwaves can cause wildfires, which firefighters increasingly face. Yet our fire and rescue service has seen huge cuts, including one in every five firefighters since 2010. What plans do the Government have to fully support those in our emergency services who have to deal with the increasing numbers of catastrophic events?
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. Of course we want to support workers in our emergency services, who do such a tremendous job. We saw some of that during the recent flooding: they are the first line of our defence, and we should support them in every way that we can.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill. He will be aware from an intervention that I made previously that many of us are concerned that the Scottish Government might be able to use planning laws to thwart the development of new nuclear in Scotland. Is it not the case that, if this is vital for the security and diversity of energy supply for the whole United Kingdom, there must be some way in which the United Kingdom can make sure that new nuclear can extend to Scotland as well? Will he look into this further?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I would be happy to have a further look at it and I completely agree with the noble Lord. I think the Scottish Government’s policy to rule out new nuclear is crazy, and what will end up happening is that Scotland will be supplied from nuclear power in England and Wales, because there are lots of interlinking connecters. The same thing is happening in Germany. Ironically, the Germans just announced that they were abandoning their nuclear stations, but will end being supplied by the huge number just across the border in France.
Lithium Ion Batteries: Fire Safety Standards
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what fire safety standards are applied to lithium ion batteries in e-bikes, e-scooters and mobility scooters; and whether such batteries are safe to use and be charged in buildings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, the product safety regulatory framework places obligations on manufacturers to ensure the safety of consumer goods, including the batteries used to power them. In short, the law requires that batteries used in such products must be inherently safe, regardless of where they are used, charged or stored. To support them, manufacturers may choose to apply standard EN 62133-2, which specifies requirements and safety tests for the safe operation of portable, sealed secondary lithium cells and batteries.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. I have a different EN number, which I will not bore the House with. He will be aware of a number of fires allegedly caused by lithium ion batteries in cars, on bikes and on scooters, which have caused house fires and one on an Underground train. One manufacturer told me that
“unless we can prove that a product has caused serious accident or injuries, there is no priority from Trading Standards to do any pro-active checks”.
Is not the answer to have proactive checks, as I believe they do in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, for about 10 years to prevent these illegal imports causing more fires, allowing the development of lithium ion batteries to continue safely?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord highlights an important point. I am devastated that our EN numbers do not match, but I would be happy to compare them afterwards if the noble Lord wishes. It is vital that we carry out checks on illegally imported products; the fire that he referred to was caused by something not in conformity with UK standards. We carry out checks on a risk-based approach where required.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that if these e-scooters are privately owned, they are illegal, so they should not be taken on to the train in the first place?
Lord Callanan (Con)
No, I do not. If they are privately owned, there is a prohibition on riding them on public highways, but there is nothing wrong with taking them on trains if permitted by the train operators.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, e-bikes and e-scooters are a great innovation, but it is the wild west out there. A lack of regulation and enforcement is giving them a bad reputation. There have been e-scooter trials and the assessments are now complete for many places, so there is no longer any excuse for government inaction. Will the Minister undertake to work with Department for Transport colleagues to commit to an early date for tighter restrictions on both imports and the way in which these vehicles are used on our roads and pavements?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I do not share the noble Baroness’s enthusiasm for banning e-scooters. The Department for Transport is considering options for how best to regulate them and to crack down on their illegal use, which we are all concerned about. New measures being considered will be designed to create a much clearer, fit-for-purpose and fully enforceable regime for regulators.
Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)
My Lords, as we make the transition to net zero, we are going to need to rely on batteries more and more. Some 156 out of the world’s largest 211 battery factories are in China, which owns and controls enormous swathes of the supply chain. If we are going to get security of supply in batteries, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that that is going to happen?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point. The access to minerals and rare earth required to make batteries is a source of considerable interest to the Government. We are looking closely at where supplies can be obtained. He will be aware of the number of recent announcements on car batteries now being manufactured in gigafactories—or they will be—in the United Kingdom, but it is an important issue, and we need to bear it in mind.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, when introduced and managed well, e-bikes and e-scooters can be part of the solution to many of the world’s urban transport and health issues. In fact, this morning I cycled in on my Scott e-bike, which got me here ahead of a lot of the other traffic. As my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, the solution is simple: better regulation and better enforcement. Do Her Majesty’s Government have any plans to introduce further enforcement and regulation which will help deliver good-quality batteries and good-quality bikes and scooters on our streets?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am delighted to hear that the noble Lord came in today on his e-bike. I am unable to resist the opportunity to say that perhaps he could have a word with his friends in the trade unions, to allow us all to come in on the Tube if we would like to at the moment. As I said earlier, the Department for Transport is considering options for how best to regulate e-scooters and crack down on their illegal use.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, as there is time in the schedule, can I invite the Minister to reconsider his reply to me? He accused me of calling for the banning of these vehicles, when I specifically praised their innovation. I asked for regulation, not annihilation.
Lord Callanan (Con)
If I heard the noble Baroness wrong, I apologise of course. We support responsible regulation. If that is what she supports us in doing, it is welcome news.
Lord Cormack (Con)
As one who does want annihilation, can I ask my noble friend to ensure that when these wretched machines, which go up to 40 mph, are on the roads, they are all properly registered and numbered, with their drivers fined if they are not wearing helmets?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am not surprised that the noble Lord supports annihilation. I do not agree with him. E-scooters represent great opportunities for urban mobility. Yes, we need to regulate them properly, ensure that they are used safely and of course ensure that riders are safe, but they offer a responsible commuting option for many people.
The Lord Bishop of Leeds
My Lords, however these things are regulated, we are building up a massive resource of batteries that one day will have to be disposed of, with the environmental risks that they bring as well. What assessment have the Government made of how in the long term we will deal with what could before too long become a problem?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point but, of course, better than disposing of the batteries would be to recycle them. A number of technologies exist to enable batteries to be reused, recycled and repurposed. There are a number of instances of electric car batteries being reused as portable electricity storage devices in the home.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, what incentives are the Government offering to householders with solar PV panels to install batteries so that they can become more self-sufficient in their electricity generation, including charging their electric cars where that is possible?
Lord Callanan (Con)
It is an important point. We offer an attractive tariff for consumers who generate their own electricity to export to the grid but, as that tariff is lower than that for which they would have to buy the electricity themselves, there is an incentive, if possible, to store it and reuse it. As we get more EVs, we will see their increasing use as storage devices, and companies will start to offer an attractive tariff to enable electricity to be released from those at times of busy demand.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, going back to the right reverend Prelate’s question, how many facilities for recycling batteries are there in the UK, and what is being done to make sure that we have end-to-end design technologies in this country?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I do not have figures for the precise number of battery recycling plants in the UK. I am aware of some developments in that field, but I do not have the precise numbers. The noble Baroness makes an important point: that we need to ensure end-to-end recycling and reuse.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his earlier response to me, but he will be aware that in the last month two train companies have banned electric bikes and scooters being taken on to their trains. That has now been withdrawn, but it was done because London Fire Brigade’s press release was a bit unclear about the risk. This goes back to the lack of a firm specification for and firm enforcement of the quality of batteries so that there is no misunderstanding. It has upset a lot of people.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I think that there was one incident on one Transport for London train, which was caused by an illegal product—it was not even properly regulated. In what I thought was a gross overreaction, Transport for London then banned e-scooters, but other train operators allow them. It is obviously a matter for individual companies to work out the risks, but a relatively tiny number of incidents have been caused from the more than 1 million that we estimate are currently in use.
International Women’s Day
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
This year’s International Women’s Day global theme is “Break the Bias”, which encourages everyone to call out bias, smash stereotypes, break inequality and reject discrimination. The UK Government will showcase our leadership in supporting women and girls in the UK and around the world. Our key moment will be the launch of a new programme to support adolescent girls overseas with 21st-century skills to give them the knowledge and qualifications they need for employment and enterprise. The Government will also make an announcement on focusing on improving the workplace for women.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, in welcoming the way forward that my noble friend the Minister has laid out, I ask her to consider the importance of breaking the bias in places such as Afghanistan, where up to 12 million women and girls currently face the risk of severe malnutrition, particularly lactating mothers. For example, 100% of the households headed by women simply choose not to eat to make sure their children can. Can my noble friend update the House on what we are doing through our overseas aid to ensure that humanitarian relief reaches them and not the male members of the Taliban?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The UK’s aid of £286 million for 2021-22 provides live-saving support to the most vulnerable. The UK is pressing the World Bank and its shareholders to allocate the remainder of the £1.2 billion that is in the Afghan reconstruction trust fund. This includes the release of £280 million in December, which helped to ensure that health services are accessible and available for women and girls and supported households to access food.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a good start for International Women’s Day would be for the United Kingdom to be as open as the EU to women and girls fleeing extreme violence in Ukraine?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I am sure that all of us support the point that the noble Baroness makes. I am sure that our Government are in dialogue with the EU to ensure that we fulfil all our obligations to help young girls in this terrible situation.
Baroness Gale (Lab)
Is the Minister aware—I am sure that she is—that there will be nothing on 8 March to mark International Women’s Day in your Lordships’ House, which goes against all our traditions over many years? Can she explain why the debate marking it will be held in Grand Committee nine days later on 17 March, by which time I think it will have become a little irrelevant? Can she ensure that this never happens again and that we have the debate in this Chamber? Could we also have Oral Questions relating to women on International Women’s Day, which again has been done for many years but which, because of the luck of the draw now that we have ballots, has become even more difficult? Would she be willing to work with me to work out a system whereby we can ensure that we have Questions relating to women in the Chamber on International Women’s Day?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I will try to answer the noble Baroness’s questions. On the debate being on 17 March, I am sure—and I refer to my noble friend the Leader—that it is to do with parliamentary timetabling. I know that the noble Baroness and others are disappointed and I am even more sorry that the ballot has not gone the way that the noble Baroness wanted it to. In relation to 17 March, I am going to the United Nations on 14 March to attend the Commission on the Status of Women and the noble Baroness will be pleased to know that when I get off the aeroplane at 6.30 am on Thursday I will be heading straight back to the Chamber to share what has happened with everybody. I will make sure that I have further dialogue with the noble Baroness; I cannot promise for this never to happen again but let us talk.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware from the debate in your Lordships’ House last night that there are still thousands of Yazidi women and girls who have been abducted, many of them having been raped in the process. She will know that a letter was delivered to Downing Street last September. That still awaits a reply. To mark International Women’s Day, will she ensure that the Government respond and say what they are doing to ensure that those still many missing girls will be brought to freedom and those responsible for the crimes will be brought to justice?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The situation that the noble Lord describes is truly shocking. I can confirm that the UK advocated strongly for the passage through Parliament of the Yazidi survivors’ law, which formally recognises the terrible crimes that the Daesh community has committed against humanity. We have established a general directorate for Yazidi survivors’ affairs, which is responsible for searching for survivors who are still missing and for co-ordinating with judicial and investigative bodies. I will try to find out when the noble Lord is going to get a reply to that letter and will get straight back to him.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, 50 years ago, when we founded Spare Rib and the first women’s refuge was set up in Chiswick High Street by Erin Pizzey, 1.6 women a week were killed by their partner or previous partner in England and Wales; the figure today is two a week. Can anyone imagine 104 women all on Parliament Square all being killed at the same time? This is a huge crime that goes largely unremarked on. What are the Government doing this year to support these women, to change some of the culture in the police and to take domestic violence more seriously? Let us not be looking at higher figure in 50 years’ time.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
Domestic violence is a subject that is near to everybody’s heart and we are doing all we can to support people to ensure that we do not have the situation described by the noble Baroness. I cannot answer for what the police are doing but I will go back to my noble friend Lady Williams and ask her to reply directly to the noble Baroness’s question.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, I voice my concerns, as my noble friend has done, that this House is not celebrating International Women’s Day on International Women’s Day. It seems quite extraordinary. Can the Minister address the continuing ghastly practice of female genital mutilation, which is still very widely practised around the world? Can she say what active steps are being taken by Her Majesty’s Government to deal with that? There are two points: one, it seems extraordinary that a parliamentary session should not celebrate such an important day and, two, what are we doing about FGM?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The message has been received from both noble Baronesses about celebrating on the day. As I say, I believe it is about parliamentary timetabling. I am sorry, I can tell the noble Baroness only what I understand but I will come back to her and confirm that. FGM is a detestable activity and the Government significantly strengthened the law on it in 2015. We introduced a new offence of failing to protect girls, extended the reach of extraterritorial offences and introduced life-long immunity for victims of FGM. Ministry of Justice data shows that almost 700 FGM protection orders have been issued since their introduction.
Baroness Fookes (Con)
My Lords, are the Government sufficiently aware of the problems faced by women already living in this country who do not speak English—and the many who will come in as refugees in a similar position—which handicaps all of them in terms of their rights and their career opportunities? Are the Government doing anything practical to help this situation?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I am very pleased to say that we recognise that the ability to speak English is key to helping refugees integrate into life in England. It is absolutely fundamental to them being able to work and to have a productive life. That is why the Home Office is working closely with other departments to ensure that mainstream English language provision meets the needs of refugees. The Home Office provides £850 for each individual resettled in the country to help them develop their English.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the Association of British Insurers has reported that on this International Women’s Day there remain key areas where action can and should be taken to ensure gender parity in the world of work by reducing gender pay and seniority gaps, and in society by addressing gender pensions gaps and inequality. Can the Minister tell us how the Government, through their policies and legislation, intend to plug these serious gaps for women in work and in our wider society?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The noble Baroness raises a really important point. I point out that the gender pay gap has fallen significantly under this Government, there are 1.9 million more women in work since 2010, and a higher percentage of women are on FTSE 350 company boards than ever before. In my role as Minister for Women I have been working with the Women’s Business Council—this issue is very important to it—and the Alison Rose review. I would be very happy to have a meeting with the noble Baroness and share more details.
Russia: Sanctions
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Dodds of Duncairn
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the likely impact of the sanctions they have introduced against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the impact of our and the allied sanctions is significant. At least $250 billion has been wiped off the Russian stock market since the invasion and the rouble has reached record lows against the dollar and sterling. The central bank of Russia has taken unprecedented measures to prop up the rouble, preventing capital flight, and has raised interest rates to 20% from 9.5%. We have also restricted access to high-end technology, blunting the Russian economy for years to come. We continue to ratchet up pressure in conjunction with our allies.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, the courage of the Ukrainian people continues to inspire us all, but it also compels us to ask what more can be done. There is no doubt that the sanctions that have been introduced by this country and across the world have been far more far-reaching in their application and scope—and indeed the speed of their introduction—than the Kremlin could possibly have imagined. We have seen major changes in some Governments’ approach to defence issues, for instance; I think of Germany. Is the Minister concerned about those countries which are not stepping up to the mark? I think of the Commonwealth countries such as India, the most populous democracy in the world. What is being done to try to persuade it to join the international consensus? There is also, of course, China. What can be done to persuade it to do more behind the scenes to be an influence for good in this terrible situation?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I agree with the noble Lord. There has been unprecedented action to work with our allies in applying sanctions. This underlines the effectiveness of the sanctions: we are able to work together with those countries or jurisdictions, such as the EU, which also have sanctions policies. The noble Lord raises a valid point about what more can be done. We will be debating the laying of further sanctions later today. Further sanctions on Belarus have also been announced—there will be legislation in that respect.
On the specific question of the Commonwealth, I am engaging directly with key partners. We secured a great deal of support from Commonwealth partners at the UN General Assembly vote. Yesterday, we saw 141 nations of the UN General Assembly vote in favour of the Ukraine resolution. That is no small feat.
I will turn to the important issues of China and India. China abstained and did not veto the resolution twice over. India obviously has a long-established relationship with Russia. However, I assure noble Lords that we are working very closely with our Indian partners to also encourage them to reflect on the current situation. As we have seen, they are also extremely challenged by the exodus of Indian students from Ukraine. I assure the noble Lord that we are working very closely with India, and other partners, in this respect.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister used the term “ratchet up”. No doubt, he would have heard a solicitor on the radio this morning talking about the potential risk of asset flight. He said that he was advising his clients, if they had not been sanctioned, to get their money out now. What is the Minister’s response to that? I heard the Minister on the radio say that it was all part of a programme, but speed is of the absolute essence here. We need faster action and, possibly, emergency powers.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
The Government have been responding, and expediting legislation. In this regard, as I have said before, I am grateful to the usual channels for accommodating these requests. Looking through my own commitments and those of the noble Lord, in the coming days, we will be speaking quite specifically on the legislation being laid.
I agree that the issue of asset flight is an important consideration. This is why we are reluctant to make announcements in advance, particularly those regarding individuals and organisations. As we know, there are individuals who are taking actions based on what has already happened. Equally, we need to ensure that every sanction imposed is legally robust and tested. This is an important part of our sanctions policy and those of international partners. There are those who may respond to our sanctions by sanctioning individuals, because their legal framework is not as strong ours. It is important that any sanction we impose—be it on an individual or an organisation—is fully tested and robust in its application.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the strongest possible sanctions are fully justified. However, we must be mindful that there are other victims of this conflict in developing countries where wheat prices have already gone up, and energy and fuel prices are going up. This will create a secondary humanitarian impact. The Government’s humanitarian support for Ukraine is extremely welcome: £140 million in ODA and $500 million of drawing rights from the multilateral development banks. However, the Government have capped our aid at 0.5%, and have cut their support for the IDA by 55% this year. Will the Minister reassure me and the House that our support for developing countries will not be affected by this additional support, which is very welcome for Ukraine?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I assure the noble Lord that we are working to ensure that we respond effectively to Ukraine. I know that the noble Lord has been very supportive of the package we announced in support of humanitarian assistance. Equally, we are very conscious of our obligations in other parts of the world. Your Lordships’ House has been through challenging circumstances on Afghanistan. We know about the continuing conflicts in places such as Yemen, and the issue with the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh. I assure the noble Lord that we are very much focused on ensuring that our response to these issues is equally robust.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, in addition to economic sanctions, what scope is there now for more diplomatic sanctions during this terrible situation? For example, after the Salisbury event, considerable diplomatic sanctions were imposed.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I am sure that the noble and gallant Lord will appreciate that I will not go into specifics on what steps we are taking next. I assure the noble and gallant Lord, as my right honour friend the Foreign Secretary has said, that all options are very much on the table on how we can further pressure Russia to do the right thing. If it pulls back from Ukraine, talks can begin. All credit goes to the Ukrainians who are engaging in this initiative on the Belarus border. At the same time, Russia is, as I said yesterday, holding a trigger to the head of the Ukrainians and claiming that they believe diplomacy to be the route forward.
Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)
My Lords, first, I applaud my noble friend for all he is doing. Given that the aim of the Government is to stop the financing of President Putin’s war machine—and given that he has just said that nothing is off the table—can the Minister confirm that the Government have not ruled out calling for the complete cessation of all European imports of Russian oil and gas, and of all payments for Russian oil and gas under existing long-term contracts? Can the Minister also confirm that the Government have not ruled out banning Gazprombank and Sberbank from SWIFT?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My noble friend raises some quite specific points. On his final point about SWIFT and a number of banks, they have already been directly impacted by some of the steps we have taken. The noble Lord will be aware of the position of Her Majesty’s Government with our key partners on the total suspension of access to SWIFT.
He also raises a number of other points. As I said in response to a previous question, I will not at this time—not least for some of the points which the noble Lord, Lord Collins, raised—be explicit on what kinds of designations or steps we may take against specific institutions or individuals. But the actions of the Government are clear, and I am sure that people are watching the situation very closely.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the Government have taken significant action in relation to sanctions. The Minister, personally, has been significantly helpful in relation to this. However, there is one further sanction which has not yet been considered and which I ask him and his colleagues in the Home Office to consider: using the powers that we have to remove British citizenship from Putin’s oligarchs living in the United Kingdom.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I am sure the Home Office has heard the point which the noble Lord has made quite clearly. This is evident in the steps taken recently by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in support of Ukraine, and her response to many of the points raised in your Lordships’ House. As I said, we are looking at the full picture. I stress the point that there are many Russians in the United Kingdom who are dual nationals. There are many Russians who do not have British citizenship but are residing in the UK. There are many Russians in Russia, as we saw in St Petersburg, who are totally and utterly against Mr Putin and his Government. It is important that we stand by them as well.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I ask the Minister why there are no applications to the court for freezing orders.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
As I have said, and as the noble and learned Baroness will know, all the actions we are taking, including the sanctions policy, are based on a legal framework to ensure that first sanctions can be applied. Equally, there needs to be a legal recourse for those people who feel that a sanction has been applied against them which is not justified. I assure the noble and learned Baroness that the legal framework is very much incorporated into our sanctions framework.
I will make a slightly further point: she would have seen that we are now working with the International Criminal Court, specifically on crimes that are committed within Ukraine. This is a point which noble Lords, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have raised with me. We are moving forward in that respect as well.
Business of the House
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That Standing Order 73 (Affirmative Instruments) be dispensed with on Thursday 3 March to enable motions to approve the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022 and Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2022 to be moved, notwithstanding that no report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on the instruments has been laid before the House.
Highgate Cemetery Bill [HL]
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 to 4.
“(i) on the burial authority’s website; or”
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 5, and do propose Amendment 5A as an amendment thereto—
“(aa) where notice of objection is given under subsection (9) and the objection is withdrawn, on the date specified under subsection (6)(b) or the day after the objection is withdrawn, whichever is later, or”
Lord Aberdare (CB)
I was glad to serve on your Lordships’ Opposed Private Bill Committee on this Bill last year, the first time that such a committee has been conducted entirely remotely, under the brilliant chairmanship of my noble and learned friend Lady Hallett. It is good to see that the Bill is now nearing the end of its passage through Parliament, and the Commons amendments make a great deal of sense, as does the Senior Deputy Speaker’s Motion, which I fully support.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 6 to 10.
“(10A) The burial authority must publish on its website or by other appropriate means, and make available on request, a policy setting out how it will exercise its powers under this section in relation to memorials.”
“(i) on the burial authority’s website; or”
“(12A) The burial authority must publish on its website or by other appropriate means, and make available on request, a policy setting out how it will exercise its powers under this section in relation to memorials.”
“(3A) The burial authority may from time to time, following consultation with the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England and the London Borough of Camden, revoke the designation of any grave as a protected grave.”
Health and Care Bill
Thursday 3rd March 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Health and Care Act 2022 View all Health and Care Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 114-III Third marshalled list for Report - (3 Mar 2022)
14:49 - Division on Amendment 80 - Ayes: 171 / Noes: 119 - Amendment 80 agreed.
Lord Kamall
“(ba) set out any steps that the integrated care board proposes to take to address the particular needs of children and young persons under the age of 25;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the joint forward plan for an integrated care board and its partners to set out any steps that the integrated care board proposes to take to address the particular needs of children or young persons under the age of 25.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the House for its continued focus on addressing the needs of babies, children and young people and thank noble Lords for bringing forward amendments on this issue again today. I am also really grateful to noble Lords who have engaged with the me and my officials, and I hope that this has resulted in amendments that your Lordships’ House feels that it can support.
I start with Amendment 36, in my name. This amendment will require an integrated care board to set out any steps that it proposes to take to address the particular needs of children and young people under the age of 25 in the forward plan. In addition, the Government have committed to produce a package of bespoke guidance, which explains how the ICB and the ICP should meet the needs of babies, children, young people and families. This guidance will contain provisions for the integrated care partnership’s integrated care strategy to consider child health and well-being outcomes and the integration of children’s services, as well as providing that the integrated care partnership should consult local children’s leadership and children, young people and families themselves, on the strategy.
NHS England has also agreed that it will issue statutory guidance, expecting that one of the ICB executive leads will act as a children’s lead, with responsibility for championing the needs of babies, children and young people. I hope that noble Lords are supportive of this government amendment and its underpinning commitment to support, improve and enhance services for babies, children and young people.
I turn to Amendments 157, 185 and 186. Safeguarding children is a priority for the Government, and we share the horror and concern provoked by the awful murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. The Government are committed to addressing barriers to safe, timely and appropriate sharing of information to safeguard children, and we have heard clearly the strength of feeling across the House on the value of a consistent identifier for children. In particular, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, and other noble Lords, for pushing us on this issue.
To this end, we are committing in this legislation to publish a report, within one year of the section coming into force, that will describe the Government’s policy on information sharing in relation to children’s health and social care and the safeguarding of children and will include an explanation of the Government’s policy on a consistent identifier for children. It will also include the Government’s approach and actions to implement the policy set out in the report. The Government agree with noble Lords that action is needed. The report will reflect a cross-government position on what actions will be taken to improve safe and appropriate information sharing.
