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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
The Government, of course, recognise that inflation is rising and are closely monitoring the situation together with the Bank of England. We are also putting in place policies to help families meet the rising cost of living, such as freezing duties, cutting the tax rate in universal credit and increasing the national living wage. Last month I announced to this House a £9 billion package of support to help households with rising energy bills.
Kim Johnson
The question was about what assessment has been made. The Resolution Foundation predicts that inflation will rise above 8% but benefits will increase by only 3%. Liverpool has some of the most deprived communities in this country, with 33% of children in my Riverside constituency suffering poverty. Does the Chancellor believe that now is not the time to increase national insurance contributions while the cost of living is increasing, forcing people into poverty at the highest level since the 1970s? Will he commit to putting measures in place in the spring statement?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady talks about children in poverty, and I am pleased that there are now 300,000 fewer children in poverty than in 2010 thanks to the actions of Conservative-led Governments. We all know that the best way to ensure the children do not grow up in poverty is to ensure that they grow up in a house where people work, and that is why I was delighted this morning to learn that there are record numbers of people on payroll.
Gerald Jones
Citizens Advice has told me that one in six people in my constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney are unable to pay their energy bills right now, and that is before they spike next month and before the Chancellor’s national insurance hike. Some 86% of people said that they did not think that the October energy loan scheme would make a difference in helping to pay their bills. The conflict in Ukraine will inevitably lead to a further surge in energy prices, so if he will not accept Labour’s suggestion of a windfall tax on oil and gas producers, what exactly will the Chancellor do now to relieve the pressures on people in my constituency and across the country?
Rishi Sunak
We are putting in place support to help households meet the rising cost of energy bills, and £9 billion of support will help to ensure that four out of five households in England will receive £150 starting this April, with a further £200 of support towards the autumn. Of course, councils have been given extra money for discretionary funding to help households in need as well.
Ms Rimmer
Since the Chancellor announced his household loan scheme in response to the energy crisis as well as a huge rise in national insurance, the world has changed. Other Departments have adapted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When will the Treasury?
Rishi Sunak
With regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Treasury has been hard at work with our international partners to put in place the most comprehensive set of economic sanctions that this country has ever had and that Russia has ever experienced. I am very proud of the job we have done.
Steve McCabe
If the Chancellor had appreciated last autumn the extent to which energy costs and other household bills would rise, would he still have advocated a national insurance rise?
Rishi Sunak
We have reacted to rising energy bills by putting in place £9 billion of support, which will get to households far faster than the proposals put forward by the Opposition, with the £150 reaching four out of five households just this April when the price cap goes up. It is also worth bearing it in mind that, because of the price cap, households will be protected from further increases all the way through to the autumn.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The cost of fuel is now an eye-watering £2 a litre in some areas, which has led to a huge VAT windfall for the Treasury. When the Chancellor thinks about his spring statement, will he look not just at cutting fuel duty but at mileage recovery rates? They have been at 45p a mile for more than a decade. Now is the time to put them up to 60p at least.
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his suggestions, and of course I will bear them in mind. He is right about the rising cost of fuel at the pumps, although I am pleased to see that over the last few days, the price of Brent has fallen by about 25%, illustrating the volatility of the situation.
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
The cost of living is biting hard in Brecon and Radnorshire. Heating oil is eye-wateringly expensive and extremely hard to come by, while a local haulage firm in Llandrindod Wells is coughing up an extra £60,000 per month on diesel. It is wrong to assume that those who live in rural areas are wealthy enough to withstand these pressures, so can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that he has them in mind as he considers all the options available to him?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. Representing as I do a rural constituency like hers, I know the difficulty that our constituents are facing. That is why our £9 billion package of support for energy that I announced earlier is done by electricity meter, ensuring that those who are off the gas grid also benefit.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
The impact on energy prices of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions will inevitably mean that Britain is poorer. There is nothing that we can do about that overall, but we can help to smooth the impact. I welcome the announcement this morning that there are 275,000 extra people on payroll. What more can the Chancellor do to improve companies’ ability to hire workers and to enable people to keep more of their own money; for example, through the reduction in the taper rate on universal credit?
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his typically thoughtful question. He is absolutely right about the circumstances we face. The data this morning shows record numbers of people on payroll, and that is to be welcomed. Indeed, the unemployment rate is now back to the levels we saw before the pandemic, thanks to our plan for jobs. There are record vacancies, and we want to get people into work. The best way to do that is to give them the skills they need and cut taxes to increase incentives. That is exactly what this Government are doing, and I expect us to make more progress in the months ahead.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
With council tax being one of the biggest items in household budgets, could the Chancellor remind the House which party tends to be the best, in a local council, for setting council tax?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent and timely point. She knows that I know that, in this country, if people want good local services delivered for the lowest possible council tax, they need to vote Conservative.
Mr Speaker
You should not make the Chancellor blush.
I call the shadow Minister, Pat McFadden.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
The package on energy announced by the Chancellor last month has already been rendered obsolete by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some estimates of average annual household energy bills suggest that there will be rises to £3,000 or even more from October. That is a ruinous figure for many of our constituents. Will the Chancellor revisit this support package in next week’s spring statement, and will he reconsider his refusal to fund help for hard-pressed households through a windfall tax on the enormous profits that oil and gas companies are making?
Rishi Sunak
It is worth bearing it in mind that, because of the price cap, households will be protected all the way through the autumn. We do not know what the price cap will be at that point. If the right hon. Gentleman knows, he is probably in the wrong line of business, and it would be good if he could tell the rest of us. Regarding a windfall tax, Conservative Members believe in getting more investment into the North sea and exploiting our domestic resources. The roundtable that my right hon. Friends the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Prime Minister and the Business Secretary hosted yesterday showed that there is enormous appetite to invest more in the UK. A windfall tax would put off that investment.
Mr McFadden
Of course, there are global factors driving up energy prices and inflation in many countries, but what singles out the UK is this Government’s decision to impose a tax rise on working people right when the impact of rising energy bills is hitting people the hardest. Why are the Government so determined to make the cost of living crisis worse now with these tax rises, particularly when the Treasury is briefing anyone—including the Government’s own Back Benchers—who will listen that the Tory party is planning pre-election tax cuts?
Rishi Sunak
The right hon. Gentleman talks about exceptionalism with regard to policy. Part of the reason we are in this situation with energy prices is the decisions made by the previous Labour Government, in particular on nuclear energy, which we are now rapidly having to make up for. We are also committed to tackling the unprecedented backlogs in the NHS, getting the waiting lists down, and recovering from covid. Every single penny of the health and social care levy will go to the people’s No. 1 priority and, although things are difficult, I know that is what people want to happen.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I represent an area in Cornwall where a large number of people are on the state pension. I know, from conversations that I have had with the Chancellor, that he is particularly concerned about that demographic. Given the critical rise in the cost of living, I wonder whether one of the easier routes to address it would be to reinstate the triple lock for next year.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right to highlight pensioners and to support them in the way that he does. He will know that we made a decision temporarily to move to a double lock this year because of the anomaly in the reported earnings, which would have meant a very large rise statistically that would not have been justified or fair in the circumstances. That said, I am pleased to say that pensions are now at their highest level relative to earnings in over three decades because of the Government’s policy on the triple lock, and we continue to be the party that will support those who need our help.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Sanctions against Putin’s regime are absolutely necessary, but they will add an extra layer of economic harm on top of the existing Tory cost of living crisis. The Chancellor must use the upcoming spring statement to deliver an emergency package of support to householders and businesses, whose costs have spiralled out of control. Will he turn his buy now, pay later energy loan into a grant, reinstate the universal credit uplift, increase other benefits with inflation and scrap the VAT and national insurance hike that will damage so many people?
Rishi Sunak
What we are doing is tackling the cost of energy. Unlike the hon. Lady’s party, we believe in the future of the North sea and we are investing in it. We want to make sure that we promote the jobs that are there. On upcoming support for energy costs, the Scottish Government have plenty of powers on welfare and tax, and if they think that they can make a difference, they should use them.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
Some 130,000 young people across Great Britain have benefited from the kickstart scheme so far, including in my hon. Friends’ constituencies. That is lower than the 250,000 jobs that the scheme could have funded, but the scheme was designed at a time when unemployment was expected to peak at 12%. The reality is that, thanks to the intervention by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the economy has recovered better than expected and unemployment peaked at 5.2% in 2020.
Andy Carter
I am grateful for that response. Last week, I went to visit Sigma, a great local business in Warrington South, which has employed nine people under kickstart, and that has made a massive difference. Can my right hon. Friend tell me what steps the Government are taking to help businesses retain young people as we approach the end of the six-month kickstart programme?
Mr Clarke
It is great to hear about my hon. Friend’s visit to Sigma, and I know that 180 kickstart jobs have been created in his constituency as of December. For those on universal credit who do not immediately continue into full-time unsubsidised work, support will continue to be available from the young person’s work coach to help them use their newly gained skills, and support will also be available from the wider DWP youth offer.
Cherilyn Mackrory
Last week I visited the jobcentre in Truro where they told me that kickstart has been a huge success. We have had around 620 kickstarters across Cornwall, providing urgently needed jobs for our young people. Given that the scheme will end this month, can my right hon. Friend expand on what the Department will do to support skills and apprenticeships, particularly for young people across Cornwall, so that we can be at the heart of the levelling-up agenda?
Mr Clarke
Spreading opportunity by levelling up our skills base is at the heart of our wider levelling-up White Paper—it is one of the core missions that it sets out. The Government will invest £3.8 billion in skills by 2024-25, which is equivalent to a cash increase of 42% compared with 2019-20. On apprenticeships, I am happy to say that last year more than 3,000 people started apprenticeships in my hon. Friend’s county of Cornwall. We want to see that work continue.
Henry Smith
Over recent months, many young people in Crawley have benefited from the kickstart scheme. In contrast to every Labour Government, which have all left office with unemployment higher than when they started, does my right hon. Friend agree that the way to recovery for our economy and the cost of living is the multi-billion pound plan for jobs that the Government are delivering?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend is right about the Government’s record on employment, just as he is right about the Labour party’s record on unemployment. To continue to boost employment, wages and living standards, he rightly references our plan for jobs, which is proving to be an enormous success. In total, the Department for Work and Pensions spend on labour market support will be more than £6 billion over the next three years.
Dr Davies
I recently visited the Dyserth Falls holiday park in my constituency, which is under renovation, to speak with some of the 40 members of the public who have been employed there under the kickstart scheme. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating all those who have taken part in the scheme, especially those who have been given permanent jobs, and set out what ongoing support there will be for those who have completed their placements?
Mr Clarke
As my hon. Friend knows, I know Dyserth very well. In fact, I will be there the weekend after next. I join him in congratulating all those who have taken part in the kickstart scheme, especially those who have secured full-time jobs. Kickstart is, of course, only one part of the wider package of support for young people that is under way. The DWP’s youth offer, which runs until 2025 and is worth £60 million, includes a 13-week youth employment programme, supported youth hubs and, crucially, specialised youth employability coaches.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Just in case colleagues in the House did not quite hear the Chief Secretary, he admitted that kickstart has failed. It promised young people 250,000 jobs and got barely half of that. But it is worse than that. The National Audit Office said about kickstart that there was
“limited assurance over the quality of the work placements created by the scheme, or whether jobs created by employers would have existed anyway”.
So in relation to the failed kickstart scheme, what does the Chief Secretary make of the following economic expression: “dead weight loss”?
Mr Clarke
With respect to the hon. Lady, of whom I am a great admirer, that is an unfair characterisation of the success of the scheme. It clearly needs to be situated in the wider context. In fact, the British economy has performed much better than anyone expected when the scheme was set up. There are robust processes in place that make sure that we genuinely are adding additional value. So work coaches have to certify that the people on the scheme are eligible for it and would have been unlikely to find work without it. Employers need to demonstrate how the jobs created are additional. Finally, it is important to contrast this scheme with the last Labour Government’s future jobs fund, which reached its total far more slowly and was far less effective. This scheme has got 130,000 and rising young people into work. It has been a great success.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
It is interesting that the Minister can call kickstart such a resounding success, given that last month the Public Accounts Committee said that the Department that runs the scheme does not know what success looks like because it launched the scheme without any idea as to what the success criteria would be. It also has no way of knowing whether the young people who are referred to kickstart jobs are the right young people and it is not properly evaluating the longer term support that employers give to those young people. Does the Minister agree with the PAC report, which was endorsed by a Committee consisting of a majority of Conservative MPs?
Mr Clarke
No, I do not agree with that report. It is an unfair characterisation of a response that was put in place at pace to meet an unprecedented crisis in our employment market. The wider success of our policy on youth employment is best measured by the fact that in January there were 500,000 more employees aged under 25 than there were in January 2021. The kickstart programme has played its full part in helping to make that possible.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Businesses in the steel industry are more likely to be able to support the kickstart scheme if the Government manage to get Donald Trump’s unfair tariffs of 25% on British steel exports lifted, as the Japanese and the EU have already achieved. Has the Chancellor spoken to the Chief Secretary about this issue, and if not why not?
Mr Clarke
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about tariffs. Obviously, the Government believe in free trade and it is something that we want to see happen too. As a Member of Parliament who represents a steel-making constituency, I am keenly aware of this as an issue. The Department for International Trade leads on the issue, and I know that the Secretary of State and her predecessor have had long and ongoing conversations with their American counterparts about getting those tariffs lifted.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
With the scheme failing to attract the numbers that were predicted by over 80,000, will the Minister outline what structure is in place to attract those who have lost out, to ensure that those young people have opportunities to find a life career? Will the new scheme be UK-wide?
Mr Clarke
Youth unemployment is lower today than it was pre-pandemic, and the wider success of the scheme has to be judged in the context that the worst-case scenario that we were looking to offset never came to pass because of the interventions that we made. If a scheme does not achieve the headline numbers that were anticipated at the time it was established because the wider economic performance of the country was so much better than anticipated, that is a success, not something to bemoan.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
Gambling contributes over £3 billion per annum to the Exchequer. The Government keep gambling duties under regular review to ensure that the sector continues to pay its fair share. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is reviewing the Gambling Act 2005, after which the Government will assess the impact of any reforms on the Exchequer.
Carolyn Harris
Analysis carried out by both NERA Economic Consulting and Landman Economics concluded that, given that online gambling is “labour intensive” and predominantly based offshore in avoidance of UK corporation tax, its net impact on the British economy is negative, particularly once the direct cost to Government, estimated by Public Health England to be £647 million, is factored in. Will the Government support the upcoming reviews of gambling regulation—the Minister said it is under active consideration—and welcome any moves to reduce gambling harm and the associated cost to society and the economy?
Helen Whately
I know that the hon. Lady is a committed campaigner on gambling as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling related harm. Specific to her point about offshore gambling operators, I am sure that she knows that since 2014 gambling duties have been taxed on a “place of consumption” basis, so offshore operators pay taxes on profits related to UK gambling.
To the broader point of the gambling review, I spoke to the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who is leading DCMS’s work on gambling, just yesterday, and I assure the hon. Lady that the Government stand ready to take action where there is evidence that vulnerable people, such as those suffering from gambling addictions, are being exploited by gambling operators.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The term “gambling” covers a broad spectrum of activities. Does the Minister share my concerns that over-zealous regulation of the gambling industry as a whole could lead to some damaging unintended consequences, such as driving vulnerable individuals to the black market, which is completely unregulated, loss of revenue to the Exchequer and damage to the greyhound and horse-racing industries, which employ lots of people?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend makes an important point. There is the basic principle that people should in general be free to spend their money as they see fit. There are about 100,000 jobs in the gambling industry in this country. It is important to ensure that we protect people who are most vulnerable from exploitation, and I know that the gambling review I mentioned is looking carefully at the best way to do that.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
Details of ministerial discussions are not normally disclosed. Treasury Ministers have meetings with a wide variety of organisations in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development. From April, universal credit and many other benefits will be uprated by 3.1%, the rate of the consumer prices index in September 2021. In addition, the Government are providing support worth over £20 billion across this financial year and next to help families with the cost of living.
Stephen Farry
Millions of families across the UK, both in and out of work, depend on universal credit and other benefits. As the Minister knows, the 3.1% uprate was set in September. We are now seeing inflation of over 7%. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust and many other organisations highlight the real jeopardy that families are now facing. They have no plan B. Indeed, families are facing cuts in real terms of over £500 over the course of the year. Surely that decision has to be reassessed in the light of changing circumstances.
Lucy Frazer
CPI has been the default inflation measure for the Government’s statutory annual review of benefits since 2011, as the hon. Gentleman knows, but we are fully aware of the impact on households of the cost of living. That is why we are providing £20 billion of support, whether that is through £9 billion of support to help with rising energy bills or through universal credit. As he also knows, we have cut the taper rate so that families can keep an additional £1,000 annually in their pockets.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Does the Minister think that the uplift coming next month will be enough to get people all the way through next winter? If she recognises that there is a problem, will the Government consider bringing forward next April’s increase to this autumn, to give people a bit more money to help with their heating and food bills next winter?
Lucy Frazer
As my hon. Friend knows, we have introduced a range of measures to support families, both working and not working. The price of energy is now set until the autumn, and a significant amount of money is going in now and in the autumn.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
Work is the best route out of poverty. We are investing more than £6 billion in labour market support over the next three years to help people to move into and progress in work. In addition, analysis published at the last autumn Budget shows that in 2024-25, tax, welfare and spending decision since the 2019 spending review will have benefited the poorest households the most as a percentage of income.
Bill Esterson
But real wages are falling by the largest amount since 2014, inflation is set to hit 8% and the energy price cap is going up. In the cause of fairness and sound economics, when will the Financial Secretary and her colleagues admit that it makes sense to use the record profits of North sea oil and gas to help ordinary people, who face a cost of living crisis?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Gentleman knows from the statistics announced this morning that wages are up in real terms compared with pre-pandemic levels. In fact, unemployment is now almost back to pre-pandemic levels, and is lower than in Canada, France, Italy, Spain and Australia. On his specific question, the North sea oil industry already contributes additional taxes through a 40% rate, which is double the amount that other corporations pay.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
My constituency has one of the lowest rates of gross value added in the UK and is desperately in need of jobs and investment. The island is known as “energy island” because we have wind, waves, solar, tidal and—hopefully—nuclear. I was delighted to hear the Chancellor mention nuclear and the fact that he has committed to the £120 million future nuclear enabling fund, but will he also commit to publishing the criteria and bidding process, so we can move at pace in this vital sector?
Lucy Frazer
It is great to see the good work going on in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Of course, her question is for our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who I am sure is considering it carefully.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
People are rightly angry that fraudsters stole from covid support schemes, as am I. When the schemes were launched, there was cross-party consensus that we needed speed to protect jobs, and because of our action unemployment peaked at 5.2%, not the 12% predicted at the start of the pandemic. We designed the schemes to prevent as much fraud as possible, and lenders stopped nearly £2.2 billion of potential fraud from the bounce back loan schemes. We continue to take action on multiple fronts to recover money that was claimed fraudulently.
Nia Griffith
It is not just a matter of fraud; it is a matter of incompetence as well. The National Audit Office has been scathing about the UK’s wasteful spending of £37 billion on private contractors to deliver the test and trace system in England, while we in Wales had a more efficient system through partnership with the Welsh Government and local councils. What guidance is the Chief Secretary giving Departments on how to avoid giving such wasteful contracts in the future? Does the guidance include considering, wherever practicable, the delivery of service contracts through public authorities, where any profit remains in the public purse?
Mr Clarke
We always continue to encourage best value, and this is at the heart of all Treasury documents on the use of public money. On the hon. Lady’s point about test and trace, it is very important to reaffirm that the great majority of the costs associated with this scheme were about testing as opposed to tracing, and it was only that scheme that allowed us to come through the enormous challenges of the period, particularly prior to the availability of the vaccine, in a way that allowed our society and our wider economy to keep going to the extent that they could.
Lucy Allan
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has been incredibly agile in responding to exceptional crises. As he tackles the impact of Putin’s war on our economy, will the Minister take every measure to accelerate growth, including reducing taxes on fuel and energy?
Mr Clarke
As has been discussed earlier in this session, as my hon. Friend rightly highlights, the Government recognise that households do need support with the rising cost of energy. Indeed, the Chancellor has already provided support worth some £9.1 billion for the financial year 2022-23. On her wider point about boosting growth, the Chancellor outlined in his Mais lecture the importance of the Government investing in capital, people and ideas, so that we can strengthen the economy and make sure that the UK is best placed to succeed in what is a challenging set of circumstances.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
Just in the last seven days, we have learned that 7 billion items of personal protective equipment were not fit for purpose, the Government are burning 500 lorryloads of it a month and former Treasury Minister Lord Agnew admitted that the lack of anti-fraud measures in the Government’s covid business support packages meant it was
“happy days if you were a crook”.
When billions of pounds of public money have been lost through the Chancellor’s incompetence, is the Minister ashamed to be hiking taxes on working people by billions of pounds next month?
Mr Clarke
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the situation in regard to PPE. Over 97% of the stock that was ordered was suitable for use. Indeed, when it comes to the wider figure covering the PPE piece, £4.7 billion of that represents PPE that will be used by the NHS, but which was procured at a greater price than it carries today owing to the scarcity that prevailed at that time, and another £3.3 billion represents PPE that can be used in non-medical settings, and the Department of Health and Social Care has already sold and donated stock in this category.
On the wider fraud point, this goes back to my earlier answer that we had to design these schemes at pace to protect jobs—I think this was agreed across the House—and we rightly, I think, made sure that that was the priority. We then built in the protections that were needed, and the protections have made sure that we are able to pursue anyone who has defrauded the taxpayer.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Lord Agnew’s evidence to the Treasury Committee last week was a damning indictment of this Tory Government’s “terrible complacency”—his words—about fraud and protecting public money, and he does not buy what the Minister says about working at pace either. Lord Agnew anticipates that there will be an “avalanche of claims” from the banks on the state guarantee of the bounce back loan scheme arriving at the Treasury in the coming weeks, so can the Minister tell the House what actions he is taking to prevent yet further billions of public money from waltzing out the door in the midst of a cost of living crisis?
Mr Clarke
On the hon. Lady’s point, the Government set up the £100 million taxpayer protection taskforce at the Budget back in March 2021, and that taskforce is expected to recover between £800 million and £1 billion from fraudulent or incorrect payments over the next two years. That builds on the work that has already been done, which saw Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs recover £536 million in 2020-21. Other agencies of the state are also involved in this important work. The National Crime Agency has made 17 arrests, 106 directors have been disqualified as of February 2022, there have been 48 bankruptcy restrictions and 13 companies have been wound up in the public interest in relation to bounce back loans.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
At last autumn’s Budget and spending review, we announced a comprehensive package of investment to level up the UK and encourage regional growth. This included the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, the £2.6 billion shared prosperity fund and £1.6 billion of investment in the next generation of the British Business Bank’s regional investment fund.
Damien Moore
Does my hon. Friend agree that town deals are one of the most progressive ways of supporting regional growth, and that the one for Southport will kick-start our economy locally?
Helen Whately
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his hard work to secure the £37.5 million town deal for Southport, which will be truly transformative for his constituents. That funding will bring in more private investment to his constituency, building on public funding and providing new jobs and opportunities for his constituents. It will be levelling up in action.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The stark reality in the north-east is that we have seen rising child poverty and reliance on food banks in recent years, and the poorest households lost £1,000 when the Government cut universal credit in the autumn. Rising prices look set to take away another £1,000 from households, before the economic impact of what is happening in Ukraine. Ahead of the spending statement next week, may I urge the Treasury please to do more to tackle the destitution that will be inevitable if nothing is done to intervene to support households in the north-east, who will then support the local economy to grow?
Helen Whately
As other Ministers have outlined, we are supporting households with the rising cost of living, including a package worth £21 billion of support. In particular we are supporting those on universal credit by reducing the taper rate to ensure that work pays. Looking further ahead, through our commitment to levelling up we are investing across the country in skills and infrastructure, with the levelling-up fund to improve growth, boost prosperity, opportunities and pay, and thereby improve people’s standard of living.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
The Minister will be aware of the positive contribution that financial services can make to levelling up all over the country. With that in mind, and with the work of my all-party group on financial markets and services on levelling up, will she commit that the Treasury will work with the industry to spread opportunity within the financial services sector, to help that sector spread opportunity through all regions of this country?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I know he is knowledgeable about this sector. It is important to remember that financial services are to the benefit of the whole country, with two thirds of jobs in financial services being outside London and the south-east. Financial services are absolutely an important part of our ambitions for levelling up.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
In rural communities, especially Cumbria, we are deeply concerned about the Government’s apparent lack of concern about growth in the rural parts of this country. Is the Minister aware of the enormous damage being done to farming in the UK, just at the moment when we need our farmers the most, by the reduction in basic payments? That started in December when farmers lost between 5% and 25% of their basic payment, without any availability of anything to replace it for years to come. Will she intervene now to keep basic payments where they currently are, so that we can keep Britain farming?
Helen Whately
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I also represent a rural constituency with significant agricultural interest, and I assure him that we have protected agricultural funding through this Parliament. We are committed to levelling up across all parts of the UK, in rural as well as urban areas.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
What steps is the Minister taking with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that areas that need levelling up are able to attract private sector investment?
Helen Whately
That is a very important point. Levelling up is not just about public sector investment—indeed, the lion’s share of investment in future growth in our economy will come from the private sector. One important thing that the British Business Bank is doing with its regional fund is crowding in private sector investment, so that we will get more private sector investment on top of the public sector investment we are putting in.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The shared prosperity fund could be one of the Government’s most effective means of encouraging regional growth across the UK, but only if the investment goes where it is most needed. Does the Minister believe that the Treasury should apply the funding commitments that were rightly made to Cornwall also to the Tees Valley as well as to South Yorkshire?