This amendment, of necessity, is limited by reference to health and social care, reflecting the scope of the Bill. However, the report to which this amendment refers will be laid by the Secretary of State for Education, who intends that it will cover improved information sharing between all safeguarding partners, including the NHS, local authorities and the police, as well as education settings. The Department for Education has already started its work, which will look at the feasibility of a common child identifier. I hope these amendments will reassure noble Lords that the Government are committed to safeguarding children and improving services for babies, children and young people. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, the National Children’s Bureau, the Disabled Children’s Partnership and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for their support with this amendment and for their constructive engagement with the Department of Health and Social Care. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for adding her name to this amendment.
I welcome the amendments that the Minister has laid relating to the needs of babies, children and young people but, despite the good progress made, this amendment seeks to go further by requiring NHS England to conduct a performance assessment of each ICB in meeting the needs of babies, children and young people in each financial year. This includes its duties concerning the improvement in quality of services and reducing inequalities and the extent of its public involvement and consultation.
There are significant challenges in meeting the health and care needs of children and young people, including their mental health needs, which are different and arguably more complex than for adults. This is particularly the case for disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs. A recent survey by the Disabled Children’s Partnership and the parent campaign group, Let Us Learn Too, found that 40% of families with disabled children have seen their savings wiped out by fighting and paying for support.
I shall give one brief example from the West Midlands. Joanne, whose autistic son also has pathological demand avoidance and communication difficulties, explained that the local authority refused to do an occupational therapy assessment, so she paid for one privately. Eventually, she took the local authority to tribunal at considerable expense in legal fees. Despite winning, it is one year on and still no support is being provided by the local authority.
One in three families with disabled children said they needed publicly unprovided essential therapies for their disabled child, but could not afford them. Some 60% of families with disabled children have sought NHS mental health support for a family member due to the stress of fighting for basic services. The Disabled Children’s Partnership cites individuals feeling a sense of societal resentment toward disabled people, says that carers are persistently undervalued and underrepresented in policy and details the enormous physical, emotional and financial burden they endure in caring for their disabled family member without adequate support from the health and care sectors. Joanne said, furthermore, that the local authority blamed her for her son’s disability and put a child protection plan in place rather than supporting her, although thankfully it was removed shortly afterwards.
Integrated care boards have a crucial role in commissioning primary and community healthcare services directly for babies, children and young people. They will play a key role in the joint commissioning of services for disabled children and those with special educational needs, as well as contributing to education, health and care plans and in the commissioning of joined-up services in the first 1,000 days of life, in which the Government are, importantly, investing. Crucially, ICBs will be jointly responsible for the leadership of local child safeguarding partnerships, together with the police and local authorities.
Yet support for children and young people varies geographically. Local systems find themselves pulled in different directions by different government initiatives and separate pots of funding, which creates a profound risk of destabilising what are relatively new local safeguarding partnerships. The Wood report, published in May 2021, reviewed the new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements put in place by the Children and Social Work Act 2017. It revealed just how stretched the resources are in protecting children, as well as the need for a more effective culture of joined-up working and a more consistent and detailed understanding of the role of the three statutory safeguarding partners—the local authority, the CCG and the chief officer of police. The Wood report also emphasised the importance of accountability regarding the quality of these services and the need for inspectorates and regulators to develop a model to analyse performance against what is deemed to be best practice, something that this amendment goes a long way to trying to achieve.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
I support and very much welcome government Amendments 36, 157 and 185 in response to the powerful debates in Committee on children’s health, safeguarding, data-sharing and particularly the case for a unique identifier for children, on which I put forward an amendment in Committee. I thank the Minister for engaging so fully and positively on these issues and for the various meetings which led to these amendments being tabled. It is also very welcome that Amendment 36 includes children in the Bill, which so many of us have argued for.
On the unique identifier as a means of identifying children in touch with multiple services, aiding safeguarding and promoting joined-up support, I strongly support the government amendment to lay a report before Parliament on information sharing and on a single unique identifier for children. That is a real step forward, and it is clear that the Government acknowledge that there are serious and distinct challenges with sharing relevant information across not just children and social care sectors but others too, including schools and the police.
There is always more to do, so I will never be 100% satisfied and I note that the amendment as tabled does not actually commit the Government to any specific timed action beyond publishing the report. Therefore, it was good to hear the further assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, gave at the Dispatch Box. I think I heard him say clearly and unequivocally that the Government are committed to developing plans not just to look at the case for but to adopt a single unique identifier for children. I think I also heard a commitment to developing a set of cross-government proposals for implementing that, and then, I hope, acting on the findings of this report within a defined timescale. If the Minister could reiterate those commitments, I would be extremely grateful. I would also welcome a commitment to involving those organisations representing children and young people, who have been so much a part of our discussions and debates, as part of the production of that Bill.
I support Amendment 59 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, which I signed, requiring NHS England to assess annually how well each ICB is doing in meeting the needs of children and young people; it provides much-needed accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to the new and crucial safeguarding responsibilities that ICBs are taking on. I welcome the statutory guidance, which I know the Government intend to produce, on having a children’s lead on the board of every ICB. That is really important.
I support the suite of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I will leave him to set out the case for them, but I agree that family hubs play a really important role in improving early intervention services, helping integration and data sharing among public services and involving the voluntary sector. Importantly, and germane to this Bill, that includes children’s health services, which are often better delivered in community settings with other family support services. I particularly support Amendment 75, which calls for each local authority to provide a family hub. That is central to a national rollout of family hubs. which I would like to see at the very core of a national strategy on child vulnerability.
Lord Farmer (Con)
I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her support; it is very much appreciated. She has been a doughty warrior accompanying us along this path for many years.
I will speak to my Amendments 64, 66, 68 and 75 and I thank the Minister for the meetings I have had with him and the Bill team to hear his concerns, particularly around being overprescriptive.
Amendment 64 simply replaces “may” with “must” and thereby requires integrated care partnership strategies to lay out how health-related services can be more closely integrated with health and social care. In Committee, I said that “may” made that aspect of integration voluntaristic, and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why, as I am genuinely mystified, the ICP is at present only invited to do that.
Amendment 66 has been revised after the discussions mentioned earlier. I propose adding new subsection (5A) to Clause 116ZB to specifically invite ICPs to consider how family help services, including those accessed through family hubs, could be more closely integrated with arrangements for the provision of health services and social care services in that area. I avoid using “must” in that case, because it could place an overly prescriptive requirement on ICPs. I also avoid mandating the use of family hubs. They are simply mentioned as an important potential access point.
I recognise and applaud the many ways that the Government have improved the Bill with respect to children’s health. However, I explained in Committee that many children’s health needs are psychosocial: they need practical, not just medical, solutions and addressing them needs a whole-family approach. That is also particularly important when parents experience drug and alcohol problems, which can affect their children almost or as much as the parents themselves.
Early family help commissioned by local authorities therefore needs to be integrated with health as well as many other departments of government. Family hubs are mentioned in my amendment, not prescriptively but as the model that could enable that to happen. In Committee, I described how DWP’s Reducing Parental Conflict programme, DLUHC’s Supporting Families and the MOJ’s private family law pilots all looked to family hubs as an access point for those who need this support. The Bill could and should help to make that model proliferate to benefit families. As it operates according to principles, not an overly prescribed framework, it can be tailored to local need, including by drawing in the bespoke work of the local voluntary and community sector. Historically and currently, health services have had a poor track record in integrating with local government and wider partners. The Children’s Centre movement frequently lamented the lack of engagement with health. The opportunity the Bill provides to avoid that pattern being repeated should not be missed.
My Amendment 66 gives meaning to the phrase “family help” and points towards an amended Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989 to explain what is meant by “family hubs”. In Committee, I explained that
“services which improve children’s lives through supporting the family unit and strengthening family relationships to enable children to thrive and keep families together”
is the independent care review’s working definition of “family help”. This is not a concept to be set in concrete in the lead reviewer’s final report, but simply one that is qualitatively different from “family support” in local authority usage. The latter leans towards late-stage statutory child protection, which ideally prevents children entering care and is far from the early help so many parents need.
Finally, my Amendment 75 necessarily changes how the Children Act 1989 refers to family help infrastructure to reflect more closely the way it has developed. It has also been adjusted since Committee to avoid mandating local authorities to provide family hubs, which would have significant cost implications, ultimately for the Treasury. As a result of my amendment, new Schedule 2(9) to the Children Act would state:
“Every local authority shall provide such family hubs as they consider appropriate with regard to local needs in relation to children and families within their area.”
“Family hubs” means an access point where children, their parents, relatives and carers can access advice, guidance, counselling or paediatric health services as well as occupational, social, cultural or recreational activities. This removes the anachronistic reference to and description of “family centres”. These were never consistently implemented in the way probably envisaged by the draftsmen of the 1989 Act, although children’s centres did emerge to fulfil many of their purposes in response to research on the importance of children’s early years.
To address the Minister’s concerns that putting family hubs into legislation would introduce unhelpful rigidity and prescription, I end by making an analogy with the Supporting Families programme. This does have a legislative underpinning, but the early troubled families programme from which it evolved provided principles for a tried, tested and consistent way of working, illustrated these with case studies and supported local authorities to develop their own bespoke approaches to that way of working. The DfE is taking a similar non-prescriptive approach in its family hubs framework, which emphasises principles—namely, access, connection and relationships—and avoids determining how local authorities implement these. Just as the Supporting Families programme has developed but is still recognisably the same way of working launched as “troubled families” 10 years ago, I and others anticipate the same continuous improvement trajectory for the family hubs model or way of working.
Family hubs are now official government policy, backed by a £130 million commitment, a major evaluation programme and decades of supportive research. The model is not prescriptive but enabling and supported by many local authorities and those designing health systems. I would be grateful, in conclusion, if the Minister would explain, after these assurances, why this important social infrastructure, the fruit of 30 years of reform, which builds on and extends Labour’s legacy of Sure Start centres, has no place in the Bill.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on his efforts to keep the issue of prevention and early intervention before us: it is vital. I also thank the Minister for the government amendments and the way he has engaged with us over this issue. I was particularly pleased to hear him use the word “action” at least two or three times in his introduction to the amendments. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and my noble friend Lady Tyler, on all they have done but in particular for pointing out, in their Amendment 59, that there could be a bit of a gap here. We have the CQC, which will inspect individual healthcare settings and, under the Bill, it will also have to see how the new integrated care system is working, but there is no guarantee that it will see it as part of its duty to see how that system is working for children. This is something that the NHS could do through the report called for in Amendment 59.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend the Minister for Amendments 36 and 157. I shall also speak in support of Amendment 59 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. Before I do so, I hope your Lordships’ House will allow me to take this opportunity to thank the healthcare professionals at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, who recently looked after me so well following major surgery. Some noble Lords may have noticed my absence. I have had half my leg rebuilt and am now the proud, if involuntary, owner of a Meccano set inserted by my excellent surgeon, Marcus Bankes, and his registrar, Christian Smith. I apologise in advance if any noble Lord seeks to intervene and I dare not sit down to take their intervention as I am not sure I would be able to get back up again.
Although the pain was excruciating and the morphine, which I am weaning myself off, very welcome, it saddens me to say that that pain was compounded by the way in which I received no support from your Lordships’ House. I might as well have been dead. It reminded me that this wonderful institution remains a place whose rules and modus operandi were designed by and for rich, non-disabled men. I will say no more on the matter now, but it is clear to me that this needs to change if we are to become a stronger, more diverse, more representative House. If we do not want to be consigned to the past, we must stop living in the past. The appalling way we treat Members whose disability enforces temporary absence from your Lordships’ House is indefensible and cannot continue.
Returning to the substance of the amendments under discussion, I am hugely grateful that the Government have listened to concerns I raised at Second Reading and others raised, in my absence, in Committee. All credit goes to noble Lords for the strength and the passion with which they did this, and to the Minister for so obviously listening and taking their concerns on board. Taken together, Amendments 36 and 157 should make a real difference to the lives of all babies, children and young people in this country, particularly those with speech, language and communication needs. I should declare at this point my interest as a vice-president of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. I know the Minister and his colleagues across government, not just in the Department of Health and Social Care but also in the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice, share my ambition and the ambition of other noble Lords in wanting children and young people with communication needs and their families to have the best possible level of support so they can realise their potential.
To help deliver that ambition, I ask my noble friend to reflect on four things. First, I would be so grateful if he would look kindly on Amendment 59, so ably spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. This would help to close any potential accountability gap and considerably strengthen the provisions of Amendment 36.
Secondly, will the Minister pledge to ensure that all the guidance to the Bill specifically references children’s speech, language and communication needs? The statutory guidance and accountability lead for SEND is a very positive development, but it is not sufficient. The vast majority of children with communication needs do not have an education, health and care plan. This includes children with developmental language disorder—over 7% of all children—those who stammer, and those with speech-sound disorders. The guidance must, therefore, ensure that the needs of those children are supported. A model that the Government have already established for this is the statutory guidance to the Domestic Abuse Act, where speech, language and communication are listed as a specific intersectionality.
Thirdly, will the Minister agree to meet the chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists to discuss how the guidance on the Bill can best capture those issues? Fourthly, on Amendment 157, can the Minister reassure the House that the report will include commitments to act to improve information-sharing? Finally, may I reiterate my huge thanks to my noble friend the Minister, and say how pleased I am to be able to do so in person, in your Lordships’ House? It is good to be back.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend back and commend him for his bravery. We came into the House at the same time, and he is a source of constant inspiration to us all; I have endless admiration for him. I apologise to the House for having omitted to declare my interests when I spoke for the first time on Report on Tuesday. I refer to my entry in the register of interests, and in particular to the fact that I work with the board of the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. I am also a patron of the National Association of Child Contact Centres and a co-chair of the All-Party Group on Child Contact Centres and Services.
I again commend my noble friend the Minister for summing up and assessing the mood of the House and tabling the amendments today; I am grateful to him for that. I also support the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and her Amendment 59, which is very appropriate. I hope my noble friend will look favourably on it, and I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness. One of her remarks earlier on Report which struck a chord with me was about the shortage of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, particularly for those in the age group affected by these amendments.
I endorse and support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer. He refers in particular to the family hubs, and I make a plea to the Minister to recognise, as part of a family hub, a child contact centre. Centres are usually manned by volunteers, and they do fantastic work—not necessarily in keeping families together, because, unfortunately, their role largely comes into play when families have broken, but they play a fantastic role in maintaining contact with the absent parent.
Obviously, in these constrained times, the budgets of all organisations come under increasing scrutiny and pressure, so I urge the Minister to use his good offices to speak to those in the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education to ensure that the budget for child contact centres will be renewed not only for two years but for three years—the period promised earlier. Those centres do fantastic work, under great constraint, and I am proud to be associated with them. I wanted to use this opportunity to support the amendments and to urge my noble friend the Minister to use his good offices in this regard.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I too welcome the government amendments—bur first I wish the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, all the best for a speedy recovery from his hospitalisation; I am sure everyone will join me in that. I welcome the government amendments to ensure that the Bill recognises how important sharing information on children’s health and social care across government departments and public authorities is to safeguarding and protecting them and to promoting their welfare. The commitment in Amendment 157 to reporting to Parliament within a year on implementation, and explaining where the use of the consistent identifier for each child would facilitate information-sharing, is a significant step forward, as is the emphasis on overcoming the barriers that stop services being joined up, which have a serious—and, sadly, all too often fatal—impact on keeping children safe and well.
We also support government Amendment 36 to Clause 20, which leads this group, on how ICBs’ joint forward plans will address the needs of children and young people. Amendment 59 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, complements this in relation to performance assessments, and says how they should address the matter, particularly the duties relating to disabled children and children with special needs. I hope the Government will respond positively to this and will consult widely with stakeholders, after the promise in the Minister’s recent letter of a package of “bespoke” statutory guidance from NHS England explaining how ICPs and ICBs will meet the needs of babies, children, young people and families, and be accountable for integrating services. The Minister’s letter, and his introduction today, provide a number of assurances on important issues, such as having children’s leads on ICB executives. We will see how it all works through in practice in the structures of the new bodies.
As noble Lords have stressed, the whole issue of sharing information across multiagencies will be difficult and challenging. Two of the major barriers for previous efforts were the clash between the value of sharing electronic information and fears about it getting into the wrong hands. That is why we need a clear status picture of where we are starting from, to be able to analyse what needs to be done, how progress can be made, assessed and monitored, and the priority areas for identification of consistent identifiers.
The Minister has promised that the report will cover all safeguarding partners including the NHS, local authorities, education and the police. Will he write to noble Lords on the categories of information currently shared between those bodies, so that we can see where we are starting from?
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has again spoken strongly on his amendments about family hubs, which we supported in Committee on the Bill and on other occasions. I look forward to the Minister's updated response. We do, however, always—today is no exception—make the very obvious point that if the Government had not shut down the excellent Sure Start centres up and down the country, many of the provisions that the noble Lord is calling for in support of children, mothers and families would all be in place now.
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who have raised important points in this debate; I also thank them for accepting some of the amendments that we have tabled in response to their engagement. That engagement was very constructive, and I hope that as they look to hold the Government to account we will continue to have engagement on these issues.
First, I shall deal with a couple of specific questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, again asked about the identifier. As I have made clear, the report will include an explanation of the Government’s policy on a consistent identifier for children. It will also include our approach and actions to implement the recommendations in the report.
We all agree that the principle of a consistent identifier is right, but there are complex issues in applying that consistent identifier in safeguarding children. This is why we want to investigate all the issues thoroughly in a report that will be laid before Parliament a year after commencement. There is one issue in which I am personally interested—I am sure noble Lords will remember that I geeked out on this one. I think there are some technical solutions, but I can also see some technical unintended consequences. I myself will look very closely at the report, especially at the technical solutions.
Like other noble Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lord Shinkwin; it is good to see him back. I thank him for engaging with me—almost from his hospital bed, I think, which demonstrates his commitment to these issues. He talked about speech and language therapy, and the Government recognise the importance of communications needs, and the important part that they play in children’s development. We will work with stakeholders on the development of guidance, and ensure that we engage with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
Before my noble Lord sits down, does “children” in this amendment include children in care?
Lord Kamall
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the annual report for an integrated care board to explain, in particular, how it has discharged its duties under sections 14Z34 to 14Z44 and 14Z47A (rather than just some of those sections).
“(ba) review the extent to which the board has exercised its functions consistently with NHS England’s views set out in the latest statement published under section 13SA(1) (views about how functions relating to inequalities information should be exercised),”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the annual report for an integrated care board to state how far it has exercised its functions consistently with views expressed by NHS England in the latest statement published under new section 13SA.
“(3A) An annual report must include—(a) a statement of the amount of expenditure incurred by the integrated care board during the financial year in relation to mental health,(b) a calculation of the proportion of the expenditure incurred by the integrated care board during the financial year that relates to mental health, and(c) an explanation of the statement and calculation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires an integrated care board to include in its annual report information about spending that relates to mental health.
“(ca) section 14Z40 (duty in respect of research),”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires a performance assessment in respect of an integrated care board to include, in particular, an assessment of how well the board has discharged its duty to promote research and the use of evidence obtained from research. Another amendment provides that the duty to promote research etc includes doing so by facilitating research.
Baroness Brinton
“(3) This section however does not authorise—(a) the disclosure of patient information, or(b) the disclosure of personal information obtained from a specified authority which is a health or social care body.(4) For the purposes of this section a “health or social care body” means a public body which exercises functions in connection with the provision of health services or of adult social care in England.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent ICBs from disclosing patient information or certain personal information.
Baroness Brinton (LD)[V]
My Lords, I thank Ministers, officials and other Peers, including my noble friends Lord Clement-Jones and Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for the discussions that we have had since Committee. I am particularly grateful for the letter from the Minister late yesterday and the meeting this morning.
I have laid Amendment 60, and I support Amendment 116, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which try to protect only the lawful disclosure of personal patient data. For the purposes of the debate on this group, can we accept that this is shorthand for the confidential personal and medical data currently mainly held by GPs and hospital doctors in England? Amendment 60 would provide that protection in legislation and was laid only because we have not yet had a clear response from Ministers on what is permitted and what the existing rules will be relation to ICBs taking over responsibilities from CCGs because ICBs are new bodies. This is in the light of new Section 14Z61. At Second Reading and in Committee, noble Lords expressed concerns that this new section, which outlines ICBs’ permitted disclosures of information, looks very wide ranging and could, for example, enable a police officer, or another person from a public body, to demand the disclosure of a patient’s personal data.
The new section uses the phrase that ICBs can disclose data where
“disclosure is necessary or expedient”
for the person making the request, but nowhere does it explain how the decision is made by the ICB or what the decision-making process is to release the data and, importantly, where the protection of that personal data sits in the hierarchy of the request of necessary and expedient demands. I have asked repeatedly how this process would work, and in responses at the Despatch Box, in meetings and in letters I have not really had a response that has laid out simply and clearly how this process would work. I shall therefore ask the Minister the following questions in an attempt to clarify how a patient’s confidential personal data will be protected and what the process would be for it to be released to a person making a request. What rules and guidance are available for staff, including those in ICBs, to manage a request from a non-NHS person requesting information other than through a court order? How would it be processed and reviewed? ICBs would not normally be the holder of such data, and new Section 14Z61 does not set out the balance between the rights of the patient and those of the requestor who believes they have a necessary or expedient reason for being sent this data.
We wish to be confident that the structures are in place for when shared care records come into force. Let me be clear: from these Benches, we welcome the principle of shared care records, but the processes need to be in place to ensure that personal data is protected when every part of NHS England would have access to that data. I raise this particularly because just this week Health Service Journal stated that the Secretary of State is speeding up the shared care records project to be complete and implemented by December 2023.
Can the Minister therefore commit that the powers in Section 14Z61(1) will be constrained such that for requests of disclosure that come from outside the health and care system, the ICB will only ever disclose the direct care providers the requester could ask instead? Can he confirm that if an ICB is to become data controller for shared care records, he will return to this clause with primary legislation on such implementation?
I am very grateful for the discussion with Ministers and officials and hope that the Minister will be able to provide your Lordships’ House with a response that demonstrates that patient, personal and confidential data remains secure. I look forward to his response, and I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the brevity of her remarks, which is a model for Report stage. I think she put this across very well indeed and I very much support her.
My Amendment 116 relates to the containment in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 of the concept of a safe haven for patient data across health and social care, which is required for national statistics for commissioning, regulatory research purposes and patient care. My Amendment 116 simply seeks to keep those statutory protections in place and ensure that NHS England does not take on this responsibility as a result of the merging of NHS Digital and NHSX within the structure of NHS England, which was a recommendation of the review led by Laura Wade-Gery. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is going to speak in some detail—but with brevity as well, I hasten to add.
Kingsley Manning, the former distinguished chair of NHS Digital, has spelled out the implications of doing this. He believes the action of NHS England in taking over NHS Digital
“is a significant retrograde step in defending the rights of citizens with respect to the collection and use of their health data.”
In a letter to me, which I received yesterday, the Minister asked me why NHS England would be regarded as less independent, transparent or objective in the exercise of these functions, given its already significant responsibility for some data and the fact that it is a very similar organisation to NHS Digital, as a statutory arm’s-length body. In answer to him, NHS England has many different responsibilities and priorities, so, first, it will clearly not be able to give the same focus to the issue of protecting the safe haven and, secondly, it has many interests which could be deemed to at least be in tension with the concept of the safe haven. That is why I and other noble Lords believe it is important to have the statutory protection already contained in the current legislative arrangements.
I conclude by saying that I am at one with Ministers in wanting to speed up digital transformation in the NHS; after all, we have been dabbling with this over many years. But it has to be done right, and the way to do it right is to be very transparent and rigorous about the protection of patient information.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendments 60 and 116, and I congratulate my noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on their persistence in pressing these two items, because they are extremely important. I also thank the Minister for his engagement, both on the Floor of the House and in extensive correspondence. This has been really quite a complicated trail. I feel as though we have been in a maze where we have had to follow a bit of string, finding the way through into data governance in the NHS.
We have had to follow certain key principles, which we all share and which the Minister has expressed, including the protection of privacy, the right of opt-out, the value of health data and, above all, the imperative to retain public trust. Given the importance of the new ICB regime, I very much hope that the Minister will be able to comprehensively answer my noble friend’s questions.