Helen Whately
We are making a substantial investment through the shared prosperity fund and other funds across the country. We have committed to ensuring that the shared prosperity fund will be at least as much as parts of the country received before through EU funding, and I am committed to the hon. Gentleman’s area just as much as to Cornwall and other parts of the UK.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
By investing in local infrastructure, the levelling-up fund will strengthen local economies, boost job opportunities and improve the day-to-day lives of people across the UK. So far, we have committed £1.7 billion to 105 projects, and at the end of the month the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will publish its monitoring and evaluation strategy for the funding.
Peter Gibson
With £23.3 million invested through the towns fund, £105 million for Bank Top station and 1,700 civil service jobs coming to Darlington, we are a leading example of how the Government’s levelling-up agenda is benefiting communities in the north-east. The second round of the levelling-up fund will continue that work. Will my hon. Friend outline the timescales for the delivery of that round?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is a fabulous campaigner for Darlington, as evidenced in all the funding that his local town has secured. I am a regular visitor to Darlington, as are my Treasury colleagues, and have seen those investments already making a difference. He asks about the second round of the levelling-up fund. It will open for business this spring, with further details to be published shortly.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
We continue to review and reform our regulatory and enforcement approach to ensure that, as illicit finance evolves, our responses do too. We have announced an unprecedented package of sanctions, including against prominent Russian oligarchs. Last night, we brought forward the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 to crack down further, and we will continue to do further work on the economic crime Bill in the next session. We have also brought a new kleptocracy cell into the National Crime Agency to tackle those explicit threats.
Mr Bradshaw
But it took a group of anarchists to seize Deripaska’s London mansion yesterday, so when will the Minister do what Europe and America have already done and seize rather than just freeze Putin’s cronies’ assets? When will he close the loopholes that still allow them to escape sanction by putting their assets in their family members’ names or using shell companies based in British overseas territories?
John Glen
The Government have worked closely with the US and the EU on a whole range of interventions. We have sanctioned 500 individuals and entities, including 386 members of the Russian state Duma. We have also worked with the US on the expulsion of banks from the SWIFT banking system, cut off 3 million Russian companies from capital markets and seen $250 billion wiped of Russian stocks. We will continue to work closely with our allies to ensure that our response continues to be comprehensive.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The Government have once again delayed the long-overdue reforms to Companies House that could have deterred illicit finance, prevented covid fraud and provided vital information to the authorities. I will ask the Minister an important question, and I want him to update the House accurately. How many Russian-linked individuals and businesses have been wrongly given Treasury-backed covid-related business support?
John Glen
We worked to give widespread support to lots of individuals across the economy. I cannot give the hon. Lady the exact chapter and verse on individuals who have been supported, but we will continue to work on Companies House reform, which will be the most significant reform of the companies register in 170 years, and later this year we will publish a second economic crime plan and fraud action plan to address the threats that we continue to see.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
In response to Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, the Treasury has helped deliver a world-leading package of economic sanctions to deliver severe consequences to the Russian economy. Across insurance, finance, trade, public and private capital markets, clearing, SWIFT, central bank assets and, indeed, bank asset freezes, we are ensuring that the Government play a leading role in making sure that Putin’s aggression does not go unpunished.
Marsha De Cordova
Families in my constituency are facing the cost of living crisis, and the planned real-terms cut to social security will force more of them into poverty and into having to make impossible decisions between eating and heating their home. According to the Trussell Trust, one in three on universal credit were not able to dress for the weather last month as they could not afford appropriate clothing or shoes. That is unacceptable. Will the Chancellor increase the level of social security support in his spring statement next week to alleviate some of the worst impacts of the cost of living crisis?
Rishi Sunak
As is common to all other years, welfare is uprated annually by September’s CPI. That will be the case next year as well, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary laid out. For those on universal credit we have cut the tax rate to ensure that work pays, delivering a £2 billion tax cut to 2 million on low incomes—the best route out of poverty.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right to point out the importance of fuel as a cost for both businesses and households. That is why I am proud that we delivered the eleventh freeze in fuel duty in a row. That has delivered huge savings for households and businesses over the past several years.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Millions of people are worried sick about soaring bills. Meanwhile, BP says it has more cash than it knows what to do with and has compared its record profits from inflated prices to a cash machine. Those profits are not being used to fund new investment. They are going on dividends and share buybacks, so why will the Chancellor not make North sea oil and gas companies pay their fair share of taxes to tackle the enormous cost of living crisis?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady talks about a fair share. It is worth bearing in mind that oil and gas companies are already taxed at double the rate of all other companies: 40% versus 19%, currently. Last year saw the lowest amount of investment in the North sea on record—just a few billion pounds. As my right hon. Friends who were at the roundtable yesterday know, there are billions of pounds of projects waiting to be unlocked. We want that investment and those jobs here in the UK.
Rachel Reeves
That is not happening with the share buybacks. The Chancellor is totally out of touch. He does not seem to understand how the cost of living crisis is affecting the least well off in society, as campaigner Jack Monroe highlighted. The Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed that the poorest households face an inflation rate 50% higher than the richest households. The Resolution Foundation warns that between 2020 and 2022, 700,000 more children will have fallen into poverty. That is devastating, but it is not inevitable. The Chancellor can and must do more in the spring statement to provide people with real help, not just a loan. Why is he so intent on shielding oil executives, instead of protecting the poorest in society?
Rishi Sunak
The best way to help people cope with rising energy costs and bills over time is to make sure we have a diversified and secure supply of energy, more of which comes from here at home. I share the hon. Lady’s concern for those on the lowest incomes. I am proud that all the evidence points to the fact that the decisions made by this Government over the last few years have benefited those on the lowest incomes the most. We have protected those who need our help, and we will continue to do so.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
It was very interesting to meet my hon. Friend, together with his colleagues from the all-party parliamentary group on investment fraud, and to hear his idea. As we discussed, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is very keen to make clear which schemes do not work. That is why, in the Finance Act 2022, the Government legislated to allow HMRC to name promoters and the schemes they promote at the earliest possible stage, to warn taxpayers of the risk of entering into those schemes, and to help those already involved to exit avoidance.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Rishi Sunak
We are spending record amounts on supporting those who are disabled. Relative to the OECD, I think we are spending in excess of the average for other leading countries. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has a particular programme of support in place to help those who are disabled to move into employment; plans were announced earlier this year.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the effect of a high effective tax rate on incentives to work. That is why the Government reduced the universal credit taper rate from 63% to 55% and increased the universal credit work allowance by £500 per year, which is essentially a tax cut for the lowest-paid, worth more than £2 billion in 2022-23, and means that 1.9 million households will keep an extra £1,000 per year on average.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Helen Whately)
The changes to the taxation of red diesel were announced back in 2020, were confirmed in spring 2021 and are coming in this year, so businesses, including in the sector that the hon. Member refers to, have had plenty of time to prepare. It is absolutely right that we tax fuels that are highly polluting; unfortunately, diesel is one of them.
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is an active campaigner for the steel sector in her constituency. I can assure her that energy-intensive industries such as steel receive substantial support from the Government, including free allowances from the emissions trading scheme and the £315 million industrial energy transformation fund, to help them to cut energy bills.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
A statutory instrument entitled the Customs (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022 was on yesterday’s Order Paper for approval by the House. It amends the customs arrangements for the United Kingdom by excluding Northern Ireland from them, changing the term “United Kingdom” to “Great Britain”. That runs totally contrary to the assurances given by the Prime Minister that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK customs territory; it runs contrary to article 4 of the Northern Ireland protocol; and it now means not only that Northern Ireland is part of the single market under the European Court of Justice, but that it is outside the UK customs territory. The motion relating to the instrument was not moved. Can the Financial Secretary give an assurance that it will not be brought back to the House until there has been a meeting to explain why it is necessary, what its impact on Northern Ireland is and why the Government have brought it forward?
Lucy Frazer
I am happy to answer that question. I understand completely the concerns of people in Northern Ireland about the impact of the protocol; the right hon. Member will know how seriously the Government take those concerns and how we are negotiating with the EU to ensure that we get the right arrangement for Northern Ireland. I can give him assurances here and now about what the statutory instrument was doing: it was making very minor technical changes in a number of areas, for example in relation to the provision of information that might have to be given but that was never previously enforced. It was actually easing up the requirements for those who operate trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. These were technical changes, and I am very—
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend has made an extremely good point. Now is the moment for us to go full steam ahead with our transition away from fossil fuels. We are investing in nuclear, we are accelerating our progress on renewables, and we are boosting energy efficiency in homes across the country. This is how we will bring bills down, improve our energy security and tackle climate change.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
When the Government set up the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, they recklessly failed to agree any guidance on early repayments. As a result, businesses are now being charged extortionate fees and are facing bankruptcy. Why is the Chancellor putting the profits of unscrupulous lenders above the recovery of our small businesses?
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
He is not doing that. The schemes were set up in various ways, depending on the size of businesses, and it will be for the individuals who borrowed money to engage with the lenders to refinance those loans on a case-by-case basis.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend has made an important point. We recognise that some people living in mansion blocks are part of a heat network and are not covered by the price cap. I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the £144 million in discretional funding that went to councils as part of the recent £9 billion energy support package, and to forthcoming legislation in which we will give Ofgem new powers to regulate prices in the sector as a matter of priority.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We really must start seizing assets and not just freezing them. That is the only way in which we can make sure that the money goes towards the reconstruction of Ukraine. Would it not also be a good idea for us not just to look at the really famous people like Abramovich, but to look at the people who own £750,000 properties in the UK and who may be the cousins, brothers, sisters, parents or some other proxy of Russian oligarchs in the UK? Must we not also do far more to tackle the personal finance of President Putin, much of which, I am told, is in the UK?
John Glen
As ever, the hon. Gentleman has made a powerful point about a very important matter. Work with our allies is ongoing to establish how we can deepen our response in a co-ordinated way in order to make a real impact on illicit finance.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
My hon. Friend has made an excellent point. He is right to champion the value of apprenticeships, in which the Government keenly believe. I had a great roundtable with apprentices in Newcastle recently, and heard for myself just what a difference they are making both to their employer and to the wider economy.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
It is estimated that the Chancellor’s smash and grab on national insurance will raise £13 billion. By happy coincidence, at the end of the financial year the Chancellor will have an extra £13 billion-worth of borrowing, because the Government have not met the borrowing expectations. Will the Chancellor use that happy coincidence to scrap the tax on jobs?
Rishi Sunak
The forecast for the public finances will be updated next week. As for jobs, I am happy to confirm that, according to today’s figures, there are record numbers of people on payrolls, record numbers of vacancies, and, indeed, more people in work now than before the crisis—and the unemployment rate is now lower than, or at the same level as, it was before coronavirus hit.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The Government have repealed many of the powers in the Coronavirus Act 2020, but they have not repealed the Act itself. This means that the Treasury can still order Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to start support schemes such as furlough without recourse to Parliament. Control of expenditure is Parliament’s first responsibility, so are the Government going to repeal the Act in total, or will the Treasury take action to give the proper powers back to Parliament?
Rishi Sunak
I would be very happy to look into the matter that my right hon. Friend raises.
Shale Gas Production
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to confirm what the Government’s current stance is on shale gas production in the UK.
The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)
In response to Putin’s barbaric acts in Ukraine and against the Ukrainian people, we need to keep all our energy options open. We have always been clear that the development of shale gas in the UK must be safe and cause minimal disruption and damage to those living and working in nearby sites. This is not a new position. Shale gas and new approaches could be part of our future energy mix, but we need to be led by the science and have the support of local communities. That was in our general manifesto, on which my hon. Friend and I stood at the last election.
The pause on fracking implemented in November 2019 on the basis of the difficulty in predicting and managing seismic activity caused by fracking remains in place, and we will continue to be led by the science in our approach. We are clear that shale gas is not the solution to near-term issues. It would take years of exploration and development before commercial quantities of shale gas could be produced. Additionally, fracking relies on a continued series of new wells, each of which produces gas for a relatively short time. Even if the pause were lifted, there are unlikely to be sufficient quantities of gas available to address the high prices affecting all of western Europe and it would certainly have no effect on prices in the near term.
As the Business Secretary has said, we will continue to back our vital North sea oil and gas sector to maximise domestic production while transitioning to cheaper, cleaner home-grown power at the same time. We will shortly set out an energy supply strategy that will supercharge our renewable energy and nuclear capacity, as well as supporting our North sea oil and gas industry.
Lee Anderson
Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State for Business told this House that
“it did not necessarily make any sense to concrete over the wells”.—[Official Report, 9 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 354.]
Given that the wells at the Preston New Road site in Lancashire are the only two viable wells in the whole of the UK, pouring concrete down them would be the end of the shale gas industry in the UK. That would be an inappropriate step at this time. We are in the midst of an international crisis, and as the Prime Minister has said, the west has become addicted to Russian gas. We must rectify that immediately; it is a national emergency.
The House was assured last week that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and No. 10 agreed that those wells should not be filled. However, Government rhetoric is not being matched by action on the ground, and Cuadrilla, the company that owns the wells, has spent the last six days trying to get hold of anyone in the Government or the Oil and Gas Authority to get confirmation that it no longer needs to carry out the abandonment process, but it is being ignored. Officials are dragging their heels and, with just days to go, Cuadrilla is legally obliged to plug the wells by 30 June. The OGA keeps confirming that. The Business Secretary says that Cuadrilla should “formally request an extension”, but that is nothing but jobsworth mentality. It is just kicking the can down the road, and we will be back here having the same argument in a few weeks’ time.
Can I ask the Business Secretary why he does not just give practical effect to the words he uttered last week and instruct the OGA to reverse the decision to concrete over the wells? That is what Cuadrilla is waiting for. Either the Government think those wells should be filled or they do not. To concrete or not concrete, that is the question; to frack or not to frack. If we do not want to see concrete being poured down our only viable shale gas wells in the middle of an energy crisis, the Business Secretary needs to act quickly.
As western civilisation grapples with an energy crisis, I am at pains to understand why the Government are risking jeopardising Britain’s long-term energy security over some tiny procedural nonsense. The course of action is clear to me—[Interruption.] I hear some chuntering in the House today, but I challenge any MP in this House to come to my constituency and speak to some real people who are struggling with their gas bills. Not one person in this place has to worry about paying their gas bill, so those Members should hang their heads in shame.
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his engagement, and I know he has a long-standing interest in energy on a number of fronts. I commend him for his continuing interest.
Nothing has changed in Government policy relating to fracking and shale gas. On the international crisis, my hon. Friend says the west is addicted to Russian hydrocarbons, but I would say that the UK is not. Last year we imported 4%, but typically we get less than 3% of our gas from Russia. The figures for oil are higher, but they are nothing like the eyewatering percentages we see among our European friends and partners.
On the holes in Preston New Road, Lancashire, the Oil and Gas Authority—the independent regulator—proactively approached Cuadrilla as recently as this week to ask whether it will apply for an extension. However, Cuadrilla has not made a straightforward application to do so. As with any licensee, Cuadrilla can apply for a straightforward extension from the Oil and Gas Authority if it wants to extend the deadline.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and I met the Oil and Gas Authority today, and it is ready to consider Cuadrilla’s letter and potential application. The Government hope the regulator would consider it favourably.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing this urgent question. He is right to try to smoke out the Government’s position, and it is no wonder he is confused—I think he will remain confused after the Minister’s reply.
Let us be clear that the Government placed a moratorium on fracking because they said it is dangerous and they could not rule out
“unacceptable impacts on the local community.”
The Business Secretary said in 2020 that “fracking is over,” and just a few days ago he wrote
“it would come at a high cost to communities and our precious countryside”.
Yet last Wednesday, just three days later, the same Business Secretary said
“the Government are open to the idea.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 355.]
Yesterday, at Chatham House, the Minister ruled it out. The Government are all over the place.
I will ask some questions, because this issue does matter. It is about our energy security, it is about communities that are deeply worried about the impact of fracking, and it is about the climate crisis. Has the Minister or his Department seen any scientific evidence since the 2019 moratorium that suggests fracking might not be dangerous and might be safe? If he does not have any evidence, why is he approaching the Oil and Gas Authority to ask it not to concrete over the wells, which was the original decision? If he does not think fracking is safe, why is he sowing uncertainty in communities across our country? If he does not have any evidence, will he assure the House that no review of fracking—no nods, no winks and no nudges—will be announced in the relaunch of the Government’s energy strategy? Clarity on this matters.
Finally, would it not be the best thing that the Government can do to guarantee energy security—the Minister should be clear about this—to have a green energy sprint by ending the onshore wind moratorium, ending the objection to solar power, embracing tidal power, moving forward with nuclear and having a properly funded national energy efficiency programme?
Greg Hands
I am delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman at the Dispatch Box. He says he is confused, but I have been absolutely clear that Government policy is unchanged from the 2019 manifesto. I am not sure what he finds confusing about Government policy being unchanged.
We did not put our 2019 manifesto on an Ed stone, but it is available online for anybody to see the manifesto pledges on which all Conservative Members ran. Government policy is unchanged, with or without an Ed stone. The right hon. Gentleman says we are sowing uncertainty. No, we have given absolute certainty. Government policy is unchanged from the pause announced in December 2019. There is no review. This is a science-led policy, and support from local communities would be needed if there were to be a change.
Finally, we heard about the “green energy sprint”, which is extraordinary. Since the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in 2010, we have increased the proportion of our electricity generation coming from renewables from 7% to 43%. In any normal terms, that would be a sprint, but it is also a marathon, in the sense that we have done that over 12 years. It has been almost a “sextupling” of the amount of energy coming from our renewables since he was in office. He talks about nuclear, but he will also remember the 1997 Labour manifesto, which said that Labour saw “no economic case” for new nuclear power stations. He has the cheek to come to the Dispatch Box today to urge that we get on with nuclear. The Government are getting on with nuclear and with renewables, doing exactly the green energy sprint that he has suggested.
Mr Speaker
I call the Member whose constituency has been mentioned, Mark Menzies.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Let me outline at the start that this does affect my constituency, and I am disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) did not have the courtesy to give me advance notice that he was going to be asking a question pertaining to my constituency.
These are not viable wells. Will the Minister just confirm that? The wells in 2012 that caused the first national moratorium were concreted over, with the blessing of Cuadrilla. The last thing it wanted to do at that point was frack again in those wells, so it dug 3 miles away. Both those wells have triggered the second national moratorium, so they are not viable wells. Will the Minister confirm that and stop this nonsense now?
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend illustrates well the point about the importance of keeping local community support if this were to happen. As stated in our manifesto, this was based on what local communities felt at that time. I do not think any local community felt it more strongly than my hon. Friend’s in Fylde. On the process, we have been clear that if Cuadrilla were to apply to the Oil and Gas Authority to extend that deadline, this would be considered by the OGA in the usual way. I repeat that the Secretary of State and I spoke to the OGA just this morning to confirm that.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a rare thing in the Chamber but I completely agree with the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) and the Minister’s opening remarks: now is not the time for knee-jerk reactions. Given that we have this energy crisis, now is the time to stay strategic and not make daft decisions. Clearly, doing fracking would not do anything to change the west’s reliance on gas, even if, as the Minister’s says, the UK does not rely on Russian gas. He can reconfirm that fracking would not release enough gas to change the international market price, so we would still be paying the same wholesale prices. Is it not the case that there is not enough geological and scientific coring information, to the right depths, to understand the viability of extraction, let alone the risks of seismic tremors, which, as we have already heard, occurred at Preston New Road? Therefore, fracking should be ruled out, in the way the Scottish Government have done. Do we not need to invest heavily in renewables? We keep hearing about nuclear from those on the two Front Benches, but committing £63 billion of capital and financing costs to Sizewell C is madness. Our approach should be straightforward renewable energy. I keep going on about pumped storage hydro. Last week, the Secretary of State said that I had been going on about it for 18 months and that it is a good solution but he needs to assess value for money. When are we going to get that value for money? When are we going to get a change to the transmission grid charging system, which is blocking the deployment of Scottish renewables? We need to invest more in tidal stream, to increase the floating offshore target and to set an onshore wind target as well. Let us maximise investment in renewable energy.
Greg Hands
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that response. He is right in the first part of what he says: fracking is unlikely to change gas prices—or UK fracking is unlikely to do so. It is certainly unlikely to change it quickly, which is what I said in my opening statement. He is also right to point to the importance of following the science, and geological information is really important. However, I have to say to him that on nuclear he continues to be wrong. The SNP’s ideological hardcore opposition to nuclear is against Scotland’s interests. We have just seen the closure of the Hunterston nuclear power station, which provided enough nuclear energy to supply every home in Scotland for 31 years. It was a great Scottish, as well as UK, solution. Our other great source of gas is the North sea, where I would like to see the SNP approach becoming more constructive and supportive of the North sea transmission deal that the UK Government did a year ago.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I support what my right hon. Friend is saying about the need for more renewables and for nuclear. We all support the objective of net zero by 2050, but we are now in a gas supply crisis. The Government insist that we are in a European market; Europe is heavily dependent on Russia. We need to produce as much gas as we can. It is a simple question: is shale an option for the Government in the immediate term, or not? That is what we need to know; otherwise, the wells will be concreted over, which the Government said they do not want.
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his support for renewables, nuclear and net zero, all three of which belong together, right at the centre of Government policy. He said that there was a gas supply crisis, but I would not characterise it that way. The UK has very secure sources of gas supply: around about 50% comes from the UK continental shelf; a further 30% comes from Norway, our great friend and NATO ally; and 20% is bought on the international market. There is obviously an issue with the price, but I do not share in my hon. Friend’s characterisation of a gas supply crisis.
Finally, my hon. Friend asked whether shale is an option. I repeat that Government policy in this area is unchanged: if people can show that the scientific base and the local community support is there, Government policy would be to allow shale if that turned out to be where those two key considerations led.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
As the Council of Europe rapporteur on hydraulic fracturing, I know, as may the Minister, that 5% of the methane produced by fracking is leaked through fugitive emissions. As methane is 80 times worse for global warming than carbon dioxide, that makes fracking worse for global warming than coal, so instead of looking at fracking will the Minister redouble his efforts on renewables, in terms of wind farms in England and marine in Wales? Will he also look to store renewable energy in organic batteries which, when produced at scale, are cheap and do not result in pollutants?
Greg Hands
There were a few questions there. In respect of the data on emissions, it is impossible to judge what UK fracking emissions would look like because data has not been produced on that.
The hon. Gentleman says that fracking is worse than coal; I can be certain that there are more emissions in the production of liquefied natural gas than in the UK continental shelf natural gas. That is for sure—there is two and a half times as much. I would expect the hon. Gentleman to rally behind our call to maintain the UK continental shelf production that is currently ongoing and to import, hopefully, less LNG.
The hon. Gentleman talks about redoubling in respect of renewables. We have Europe’s largest installed offshore wind capacity, which we are already committed to quadrupling. That is twice the rate of the redoubling for which he called.
Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)
The moratorium introduced ridiculously low seismic limits that appeared to have been written by someone who did not understand the Richter scale. Should not the decisions be taken by local planning authorities, with community involvement, and the limits set at levels similar to those we might see for development in London, for example? Should we not be locking in the community benefits of fracking sites?
Greg Hands
I strongly commend my hon. Friend for his support for Government policy on energy, and particularly nuclear. He mentioned seismic limits; I was not the Energy Minister at the time, but I believe that tens of thousands of complaints came in to the Geological Society at the time of the drilling. That showed the magnitude of the public impact of some of the drilling at the time.
On my hon. Friend’s point on local consent, I refer him to what I said earlier about the importance of the need to bring local communities on board in respect of any of these projects. With pretty much every type of energy production, we need to bring the local community on board, and that is the case for fracking as well.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
There has been much hand-wringing in the House about the cost of energy, energy security and our reliance on outside sources, yet within our own country we have sufficient gas to do us for 50 years. Does the Minister think it is sensible to turn our back on the jobs and taxes and to spend money to buy gas overseas when we have an indigenous source, a pipeline across the United Kingdom and one of the richest and deepest shale gas seams in the world?
Greg Hands
We are not turning our back on anybody. We have been absolutely clear that it is vital for us to keep our energy diversity and our energy security. We are not turning our back on anybody or anything, but Government policy on this issue is unchanged: we need to see both the scientific evidence and the local community support before we can proceed, as we set out in our 2019 manifesto.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
It is reassuring to hear from the Government that the support of the community is going to be at the heart of any decisions, because I can tell the Minister that in Rother Valley there is no community support for fracking. In Harthill and Woodsetts, where there is the potential for wells, nobody wants fracking—in fact, the fracking site in Woodsetts is mere yards from an old people’s retirement home. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will focus more on renewables, and not on fracking, because every single minute that they spend talking about fracking is a minute not spent talking about renewables and a minute that engineers are not working on renewables? We need to get renewables online, not fracking.
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend, who also takes a keen interest in energy matters, and particularly renewables, makes a really strong point about the need to maintain local support and local consent for these projects. He is quite right that we have a strong focus on renewables. The Prime Minister himself describes the country as the Saudi Arabia of wind. The commitment to renewables comes right from the very top of our Government and exists throughout the Government.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
In his contribution, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) characterised his constituents as “real people”; I assure him that the people of Lancashire are real people. The people of Lancaster and Fleetwood whom I represent are completely opposed to fracking in Lancashire, and I am sure that I speak for my friend the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) as well when I say that.
The reality is that shale gas production is currently paused. The Minister says we would need support from local communities; does he hear loud and clear that Lancashire says no and people in Lancashire do not want fracking? Will he reassure my constituents that the wells will be concreted over and that the Government will consider turning the pause into a ban on fracking?
Greg Hands
What happens to the wells is soon to be a matter of discussion between the Oil and Gas Authority and Cuadrilla. On what the hon. Lady said about maintaining local support, the support of the local community is incredibly important. It is stating the obvious to some extent, but as Energy Minister I have discovered that for all energy projects—whether offshore wind, onshore wind or solar—we need local community support, and fracking would be absolutely no exception to that.
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies), who has done so much over many years to support his constituents, who have been adamantly opposed to shale gas extraction. However, frankly, the Opposition talk a load of tosh when it comes to how we are going to meet our net zero ambitions. My right hon. Friend the Minister has set out our amazing achievements in renewables and in our commitment to achieving net zero. Nevertheless, to meet the exponential increase in electricity demand in order to make the transition, we have to look at the lowest-emission fossil fuel, which is gas. If we have safe and secure resources in this country, which we undoubtedly do, it is absolutely right that we talk to communities about whether they would like to have free gas in return for committing to shale gas extraction in their area. That is only right.
Greg Hands
A huge part of the Government’s delivery on renewables in the past 12 years is down to my right hon. Friend, first as Energy Minister and then as Secretary of State at my Department. In both those roles, she drove forward a big increase and made some of the early, tough decisions on renewables, so I absolutely pay tribute to her.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right on gas: the Climate Change Committee itself has said that the use of gas can still be consistent with reaching net zero in 2015, and—let us face it—it is vital for our energy mix today. She also made some strong points about how we keep local consent and local communities on board. In respect of all forms of energy, that is one of the central principles that the Government are keen to maintain.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Government say that the policy has not changed, but I wonder why it is so hard to make a decision. Ellesmere Port had a public inquiry more than three years ago for a shale gas development and we still have not had a decision from the Minister as to whether that will proceed. Is not it time that the Government stopped trying to have their cake and eat it, actually made a decision and rejected fracking once and for all?
Greg Hands
The policy is clear and laid out in our 2019 manifesto. It is not possible for me at the Dispatch Box to comment on individual decisions as they may be being assessed by the Department, but the policy in 2019 is clear that there is a pause on future fracking developments.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I thank the Minister for what he has just said, which my constituents will welcome. Many in this House seem to think that I represent South Dakota rather than Blackpool, which has eight out of the 10 most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, all of which are deeply fearful of higher energy costs. Does not the Minister agree that this debate about fracking is a complete distraction from the task in hand of finding speedy, effective and efficient measures to reduce energy costs in the short run, not a further long-term gamble on unproven technology that is many years away from delivering anything meaningful to my constituents?
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend has represented Blackpool incredibly ably for the past 12 years and knows his community well. He makes, again, a strong point about the importance of community consent. He also makes the point about the speedy implementation of alternative, cheaper and cleaner forms of energy. That is why we announced, just a couple of weeks ago, a contracts for difference renewables auction on an annual basis to do precisely that.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Renewables are the cheapest form of energy. It is a well-established industry; fracking is not. Reading the room, I think it is very clear that that is understood here, so why do the Government not ban fracking altogether? The Government have already made new commitments to renewables, but is not now the time, given this new challenge—there is a new challenge; we might not call it a crisis—to double and treble on the plans that are already in the pipeline and make and plan for even more renewables than the Government are currently doing?
Greg Hands
The hon. Member calls on us to double or treble renewables. That is not good enough. We are going for the quadrupling—the quadrupling—of our offshore wind capacity in this decade. It is already the largest in Europe. We are not just doubling or tripling —we are quadrupling that capacity.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Around 85% of the beautiful constituency of Thirsk and Malton is covered by shale gas exploration licences, and we will need gas for many decades into the future, so, in principle, I am not against it. I happen to think that it would be easier to do exploration in the North sea. The energy experts who spoke to the Treasury Committee yesterday were clear that one thing hampering that is the lack of willingness from our banks to extend moneys to invest in exploration, because they are focusing on environmental, social, and governance goals rather than the national interest. Will my right hon. Friend work with the Treasury to make sure that our banks do support exploration because we will need this gas into the future?
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for that incredibly important question. I agree with him: in principle, I am not against shale gas either. He also raised the important question about banks and lending, particularly to the North sea. Let me be absolutely clear from this Dispatch Box: this Government welcome continuing investment in the North sea. That is absolutely part of our energy security and part of our energy resilience. If there is any further sign that banks need a signal from the Government—either from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or the Treasury—let me send that signal today: we want to see continuing investment in our UK continental shelf.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that biogas from landfill and sewage waste produces cheaper electricity than almost any other form of gas? If that is so, can we do more to up the volume of that production, as, I think, National Grid suggested some seven years ago?
Greg Hands
The hon. Member raises a very good point and a strong point. In terms of what defines something as being cheaper, there are different ways to cut that. It will depend on what the prevailing prices are of alternative sources of energy. He will know that, for example, gas prices are more than 15 times their five-year historic high, so much depends on what the other prices are out there. But as I said earlier, a strategy will be launched by the Government before the end of the month, which will address a number of the different questions in terms of where our energy supply will come from in future years.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
Diverse organisations such as the Climate Change Committee and the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which I chair, agree on one thing: gas will be part of our energy mix to 2050 and beyond. That makes domestic supply a very sensible endeavour. I just put the benefits to the Minister: 75,000 potential jobs; tens of billions of investment; billions in terms of tax revenues; massive savings of CO2 compared with LNG inputs, which are truly horrific on CO2, given that they come in on a diesel ship; and the balance of payments positivity. Is there anything in that list that my right hon. Friend disagrees with? Finally, I implore him to send a note of thanks to the US Government who took the dash to shale gas extraction some time ago and it is on the back of that that they have mitigated a lot of our energy failure.
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his continued interest. I am always happy to meet with his group to discuss these issues. He is absolutely right: domestic supply is very important. This is not the time to be wanting to increase imports of foreign LNG. That is one reason why we want to see a robust UK continental shelf producing UK natural gas. The point he makes about investment, jobs, tax revenues and so on would be considered in the round, but I point out the earlier point about seeing the scientific evidence first and the local community support as well.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Many Wirral West residents are extremely concerned that petroleum exploration and development licence No. 184 covers Wirral West. The Government’s failure to ban fracking leaves my constituency at risk of this dangerous technology that would extract fossil fuels at the very time that we should be moving to renewables. I led a successful campaign against underground coal gasification in the Dee estuary in 2013 and last month the Government told me that they no longer support the development of UCG. Can the Minister reconfirm whether that position is still the case, or whether it has changed, and will he ban both fracking and UCG?
Greg Hands
I have laid out clearly that our policy on fracking is unchanged. The hon. Member illustrates well the need to keep community support. When it comes to renewables, this Government’s record is one of the best in the world in delivering on renewables. We have the world’s largest installed offshore wind capacity, a new dedicated pot for tidal, and a lot of progress on solar and on onshore wind. All these things are helping the UK to produce a very diversified set of energy sources, which is a key part of our response to the current crisis.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I commend the Minister for his clear answer today that, if an application for shale gas is made, there will be no political objection from the Government, but it must be determined on the basis of the support of the local community, by which I presume he means the local planning process. Can he confirm that that approach, based on local community support, will also apply to large solar farms?
Greg Hands
We have an established process in place for large solar farms and I am not changing policy on that. Solar offers a great addition to our armoury of renewables and it has been a big success in this country in recent times. When it comes to commenting on individual applications, I obviously cannot do that because that is the quasi-judicial role of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
At COP26, Wales signed up to the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, and we have comprehensively rejected fracking or any new hydrocarbon developments. Shale production will not meet our current energy needs; it will take too long, be too expensive and condemn our climate targets. Will the Minister assure me that he will respect Wales’s opposition to fracking, honour our COP26 pledges and not give in to climate deniers and fossil fuel opportunists?
Greg Hands
I remind the right hon. Lady that energy is reserved. However, I refer her to my earlier point about local community support being important in all our energy policy.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
The important thing in all these matters is to remain pragmatic. We will need gas even after we hit 2050, because gas, for example, will be the way we make hydrogen and hydrogen is clearly part of the way ahead. The reality is that the Minister knows that. I ask him, whether on shale gas or the North sea, to remain completely pragmatic—as Conservative Governments should be—to recognise that fact and not to allow this new ideological religion to take over everything. If we want to ask somebody, let us ask them whether they feel their gas prices should be rising at the current rate, or whether they would like lower gas prices.
Greg Hands
I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend on both the importance of hydrogen and on the importance of being pragmatic. He and I were both elected on a 2019 Conservative party general election manifesto and Government policy is unchanged from that manifesto. That is the height of pragmatism: to stick to our manifesto and keep our options open.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is unfortunate that the boss of Cuadrilla has, with the support of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), used the Ukraine crisis to reopen the discredited case for fracking. Will the Minister simply agree that we are better off investing in the renewable technologies of the future in terms of both our energy security and of meeting our climate commitments?
Greg Hands
We are investing massively in renewables. Our current round of allocations in the contracts for difference auction is larger than in any previous round. Within that, we have announced big support for offshore wind and other technologies and, for the first time, a dedicated £20 million pot for tidal.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Real projects take time and money, as my right hon. Friend knows all too well from his work on nuclear and elsewhere. That is why we are here today. There has been inadequate communication between the decision makers in authority and the company, which knows it has to act now if it is to meet the deadline to put concrete in the wells. Will he please personally intervene to ensure that there is effective communication between the authorities and the company, so that we do not have to bring urgent questions such as this to the House?
Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his ongoing interest in all matters relating to energy, but I must say to him that Cuadrilla was told almost a year ago, in June 2021, of the requirement to decommission the two wells by the end of June 2022. It was given a huge amount of notice to do that. I mentioned earlier that the Secretary of State and I have spoken to the Oil and Gas Authority today, and I believe that further communication will happen with the company.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I am glad the Minister has acknowledged that fracking would do nothing to increase our energy security, given that the energy would then be sold on global markets at international prices. I am also grateful that he talks of the importance of public consent. He will know that, given that only 14% of people support fracking and the fact that it would require 6,000 wells to replace even half the gas we are currently using, that will not happen any time soon. However, I urge him to do more on energy demand. This whole debate has been about energy supply—where is the action on reducing demand? That is where the Government are dragging their feet and that needs to change now.
Greg Hands
We have comprehensive investments going on through the heat and buildings strategy and other initiatives to ensure that energy demand is also addressed. But may I say this, because I think the hon. Member missed the last couple of occasions to put questions to the Dispatch Box? One thing I am sure of is that I am glad we did not follow the advice of the Green party back in 1989, when it scored its record result in an election with 15%. Its advice was that it was impossible to take action on emissions while simultaneously growing the economy. I am really glad that we decided to ignore that advice, because in the intervening 30 years we have grown the economy by 78% and reduced our emissions by 44%, comprehensively proving the Green party totally wrong.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment. After the 1973 oil price shock wreaked economic havoc across the western world, different countries responded in different ways to ensure it never happened again. Denmark went for increasing wind power, Japan went for increasing solar, France went for increasing nuclear power and in Britain we went for increasing oil production in the North sea. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should learn the lessons of history to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes, and that the response to high international energy, oil and gas prices should not be to press pause on net zero, but to push full steam ahead with it, growing renewables and nuclear power?
Greg Hands
I think I am meeting my hon. Friend’s APPG either this week or next, and I am looking forward to that. He makes some strong points. Net zero is not part of the problem; it is part of the solution when it comes to both the transition and energy security. He talks about not repeating the mistakes of the past and he mentions nuclear. I will put on record that I am glad to see the conversion of the Labour party from saying it was anti-nuclear in its 1997 manifesto to now backing the Government’s nuclear programme. I welcome that conversion.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My constituents in Formby have experienced test drilling, and they have very real safety concerns. I can assure the Minister that there is widespread community opposition to fracking in my constituency. Will he give my constituents certainty that fracking is ruled out? I will tell him how he can do it—by ending the moratorium on onshore wind and giving full-throated support to tidal energy, both of which are realistic options in the Liverpool city region.
Greg Hands
We have just announced a dedicated pot for tidal energy in the CfD round. In terms of providing certainty, may I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he goes back to the 2019 Conservative party manifesto? The policy is unchanged from that. As a friendly, cross-party suggestion, if he wants to give his constituents some assurance, he could perhaps reprint that manifesto in full and distribute it to all his constituents, saying that there the policy is unchanged.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Gas suppliers are asking energy-intensive businesses, including a major paper mill in my constituency, for large up-front payments. As the Government review their energy strategy, will my right hon. Friend look at a proposal for a Government-backed payment guarantee scheme to help companies to manage cash flow and avoid the need for prepayment?
Greg Hands
Of course we are acutely aware of the difficulties that some energy-intensive industries face. My ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), is looking at that all the time, and we review the situation constantly, but those schemes are often a matter for the Treasury and for agreement with the Treasury.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Back in 2014, the people of Warwickshire were very vocal in their opposition to proposed fracking licences across the county by Cluff Natural Resources. I am sure the Minister would agree that our objective must be to reduce energy demand. Why was it, then, that his Government tore up the zero-carbon homes legislation of the previous Labour Government, which would have seen 1 million new zero-carbon homes built from 2016, reducing the demand for energy in this country?
Greg Hands
I think the hon. Gentleman is inviting me to go back down memory lane to 2010. I will tell him this: thanks to the actions of this Government, the number of homes that are energy efficient and clear those minimal criteria has massively increased in the past 12 years. Ensuring that energy-efficient homes are there is something that this Government are delivering on.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Evidence to the Treasury Committee yesterday reiterated that fracking is not worth doing, but also pointed out that part of the problem is the UK Government’s poor and inconsistent stewardship of our resources in the North sea compared with our neighbours in Norway, who have had a long-term and consistent plan for their resources. What commitment do the Government really have to their own transition plans—that was a question yesterday—and will they invest in renewables, which will benefit not only the environment and our economy but our energy security in years to come?
Greg Hands
I will give the hon. Lady two pieces of advice. First, she may want to visit north-east Scotland herself and see who the people there, particularly the people in and around Aberdeen, think are more supportive of the offshore sector in its entirety, including oil and gas and renewables—the Scottish Government or the UK Government, because the answer is normally the UK Government. Secondly, she asks whether I am still backing the North sea transition deal. That is a deal done by this Government, so of course we are still backing it. I keep asking her colleagues whether they back the North sea transition deal, and I never hear anything. If she is now announcing that the Scottish National party is backing it, then that is one clear gain from today’s contributions from the SNP.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is time that the Government’s policy moved from a pause on shale gas production to a full stop. The people of this country have moved on, and so has the science. On Friday, the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), was in York looking at the BioYorkshire project, which will change and transform the future of our energy supply through the biofuels industry. Will the Minister not invest in that instead of old technology that simply will not deliver?
Greg Hands
We do invest in biofuels. My hon. Friend had a very good and productive visit, and I thank everybody in York who received him. We do invest, and we make sure that this is part of our diversified energy mix. Diversification is absolutely key in the space of energy, as other countries have perhaps learned to their cost.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
We cannot allow the current crisis to be used as an excuse to greenlight fracking, and, as the Minister said, any potential benefits to prices would not even be seen for years to come. The Government should be focusing on identifying other solutions such as investment in wind or solar power, or using new agricultural policy schemes in the UK to increase nitrogen use efficiency to reduce the waste of artificial nitrogen fertiliser. What alternative projects is the Minister considering?
Greg Hands
I thank the hon. Lady for that question. On hydrogen, I can confirm that one project pretty near to her constituency—the Whitelee wind farm just south of Glasgow, which I went to in November—is looking at how wind power, in this case onshore wind power, can be converted into hydrogen, with £9.8 million of UK Government support. That will drive buses and dustcarts in Glasgow city for many decades to come. It is exactly that sort of innovative project that the UK Government are backing.
Liz Saville Roberts
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked the Minister very carefully about whether he would respect Wales’s policy of refusing further coal and gas. I am sure that most people in this House will appreciate that this aspect of energy is devolved to Wales, but he replied that energy is a reserved matter. Can you advise me, Mr Speaker, on how awareness could be established within this Government as to which powers are reserved and which powers are devolved to Wales?
Greg Hands
Well, Mr Speaker, I have nothing to change from my answer. What I can say is that we do have a very constructive relationship with the Welsh Government on areas of energy, as I always had on trade. They hold key levers in areas that are important on delivering energy, such as planning and skills, so of course it is in our interests, on behalf of the people of Wales, to work together as the UK Government and the Welsh Government.
Legal Aid
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
Today I am publishing the Government’s response to the independent review of criminal legal aid. Copies are available in the House. Our proposals will put criminal legal aid on a stable and sustainable footing for the future. They will help to deliver this Government’s objectives of delivering swift access to justice, and they will usher in the reform we need at this crossroads moment as we build back a stronger and fairer society after this debilitating pandemic.
Covid-19 has been exceptionally challenging across our justice system. We owe our whole legal profession—the solicitors, the barristers, the judges and the court staff—an enormous debt of gratitude for keeping the wheels of justice turning over the past two years. Thanks to their efforts, we are driving down the court backlog and returning to a more normal way of working—in the interests of victims, witnesses, and of course the wider public. I thank Sir Christopher Bellamy for his comprehensive and invaluable review, along with his panel of experts and everyone else who contributed their views.
As I said, this is a crossroads moment. Our legal aid system needs investment if defendants are to have access to the highest-quality advice and advocacy, and if we are to ensure a sustainable criminal legal profession right into the future. To that end, Sir Christopher made two headline recommendations in his review. First, he proposed an increase of 15% in the various criminal legal aid fee schemes. I have accepted this in almost all respects, except where it risks introducing perverse incentives—for example, if it were to be applied to the rate of pages of prosecution evidence.
Secondly, Sir Christopher recommended an overall increase in investment in criminal legal aid of £135 million. Our package of reforms, announced today, matches that recommendation. As part of that, we will hold £20 million aside each year for longer-term investment, including reform of the litigators graduated fee scheme, the youth court, and the wider sustainability and development of solicitors’ practice, so that the system pays more, and more fairly, for the work actually done. On top of our additional funding to support court recovery, this will take taxpayer funding of criminal legal aid to £1.2 billion—the highest level in a decade.
Let me now unpack some of this for the House. In the short term, our cash injection will give a 15% boost to police station work, magistrates court work, much of the Crown Court work of advocates and litigators, and the work of solicitors in very-high-cost cases, as well as some of the smaller schemes. While getting pay and conditions right is clearly critical, Sir Christopher also made a number of wider systemic recommendations about the future of criminal legal aid that we also intend to take forward. We will reform fee schemes so that they properly and fairly reflect the way our legal professions work in the real world today. We will increase the diversity of our legal professions, promote a more sustainable criminal defence market, and harness the power of new technology.
Supporting a sustainable, diverse and stable criminal defence market depends both on the right fees and on having an adequate supply of legal practitioners, so we propose to review the standard crime contract to reduce barriers to innovative ways of doing business. We will offer grants for training contracts for criminal solicitors, and for solicitor advocates to gain higher rights of audience, expanding the supply of high-quality lawyers in the system. The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives has helped to remove barriers to entry into the profession and, in particular, has helped to promote non-graduate routes into the law. We want to take those reforms further again. So under our proposals, CILEX professionals will be able to become duty solicitors without having to achieve additional qualifications.
Work as a duty solicitor often involves unsocial hours and lengthy travel, making it hard for those with caring responsibilities, who are disproportionately women, to pursue a career in criminal defence. We want to make it easier for everyone to work in this area, so we will explore new ways of delivering remote legal advice in police stations. As Sir Christopher highlighted, the sustainability of the criminal solicitor profession is a particular challenge, so today I am proposing to expand the Public Defender Service, focusing on areas where more capacity is needed. That means that when there is risk of market failure, we will have a more flexible range of options to address it.
Next, Sir Christopher recommended that I propose an advisory board that will help represent all parts of the profession and shape future criminal legal aid policy. We will also gather views on how and where the innovative new technology that is helping us with the backlog can be used to even greater effect.
Our proposals respond to the full range of Sir Christopher’s review. They will increase efficiency across our system and deliver swifter justice for victims and defendants by incentivising early advice and resolution where that is right and proper. They will reinforce a more sustainable market, with publicly funded criminal defence practice seen as a viable, long-term career choice, attracting the brightest and best from all backgrounds and providing a further pipeline for the judges of tomorrow. It is only right that, as we reinforce the supply and sustainability of legal practice, we look closely at those who our legal system and our legal aid system are there to support, namely those who need legal representation and cannot afford to pay for it themselves.
The thresholds for eligibility for legal aid, which have not been raised for more than a decade, need to be reviewed, and it is timely to review them as we consider our wider reforms. Today, we have launched a separate consultation on legal aid means-testing. Our proposals will ensure a fairer justice system that targets legal aid towards the people who need it most—those least able to pay and the most vulnerable in our society. No one’s income or financial situation should stop them enforcing their legal rights or defending themselves when they have been accused of a crime. That is why this Government propose to significantly increase income and capital thresholds for civil and criminal legal aid, so that even more people in England and Wales will qualify for that support.
A funding boost of £20 million means that more than 2 million more people in England and Wales will be eligible for civil legal aid each year, and 3.5 million more will be eligible for legal aid to fund their defence at the magistrates court. We will exclude disputed assets from the civil legal aid means test. That move will particularly benefit victims of domestic abuse where the abuser is controlling assets. We will also remove the financial cap on legal aid eligibility in the Crown court for all defendants, so that everyone can access the right support at the right time.
At the same time, we will remove means-testing entirely for legal proceedings brought by parents whose children are facing the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. At the worst time in any parent’s life, those parents must and should have access to proper advice and representation, and they should not be expected to shoulder the burden themselves.
The proposals I have set out today represent a major investment in our legal aid system. They will ensure our justice system is fair, fit for the future and supported by a thriving and diverse legal profession, and that it delivers swifter and fairer justice across our society. I commend this statement to the House.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I thank the Justice Secretary for advance sight of his statement. I could not agree more that we owe our whole legal profession—solicitors, barristers, court staff and judiciary—a debt of gratitude for keeping the wheels of justice turning over the last two years. I pay tribute to their hard work in helping deliver justice for victims. I also put on record my thanks to Sir Christopher Bellamy and the rest of the team for their work.
Today’s announcement and response to the Bellamy review is welcome, particularly the Government’s commitment to increase legal aid rates by the 15% that Sir Christopher Bellamy recommended. The proposed restructure of the fee schemes will benefit members of the public and the profession alike. Similarly, we welcome having an independent advisory board to keep policy matters pertaining to criminal defence under review. Can the Justice Secretary outline the membership of the advisory board? Will he ensure that it is both representative and diverse, to help deliver meaningful change?
We will study many of the other measures that the Justice Secretary has mentioned, including the reforms of the duty solicitor scheme, in more detail. However, if the Government accept that criminal legal aid is in a perilous state, the same is surely true of civil legal aid, where decades of cuts and underfunding have crippled practitioners, and we are seeing the same recruitment and retention crisis. Urgent investment is necessary, and the Ministry of Justice has yet to publish any details on the civil sustainability review. We are suffering from serial underfunding of the entire legal aid sector, paired with a strict means test and a huge backlog in the criminal courts.
We know that justice delayed is justice denied, and victims are paying the price. Between 2012 and 2020, annual legal aid spending fell by 27% in real terms, largely as the result of changes under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. That is £4.2 billion over a seven-year period—an average of £600 million a year. Essentially, we have a position where it is simply not financially viable to be a legal aid provider in many areas of law. The Government have accepted that to be the case in criminal law, but the maths is no different in civil law. There is no doubt in my mind that the legal aid sector has survived purely on good will, and I know that at first hand as a former lawyer. Chronic underfunding has brought the criminal justice system to its knees and created advice deserts across the UK. The steps outlined today are too little, too late.
There can be no surprise then that the profession has voted with its feet. Just a few days ago, 94% of the membership of the Criminal Bar Association voted to take industrial action. That will have a disastrous impact on the backlog in the criminal courts that existed well before the beginning of the pandemic. The Government may find the profession does not accept their response, their appreciation of the urgency or the time it will take to implement. Can the Lord Chancellor set out when the recommendations will take effect? Victims have waited long enough.
While the means test review for both criminal and civil legal aid is welcome, it is of little use to the public if they are eligible for legal aid but cannot access the provider base. Advice deserts are a direct result of the negative impact caused by reductions in legal aid funding. There is no justice if there is no access to justice.
The Justice Secretary claims this is a major investment in the criminal justice system, but make no mistake: it is the absolute bare minimum, and it does not fix a decade of Tory austerity. It fails victims at every turn. The erosion of access to legal aid represents a threat to the rule of law. It does not matter what legal rights an individual has on paper if they do not have the means to uphold them. The Government pay lip service to levelling up the country. When will they level up access to justice?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he said about the criminal legal aid proposals and the means test review. The announcement today is principally about criminal legal aid, and if I have understood him correctly, he backs us on all the criminal legal aid proposals.
Can I be clear in relation to the CBA ballot? If the hon. Gentleman welcomes our proposals, presumably he would agree, as I hope would others across the House, that it is totally unwarranted for the CBA now to proceed with strike action.
The hon. Gentleman asked about timing. On criminal legal aid, we will consult for 12 weeks. I would expect him to agree that we should follow the normal public law principles to have that consultation, otherwise we are exposed to a greater risk of judicial review.
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman is nodding, and I am pleased that he does support that, even if some of his colleagues do not. We will then introduce a statutory instrument so that the proposals enter into force in October.
The hon. Gentleman talked about cuts to legal aid. I remind him that a previous Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, had plans to cut almost £200 million a year from the legal aid budget in 2009, as was made clear by the noble lord Lord Carter, who said,
“we had to break the hold of the criminal practitioners and force them to restructure so we could get more control over the costs of provision”.
In relation to our criminal legal aid proposals, we are ensuring that we have a sustainable system that supports practitioners but, above all, supports victims, witnesses and the society that we want to build after the pandemic.
I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that there will be 2 million more people with access to civil legal aid, which he mentioned, and 3.5 million more people with access to criminal legal aid in the magistrates courts. I thank him for his pretty fulsome support for the criminal legal aid proposals. I urge him to reflect on and recall the Labour party’s proposition before the 2010 election. I hope that he will be clear that it is totally unwarranted for the CBA to now proceed with strike action.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Justice Committee, Sir Robert Neill.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
This is a very welcome announcement and I congratulate the Secretary of State on taking on board Sir Christopher Bellamy’s recommendations. I join him in thanking Sir Christopher for his report and all those in the legal profession who have kept the system going under real difficulty. In appreciating the real difficulty that the profession has been undergoing in these times, does he agree that it is important, in order to get this right, to have the earliest possible increase and to take on board the words of the chair of the Bar Council, who says:
“We will work with the Ministry of Justice to make sure the funds are delivered swiftly, effectively, and fairly.”?