But if we have taken the time to get to this point of really understanding—or beginning to understand—the kind of data governance that the ICBs will be subject to, it raises the question of what future guidance will be in place. I very much hope that the Minister can absolutely give us the assurance that there will be new, clear guidance, along the lines I hope he is going to express in response to my noble friend, as soon as possible, especially given the speeding up of the electronic patient record programme, as my noble friend Lady Brinton said. That is, of course, desirable, but it has to be done in a safe manner.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, I rise even more briefly to support Amendment 116. It is worth reminding the Minister and the House that the Government Statistical Service is independent. It was made so by the Blair Government so that Ministers could not withhold, distort or delay the publication of uncomfortable statistics. Rebukes on dodgy statistics secure public reprimands of Ministers and departments.
The logic of this position is that you do not put the collection or publication of health statistics in the hands of an operational arm’s-length body, particularly because there could be a conflict of interest. That point has already been made. These functions should be left in the hands of an independent non-operational body, which is what the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, does. Can the Minister explain why the Government are making this change? My instinct is to be mightily suspicious.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I simply rise to say that I agree with all noble Lords who have spoken and look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to share all the concerns expressed about the open-endedness of what is in the Bill and the concerns about the lack of protection for patient data. Clearly, there has been much debate and discussion, and I think it is right that we hear from the Minister.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My goodness—I thank noble Lords for their brevity. I am afraid that I shall not be as brief as I would want to be. I would like to confine myself to single-word answers, but I do not think that would give the reassurance that noble Lords are looking for.
I begin by thanking all noble Lords who have engaged with me on this, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Hunt. As they know from our discussions, this issue is very close to my heart and something I feel very strongly about, so I welcome their pressing the Government on this and their continuous engagement—in fact, right up to this morning. I do not think that this is the end of that engagement but I hope to give some reassurances. I completely understand the interest in the integrated care boards’ power to disclose information that is personal data. I hope I will be able to clarify some of the intentions.
New Section 14Z61, inserted by Clause 20, recreates the section that applies to CCGs, which sets out the circumstances in which CCGs are permitted to disclose information obtained in the exercise of their functions. The clause in question already restricts ICBs’ powers to disclose information, by limiting these to the specific circumstances set out in the clause.
In addition, the existing data protection legislation, including UK GDPR, provides several key protections and safeguards for the use of an individual’s data, including strict rules and key data protection principles for the sharing of personal data. Health data is special category data—that is data that requires additional protections due to its sensitivity. For this type of data to be processed lawfully, a further condition must be met as set out in UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act.
In addition, the common law duty of confidentiality applies to the use of confidential patient information. This permits disclosure of such information only where the individual to whom the information relates has consented, where disclosure is of overall benefit to a patient or is in the public interest—for example, disclosure is to protect individuals or society from risks of harm or where there is a statutory basis for disclosing the information or a legal duty, such as a court order, to do so.
Every health and care organisation has a Caldicott Guardian—a senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of people’s health and care information and making sure that it is used properly. Caldicott Guardians decide how much information it is appropriate to share—they may decide that even legally permitted information may not be shared—and they advise on disclosures that may be in the public interest. They act in accordance with the eight principles, which are the framework to ensure that people’s confidential information is kept confidential and used appropriately. The UK Caldicott Guardian Council works closely with the independent statutory National Data Guardian, whose role is to advise and challenge the health and care system to help ensure that the public’s confidential information is safeguarded securely and used properly.
Nothing in the clause overrides the range of requirements in law that provide key protections and safeguards for the use of an individual’s personal data. I can also confirm that NHS England’s power to issue guidance for ICBs will apply to their functions relating to data sharing, and that may be a helpful route in making it clear to ICBs what their duties and responsibilities are, in respect of any confidential data they may hold, in a way that illustrates how legislation applies.
The effect of the amendment is to prevent the effective operation of the clause as drafted. This would prevent the ICB from effectively discharging its functions where it may be necessary to disclose personal patient data, including investigating complaints, making safeguarding referrals for patients whose welfare is at risk, complying with court orders and assisting criminal investigations. It would also risk a confusing data-sharing system where different rules apply to different organisations.
On Amendment 116, once again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for bringing this issue before this House. Our aim is to put data and analytics at the heart of NHS delivery and remove incoherence in the organisational leadership, for the benefit of patients and their outcomes. It is a solid recommendation for improving how health and social care data is used more effectively, closing that gap between delivery and the use of data to inform and improve services.
I understand that noble Lords fear that the movement of the statutory data functions from one world-class arm’s-length body, NHS Digital, to another, NHS England, which indeed runs the NHS itself, would result in a decline in the exercise of those functions. We feel that this fear is perhaps overexaggerated but I would be very happy to continue discussions on this.
However, that movement would be accompanied by the transfer of several thousand expert staff and all their supporting expertise and technology, along with the existing statutory safeguards, which would be preserved. NHS Digital and NHS England have a history of very close working on data, most recently of course in how the management of data has underpinned efforts to defeat Covid-19, through the protection of shielded patients and the management of data on vaccinations. The Government and Parliament held NHS Digital to account for the delivery of its functions, and they will continue to hold NHS England to account for the delivery of any functions which transfer.
As to the concern about a conflict of interest, the data collections which NHS Digital undertakes are the result of directions from either the Secretary of State or NHS England, and obviously the direction-making power of the former will continue to be relevant should the proposed merger take place. Directions include details of how data must be shared or disseminated. NHS Digital is required to publish details of all such directions and maintain a register of the information it collects. There is also a rigorous process for external data access requests and audits of how data is used.
The intention here is that such safeguards would continue when the functions transfer to NHS England and would make it very difficult for the organisation to suppress or otherwise refuse to make available any data which it is required to collect and disseminate in fulfilment of its statutory role. I hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that I have reassured the noble Lord, Lord Warner—clearly not—in terms of suppressing information.
There is a rigorous process for external data access requests. NHS England’s Transformation Directorate will be assuming responsibility for NHS Digital’s functions, and for accomplishing the alignment of delivery and data proposed in the Wade-Gery review. There will continue to be external, independent scrutiny—for example, by the Information Commissioner and the National Data Guardian—of the use by the NHS, and NHS England in particular, of health and care data.
I hope that I have given noble Lords some reassurance that these important issues have been considered by the department, and that they will feel able not to move their amendments when reached. Of course, given my strong interest in this subject, I am prepared and happy to have further conversations to make sure that we close any remaining gaps and for me push the department and NHS England as appropriate.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
I now invite the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is taking part remotely, to reply to the debate.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, in particular for their brevity given the long day we have ahead of us. In particular I thank the Minister for his helpful response.
My Amendment 60 is very specific and I asked for a specific response. The Minister has confirmed what I wanted to hear: that health data is special category data, and that it requires additional protections due to its sensitivity, which would be applied by any ICB when it has had that request. The other key phrase that stuck out was that nothing in the clause overrides the range of requirements in law to provide those key protections and safeguards regarding individual personal data. I am therefore satisfied on that basis.
Briefly on Amendment 116, which is much broader in scope and very important for the future of data use with the proposals that are coming down stream, I agree with all the comments that were made by noble Lords. One particular thing that stood out for me was the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that the publication of the Goldacre review is vital before any final version of Data Saves Lives is made public.
We will not get to a vote on Amendment 116 today. However, could the Minister assist the House and confirm that guidance will be issued, rather than a looser “may be” issued? With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lansley
(2) The integrated care partnership may be designated as the Health and Wellbeing Board where the area of the integrated care board and the responsible local authority are coterminous.(2A) If more than one Health and Wellbeing Board relates to the area of the integrated care board, the integrated care partnership may be designated as the Health and Wellbeing Boards of each responsible local authority acting in combination.(2B) The integrated care partnership must consist of—(a) one or more members appointed by the Health and Wellbeing Board or Boards,(b) members appointed by the integrated care board (equivalent in number to the number appointed by the Health and Wellbeing Board or Boards), and(c) such further members as are appointed by the integrated care partnership.”
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, Amendments 61, 95 and 96, which are all in my name, are to two separate issues. Amendment 61 relates to an issue we debated a number of times in Committee, when, if I may presume, there was a degree of support among noble Lords for the proposition that integrated care partnerships, in so far as they have to produce a strategy for a needs assessment for their area, have a very complementary—indeed, one might say overlapping—responsibility with health and well-being boards established in local authorities.
I will not go into the detail of how this works, and nor do I rest on the construction of Amendment 61. I freely acknowledge that this is a tricky thing to do. There will be circumstances where one ICS, one ICB or one ICP covers a lot of local authorities and others where it covers only one or two. In the latter case, it is pretty straightforward to integrate health and well-being boards and integrated care partnerships. In other cases, the membership and construction may be more complicated.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
There has been a whole debate at Second Reading and in Committee about the equality of local government and the NHS in this regard. Importantly, local government focuses on place because it is used to doing so. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said, the legislation does not include powers to delegate right down to local government so that it can work with the NHS—which it sees as its key responsibility—then there will be a gap, and this will not be seen as a true partnership. More importantly, the powers that would unleash some of the issues central to the Bill—better integration, reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes—will not be achieved. There will not be the powers of delegation that will be allowed to place when innovation starts.
That is why the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, are important, particularly Amendment 96, on the roles of the place board. If the Government do not take this forward, it will be a total abdication. Place will be important in unleashing innovation, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out this gap in the legislation.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has made some important and sensible points, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.
My noble friend Lord Scriven raised the important question of the role of local authorities. I simply want to add that I happen to know that some of the chairs-designate of the ICBs would really like to know the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, early on in his speech. What is the relationship of the health and well-being boards to the ICBs? If those people are confused, it is not surprising that noble Lords are too.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has once again put his finger on an issue that the Government need to take seriously and which, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, has run through our debates at Second Reading and in Committee. What is the role of the ICPs’ joint working and what should a place board be doing? As I said during the previous day’s debate on Report, we need also to treat place boards—or any commissioning body—in the same way as we do the ICBs.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is right. If the Government do not address this issue in the next few weeks by putting something in the Bill, we may well find ourselves back here in two or three years’ time, doing exactly what we are doing now.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, this has been an important discussion about place and joint working, and although the Government are unable to accept my noble friend’s amendments, for reasons I shall touch on, I hope I can reassure him that the questions which he and other noble Lords have raised have been considered in the Bill.
England is so large and diverse that a one-size-fits-all approach will not be right for everyone, and that is why we have been flexible about the requirements for integrated care partnerships and joint working arrangements. We fundamentally believe that, if integration is to work, we must allow local areas to find the right approach for them.
As my noble friend will appreciate, our provisions on integrated care partnerships build upon existing legislation, particularly in the case of health and well-being boards. We know that health and well-being boards have played an incredibly important role in the last decade, and this legislation intends to build on their success. We will be refreshing the guidance for health and well-being boards in the light of the changes that this Bill proposes, in order to help them understand the possibilities of these arrangements and their relationships with ICBs and ICPs, so that they can find the most appropriate model for their area.
Fortunately, this Bill and existing legislation already provide the framework to do what these amendments intend to achieve. Two or more health and well-being boards can already jointly exercise their functions, and where the local authority area and ICB area are the same, there is no reason why the health and well-being board and the ICP cannot have the same membership. The ICP is intended as an equal partnership between the local authorities and the ICB. By restricting the right of the local authority to nominate a member who they see fit and requiring them to do so through a committee with a potentially wide membership, including the ICB, risks undermining that equality. Local authorities may ask their health and well-being board to nominate those members. However, we do not wish to restrict their options and unintentionally prevent better collaboration and integration by adding further requirements to the Bill.
I turn to the joint working arrangements. The Bill also provides for the ability to establish place-based committees of ICBs and to set them out clearly in their constitutions. I assure my noble friend on this point that the legislation allows the flexibility to establish these committees, so we should not find ourselves in the situation that he talks about. ICBs will be able to enter arrangements under new Section 65Z5, which allows an ICB to delegate or exercise its functions jointly with other ICBs, NHS England, NHS trusts, foundation trusts and local authorities, or any other body prescribed by regulations. Under these powers, a committee of an ICB could be created to look at population health improvement at place level and could consider entering an arrangement under Section 65Z5 to work jointly where appropriate.
The membership of that committee can be decided locally by the ICB, and it is entirely open to the ICB to seek views from other organisations as to who best to appoint. I hope that reassures my noble friend that there is already the legal framework for ICBs to look at population health improvement at a place level. We are trying to protect the ability of ICBs to determine the structures that work best for them. To help them to do that, NHS England has the power to issue guidance to ICBs on the discharge of their functions. The flexibility that we have set out in the Bill makes my noble friend’s intentions possible. However, our provisions also give a degree of flexibility, so that areas can take control, innovate, and adopt what works best for them, rather having to meet prescriptive top-down requirements.
It is for these reasons that I hope that my noble friend feels able to withdraw his Amendment 61 and not move his Amendments 95 and 96 when they are reached.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for their support, and to my noble friend for responding. I have a couple of important things to say.
First, I was not suggesting these things. I was suggesting that the legislation should reflect what the Government’s intentions are, because the integration White Paper set them out. Secondly, my noble friend said very carefully that the health and well-being boards and integrated care partnerships can have the same membership, but that is not the same as them being the same organisation. I am looking for my noble friend to say, without fear of contradiction, that where they choose locally to do so—and I am perfectly happy for there to be flexibility—local authorities and the ICBs can create an integrated care partnership which serves the functions of the health and well-being boards and the integrated care partnership in one organisation. That is the question.
On Amendments 95 and 96, I take the Minister’s point. I looked at it and thought, yes, there’s no difficulty about the place boards being a committee of the integrated care boards, but the Government in their White Paper said that there should be a single person accountable for shared outcomes in each place. That place board would have functions delegated to it from the integrated care board and local authorities. For that to happen, I cannot understand why it is not necessary for that to be reflected in Clause 62, since the existing legislation makes no reference to place boards. Also, if the person who is accountable is the chief executive of the place board, we must assume that that will not necessarily be the chief executive of the integrated care board, yet as things stand in the legislation, the chief executive of the integrated care board will be the single accountable officer. How is the accountable officer to be the chief executive of the place board?
Lord Farmer
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and others to Clause 21 and Schedule 4 in the name of Lord Farmer would require integrated care partnerships to consider how to integrate health-related services into the provision of health and social care services, and specifically family help services, as relationships are recognised by research as a “health asset”. “Family help” is defined in accordance with the Independent Care Review’s starting definition. ‘Family hubs’ are named as key potential sites for delivering integrated paediatric health and family help.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
Amendment 64 has already been spoken to.
Lord Farmer (Con)
But I did not withdraw it. I was waiting for the response; nor did I have a chance to say whether or not I would divide the House.
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord is correct that he can speak to Amendment 64 and, in doing so, move it, but he should then choose to withdraw it or test the opinion of the House.
Lord Farmer (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and other noble Lords, for their support, and I thank the Ministers for helping on the direction of travel for family hubs, and for family hubs being included in statutory guidance for integrated care services and bespoke guidance specifically covering family help. However, we are talking about the bronze medal position. Gold medal is primary legislation, silver is secondary, and statutory guidance is bronze, although at least we are on the podium. As the Minister said, this is ongoing. They are awaiting the review of children’s local care evaluations from 75 local authorities. I will be with them on the journey. That is all that I can say, as it is ongoing.
Amendment 75 still presents a possible risk of imposing an additional burden on local authorities in their delivery of local services. Given that I have mirrored what the Children Act 1989 says regarding now defunct family centres, the Government should really consider amending this themselves if it inappropriately burdens local authorities. In any event, I welcome the Government’s movement. I beg to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lansley
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments in my name relates to Clause 26. Noble Lords will recall that we had a rather helpful debate about this in Committee. The point is that the Care Quality Commission is an independent organisation. We want to respect that and see that carried through into its new responsibility of reviewing and inspecting the integrated care systems.
The Bill asks for “objectives and priorities” to be set by the Secretary of State. In another place, Members of the Commons inserted the idea that these priorities must include—as seen in proposed new Section 46B(3)—
“leadership, the integration of services and the quality and safety of service”.
That is fine; if they want that, let us leave it in, but I have no idea what “objectives” are in this context. Although I do not want to go down the path of semantics, for the Secretary of State to say what his or her priorities are is entirely reasonable and should be reflected in the indicators used by the CQC, but I am not sure that I know what “objectives” are in this context. Either my noble friend will explain to me what the objectives are, in which case the question of why they are not clarified further in the Bill arises, or let us leave them out—which is what most of these amendments do.
Regarding two of these amendments, it seems particularly undesirable for the Secretary of State—as in proposed new Section 46B(5) and (10)—to
“direct the Commission to revise the indicators”.
The indicators that the Care Quality Commission devises require the approval of the Secretary of State, so I am not sure why we should so trammel the independence of the CQC by enabling the Secretary of State to “direct” it to revise its indicators as opposed to denying approval, so I would rather that were not there.
Our noble friends on the Front Bench have been very accommodating; a spirit of compromise and understanding seems to have imbued the Front Bench splendidly so far. If the Minister is not minded to accept my amendments, I hope that she can at least give me some reassurance about the manner in which the Secretary of State’s powers are to be used or—in my view, this would be better—not used or extremely rarely used. I beg to move Amendment 69.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, the CQC is a competent and independent organisation. Long may that continue, and any attempt to trammel it is unwelcome. We have here a 265-page Bill. If the CQC cannot get from the Bill the intentions of the Government and carry them out carefully in doing its job inspecting and reporting on how the integrated care systems are working, I do not think it needs any further direction from the Secretary of State.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I agree with that and with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. We will be coming to other issues about the Secretary of State’s powers later on Report, but the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has put her finger on it. I think I was there at the CQC’s inception because I was a Minister at the time, or certainly soon after. It has discharged its duties extremely well. The Minister needs to explain why the Government feel it necessary to put these powers into the Bill.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for raising this issue. I hope in the spirit of collaboration and compromise I am able to provide him with some further clarity and reassurance, even if I am not able to support his amendments.
Flourishing systems are critical to the success of integration and many of the proposals in the Bill. In that context it is right that the Secretary of State, who is accountable to Parliament, can set the overall strategic direction of reviews of integrated care systems through setting objectives and priorities for the CQC in relation to those assessments. However, it will be the CQC as the independent regulator and expert which will develop and carry out those reviews.
In Committee, noble Lords across this House raised several matters that these reviews should or could look at—from children to rare conditions—and it is right that the Secretary of State should be able to set objectives to explain the intent that lies behind high-level priorities such as leadership, integration quality and safety. These objectives will aid the CQC in its development of the review methodology and quality indicators and lay out where specific focuses should be given. The current clause allows the Secretary of State to make these distinctions and be more nuanced, just as is permitted for CQC reviews of local authority functions relating to adult social care set out in Clause 152. To remove the Secretary of State’s ability to set objectives is to remove nuance, which in turn could dilute the focus of these reviews on particular patient pathways or integration arrangements.
Furthermore, the Secretary of State must be able to ensure that the CQC’s role is complementary to other assessments, such as NHS England’s oversight of ICBs. This is achieved in part through the Secretary of State’s role in approving and directing to revise the indicators of quality, methods and approach. Removing the Secretary of State’s ability to direct the CQC to revise indicators risks the Secretary of State being locked in after approving the methodology. This could prevent the Government being able to respond to shifting developments in health and care, thus undermining the review’s relevance as time progresses.
I further reassure my noble friend and other noble Lords that we expect the power to direct to revise to be used infrequently, so as not to disrupt CQC reviews. The Government fully respect the independence of the CQC, and these powers are designed to ensure that its reviews of the integrated care systems are effective without undermining that independence.
It is for these reasons that I hope my noble friend feels able to withdraw his amendment and not move his further amendments when they are reached.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I am most grateful to my noble friend and for the support of noble Lords for the concept. I hope the CQC will find that this assists it in ensuring that it remains independent in how it goes about its job, and, indeed, how it derives indicators of quality and fitness for purpose. I take my noble friend’s point about what objectives might be. They might be, for example, objectives of the nature of the service that the review should cover so the Government might have some national priorities. I think the word “priorities” would have been sufficient.
I confess to my noble friend that I did not understand why the Secretary of State might come in and direct the CQC to change its indicators. It would have been perfectly reasonable for the Secretary of State to have waited and seen what the CQC said. The CQC will clearly change its indicators from time to time as technologies and services adapt, and it could have been trusted to do it. I will not press the point and I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 69.
Baroness Penn
“Armed Forces Act 2006
82A_(1) Section 343AA of the Armed Forces Act 2006 (due regard to principles: England)(as inserted by section 8(3) of the Armed Forces Act 2021) is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (3), for paragraph (h) substitute—“(h) an integrated care board;”.(3) In subsection (8)—(a) omit the definition of “clinical commissioning group”;(b) at the appropriate place insert—““integrated care board” means a body established under section 14Z25 of the National Health Service Act 2006;”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on Clause 14 of the Bill, which establishes integrated care boards.
“Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022
239_ The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 is amended as follows.240_(1) Section 25 (relevant review partners) is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (2)(c) for “a clinical commissioning group” substitute “an integrated care board”.(3) In subsection (3)(c) for “clinical commissioning group” substitute “integrated care board”.241_ In section 36 (interpretation), in subsection (1)—(a) omit the definition of “clinical commissioning group”;(b) at the appropriate place insert—““integrated care board” means a body established under section 14Z25 of the National Health Service Act 2006;”;(c) in the definition of “review partner”, for paragraph (c) substitute—“(c) an integrated care board, or”.242_ In Schedule 1 (specified authorities and local government areas), in the table headed “Health and social care”—(a) for “A clinical commissioning group established under section 14D” substitute “An integrated care board established under section 14Z25”; (b) for “the group’s” substitute “the board’s”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on Clause 14 of the Bill, which establishes integrated care boards.
Baroness Penn
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the insertion into section 13U of the NHS Act 2006, by another amendment, of a duty for NHS England to include additional matters in its annual report.
“Duties in respect of research
In section 1E of the National Health Service Act 2006 (duty as to research), after “must” insert “facilitate or otherwise”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This Clause provides that the Secretary of State’s duty to promote research etc includes doing so by facilitating research.
Baroness Cumberlege
“(1) The Secretary of State must, at least once every two years, lay a report before Parliament describing the system in place for assessing and meeting the workforce needs of the health, social care and public health services in England.(2) This report must include—(a) an independently verified assessment of health, social care and public health workforce numbers, current at the time of publication, and the projected workforce supply for the following five, ten and 20 years; and(b) an independently verified assessment of future health, social care and public health workforce numbers based on the projected health and care needs of the population for the following five, ten and 20 years, taking account of the Office for Budget Responsibility long-term fiscal projections.(3) NHS England and Health Education England must assist in the preparation of a report under this section.(4) The organisations listed in subsection (3) must consult health and care employers, providers, trade unions, Royal Colleges, universities and any other persons deemed necessary for the preparation of this report, taking full account of workforce intelligence, evidence and plans provided by local organisations and partners of integrated care boards.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Government to publish independently verified assessments every two years of current and future workforce numbers required to deliver care to the population in England, taking account of the economic projections made by the Office for Budget Responsibility, projected demographic changes, the prevalence of different health conditions and the likely impact of technology.
Baroness Cumberlege (Con)
My Lords, as this is Report, I declare my interests, which are that I am employed by NHS England to implement my report on maternity, Better Births.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I shall speak shortly to Amendment 168, but want briefly to refer to Amendment 80, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and so eloquently introduced by her, and supported across the House. Workforce planning is critical. Frankly, it is surprising that Ministers resisted amendments in Committee which called for formal long-term workforce planning for the NHS, social care and public health to be embedded in legislation.
The noble Baroness said that that current arrangements can be a bit like sticking plasters, and she is right, but it is not just about the use of bank and agency staff but about planning healthcare professional education. We all know how long it takes to train a doctor, but most of the other professionals also cannot just be turned on and off at election time. There have been too many times when this Government have said at elections that they would suddenly magic thousands of extra doctors and nurses. We need to build timescales into that workforce planning. The noble Baroness also talked about population demand, but I want to make another point: this is not just about population numbers; it is also about demographics. We will need more GPs and hospital professionals managing our rapidly ageing population. If we do not encourage people to go into those specialisms, we will not be able to look after our population in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time.
I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, that if government resistance is because of the funding implications with delivering such a plan, that is very short sighted. Not planning will be even more catastrophic. Amendment 80 is more modest in nature but is a critical minimum to achieve a commitment to plan effectively for the NHS, social care and public health.
I turn now to Amendment 168. Given that there are a number of speakers on this important group, I will be very brief here too. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, echoes the one he laid in Committee, and I am pleased to have signed both. We heard in Committee about this frustrating loophole that meant that it was not possible for certain members of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine to be added to the list of colleges which could be involved in the appointment of NHS consultants. This is now slowing down the appointment of NHS consultants. I am very pleased to support the amendment and hope the Minister will be able to give good news to the House on this amendment too.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
Now I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who is also speaking remotely, to speak.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB) [V]
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 80 and 168. Amendment 80 is very important and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for being so persistent. Throughout the country there is a workforce shortage in hospitals, the community and social care. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, warned that:
“Unless expressly required to do so, government will not be honest about the mismatch between the supply and demand of healthcare workers.”—[Official Report, 7/12/21; col. 1814.]
This amendment would give an independently verified assessment of the workforce numbers to meet the growing needs of the population.
Patients who have serious, rare and specialised conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, spinal injuries and all sorts of conditions need expert, specialised staff and equipment so they get the treatment they need. Otherwise, their conditions can deteriorate and result in added costs to the NHS and the taxpayer. Delayed treatment also means unnecessary pain and suffering for the patients. I hope the Government realise the need for Amendment 80.
I was surprised when I received a letter from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh telling me that, along with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, it was excluded by omission from participating in the process of helping trusts in England recruit much-needed consultants. I wonder what the reason for this extraordinary discrimination is. Does England think it is superior? These royal colleges have been contacted by multiple trusts in England seeking help to recruit the necessary surgeons but, unless this regulation is corrected, they cannot help in this process. This sharing of important selection is more important than ever at this difficult time.
The royal colleges of medicine in Scotland have a good reputation worldwide. I have a personal interest in this amendment, as one of my grandfathers trained as a doctor in Glasgow and one of my cousins trained in Edinburgh and is now a professor of microbiology. I hope the Government can rectify this lacuna in the regulations by accepting this amendment.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I am an honorary fellow of the two Edinburgh colleges and I strongly support this. It seems extraordinary that these very distinguished colleges which, as has been said, have an excellent record over many years in teaching people not only in this country but in many other countries should be excluded from playing a part in these appointments.
I also support Amendment 80 but would like to elaborate on it a little. I think Health Education England was set up, by the Act that we had before, with some degree of contention. It is a system that is supposed to help determine the future for the health service, with fairly elaborate provisions to that effect, as I remember from that Bill.
It is not at all clear to me how this assessment is going to be done. I see it has to be verified independently, in other words somebody independent of the whole system has to assess it for its accuracy. However, if you need Health Education England to do this for the medical professions particularly, why do you not need something similar to deal with the very complicated system of social care? Therefore, I think the whole system requires to be extended to cover something like Health Education England in relation to the whole area that this amendment covers. The Secretary of State sets up some kind of mechanism for report; it has to be a pretty elaborate mechanism if it is going to work. Therefore, I humbly suggest that something like Health Education England is needed to be the basis on which this assessment arises. Then, of course, you have to provide for the independent assessment of whether it was a good assessment originally. I support this amendment, but I think something more elaborate is ultimately required.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I will just speak to my Amendments 111 and 168. On Amendment 111, when the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Masham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, have already put forward the arguments, there is very little for me to say, but the exclusion of the Scottish colleges from the appointment process needs to be rectified. It is an irritant, a hold-up.
In Committee, the noble Lord said that we needed to go through consultation. That was a dreary and negative response. The Scottish colleges have done that. They have consulted and got the support of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, NHS Employers and the NHS Confederation. Surely the Minister can just accept this amendment. To simply say that there is no need for it and lots of consultation has to take place is just a ludicrous waste of time and money. This is the time to do it. He should bring an amendment back on Third Reading and be done with it. The noble Lord says that he wants to improve efficiency in the health service. I am afraid I take that with a pinch of salt, because he is just letting officials run riot around him in relation to petty, bureaucratic objections to this change.
Obviously, my other amendment is not major compared to Amendment 80, which is substantial and very important. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has really put it forward with great force. Again, I think the noble Lord needs to take a more vigorous approach with the Treasury, because clearly that is where the objection to this is coming from.
My other amendment is about the terrible problem of GP distribution, or the wide variations. I am not going to tempt the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, to come in on the GP issue—but the latest figures, for 31 December 2021, show, for primary care networks in England, the huge variation in the number of GPs. In 24 of the networks, the average list of registered patients for fully qualified full-time equivalent GPs is more than twice the national average. There are five primary care networks where the average is more than three times the national average; these are often in the most deprived areas. No wonder there is an issue of burnout, early retirements and a move to part-time working.
The Government’s response so far is the targeted enhanced recruitment scheme—an incentive for GPs to go into these areas. It is not enough; a much more substantive piece of work is required, and I hope again that the Minister will come forward with a positive response.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I shall speak to Amendment 82 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I attended Second Reading and made my views felt then, but I have not been able to join the deliberations on the Bill since then because of the pressure of other Bills in your Lordships’ House.
Even I, as someone who does not know very much about medicine, know that the most urgent challenge currently facing our health service is a shortage of nurses. I have been lobbied very heavily by the Royal College of Nursing, because Amendment 82 is its number one priority. It feels that, without a co-ordinated work plan, a coherent forward view and knowledge of exactly how the situation is at the moment, it cannot possibly achieve the sorts of numbers that are needed. There were almost 50,000 vacancies before Covid, and you can imagine the pressure that Covid has put on to the NHS—extreme pressure at completely unsustainable levels, and with staff numbers that are actually unsafe. We all know this, yet Boris Johnson and the Conservatives made big promises at the last election—their manifesto made a promise of 50,000 more nurses—and instantly that number began to unravel, as it included existing nurses who do not quit. That is unclever and unsophisticated number crunching.
I do not understand why this Government will not live up to their manifesto commitments. One reason why I have not been able to speak on this Bill since Second Reading is because of all the other Bills coming through, on which the Conservatives have said that they are aiming to achieve their manifesto commitments. They are actually going rather beyond their manifesto commitments in lots of areas—but the fact is that they are picking and choosing as if from a box of sweets the ones that they prefer.
The Royal College of Nursing represents over 480,000 nurses in health and social care. These are people whose pay requests are constantly ignored—and who constantly have their pay cut; in real terms, it has reduced. Just at the point when MPs are getting very welcome extra pay, nurses hang on by their fingertips. We know that vacancies are also a huge problem, with retirement age approaching for a lot of nurses. Nurses need the certainty of planning, and I do not hear those plans coming from the Government, although this is really their job—to manage the economy and manage society in a way that benefits everybody. Clearly, if the NHS fails in any area, that does not benefit anybody at all.
I argue very strongly for Amendment 82, and I just hope that the Government wake up in time to see how necessary it is.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to co-sponsor the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, Amendment 80, and to speak in support of a number of the other amendments in this group. I declare my honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of GPs, and thank them and the 100 other organisations across the health and social care sector that have joined in the cross-party support that this amendment is likely to generate.
In considering how to vote on this amendment, I think it really boils down to two very straightforward questions. First, do we need regular, rigorous and independent workforce planning for health, social care and public health? The social care point, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, has just reminded us, is so crucial here. The second question is: if so, will we get it, with appropriate rigour and independence, without this amendment? I suggest that the answer to that question is, unfortunately, no.
The first question is self-evident to most people. We discussed it throughout Committee: workforce pressures mean that it is obvious that we need regular workforce planning. The very long lead times make it critical. Earlier this week, your Lordships were debating pressures in young people’s mental health services and eating disorder services. It is worth reminding ourselves that a new consultant psychiatrist specialising in eating disorders, starting work in NHS mental health services this morning, will have entered medical school 15 years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves, too, at a time when the NHS is confronting long waits for routine operations and needs to deal with a backlog of care, that the new medical student starting undergraduate medicine in September will report for duty as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in 2037.
So the lead times are clear, yet we have a paradox: more young people and, indeed, mid-career people, would like to join this great campaign, this social movement—the health service, social care and public health—but we are turning them away. In 1945, Nye Bevan said:
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
I suggest that, if Bevan were recasting his aphorism for today, he would say that, at a time when the NHS and social care have such a clear need for more staff, only a workforce planning system of organisational genius could turn away bright and committed young people from undergraduate medicine and other oversubscribed university places for health and other professions.
We have to accept that there will be extra costs from getting this right. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, was quite right to draw attention to the fact that there will be savings, including from the £6.2 billion spent in 2019-20 on agency and bank staffing across the health service. But there will be extra costs: the Royal College of Physicians has estimated that doubling undergraduate medicine places would cost perhaps £1.85 billion, which is about one-seventh of the amount that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee identified last week as being likely to be lost from fraud and waste through the various furlough and other schemes introduced during Covid. So I think we need to put these costs in perspective.
The fact that there will be those costs gives us the answer to our second question. Of course, we need workforce planning, but are we going to get it without this amendment? I am afraid that I do not think we are. In Committee—although I shall not rehearse it—using publicly available materials, I set out the sorry history of what I described as the “wilful blindness” that has been inflicted on the health and social care sector and, indeed, on health Ministers and the Department of Health and Social Care itself, as they have sought to go about this task down the years.
The question before your Lordships is: has the leopard changed its spots? I suspect—and I genuinely sympathise with the Minister’s predicament—that he will tell us that the baton has now been passed from the Department of Health and Social Care to NHS England, so that for the first time it has the responsibility for undertaking this task, and we should be reassured by that fact. In that case, I ask him to give clear guarantees at the Dispatch Box that the proposed new powers of direction for the Secretary of State will never be used to veto or censor any independent estimates that NHS England itself puts forward, including those with a financial consequence. Indeed, I ask that he goes further than that and gives us a Dispatch Box guarantee that NHS England will be entirely free to publish, every two years, without approval, veto or censorship from either the Department of Health or the Treasury, the workforce need, demand and supply models implied in Amendment 80. If those guarantees are not forthcoming from the Dispatch Box, I think your Lordships will be entitled to draw your own conclusions.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, would the noble Lord be surprised to hear the rumours that the Treasury has prevented the Minister from responding in a positive way to this amendment?
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
We await insight from the Minister himself on that point; it is indeed, of course, what the chairman of the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt, suggested in the House of Commons. We have an immediate litmus test before us, which should help us answer the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. As your Lordships will remember, we noted in Committee the fact that, just 10 weeks before the start of the financial year, when it should have been planning 10 years out, Health Education England still did not have its operating budget for the year ahead. My understanding—I hope to be corrected by the Minister—is that, certainly, as of 10 am, Health Education England still does not have its workforce operating budget for just 29 days’ time. That is precisely because of a set of behind-the-scenes discussions—no doubt courteous, but nevertheless fervent—between the Department of Health and Social Care on the one hand and the Treasury on the other.
Health Ministers are more sinned against than sinning on this, frankly, and in that sense this amendment will strengthen their hand. I suspect that, privately, they will welcome the mobilisation of your Lordships to support their negotiating case. The very fact that Her Majesty’s Government oppose this amendment is proof positive that it is needed. We need it because we need to look beyond the end of our noses. To vote against this amendment would be to cut off our noses to spite our faces.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, this whole group is worthy of government action, and I support Amendments 80 and 81 in respect of speech and language therapists. The NHS Long Term Plan itself states that speech and language therapists are a profession in short supply. The Department of Health and Social Care, in its submission to the Migration Advisory Committee’s review of the shortage occupation lists, argues that speech and language therapists should be added to them because of the pressures facing these professions, particularly in relation to mental health.
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, for whose advice I am grateful, suggests that a minimum increase in the skilled workforce is required in the region of 15%. In recent years, the profession has grown by 1.7% in a year. The Government themselves recognise that they are clearly not delivering the speech and language therapy workforce that we need. No national assessment has been undertaken of the demand and the unmet need for speech and language therapy, which, I remind noble Lords, is essential for people to be able to communicate. Will the Government accept Amendments 80 and 81 or explain otherwise how they plan to improve workforce planning so that speech and language therapy is no longer a profession in too short supply?
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I will be exceptionally brief and make two very quick points, but first I need to apologise for, when I spoke earlier, omitting to mention my registered interest as a non-executive director of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
I very strongly support Amendment 80, moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and pressed so very cogently by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and others. It is absolutely fundamental to everything that the Bill is designed to achieve, and we will not achieve those things unless the workforce is addressed.
In relation to Amendment 111 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I say that it is so important that we have a review into the distribution of GPs in England. I was very concerned when we debated in Committee the huge variation in list numbers in different parts of the country. The biggest lists were in the most deprived areas. If you track that back to the debate we were having on health inequalities, where there was a huge consensus across the House, it is clear that we are never going to fundamentally tackle health inequalities unless we have far greater equality in things like the size of GPs’ lists.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and Amendment 80. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, made two points: I would just like to add a third to his argument. He argued that workforce planning needs to happen. There is no large employer of people that does not plan its workforce other than the NHS. We need to do it, and I do not think anyone in this Chamber is going to disagree. He also said that this would not happen without legislation. I will not repeat the points I made at Second Reading or in Committee, or those that he just made so eloquently.
My third point, which I would like to add, is very much addressed to my noble friend the Minister. It is that this amendment will not bring the downsize that the Treasury truly fears. This is actually an amendment of sound management that enables the NHS to manage finances and people better. While there will be more money spent on training, this is actually the way to control the costs of the ever-growing demand for health and social care. If you do not plan, you cannot control the costs. This is actually the way to do the very thing that the Treasury is most concerned about.
Far from locking in old, established ways of working, this is also the way to drive transformation because, unless we are honest about the ever-growing demand for clinicians of every profession, we will not face the fact that we will need to change the way those clinicians work together as medicine and science evolve and all of us age. This is a way to deliver the very thing that the Treasury most wants: control of the finances and transformation of our healthcare services.
With that, I add one final point, and I hope noble Lords will forgive me for repeating what I said in Committee. There is another reason why we need to do this now. Our NHS people are exhausted, and they have lost hope that we understand what it is really like on the ground for them. By passing this amendment, we will give them hope; we will show them that, collectively and cross-party, we really understand that it is they who make our wonderful, precious health and care system work, and we are committed to helping them going forward.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I must declare my interests: I am a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, which is affected by Amendment 168. I am an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, president of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and an observer on the Medical Schools Council. All those organisations have a vested interest in this amendment.
Very simply, this amendment just makes sense for the future. Without it, the cost of healthcare to the nation will rack up and never come under control. The talk about people working in the NHS is a fallacy. What matters is whole-time equivalents and the competencies of those people with whole-time equivalents. While it is absolutely right to say that it might take 15 years for somebody to come through training as a specialist, what is not understood is that, as soon as people qualify, having left their undergraduate training, they are then on the job. They are learning on the job, working incredibly hard and contributing, but they do not have the competencies developed. That is what takes a long time. The modern techniques that get things done much more quickly and that deal with more patients—laparoscopic surgery having been an example—are highly skilled, but highly efficient.
We have a shortage of 1,400 anaesthetists. Without anaesthetists, you cannot have good maternity services, you cannot operate and you cannot have good emergency services. They are absolutely essential to the whole running of secondary care. Then, of course, in primary care, we have the gaps as well, so the specialist training is really important.
As well as that, this cannot be handed over to algorithms on a computer and left to IT, because of the need for personal interaction between the clinician and the patient and their family. I do not believe that this will be replaced by AI. However, many jobs performed currently will be taken over by AI, freeing up clinicians to become even more specialist competent.
Building on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, I remind the House that poor care overall is more expensive than good care in the long term. It is a very short-term view to think that you can provide poor care; in the long term, you really do stack up debt. Stopping workforce planning will not avoid costs at all; all it will do is move the costs from one year further into the future and create bigger problems. Although I hesitate to say it, I think it will also fuel the whole litigation culture.
Amendment 80 is absolutely essential. If it is accepted by the Government, or passed by this House, then Amendments 81 and 82 would fit very neatly into the criteria against which such reports are to be written on the workforce. I remind noble Lords who might be unaware of this that the royal colleges already collect workforce data. Verification of data collected from integrated care boards and areas will not be difficult, because you will simply see how the figures match up. The figures will be reported centrally, and planning can take place. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is so straightforward; I cannot see why we want to rack up costs further by not putting it through. Vacant posts cost money, they do not save money. By putting that through, we will have more efficient appointment procedures. This is an historical anomaly which could be corrected easily.
Relying on bank staff is really dangerous. Mistakes happen much more often when staff come in who do not know the place, the team or who to call. You would never field a sports team consisting of a bunch of people brought together to play at a high level who had never played before. Yet, what we are doing in our NHS is bringing in bank staff who often do not know the hospital or the team. They do not know the strengths of the other people in the team, so they do not know to whom they can delegate. I hope that the House will approve Amendment 80 if the Government are too short-sighted to just accept it.
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support very strongly Amendments 80, 81 and others in the group. They have already been explained eloquently, so I will not repeat those arguments. I declare my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. We have already heard about their importance, as a profession, as part of the wider allied health professionals. It is always worth remembering that allied health professionals make up a third of the total workforce.
Responding to workforce planning in Committee, the Minister stated that he shares the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—from whom we have just heard—on the importance of
“integrated workforce planning across NHS and non-NHS employers … and that work is under way on it.”—[Official Report, 24/01/22; col. 102.]
Unfortunately, at that time the Minister did not set out what that work was. The response did not really give a great deal of hope regarding the long-term failings in workforce planning for allied health professionals in general and speech and language therapists in particular. We need to ensure that this is addressed. As we have heard, these amendments properly address the issue.
I draw particular attention to subsection (4) of Amendment 80, which clearly states that royal colleges must be consulted in drawing up the report which will be laid before Parliament on
“meeting the workforce needs of the health, social care and public health services in England.”
By that consultation, we should ensure that allied health professionals, and particularly speech and language therapists, are included. These professionals sometimes work directly in the NHS. Often, however, they work in other health settings and can be employed in those settings by the NHS. They might also work in settings such as education, the criminal justice system and other parts of the social care system, or in independent practice. They should all form part of the consultation to ensure that the plans which come forward on workforce planning are comprehensive in their nature and coverage. Therefore, these amendments are crucial to achieving this objective. I am sure that the Minister will want to give us that same assurance when he responds.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support this group of amendments and to declare my interest as a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing. It is absolutely clear to me that, without the right staff in the right place, you cannot give the right care. This is the situation we are in at the moment, and we must get it right for the future. We are on an improvement trajectory, and there is an increase in the number of nurses employed in the NHS. However, this is not universal across all areas of the NHS, particularly in learning disability and mental health.
If we could get the Government to support Amendment 80, we could resolve the issue through guidance. On Amendment 81, I also speak for my noble friend Lord Patel, who unfortunately cannot be here today and who believes that an elegant solution as described by my noble friend Baroness Finlay, in terms of guidance subsuming Amendment 82 in particular, would enable directors of nursing, medicine and care to be responsible for ensuring that they have a safe staffing structure in the areas for which they commission care. That would be reported up every two years through the Secretary of State, rather than every five years, as indicated in Amendment 82. This would be a much more suitable solution.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will intervene. I was not intending to speak but I was prompted by a recollection arising from the reference to anaesthetists by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I recall that the Centre for Workforce Intelligence produced in February 2015 a report on the future supply and demand of anaesthetists and the intensive care medicine workforce. I have just checked the report, and it projects for 2033 that the number of full-time equivalent staff required will be 11,800, and supply will be 8,000. Therefore, in February 2015, we knew of this set of projections produced by the CWI. It said, among other things, that there should be
“a further review in the next two to three years.”
However, the CWI was abolished in 2016 and its functions were restored, I think, to the Department of Health.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, did not refer to this directly, but we must bear in mind the general presumption that there has never been workforce planning, although in certain respects, there has. The report on anaesthetists is only one of a whole string of reports—I could list them, but I do not need to—produced by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence before it was abolished. Their main purpose was to say to Health Education England, “This is the level of education and training commissioning you should be undertaking in the years ahead”. As the noble Lord said in Committee, it did produce a set of proposals; it is just that they were not acted upon.
I just say this: legislation may be the right way to proceed now, but let us not lose sight of what is actually required, which is for Health Education England not to have its budget cut, as happened in 2016, but to have its budget increased and for that budget to be turned into an education and training commissioning programme that delivers the numbers of trained professionals in this country that we project we will need. It is no good saying, “Oh, we’ve never had planning; we passed a piece of legislation.” I am sorry, it could be a case of legislate and forget unless the money is provided and the commissioning happens. There have been organisations whose job it was to do it—Health Education England, the Centre for Workforce Intelligence—but they were not supported, and in one case, abolished.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 111 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. On Amendment 111, I want to emphasise two points. First, GPs are and have always been the gatekeepers to the NHS. Without GPs, there is less primary care and less access to the NHS. Over 90% of patients access the NHS through their GPs and primary care. If you are unlucky enough to live in an area with a serious shortage of GPs, your access to NHS services is highly likely to be diminished and your health put at greater risk.
My second point is that it follows that a shortage of GPs is also likely to contribute to health inequalities, a topic much discussed during the passage of the Bill. In addition, this is likely to mean that you live in a place which the Government say they want to level up. So, if the Minister accepts the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, he will be helping to deliver two government objectives: reducing health inequalities and levelling up. What’s not to like? Who knows—he might even get a promotion out of it.
I turn briefly to Amendment 80, which I support and will vote for if the noble Baroness pushes it to a vote. I want, however, to emphasise two points that follow on a great deal from what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. For too long the NHS has relied on buttressing its inadequate system for training home-grown staff by recruiting from abroad. Brexit and tighter immigration policies have significantly reduced this supply line. It will take long-term planning and consistency of purpose over many years to rectify the health and care workforce supply problems.
My second and last related point on workforce is that the track record of the Department of Health on long-term planning is appalling. It is not just me saying that; it was made absolutely clear in the report by this House’s Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and Adult Social Care, so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who unfortunately, as we all know, is laid low by Covid. Those who support Amendment 80 should hear the arguments in the debate on Amendment 112, which would support its implementation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, thought that something more elaborate than Amendment 80 was required. That may be the case, particularly for social care, but Amendments 80 and 112 complement each other. They are not rivals or alternatives; they put in place a structure thoroughly independent of government and which requires the Government then to pay attention to what has been independently provided.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, it is clear that there remain huge and serious concerns across the House and beyond regarding how the Bill addresses the chronic staff shortages in our health and care services. I say health and care services, because as we know, the staff shortages affecting the delivery of services are not just within the NHS but felt across the board, in health, care and public health services. While this is a current and urgent issue, future workforce planning will be the single most important factor in limiting our ability to deliver the ambitions we all have for the future of health and social care and importantly, the ambitions of the Bill.
Like many other noble Lords, I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, and if she feels that the current duties the Bill places on the Secretary of State in Clause 35 to report at least every five years are inadequate, then I urge the Government to take note. As my noble friend said when she introduced her amendment, she is not alone: at least another 100 organisations are calling for this aspect of the Bill to be strengthened. I ask the Minister today, therefore: if the Government are not planning to accept the amendment, how do they plan to address the challenges of future workforce? How will they assess the future needs of health, social care and public health services? Previous work has not quantified the workforce numbers needed and we cannot wait for another review.
I have a couple of observations on the amendment itself, which I commend in that it does require the Secretary of State to report on this wider health, social care and public health workforce, unlike the current Clause 35, which refers only to the health service. However, I sound a note of caution, because if we simply assess vacancy rates, or get into the mindset of needing to replace like for like, role and service development, which will be essential to support future health and care services as they evolve, risk being stifled, as my noble friend Lady Harding referred to.
Those who hold much of the data on health and care professionals are not only the royal colleges, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, mentioned, but also the regulators. I note that proposed new subsection (4) of the amendment does not mention health and care regulators, which I think should be consulted, in the spirit of my noble friend’s explanatory statement.
Finally, when describing the system in place for assessing and meeting workforce needs, as training and regulation are UK-wide, I hope there will be a spirit of co-operation between NHS England and the devolved nations to ensure that we are training the right people for the right roles across the UK NHS: this needs to be in any future workforce assessment as well. I also cannot understand why we do not accept that the royal colleges in Glasgow and Edinburgh can help us recruit. That seems completely bananas—that is the technical term. Will the Government accept that we cannot put workforce planning yet again into the “too difficult” box? We need to do more and go further, as my noble friend Lady Cumberlege urges. I accept there are no silver bullets, but the regular publication of independently verified projections of future demand and supply of workforce could, over time, create a sustainable model for improvement that would have a positive impact on both patient care and staff experience.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on the way she introduced Amendment 80—it was masterful. I point out that she took this amendment from the right honourable Jeremy Hunt, who unfortunately failed to get it through the House of Commons. In doing so, he expressed his regret that, when he was Secretary of State, he was not able to put in place a structure such as the noble Baroness proposes today.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, have both commented that it is self-evident that we need a workforce adequate to meet the demand. To do that, we need to anticipate increasing demand, changes in demographics, population growth and changes in practice. Crucially, we need to put in place resilience to health shocks. If we do not do that, we will continue to struggle to reach the OECD average of 3.7 doctors per 1,000 people, which is reasonable. To get there, we actually need 50,000 more doctors.