Can we meet the Bar Council and the profession in that spirit of co-operation and get this implemented at the earliest lawful opportunity?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee is absolutely right and I welcome the constructive responses from the Bar Council and the Law Society. He is right that we must do it as swiftly as possible, but he makes an important point that we must do it lawfully. We are following the normal public law principles in having a 12-week consultation. As I have indicated, we intend to bring the proposals into force through an SI by October. I hope that that strikes the right balance. As he and, in fairness, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) said, we extend our gratitude to all the lawyers—solicitors and barristers—judges and court staff who have done an incredible job through a very difficult couple of years.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State now accept that the swingeing cuts in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 have hobbled access to justice for a decade? Does he accept what the chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Jo Sidhu, said about the announcement today, which was that it
“will not be sufficient to retain enough criminal barristers to keep the wheels of justice turning and that means victims will be failed”?
If he does not accept that, what effect will it have on the backlog? He currently has a pathetic target to reduce the backlog to 53,000 cases over the next three years. If this is a groundbreaking change, what effect will it have on that backlog?
Dominic Raab
We will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman given that he was there at the time that Labour was planning those swingeing cuts and, indeed, he backed them. Only now, when we have had to deal with the financial consequences of the economic mess that the last Labour Government left behind and put ourselves on a sustainable footing with the biggest investment in legal aid for a decade, he is complaining.
The Crown court backlog and the magistrates court backlog are coming down. Again, I did not hear from him a clear statement that strike action would be not only unwarranted but the last thing we need as we build back and recover in our Crown courts and magistrates courts.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I am glad that he has followed the excellent recommendations of Sir Christopher Bellamy and I am glad to see the work that I started coming to fruition. He is right to draw a contrast between the approach and language in the Bellamy report and some of the hostile environment, frankly, that the criminal Bar had to put up with under the last Labour Government, which I remember very well. I also commend the raising of the threshold on civil legal aid, which will be one of the single biggest extensions of eligibility that we have seen in many a year. May I press him on the consultation period? I agree that he is absolutely right to follow public law principles, but I suggest that a slightly shorter period of eight weeks followed by an SI could deliver the necessary changes in an even shorter time.
Dominic Raab
I pay tribute to the huge amount of work that my right hon. and learned Friend did, which I was fortunate to inherit, before we came forward with our proposals. I agree with much of what he has said and done in this area. He is right to talk about the environment and the climate within which we talk about lawyers, because it was of course under the last Labour Government that they named and shamed lawyers for earning too much in fees. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) is chuntering from a sedentary position, but he is guilty of doing exactly that under the last Labour Government. We have not done that; we have engaged in a sober and sensible way because we understand the value of the legal profession, both barristers and solicitors.
I understand my right hon. and learned Friend’s call for a slightly shorter consultation period but, given the legal risk that I have been advised on, shortening it from 12 weeks to eight weeks does not seem the right thing to do. The consultation period is there not just as a legal matter but to ensure that we can tease out all the detail of the reforms, such as the implications of the fees and of the wider systemic reforms that we are introducing. It is right to take that time and I cannot see how a difference of four weeks can justify strike action in this case.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
The Government cannot swerve responsibility for having made the largest cuts that have ever been made to the legal aid budget, which have brought civil and criminal providers to their knees. The whole service is held together by good will. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid, I welcome every single penny that comes back into the service, but the fact remains that there is a crisis of capacity. Our inquiry report a few months ago showed just how many providers are closing and have been closing every month over recent years. I ask the Secretary of State exactly what steps he will now take to deal with the crisis in the provision of civil legal aid—he did not answer that in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan)—not least to accommodate the additional demand for service that will now flow into it as an admittedly welcome consequence of adjustments to the means test.
Dominic Raab
I think the hon. Lady was also around at the time when the Labour Government were planning their cuts. [Interruption.] She does not like it, but I remind her that it was Tony Blair who said that the Labour Government would
“derail the gravy train of legal aid”,
so I am afraid that she cannot come to the House with those crocodile tears. On her substantive point, however, the consultation on expanding the Public Defender Service and the 15% raise in legal fees will deal with the scarcity of legal aid practitioners in certain areas. As I have already said in relation to the means test review, millions of extra people will become eligible for civil legal aid, which she should welcome.
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I, too, welcome what my right hon. Friend has announced. He is right to focus on attracting bright young lawyers into criminal defence work. Does he also recognise that it is important to retain more experienced criminal defence lawyers who can take on the complex cases that, as he will appreciate, form a larger and larger proportion of the criminal courts caseload?
Specifically in relation to pages of prosecution evidence, I understand that my right hon. Friend is following one of Sir Christopher’s recommendations in that respect, but he will understand that that has been a proxy for the complexity and difficulty of criminal cases for some time. If we are not to increase fees in that regard, how does he intend to reflect those complex and difficult cases?
Dominic Raab
I agree with many of my right hon. and learned Friend’s points. He makes the right point that we must ensure that we still have the expertise we need at the high end of the profession. In relation to the rate of pages of prosecution evidence, he will know that we want to ensure that we do not encourage perverse incentives. I am not suggesting that that is done deliberately, but systemically it is something that we need to look at, and it is right to do so. Instead, as set out in the Government’s response, we will invite views on the longer term reform of the litigators’ graduated fee scheme to include the optimal basic structure of litigator remuneration, the role of pages of prosecution evidence in determining fees and what data should be collected to enable a thorough examination of litigator preparatory work. I hope that will address the points made.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
For years, the south-west has been called a legal aid desert. There is currently a huge backlog in the courts; legal aid is one part of the problem and workforce another. Justice delayed is justice denied. Can the Secretary of State tell me what immediate difference this statement will make to the thousands of victims in the south-west who are waiting for justice or who cannot even get justice now?
Dominic Raab
The proposals on the Public Defender Service and the means test review, and the increase in the fees, will all look across the board at areas where there is a scarcity of supply of practitioners willing to take on that work, in order to fill the gaps. I look forward to that and I hope that the hon. Lady will contribute to the consultation.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Government are to be congratulated on accepting Sir Christopher’s headline recommendations in full. I saw how much care and consideration went into that piece of work, but I would like to ask my right hon. Friend about chapter 13 of the report, which deals with fee income at the criminal Bar. Sir Christopher found that at every level of seniority female barristers earned less than their male counterparts, on average by 34%. He also found that non-white criminal practitioners earned less than white criminal practitioners by an average of 10%. What reassurances can he provide that this significant injection of public money will not be used to sustain potentially unlawful pay disparities?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very important point. In 2020, the gender balance at the point of entry among specialist criminal barristers was roughly 50:50, but at the senior level there is a much higher imbalance, with a ratio of 70:30 men to women. What are we doing about that? Our fees changes, for example in relation to duty solicitors, will particularly support younger lawyers. They will disproportionately help women with caring responsibilities.
We are also looking at further diversification through the roles and the rights that CILEX members can acquire. CILEX has allowed non-graduate routes into the profession, and I think 76% of its members are women. More generally, breaking down glass ceilings and barriers to entry into the profession is important. Beyond fees, the consultation will allow us to consult and to understand what more we can do systemically to attract a broader diversity of practitioners into the profession and then, critically, allow them to flourish.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right to say that we need to deliver swifter justice for victims, but if you will allow me a slight detour, Madam Deputy Speaker, do we not also need to deliver swifter justice to victims of war crimes in Ukraine? What is the Government’s attitude now towards the International Criminal Court? I think he would agree that attacking a nuclear power station or civilians is a war crime, but will he ensure that it is a war crime to initiate a war of aggression?
Dominic Raab
I share the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this subject and it is a timely, if circuitous, question, because I was in The Hague yesterday, where I met the ICC chief prosecutor and the president of the court; as he Gentleman knows, the ICC is independent and it is for it to determine those issues. I think I was the first Justice Minister to go there, and I was clear that we will provide a package of support, including financial and technical assistance, to enable the office of the prosecutor to do its job. We will be co-ordinating with our allies and our key partners so that is a concerted effort. The message needs to go out to Putin and to every commander on the ground in Ukraine that if they follow illegal orders they will end up in the dock of a court in The Hague and potentially in prison.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I will resist the temptation to broaden questions about the statement still further.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. Will he confirm that the intention is to increase the thresholds each year in line with inflation, so that we do not get to the same position we are in now? If so, what factor of inflation will he include on an annual basis? Finally, what impact does he expect this measure to have on the youth courts?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said. We do not plan to index the thresholds, but he makes a reasonable point. We will obviously need to keep them under regular review, but this is a big step change in the threshold and we will keep a close eye on the impact that inflation has on them. More broadly, he asks about the youth courts, which are a crucial part of the system. We are proposing a general uplift of 15% to magistrates courts fees, and the youth courts will be included in that uplift.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Will the review of legal aid specifically look at how disabled people can enforce their rights under the Equality Act 2010?
Dominic Raab
The review does not specifically deal with that, but if the hon. Lady and other groups would like to make submissions to the review, I will ensure they are properly taken into account.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement about the increased funding of £135 million a year. Can he confirm that that extra funding will mean that more of my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme will be covered by legal aid, so that they will be able to exercise their legal rights and defend themselves if they are accused?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should never forget that as important as the legal profession is—we have all paid tribute to its members—the legal and justice system is there for my hon. Friend’s constituents and those of hon. Members across the House; for victims, witnesses and the public at large.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Criminal legal aid issues have become particularly acute in Barnsley in the last few days because the roof of Sheffield magistrates court has fallen in, meaning that defendants are queueing up in Barnsley. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that this a damning indictment of the legal system under his Government?
Dominic Raab
Of course we will look at all courts with maintenance issues, but in reality record investment in magistrates courts has been secured in this spending review. We have increased the sentencing powers of the magistrates courts from six to 12 months, and we are further supporting the practitioners who serve those courts with the measures we have announced today.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Sir Christopher Bellamy’s review of criminal legal aid was based on two overriding principles: that remuneration of criminal lawyers should be such as to attract the right legal talent that the system requires, and that there should be equality of arms so that the resources available to defence are broadly similar to those available to prosecution. Does my right hon. Friend agree that those are the right principles for civil legal aid as well as criminal legal aid?
Dominic Raab
The criminal legal aid system is different from the civil legal aid system, but the overarching principles and the need to ensure access to justice are common to both. That is why under the means test review we have ensured not only that 3.5 million more people will have access to criminal legal aid in the magistrates courts, but that 2 million more will have access to civil legal aid, which I hope addresses my hon. Friend’s concern.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Although it relates to England and Wales, I would like to see this being part of the work that the Northern Ireland Assembly is doing on policing and justice. While decent pay for lawyers, and thereby increased ability of the working poor to gain access to civil legal aid, is welcome, and while there seems to be the necessary movement towards that in what we have heard today, can the Secretary of State assure us that those who need help will now get it? Historically, that has not been the case.
Dominic Raab
The proposals that we set out today apply to England and Wales—we respect the devolved competences—and we believe they will effectively address systemic issues across the justice system. I was in Belfast recently, and I have had engagement with all parties in relation to justice issues. We have a lot to learn from all jurisdictions across the UK and we will continue that two-way dialogue.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
I declare an interest as a former practitioner both as a criminal solicitor and, indeed, at the criminal Bar. I compliment and commend the former Justice Secretary for appointing Sir Christopher, who did an incredibly difficult job and did it incredibly well. However, barristers are about to do something that they do not want to do, which is to take action—industrial action—because this Government have brought the criminal justice system to its knees over a decade. The problem is that they do not have confidence in the Justice Secretary, and for good reason. The Government have already significantly underestimated their expenditure on the accelerated items of the criminal legal aid review by 80%, so how can they believe that the money will in any event come to them? The real problem is that the money is needed now—not in three months, but immediately—and that is how he will prevent industrial action by the criminal Bar.
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman seems to be the shop steward for what I think is totally unwarranted industrial action, which was balloted for before we had announced our proposals. I hope the Criminal Bar Association will take the more constructive tone we have heard from the other practitioner groups, because if he commended my right hon. and learned Friend my predecessor for appointing Sir Christopher, he surely must welcome the Government’s acceptance of the proposals he has made virtually in full.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement.
International Travel
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about international travel.
It is almost two years to the day since the country first went into lockdown—two years in which we have fought an exceptionally difficult and unpredictable pandemic, two years of unprecedented restrictions on mobility and two years that have had a drastic impact on travel and on the industry. However, we have now reached an important milestone in our journey back to pre-pandemic normality. After getting rid of testing requirements for eligible vaccinated passengers a few weeks ago, I am pleased to confirm that we are once again leading the way by removing all the remaining covid measures affecting international travel into the UK.
That means we are the first major economy to get back to the kind of restriction-free travel we all enjoyed before covid. Whether for reuniting with friends and family, holidays or business trips, from 4 am on Friday 18 March—this Friday—there will be no testing or quarantine requirements for any passengers arriving into the UK, regardless of their vaccination status, and we will go further. I have heard the calls from passengers, airlines and Members across the House that the passenger locator form is a burden that has simply outlived its usefulness, so I am delighted to confirm that, from Friday, we will be removing the passenger locator form for all passengers. No more quarantine, no more tests and no more forms—international travel is back.
It will be the first time in two years that we can enable frictionless journeys for passengers travelling to the UK, and the remaining international travel legislation will therefore be revoked this Friday—18 March—two months earlier than the original expiry date of 16 May. The devolved Administrations have confirmed that they will align on the removal of these measures, so this change will be UK-wide. [Interruption.] I hear the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) chuntering away from a sedentary position. I will come to the Opposition policy, which was both to have further restrictions and then to lift restrictions—often simultaneously—depending on which Member on the Front Bench we listened to.
Today’s announcement is another vital step in our strategy set out by the Prime Minister last month for Britain to live with covid-19 and to manage an endemic virus. Thanks to the success of our vaccine and booster programmes in building population-wide immunity—further boosters are on the way for the most vulnerable this spring—we are in the strongest possible position to lift covid travel regulations without compromising public health.
We must of course remain vigilant against possible future variants, but thanks to the robust protective shield we have built, we can avoid simply reverting to the same restrictions we have used in the past. Even if another variant of concern emerges, next time we will react differently. We have learned a lot during this pandemic, and we will use that experience to respond in more measured ways and more flexible ways. For example, while quarantine hotels were appropriate for red-list arrivals at an earlier stage of the pandemic, we are now standing down the remaining capacity. Our default approach in future will be to take the least stringent possible measures, avoiding border restrictions to minimise impacts on travel. So we will maintain a range of contingency measures in reserve, tailoring our response to the situation. Our first recourse will be to public health guidance, and guidance to ports, airports and operators on how passengers and staff can stay safe and protect others, and we will avoid stricter restrictions wherever we possibly can.
Although we are dropping all testing and quarantine requirements, our advice to eligible adults who have not been vaccinated stays the same: “If you’ve not got jabbed, then please get your vaccinations. If you’ve had two jabs, please get a booster. It will boost and protect your health, it will protect vulnerable people around you and it will smooth travel to other countries.” It is important to say that vaccination status may continue to be required in other countries to make journeys seamless. Passengers should continue to check travel advice on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office website, before they book and travel, to see what restrictions may still be in place in the countries people are visiting.
As we better deal with covid-19 at home, we will continue to make our leading contribution to tackling the disease abroad. We are sending 100 million further doses of vaccines to other countries by this summer. More than 2.6 billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have now been supplied to countries around the world on a non-profit basis, almost two thirds of which have gone to low and lower middle-income nations. We are working with key international partners to establish common rules and common contingency measures, reflecting what we have learned from this pandemic, to use in the future.
While all of these measures have been necessary, I do not underestimate for one second just how hard travel restrictions have been. They have been difficult for passengers, and damaging for travel and tourism in particular. Now that we have lifted the final covid measures on inbound flights, the industry will play a vital role in helping build back better from the pandemic. Soon we will publish our strategic framework for aviation, supporting the sector and the jobs that rely on it, and as part of that we will be considering the workforce, skills, connectivity and of course the crucial mission to deliver our net-zero commitments. I will set out more details about the strategic framework in due course.
We promised that we would keep draconian and costly covid measures in place for not a day longer than was absolutely necessary. Now we stand as one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and we are also the first major economy to travel freely once again without restrictions. The UK has achieved many hard-won gains over the past two years thanks to the endurance and resolve of the public. Now we are seeing the long-awaited rewards for that patience and determination. The removal of all remaining travel measures this Friday will mean passengers can book trips with confidence, businesses can plan with greater certainty and Britain can continue to bounce back from the pandemic, as we learn to live with covid. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The aviation industry is a critical part of the UK economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, and we all want to see a safe return to international travel, which is why, earlier this year, Labour outlined our comprehensive plan to live well with covid and to protect lives and livelihoods.
We know that the virus will continue to change and adapt and we will need to live with it as it does, and that is critical when it comes to the travel industry. Another variant of concern may emerge, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, and lessons must be learned from previous Government responses that damaged the industry. He partially outlined some contingency measures, but he had previously committed to publishing a full contingency strategy to deal with possible future variants. With surging cases in international hubs such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, does he agree that he should be fully transparent about his plans, and that that would boost confidence for the travelling public and the airline industry? Can we get a commitment to the publication of that strategy today?
Today’s announcement, which ends restrictions for the unvaccinated, is a reminder of another stark truth: in an era of global international travel, no one is safe until everyone is safe. We in the UK have learned that lesson the hard way. The Secretary of State has confirmed that we will be sending 100 million doses to low-income countries by the summer. Will he explain how 77 million doses will be delivered in just three months, when 23 million have been delivered over the past nine? If we are to break the cycle of new variants, there is only one way to do it: to vaccinate the world.
The elephant in the room today for the Transport Secretary is the cost of living crisis about to engulf this country. The barrier to passengers booking holidays with confidence this spring and summer is not a passenger locator form; it is the historic collapse in living standards facing millions, and the Conservatives’ refusal to do anything about it. The barrier will be the record rise in energy bills in two weeks’ time, the brutal national insurance hike that his Government are imposing on working people, and the record prices of petrol that are swallowing up the incomes of millions of British people as we speak.
This country is facing the largest decline in living standards since the 1950s, putting a holiday beyond the reach of many, and the Transport Secretary has literally nothing to say. Indeed, the only step he has taken is to hike up rail fares by the largest amount in a decade. Today’s announcement eases the remaining travel restrictions, but let us be clear: the barriers to holidays this summer are the tax rises his Government are imposing on hard-working families, the surging petrol prices, and the cost of living crisis made in Downing Street. Either he is oblivious to this crisis, or he is completely indifferent. Either way, is it not time this Government woke up?
Grant Shapps
I thought we were here to talk about releasing the final covid measures, but I am always up for the challenge and I am happy to respond to the hon. Lady. She started by talking about the importance of and costs to the aviation industry, and I have an ask for her in return. Yesterday, it became apparent that the Labour Government in Wales were less than chuffed with the idea of removing those final measures. Indeed, they want to continue to pile on the costs, bureaucracy and red tape of passenger locator forms, even though they are past their point of relevance. That is what the Labour Government want to do in Wales, and therefore we should not take lectures on how to improve things for the industry. I would have thought that being the first major economy in the world to make travel covid-free in terms of removing those forms would have been warmly welcomed, and I think the Welsh Government could do the same.
The hon. Lady referred to the importance of vaccination and I entirely agree. Moments ago we were talking behind the Speaker’s Chair about the terrible figures in Hong Kong to which she referred, and noting the fact that the deaths that are occurring from the spike in cases in Hong Kong appear to be entirely down to the lack of booster vaccinations. I know she will join me in being grateful that we in this country have managed to get those booster vaccinations to the population most at risk, particularly older people.
The hon. Lady asked about the toolkit of responses if covid comes back, and we had an extensive conversation about that with the UK Health Security Agency in our covid operations meeting yesterday. The collective decision, across all four nations, was that since we do not know the exact form that covid will take in future, rather than listing every possible measure—which, by the way, is every possible measure that has been taken in the past—it would be better and more responsible to see what we are facing in the specific when we see a variant of concern. Members across the House will already know the range of events and possibilities available, noting that vaccinations and pharmaceutical measures make those very different. [Interruption.] I do not agree with the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East that listing a range of increasingly draconian measures will somehow reassure the industry. I think it would be quite the opposite, and that was agreed across all four nations.
Finally, the hon. Lady went on to discuss the cost of living—a very valid subject to be discussing, although I am not sure it quite fits this debate. But briefly, I thought that the Leader of the Opposition had stood at that Dispatch Box a couple of weeks ago and acknowledged and warned the House that the cost of living would rise because of the war in Ukraine—I quote the right hon. and learned Gentleman when I say that. The hon. Lady asked specifically what we have done about the cost of petrol in tanks, but for 10 years, 11 years, we have frozen fuel duty, and for every one of those years Labour opposed that—every single year without fail. That measure saved £15 per gallon for the average family car, but what have Labour Members done? They have voted against it every time. They now have the chutzpah to come to the Dispatch Box and ask what we are doing about it. It is simply extraordinary. The hon. Lady then referred to rail fares, which have risen at nearly half the level of inflation. That represents a real-terms cut in rail fares because, as she knows, inflation is higher.
The hon. Lady mentioned and referenced employment and unemployment, and I have three facts for her. First, we have record levels of employment in this country, which are higher than before covid. Secondly, unemployment has been falling every month for the past year. Thirdly, no Labour Government in history have left power with unemployment lower than when they came to office.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Transport Committee, Huw Merriman.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was beginning to wonder which statement I had walked in on. Let us return to the theme of international travel, not least because thousands of people have worked in that industry over the past two years and have suffered greatly. It would be respectful of this place to focus on them, rather than on some of the wider issues that have just been brought up.
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Over the past two years I know that he has battled hard to support this sector. These are the last barriers to be removed, and I hope the industry will now be ready for lift off. Border Force resources will be required once capacity increases in the summer. Will he do everything in his power, working with the Home Secretary, to ensure that we have everybody we need at the airports? I used the airport at the weekend. Border Force was fantastic and really efficient, but as numbers upscale, so must it upscale.
Grant Shapps
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Ensuring that Border Force and its resources are in the right place will be important, especially when our airports get busier again. I will certainly undertake to speak to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about those provisions. It might interest the House to know that with e-gates, not having to check a separate database for the passenger locator form—that was automatically carried out by e-gates, using both software and hardware—saves up to six seconds per passenger coming through. That should also help to relieve some of the queueing.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the SNP spokesperson, Gavin Newlands.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It has become increasingly clear that the much vaunted four-nations approach often stems from situations where the devolved Governments are left with little choice, given the nature of the devolution funding settlement. Whether for furlough, community testing, or the various travel arrangements, when the devolved Governments perhaps took a different view, at least with the timing of such decisions, no public money would be made available for a different public health approach. It is not quite a “do as I say” approach; it is more a “do as we will fund” approach. Borrowed funds are obviously not available to the devolved Administrations, and as the Secretary of State alluded, the Welsh Government have said they are extremely disappointed at the dropping of testing requirements. The Scottish Government have said that they followed the UK Government to avoid the harm to tourism caused by non-alignment. Is this another example of the UK Government making a decision, and strong-arming the devolved Administrations into following them to avoid economic disadvantage?
Despite the unease that some members of society will have following these announcements, particularly given the rather nebulous commitment to continued surveillance, this is welcome news for the aviation and travel sectors, which come out of the pandemic in much poorer, smaller and less competitive shape than they entered it. That is largely a result of the extremely poor support given to the sector, in which the UK stood out among top aviation markets for its paucity of support.
The future is far from certain with events in Ukraine and covid potentially causing disruption as well as the cost of living, as has been alluded to. So I would like the Government to commit to being a bit more fleet of foot on aviation support should the need arise. Indeed, when will the strategic aviation review be published?
The UK Government have said that the UK Health Security Agency will continue to monitor variants of concern, so, further to the concerns outlined by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), will the Secretary of State explain what measures will be part of that continued monitoring, how long it will operate for and how it will be funded? Lastly, what consideration at all did the Secretary of State give to the position of devolved Governments in reaching the decision that he has announced?
Grant Shapps
I should point out to the hon. Gentleman and the House that the UK Health Security Agency is a four-nations body made up of the chief medical officers from all parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland. Therefore, when we came to yesterday’s discussion at Covid-O, which included Scottish Ministers, we could take into account the advice provided. I do not want to accuse him of being happy to see the forms and bureaucracy scrapped while still somehow opposing it, but it seems to me that if one is really serious about cutting bureaucracy, one should welcome this step.
The hon. Gentleman refers to support that he claims the Scottish Government have given to aviation, but it is worth reminding the House that that is not what Edinburgh and Glasgow airports have said. They were upset that Ministers in Scotland refused to meet them, which they said was “galling” and in “stark contrast” to the UK Government’s approach. Indeed, the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association said that its industry had been “sacrificed” by the SNP—its word rather than mine. It is important to say that we are supporting the sector, not least by removing these restrictions.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the strategic aviation review. I hope he will accept that there is no point in carrying out a review during omicron and covid—we want to do it as the industry comes out—so that will be forthcoming. He asked a sensible question about continued monitoring, which will happen in two ways. First, he will be familiar with me having said many times at the Dispatch Box when we were in the midst of the pandemic that the UK was carrying out up to 50% of the genomic sequencing in the entire world. That figure is now different, because we have helped and other countries have caught up, so, although we are carrying on our programme, much of that genomic sequencing is happening around the world rather than needing to be done specifically here. Secondly, we have the programme led by the Office for National Statistics that carries on finding out where coronavirus is in the country and the extent to which different variants might be starting to take hold. We can therefore continue to monitor things comprehensively through both genomic sequencing and the covid-19 infection survey of the population.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
May I express my gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for removing all covid-19 international travel restrictions for those coming into the United Kingdom? Will he join me in welcoming the reopening of the south terminal at Gatwick airport on 27 March and the thousands of job vacancies now available and needing to be filled as we recover our industry and our economy?