However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out, this is not just about doctors. It is also about nurses and, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, it is about allied health professionals. We need to train them all in a timely way, given, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, pointed out, how long it takes to train all these health professionals.
The Prime Minister claimed in the House of Commons recently that we have 45,000 more people working in the health service than before the pandemic. Unusually, that may be true, but it was not clear whether they were full-time professionals. However, that number bears no relation to the demand. There is no point in quoting raw figures if they are not related to the rise in demand. Moreover, there are fewer GPs than before the pandemic, and that is where people’s access to the NHS begins. If someone cannot get to see a GP, they cannot get a diagnosis or a referral, and their disease gets harder and more expensive to treat. Having too few GPs is not a cost-effective strategy, so I support Amendment 111, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and also his Amendment 168.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
This powerful debate has focused on two simple truths. First, without the full team of people in place at the right time, it will not be possible to provide the health, social care and public health services we need. The second simple truth is that this will not just happen on its own. I am therefore glad to have put my name to Amendment 80, joining the noble Baronesses, Lady Cumberlege and Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, in so doing. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for her impactful introduction of the amendment. I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that this is the amendment to focus on, the one that will take us in the direction we need to go.
It is hardly surprising that the need for workforce planning has come up time and again during the passage of the Bill, and it is not going away. Workforce planning is at the core of all the plans, yet it remains unresolved and continues to cause considerable disquiet, including in the Health and Social Care Select Committee. We know this is an urgent requirement to tackle, and I hope that, even at this late stage, good sense will prevail and the Minister will be able to give the assurances that your Lordships’ House seeks.
The lack of sufficient staff, trained and able to deliver care, is the biggest issue facing the NHS and social care. Whatever claims are made about how many staff there are, they are meaningless unless posed against what is actually required. Since the Bill was published there has been universal opposition to the limited and inadequate provision in Clause 35. As my noble friend Lord Hunt noted, the Treasury’s robust resistance to publishing anything that sets out properly the gap between the number of staff required and of those in post is a badly kept secret. I regard that as short-sighted for all the reasons that have come up in the debate thus far.
It is reported that a record number of 400 members of staff are quitting the NHS every week. The United Kingdom has 50,000 fewer doctors than we need, and there are currently 100,000 vacancies. Workforce planning needs to be in place to give us the chance to assess and tackle the workforce crisis. Today we have the opportunity to put that right. As we have heard, the amendment is supported by a major coalition of some 100 health and care organisations. As my noble friend Lord Bradley said, it also takes strength from giving the opportunity to consult a comprehensive range of organisations and groups that know the reality of what is needed to run our care services. We should add our support to that.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for adding their support to my Amendment 81. It tackles the same problem, but from the bottom up. Without the foundation of a workforce plan, no ICB can plan anything properly, as they are required to do by other parts of the Bill. There is also the wider point that the national strategies or definitions of systems planning have no reality unless they transfer down to those who actually have to deliver the outcomes. We know that there are widespread and well-evidenced arguments in support of workforce planning. I urge the Minister to accept the wisdom and the reality of these amendments and to take the opportunity to fix a challenge that surely is not going away.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for bringing the discussion of workforce planning before the House today. Perhaps before I go further, all noble Lords will want to join me in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Patel, a speedy recovery. He definitely would have spoken in this debate if he had been able to join us. I should also say that I was particularly impressed by the double act of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Stevens. Perhaps they will be known in future as the Morecambe and Wise of the House of Lords.
We all agree that the workforce is at the heart of our NHS and social care. It is right to ensure that we have the workforce that we need for the future to keep delivering world-class, safe and effective healthcare. Some noble Lords may not like to hear this, but I remind them that we have a record number of nurses. We continue to look at different ways of recruitment, and in response to Oral Questions I have referred to the way that we are looking at different pathways into nursing for British people. It is also a fact that we have always recruited people from overseas. Indeed, our public services were saved, post-war, by people from the Commonwealth coming to work in public services. I remind noble Lords that now we have left the EU we will no longer give priority to mostly white Europeans over mostly non-white non-Europeans. We will focus on ensuring that we have equality across the world.
I will not repeat what I have said about other issues, but if you are to have workforce growth, which we all want, it must be accompanied by effective, long-term workforce planning. That is why the department has commissioned Health Education England to work with partners to develop a robust, long-term strategic framework for the health and regulated social care workforce for the next 15 years. This includes regulated professionals working in adult social care, such as nurses and occupational therapists, for the first time.
Lord Warner (CB)
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but when I listened to that last statement about Health Education England, I wondered whether he had seen the article in the Economist of 5 February, which shows that the guaranteed forward funding of Health Education England extended to less than a month ahead.
Lord Kamall (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord because that was a point I was hoping to come to when I lost my line. The budget will be agreed by the start of the new financial year and, as in all previous years, following the outcome of the 2021 spending review, spending plans for individual budgets in 2022-23 to 2024-25 inclusive will be subjected to a detailed financial planning exercise, and it will be finalised in time. We have also commissioned NHS England to develop that long-term workforce strategy and the key conclusions from this work will be set out.
Clause 35 will increase the transparency and accountability of the workforce planning process. Noble Lords referred to Her Majesty’s Treasury. The department is working closely with the Treasury to deliver a bigger and better NHS and social care workforce. The spending review 2021 provides a further £23 billion for the NHS for April 2022 to March 2025 and gives a three-year settlement. It will keep building a bigger and better-trained workforce.
Noble Lords also referred to agency staff. The flexible staffing policy aims to provide sufficient temporary staff to the NHS to meet fluctuations in demand. In 2015 the Secretary of State announced the introduction of several measures to reduce the agency spend, including price caps, procurement frameworks and expenditure ceilings. These have contributed to the NHS reducing spending on agency staff by one-third, but we recognise that there is more work to be done. We also recognise that the health and social care workforces are often spoken about separately, and the department is working to integrate the two workforces, as outlined in the integration White Paper. Noble Lords will recall that, in addition, we have started a voluntary register for care staff, which we hope to move to being mandatory in due course, following a consultation to better understand the landscape of the workforce, and to look at different qualifications and make it a better career.
We know that work on long-term workforce planning at a national level will need to be replicated at a local level. Subject to the passage of the Bill, ICBs should be the vehicle to support that. To guide that work, in August 2021 NHS England published draft guidance for ICBs explaining their central role, ensuring that the health and care system has the necessary workforce to meet the needs of the populations it serves. A copy of this guidance has been laid in the House Library. In addition, the amendments on ICBs’ forward plans and annual reports will require ICBs to report on how they exercise their duty to promote education and training for the current and future workforce.
Amendment 82 refers to safe staffing. The Government are committed to ensuring that we deliver safe patient care and that there are safe staffing levels across the NHS. Safe staffing should remain the responsibility of local clinical and other leaders, supported by guidance and regulated by the Care Quality Commission. The ultimate outcome of good-quality healthcare is influenced by a far greater range of issues than how many of each staff group are on a shift, even though that is clearly important, and it is why the Government are committed to continuing to grow the workforce.
I now turn to the amendment addressing GP distribution. We fully support the intention, particularly as part of our agenda to level up and recover from the pandemic. However, the pandemic’s impact on the workforce is not yet fully understood and the system is moving to meet the impact in new ways. As a result, a review of GP distribution is likely to be premature but, as noble Lords will recall, we have opened new medical schools in areas where there has been a lack of workforce, in the knowledge that many people stay in the areas where they were trained. That is part of our plan to make sure that there is more equitable distribution. We will also use the targeted enhanced recruitment scheme to incentivise trained doctors to work in hard-to-recruit areas.
Baroness Cumberlege (Con)
My Lords, thank my noble friend very much. He has certainly gone as far as he can today; I am afraid it is not far enough. We have had informal conversations on this and I think it is no surprise to either of us that I was hoping for a great deal more. We have heard 17 speakers and the debate has taken around an hour and a quarter. It has been such an interesting debate—I always learn more in this Chamber, and I learned so much more today.
I want to thank the 17 speakers who have supported my amendment. As far as I can see, not a single one had any reservations about Amendment 80, because it is so simple. It is not groundbreaking; it simply wants a plan that people can recognise, and one that will fill the gaps in the workforce requirements according to demography and the needs of our population. The amendment is simple and clear, and it will make such a difference, not only to those working in the NHS but to the public, whom we are here to serve.
I thank all those who have taken part, particularly from my own Benches, and all the other noble Lords. I have to say, with some regret, that I have not heard anything that counters the arguments put forward. I was hoping that after Committee we might have found some common ground, but I sense that we have not. I am disappointed by that, so I seek to test the opinion of the House.
Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
That the Regulations laid before the House on 28 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 31st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Instrument not yet reported by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, these two statutory instruments were laid before the House on Monday 28 February 2022 under the powers provided by the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, also known as the sanctions Act, and came into effect on 1 March.
We have announced the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions ever in response to Putin’s premeditated and barbaric invasion. Working with our allies, we will continue to ratchet up the pressure. We have already imposed sanctions on President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, five Russian banks, 120 businesses and a long list of oligarchs. Taken together, they target assets worth hundreds of billions of pounds. Importantly, we have also worked with our allies on this issue, agreeing to remove selected Russian banks from SWIFT and to target the Russian central bank, but we will go further.
We continue to stand with the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to face up to unbridled aggression. As I have said on a number of occasions, and as has been said by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, nothing is off the table.
To update noble Lords on where we have got to on sanctions, overnight on 28 February we laid two new pieces of legislation on financial and trade measures. The first included a ban on Russian sovereign debt, a prohibition to limit access to sterling and a ban on any Russian company issuing securities or raising finance in the UK. These significantly strengthen our arsenal of sanctions against Russia. This is alongside increased trade measures, including a prohibition on sensitive dual-use items that could be used by the military and banning a further range of critical-industry goods, from high-tech to aircraft.
Sanctions announced by the United Kingdom and our allies are already having an important impact. Central bank interest rates have more than doubled, international businesses are quickly divesting, and the rouble is now trading at roughly a quarter of what it was when Mr Putin took power. That will impact the institutions that prop up Mr Putin and his cronies. We will continue to work with our allies to bring forward further sanctions and press for collective action to reduce western reliance on Russian energy. We will also continue to use every lever at our disposal to support the legitimate Government of Ukraine and, importantly, the Ukrainian people.
This legislation follows the “made affirmative” procedure set out in Section 55(3) of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. These statutory instruments amend the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The powers in them will prevent Russian banks accessing sterling, which is a significant and new measure for the UK. Russian banks clear £146 billion of sterling payments through the UK financial system each year. Without the ability to make these payments in sterling, designated banks will not be able to pay for trade in sterling, invest in the United Kingdom or access UK financial markets. This matches the power the United States already has to prohibit access to the dollar, showing our joint resolve to remove Russia from the global financial and trade system. Around half of Russian trade is denominated in dollars and sterling. We have already used this power to designate Sberbank, the largest Russian bank.
The same statutory instrument prevents the Russian state raising debt here and isolates all Russian companies—of which there are over 3 million—from accessing UK capital markets. This measure goes further than those of our allies, banning all Russian companies from lucrative UK funding. Russian businesses listed in London have a combined market capitalisation of over £450 billion. This includes some of Russia’s largest state-owned enterprises, and the Kremlin is hugely reliant on their tax revenues. Banning them from raising debt in London will further increase the burden on the Russian state. Global giants such as Gazprom will no longer be able to issue debt or equity in London. In the last seven years, Russian companies have raised over $8 billion on the UK markets. We have put a stop to this.
The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2022 ban exports to Russia across a range of items, including the dual-use list and other goods and technology critical to Russia’s military-industrial complex and its maritime and aviation sectors. The SI also bans a range of technical and financial services related to such items. With this legislation, enacted in alignment with the United States, the European Union and other partners, we will collectively cut off Russia’s high-tech imports. This includes critical, high-end technological equipment such as microelectronics, telecoms, sensors and marine and navigation equipment. It will blunt Russia’s military-industrial and technological capabilities, gradually degrade Russia’s commercial air fleet, and act as a drag on Russia’s economy for years to come. The Department for International Trade and the Treasury will offer advice and guidance to UK businesses that are affected.
In conclusion, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is part of a long-term strategy. If we were to give ground now, Mr Putin’s strategy of aggression would never end. Instead, he would be emboldened, and his focus would simply move on to the next target. The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of this response. Importantly, we are acting in concert with our allies; collectively, our measures will deliver a devastating blow to Russia’s economy and military for years to come. The importance of co-ordinating with our partners will allow our sanctions to reverberate through Mr Putin’s regime.
We must remain firm and resolute in our response. We must rise to this moment and, importantly, continue to stand with Ukraine and its people. I am determined that we will continue to support them in that choice. I beg to move.
Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on what they have done so far, but does the Minister agree that this package has already been overtaken? It is already inadequate against the developing need. For example, the Germans have been able to impound the yacht belonging to Mr Usmanov in Hamburg, yet he still has access to his stately home in Guildford. How can that be?
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on all his efforts and those of Ministers in his and in other departments in both places. However, there is a concern in the country that the inevitable delay in passing the legislation which came into effect on 1 March has perhaps meant that a number of assets have been able to be moved. Are the Government concerned about this?
Looking at SI No.194—I hope I have identified it correctly—I understand that provision will be made for medicines and humanitarian aid to reach Ukraine. I want to press my noble friend as to what routes will be used. There are reports that pharmacies in Ukraine are already facing a shortage of medicines. There will need to safe routes in.
We can only imagine the level of injuries and casualties that are having to be dealt with at this time. Is there any way in which some of the casualties can be evacuated to neighbouring countries? Is it the Government’s desire to send teams of medically qualified people out from the United Kingdom to assist with this humanitarian effort?
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on having gone further and faster than they had originally planned once the gravity of the situation became clear. Although this may be the largest ever package of sanctions from the UK, can the Minister explain to the House why there are so few individuals on our sanctions list compared with the EU’s? Why, in a particular spirit of generosity, are we allowing 18 months from when the legislation comes into effect for those who wish to sell their houses and get the proceeds out of the country to do so?
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness’s last remark. I was on the Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, which sat in 2019. Clearly, 18 months is far too long if Clause 3 of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill is to have any immediate effect.
Is there any possibility of having a look at the enemy aliens Act of 1914? Of course, this is not an exact parallel, but there may be suitable provisions within that old legislation, which was renewed in 1919 after the end of the First World War. Could my noble friend’s officials perhaps look at this legislation to see if there are any useful provisions which could be modernised and brought forward to be of value nowadays—accepting that the United Kingdom is not “at war” with Russia?
While the measures which my noble friend has just announced are hugely valuable, there are three groups of people on whom we need to apply pressure, given that the Ukrainians are actuarily unlikely to win a fighting war, brave as they are and incredible as their resistance has been so far.
First, when the ordinary Russian public are queuing for bread in Moscow because the Russian economy has collapsed, they will begin to wonder why and they will begin to ask why Russian state television and other state-controlled media operations have been less than candid about why the Russian army has gone into Ukraine, its level of success and the number of their children who have been killed. I understand that the Russian army moves, when it can, not just with armoured vehicles, artillery and infantry but with mobile crematoriums, so that the soldiers who are killed are immediately disposed of and the Russian public do not get to know about the huge numbers who have been killed.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister and the Government on the tough regime of sanctions that has been introduced this week, and I agree with every word of the previous speech.
This is an extraordinary time. Civilians are being bombed and war crimes are being committed, and extraordinary times require special and extraordinary responses. Ministers are completely right to say that one of the ways to isolate a weakened Putin and to put him under pressure is to target him and his supporters and the money they have stolen from the impoverished people of Russia. As the Foreign Secretary has said, we should sanction Russian government Ministers, senior officials, Putin’s inner circle, the oligarchs who look after his funds, members of the parliament and senior members of the security services and armed forces.
We in this country have a particular responsibility, because so much of the money looted from the people of Russia has been spent and invested here in London. The way to identify the funds, the properties that such people have bought and the businesses they have invested in is to target those who enable them to spend and invest these funds. Just as accountants are required to report clients they suspect of tax evasion, so other businesses and professionals should be required to report people they suspect of benefiting from Putin’s regime. We should make it a legal requirement for lawyers, accountants, company formation agencies, financial services firms, investment companies and estate agents to report on the structures and holdings set up to allow sanctioned individuals to hold assets in this country. Surely, this would make the whole sanctions process swifter, simpler and more straightforward. Will the Minister look at including measures such as this in the sanctions Bill being brought forward in the next few days?
Secondly, is it true, as Politico reported this morning, that during the rollover of EU sanctions rules into British law during the Brexit process, the UK sanctions regime became significantly more procedurally complex because the new laws were amended to ensure procedural fairness for those being sanctioned, to strengthen measures those sanctions could take in response, and to ensure that sanctions were imposed in what was described at the time as a “proportionate manner”? If it is the case that these changes made the imposition of sanctions more complicated and difficult here in the UK than in the EU or the US, should we not use the legislation that the Minister is bringing forward to unravel these changes so that we can speed these processes up?
Thirdly, is it also the case, as reported in this morning’s Times, that the Government are finding it difficult—despite the work the Minister is doing, which I applaud, and the work of his officials, who I know are working flat out on this—to impose sanctions swiftly because of a shortage of lawyers and officials able to carry out the work? If so, what plans do Ministers have to recruit more people urgently to do this?
Finally, what happens to funds and property and other assets that are frozen or seized from people in this process? I suggest that they be held in trust to support the future democratic Government of a free Ukraine, to rebuild their economy.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I raise again with the Government the issue of cryptocurrencies. Effectively, Russians cannot now transfer roubles into dollars, euros and pounds sterling but they can transfer into cryptocurrency. The Minister will know that the Ukrainian Minister of Finance on Monday called on all the decentralised finance—the DeFi exchanges—to remove Russia from their schemes. Some, such as Coinbase, have done so, but others—Binance is the big one that comes to mind—have decided to sanction only the 100 names on the sanctions list and otherwise to allow free translation of roubles into cryptocurrency. We have heard from the Ukrainian Government that this is a serious mechanism for evading sanctions. Binance, which I mentioned, is registered in the Cayman Islands and therefore falls into the UK financial family. What more will the Minister do to prevent what may have looked like a loophole from becoming what is now growing into—a major escape hole?
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, these are dark days. I am delighted to follow and identify with the initial remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Austin. Our hearts are with the brave people of Ukraine. The Russian people will suffer long-term hardship but nothing compared to that befalling the extraordinary people of Ukraine.
It is no fault of the Russian people that they have no understanding of the reality of why they are being fully penalised. It is quite astounding that, from my calls to Russia, their perception of what is going on in Ukraine borders, frankly, on the fanciful. Disinformation is rife. These measures are very necessary and the UK Government are doing exactly what they have to do. They have my full support.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
My Lords, I fully support these sanctions and I congratulate the Government on the packages brought forward. I look forward with interest to the replies to be given to several of the detailed points raised about exactly how firmly they will be enforced.
I will look forward a little. The medium to long-term reality is that we are applying these sanctions against Russia, but Russia is almost certain in the end to achieve some degree of military success. A new reality will dawn, probably with a puppet Government in Ukraine, and the whole issue will start fading from international debate, from the media and so on. What are the Government’s plans for the medium term and, if necessary, the longer-term future in sustaining these sanctions and this level of pressure on the Russian regime?
In reality, there will be quite rapidly a tendency to put pressure on the Government to allow people to return to a new normality: to allow Russian companies to have access to the City of London again and to ease sanctions causing financial losses to lawyers, accountants and firms here. Is the Minister able to assure me that, as far as the British Government are concerned, we intend to retain this degree of sanctions until some satisfactory solution to the political problem is achieved, with a genuine agreement with a respectable Ukrainian Government who have proper regard to international law and national sovereignty? Will the British Government remain one of the more robust in the western lands? There will be considerable pressure to stop doing so much once we have, as it were, done our best to protect the Ukrainian regime during the conflict.
The sooner we start addressing that problem, the sooner we will start facing up to realistic problems that we must plan for. The Russians will undoubtedly, for example, try to ensure that the sanctions do quite a bit of damage to western economies, and will start trying to use their influence on the oil and energy markets to demonstrate that they can cause us some continuing loss unless we begin to lose interest—shall we say?—in the crisis that has so shocked the world. Are we determined to be one of those western countries that will seek to maintain the fullest force of sanctions we can unless and until a satisfactory solution is reached with the Russian regime?
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, who has just given the Government some wise advice which I hope the Minister will carry back to his colleagues.
We welcome the sanctions and look forward to the arrival of the economic crime Bill when it comes from the Commons the week after next. That has flushed out quite a lot of advice and some very strong comments from people who have been looking at the area of economic crime and kleptocracy in this country. One of the threads coming through, which goes back to the issue of what we can do now to stem that flight of capital, is that we are not fully using the anti-money laundering laws that we already have on statute in order to do that now. Will the Minister agree that more can be done with current legislation, which can be used to help stem the flow of money stolen from the people of Russia? Does he undertake to redouble efforts with all the bodies that have the power to use these anti-money laundering laws to get on and do it?
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I welcome these measures on behalf of these Benches and I thank the Minister for maintaining contact and giving advance notice.
These are both the culmination of weeks of lobbying from Parliament to have sight of further measures but also, as noted in this short debate—including by the Minister—the start of a process. They are of a differing character, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, indicated. Perhaps these are now of a more strategic nature which will be medium and long term, and perhaps they will have a different characteristic from the sanctions regime that we have put in place, which is different from what the EU scheme envisaged.
The noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, rightly raised a number of weeks ago with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, in the Home Office, why, as my noble friend Lord Fox indicated, we had not been using existing legislation. It has been highlighted for a number of months that the weak point in the global efforts against money laundering and kleptocracy is in fact the UK. Therefore, questions such as that of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, are quite right. There is a niggling fear that the UK is still behind the US and the EU in making sure that there is, as the Foreign Secretary said a number of weeks ago, no place to hide for kleptocrats. However, as we have seen, because the Government have now, due to persuasion from Parliament, brought forward the first of the economic crime Bills, there have been, regrettably, plenty of places to hide.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I too fully welcome the introduction of these sanctions. The Government will have our full support in holding Putin and his acolytes to account. I believe—and I said this earlier to the noble Lord—that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, is right; these sanctions are about not only how effective they will be, but how sustainable they will be. We need to focus on their sustainability as much as their effectiveness.
I reiterate the promise of the shadow Minister for Europe, my honourable friend Stephen Doughty, that we will work with the Government at speed to pass any necessary legislation to this effect. Russia’s invasion is an act of barbarism which requires a united response from all who value the principles of sovereignty and democracy, which must include measures to exclude it from the benefits of the global financial system.
Reflecting all contributions from noble Lords today, our only ask is that the Government go further and faster. I said this morning in Oral Questions that one of the problems with the strategy of ratcheting up is that there is an element of forewarning, which obviously has an effect. In the areas of asset freezing of Russian banks and oligarchs, there is a serious risk of asset flight. The noble Lord, Lord McDonald, mentioned this point very effectively. I asked the Minister this morning whether there has been any preliminary assessment of whether this has already happened. That is one of the things in terms of preparation. Like other noble Lords, we welcome the new legislation to set up a register of overseas entities holding UK property, but the decision, as noble Lords have pointed out, to delay its introduction for 18 months clearly allows oligarchs to escape sanctions.
I also mentioned to the Minister earlier that Labour’s Front Bench on the legislation in the House of Commons has tabled measures to require the new register to come into force within 28 days of the legislation passing. I hope that the Government accept this amendment. It is important that we remain united, as I have said before, as a Parliament and a country.
The steps taken to cut Russia out of the western economic system are particularly welcome, and the efforts on SWIFT and the Government’s push to get a global response to that has been really important. It has been well known that Russia has been developing alternatives to SWIFT since calls first emerged for Russia’s exclusion during the invasion of Crimea. I hope that the Minister can update the House on what assessment the Government have made of Russia’s potential for developing an alternative, again picking up a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, about the sustainability of our actions.
Given that not all Russian banks are currently included, the Government are right to call for an expansion. Has the FCDO had any recent high-level conversations about that? The Government should also consider how they can widen the number of banks that are prevented from accessing sterling and expand sectoral sanctions. The Minister mentioned those, but we should even be thinking of the insurance market. There are other areas and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, was right to focus on the interest groups that may have the most influence on Putin and his acolytes. I agree with the points he made. One not insignificant idea on export controls is to look at the luxury goods going into Russia. We know that cars are included, but there is a whole other range. That visibility could address the point made by the noble and learned Lord about soft power and how we raise awareness in Russian people’s minds about the impact of their Government’s action.