Grant Shapps
I do not think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that virtually nobody in the House has done more than my hon. Friend to promote the case of the hard-pressed aviation sector during the last two years of the crisis. It is great news that Gatwick’s south terminal will reopen on 27 March; I very much hope to be there for that. I know that he shares my enthusiasm for all the work that carried on during the crisis to aim for jet zero, to help clean up the aviation sector and ensure that, by 2050, we have not only a booming British aviation sector but a cleaner one.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I am delighted that England is following Norway, Ireland, Hungary and several other countries in lifting all remaining travel restrictions. Will the Secretary of State assure me that when the public inquiry into covid happens, it will have full access to all the various and quite secretive committees that the Government relied on when they imposed those travel restrictions? Many of us believe, and growing evidence suggests, that for countries such as ours, which were never going to have a zero-covid strategy, the draconian travel restrictions did more harm than good.
Grant Shapps
For the sake of completeness, I will mention Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway and Slovenia, which have either removed or will shortly remove measures to put themselves in the same position. I say “of leading economies” because I am not aware of any other G7 economy that has gone as far as us in scrapping restrictions and making it easier to travel.
The inquiry will be there to learn the lessons from covid, and it is incredibly important that it does so not just in relation to travel but across everything that happened during covid. Of course, we want to learn the lessons because, without learning the lessons of the past, we can never improve things for the future.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I have learned from being in this House that when the Government do something good and well, few Opposition Back Benchers turn up—we have only one today—and the three shadow Ministers have heckled from a sedentary position because they know that the Government have done a good job. Is it not true that the Prime Minister’s leadership by getting the vaccine and unlocking our society has allowed us to have freedom day for travel this Friday? Does the Secretary of State have to sign a piece of paper or lay a statutory instrument before the House? If he just needs to sign a piece of paper, why does he not do so tonight so that we can start tomorrow?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all remember Margaret Keenan receiving that very first properly approved vaccination in the entire world, and that happened in this country. It was not just that: we also got the vaccination programme out first and, critically, the booster programme out first and showed world leadership. Actually—this is partly in response to the comments of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh); I did not pick up this point—2.6 billion people have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccination, so we have made more of a contribution than any other country in the world. It is absolutely right to recognise all of that.
I do not know the technicalities of quite what happens—I imagine that we must sign an SI—but I do know that we need a few days to alert everyone to change the systems for Border Force and ensure that people already away can adjust to the change. However, it is only three more sleeps, is it not? I hope that my hon. Friend can contain himself.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is the right thing to do and, as I have said before, freedom works. However, may I press him on his answer to the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) about ensuring that, after a period of having been wound down to deal with fewer passengers, ports of entry are ready to give that warm British welcome to people either returning home or visiting for travel and leisure? I heard a horror story the other day that, at Heathrow terminal 5, e-gates were telling everybody to seek assistance but there was only one official. Will he do everything possible to support our airports and work with the Home Office to ensure that all ports of entry are ready to receive people?
Grant Shapps
I absolutely will do that. I know that Border Force has been working hard, sometimes under difficult conditions. Many people do not realise that every time there was a change in which countries were added or removed or rules changed—there were hundreds of them—that often required not just software but hardware changes. As a passenger put their passport down on an egate, it was reading not only their passport for permission to enter but checking the passenger locator form, their vaccination status and how they had filled in the form—it was doing an awful lot of work behind the scenes. Updates, unfortunately, commonly caused breaks in that system. As far as I know, we were the only country in the world to even attempt anything as ambitious on e-gates—I certainly came across no equivalent in North America or Europe. It is really important that much of that bureaucracy will be removed as that should smooth things out. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), I will discuss Border Force resourcing with the Home Secretary.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I think that everybody in the House will warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement about extra vaccines being distributed around the world. Will he ensure that a list of countries receiving them is put in the Library for us to check? Will he assure me that a good number of very poor Commonwealth countries are prioritised in the programme?
Grant Shapps
It is certainly the case that the vast majority of the vaccinations through Oxford-AstraZeneca have gone to mid and lower-income countries. Many will have been used by Commonwealth countries. I should have answered in detail the point made on that by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I will place a note in the House of Commons Library to provide a breakdown of where those have gone and answer the further question about how the 100 million is worked out. But I think all of us in the House, regardless of which side we sit on, can be incredibly proud of this country’s literally global lead in protecting the world against coronavirus.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Axing all the remaining covid restrictions for outgoing travellers will be warmly welcomed by those working in the travel, aviation, airport and aerospace sectors, including my wife and many Gloucester constituents. Those are all areas of expertise and employment across the UK. Does my right hon. Friend share my pride and enthusiasm for the new record-breaking electric aircraft, the Spirit of Innovation, developed at Gloucestershire airport, and the new hydrogen aircraft developed at Kemble airport, also in Gloucestershire, showing that in a county famed for the first ever jet-engined aircraft take-off, we can now focus on an exciting future for travel and aviation at much less cost to the environment?
Grant Shapps
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I do not want to disappoint him or his wife. It is incoming traffic that will have the reduction in bureaucracy. On outgoing, we still encourage people to check with the FCDO. As I pointed out a couple of times, most other countries still have some restrictions. But is he right about that electric aircraft, which is a Rolls-Royce project—the world’s fastest flying electric aircraft being produced right here in the UK? He is. ZeroAvia is producing the world’s first hydrogen aircraft, which is now on its second version, a larger 20-seat aircraft. There is a lot of innovation, backed by £180 million, to assist all this decarbonisation of aviation. It is very exciting and it leads to a very strong future for British aviation.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement.
Quad Bikes
Tuesday 15th March 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Quad Bikes Bill 2021-22 View all Quad Bikes Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require quad bike riders on public highways to wear helmets; to make provision about the registration of quad bikes; to make provision about the dangerous and anti-social use of quad bikes; and for connected purposes.
The Bill will promote safe use of road-legal quads and reduce the number of off-road quads on our streets by making the wearing of helmets compulsory, making necessary the installation of vehicle immobilisers, making registration of all quad bikes compulsory and empowering police to remove problem off-road quads from our streets permanently. I thank the many stakeholders who have worked with me on the Bill: West Yorkshire police, the West Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for policing and crime, the Royal College of Policing, the National Farmers Union, Brake, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety.
The constant, loud, piercing drone of quad bikes is an all too familiar sound in many of our towns and cities. These vehicles have important and legitimate uses in agriculture and related industries, but they are tools, not toys, and their careless, reckless and unsafe use on our streets is a menace. My constituents have had enough. Most issues are not caused by road-legal quad bikes, which, like any road vehicle, must be registered, have an MOT and be driven by a responsible adult with a licence and insurance. Instead, our streets are plagued by quads legal only for off-road use, which do not require registration. Most off-road quads are not approved for use on public highways precisely because they do not meet road safety standards. The lack of registration also means that they are harder to trace by police.
The antisocial use of quads centres in cities and the suburbs, but the vehicles used are often stolen from farms. The National Farmers Union sees it as a particular problem and estimates that some 1,100 quad bikes are stolen from farms each year, costing farmers upwards of £3 million. If just a fraction of those end up on public roads, that is hundreds of illegal quads running rampant on our streets. These vehicles are designed for herding animals in fields, not tearing up tarmac in our towns and cities.
Data from West Yorkshire police shows that antisocial quad use is a growing problem. There were over 10,000 reports of antisocial use of quads and bikes in West Yorkshire in 2021, a shocking 42% rise on the previous year.
The problems of antisocial quads are threefold. At the most basic level, they are a disruptive and persistent noise nuisance. Just one antisocial quad rider ripping through a neighbourhood will disturb hundreds and hundreds of residents. That constant noise causes distress to residents and undermines public confidence in our police. They also damage the local landscape, tearing up fields, green spaces, embankments and parks. Only last week, a constituent contacted me about a convoy of no fewer than seven quads racing between families on park space. On more than one occasion, community sports groups in my constituency have had to cancel or postpone matches and training because of damage to their local playing fields from quads. Most seriously, they are a risk to other road users, pedestrians and the drivers themselves. Only last year in Bradford, a man was killed when his quad veered and collided with another vehicle.
I recently spoke with a constituent who told me they had seen a young person on a quad weaving through traffic on two wheels on a busy A road in excess of 40 miles per hour, a danger to every road user and pedestrian nearby. What was the rider’s choice of headwear? Was it a helmet to protect their life? No, it was a balaclava to protect their identity. I propose to make wearing a helmet compulsory for all quad users on public highways. In Northern Ireland, it is already a requirement. Why that is not the case in the rest of the United Kingdom is a mystery. The argument is self-evident: when the worst happens, the results are catastrophic. A quad user is twice as likely as someone in a car to get into an accident in the first place and then is 10 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed. The compulsory wearing of helmets would make the law consistent with that for other similar vehicles.
Police have powers to seize these vehicles, such as under section 165A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 for unlicensed or uninsured vehicles, and under section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 for vehicles used antisocially, but they still face an uphill struggle. The police will always prioritise public safety. Where they judge they cannot risk injury to pedestrians, other road users, the rider or their officers, they will not give chase to quads. So to take action, police must link a quad being used antisocially to an owner with an address. That can take hundreds and hundreds of hours of police time, piecing together official reports from members of the public, scouring community intelligence on social media or reviewing CCTV from businesses such as petrol stations for that one frame showing the rider’s face, all to make a strong enough case to act.
That work does get results. For example, in my neighbouring city of Leeds, after a ride out involving over 100 vehicles in 2016, police were able to take action that resulted in 13 convictions, with sentences between 12 months and two years. However, it is labour-intensive and should any one link in the chain break, the police can do little. Yet effective changes can be made to help the police and will reduce the number of illegal quads on our streets. Unlike for cars, the installation of immobilisers is not a legal requirement. That vital piece of technology has been required in all cars since 1998. The device provides an additional layer of security and makes it that much harder for opportunistic thieves to make away with them. By making immobilisers a requirement, we make theft harder and reduce the number of quads getting on to our streets in the first place.
My Bill also proposes extending the registration scheme for licensed road-legal quads to cover all quad bikes, including those allowed for off-road use only. That establishes a clear line of ownership right from the point of sale, which will help police in their inquiries when investigating reports. It means that, once seized, stolen quads can be more easily returned to their rightful owner.
Finally, police will be empowered so that, once they have taken a problem quad off the road, they can make sure it stays off the road. I was astounded to learn from senior police officers that, once a quad has been seized, police have little control over where that vehicle ends up. If it was stolen and its rightful owners can be found, it can be returned, but quads are frequently sold at auction as proceeds of crime. Because of a lack of registration and regulation, once a vehicle is sold, the police are almost powerless to prevent it from ending up right back on the very streets that it has been plaguing, starting the cycle once again. We must break that cycle. The seize and release approach is not working; police must be given the power to seize and destroy nuisance quads, taking them off the streets permanently.
We need to stop seeing these vehicles as toys. If we continue to let them slip through the cracks in legislation, we will fail to protect legitimate owners from needless theft, we will fail to protect residents dealing with chronic noise and we will fail to protect all road users and pedestrians who remain at risk. It is time we brought in measures to provide consistency, protect road users and legitimate owners of quads, and stop the blight of their dangerous and antisocial use on our streets and paths. I commend this motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Judith Cummins, Barbara Keeley, Nick Smith, Graham Stringer, Mrs Sharon Hodgson, Dan Jarvis, Yvonne Fovargue, Charlotte Nichols, Kate Green, Rosie Cooper, Jackie Doyle-Price and Naz Shah present the Bill.
Judith Cummins accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 May, and to be printed (Bill 281).
Ukraine
The Minister for Europe and North America (James Cleverly)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the situation in Ukraine.
Seven days ago, President Zelensky inspired us with his address to Parliament. This weekend, he was visiting wounded soldiers in hospital, leading from the front. We owe it to President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine to do our utmost to help them in their brave fight; we owe it to ourselves to stand up for security and stability in Europe; and we owe it to the world to keep the flame of freedom burning and to show that aggression does not pay.
In response to the unprovoked attack, the world has shown immense unity in standing up to Vladimir Putin, but we need to keep up the pressure. Our objective is clear: Putin must lose in Ukraine. We are doing this by cutting off the funding for his war machine, by providing weapons that the Ukrainians need to defend themselves and by isolating Putin on the world stage. The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of the international response, with a tough sanctions package and strong support, including defensive weapons and humanitarian aid. We will now enhance our work with allies to respond to Russia’s aggression.
We need to be strong to get peace. That is why we are building on efforts to cut off the funding for Putin’s war machine through sanctions. Today, I can announce that we will go further than ever before by hitting more than 360 more people complicit with Putin’s regime. They range from former President Dmitry Medvedev and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to Putin’s propagandist Maria Zakharova. After today, we will have designated more than 1,000 individuals and entities under our Russian sanctions regime.
We are using our new powers under the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 to maximise impact. That would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of colleagues across this Parliament to get the legislation through the House so quickly, which shows our collective determination to lead by example in punishing the Putin regime.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Minister is right that we are sanctioning a lot of people, but actually we name the people who are sanctioned, and then other people do the sanctioning by not engaging with them on a financial basis, not buying or selling properties and all the rest of it. At the moment, it is phenomenally difficult to find out from the Foreign Office sanctions list who is and is not sanctioned. For instance, I gather that it was announced last week that Members of the Duma were sanctioned, but they are still not on the Foreign Office website list, as far as I can see. I wonder whether there is a way of making the information far more readily available to the wider population.
We need to deal not just with the people who have £20 million houses, whom we have all heard of, but with the people who have £750,000 flats in London, bought with Russian dirty money—the many relatives of Abramovich and his ex-partners, for instance. Each one of them needs to be dealt with, and each one of those properties needs to be seized.
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about ensuring that we give due publicity to the people, institutions and entities who have been sanctioned. I will ensure that the Department listens to his suggestion.
In December, we brought our G7 partners together in Liverpool to warn Putin that invading Ukraine would have massive consequences. We have followed through on that pledge. We have worked with our allies to cut off sectors of the Russian economy by targeting its defence companies, trade and transport sector, and by kicking banks out of the SWIFT financial system. We have led the way with our financial sanctions, targeting 10 Russian banks, and we have hit over £300 billion of Russian bank assets. All this amounts to the toughest sanctions package of any country. We will work with all our allies and encourage them to keep ratcheting up their efforts as well.
We will continue to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine. We were the first European country to send defensive weapons; we have already donated more than 3,600 next generation light anti-tank weapons and are now supplying Javelin missiles.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the lighter moments in an otherwise extremely bleak military picture in Ukraine was the destruction of Russian tanks, using—one has to presume—British NLAW missiles?
James Cleverly
My hon. and gallant Friend makes an important point. We have heard anecdotally that Ukrainians are shouting “God save the Queen!” as they fire those weapons at the tanks that have been sent to destroy them. I am very proud that we play an incredibly important part.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I thank the Minister for giving way; it is very courteous of him. Is it not true that part of the reason we are where we are today is the historic long-term running down of our armed forces? The situation today sits very ill with the proposal to reduce the British Army by 10,000 men and women. Finally, we have all read in today’s Telegraph that inflation will reduce the size of the armed forces over the years ahead.
James Cleverly
The sad truth, I think, is that Vladimir Putin has been plotting this expansionist idea of his for quite some time. I do not agree that it is necessarily linked with domestic defence policy in the UK, but we can absolutely be proud that British military technology, assisted by British military training, is helping the Ukrainians in their time of need and in their ferocious defence of their homeland.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has told us that the United Kingdom has taken the lead on our continent in freezing the assets of Russians. During his discussions with representatives of the European Union, have they been able to furnish him with an explanation of why they, as an entity, have failed to keep pace with Britain in that regard?
James Cleverly
I am often encouraged to do a “compare and contrast” between the United Kingdom and our international friends and partners, but the simple truth is that there has been greater, tighter and closer co-ordination in response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine than I could ever have imagined, and we will continue to work together extremely closely. We are proud of the fact that the UK Government have had a dramatic and detrimental impact on Russia’s finances, choking off Putin’s ability to fund this aggression, but we intend to go further, and we will do so in close co-ordination with those international friends and partners.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
As someone who lost his guts, or at least his lunch, quite a few times when helicopters were having to jig because of the threat of Singer missiles—given to our allies at the time, decades earlier—may I ask whether the Minister can assure us that the Government’s measures are sufficient to ensure that our weapons do not end up on the black market in the hands of the wrong people at a future date? Will he also confirm that our weapons—the NLAWs and other pieces of aggressive equipment—will not end up in the hands of far-right neo-Nazis, many of whom we know to be making their way to Ukraine now from around the world?
James Cleverly
Our priority, and the purpose of the defensive weapon support that we have provided, is to help the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the attacks of Russia. Obviously we hope that this conflict will come to a swift conclusion, but until then we will continue our support for the Ukrainians as they defend themselves. What happens at the end of this conflict, in terms of securing munitions, will be something on which we will work with the Ukraine Government and our national friends and partners, but at the moment our priority, quite rightly, is to help the Ukrainians to defend themselves against Putin’s attack.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I ask my right hon. Friend about this distinction between defensive and offensive weaponry? The fact is that when a friendly nation finds itself under attack, all the weaponry with which we supply it is defensive. I should have thought that if we cannot intervene ourselves—and there are good reasons why we cannot—there is no reason at all why we cannot help the Ukrainians with their airspace problem by facilitating the necessary aircraft deliveries which they have requested.
James Cleverly
My right hon. Friend has made an important point about munitions systems being inherently defensive when a country is under attack. He has also made an important point about airspace management, and I will come to that later in my speech. I intend to make some progress now.
Since 2014, we have worked to train more than 22,000 Ukrainian troops under Operation Orbital. As well as helping Ukraine to defend itself from attack on the ground, we must help it to defend itself against attack from the skies. That is why we will be sending more supplies, including Starstreak ground-based air defence anti-aircraft missiles. We and our allies need to do everything possible, within the UN charter on self-defence, to help Ukraine to defend itself, which is why I was with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister this morning discussing with and working with our Nordic and Baltic allies to increase defensive support as part of the UK-led joint expeditionary force. We must be robust in supporting our NATO allies living under the shadow of Russian aggression, so the UK, as NATO’s biggest European contributor, is doubling the number of troops in Estonia and Poland.
As Putin inflicts ever greater misery in Ukraine, we continue our humanitarian and economic support. We have pledged almost £400 million, which includes the supply of more than 700,000 medical items directly to Ukraine and more than 500 power generators to keep essential facilities such as hospitals running. We have also brought 21 critically ill Ukrainian children to the UK to receive life-saving cancer treatment. We are providing more humanitarian aid than any other European country. The British people have also risen to the moment by showing their own huge generosity of spirit. In the short time since our homes for Ukraine scheme was launched, more than 80,000 people have signed up for it.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
It may be helpful for my right hon. Friend to know that according to a Sky newsflash, the figure is now more than 100,000.
James Cleverly
That is lovely. It is not usually nice to be wrong at the Dispatch Box, but I am incredibly proud that the figure I quoted, which was accurate a few hours ago when this speech was written, has now been made obsolete by the enormous generosity of spirit of the British people. I think that that shows us at our best. The Disasters Emergency Committee’s appeal has now reached over £150 million, which we are supporting with our largest ever match-funding pledge of £25 million.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I do not doubt the generosity of the people of this country, but I am still worried about the generosity of the Government. May I give the Minister an example? A young Ukrainian family, related to one of my constituents, have thankfully made it into Poland, but although their visa appointment was over a week ago, they are still waiting for the outcome. Meanwhile, their hotel bills are rising and they are even considering returning to Ukraine—to a war zone. How humane is that response from the Government? Can they not make these decisions much more quickly?
James Cleverly
The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and other members of the Government have made it clear that our intention is to be generous and to welcome Ukrainians with open arms. We are trying to facilitate that as quickly as possible, and the Home Secretary has spoken at the Dispatch Box about measures that she has put in place for that purpose. If the hon. Lady will pass on the details of the people whom she has mentioned, we will see what we can do to help, but I assure her that the generosity of spirit of this country will be felt by the Ukrainians who are fleeing persecution and attack from Vladimir Putin.
As well as supporting Ukraine directly, we are deploying our diplomatic efforts internationally. We are rallying the 141 countries that voted to condemn Russia’s actions at the United Nations to do even more. We have seen many of those countries support our sanctions worldwide, from Switzerland to Singapore, and we are working to draw more countries into the orbit of those that are prepared to stand up for the sovereignty of Ukraine. We are working with partners to reduce the economic dependency on Russia across the world, from the Indo-Pacific to Africa and the Gulf, through trade and British international investment. Everything we do will further isolate the Putin regime which has made Russia a global pariah.
Ultimately, we will hold Putin accountable for his crimes. We will work with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to help them to obtain the information that they need, and we will not relent in our mission to see that justice is done.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend seen the recent reports that the Russian navy is now massing off Odesa in a typical Russian tactical manoeuvre to open a new front? Is this not in fact a new opportunity to demonstrate to the world the unacceptability of Putin’s disgusting war and to invite open and international condemnation of his actions?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to continue working internationally to enhance the coalition of nations that have denounced Putin’s actions and to increase the pressure on him to bring this war to a conclusion rather than opening up another front and increasing the suffering of the people in Ukraine.
We must be realistic that there will be a cost to the UK and to our allies of imposing these tough sanctions, but the cost of doing nothing is so much higher. We saw what happened in 2014 when the free world did not do enough to contain Putin’s aggression. He came back more aggressively, and that is why we cannot allow him to impose a settlement on Ukraine that vindicates his aggression. If we fail to stand up to Putin and fail to support Ukraine in its hour of need, we will live to regret it.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
We know what a successful sanctions regime will look like: withdrawal, peace restored, etc. Who will determine—and when—whether the sanctions policy has worked, and what is the next step thereafter?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend is right to draw our attention to that. The simple truth is that the sanctions have to be successful and we have to keep applying the pressure until they are successful.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
On that point, as we mount up the sanctions, we will be freezing more and more oligarchs’ and Russian assets, but we will not be selling them. We are not sequestrating them, so we are going to end up with a pile of assets. Are we at some point going to use those assets for the benefit of the Ukrainian people, or are we just going to wait until the war is over and hand them back, which I do not think would be as popular?
James Cleverly
Ultimately, what we are looking to do with these sanctions is choke off the supply of funds for Putin’s war machine. We have to be very focused on what the sanctions are for. This is about bringing this conflict to a conclusion.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
Just a single point on sanctions: what action will we take when people break those sanctions on Russia and take supplies? I am thinking particularly of the crude oil being taken by India. What action should we take in those circumstances against people who are still supporting Putin, with his money flowing into the country?
James Cleverly
Ultimately, the enforcement of our sanctions regime is a task for Her Majesty’s Treasury. We will of course work across Government and internationally to ensure that the sanctions packages are robust and have the desired effect of ending this war in Ukraine. That is why the UK is working so hard and that is why, together with our allies and partners, we will ensure that Putin loses in Ukraine.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Three weeks ago, the world was changed forever. Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion marked the start of a crime of aggression against the Ukrainian people, but it was also the beginning of an assault on the fundamental aims of post-war Europe: peace, freedom and national sovereignty. After countries on our continent murdered one another on an industrial scale in two world wars in one century, after a cold war that threatened our planet with nuclear extinction and after horrific conflicts in the Balkans, we established an era of relative security in Europe. With the vicious tyrant in the Kremlin now shaking that all about, Ukrainians have defended their homeland with extraordinary courage and determination. Russian forces, fed a diet of propaganda by their Government, might have expected to be greeted as liberators. They have instead encountered not just the dogged and skilful resistance of the Ukrainian army but the courage of ordinary men and women willing to stand in the path of Russian tanks.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I completely agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, but do those on the Labour Front Bench accept that, for too long, the west has basked in the peace dividend following our victory in the cold war? Democracy needs nurturing and protecting, because sometimes it is a fragile concept. Does he therefore agree that, having taken that for granted in the past, we need to do more to build our hard and soft power to ensure that in the coming battle for democracy, it is those who believe in the concept who actually win through?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman is completely right. After Georgia in 2008, after Crimea, after Donbas and after Syria, there is now deep reflection in the western community on what we could and should have done. It is important to remember that in a democracy such as ours, soft power always plays a part. That is why we should never undermine the BBC, the British Council, the role of our foreign diplomats in this endeavour or the importance of international development. We have soft power, but he is right to say that we also have armed, hard power, and we should be very cautious about the cuts that we have made to our armed defences. Sadly, Putin has deployed only hard power—or aggressive power in terms of his cyber-power—but we have the whole arsenal and we should reflect deeply on the complacency that has crept in over the last few years.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am grateful also for the unity that has been shown across this House in our response to what Putin is doing in Ukraine, but I wonder, given that he referred to Syria, whether on reflection he regrets the stance taken by the Labour party in this Chamber when chemical weapons were used in Syria and Labour chose not to support the then Government’s position that we should take action alongside the Americans.
Mr Lammy
I entirely understand why the former Prime Minister raises that issue. She will know, too, that there is deep reflection on Capitol Hill and in Washington on what happened at that moment in time. This is a long curve; it is one that goes back to 2008. It is not just about that singular moment, but I understand why she raises it.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
Can I go back to what the right hon. Gentleman said about soft power? He said that Putin was deploying only hard power. That is absolutely true in Ukraine, but for too long, large amounts of Russian soft power, by way of cash, have been flooding into various parts of the UK—into culture, universities, politicians and businesses. Is it not the case that we should pay a great deal of attention to ensuring that that cannot happen again?
Dr Julian Lewis
Could I urge colleagues on both sides of the House not to bring the Syria vote into this dispute? The Syria vote hinged on the fact that it was proposed to depose another Arab dictator without regard to the nature of the extremists who would have taken over. We did exactly that sort of thing when we armed all sorts of groups in Afghanistan, and that did not work out too well for America either. This is a separate issue and we should not confuse the two.
Mr Lammy
The Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee gives the right context of the debate, as I remember it, at that time.
Ukrainians have defended their homeland with extraordinary courage and determination, and Russian forces, fed a diet of propaganda by their Government, may have expected to be greeted as liberators but have instead encountered dogged and skilful resistance from the Ukrainian army. Putin’s hopes for a brief campaign have crashed against the rocks of Ukrainian defiance.