The designation of further individuals was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, and the point was raised on Radio 4’s “Today” programme. The Prime Minister suggested that more than 100 further persons could now be sanctioned. It is clearly now possible that those with links to the Kremlin will use that as a warning to sell their assets. We have seen that the Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, is seeking to offload the club, with a price tag believed to be £3 billion. His multimillion-pound residential properties are also up for sale. He says that proceeds will be donated to good causes, but the truth is that we will never know where that money will ultimately end up. Does the Minister believe that Mr Abramovich’s actions have been driven, at least in part, by the Prime Minister’s incorrect assertion that he was on the UK sanctions list? Do the Government agree that any form of pre-notification, or indeed inclusion of grace periods for certain banks, severely undermines the effectiveness of sanctions? I have heard the Minister repeatedly say in the Chamber in the past that he will not indicate or respond about future designations because it does precisely that.
We need to return to the point about how fast we designate people. When the Government extend their designations—I hope that will be soon—I hope that they will allow parliamentarians to suggest further targets. We had this debate about the mechanisms for informing the Government and the FCDO about possible targets when we debated the sanctions Bill. That intelligence may go beyond normal intelligence service facilities, but we should be open to those sorts of suggestions.
Finally, we must all remember that Russia is supported by Belarus and treat Lukashenko’s regime as belligerent. The sanctions announced against individuals in Belarus are a step in the right direction, but we should consider other options for deterring their involvement. Do the Government plan to match the measures announced by the EU for banning machinery exports to Belarus? As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, said, it is misguided to think that we have time on our side. For as long as the Kremlin continues this campaign of violence, we must hold to account all those who enable it. We welcome these sanctions but look forward to further measures being brought forward on a speedy basis.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their strong support for the sanctions more broadly and specifically for the measures that we are debating today. I say from the outset that I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Existing laws and processes should be fully leveraged to ensure that those actions that have been taken can be fully applied rather than our just waiting for new legislation to pass. The noble Lord, Lord Austin, and others, pointed to the importance of resourcing. I assure him that it is at the forefront of our thinking, both in the context of the FCDO and across government, including the Home Office.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed on the specific sanctions before us, but as I expected—it is no surprise to anyone—our discussion this afternoon has gone much wider. I am sure that will be reflective of the upcoming debates both on the legislation and on specific issues relating to the unravelling of the situation in Ukraine.
The noble Lord, Lord McDonald—I nearly said “noble friend”; he was certainly a friend when he was a PUS—will know all too well that I cannot comment on specific designations. Nevertheless, I hear what he says. In this regard, I assure him and all in your Lordships’ House that we are aligning ourselves. Where there are designations which are reflective of partners who may have moved forward more quickly or broadly, we are working closely with them. Questions are often asked about our alignment particularly with the EU. Noble Lords may be aware that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has been invited, along with representatives of the United States, to attend the European Union Foreign Affairs Council to ensure that we are fully aligned in how we move forward, both in the governance structures and in the specific designations. That underlines the challenge that we face but also, importantly, the collaboration and collective response from the Government of the United Kingdom and Governments of key partners, including those within the European Union. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is visiting key partners today as I speak.
The measures that we have taken are already having a significant impact, but I assure noble Lords that I have listened carefully to and made note of their suggestions as to what more we can do in consultation with our allies. As we debate legislation which enables what action we can take, further announcements will be made. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about Belarus. We will debate the specific application of those sanctions in the coming days. We will introduce further sanctions and prohibitions on financial services relating to foreign reserves exchange and asset management by the Russian central bank. These too will be before us in the coming days.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh rightly talked about ensuring humanitarian carve-outs from our sanctions. From our experience in Afghanistan, I have been very minded to ensure that this is part and parcel not just of our thinking but of our processes. My engagement earlier this week in Geneva with key partners working on the ground, including the various agencies of the UN but also the likes of the ICRC, was focused on the very issue that she highlighted.
The United Kingdom has also said that we will work with our allies in NATO. On Friday, NATO leaders reiterated their commitment to Article 5 in solidarity and support for Ukraine, which many noble Lords mentioned. We will also provide further humanitarian support, which has been announced by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The UK has also announced £100 million of new funding to aid efforts to build Ukraine’s resilience and reduce reliance on Russian energy supplies. I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Austin, about particular assets held and how they are best utilised. Past conflicts have also demonstrated the legal challenges that apply, depending on who owns what assets and the legitimacy of the Government of a given country to have a right to those assets. We can talk of conflicts past, on which we are still trying to unravel some of those issues. I am sure that noble Lords welcome the additional £100 million of new funding from the United Kingdom to build Ukraine’s resilience and reduce reliance on other areas, including energy and security.
My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier rightly highlighted the different groups. Again, that is very much part and parcel of our thinking on how we can target further work and co-ordination with our key partners. I am also minded very much to agree with him on the important issue of Russian disinformation. The Russian Government are conducting an aggressive set of information operations against Ukraine and NATO in a shameful attempt to justify action against Ukraine. I have to say to my noble and learned friend that I think we all take encouragement that the protests against Russia’s actions are not limited to countries outside Russia. We have certainly seen disgraceful scenes today of protests being again put down in St Petersburg by Russian military and security forces, but they show that the Russian people totally despise the actions being taken by President Putin, and we will work to see how we can strengthen our influence through soft power.
Whoever we target under designation criteria will remain subject to a test of appropriateness, as set out under the sanctions Act. I have made this point before: our values and our system acknowledges that we have a robust legal framework to our sanctions, and we will need to consider carefully how sanctioning individuals helps to achieve the purposes of the regime. The whole essence—and I say this as the UK’s Human Rights Minister—is very important to me in the fairness that we apply when we look at such issues. However, equally, we are very much committed as a champion of freedom and democracy to tackle corruption and illicit finance that directly undermine security and democracy. The UK will use our autonomous sanctions and other tools to send the clearest possible message that the UK is not a safe haven for illicit wealth or financial flows, including those from Russia.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, rightly raised the issue of cryptocurrencies, which are not so specific to the current instrument, but crypto-assets are economic resources and are therefore covered by the UK’s financial sanctions. I believe that with the economic crime Bill and other measures that will be taken there will be broader discussions about that issue. The noble Baroness is totally right that where we identify the so-called loopholes that have been used creatively, to put it that way, by those seeking to avoid particular rules, regulations and sanctions, we need to close them down as quickly as possible, but in conjunction with our partners and allies.
My noble friend Lady Wheatcroft raised the issue of property. My understanding is that properties subject to asset freezes are not directly seized, but they cannot be sold and employees cannot work in those properties. She raised the issue of the 18-month figure, which I think is very much within the provisions of the economic crime Bill that has been introduced. If I may, I shall write detailing the specifics. There are qualifications within that, but she is right to raise the issue. As I say, I am sure that it will come up in the debates we have on the Bill.
My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier also raised the issue of EU comparisons. As I have already said, we are working together closely. Where we are perhaps ahead or behind any of our key partners we are looking to align as quickly as possible on specific steps that we are taking.
On the issue raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke, he may not remember, but I remember as a much younger man listening to one of his speeches in a think tank. We were discussing Iraq at that time. My noble and learned friend articulated very clearly—and his views have come to pass—that an intervention in Iraq would not resolve the conflict, as some of it was embedded in religious differences based on 1,500 years of different perspectives. I agree with him that this is about the long haul. I assure my noble and learned friend that we are absolutely determined that the actions we are taking today will remain robust. The United Kingdom has been playing a leading role in ensuring that as we work with our international partners, particularly those in the European Union, we recognise their challenges and where there are issues, for example with Germany and energy, we make the case powerfully and constructively while recognising that we need to move together.
I say to my noble and learned friend that it will not just be about the resolve of the United Kingdom. This resolve will need to be reflected within the wider international community to ensure we are fully aligned. That is why, in terms of our ministerial engagement, we are speaking extensively with our key partners, not just on a daily basis but on an hourly one. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, other Ministers and I are travelling quite extensively. We are taking action, as was shown by the United Nations vote yesterday. We are working with the US, the EU, the G7 and the OSCE. It is good to see how we are working with other key partners and perhaps even with those partners or other countries where we do not see eye to eye and with countries where we have big differences, including China. The fact that China abstained not once but twice—once at the Security Council and then yesterday at the General Assembly—shows that diplomacy and diplomatic efforts are also vital in our response.
I have sought to cover the specifics—
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
With regard to China and the position of the UK, as the Minister will know, the UK is a global hub, not only for oil trading but also for shipping and for insurance of that global shipping. Especially with Russia and China, insurance—I think the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referenced insurance, but I did not pick up what the Minister had said about that—for shipping is one of the key elements in doing real harm to the Russian oil and gas sector. A lot of it is brokered through London. Can the Government please outline what they intend to do about this sector?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the specifics of shipping—the noble Lord had also raised wider issues such as bullion—are very much part of our thinking. On shipping specifically, the noble Lord will know that we have already taken the lead. My right honourable friend the Transport Secretary introduced certain measures that restrict the movement of Russian vessels and their landing in UK ports. The noble Lord is right to raise the broader issue of insurance and the hub and the role that the United Kingdom plays. We will be taking further measures in this respect and the details of them will follow.
As I have said throughout this whole process, as these measures are coming in, it is a very fluid situation. We are working as quickly as we can. There is the legislation in front of us that we are approving today—I hope that will be the case—and other measures already under way, some announced and some not. I do not want to pre-empt them. However, the noble Lord is quite right to raise the shipping sector. I hope that the steps specific to that sector that we have already taken indicate the Government’s route in terms of our intention to work further to limit, as the noble Lord says, the effectiveness of Russian activity in that sector.
Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
That the Regulations laid before the House on 28 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 31st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Instrument not yet reported by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Health and Care Bill
Thursday 3rd March 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Health and Care Act 2022 View all Health and Care Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 114-III Third marshalled list for Report - (3 Mar 2022)
16:33 - Division on Amendment 84 - Ayes: 145 / Noes: 122 - Amendment 84 agreed.
18:27 - Division on Amendment 108 - Ayes: 110 / Noes: 91 - Amendment 108 agreed.
18:53 - Division on Amendment 112 - Ayes: 80 / Noes: 91 - Amendment 112 disagreed.
Lord Lansley
“(4) A direction under section 13ZC may not be given in relation to a decision about the relative allocation of resources to integrated care boards.(5) A direction under section 13ZC may not be given in relation to a decision about the results of a procurement of goods or services provided for the purposes of the NHS in England.”
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, noble Lords will recall from Committee some substantial discussion about whether it was wise for the Secretary of State to take additional powers of direction in relation to NHS England. I suppose I should declare an interest since I gave the NHS commissioning board, or NHS England, the freedoms it currently enjoys. I am probably the person least likely to be persuaded that it is a very good idea to take all that away. After our debate in Committee, I thought it was probably sensible, rather than to seek to remove the powers of direction that the Secretary of State is given under Clause 39, to look at the exceptions to that power in new Section 13ZD and ask: are these all the exceptions that we should have?
On Amendment 83, the conclusion I reached was that there were at least two specific areas which are not mentioned in new Section 13ZD but should be; namely, limitations on the use of this power on the part of the Secretary of State. First, the local allocation of resources to integrated care boards—and the difficult decisions of trying to remedy the inequalities in access to healthcare services through the resource allocation process—is not something which any of us want the Secretary of State to interfere with; otherwise, it is sure to be regarded as being done for a political purpose, even if it might be done for another.
Secondly, there is the question of
“procurement of goods or services”.
After all the experience we have had over recent months, the last thing any of us wants is to go too far in the direction of the Secretary of State having a power in relation to procurement when that can perfectly well be given as a responsibility to NHS England. This is Amendment 83, and I hope that my noble friend, if he cannot accept the amendments, will give us some specific assurances in relation to the Secretary of State not using those powers.
In this group, I also put my name to Amendment 84, which would remove Clause 40—and, by extension, Schedule 6—from the Bill. This is about the Secretary of State coming in and acquiring more powers than was formerly the case. I was shadow Secretary of State for six years or so. During that time, I would have loved it if the then Secretary of State had all these powers to intervene in every reconfiguration, because I went around the country—as people are fond of reminding me—mobilising opposition to some of the ways in which the health service, led by the then Government, was trying to reconfigure services. This is not something that the Secretary of State or the current Government should wish for themselves or for their successors in office. I will not go back into all the arguments, but there are plenty of good examples of where, if the Secretary of State had this power, people would press the Secretary of State to use it—and it would be deeply unwise for a Secretary of State to get involved.
The justification on the part of the Government is that it stops this going on for ever. But there is a reason that these things go on for a long time—because they are intensely difficult, and the balances are very difficult to strike. Sometimes, the processes of consultation and public engagement take a long time. If the Government’s argument is that they are going leap in, intervene and settle it all quickly, both sides will yell when they do that. We can be absolutely certain of this. No one will be happy, and everyone will blame the Secretary of State. This is very firmly in the “be careful what you wish for” category. We would do the Government a great service by deleting Clause 40 from the Bill. If the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, pursues that, I will certainly support her. I beg to move Amendment 83.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
With the leave of the House, I thought it might be useful if I used my slot to speak right now on leaving out Clause 40. First, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for putting their names to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Patel—with whom I spoke this morning, and who is definitely on the mend, so I hope we will see him next week—said how strongly he supports the amendment. I will speak very briefly because we have already said much of what needs to be said about saving the Secretary of State from himself—as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, I think. This is what this amendment is about.
Clearly, this is not what the NHS asked for in the Bill. It did not ask for this power. It has been added to the Bill—by a previous Secretary of State, I suspect—and I hear rumours that even the current Secretary of State is not a great fan. Why would any Secretary of State want to have this power—to be lobbied and drawn into any minor local dispute, particularly as we head towards a general election?
I have a small anecdote. A small coastal town had a small hospital with an accident and emergency department. It could not be properly staffed, it regularly closed for random periods, and far too often patients arrived there only to be moved to the larger A&E 20 miles down the road. Proposals were made to close it—and of course, outrage ensued. “Save our A&E”, people said, even though it was unsafe. Local politics were poisonous, and the blame for the closure was thrown on opponents, whichever side they were on.
However, over time, good communications, clinical leadership and, eventually, bringing local people into the team, got the proposal moving. People understood what was needed and why, and the reconfiguration process went through its stages, with external reviews and analysis by the national clinical advisory team, which all gave reassurance. The clincher came when a distinguished clinician leading the review told a meeting that he would personally go and paint over the road signs for the A&E, because it was so unsuitable. It shut, which probably means that lives were saved.
The process of rational argument and proper analysis works, and on this occasion we should not just leave it to local politics to decide what reconfiguration means. The Secretary of State has enough powers to direct the whole NHS in its fullness, but should not be involved in what may be very small reconfigurations indeed. We agree, and many people in the NHS and its organisations agree, that this clause should be removed from the Bill.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I have no doubt that when the Minister responds he will say that the Secretary of State is likely to use this power very rarely. The point is that the moment the health service knows the Secretary of State has such a power, that will immediately influence its behaviour in relation to any improvements or major changes of services likely to lead to opposition from the local Member of Parliament. I think that the Minister is responsible for innovation in the health service, and this will put the kibosh on innovation and service changes.
Written on my heart is Kidderminster General Hospital. The Minister may not recall this, because it is a long time ago now, but Worcestershire Health Authority made proposals to reconfigure A&E services and close Kidderminster General Hospital. The then Member of Parliament, David Lock, who was a loyal member of the Government, bravely defended that decision. He lost his seat in 2001, and it has been written on the hearts of many MPs since then that they do not defend that type of change, because they might lose their seats.
I cannot believe that the Government wish to give the Secretary of State the nightmare of that kind of lobbying—I am trying to tempt the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, to intervene here, because he knows what MPs do. What we have at the moment is a very good system, at arm’s length, and it beats me why on earth the Government want to do this. We need to do the business and get rid of the clause. I suspect that we shall not see it back again.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 84 is intended to remove the powers of the Secretary of State, in Clause 40, to intervene in decisions on reconfigurations of health services. I said in Committee, and I say again, that those powers are very dangerous. We have recently seen how the Government’s powers to provide or withdraw funding for a proposal to, say, build a new school or improve infrastructure in a particular constituency have got them into trouble. Political considerations have trumped public interest. In the media they call that pork barrel politics—not a very complimentary phrase, I am afraid.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
I thank noble Lords for bringing this debate to the House today. I am sure that the Secretary of State will be grateful for the desire to save him from himself and his powers. Let me read out the following quote:
“If we went out to Parliament Square now and straw-polled people walking by, asking them who they thought was responsible for the NHS in England at a national level, I think we would wait a very long time before anyone gave any answer other than the Government and, by extension, the Secretary of State”.—[Official Report, Commons, Health and Care Bill Committee, 21/9/21; col. 393.]
These are not my words, but those of the Opposition spokesman during Committee in the other place.
One of the core pillars of the Bill is to ensure appropriate accountability for the NHS. This is of the utmost importance as we invest further in local service decision-making and delivery. It is critical that, in line with the aims of the Bill to empower local systems, the Secretary of State has the appropriate levers to meet the public expectation for ministerial accountability.
There has been some confusion about what the powers in the Bill will do, and if noble Lords will allow me, I will spend a moment on this to add clarity. Clause 39 will simply allow the Secretary of State to direct NHS England—and only NHS England—on matters where it already has functions. This is not a power over local bodies. Clause 40 and Schedule 6 will allow the Secretary of State to call in and decide on reconfiguration decisions. They do not remove any of the existing safeguards, including the requirement to consult or the role of the Independent Reconfigurations Panel in providing advice to the Secretary of State.
I understand the arguments put forward in Amendment 83, and I will take procurement first. We agree that it is inappropriate for the Secretary of State to be involved in individual procurement decisions. That is not the motive behind this power, and it is not the way it would be used. The regulation-making power inserted by Clause 70 prevents the Secretary of State being able to use this direction-making power to direct NHS England—
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
The Minister said that this was not the motive behind the power, but motive is not the point here. I am sure that the Secretary of State has the best of motives, as does the Minister, but the point is the effect of what the Bill says.
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for clarifying that. Of course, we completely understand the concerns that have been raised. The Secretary of State must use regulation-making powers where they exist, rather than using the power of direction to achieve what could be achieved under regulations.
Turning to the allocation of resources to the ICBs, the Government have no ambition to use this power to interfere with individual allocations of money to the system. It will not be used to interfere with the independent Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. NHS England will continue to make funding allocations to ICBs to support them to deliver functions via the target formula, in order to reduce inequalities between patients. We have attached safeguards to this power to make sure it is not misused. Any exercise of this power must be done transparently: it must be made in writing, be published and be made in the public interest. This will enable Parliament to challenge Ministers and hold them to account.
Turning to Amendment 84, Clause 40 and Schedule 6 will allow the Secretary of State to better support effective change and respond to stakeholder concerns, including views from the public, health oversight and scrutiny committees and parliamentarians, in a more timely way. The clause and schedule will ensure that key decisions made about how services are delivered are subject to democratic oversight.
It is a misapprehension that the Secretary of State currently has no role in the decision-making process for reconfigurations. He does and without these provisions that role will continue. However, currently, referrals usually come at a very late stage in the process, which represents neither good value for the taxpayer nor good outcomes for patients.
I understand the concerns from noble Lords, including former Ministers, about how these powers might be used. But I have been asked to make clear that we expect the vast majority of reconfiguration decisions to continue to be managed by the local system—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt, but does the Minister not take my point that it is not that Ministers will have to use those powers; it is that they have powers that will change behaviour immediately in the health service? That is the issue.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
Before the Minister answers that question, I wonder if he would be kind enough to answer two from me. He just gave a list of what the powers will not be used for, but could he tell us what sort of thing the powers will be used for and under what circumstances? Can he also say why previous Secretaries of State—some of whom are not very far from where I am standing now—did not feel the need for those powers and still felt themselves accountable for the health service?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank noble Lords for those interventions. If they will allow me, I will come to answer them in my remarks.
We understand the concerns about how these powers will be used. It is in the interests of nobody, least of all the Secretary of State, to be making every decision in the system, and stakeholders will be encouraged to continue to resolve matters locally where possible. Duties for those responsible for reconfigurations to involve patients and consult the local authority will continue. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State is ultimately accountable for all changes to the health service. Therefore, it is entirely consistent with democratic principles that he or she should have the ability to intervene where it is deemed to be in the interests of the public.
We recognise that, in exercising these powers in this clause and schedule, it will be vital that the Secretary of State receives expert and clinical advice. That is why the Independent Reconfiguration Panel will continue to provide independent advice to the Secretary of State, allowing them to benefit from its many years of experience. This will mean that the Secretary of State will have independent advice that will include the views of both overview and scrutiny committees and patients, and the clinical case for change—
Baroness Cumberlege (Con)
I thank my noble friend. On this clinical advice, he is aware of the enormous changes that were made to stroke services in London. In the reconfiguration that took place, many lives were saved. But when it came to east Kent, the reconfiguration request, which was to do with stroke services, sat on the Secretary of State’s desk for two years. I just wonder how many people died for that delay.
When I put forward an amendment in Committee, I said that a decision must be made within three months by the Secretary of State if it is before his view, on his desk. Delay costs lives. It is absolutely critical that decisions are made fast in these reconfigurations, because we will lose lives.
Lord Kamall (Con)
Indeed, sometimes it is absolutely critical that decisions are made quickly. Where there are concerns about the speed of those decisions, the Secretary of State may ultimately decide to intervene, subject to advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, overview and scrutiny committees, and patients, and based on the clinical case, should he or she decide to exercise powers under this clause.
I understand the concerns raised in this House and have heard the arguments presented today and in Committee. However, I think it would help if I reminded noble Lords that the Secretary of State’s powers included in the Bill are to ensure accountability. The public rightly want to hold the Government to account for the health service, and these powers allow that to happen effectively. The other place acknowledged that approach and supported it—
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
I cannot believe that the Minister meant to imply that all the structures being set up in this Bill are not accountable, because there are a whole lot of accountability measures in this Bill which will hold to account the people making these decisions without the Secretary of State. One might think from what he just said that the powers are very narrow.
But I draw his attention to page 206 of the Bill. In proposed new Section 68A(4)(3)(a), it just says that the Secretary of State can decide whether a proposal goes through or not, but in proposed new Section 68A(4)(3)(b) it says that the Secretary of State can intervene in the “particular results” that have to be achieved. In proposed new Section 68A(4)(3)(c) he can decide the procedure and other steps that should be taken in relation to the proposal. In proposed new Section 68A(4)(3)(d) there is the
“power to retake any decision previously taken by the NHS commissioning body”.
These seem to be very broad powers; they are not just small intervention powers by the Secretary of State.
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Baroness raises some important points, but I remind her that, alongside those, she should consider safeguards and limitations that are being put in place to address these concerns and the importance of ensuring due accountability for health service delivery. I understand the strong feeling among noble Lords and have tried to go as far as I can in addressing those concerns. I once again, perhaps in vain, ask noble Lords to think about the assurances that have been given and not to move their amendments when they are reached.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. In particular I am grateful for his specific assurances on the powers of procurement and the question of resource allocation. We can be pretty confident that the Secretary of State would not interfere with the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation or the NHS England response to it. If the Secretary of State were to start messing with the formula, we would get into a very difficult place.
I am still of the view that there was a very good reason we gave NHS England greater freedoms. I think it would not have been possible for NHS England to have published its Five Year Forward View in 2014 or even more so the Long Term Plan in 2019, in circumstances where it had occupied the same relationship with the Secretary of State as it did in the past.
This is taking NHS England from its current degree of independence to something that it was not in the past, but is a little more ambiguous. It will be difficult, for precisely the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, explained, for the NHS to feel that, when the successor to the long-term plan is published by the successor to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, it is the NHS’s own plan. That has been very important; Ministers have said it a thousand times. Why do we not let that happen? The measures in Clause 39 take a real risk of infringing on the idea that it is the NHS’s own plan.
It does not mean that the Secretary of State is not accountable, but that they are accountable in ways that they can legitimately control: the resource allocation and an expectation of the priorities and outcomes. That is where the Secretary of State should be putting the weight of the Government, not in trying to decide how outcomes in the NHS are best achieved. I do not agree in principle with what is proposed in Clause 39, but I am not going to press that point.
I will, however, if the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, pushes it, support her on Clause 40. I say to my noble friend: look at Schedule 6. The structure of it does not even mention the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. As soon as there is a proposal for a reconfiguration from any of the NHS bodies, it quite clearly places in the hands of the Secretary of State the responsibility to decide whether to go ahead with it or not. That will be exactly the moment when the Secretary of State is drawn in and is not able to be extricated from it.