That courageous resistance, however, has been met with growing brutality, with siege laid to cities, war crimes committed and civilians forced to flee, but let us look at the result of Putin’s war. There have been Russian casualties on a scale Putin could not have predicted. There is horrific suffering among the Ukrainian people who Putin claims are Russians’ brothers and sisters. Ukraine’s President has become an emblem of democracy standing up to dictatorship. The Russian economy is in freefall, the west is united, NATO is strengthened, Germany has announced a massive and historic increase in its defence budget, and even non-NATO states such as Sweden and Finland, which I visited last week, are exporting weapons to Ukraine. Russia stands isolated at the United Nations, condemned by more than 140 nations, while thousands show great courage in protesting against this war in Putin’s increasingly authoritarian police state.
This House is united in saying that defensive military support to Ukraine should continue. It is right that we help Ukraine defend itself, and the Government have Labour’s full backing in providing such support, including the new anti-tank and possible anti-air weapons systems announced last week. We need to get them into Ukraine as soon as possible, as they will be essential to maintaining Ukraine’s use of the sky. Last week the Government said they had taken the decision to explore a donation of Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. Has that decision been made?
Mr Baron
I apologise to the House for intervening on the right hon. Gentleman a second time. I completely agree with what he just said, but there is a balance to be sought between offering essentially defensive weaponry and offering offensive weaponry, which is why some Conservative Members were concerned about talk of a no-fly zone or, indeed, the donation of Polish MiG jets to Ukrainian forces.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in this age when soft power is important—the old adage is “talk softly but carry a big stick”—we should not consider any further cuts to our soft power capability, including the British Council?
Mr Lammy
I entirely agree.
From the beginning, this House has stood united in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and against Putin’s aggression, so I welcome the news of additional sanctions. We support tough measures against Putin’s cronies and cutting Russia out of the economic system, but let us be clear that we were promised sanctions immediately after the invasion of Ukraine. Since then the Government have been playing catch-up.
The EU sanctioned members of the Russian state Duma on 23 February. Why did the UK not do the same until 11 March? I wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 27 February calling for a ban on the export of luxury goods to Russia. Why did the Government only do that today? The United States sanctioned Oleg Deripaska four years ago. Why did the British Government catch up only five days ago?
The Government’s delayed sanctions gave Putin and his cronies a get-out-of-London-free card. Roman Abramovich, who was sanctioned at the same time as Deripaska, is just one example. Because of Ministers’ tardiness, Abramovich was able to fly his jet out of Stansted and sail one of his superyachts to Montenegro, with his second boat not far behind. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) observed, that is £1 billion of assets that have left the United Kingdom.
For too many days during this war, the Government have been behind our EU and US allies on individual sanctions. They have been behind the Opposition on sanctioning banks in Belarus as well as Russia. They have been behind us on sanctioning the energy sector and on closing the loopholes that let Putin’s criminal cronies off the hook.
Alec Shelbrooke
I accept the political point that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but I am sure he recognises that we were first out of the traps on banking sanctions and that we led on trying to remove Russia from SWIFT. It is simply not fair to paint a picture that we have been following the EU and the US. There has been an international response in different areas, and it has come at different speeds.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way.
The right hon. Gentleman is factually incorrect on the speed at which the UK applied sanctions compared with others, but does he agree that it is now important to start planning for Ukraine’s reconstruction? Somebody has to clear up this mess, and it will need some sort of Marshall plan. Does he agree that the sanctioned assets are ultimately fair game to be seized and used to rebuild Ukraine? In that respect, will he differentiate oligarchs and kleptocrats? The assets of the latter are clearly fair game, and the assets of the former may well be fair game.
Chris Bryant
I asked the Minister about seizing assets, and this follows from the point made by the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). If we do not seize assets, we will not be able to redeploy them towards the reconstruction of Ukraine. I suspect the Government will need further primary legislation to do that, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the House would stand ready to do that if necessary? There will otherwise not be a Marshall plan for Ukraine.
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the historical enforcement of sanctions in this country, and of course the Opposition will stand ready to assist the Government if and hopefully when that legislation comes forward.
For more than a decade the Government have refused to clean up dirty Russian money. For any change to happen, Ministers have had to be dragged through the Lobby by Members on both sides of the House to rush through legislation that should have been passed years ago. We welcome the measures in the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, which was passed yesterday, although many are too weak.
The job is only half done. We must complete the process of shutting down the London laundromat and ending the impunity of Russian oligarchs and the corrupt elites and criminals from across the world who use Britain as a base for hiding stolen money. That means completing Companies House reform, closing loopholes that allow overseas territories to be used as offshore tax havens to shield dirty cash from all around the world, and effectively enforcing our laws, as has just been suggested.
This war has caused the gravest humanitarian crisis on our continent in decades and the biggest movement of people in Europe since the second world war. Almost 3 million people have fled, the vast majority of them women and children, with little more than the clothes on their back.
Yesterday I met the Romanian ambassador, who told me of the efforts under way to help and support those fleeing the war. I pay tribute to communities throughout Europe, especially in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Moldova. Britain has a proud tradition of supporting those in need. Quite simply, we must do our part, but Government bureaucracy is still standing between desperate Ukrainians and the generosity and good will of the British public.
The war in Ukraine is a seismic shift. Our short-term responses must be components of a longer-term strategy. We must match deterrence with diplomacy, standing firm and resolute in defence of our allies while minimising any risks of a direct NATO-Russia confrontation. Avoiding miscalculation and miscommunication, we must have a clear-eyed assessment of how this war could be brought to an end so that a free and sovereign Ukraine can be rebuilt for her people. NATO is rightly avoiding direct conflict with Russia, but that means that the costs of this appalling war are being felt almost entirely by the Ukrainian people. Putin deserves absolute defeat in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people deserve absolute peace. So we must play our part in pushing for a negotiated settlement, a deal for peace based on terms accepted by the democratically elected Government of Ukraine. We must have not only strong and effective sanctions, but a clear notion of how they can be used to bring about the outcomes we seek.
While we push for an end to Putin’s monstrous aggression, as well as for peace, democracy and freedom for Ukraine, we must remain open to the Russian people. They did not choose this war, so we must expose Putin’s fabrications, distinguish between the Russian regime and Russia, and bolster the work of the BBC World Service and others to communicate with authoritarian states, as has been said. We must revise our defence plans for this new era, scrap the planned cuts to the Army and protect our energy security with a green energy sprint, to move decisively away from fossil fuels and on to clean, cheap, home-grown renewables instead. That will end dependency on Russia, accelerate our path towards net zero and cut off finance for Putin’s war machine.
Simon Hoare
The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned a negotiated outcome. What we will all want to see is Russia withdraw entirely from all parts of Ukraine—no negotiation, just withdrawal. Will he confirm that that is his position and that of his party?
Mr Lammy
Of course Putin must withdraw, and I said that this should be based on the views of the democratically elected Ukrainian Government and their people.
It is rare that I agree with much at all that comes out of the mouth of our current Prime Minister, but I agree with the opening of his comment piece for today’s The Daily Telegraph, as the west did make a “terrible mistake” in letting Putin “get away” with his “act of violent aggression” in Ukraine in 2014. But the Prime Minister should also apologise for his own apologism, because in 2016 he foolishly blamed the EU for the illegal annexation of Crimea. In the absence of the Prime Minister, I am sure the Minister will agree that that was dangerously wrong, and that only Putin and his rogue regime can be blamed for these illegal acts of war.
The Prime Minister has made mistakes in advance of this war. He should apologise, too, for dining with an ex-KGB agent in April 2018, just two days after attending a high-level NATO summit that focused on Russia, as well as for foolishly declaring that the
“concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass ... are over”
as recently as November 2018. In the face of illiberalism, aggression and dictatorship, now is the time for us to reassert our belief in liberal democracy; reiterate our support for human rights at home, as well as abroad; reinforce our unshakable commitment to our NATO allies; and proclaim our belief in multilateral institutions, such as the UN, that are designed to build peace and prosperity, based on the rule of law. Because those who seek to divide us have these in their sights.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As the House can see, a lot of people wish to catch my eye during this debate, and we want to get as many in as we can. I am not going to introduce a time limit at this moment, but if everybody could focus on speaking for about eight minutes, which is generous compared with the time allowed in most debates we have, at least we will be able to give everybody a fair share. I call Theresa May.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for his speech and, as I said earlier, I thank everybody from across this House for the unity we are showing in the face of the heinous further invasion of Ukraine by Russia. There is a very clear message from this House and this country: Putin has brought war to mainland Europe; he has invaded a sovereign, independent country; and he is killing innocent men, women and children whose only wish is to live in freedom and free from Russian aggression. There should also be a clear message from this House that those responsible for initiating and prosecuting this war will be held accountable for their war crimes.
As I look around the Chamber, I am sure that there are going to be many speeches on a number of matters relating to the war in Ukraine: security and defence matters, military matters, sanctions and refugees. Indeed, such references have been made in the two opening speeches. I want to focus on one issue on which light has not been shone so far and where I have a particular interest. I say to the Minister that this matter is primarily for the Home Office, but I hope that he and the other Ministers on the Front Bench will be able to take these messages to the Home Secretary and ensure that they are taken on board and that action is taken.
The issue I want to raise is that of the trafficking of Ukrainian people, particularly unaccompanied Ukrainian child refugees, at the border areas. That is happening in Poland and in other countries to which Ukrainian refugees are fleeing. This issue has been raised with me by two non-governmental organisations that work globally on tackling modern slavery: Walk Free and the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery. It is a sad reflection on human nature that at the very point where these women and children are fleeing Ukraine for their safety in order to find refuge elsewhere, the criminal gangs have moved in to make money from the trafficking of what they consider to be yet another commodity—human beings. These gangs are attempting to make money out of this human distress and vulnerability.
The human traffickers moved in within a day or so of refugees starting to come across the borders. We have seen the photographs of the borders and we know that the numbers are such that the situation can be chaotic. It is very difficult; there are many unaccompanied children coming over. They are not necessarily orphans, but they may not have their family with them, and some of these children do not have papers. I understand that the Polish authorities are making valiant efforts to find papers and photograph children to find some sort of record of them in order to identify them. However, we know that there is no database and no real means of ensuring that identification and tracking of what is happening to those children. It has been suggested that a database is needed, and I know that efforts are being made to encourage the tech companies to help, and to do so quickly, by creating a database that can identify and track these children, to make sure that they are not unidentified and there is not the opportunity for the criminal gangs to take them away without anybody knowing that they have been there or where they are being taken. So my first ask for Ministers is whether they will now work urgently with UN agencies, the European Commission and the tech companies to find a resolution to this issue, to put in a place a system that means there can be no unidentified children left to the mercy of the traffickers.
My second ask is on the need to deal with the criminal gangs. Europol and Interpol almost certainly need to be involved, as do the various police and law enforcement agencies throughout Europe. There will be a key role for our National Crime Agency, which I believe should take the lead. I hope that if it has not already done so, the Home Office will take the issue up with the National Crime Agency and make sure that it has the resources it needs to deal with the issue. I also hope that the NCA and the Home Office recognise the urgency and importance of the issue of the trafficking of children.
My first point was on the need to reduce the opportunities for traffickers and my second was on the need to identify, catch and prosecute the traffickers, but we must also recognise that some children will be prey to the traffickers and some of them may be brought across borders and into the United Kingdom. It is possible to identify children who have been trafficked when they are brought through the border, so my third ask is for the Home Office to ensure that Border Force recognises the possibility of trafficked Ukrainian children being brought across the border and into the country, to reinforce its guidelines for Border Force staff on how to identify them, and to ensure that those staff are aware of this potential issue and are vigilant in dealing with it at the border.
As the Minister has outlined, the United Kingdom is in many ways rightly supporting Ukraine and putting pressure on Russia to stop its illegal invasion, but we have to look beyond the obvious. I suggest that the opportunities for traffickers in border areas is not the obvious but is, sadly, something that will lead to considerable further human misery. I trust that the Government will take the issue on board and act with urgency.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Three weeks ago, when we looked at the Russian troops amassing on Ukraine’s borders, none of us could have imagined the horror that we were going to witness. To see war crimes being committed, to see cities being levelled, and to see civilians being surrounded and stuck in basements without food, water or medicine—these are scenes that none of us expected. We certainly did not expect to see them in a sovereign, independent, modern-thinking country such as Ukraine.
I pay tribute to the people of Ukraine—the House is absolutely united on this. We pay tribute to President Zelensky and to the people for the bravery and resilience they have shown and continue to show in the face of the onslaught. I also pay tribute to the countries that have opened their borders to the refugees, and particularly to Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Poland. I have probably missed out some countries that are doing great work with refugees, but those are the countries into which refugees are initially crossing over.
We have to remember that this is not the first time that Ukraine has met the force of Russia. One hundred years ago, when Russia wanted to impose its will on the Ukrainian people, it enforced famine on Ukraine. Millions died during the Holodomor. We are already seeing the bodies pile up in this conflict. We need to do what we can and I fully support the lethal military aid that the UK is providing. It is crucial to Ukraine’s response.
I wish to focus my comments on the refugee crisis, which is the issue in which most of our constituents feel most invested but in respect of which, in many ways, they feel most helpless. On Friday, the Home Secretary wrote to MPs about the UK’s humanitarian response. Unfortunately, nothing in that letter reflected the scale or seriousness of this crisis; rather, it was a list of hoops that refugees would have to jump through. Frankly, it entirely lacked compassion. Let me read the House one sentence that stood out:
“I have two overarching obligations: to meet my first responsibility of keeping the British people safe and to meet their overwhelming demand that we do all we can to help Ukrainians.”
There was nothing about our need to help Ukrainian refugees directly. Even if I take that sentence at face value, it contains this idea of keeping British people safe and supporting Ukrainian refugees—two things that are not contradictory. There is no reason why we cannot do both.
We have to be clear that it is not British people who are being bombed out of their homes, who are seeing mothers and babies killed in maternity hospitals, or who are seeing families lying dead at the side of a road. It is not British people in Mariupol who have run out of food, water and medicine; whose homes have been obliterated by the Russian bombardment; and who now are holed in, surrounded and unsure of their fate.
I am not naive, and neither are my colleagues; we know that there is a threat to the security of the United Kingdom. But the threat is not from mothers running with babies in their arms. It is not from children who have had to leave without their family. The threat is already here. It is in multi-million pound properties scattered across the City of London. It is in oligarchs funding certain members of this Government. In fact, it is sitting along the corridor from us right now. If Russia wants to infiltrate, it already has done so, so let us get serious about our response. We need to act quickly, and quick action does not mean lengthy visa applications. In fact, I find the word “visa” particularly troubling when we are talking about refugees. Refugees do not need a visa; they need compassion.
Although I welcome the shift from the Government in the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the scheme is asking individuals to shoulder the responsibility, even to the point of identifying individual refugees—selecting the family that you fancy. This should not be up to individuals to co-ordinate; it is madness. I have been inundated with correspondence from constituents who wish to help, but how do they connect with refugees? I certainly do not know and neither do they. It has to be co-ordinated by Government, and it has to be fully co-ordinated with the devolved Governments and local authorities. It is not an individual problem and there cannot be an individual solution.
As an aside, I wish to direct my next comments directly at journalists. Disturbingly, some of us have now been asked by journalists whether we are offering our own homes to refugees. That is not appropriate. I do not put anybody on the spot, whether they be constituents, family members, or Conservative Members, to ask them what they can do to support refugees—as if it is some sort of kindness test—and neither should journalists. I do not know the personal circumstances of most Members here. I do not know whether they live in a mansion, or in a studio flat. I do not know whether they have children or caring responsibilities that would make things different. I do not know anything. It is none of my business, and, frankly, it is none of the business of journalists either. Although I might find myself on a different page to some Conservative Members in terms of the humanitarian response, I will not be asking anyone that question.
Let me also say that £350 to host someone—many people would host without money, by the way—is a cheap way of doing things. What that does not do is fund things, such as specialised trauma counselling. What it does not do is look at support services that will be required for children who have seen things that no child should see.
Simon Hoare
Up until that point, I was 110% with the hon. Lady, but my understanding from what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said yesterday was that £350 was the payment to the host family or household. All the other Departments, whether it was mental health, education, other health and so on, would all be having additional funds in order to meet those requirements. She makes absolutely the right point, but she arrives at the wrong conclusion.
Carol Monaghan
If that is the case, great, but we need to know; we need to know what the money is and how it is being given out. If a local authority is taking people on, we need to know how much they will be getting. There are many local authorities that are still not receiving money for supporting refugees, including my local authority in Glasgow. We need to know that there is money to provide specialist services as well as money for host families.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Will one of the Ministers on the Front Bench help us here? My clear understanding was that Ukrainian refugees who come here will all be able to work immediately, will all be able to claim benefits immediately, will be able to have complete access to NHS services, and will all be able to get education. There is probably more to it. Would someone from the Front Bench nod, because it is really important that all our constituents understand that this is an incredibly generous package of help for people who badly deserve it?
Carol Monaghan
If Ukrainian refugees have access to all those services, that is great—but those services cost money, so local authorities must be supported with the finances to provide that.
I have a list of asks. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) spoke about trafficking, which has not been talked about enough. We know where the main exit points are from Ukraine. We need to be in there, working with organisations on the ground such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Red Cross, to take people directly from those crossing points. There should be no opportunity, or at least we should minimise any opportunity, for traffickers to gain access to those who are already incredibly vulnerable. We need to transport people directly from there. It should not be a case of their having to get to Calais or anywhere else.
I ask the Government to work directly with devolved Governments to identify both capacity for supporting refugees and gaps in services. I have talked already about trauma counselling. We need to know how we are going to support properly those coming here. For example, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) mentioned the ability to work. We must look at fast-tracking professional qualifications so that doctors and teachers can come in and work, and use the qualifications they have. In the case of teachers, in many instances they will be able to help Ukrainian children who are coming in and need language support.
Finally, we must look at examples of what other countries are doing. Let us look at what Ireland has done, for example: first, it has got people in quickly, but it has also looked at how it can utilise the skills that are coming into the country and how it can integrate people. We need to look at the best practice being displayed in other countries, rather than—as was reported—criticising their response. History will judge us on how we respond. We are three weeks in; it should not be another three weeks before we see anything.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the priority is getting people over here, and once they are here we can start looking into professional qualifications, skills and integration? We just need to get them out of Poland and Ukraine, get them over here and then we can take those things further.
Carol Monaghan
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman: we should get them here, and then in a few weeks’ time we can look at the other things. However, the easiest way to get them here is to waive the visa requirements. In the past, Britain was a haven. In the 1940s, we saw the very best of this country. Let us not find ourselves on the wrong side of history this time.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Ukraine is Europe and Europe is Ukraine. I am under no illusion that the incredibly brave defence and sacrifices being made by the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression and barbarism is nothing less than a sacrifice on our behalf. While Ukrainian sacrifice is about defence of their land and their homes, for us their sacrifice is not about territory; it is a sacrifice being made by Ukrainians in defence of our democratic values, our peaceful existence, our western cultures and the post war non-violent settlement that we have enjoyed for so long and come to take for granted. All those things are now challenged by Russia’s totally unsupportable actions.
To lay the blame at the door of an unhinged Russian President or his criminal gang is easy, but it is not adequate. The causes of this disaster are long in the making and are painful for us in the west, because they show up weaknesses in our own political systems. In retrospect, we in the free west massively misunderstood the nature and implications of the demise of the Soviet empire. We assumed that that empire and its power elites would somehow disappear—that they would jump to western values, markets and regulation, and that they would demilitarise. We relaxed and took down our guard. We demilitarised, based on some vacant concept of the peace dividend and the ultimate victory of liberal democracy, and we hoped, with little justification, that Russia would become just like us. Most people actually welcomed President Putin, who in the early days made a play against corruption—that is, until the huge scale of his own corruption was realised. Then the west adopted an apologist attitude. Little was made of Putin’s viciousness in Chechnya, perhaps because that suited the western narrative at the time. The invasion of Georgia in 2008 went largely unnoticed in the west, even though it established a method of interference, fake causation and brutal attack that we have now seen repeatedly used by Russia in Crimea and in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk.
For those of us who have closely followed these events over the past decade, it has been a very frustrating period. Even when Russia attacked people in this jurisdiction, indeed using radioactive and nerve agent weapons, we reacted only in the most measured of ways, and yet the signs and the patterns—the lack of care for our values, the irrationality, the barbarism and the cynical geopolitical manipulation tactics—were always there. If there is one thing that comes out of this before others, it is that we must view our relationship with Russia on the basis of what it is, not what we would want it to be. Personally, I am horrified and disgusted by Russia—but I am not surprised.
We must recognise that Russia is quite content not only to use force but also to start using it on a much lower provocation level than us. So yes, even if we do not directly fight Russia, we must continue to provide the Ukrainians with all the military assistance they need. If they also need missiles to defend against planes, they should get them. If they need more anti-tank weapons, they should get them. If we need also to institute an urgent review of what military staff and equipment we and NATO will need in the event of Russian aggression continuing in the way it has been doing, we must do it. There must be no more weakness and no more ignoring threats.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I thank my very good friend for allowing me to intervene. The real problem the military have now is that the anti-aircraft missiles cannot go high enough, so they really need MiG-29s. There are pilots there that can fly them, and there are MiG-29s within the NATO alliance; we have seen the Polish ones. Let us do all we can to try to give them MiG-29s so that they can go up and get the aircraft that are beyond the reach of anti-aircraft missiles.
Mr Djanogly
My right hon. Friend makes a great intervention. I absolutely agree that we should be doing everything we can to assist the Poles to get those planes to our friends in Ukraine.
If Russia is not prepared to live by our western rules and actually uses them against us, then we must remove it from our economic system. It has become clear that the west acting collectively has the ability to send Russia back to the economic dark ages and a barter society, if we have the political will to do that. Recent sanctions rounds and implicit western unity in this regard, not least the banning of Russian banks from the SWIFT system, have been heartening and often indeed led by our Government.
The further list of sanctions today, taking numbers, as the Minister said, to over 1,000 individuals, is welcome and impressive. Having said that, I do feel that if we had cracked down on Russian intransigence after its invasion of Georgia—which, by the way, Russia still partly occupies—we would have stopped much later pain in the west.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
As my hon. Friend knows, I had the honour of meeting the chairman of the Committee on European Integration of the Parliament of Georgia in Paris at the conference a few days ago. Does he recall me saying that she said that Georgia has been warning about this for nearly 20 years now?
Mr Djanogly
It has indeed, as I can say from a lot of first-hand evidence.
Sanctions against individuals will play an important role here. I saw how the Government were really getting it when they extended the Aeroflot sanctions to private jets. My next suggestion, as I have told the Minister before, would be to ban Russian yachts and planes from getting insurance. Sanctioning leads to asset freezes, so the Government will be left holding millions of pounds-worth of houses, boats and other assets, but what happens next? Will these assets be sequestrated and used for the benefit of Ukraine’s rebuilding, or will they be held to be returned to oligarchs after the war? The latter option may not be so popular, but it might be legally correct if we do not legislate further on this matter.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument on the use of sanctions and their importance abroad. Does he not agree that their use is also important at home? We are seeing dirty Russian money stolen off the Russian people being used by Putin in deliberate acts to undermine our national security, to silence voices in our country, to intimidate journalists and to disrupt the procedures of our courts. Does my hon. Friend not see that as a direct assault on the British people, being brought and paid for by Putin’s friends, with money stolen off the Russian people?
Mr Djanogly
Yes, indeed, and in every regard. I am very pleased that we are now addressing that. Many have addressed the question of helping Ukrainian refugees. I do not have time to go into that in detail today, other than to say that we need to be generous to these poor souls to the greatest extent that we can.
Finally, but no less importantly, we should now be preparing a significant Marshall-type plan for Ukraine. Once Russia is out of Ukraine, which must be the only outcome we can believe in, Russia should know that as much as it will be humbled by our sanctions, we shall also help to rebuild Ukraine and to put Ukraine into a better economic situation than it is in now. The days of pandering to Russia are over. The suffering of the Ukrainian people, of the Georgian people and of others, including Russians demonstrating on behalf of us all, must not go unrecognised. We must keep up this action.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Nobody could fail to be moved by the images of Ukraine that we have been seeing on our screens for days now—the destruction, the death and the millions of refugees. It is right that we are in this Chamber discussing Ukraine at further length. None of us can know how long this conflict will last, but we do know that there is already a severe refugee crisis with the potential of literally millions of victims.
A number of Members on both sides of the House have already given vent to their frustrations at the Government’s response. Members have spoken about the Calais visa processing centre, which does not exist, and the Lille processing centre, which may as well not exist, because its whereabouts cannot be divulged. Instead, I will focus on the Government’s new scheme. The shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) yesterday called it a “DIY asylum scheme”, and she is right. It is the responsibility of Governments and states to ensure that the legal rights of those seeking asylum are upheld. It should not be dependent on the generosity of the people of Britain.
The scheme that has been announced is something of a curate’s egg—good in parts. Let me begin by praising those parts of the scheme that are commendable. The Secretary of State told the House yesterday that the scheme would begin with people with known connections to Ukraine and then be widened out, and that is sensible. There is a stipulation that accommodation is made available for at least six months. On the face of it, that is a sensible precaution—nobody wants to see vulnerable refugees moved from pillar to post—but it does highlight a structural problem with the scheme to which I will return.
It is a very good thing and correct that under this new scheme, refugees will be allowed to live and work in the UK for up to three years and receive full and unrestricted access to benefits, healthcare, employment and other support. Some of us have long argued that that should be the position for all refugees and asylum seekers, wherever their country of origin. The current position, where some of the most vulnerable people in this country are kept dangling with vouchers and minimal income, is itself inhumane and a recipe for exploitation of all kinds. It is costly and bureaucratic to run, and it demeans those we are supposed to help. The arrangements for the Ukrainians should be a precedent for the treatment of all asylum seekers, not an exception.
Clive Lewis
Does my right hon. Friend have any idea why Conservative Members might want to have a different approach to refugees fleeing Ukraine and refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Syria and other countries?
Ms Abbott
My hon. Friend tempts me; perhaps it is the case that it is easier to be humane with refugees who look like us.
In the first instance, the Government tried to apply the visa system to refugees, which is wrong in principle. Visas are discretionary for any Government and any Government are within their rights to limit or withhold visas, but that is not the case for refugees who have a right to seek asylum under international law. It is a category error to treat, or attempt to treat, refugees in that way because it breaches international law in principle and it is unjust. Yet with the new scheme, we have an asylum system in which, essentially, the responsibility for refugees has been outsourced; it is a DIY scheme, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan put it. That cannot be right. It is one thing to harness the generosity of the British public but quite another to leave vulnerable refugees waiting and hoping because their only chance of a decent life here depends on private generosity.
I remind the House that that model of community sponsorship has been used before for the 2014 group of Syrian refugees. By 2017, however, there were only 12 schemes across the whole country, six of which were in London. We know from the attempt to use community sponsorship for Syrian refugees that there are issues that need to be resolved: there needs to be strong local authority support, because when the community sponsorship ends, the local authority will have to provide housing and support; we need a better structure than we had in relation to the Syrian refugees; we need better planning and funding; and we need to be clear what happens when the community sponsorship comes to an end. It is not clear to me how outsourcing the reception of asylum seekers in that way meets our treaty obligations or whether the Government could be suspected of trying to shirk them.
I will also mention the contrast between the stated willingness to help Ukrainian refugees fleeing war and the approach to no less terrified victims of other wars, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. They were wars and conflicts that the Government and their allies had a role in and that caused vast destruction and loss of life. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says that there are still more than 9 million Iraqi refugees worldwide, yet there are currently only 20,000 in this country. Whatever the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities may say, that is not generous and it is not even close to being proportionate.
The Government need to think through their proposals. They need to do more and much better and to abandon the notion of visas for refugees. There may have to be rudimentary security checks, but to make refugees, to whom we have a legal obligation, go through all the red tape of a visa application is wrong and does not meet the Government’s responsibilities in principle. The Government need to do more and do better. The British people have shown the way with their generosity and the Government need to step up and meet their responsibilities to refugees, not just in words but in practice.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The situation in Ukraine is terrifying and alarming. This appalling assault on a democratic sovereign state must end in failure for President Putin, but I fear there is much worse to come.
Success or failure for Putin could leave us with an unprecedented series of risks. He would become emboldened from a successful campaign that would give him confidence and expose other neighbouring states to the same fate. The risks that stem from failure for Putin are also frightening, as his frustration at the heroic bravery of the Ukrainian forces could lead to an escalation of the conflict to terrifying levels. We are aware of President Putin’s record with chemical weapons in Syria, we have seen his attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power station, and two days ago we saw the use of stand-off munitions landing less than 20 miles from the Ukrainian border with Poland.
The situation is set to get worse. The west needs to respond to the fast-moving picture with whatever intervention is necessary and be prepared for the domestic challenges that will ensue. United and severe action taken by allied nations will make a significant difference over time. Each country has played a major part in the areas where it can have the greatest impact. The UK’s contribution has been significant, particularly in providing necessary arms, but more work can be done in that area.
The scale of the UK’s sanctions, freezing of assets and financial penalties is among the most severe of any nation, with more than £250 billion of bank assets frozen—more than by any other country in the world—as well as action on the international payment facility, SWIFT. Some 500 of Russia’s high-value individuals have been sanctioned, in addition to scores of oligarchs, and their homes and other luxury assets seized. Although we use only a small amount of Russian oil and gas, it is right that they will be phased out as soon as possible, along with bans on technical goods, the sale of assets owned in Russia and the sanctioning of Russian politicians. The Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act will make it easier to intervene and yesterday the Secretary of State announced the welcome, limitless sponsorship programme to enable more refugees to come to the UK—I will return to that.
All these measures are important and will make a significant difference over time, but we must recognise that doing the right thing—offering support over time and in the long term—will have a domestic impact in the UK and around the world. Nothing compares to the experiences felt in Ukraine, but we will need to be ready for the consequences in access to food and supplies, higher inflation and a significant hit to our living standards in the United Kingdom.
I believe the public are ready for that. The generosity shown in offering accommodation to Ukrainian families is a heart-warming example of the nation coming together in response to a crisis in Europe. During the second world war, major sacrifices were made domestically, in addition to the direct war effort. Thankfully, the impact of the conflict in Ukraine will be less severe in the UK, but there will still be an impact. We need to be straight with the public and come together as a nation, as we have at other times of crisis.
I ask that the Prime Minister consider making a statement to the nation to highlight our need to act internationally, to prepare us for the potential impact locally and to say that we have to come together. We should not underplay the very real challenges and sacrifices ahead of us, but as we meet them we must consider that we are very lucky compared with people in Ukraine who face grave risks.
My final comments relate to the excellent sponsorship programme that was announced yesterday. The delays have clearly caused challenges and frustrations, but the scheme’s implementation must be our focus, and I hope the Opposition will recognise that we are in a time of crisis and need to come together. The public response has been humbling and quite fantastic. We need to prepare for the fact that Ukrainian families could be with us for some time, and we will rightly continue to give them all necessary support.
The only experience we have had in recent times has been of supporting Syrian refugees, but I want to highlight, among all of the well wishes and positive statements made by local authorities and individuals in this House and beyond, an example in my constituency. Two brilliant community groups, Croeso Cowbridge and Croeso Llantwit—Welcome Cowbridge and Welcome Llantwit—came together to sponsor families from Syria. This was done in response to local political leaders calling on people to come together, but the preparation, along with the need to win support from the local authority for every aspect, took four years. So far my local authority has only accommodated two families. We do not have four years to prepare. We do not even have four weeks to respond, but that demonstrates the scale of activity that needs to take place within the coming days.
The Ukraine families need to be at the centre of our consideration. The last thing any family need, as has already been suggested, is to be moved from pillar to post. As hosts, we need to recognise that we may need to support them for an extended period. Even if the conflict ended quickly, there has been so much destructive activity in Ukraine that many homes and communities do not exist any more. So I say to Members on the Government Benches, but particularly to Members on the Opposition Benches, that if there has ever been an occasion to come together, definitely call on the Government to support and to act, but do that in a positive spirit, because other people are watching and many of these families deserve the warmest welcome that we can provide.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
It is a privilege to speak after so many interesting and varied speeches so far. Let me start by saying unequivocally that the Ukrainian Government and their people have every right to wage armed resistance against this unmentionable Russian invasion, which I believe is included under the UN charter. That is the first thing I wanted to put on record, but from now on some of my speech may find disagreement with Members in this place. I support the Government and their arming of Ukrainian resistance but, as I mentioned in an intervention, I also have questions. One of the roles of the Opposition and one of the roles of us in this place is to ask the questions that we think the Government are not asking or do not want asked. That is our job here and that is what I want to do today in my speech.
In my intervention, I asked whether we were doing enough to put in place precautions about the billions of pounds of arms that are going into Ukraine. Some of them— Stinger missiles and anti-tank weapons— are quite lethal. We know from our recent history that those weapons can be turned against us. I can go into a shop and find a tracking device to follow my bike, my iPhone or any device I have. There is software that can be shut down with kill switches. The more lethal and complex the technology, the easier it is for us to do that. I do not need the details—we do not need the details in this House—but I want to know that the Government are thinking a few moves ahead and that is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about thinking beyond the immediate, trying to be strategic and thinking about the consequences of our actions now. Those actions are right—arming the Ukrainian people is right—but there are other actions that will come from this, so how do we make sure we learn from the lessons of the past?
I think it is time to pause and reflect: where do we want to be in six months, in a year, in 10 years? I want to ask some questions that have been raised by an organisation called Rethinking Security. I will quickly go through them now; there are about seven.
Do we see military might as inherently wrong, delegitimised because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or do we merely see it discredited in the wrong hands and validated in the form of our valiant allies and armed forces? Do we recognise the horror of all humanity caught up in war, or do we decide that, like malaria and cholera, this is some African or Asian malady that intrudes intolerably into safe, civilised Europe? Do we recognise that oligarchic interests have captured and corrupted our own political, economic and media structures, or do we make examples of a few Russian playboys and declare mission accomplished?
Do we really want to break our easy addiction to imported carbon, or do we just want to find a new dealer? I say that noting that the Prime Minister is on his way to Saudi Arabia, a country that has just executed 81 people and is conducting a brutal war in Yemen—I am smelling some inconsistencies here. Do we believe that Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are all integral to Europe, and commit to their eventual inclusion within a secure and just peace system, or do we decide that a new iron curtain is the best way to divide and subdue a continent at arms? Those are the questions we need to be asking, beyond the immediate.
I want to come now to the role of the oligarchs and their interests. This is the rot that is at the heart of our politics and economy. We have heard repeatedly how the Benches opposite are bankrolled by the richest, including oligarchs. That is who they represent. This is writ large in their policies and policy choices. But do not take my word for it. An investigation by openDemocracy in 2019 revealed that, in a decade of austerity, the Conservatives took £130 million in donations and 80% of their 2019 general election funding came from the elite Leaders Group, with exclusive access granted to group members for a fee of £50,000. There are other examples. Overseas territories, British tax havens, are responsible for 29% of the £245 billion in global taxes that the world loses to corporate, according to the Tax Justice Network. We know that donors and elites can essentially purchase a permanent seat in the House of Lords. Look at the owner of the Evening Standard, who, I am pleased to say, our own leader refused to be photographed with. We know that elites in our own media own 90% of UK-wide media and print and it is controlled by just three companies.
Richard Graham
This is an incredibly important debate for us all. Feelings are very strong and a massive amount is being done by our constituents and by the Government in a series of different sectors. The hon. Gentleman has so much to contribute and so many valuable thoughts. I wonder whether he really needs to focus on an argument about the funding of different parties as his key contribution to the debate.
Clive Lewis
I think the reason many of us on this side want to focus on this is because, at the heart of what is going on, we understand that, for many years, Putin—the same man, the same circle that devastated Russia and asset stripped it—planted that money into the City of London. This was their city of choice. That happened on the watch of successive Governments, but the hon. Member’s Government as well. I think it is critical that we understand Putin and the people around him, and how they have enriched and engorged themselves and made themselves powerful. We have to understand how that has happened if we do not want it to happen again. We also have to understand how our democracy is being corroded by interests similar to those of the people in control of Russia.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the £30,000 accepted by the Conservative party from the wife of a Putin ally, Lubov Chernukhin? Let us be clear, in answer to the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham): Lubov Chernukhin is married to the former Deputy Finance Minister, Vladimir Chernukhin. At that time, the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), was warned about cyber-attacks from Russia. We had the absurd situation where he himself took that woman around Churchill’s war rooms on a private guided tour. That is the point my hon. Friend is making. The Conservative party is steeped in Kremlin money.
Clive Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—[Interruption.] I can hear chuntering. I am sure Conservative Members do not want that mentioned. They want us to focus merely on what is happening in front of us. That is right, and much time will be devoted to it, but it is also important that we see the underlying trends and conditions that have in part enabled people such as Putin and the circle around him to come to power. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is chuntering from a sedentary position. He can make a point if he wishes to.
Alec Shelbrooke
The hon. Gentleman just said that the Conservative party brought Putin to power. Will he remind me who was in government in the year 2000?
Clive Lewis
I will give the right hon. Member a quote—it will make the point very clearly:
“When confronting oligarchs and corruption, we need to look well beyond Russia, and not just at other autocracies but at our own national elites and the control that they have over politics and the media. It is too easy to blame Russia and some campaign of foreign subversion. The truth is that we have also been subverted from within and allowed our institutions to be captured and sold. Our media is oligarchic and so, increasingly is our politics. Whether Russian, Australian or British, such concentrated wealth and power is detrimental to our freedom and security.”
James Gray
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way in the middle of his rant. Supposing that his absurd conspiracy theory were correct, can he point to one single policy decision by the Government—any Government—made as a result of his alleged corruption?
Clive Lewis
I am pleased to see the hon. Member here and not in his Caribbean home—[Interruption.].
James Gray
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I make it absolutely plain to the hon. Gentleman that I have a flat in Westminster, that I have no Caribbean home and that it is simply an absurd allegation to suggest that I do?
Clive Lewis
I take that back—I have the hon. Member confused with someone else, but don’t worry about that. He does not have a Caribbean home, and that is fine, but one of his colleagues does and he spent a vast deal of time during lockdown defending the interests of oligarchs in this country. We will move on. [Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering from a seated position—would he like to make a point?
Clive Lewis
No? Thank you. Good. [Interruption.] You can bury your gold in there. Let us move on.
Clive Lewis
No, I will make some progress. [Interruption.] I am sure that there will be plenty more for the hon. Member to come back on.
I will move on to military spending. I hear Government Members making—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I have not put a time limit on speeches, but I have asked people to keep to around eight minutes and he is way over that now.
Clive Lewis
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I appreciate your generosity.
In terms of increasing expenditure on defence, we must first ensure that what we already spend is spent properly and efficiently. I do not think we can say that about the Ministry of Defence’s procurement, which is known across Government to be ineffective and inefficient—I need only mention the Ajax armoured vehicle to make the point that billions have been misallocated and spent inefficiently and ineffectively. Before we start talking about spending more, let us not forget that we are one of the biggest spenders on armaments in the world, dwarfing Russia—we spend more than Russia every year—and that global spend on armaments is approaching $2.5 trillion, which is 20 times larger than what we have pledged to spend on the climate crisis, the biggest existential threat facing humanity. I understand that all eyes are on Ukraine and Putin now, but we must understand that poverty, inequality and the climate crisis are the biggest drivers of global insecurity, and, while spending money on weapons and warfare is right and appropriate, we must put that into the context of appropriate spending on other areas.
We already see right-wing Tory outriders such as James Forsyth saying that money will have to come from other sectors of Treasury spend to pay for defence increases. I and—I think—many Opposition Members feel that if there is to be extra spending on defence, that needs to come from the rich, not the public, the poor and my constituents, who have spent the last 10 years under austerity, just come through covid and now face a cost of living crisis. They should not be paying the extra for defence spending. If there are to be sacrifices, let them be made by the rich, not the vast majority of my constituents.
I will finish with a quote. You have been very generous, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the answer to the questions I asked earlier
“is not to defend the status quo by investing our common wealth into more arms, border walls and imported fossil fuels, then we have work to do. The first step is recognising how perilous the current order is and acknowledging the culpability of our own actions and those taken in our name. Solidarity with a common humanity deserving of a common security is the next step toward taking action to change the international system towards one genuinely opposing the threat and reality of war. The challenge then is to build-back-better a new international order supportive of human development, human protection and human security for all.”
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I disagree with quite a lot of what the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) said. However, I acknowledge the fact he served on the frontline in Afghanistan in the armed forces of the United Kingdom and that it takes a degree of moral courage to speak out against the overwhelming views of an audience. I am sure that he would acknowledge, however, that whatever courage it took for him to make that rather unpopular contribution—I dare say his contribution was possibly, in some respects, inaccurate—it took a lot more moral courage for Maria Ovsyannikova to speak out as she did on Channel 1 Russian TV. I wish to put on record in this House—I do not think it has been done yet since she did so—what her placard said:
“No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
Because she knew the sort of society in which she lives would have her arrested and locked away for what she had done, she had pre-prepared a video which concluded as follows:
“Now the whole world has turned away from us”—
meaning the Russians—
“and the next 10 generations of our descendants will not wash away the shame of this fratricidal war.”
As a young mother with one Russian and one Ukrainian parent, who is better qualified than she to judge?
Daniel Kawczynski
My right hon. Friend is making a brilliant point. Is he aware that this lady now potentially faces a prison sentence of 15 years, because of the new legislation introduced by Putin to try to suppress freedom of speech?
Dr Lewis
Yes, I am aware of that. And I feel that the more attention we draw to her courage and bravery in showing up the ruthless nature of the regime which Vladimir Putin embodies, the more likely it is that perhaps Russia will think twice before it goes even further than it already has.
James Gray
Will my right hon. Friend and the whole House join me in also paying tribute to the American Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, who has been killed outside Kyiv?
Dr Lewis
Yes, indeed. Politicians often have harsh words to say about journalists, but I wonder how many politicians would put themselves at risk in the way in which so many journalists—American, BBC, Sky and all the other British journalists—are doing. Let us remember that when we are listening to reports about incoming missiles, those brave men and women are reporting from the very targets on which those missiles are ranged.
Near the end of the second world war, the joint intelligence sub-committee of the British chiefs of staff produced a report entitled “Relations with the Russians”. From years of experience of the Anglo-Soviet alliance against Nazi Germany, the JIC concluded that Russia would respect only strength as the basis for any future relationship.
According to the sneering psychopath Mr Putin, what his country is engaged in at the moment is a holy war against Ukrainian neo-Nazis. What he fails to remind people is that the second world war, with which he presumes to draw comparisons, was enabled only by the vicious agreement between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to carve out Poland as a result of a secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When people in this country ask which event started the second world war, it is not enough to say that it was the Nazi invasion of Poland. It was the Nazi-Soviet agreement to invade Poland 16 days apart: Nazis from the west and Soviet Russia from the east.
Vladimir Putin is a product of that history and of that system. He earned his spurs in the KGB, schooled in the suppression of captive countries, steeped in the culture of communist domination and filled with regret that the Soviet empire imploded. According to him, its break-up was the greatest disaster of the 20th century—a revealing and curious choice when compared with the millions killed in two world wars, in the Russian civil war and in the forced collectivisations, the mass deportations and the hell of the Soviet gulag. Until the Bolshevik revolution came along, there had been a significant chance of Russia evolving along democratic lines, but then the cancer of Marxism-Leninism gave cynical psychopaths like him their ideological excuse to seize total control. Their opponents were denounced as enemies of the people and were put, or worked, to death with no semblance of due process.
Now that ideology has gone, but the ruthless mindset remains. Russian leaders no longer claim to be building a workers’ paradise, but they still believe that western capitalists will sell them the rope with which to be hanged.
Alec Shelbrooke
May I draw on my right hon. Friend’s point about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? I am sure that he has seen the Putin essay. Paragraph 38 is really frightening for European security:
“Under the 1921 Treaty of Riga, concluded between the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Poland, the western lands of the former Russian Empire were ceded to Poland.”
Does that not make it clear that Putin’s intentions do not stop at Ukraine?
Dr Lewis
It makes it absolutely clear. That will be the very next point that I address.
Whereas Russia previously infiltrated by ideology, its leaders now bribe their targets with high-spending oligarchs and the temptations that they place in the way of western politicians. Gerhard Schröder, a former Chancellor of Germany, is the prime example—a man who has been chairman of Rosneft since 2017 and has recently, I believe, been a director of Gazprom as well. He has been at the heart of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) did so much to warn this House against when people were somewhat complacent about it.
For 40 years from 1949, two factors ensured the containment of Russia and the maintenance of peace: the deterrent power of western nuclear weapons and the collective security provided by article 5 of the north Atlantic treaty. No longer could an aggressor attack small European states that belonged to NATO without the Americans immediately entering the war. We know that it is Ukraine’s misfortune not to belong to NATO, and we can argue about whether that should have been permitted. I simply say what I have said all along, which is that if NATO over-extends the guarantee of article 5 to the point at which it ceases to be credible that the major NATO countries would fight world war three to defend the country in question, it undermines the credibility of the guarantee as a whole.
I will conclude by referring to what the former President Petro Poroshenko said on Sky TV at 1 o’clock today. He made a more appropriate parallel with world war two than Putin could ever make when he referred to what we called “lend-lease”, which was the decision taken and signed into law by President Roosevelt in March 1941 to give all sorts of high-value equipment and support to those countries that were fighting for democracy, even though America was not then in the war itself.
Former president Poroshenko quoted Churchill’s words:
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
He also said, “Don’t trust Putin…if you try to compromise with Putin he will go further.”
This relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). There is no doubt at all that the battle that Ukraine is fighting now is the frontline of the battle that would face NATO if NATO’s credibility were undermined.
So it is quite simple, and I think that the Government could go further in terms of this rather artificial distinction between “defensive” and “offensive” weaponry. I believe that fighter jets—provided that they are crewed by Ukrainians and not by people of a NATO nationality—are a defensive weapon, and that we should operate according to a single practical slogan, namely that we will support Ukraine in its fight for democracy by all means short of war; and that means supplying them with the tools so that they can finish the job.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
For over two weeks, we have witnessed the most profound threat to democracy in Europe since the second world war, and the humanitarian crisis that followed unfolding before us. When the time came for us to respond, in the first instance Ministers of this UK Government were once again out of kilter with the strong public opinion on how they should treat refugees fleeing war. We must remember that this is a Government who not only came to power on the basis of a Brexit promise to limit migration from eastern Europe, but have allowed an influx of Russian agents and oligarchs to feed dirty money into once respected institutions. The Prime Minister himself was at one time deemed a potential security risk owing to his cosy relationships with certain individuals.
More than 300 constituents have contacted me to express their anger at the pitiful response—in our name—from this Government. Mr Chambers from Bargeddie wrote:
“Steven please press this heartless Government into being more accommodating of these poor refugees.”
So far 2.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine, with the United Nations estimating that the number will double by the end of this week, and what have this Government actually succeeded in doing? They have created barrier after barrier and piled confusion on top of misery, using excuse after excuse and exploring any possible way in which they could avoid playing their full part in this European humanitarian crisis. The solution was staring them in the face all the while: waive visa requirements for Ukrainian women and children desperately fleeing war and in need of sanctuary.
Countries with far lesser economic output than the UK can go above and beyond to waive visa restrictions for migrants from Ukraine, so why can we not do the same? The answer is the lack of political will. Scotland and Wales have already committed themselves to becoming “super sponsors” for Ukrainian refugees, but the power to make such a decision lies in the idle hands on the Government Benches. If the shackles of this place—the shackles of Westminster—were not upon them, the devolved countries would have already become champions of humanity.
Alun Cairns
The hon. Member will have heard the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations yesterday show complete willingness to work with the devolved Administrations, the Scottish and Welsh Governments, in the warmest way possible. Has the hon. Member looked at the data on the performance by the local authorities in each of those nations in receiving Syrian refugees? There may be an awful amount of rhetoric at the moment, but the activity is very different.
Steven Bonnar
I thank the right hon. Member for his contribution, but the political point that he makes does not stand up to any form of scrutiny. Scottish councils stand ready to accommodate refugees. We did the same in the case of the Congo and Syria. It is up to the Home Office and this Government to provide the funding to allow Scottish local authorities to play their part.
Carol Monaghan
My hon. Friend will also be aware that in Scotland we have taken more refugees per head of population than anywhere else in the UK since 2017—so for the last five years.
Steven Bonnar
My colleague makes a fantastic point, and I am sure that the House will take it on board.
Another constituent of mine, Mrs Fuller from Bellshill, wrote:
“Steven, we have tried to help in any small way we can through donations but this is a drop in the ocean of what is required when the real power lies with this Government.”
My constituent is absolutely correct, but what have this Government done with their power? They have limited family reunification, cut foreign aid budgets and denied women and children immediate entry. They are consumed by the idea of denying any prospect of residency. This Government should have shaped an immediate humanitarian response that went beyond warm words—something befitting the attitude of the general public across these four nations. Germany, for example, has already given all arrivals the right to work and children access to education immediately. The French have offered free train travel from Poland to France, with more than 100,000 refugees expected in the next couple of weeks. The Irish waived visa requirements immediately. And to the Polish, we must say dziękuję—thank you. We watched as they opened their borders, their homes and their hearts. We also watched as the UK dragged its heels as it amplified a post-Brexit state that contrasts starkly with the compassion shown by our EU counterparts.
Stewart Hosie
We tend to forget Moldova, but it is always worth remembering that the poorest country in Europe has taken in a quarter of a million refugees. A quarter of a million! Does not that make it doubly shameful that what we are told is one of the wealthiest countries in the world has so far done so little?
Steven Bonnar
I agree completely with my right hon. Friend.
Another of my constituents, Mr Strachan from Viewpark, wrote:
“As like many others, myself and my wife are disgusted at the UK Government’s failure to bring many more Ukrainian refugees to the UK. Ukrainians, and all refugees, are welcome in Scotland.”
That point about all refugees sends an important message, because we must not lose sight of all other atrocities that continue across the globe as well as the war in Ukraine. The conflicts in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq and Kashmir are all ongoing, but without much concern or support from this Government. We all remember this Government announcing an Afghan resettlement scheme, yet almost six months later we are still no further forward with a solution for those who remain in the midst of a relentless Taliban regime.
This Government are all talk but no action, unless that action is to continue to arm the perpetrators of such conflicts. The UK sold £15 billion-worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia last year—the very same weapons that are now being used to terrorise the Yemeni people—and British-made bombs rain down on Palestine. How can we claim to be against such atrocities when this very Government are responsible for selling the arms that enable them? This UK Government cannot sit back and allow history to judge their actions. If they do, history will not be kind.
I hope that the people of Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill have, through me, made their feelings quite clear: the Prime Minister’s and this Government’s response is inadequate. The Prime Minister must ask himself: what is the price of compassion? Bureaucracy can no longer trump humanity when kindness and decency are required, and I sincerely hope that this Home Office and this Government will enact some decency and humanity in its operations, not only for Ukrainians but for all those suffering in conflicts across the world.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
There will now be a six-minute limit.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
This will be a shorter speech, but I am afraid that we have to prepare for a long war. There will be escalation. We are seeing the build-up of the Russian navy ready to attack Odesa, there is a threat to Moldova, and in the western Balkans the Russians have been restoking that old conflict ready to make it explode once again and opening another front. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and North America hoped that sanctions would bring this to an early conclusion, but I am afraid that they will not. Sanctions will take a long time. The Russians have a long history of bearing hardship, and it will take a long time before they blame Mr Putin for those hardships. We will have to bear the sacrifices that the sanctions will cause for our own people, but we can and must win this conflict.