My noble friend has simply to look at the example of the reconfiguration of congenital paediatric cardiac services to realise that no sensible Minister would have been drawn into that debate at an early stage with any confidence of being able to make a decision that would have been accepted by any of the parties to that debate.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
The noble Lord raises the congenital paediatric cardiac case, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, raised the Kent stroke question. On that question, the estimate was that 40 to 50 people will have died or lost their ability to live independently as a result of that two-year delay. Is it not the case that, for the very reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has just set out, those kinds of delays will now be invisible to the naked eye because these proposals will never get off the ground due to the self-censoring of necessary clinical change that would save lives, precisely as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath described?
Lord Lansley (Con)
We all know that when these proposals come forward, there is a lot of local pressure. In many cases, it will be local pressure that is transmitted to the Secretary of State by Members of Parliament who are—
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, it might be worth reminding noble Lords that on Report, noble Lords only speak twice for short questions of elucidation.
Lord Lansley (Con)
The noble Lord was elucidating something to which I was responding. That is my view. Anyway, I was not planning to go on at any length. My point is very straightforward. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, that will be transmitted to the Secretary of State at an early stage, before the point where the Secretary of State can, in any practical way, distance himself or herself from the decision by giving it to the independent reconfiguration panel. There is a process out there. I am a Conservative, and we do not change things that are not broken. This is not yet broken. It is a system that has been used tolerably well and we should stick with it, so I support leaving out Clause 40. However, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 83.
Lord Kamall
(a) the reference”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on another amendment which provides that references in new section 26A of the NHS Act 2006 to effects of a decision in relation to certain matters include its effects in relation to inequalities with respect to those matters.
“(b) the reference to effects of a decision in relation to the health and well-being of the people of England includes a reference to its effects in relation to inequalities between the people of England with respect to their health and well-being;(c) the reference to effects of a decision in relation to the quality of services provided to individuals includes a reference to its effects in relation to inequalities between individuals with respect to the benefits that they can obtain from those services.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that references in new section 26A of the NHS Act 2006 to effects of a decision in relation to certain matters include its effects in relation to inequalities with respect to those matters.
“NHS trusts: duties in relation to climate change
After section 26A of the National Health Service Act 2006 (inserted by section 45 of this Act) insert—“26B Duties in relation to climate change etc(1) An NHS trust established under section 25 must, in the exercise of its functions, have regard to the need to—(a) contribute towards compliance with— (i) section 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008 (UK net zero emissions target), and(ii) section 5 of the Environment Act 2021 (environmental targets), and(b) adapt to any current or predicted impacts of climate change identified in the most recent report under section 56 of the Climate Change Act 2008.(2) In discharging the duty under this section, NHS trusts must have regard to guidance published by NHS England under section 13ND.””Member’s explanatory statement
The new Clause would require NHS trusts, in exercising their functions, to have regard to certain matters relating to the environment, including climate change.
Lord Kamall
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment means that any order imposing a limit on the capital expenditure of an NHS foundation trust may only relate to a single financial year (rather than spanning more than one financial year).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment requiring an order under new section 42B(1) of the National Health Service Act 2006 to relate to a single financial year.
“(4A) An order under this section may be made at any time during or before the financial year to which it relates.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment requiring an order imposing a limit on the capital expenditure of a foundation trust to relate to a single financial year. It clarifies that although the limit must relate to the whole financial year, the order imposing it may be made part-way through that year.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment requiring an order under new section 42B(1) of the National Health Service Act 2006 to relate to a single financial year.
Lord Kamall
(a) the reference” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on another amendment which provides that references in new section 63A of the NHS Act 2006 to effects of a decision in relation to certain matters include its effects in relation to inequalities with respect to those matters.
“(b) the reference to effects of a decision in relation to the health and well-being of the people of England includes a reference to its effects in relation to inequalities between the people of England with respect to their health and well-being;(c) the reference to effects of a decision in relation to the quality of services provided to individuals includes a reference to its effects in relation to inequalities between individuals with respect to the benefits that they can obtain from those services.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that references in new section 63A of the NHS Act 2006 to effects of a decision in relation to certain matters include its effects in relation to inequalities with respect to those matters.
“NHS foundation trusts: duties in relation to climate change
After section 63A of the National Health Service Act 2006 (inserted by section 59 of this Act) insert—“63B Duties in relation to climate change etc(1) An NHS foundation trust must, in the exercise of its functions, have regard to the need to—(a) contribute towards compliance with—(i) section 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008 (UK net zero emissions target), and(ii) section 5 of the Environment Act 2021 (environmental targets), and(b) adapt to any current or predicted impacts of climate change identified in the most recent report under section 56 of the Climate Change Act 2008.(2) In discharging the duty under this section, NHS foundation trusts must have regard to guidance published by NHS England under section 13ND.””Member’s explanatory statement
The new Clause would require NHS foundation trusts, in exercising their functions, to have regard to certain matters relating to the environment, including climate change.
Lord Kamall
“(2AA) For the purposes of subsection (2)(da) (as read with subsection (2A))—(a) a reference to the effects of decisions in relation to the health and well-being of the people of England includes a reference to the effects of the decisions in relation to inequalities between the people of England with respect to their health and well-being; (b) a reference to effects of decisions in relation to the quality of services provided to individuals includes a reference to the effects of the decisions in relation to inequalities between individuals with respect to the benefits that they can obtain from those services.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that references in new subsection (2)(da) of section 96 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to effects of a decision in relation to certain matters include its effects in relation to inequalities with respect to those matters.
Lord Lansley
“(5A) Rules under subsection (1) may not be framed by reference to whether the provider is in the public or, as the case may be, private sector.”
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will not go on at great length because noble Lords have heard more than sufficient from me today, but this group brings us to what is known in the trade as the provider selection regime: that is, how the NHS goes about the process of commissioning services from a range of providers and the relationship between that and the choice that is available to patients. I am going to refer to my amendments, Amendments 98 and 99, and, without going on about it, I commend Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. Finding out whether people have actually experienced choice and whether that is helpful to them is a useful thing to do, and I am not sure whether it features in the current electronic referral system. It would be useful to add it in.
The words of Amendment 98 are in fact already in the regulations that the NHS currently lives by because, born of the previous experience when there were discriminatory payment arrangements for private sector providers relative to public sector providers—ie, more advantageous payment arrangements for the private sector than the public sector—in the 2012 legislation we legislated to prevent that happening in the future. The current Bill removes said prohibition on discrimination on the basis of the ownership, public or private ownership, of a provider.
Noble Lords might think, “Ah, this is trying to avoid us discriminating against the private sector.” This was actually included in order to prevent the Government or the NHS discriminating in favour of the private sector. There may be arguments for it in certain circumstances because NHS bodies often have, as it were, fully depreciated assets and to create additional capacity the private sector very often has to invest capital and has to meet the costs of capital as well as the revenue costs of providing services. None the less, we addressed all that and took the view that we did not want any discrimination: we wanted no competition on price, but we wanted competition on quality. That is why, to be perfectly frank, I am testing the Government’s intentions in omitting something that was a central plank of policy for the 2012 legislation.
On Amendment 99, if I recall there is language in the original White Paper from last year, which set the provisions for the Bill, which referred to “any qualified provider” and made it clear that it was the Government’s intention to maintain the existing choice arrangements and access to any qualified provider. Indeed, I think it said that it would “bolster” the system, although I am not sure whether that is happening anywhere. The amendment is really intended to test a particular issue that arose. I am a very sad person, and I was looking at the service conditions for the NHS standard contract; the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, will know them intimately. There is a point at which commissioners who are presented with people who wish to access other providers, who have a contract with another commissioner, are not required to extend that service to them. The way in which it was written in the standard contract was to talk about circumstances where the originating contract does not refer to the address—I think it said the postal address—included in the originating contract. My point to the Government is that this is absurd. There can be geographic limitations, but we should aim not to make them as limiting as the reference to a postal address in the originating contract would have made them.
The wider point is that, if one looks at the new provider selection regime, one sees that there is a process by which commissioners—the decision-making bodies commissioning services—go through a process of saying, “What are the circumstances of commissioning providers?” They ask whether it is circumstance 1, extending the existing arrangement; circumstance 2, going to a different provider; or circumstance 3, going to competition. The language of circumstance 2 is:
“where the decision-making body wants to use a different provider and the decision-making body considers it can identify a suitable provider without running a competitive procurement process”.
This is something that it will be readily able to do in many cases. A commissioner can say, “This is the circumstance. We want to go to a different provider and we know who we want to go to—that’s fine, we’ll give them the contract.”
Circumstance 3 is
“where the decision-making body cannot identify a single provider or group of providers that is most suitable without running a competitive process; or to test the market”.
The body could choose to test the market, but of course more than subtly. Whereas, in the past, the NHS tended to think that it needed to test the market in circumstances in which the legislation did not actually require it to, there is no such thing as compulsory competitive tendering in the 2012 legislation, or the regulations made under it. But now it has shifted completely the other way, and NHS bodies will be able broadly speaking to choose not to use competition at all. The question is whether that will really be sustainable. In the short run, access to the private sector may well be quite widespread, and there may well be a significant element of choice available to patients through the electronic referral service, but that may be closed down in years ahead, if these provisions are implemented in the way in which they are set out.
I issue a further warning to my noble friends. If you are a provider of services to the NHS and you believe that a decision has been made unfairly or inappropriately by the NHS, there is a standstill on the contract, you have 30 days, and you can send in a complaint, in effect, to the decision-making body, which then decides whether it has done the right thing. There is no independent process whatever, so it seems that the chances of providers resorting to law to challenge what they regard as unfair decisions on the part of decision-making bodies in the NHS rise dramatically with the implementation of these processes.
All that said, I hope what I can hear from my noble friends on the Front Bench is that what they said in the White Paper a year ago in February 2021 remains true: that they are going to sustain patient choice, that they will use the resources of NHS providers and beyond to enable us to fulfil our very demanding recovery programme, that they will think hard about whether the precise language in some of the respects that I have outlined is fair to providers, and that commissioners in the NHS will use their procurement capabilities to deliver best value for patients. I beg to move Amendment 98.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is contributing remotely.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I start by commending Amendment 100 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and I look forward to hearing him speak on it. It is an excellent idea to ask people how much choice they have actually had when offered treatment. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for explaining his two amendments, and I would like to say to him that he is not sad for carrying out his role in your Lordships’ House with interest and care. His expertise in matters that may leave others cold should be celebrated. The amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, ask that trade unions should be part of consultations on private providers, and that seems sensible.
I wish to focus, albeit briefly, on Amendment 106A, which proposes that Clause 70 be left out, and which will be spoken to later by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton; I apologise to her that under the remote rules I have to speak first. I will confine my remarks to the views of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s 15th report, in which paragraphs 17 and 18 make plain its views about these proposed procurement arrangements and regulations. The first point that it notes is that the memorandum, at paragraph 481, says that
“full analysis has not been completed and there has not been time to produce a more developed proposal.”
Why on earth do the Government wish to bring into force legislation that they admit they have not had time to analyse, let alone produce a more developed proposal for? We from our Benches, along with other noble Lords, have repeatedly said that the Cabinet Office procurement Bill is likely to overtake the needs for NHS-specific procurement regulations.
Paragraph 17 of the DPRRC Report gets straight to the heart of the issue and provides a response to the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, has tabled, starting with Amendment 101 in this group. It says:
“We do not accept that the inclusion of regulation-making powers should be a cover for inadequately developed policy.”
It is therefore more than a little surprising to see a slew of government amendments on this issue that, in the group under discussion, strengthen the powers under regulation.
Paragraph 18 of the Delegated Powers Committee report states that:
“Ministers would not ordinarily propose clauses in one Bill possibly requiring imminent amendment in a subsequent Bill without expecting to face questions. The House may wish to seek further and better particulars from the Minister concerning the possible effect of any Cabinet Office procurement Bill on the Health and Care Bill, and … to press the Minister on why it was necessary to include provision, based on inadequately developed policy, in the Health and Care Bill when the Government intend to introduce a procurement Bill.”
Not only have we tried this at an earlier stage, but there have been meetings between Committee and Report, and it appears that the Government are determined to press on. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has concerns about the Government’s intentions on the clause and its amendment; if she chooses to call a Division on stand part, we from these Benches will support her.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendments 98A, 98B and 98C. Among other things, the Bill is designed to facilitate the outsourcing to private contractors of NHS services currently carried out in-house. That is the Government’s policy for the NHS, although it is firmly opposed by most of the citizens of this island.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, my Amendment 100 requires NHS England to
“conduct a public survey of whether patients have been offered choices about where they obtain treatment and must report to the Secretary of State what action they will take as a result of the survey.”
I am grateful for the support of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Lansley, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Cumberlege and Lady Brinton.
Currently, there is no regular survey of whether patients are aware of their right to choose or of how many have exercised it. The last NHS England official survey of whether patients were aware of their choices was in 2015, when just 47% of those questioned said they were aware.
Waiting times vary enormously by geography. Knowing about the right to choose could mean a significant cut in the waiting time for treatment. For example, waiting times for orthopaedic care vary from 89 weeks in Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to 25 weeks in the relatively nearby Milton Keynes trust. Recent polling by the Royal College of Surgeons showed that 73% of patients questioned would willingly travel to a surgical hub which was not their local hospital if they could be treated more quickly.
There is no system for monitoring whether patient choice is working. Amendment 100 fills this gap and restores the situation to where it was before 2015. I hope the Minister will accept this simple amendment in the interests of patients.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am implacably opposed to privatisation of the NHS—not for ideological reasons, although the Green Party is strongly opposed as well. I think it is inefficient. Privatisation has not worked. It has failed to deliver on promises to increase quality, decrease cost and help patients. Rather than save money through reduced bureaucracy, the main cost savings of privatisation seem to be in cutting the terms and conditions—chiefly the pay and pensions—of staff. If private companies can compete for public services, let them compete on a level playing field, rather than simply capturing staff and paying them less.
I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explained his Amendment 98 because I had understood it completely the other way around—that he was protecting private services. I was going to have a word with him afterwards about it, but there is now no need.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, just said, most people in Britain do not want a privatised NHS. They want a public service because that is what will give them the best results.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, this group contains a number of helpful amendments. I welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled in response to the many and varied discussions we have had. I am grateful for this positive and constructive approach, which proposes transparency at the heart of procurement.
We have discussed with the Government at some length why the NHS has to have its own bespoke procurement regime, which the Bill paves the way for. We have seen two consultation documents about the scope, scale and nature of this bespoke regime. Although they seem quite sensible, we have been assured that the Government feel that the regulations will be based on a sound foundation.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, is quite right about patients not knowing their right to choose. It is a hole in the provision. The right to choose is very important. People absolutely do not know that they have it.
While not being explicit, the new providers’ selection regime will actually get us to where Labour tried to get in 2010 with the NHS as the preferred provider, at least as far as the many complex and expensive services provided by NHS trusts, FTs and other core patient-facing services are concerned. Therefore, the principle is fine. The problem is that it does not extend across everything that the NHS procures, and that is partly the nub of what my noble friend said in his amendments, which I will return to in a moment.
Our view is that in any circumstances where competitive procurement is to be used, the national rules apply, so why does the NHS need a bespoke system for all non-clinical stuff? We have never actually had an answer to that, except that the NHS comes up with wider regulations, and we feel that that it is a waste of time and effort. However, we have had ample assurances from the Government that the NHS bespoke regime will be properly documented and all the rules set out, with some route to enforcement and challenge. We are assured that there will be no award of contract without applying the process that is set out—no back doors and no flexibility when contracting with private companies. With those assurances in mind and the knowledge that campaigners and trade unions will be vigilant and might even stump up for judicial review, and because of the ICB amendments agreed earlier in the week, we will get more or less what we wanted and we will not try to remove Clause 70 from the Bill.
I turn to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Hendy, who has our sympathy and approval. Had we been discussing this at a different time of day, we may have sought to support some of his amendments, and certainly the spirit of them. He has posed a legitimate question to the Minister: why do the Government not insist on good employment of staff as a criterion for their procurement regime?
We on this side of the House remain opposed to the outsourcing of NHS-funded services such as cleaning, catering and many others because we can see that it has led to staff being transferred into the private sector, corners being cut and standards dropping. It has been a symptom of chronic underfunding and it is a terrible long-term strategy. It has of course been completely counterproductive because it has sometimes meant that our hospitals have not necessarily been cleaned, serviced or looked after as we might have wished them to be. We have tried at various stages to introduce safeguards and to outlaw altogether the NHS’s tax-dodging habit of setting up SubCos, but those are probably matters for another day.
I would say to my noble friend that I am not sure that changing the procurement regime is the best way forward for this issue, although he has our support in the politics and context in which he introduced his amendments.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, before addressing the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Warner, it may be helpful if I speak to the six government amendments in this group: Amendments 101 to 104, 106 and 107. The first five of these amendments would amend Clause 70, which inserts a new regulation-making power in relation to the procurement of healthcare services, Section 12ZB, into the NHS Act 2006. They amend the clause so that regulations, when they are made under this power, will have to include provision for procurement processes and objectives, for steps to be taken when competitively tendering and for transparency, fairness, verifying compliance and the management of conflicts of interest. Amendment 106 also requires NHS England to issue guidance on the regulations.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend, in particular for the helpful explanation of the impact of the response to the consultation published yesterday, which I think moves us in the right direction on the service conditions in the standard contract on that point. I am grateful for my noble friend’s assurance on Amendment 98 as well. Clearly the power is available in the regulations to make sure that the non-discriminatory element of the procurement regulations can be brought forward in due course, so it need not be in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 98.
Lord Warner
“6H Survey relating to patient choiceNHS England must annually conduct a public survey of whether patients have been offered choices about where they obtain treatment and must report to the Secretary of State what action they will take as a result of the survey.”
Lord Warner (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister for his reassurances on the issue of patient choice. I suggest that the arrangements that he outlined in his response to my amendment are not well known, even to those such as the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, so I wonder whether he might look at the arrangements for publicising that information. In the meantime, I shall not move my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment changes the principal regulation-making power in relation to procurement so that regulations under the power will have to include provision for procurement processes and objectives.
“(1A) Regulations under subsection (1) must include provision specifying steps to be taken when following a competitive tendering process.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires procurement regulations to include provision specifying steps to be taken when following a competitive tendering process.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the changes made by another amendment to the principal regulation-making power in relation to procurement.
“(3) Regulations under subsection (1) must, in relation to the procurement of all health care services to which they apply, make provision for the purposes of—(a) ensuring transparency;(b) ensuring fairness;(c) ensuring that compliance can be verified;(d) managing conflicts of interest.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires procurement regulations to make provision, in relation to all health care services to which they apply, for the purposes of ensuring transparency and fairness and that compliance can be verified and managing conflicts of interest.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I shall not call Amendment 105, as it has been pre-empted by Amendment 103.
“(4) NHS England must publish such guidance as it considers appropriate about compliance with the regulations.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires NHS England to publish guidance about compliance with any procurement regulations that are made.
“(b) in section 272 (orders, regulations, rules and directions), in subsection (6), after paragraph (zzd), insert—“(zze) regulations under section 12ZB,”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment means that regulations made under new section 12ZB of the National Health Service Act 2006 (as inserted by Clause 70 of the Bill) will be subject to the affirmative procedure rather than the negative procedure.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
“Health service procurement and supply chains: genocide convention obligations
(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision for the purposes of ensuring that procurement of all goods and services for the purposes of the health service in England is consistent with the United Kingdom's obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), procurement is not consistent if a Minister of the Crown has assessed that there is a serious risk of genocide in the sourcing region.(3) A Minister of the Crown must make an assessment as to whether there is serious risk if the chair of a relevant select committee of either House of Parliament requests one, and must complete such assessment within two months.”
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I should note, for the convenience of the House, that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be taking part in this debate remotely.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, as we move to Amendment 108, I should declare my interests as set out in the register: my involvement in a number of all-party parliamentary groups, and the fact that I am patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response. I should also declare my support for the other two amendments in the group, Amendments 162 and 173, which will be spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who has trenchantly and consistently pursued the arguments around forced organ harvesting and the public exhibition of anonymous cadavers from Chinese jails. I have spoken in favour of those amendments previously and will not repeat my arguments today.
Like those two amendments, Amendment 108 is an all-party amendment, which was tabled in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and by myself, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is a sponsor today. It would have been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but he has had to self-isolate in Cumbria with Covid, and we all wish him a speedy return to his place.
Yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, was able to attend an online meeting with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and he asked me to move the amendment in his place. I thank both Ministers for their constructive engagement, and perhaps I might pursue further with them some of the arguments and issues raised yesterday. During our discussion the department told me that it had found no evidence of child labour, forced labour or unethical behaviour. Indeed, that was a repeat of a statement made to me in a parliamentary reply by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, when he was a Minister.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I am sorry to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is unwell, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his excellent introduction to Amendment 108, to which I have added my name. I also support the other two amendments in this group, which are in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who I commend for his consistent campaign on these issues over the years. His Amendment 162 would ensure that there must be informed consent, with no coercion or financial gain, when organs are donated or when UK citizens go abroad for transplants. Amendment 173 would ensure that cadavers would no longer be used for public display unless it is the body of a person which is at least 100 years old, because, as with Amendments 108 and 162, there is real concern that people have been forced to have organs removed, or their bodies have been used after their death—sometimes murder, sometimes execution—but without their consent.
Returning to Amendment 108, it has two clear objectives: the first is to prevent the Government procuring health service goods produced in regions where there is a serious risk of genocide. While the Government say there is no evidence, a New York Times investigation found that PPE made through the Xinjiang labour transfer programme was present in US and international healthcare systems. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, there is increasing evidence that the NHS has procured such items already.
The second objective is to create a process through which the UK Government can be required to assess regions for serious risk of genocide and publish their assessment. This is necessary because the UK Government have given out PPE contracts worth almost £150 million to Chinese firms with links to forced labour abuses in the Uyghur region.
The Government have said that genocide amendments are not appropriate in the Bill and that the Modern Slavery Act 2015 offers protection, but the reality is that the UK is not leading the world here. The US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act creates a “rebuttable presumption” banning all goods sourced in whole or in part from the Xinjiang region of China, unless clear and persuasive evidence can be provided to the contrary; and the European Union is now considering bringing forward new legislation to ban products made with forced labour from entering the European market. The UK’s Modern Slavery Act does not go nearly as far as either of these proposals, merely requiring that companies publish—but not that they act upon—modern slavery statements. People’s lives and human rights are at stake here. Frankly, it is time the UK followed suit with stronger legislation. This amendment would be a strong and careful start that means government and Parliament cannot look away. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
I shall speak very briefly, because I am conscious of the time and that we have a lot of business to do. This amendment seeks nothing more than to create another human rights threshold for health procurement, adding to those that are already in place, which seek to address slavery but have major shortcomings, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has just described. I keep hearing it being said that a health Bill is not the proper place for an amendment concerning genocide. Well, I am afraid that I do not agree. This is an appropriate place.
We are not asking the Government or the Department of Health to decide whether there is a genocide taking place; we are asking the Minister to take on the duty to assess whether the source of instruments, test kits, protective equipment or whatever may be from forced labour and a situation of slavery. Xinjiang province is the obvious place for us to be concerned about, but there are other places—for example, in India—that we should be concerned about too, and I think that placing that duty on the shoulders of the Minister is a way of concentrating minds. That is why I really press this amendment and I pay tribute to the way the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has so assiduously pursued this. That is all I wanted to say, but I will support this amendment and I urge the House to support it too.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great honour for my two amendments to be grouped with that in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Blencathra. As the noble Lord has discussed the supply chain, I should declare my interest as president of the Health Care Supply Association, although I am not speaking on its behalf when it comes to my strongly supporting his amendment, which sets the context for my own two amendments.
We debated this issue very fully in Committee. I think that the House believes strongly that the commercial exploitation of body parts in all forms is unethical and unsavoury. When it is combined with mass killing by an authoritarian state, we cannot stand by and do nothing. In 2019, the China Tribunal, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, stated:
“The Tribunal’s members are certain—unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”
In June this year, 12 UN special procedure experts raised the issue of forced organ harvesting with the Chinese Government in response to credible information that Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians had been killed for their organs in China.
Currently, human tissue legislation covers organ transplantation within the UK, where we have a very ethical approach, but it does not cover British citizens travelling abroad for transplants, and British taxpayers’ money will pay for anti-rejection medication regardless of where the organ was sourced or whether it was forcibly harvested from prisoners of conscience.
I shall not repeat all that I said in Committee, but I have had a helpful meeting with Ministers for which I thank them. In that meeting and in subsequent meetings, the Minister was concerned that my amendment in relation to organ tourism would penalise vulnerable people seeking to pay for a transplant. I have thought about that carefully, but, in the end—and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, expressed so well why this Bill is highly appropriate for these kind of amendments—we have to draw a line in the sand. That is particularly so today, in the horrific circumstances that we meet. We have to draw a line in the sand and send out a powerful message globally that we will not support these abhorrent practices in any way.
My Amendment 162 comes later, but I shall seek the opinion of the House at that time.
Baroness Northover (LD)
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has very effectively introduced the amendments to which I have put my name, Amendments 162 and 173, and I wish briefly to express the support of these Benches for those. We also support Amendment 108, to which my noble friend Lady Brinton has put her name.
As noble Lords know, we have been inching forward on these matters with Ministers, and I welcome that forward movement. I note, however, recent warnings from Ministers that, for example, there are “opportunity costs” in implementing these measures, as ensuring that proper standards are enforced requires effort and potential cost. I understand that. Nevertheless, we cannot allow ourselves to become complicit in any way in organ tourism where the source of those organs is forced or where selling the organ is to address appalling poverty.
Some say that this trade may be declining in and from China. If so, that is welcome and might reflect international pressure, not least on the Chinese medical profession. It is not clear that those involved in the China Tribunal and the Uyghur Tribunal would agree that it is declining.
Even if we were to accept that, and Ministers seemed to indicate that they thought that might be the case, we are also hearing now of an increase in the selling of organs in Afghanistan because of the dire situation there. There have been recent reports of journalists seeing the scars of those who have sold their kidneys. That is a terrible indictment of our walking away from Afghanistan and failing to address the appalling conditions that we have left there. How can we regard such potential “donors” as being anything other than the most extremely vulnerable? How can you put that up against the vulnerable who may need to have donations?
As for the bodies exhibitions, we have discussed before how distasteful they are—but then we realise with horror exactly where these bodies seem to have been sourced: among other things, from Chinese prisons. We should never have condoned that, turning a blind eye. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, who argued in Committee that they should simply be banned. There is no reason whatever to agree to their continuation.
I now hear that the Government may argue—and this is incredibly familiar—that these amendments are flawed. As the noble Earl knows, often Ministers are given briefs that say, “This is a flawed amendment, so turn it back.” I am very familiar with them. In those circumstances, the best thing is for your Lordships to pass these amendments, because Ministers know, or should know, that the essence is extremely clear, and with government lawyers we can work out how best to sort out any unintended consequences. I hope that I do not hear anything about these amendments being flawed—and I say that to the Box. I therefore commend them to your Lordships.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, and I shall speak specifically and briefly to Amendments 162 and 173.
These amendments are updates to the Human Tissue Act, which was born out of public outrage following the Alder Hey scandal, when over 100,000 organs, body parts and entire bodies of foetuses and stillborn babies were stored in NHS facilities. The body parts of dead patients, including children, were removed without consent. Today, the Human Tissue Authority’s guiding principles, as set out in its code of practice, are consent, dignity, quality, honesty and openness. These principles should not only reflect how human tissue sourced from within our own nation is treated, we must treat human tissue and organs with the same principles when sourced overseas.
In China, as has been said, there is substantial evidence of Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs—as well as some evidence of Tibetans and house Christians—being killed on demand for their organs. Blood is taken off them for tissue-typing at the time when they were taken into custody, often with no idea why they were taken into custody at all, other than that they belong to one of those groups. There is no consent, no dignity and no transparency.
On 7 December last year, the British Medical Association released a statement on the abuse of Uighurs in China, expressing
“grave concern regarding the situation in China and the continuing abuse of the Uyghur population of the country as well as other minorities.”
It went on to state:
“We are particularly alarmed by the reports of organ harvesting, forced birth prevention, and the use of genomics data for racial profiling.”
It urged
“the UK government and international actors to exert pressure on the Chinese government to cease its inhumane actions towards the Uyghurs”.
If we do not pass amendments as laid before the House today, we will be complicit with these practices, because we will be looking at them with Nelson’s eye, with all the evidence that we have that they are going on.
On Amendment 173, on the exhibition of whole bodies using a plastinated technique, I suggest that there is no transparency whatever. Any attempt to claim that there has been consent is extremely suspect, because consent is very easily falsified. I went to one of these exhibitions because I thought you ought to go and see what you are criticising. This was not an anatomical, educational experience but a visual display of plastinated bodies in all kinds of different poses. But the one that horrified me the most was a pregnant woman, quite advanced in her pregnancy and with the foetus in her womb, which had been plastinated. I do not believe that that woman would have given consent for plastination. That raised real questions as to why such an advanced foetus was in the womb of a dead woman without something there explaining the nature of her death, the cause of death and the circumstances in which she had decided to consent to such a procedure.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 108, while supporting the other two amendments introduced so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Northover, and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke so eloquently.
I am completely in support of those amendments, but I wish to speak briefly to the genocide amendment today. On various occasions during the Covid pandemic questions were asked of the then Health Minister about the procurement of PPE. He was not able to give me a straight answer to say, “We can guarantee that no PPE procured could have had anything to do with slave labour or could have come from Xinjiang.”
The NHS seeks to be world leading. We all support it and want it to be able to deliver for every citizen in this country. But that should not be at the expense of the lives of those in other parts of the world. It is not good enough to say that we have the Modern Slavery Act if that will not lead to a change in practices. It is absolutely essential that our supply chains do not include anything that comes from forced labour.
If one looks at what is going on in Xinjiang, it is possible to barter to get numbers of people, just as it was 200 years ago during the slave trade. That is not acceptable. It may be the case that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, pointed out, we will be told, “This is not the right piece of legislation.” If it is not, what will the Government bring forward that will mean that every point of our supply chain—every part of government procurement—ensures that we are not procuring things that have been made using slave labour?
We must not be complicit. This House should support the amendments, and if the Minister is not able to support the amendment, perhaps he could come back with a revised and better version of the amendment that will do what we all seek to achieve.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly only to Amendment 108, which I understand the Government are likely to resist when my noble friend the Minister comes to speak. I say simply, very briefly, that to be persuasive, my noble friend has to explain how through administrative measures the National Health Service will achieve the effects of this amendment. He has to explain that in a credible way and that the effects will be rapid and comprehensive. Any idea that this will be kicked into a long review that ambles on and may or may not produce the effects required by at least the first two proposed new subsections of the amendment will lack credibility; I am less concerned about the chairman of the Select Committee part that comes in the third one. I would like my noble friend to know before he speaks that that is what I think we all want to hear.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, China has been found out. Thanks to surveillance and other types of technology, and courageous on-the-ground reporting, it is clear that China does use slave labour. As we know, the UK has a duty under the genocide convention, and there is strong evidence that much of the material produced by slave labour, even possibly by genocide, is being used by NHS staff—and even by noble Lords ourselves when we use lateral flow tests, since we are not confident about where they came from. They come from areas where there is serious risk of genocide and as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said, it is not necessary to determine genocide in order to be obliged to do a risk assessment and take action; and we are not doing enough of that. Over half of these products come from places where there is no conflict, so action against conflict is not adequate. More needs to be done. We must not fail to do it because it is more convenient to buy products to keep us safe without investigating how they are produced. Our safety must not be on the backs of people whose rights, and even their lives, are being taken from them.
The same applies to organ-harvesting from unwilling donors. There is incontrovertible evidence that it is not just happening but happening increasingly, and it absolutely has to stop. My noble friend Baroness Northover made a strong case that the exhibiting of cadavers should not happen in a civilised society, and I hope that the Minister is going to tell us how the Government are going to stop it.
Lord Eatwell (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to give my strong support to Amendment 108, and I do so because of the terms of the genocide convention to which this Government are committed and are obligated to support. It is important for the House to note that genocide is not defined solely as mass killing. It is also defined as
“causing serious bodily or mental harm … deliberately inflicting … conditions of life calculated to”
destroy the protected group
“in whole or in part … imposing measures intended to prevent births”,
and
“forcibly transferring the children of the group to another group.”
The Government are a signatory to the genocide convention, and I think the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is obligated by that signature to support this amendment.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, it is impossible to turn away from the connection between procurement of products and services and the message and support that such procurement may give to those who seek to exploit, oppress, damage and murder.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for introducing this amendment, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who we wish well. Genocide and the abuse of human rights do not respect the imposed boundaries of government departments, and that is why it is appropriate that these amendments, which have extensive support both inside and outside your Lordships’ House, have been tabled today. Amendment 108 has cross-party support and if the will of the House is tested, we on these Benches will support it.
The NHS is the biggest single procurer of medical products in the world. It has a huge amount of leverage to be a force for good or otherwise when it comes to ethical procurement. It can starve abusive regions of resources. It can also remove a veneer of acceptability from those regions.
If we are serious about being global Britain and a force for good in the world, we need to act as such. It is surely wrong that, for example, we are using bandages which have been produced by forced labour. We must hold the Government to their commitment to provide guidance and support to UK government bodies to use public procurement rules to exclude suppliers where there is sufficient evidence of human rights violations in any of their supply chains. As expressed by my noble friend Lady Kennedy, this is about giving the Minister the opportunity to act. It is about focusing minds. I hope that the amendment will find favour with the noble Earl.
In Committee, my noble friend Lord Collins spoke of the need not to be tied down by a very strict legal definition of genocide. He also emphasised that we must focus on broader human rights issues. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, we need to take a comprehensive, joined-up approach. Amendment 108 gives us this opportunity.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for continuing to press home the need for action, as outlined in Amendments 162 and 173. We heard explicitly and movingly about the realities of how this affects people’s bodies, alive and dead, and the distaste and abuse related to it. It is surely right that UK citizens are safeguarded against complicity in forced organ harvesting as the result of genocide. Countries such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, Norway and Israel, among several others, have already taken action to prevent organ tourism in respect of China. We have the opportunity to do so today.
I hope that the noble Earl will feel able to accept these amendments. I am grateful to the noble Lord and his officials for the opportunity to discuss these matters. I hope only that your Lordships’ House can assist in improving this aspect of the Bill by taking action, as we should, about genocide and the abuse of human rights.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, the amendments in this group bring us to three discrete topics which are nevertheless linked by a common thread—that of human rights. Because they engage us in issues of great sensitivity, I begin by saying something that may sound unusual. There is probably no one in this Chamber who is not instinctively drawn towards these amendments. All three are honourably motivated. In pointing out any shortcomings, I would not want noble Lords to think that the Government did not understand or sympathise with why they have been tabled.
I will start with the issue of organ tourism. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I find it abhorrent that individuals exist who are in the business—often the lucrative business—of sourcing human organs from provenances that are both illegal and supremely unethical. They then entice desperate and seriously ill people to go to a foreign country to have such organs transplanted within them. This idea is unconscionable. As far as we can, we should have no truck with it. The Human Tissue Act already prohibits the giving of
“a reward for the supply of, or for an offer to supply any controlled material”
in any circumstance where a substantial part of the illicit transaction takes place in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
The Modern Slavery Act makes it an offence to arrange or facilitate another person’s travel, including travel outside the UK, for the purposes of their exploitation, which includes the supply of organs for reward in any part of the world. The law as it stands addresses a substantial element of potential criminality. How widespread is this criminality? What do we know about the scale of organ tourism as it relates to UK residents? I have obtained some figures from the department. In 2019-20, the last reporting year before international travel was curtailed by the pandemic, a total of 4,820 organ transplants took place in this country. At the same time, NHS Blood and Transplant data shows that only seven UK residents received a transplant abroad, many if not all legitimately, and had follow-up treatment in the UK.
Therefore I am thankful to say that the scale of the problem of illicit organ tourism, as it relates to UK residents, is small. If the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, were to say to me that one such case is one too many, I would agree, but the House should not support this amendment, because it is not right to support an amendment that could cause vulnerable transplant patients who receive a legitimate transplant overseas to face imprisonment because they may not have the right documentation. That is what the amendment could lead to. Checking such documentation and creating individually identifiable records for every UK patient who has received a transplant overseas would put healthcare professionals in an invidious and inappropriate position by blurring the line between medic and criminal investigator.
More to the point, it could also prevent those who legitimately receive an organ transplant abroad—particularly those from minority-ethnic backgrounds—from seeking follow-up treatment, for fear of being treated as a criminal suspect. Following that thought through, I say that the effect that this amendment could have in exacerbating health inequalities is likely to be far greater than its effect in deterring transplant tourism, especially, as I have emphasised, because there are already legal provisions in place covering most cases of organ tourism.
I listened with care to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, particularly regarding her examples of the exhibition that she went to. I join her in being somewhat incredulous that there could be consent to some of the exhibits that she witnessed. However, where consent has been obtained, it must be unequivocal. As I emphasised, the law as it stands now prohibits the exhibition of bodies or body parts where express consent cannot be fully demonstrated. I undertake to speak to the Human Tissue Authority, to see that, should there be another exhibition of this kind proposed, there is full transparency in the form of labels under each exhibit making clear how consent was obtained and what it consisted of.
Targeting those who receive an organ, rather than the traffickers and their customers who initiate or negotiate the arrangements, risks imprisoning vulnerable patients who may have been misled as to the provenance of their organ. That would be disproportionate. The Government’s view remains that the best approach is to continue targeting traffickers and their customers, while doing all that we can to help UK residents who are in need of an organ by focusing our efforts on improving the rates and outcomes of legitimate donations.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
Before the noble Earl sits down, may I apologise to the House? I should have declared that I am the UK chair of Commonwealth Tribute to Life, which aims to establish a memorandum of understanding across the Commonwealth over ethical transplantation.
The Minister, in his reply, spoke of seven patients who are known to have travelled abroad for organs. Most of those were legally arranged, so the numbers are very small; yet the clinical services in the UK are not aware that it is illegal to arrange to purchase an organ abroad if most of that transaction happens in the UK, or to procure the travel to go. I wonder whether the Minister would be able to undertake to work with us in NHSBT to ensure that all the clinicians working in the field are aware of this and can brief patients appropriately at the time they sign up to be on the transplant list, so that they understand that, although they are eligible for a transplant, they should not be seeking transplants in other countries, even when tempted to do so. It can look quite alluring, and I am concerned that, within the profession itself, there might be some misunderstanding. I realise this is a difficult question and the Minister might prefer not to answer it now; it might be something we could discuss later.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, that is a perfectly valid question from the noble Baroness, and I would be happy to take that back to those in the Department of Health and Social Care who have direct responsibility in this area.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I know that this is a complex and long Bill, and that the House will want to move quite quickly to the next business. I will end by simply thanking every noble Lord who has participated in today’s debate, especially the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Merron, from the opposition Front Benches, and the noble Lords on the Government Benches who have supported the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, at every stage of the progress of this amendment.
I know that when the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that he was instinctively drawn to these amendments, and that he found many of these practices abhorrent, he was speaking as he feels. I am grateful to him, not only for the meeting that we had yesterday with the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, but for his promise to look at this further. Among those to whom I would like to introduce him is a Uighur surgeon I have met, who has given evidence here in the House about being forced to remove organs and to kill the patient in the course of that. This is the ethical issue here. If people profit from that in any way whatever, even if inadvertently, we must not be complicit.
A year ago, we were promised that there would be an urgent review of exports to Xinjiang and fines for businesses which failed to comply with the Modern Slavery Act, when parliamentary time allowed. Those things have not happened. The urgent review has just been completed, but it ended up dealing only with military exports and there have been no fines applied one year later. It is never the right Bill or the right time. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I were told this on the telecommunications Bill, we were told it again on the then Trade Bill. We are told it on every Bill. That is why it is inevitable that we come back with amendments like this until the comprehensive plan, to which the noble Earl referred, actually happens.
The House really needs to send this amendment further. We have had between Committee and now for the Government to help us redraw it, if there are any defects or flaws. I am unaware of what they may be; they have never been pointed out to us. The noble Earl also knows that the Government could say to us, “Bring this back at Third Reading and we will help to draw up such an amendment.” However, I am told that this is not possible either. Therefore, the only way for us to ensure that this amendment can proceed and be perfected is to send it to another place. I am glad to be able to tell the House that a former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, has agreed that he will personally promote this amendment if it is passed in your Lordships’ House today and take it further there. He says that he is with us 100%. I would like to seek the opinion of the House.
Lord Kamall
“Meaning of “health” in NHS Act 2006
In section 275(1) of the National Health Service Act 2006 (interpretation), at the appropriate place insert—““health” includes mental health;”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause clarifies that in the NHS Act 2006 “health” includes mental health (unless the context otherwise requires). Although the natural meaning of health is capable of including “mental health” the existing provisions of the Act are inconsistent about whether they mention mental health expressly which could cause confusion.
Lord Kamall
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on Clause 79(3) of the Bill, which omits paragraph (c) of section 100(4) of the Care Act 2014.
Lord Warner )
“PART 1AHEALTH AND CARE SUSTAINABILITYOffice for Health and Care Sustainability
(1) There is to be a body corporate, independent of the Government, called the Office for Health and Care Sustainability (“the Office”) to safeguard the long-term sustainability of an integrated health and adult social care system for England. (2) The Office must be established within six months of the passing of this Act and must publish a report of its initial findings relating to its main functions within a year of its establishment.(3) The role of the Office is to continually assess the outlook for the health and care system over the coming five, 10 and 15 years.(4) The Office has no function in operational or service delivery aspects of the health and care system.(5) The Office must—(a) monitor and publish data relating to demographic trends, disease profiles and the likely pace of change relating to future service demands,(b) assess the workforce and skills mix required to respond to those changes and publish regular reports on those matters, and(c) consider the stability of health and adult social care funding relative to changing demographic and disease trends, including the alignment between health and adult social care funding, and publish regular reports.(6) The functions of the Office are to be exercised on behalf of the Crown as if it was a public department.(7) The Office is to consist of—(a) an executive chair appointed by the Secretary of State with the consent of the Public Accounts and Health Select Committees of the House of Commons,(b) two other members appointed by the Secretary of State with the consent of the Public Accounts and Health Select Committees of the House of Commons, and(c) two other members nominated by the Office and appointed by the Secretary of State.(8) The initial appointments under subsection (7) are for a term of five years and no more than two terms may be served.(9) The remuneration of the executive chair is to be agreed by the Secretary of State but may not be less than that paid to the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care; and all other salaries and gratuities for members may be agreed by the Office with the consent of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.(10) The Office may employ staff on terms and remuneration consistent with that of the civil service.(11) The Office may—(a) establish such committees and sub-committees as it deems necessary,(b) determine its own procedures and those of its committees and sub-committees, and(c) do anything calculated to facilitate, or conducive or incidental to, the carrying out of any of its functions.(12) The annual budget of the Office is to be provided by the Secretary of State after consultation with the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons.(13) The Office must keep proper accounts and records in relation to its accounts, and must prepare and publish each year an audited statement of accounts.(14) The Office must prepare an initial report on its work within one year of its establishment, and thereafter annually, and may at any time publish a report on its functions when it considers that this assists safeguarding the long-term sustainability of an integrated health and adult social care system in England.(15) The Secretary of State must lay any report prepared by the Office before both Houses of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment implements recommendations 33 and 34 of the 2017 report by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and Adult Social Care. It draws on the legislation setting up the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 112 is my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Scriven and Lord Kakkar. I am grateful for their support. This amendment goes much wider in terms of independence from the Secretary of State than Amendment 80, moved so convincingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, earlier today.
Amendment 112 establishes a new body to help to secure the long-term sustainability of our health and care system. That body is an independent office for health and care sustainability as recommended by this House’s Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and adult social care. This new body is based on the model of the Office for Budget Responsibility. That body is widely accepted as having worked well over a number of years. My amendment draws heavily on the 2011 legislation setting up the OBR.
The new office of health and care sustainability has three main functions which are set out clearly in the amendment, so in the interests of time I will not repeat them. The new body would look five to 10 to 15 years ahead and publish regular reports which would be laid before both Houses of Parliament. It would produce an initial baseline report within a year of its establishment. Like the OBR, the new body would have an executive chair and five members. The chair and two members would be appointed by the Health Secretary but—and this is a very big but—with the consent of the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee and Health and Social Care Committee. The remaining two members would be chosen by the office itself. Like the OBR, the new body would not have a membership controlled by Ministers.
The new office of health and care sustainability would be much more independent of the Secretary of State than is provided for in Amendment 80. It would have a much wider remit in terms of improving the balance between the NHS and social care, on both staffing and funding. The greater long-term independence seems essential given that the Department of Health—now the Department of Health and Social Care—has a political and official track record which was revealed to the Lords Select Committee as pretty unsatisfactory.
The Department of Health has been failing to plan for the future for a very long time. The evidence given by its Permanent Secretary totally failed to convince the Select Committee that it took long-term planning seriously. That Permanent Secretary is still in place. I do not like personal attacks, but in evidence to the Select Committee this person actually said that he did not see long-term planning as part of his job description. So we have a situation where the long-term planning of the NHS and social care is simply not on the agenda of the government department responsible for it.
With this track record and the Covid recovery programme that the Department of Health and Social Care now faces, it seems to me a triumph of optimism over reality to rely on that department and its harassed political head to undertake long-term planning. I say that despite the House passing Amendment 80. We are looking for a situation in which there is more independence of the Secretary of State and, indeed, more independence in the collection of information, the sifting of that information, and the analysis that that information shows—and that covers funding as well as workforce issues.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of your Lordships’ ad hoc Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS. My noble friend Lord Warner has very clearly introduced the arguments summarised at that time, when your Lordships’ committee made its report, strongly supporting the establishment of an independent office for the sustainability of health and care, and I shall not repeat those arguments.
What was striking was Her Majesty’s Government’s response to that report and, indeed, to recommendations 32 to 34 in that report, which dealt with that specific question. To summarise, Her Majesty’s Government felt that that office was unnecessary and that the Office for National Statistics had much of the data publicly available to assist in this long-term planning activity. Clearly, that is not the case; it has not happened, and it is unlikely to happen.
It is essential, as we have heard, that such an office is established not only to deal with questions of workforce—my noble friend has identified the interview given by the right honourable Jeremy Hunt on the question of an independent office for questions of workforce—as sustainability of health and care goes far beyond workforce. A very careful and appropriately defined methodology and expertise needs to be brought together to ensure that we can plan on a definite basis and achieve the sustainability that every Member of your Lordships’ House clearly regards to be essential. I therefore hope that Her Majesty’s Government accept this amendment.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, five years have passed since the ad hoc Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS, under the chairpersonship of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, recommended an office for health and care sustainability. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for bringing this amendment before your Lordships’ House. This is a clear direction to put sustainability at the heart of planning and is long overdue. So we on these Benches support the amendment, and I hope the Minister will accept this amendment as a way forward.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for bringing this debate before the House today. As mentioned in the debate in Committee, the specific functions described in Amendment 112 are crucial functions that the Government are committed to ensuring are discharged. This commitment is underlined by the fact that there are already bodies and mechanisms in place to fulfil these functions. These are core components of the Government’s commitment to evidence-based health provision. This commitment has been made clear in many of the Bill’s provisions, in our wider programme of public health reform and in the proposals set out in the Government’s plan for health and care.
The amendment makes recommendations on both appraisal and scrutiny of funding and of social and demographic trends. With regard to the monitoring of trends, the department already publishes data relating to disease profiles, which incorporates demographic trends where relevant. This is supported by independent academic modelling from the Care Policy Evaluation Centre, CPEC, to produce projections of the long-term demand on adult social care services. As for funding, noble Lords will also be aware that successive Governments have used the well-established spending review process to set public service budgets. This takes into account the needs of service users, but crucially also considers the fiscal context and how healthcare expenditure balances with the range of priorities across government.
As noble Lords have noted, aligned to those spending decisions, the Office for Budget Responsibility already scrutinises the Government’s fiscal approach and our management of fiscal risks. For example, in October 2021 the OBR provided an independent analysis of the Government’s reform to the funding of adult social care in England and has announced that it will provide more analysis of the long-term implications in its next fiscal sustainability report. There is also, as noble Lords will know, a wide range of highly influential non-governmental bodies dedicated to the kinds of functions proposed for this new body—the King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust to name just three. All of these contribute richly to the public debate on financial sustainability and on the size and composition of the workforce, as well as other related issues, and to the ability of this House to scrutinise government decisions on spending and policy.
The Government therefore do not think that the creation of a further body would add value. At this crucial time for the health and care system, we must proceed with the reforms we have outlined. For these reasons I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, no chance. I wish to test the opinion of the House.