What matters above everything now is the resolve and determination of our NATO allies that, however long it takes, freedom and democracy will prevail. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is fond of saying that Putin’s invasion must fail, but we can show more confidence than that: it will fail and Putin will fail. Dictators and despots who mount illegal foreign wars all fail in the end. Hitler, Mussolini, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein, they all failed.
However many die in this struggle, whatever the cost in the mangled bodies of innocent civilians and however many cities are flattened to compensate for Putin’s real powerlessness, he will fail. The wars of dictators always fail and will always fail. The whole evil edifice of the old Soviet Union, even that failed in the end. The lies, the corruption, the self-deceit, the lack of consent and the inability to inspire—Putin’s invasion is built on the same rotten values.
Democracy and our elected politicians are riven with imperfections, but our fundamental values shine across the seas and continents to illuminate the darkness. They inspire those who are fighting the invaders now, and they must inspire us also.
Ukrainians will never surrender, as President Zelensky told this Parliament last week, and we should not consider surrendering anything on their behalf, not their freedoms and not their territory. We never accepted the Soviet occupation of the countries of eastern Europe as a permanent settlement, and today those nations are free. We know that one day Ukraine will again be free, but to give our resolve meaning we must do more to support the fighting morale of the Ukrainian forces, as their morale is their vital component. They have, so far, surpassed the expectations so many had of them, they have humiliated Putin’s army and they have destroyed the fake aura of his invincibility. We must arm them in every way we can short of war, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said. We must provide more ammunition, more ant-tank weapons, more anti-aircraft weapons, more humanitarian and military training and more humanitarian aid, and we should find a way to get them the MiGs.
We must not be intimidated from doing what is right to help another nation defend itself, but we must avoid overreacting to Putin’s escalations and provocations. There must be a clear distinction between the measured way we act and our iron will and resolve to win in the end. What we must not do is accept a political defeat while the military battle is turning against Putin’s army. In fact, the danger today comes from those who want to negotiate on Putin’s terms by inviting political defeat at the time when Putin’s war is going so badly for him.
There will be more destruction, more death, more indescribable horrors, more tragedy and more blood. That is the pity of war, as Wilfred Owen described it. We should pledge to rebuild Ukraine and pledge that this invasion will not stand, or the whole free world will pay the price for such a defeat for decades to come. We must rebuild our strength. We enjoyed a 30-year peace dividend, but the peace is over and the dividend is cancelled. NATO must rebuild the strength and deterrence upon which our security depends. The price of peace is eternal vigilance, a lesson we must never again forget. We will rebuild peace only through strength. Let us never again forget that we can have peace only through strength.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I agree with every word spoken by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin).
All this was not only predictable but predicted repeatedly in this House by some of us, and we were shouted down for saying it. I said in 2014:
“We know how Putin reacts in a crisis…We also know about his territorial ambition.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 677.]
In that debate, hon. Members repeatedly trotted out the Russian line about the annexation of Crimea.
The Daily Telegraph, from 2007 to 2017, received £40,000 a month for “Russia Beyond the Headlines”, which was paid for by the Russian Government—it was Russian propaganda.
I am delighted that we now have a proper list of sanctions against people such as Nikolai Patrushev, Igor Sechin, Sergei Shoigu and Sergey Naryshkin. They should have been on the list right from the very beginning, as they are the very closest people to the Russian Government and they are completely entwined in the decision to invade Ukraine. But I am mystified at why some people are still missing from the list, including some of the broadcasters. Sergey Brilev regularly reports on the war in Ukraine for Rossiya 1 and always touts the Russian line. He has a £700,000 flat in Chiswick and a British passport, as well as a Russian one. Why on earth is he not on the list? Vladimir Solovyov, a 58-year-old who is also on Rossiya 1, is on the EU list but not on the UK one. Olga Skabeeva, a 37-year-old, is also on the EU list but not on ours. She is another person trotting out the Russian propaganda.
I do not understand why the former MP Rinat Khayrov, who is very close to the Defence Ministry, is not on the list. I do not understand why his close associate Rustem Magdeev is not, and neither is Khayrov’s daughter, Elsina Khayrova, who is unemployed but manages to have a £22 million mansion in Surrey, a £10 million art fund and £25 million spent on other properties around the UK. I do not understand why her husband, or perhaps soon to be ex-husband, Dmitry Tsvetkov is not on the list, and neither are so many others involved in Gazprom contracts. I do not understand why Abramovich’s properties that are owned through his “subsidiaries”, or rather by members of his family—Irina, Anna and Sofia—in Chester Square, Ebury Mews, Eaton Square, Cadogan Place, Hornbury Crescent, Tor Gardens, Fyning Hill and Goldring farm are not on the list. I do not understand why those have not yet been frozen as assets.
I do not know why Arron Banks is not on the list, either—even Isabel Oakeshott now thinks that he is an agent of influence for the Russian state. I simply point out that Nigel Farage received £548,573 from Russia Today in 2018 alone—this is from the Russian state.
We should not just be freezing assets; we should be seizing them. I do not think the Government have the power to do that. In normal times, we would not want them to be able to seize assets, but we need to have that power now. If we look at Chelsea football club, we see that it is in a kind of limbo at the moment. It ought to be able to flourish. I have no ill feeling against Chelsea football club—I am Welsh and I do not really care about football much. What I do care about is that the asset should be seized by the Government so that it can be spent on the reconstruction in Ukraine. If the Government do not take that power, they are not going to be able to do that.
That takes me to a point that I do not think the Foreign Secretary fully understood when she appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee last week, which relates to the issue of war crimes. We have undoubtedly seen war crimes committed in Ukraine already: the bombing of civilians when they are trying to escape as refugees through ceasefire corridors, the bombing of civilian and residential areas where there are absolutely no military installations, and the use of phosphorus weapons. I would argue that nowadays we should also be considering the use of cluster munitions as a war crime.
Many of those issues will be addressed by the International Criminal Court, but the one issue that is more difficult for it, because it is not a part of international criminal law at the moment, is the initiating of a war of aggression. In the Nuremberg trials, the British deputy judge declared that it was not just an international war crime but the ultimate international war crime, because it encompassed all the other crimes inside it. The danger is, of course, that the President, the person who makes the final decision—the ultimate decision—the person at the very apex of the decision, is the one most distant from the individual decisions that may be made. I hope that all the people I mentioned earlier as the main elite in the Russian Government, and Lavrov as well, will be held to account at the ICC, but we may have to change the law to make sure that Putin himself is brought to justice, and that is what we must do.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
History does not so much repeat itself as do human nature and nationalistic ambitions, despite decades of protestations of European peace and harmony. The current crisis goes back even further and with even deeper roots than are currently understood. We should never forget Bismarck’s warning that whenever he heard the word “Europe” on the lips of his fellow statesmen, he began to worry.
Central to the accumulating current Ukrainian situation is the fact that both Chancellor Kohl and later Angela Merkel, not to mention Gerhard Schröder and strategists in the European Union, contributed profoundly to the overwhelming strategic failure that we face today. This can be traced back to the bilateral treaty, underestimated by most at the time, between Gorbachev and Kohl in November 1990, with the wall having come down, as Maastricht loomed and as Margaret Thatcher fell. The treaty led to a massive shift in the balance of power in eastern and central Europe. By signing this bilateral treaty, they put Germany and Europe into a continuing state of dependency on Russian energy and in respect of related matters. We continue to pay the price.
In 1990, Chancellor Kohl was convinced that there had been a seismic shift in favour of Germany’s leadership of Europe. In a 2001 article in The European Journal, I argued that the situation was then coming to a head, with grave implications for the future geopolitical stability of Europe. I pointed to the inextricable relationship between Germany and Russia, embedded in Germany’s strategy, and to the indebtedness of Russia to Germany and therefore its dependency.
Russia’s debt, 40% of which was owed to Germany alone, was accompanied by a debt rescheduling agreement signed in Berlin in July 2000. The agreement was complemented by contracts for export credit guarantees provided by the German state-owned company Hermes. I emphasised my concern that Germany was then agreeing in principle to convert Russian debt into equity in Russian companies—in which Gerhard Schröder, the ex-Chancellor of Germany, became a major player. I believe that even now he is still the chairman of Rosneft, is on Gazprom’s board of directors and is chairman of the Nord Stream shareholders committee. Is that still so? Has he been sanctioned?
I warned then—in 2001—against German firms increasing their stake in Gazprom. At that time, natural gas exports from Russia to Germany amounted to 35% of Germany’s annual consumption. I argued that Vladimir Putin, scarcely heard of at the time, was a Russian nationalist who bitterly resented being dependent on America and who had a choice between building an alliance with China or with Europe. I argued that Russia’s dependence on Germany had within it the seeds of self-destruction and represented severe dangers to our future geopolitical stability.
By the arrangements I have described, Russia was enabled to weaponise its energy against the west in return for short-sighted hubris and self-interested greed. We live today with the consequences of those mistakes; therefore arises the tragedy of Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 —let alone Nord Stream 1—bypasses Ukraine, so it remains one of the greatest strategic mistakes of our time, conceived all of 20 years ago or more. It created Europe’s dependency on Russian gas and oil supplies, which must be totally ended now.
When we reflect on the fundamental shift represented by Olaf Scholz’s reversal of Germany’s defence policy and its increase in defence spending, let us remember that two swallows do not make a summer, and that it was a mere three weeks ago that I wrote an article in which I pointed out that Germany was providing only a few thousand helmets to Russia’s eastern European neighbours and merely pausing Nord Stream 2. It is now not a question of merely learning lessons with the benefit of hindsight: the real point is whether we will ever learn the real lessons of history and of human nature that need to be learned for the future. As I speak, Germany still depends on Russian oil and gas and Nord Stream 2 has only been paused, not yet completely abandoned.
Regaining our self-government has enabled the UK to become self-sufficient in deploying our new resources from the North sea licensing regime, as the Prime Minister has indicated. It has given us the ability to rely on, among other things, our own domestic nuclear industry—I pay tribute to the nuclear delivery group, of which I am a member, for all the work that it has done over the past six months—and, hopefully, sensible and balanced renewables. We must accelerate this programme at once as a matter of national interest. We must also encourage the European Union to do the same, and we must never forget that domestic national energy requirements and self-sufficiency are at the centre of gravity of economic and, therefore, political independence. We are part of an alliance. We will work in alliance with Europe, in alliance with the United Nations and in alliance with the United States and the rest of the world against Putin. We must never forget that we are in peril and that we have to fight back.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Let me start by echoing the fine tribute that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) gave to Marina Ovsyannikova. Her bravery yesterday was extraordinary, as it has become so deeply dangerous in Russia to tell the truth. Her act of courage has inspired us all, and we wish her all the safety that she can possibly have right now.
I am proud that this House stands so united against the tyrant Putin and his murderous regime, and in support of the determination and extraordinary bravery of the Ukrainian people who face a level of horror and devastation that many have rightly said amounts to war crimes. I want to put on record my support for the many hon, Members who have spoken eloquently about the urgent need for Ministers to waive visas for refugees and to match the compassion and generosity of other EU countries. I share the concerns that have been raised about the lack of speed and scope of some of the policies on sanctions.
I want register my thanks to all those hon. Members who are working with me to put pressure on our own parliamentary pension fund to divest from Russian assets, including from companies such as HSBC which, according to Bloomberg data, owns equity stakes in five of the biggest Russian oil and gas companies.
In the short time available to me, I want to take a step back and focus a little more on what got us into the situation in which we find ourselves and on the action that is needed to tackle Putin’s long-running hybrid war of both violence and disinformation, which has long been in force, including here in the UK. It is an insidious strategy that deliberately undermines our public information sphere and our political institutions, and that deliberately seeks to divide the democracies that might stand up to him over Ukraine.
On disinformation, I suggest that we look no further than what is revealed in the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report, which warned that there was credible, open-source evidence of attempted Russian interference in UK elections. It painted a picture of how Russian state influence in the UK is the new normal, with deep links between the Russian elite and UK politics, and how, crucially, the intelligence community had, in its own words, taken its “eye off the ball” on Russia.
It gives me no pleasure to observe that the Prime Minister is personally responsible for delaying, suppressing and then failing to investigate the Russia report. MPs, including myself, are now having to resort to the courts for a second time to try to get the Prime Minister finally to investigate. We are now going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, alongside the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and representatives from the other place. This curious lack of interest in evidence of Russian state interference in our electoral processes is, frankly, extraordinary, and stands in stark contrast to investigations undertaken in the US.
Then we come to the violence. As the news about Ukraine darkens even further, increasingly we think the unthinkable—would Putin, for example, use chemical weapons? The answer has to be yes, because he has already done so here on UK soil in 2018. The Salisbury nerve agent attack was part of Putin’s long-term strategy, message and hybrid warfare. The amount of nerve agent found in the bottle that was used against the Skripals and that killed Dawn Sturgess was enough
“to kill several thousand people”,
according to a recent interview with Fiona Hill, a former US national security adviser on Russia. Putin wanted us to know that he is prepared to use any weapon.
When Putin sent a weapons-grade nerve agent to Salisbury, it was a military operation and seen as an attack on NATO. As a result, there was far-reaching international co-operation, including sanctions. Our then Foreign Secretary, now Prime Minister, met NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels for a crucial, highly sensitive meeting about Russia in the wake of that chemical attack on UK soil.
However, we have since learned the shocking news that, immediately following that meeting, the then Foreign Secretary ditched his security and travelled directly to the Italian villa of Evgeny Lebedev, the person with the life peerage who is now under so much scrutiny—the person who, as long as a decade ago, Sir John Sawers, then head of MI6, made clear was not deemed a suitable person to meet. While he was there, the Foreign Secretary also met Evgeny’s father, ex-KGB agent and oligarch Alexander Lebedev.
That raises crucial questions. Did the then Foreign Secretary inform the Prime Minister, the Foreign Office and the security services that he was going to fly from the NATO summit to meet an ex-KGB agent? If so, why was he travelling alone, without his security detail? Did he take classified documents with him? Did he inform the Prime Minister and the security services about the meeting after the trip? Was he debriefed? Did he provide a list of contacts?
Let me be clear: Salisbury was the first use of a chemical weapon in Europe since world war two. It was an attack on NATO soil and, as the Minister responsible for overseeing the British response, our now Prime Minister went straight from a classified meeting with NATO’s Secretary-General and alliance partners to meet a trained Russian intelligence officer. That is surely a national security breach of the highest possible order. That is why investigating that incident, the Russia report and every part of Putin’s arsenal—how he and those linked to him have created dependence and compromise via sports, finance, property, land and energy—is so urgent.
I say that not to score points, but because undermining democracy in the US and Europe was part of Putin’s strategy to divide and confuse the world as he prepared to attack Ukraine. We must be thorough. When the people of Ukraine are dodging bombs and bullets, we should not be dodging the truth.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The Kremlin must be reeling in shock. President Putin was no doubt briefed that a simultaneous rapid blitzkrieg into Ukraine on at least three axes would result in Russian forces triumphant in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. The briefings were wrong, and the envisaged three-day rapid campaign has been ground into a humiliating slogging match, in which Ukrainian forces often give Russian troops a very bloody nose.
It is clear that Putin fully expected Ukrainians to show weak resistance, and at the same time to welcome their fellow Slavs with joy, flags and flowers. Wrong—very wrong. Ukrainians may be Slavs, but they now look much more to the west than the east. They do not want Mr Putin’s version of tyrannic government.
Putin is most certainly a tyrant, and one who has few inhibitions when it comes to those who disagree with or fail him. Since the third Russian major general was killed—apparently there are about 20 of them in Ukraine—Putin has sacked those in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the FSB, who provided intelligence briefings on what the Russian forces could expect on entry to Ukraine.
Putin, an old KGB officer himself, will be under no illusions about the dangers he faces even at home. We have all seen, and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) have mentioned, the incredible display by a placard-bearing TV editor, Maria Ovsyannikova, who appeared on the Russian state television Channel One news programme. That went right the way across Russia and would have made her point vividly. What an incredibly brave person.
Naturally we all hope that Putin’s premiership could be on an increasingly slippery slope, so as to get him out of power, but we should not bet on it. A huge percentage of the Russian population will still be with Putin—will believe what he is putting out—but hopefully the slow drip, drip, drip of resistance will eventually reach a tipping point, and the grey suits in the Kremlin will tap him up and suggest, “Time to go.” We all hope that, but we cannot guarantee it.
In the meantime, we in the UK must do all we can to support the Ukrainian people, who, I gather, are increasingly demanding that the Russians are convincingly defeated. Their anger at what Russia has done is growing daily as casualties mount up, homes are destroyed, and cities are wrecked. Russia has failed to establish total domination of the air—and that, by the way, is because of the considerable help that we the British have given the Ukrainian armed forces by means of training and anti-aircraft missiles. May I remind the House that we trained 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers prior to the war, especially in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons? Speaking as an infantry officer for a moment, those are perfect weapons in the kind of conflict we see in Ukraine. Held by single men and women, they are really effective in built-up areas.
My contacts who have good sources in Ukraine tell me that we the British are considered to have been an incredible friend to the people there, and our stock is very high because of the support we have given throughout the crisis. So we must continue to do everything we can to help Ukraine. First, obviously, we are going to give as much shelter and support to those poor people that come to our country. Secondly, we are going to continue to use every instrument, and even more instruments, to get to punish the people in charge in Russia—
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
From my right hon. Friend’s own experience as a former serving officer, what more military assistance does he think the UK Government could give? Must we mindful of perhaps stoking an escalation?
Bob Stewart
I am very mindful of an escalation, because I am really concerned that Putin might start using chemical weapons when he fails to get into the centre of towns, as he did in Aleppo. The answer to the question is to provide MiG-29s from other countries to be flown by Ukrainian pilots, so that they can take on high-level aeroplanes.
Thirdly, we have to provide money—DEC is doing really well there—as well as weapons and ammunition, and frankly anything that will help the Ukrainians to maintain their incredibly plucky defence of their country. God bless Ukraine!
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
It is indeed an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and other Members who have spoken here today. It is a huge privilege and honour to sit among so many people who hold democracy so close to their hearts in supporting the Ukrainian people.
Ukrainians and President Zelensky have displayed the highest level of bravery in the face of brutal Russian aggression. In the eyes of Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians have made an unforgivable choice: they decided to be an independent and democratic country. Like all dictators, Putin is terrified of losing power. He is fearful of having a partially Russian-speaking nation on his border succeed as a democracy. In Putin’s eyes, Ukraine has to fail, or the Russian people will see that there is a better way.
Ukrainians have made their choice. They want to be a European country. They want to become a member of NATO. They want to be free to make their own choices. Make no mistake, Ukrainians are fighting this war on behalf of all of us who are part of the free and democratic world. We must support them as if the future of our country and our way of life depends on it, because quite frankly, it does.
Ukrainians are asking for more support. They are asking for surface-to-air missiles capable of protecting their cities. They are asking for the Soviet-era MiG-29 jets that so many have mentioned today. Each day, these decisions are deliberated over instead of acted upon. They are asking for the missiles and the jets, not the pilots. More Ukrainian men, women and children will die. NATO members are already providing weapons and ammunition. Eastern European countries providing jets is no different.
In 2014, we let Putin take Crimea without any real consequences. Putin is a man who orchestrated the bombings that resulted in the deaths of 300 of his own people to help start a war to take power. He is a man who had his political rival shot for opposing war. He is a man who approved a poisoning on British soil that resulted in the death of a British citizen. He is a man who pre-recorded his declaration of war on Ukraine, after which he pretended to be open to diplomacy. Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
I understand why NATO cannot get involved directly, yet short of that, we should be doing absolutely everything possible. That means supporting eastern European countries in their efforts to send jets to Ukraine; sanctioning and cutting off all remaining Russian banks from SWIFT; and seizing the empty homes and yachts of Russian oligarchs in British territory, including overseas. Putin cannot be allowed to win this war. If he does, it will not just be the Ukrainian people who suffer the consequences; the world will suffer them as well.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my outside interests as set out in the register.
It is a huge pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) and the very sensible speech she has just made, which underlines the unity across the House in facing this extraordinary and unjustifiable aggression by a member of the permanent five at the United Nations, tearing up 75 years of the international rules-based system and in contravention of everything that the UN has said and stood for and of the growth of international law.
Everyone in the House and the country will be haunted by the plight of the refugees. It is impossible to find words to set that out or explain it, but for many of us it will be the little girl, aged 10, terrified, her eyes wide with fear, clutching her cat as she came over the border from Ukraine. We must hope, as William Hague so eloquently said in The Times today, that
“a hollow structure…will lose its reputation and respect very quickly when its thieving and selfish reality is revealed to its own people. That may take months or years, but Putin’s henchmen would be well advised to start thinking about their escape route to Pyongyang.”
The whole House will agree with our former colleague. The Chinese today referred to the invasion as an “irreversible mistake”, and many of us this afternoon have saluted the extraordinary bravery within Russia of ordinary people standing up to this bullying maniac. I strongly support and congratulate the Government, particularly the Ministry of Defence, on giving the Ukrainians hope and some military muscle without starting world war three and on co-ordinating economic sanctions and the economic isolation of Russia across the western world and across European states.
I mainly want to talk about the humanitarian position, on which there is no need to look in our crystal ball; we can read the book of what happened in Syria. The House may recall that Jo Cox and I co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group for friends of Syria and held more than two emergency debates in the House.
If we want to know what the Russians will do to those cities in great peril in Ukraine, we need look no further than what they did in Aleppo, one of the great cities of the world, which, as the Nazis did in Guernica in 1937, they bombed back to the stone age. There were also indiscriminate attacks on hospitals. Let us imagine the bravery of the men and women, doctors and clinicians, who are working in hospitals in Ukraine and who know from Syria exactly what fate may await them. There were also massive breaches of the rules of war and of international humanitarian law.
Let us make no mistake about the danger of the use of chemical weapons, which was greatly enhanced when President Obama told the Russians that, if they used chemical weapons, they would cross a red line and action would be taken yet, when they did cross that line, no action was taken. Let us also remember the sheer numbers of people who were on the move. In Syria, 5 million people were internally displaced and 5 million people were outside in the surrounding countries—that is 10 million people out of a population of 20 million. That shows the scale of what may now face us.
The critical thing in humanitarian terms is that there should be a seamless approach where all of Europe and NATO share the burden fairly with the frontline states, whether they are in or out of the European Union.
Bob Stewart
Speaking as someone who has dealt practically with refugees and displaced persons, we should put our bureaux and our offices right at the border with Ukraine, perhaps in Poland. As people come across, we should be guiding them, helping them, protecting them and perhaps giving them some help to get to the UK or elsewhere. The European Union should be doing that—we should all be doing that—with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UNHCR.
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. and gallant Friend, who made such a great speech earlier, is absolutely right. There should be total solidarity with the frontline states and our European friends and partners in tackling this extraordinary crisis.
My second point on the humanitarian position is that we must also underline that there will be no impunity. I remember that, in a National Security Council meeting on Syria, the Foreign Office committed to collecting evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity by individual Russian and Syrian soldiers inside Syria. We must go after all those not only who fire on civilians but who give the order to fire on civilians, no matter how long it takes and wherever they hide. In Bosnia, we showed that we could go after those murderous people. They must be caught and put before due process. The use of social media, of course, will make it much easier to get the evidence that will then defy impunity and to get the message across to ordinary Russian conscripts serving there—those who give the command and those who exercise the command—of the deep jeopardy that they will be in, no matter how long it takes, when this is all over.
My final point is to caution the House against any sense that the humanitarian corridors are likely to be much of an answer. I am afraid that, too often, they are not what they appear. There are huge dangers in apparently separating humanitarian from non-humanitarian space. By definition, they are geographically limited and they undermine obligations under international humanitarian law to allow civilians to reach safety from areas of fighting and the ability of aid to reach those in need.
We learned in Syria that Russia uses humanitarian corridors to advance its military strategy: it uses them cynically to distract and manipulate, and to empty an area for military gain rather than for humanitarian support. They create an illusory sense of security and should, in any event, be run by the ICRC. They are used as an instrument of public relations and not of humanitarian support. I caution hon. Members that they are not safe and are only a very small part of the answer.
We have heard calls this afternoon for NATO to be rejuvenated, and it is being. We have heard about the increased necessity of defence expenditure, which I entirely endorse. The words of the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), at the weekend were absolutely right. This is a terrible crisis. We must stand together on the economic sanctions and on the support for the Ukrainians, and we must hope that our former colleague, William Hague, is correct.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
The world and all of us across this House have watched in unity the horrors of recent weeks, as Ukrainian civilians and thousands of soldiers have been killed in this predicted and premeditated invasion. For perhaps the only time in the next couple of months, I sat on the Conservative side of the House to watch Zelensky give his powerful speech, as we showed unity, with party differences put aside for that day.
The ongoing war has forced more than 2.5 million people, mainly women and children, to flee their country and face the prospect of many months of uncertainty in refugee camps across Europe. Indeed, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called it the
“fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II”,
with many predicting that numbers could exceed 4 million people in the months ahead.
While many of our European partners have scrapped their bureaucratic red tape to enable hundreds of thousands of people who are cold, hungry, grieving and desperately in need of support to seek sanctuary in their country, our Government have offered little more than hollow promises until this day. Despite the Prime Minister last week offering hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians sanctuary in the UK, the Government were shamefully forced to admit that only 1,000 people have been admitted and given refuge on our shores. The visa processing centre that the Home Office set up in Calais was little more than a single desk that failed to offer desperate Ukrainians either appointments or walk-in access. Inexplicably, it was not even made public as tens of thousands of Ukrainians streamed across France in search of safe passage.
The reality is that this is the culmination of more than a decade of this Government’s hostile environment policy that, as everyone knows, is nothing more than a dog-whistle, anti-immigrant, racist agenda that prevents some of the most vulnerable people on Earth from seeking sanctuary on our shores, and has perhaps been too successful by far. On top of this, the Government have continued to push their inhumane Nationality and Borders Bill through this House. I believe that the Home Secretary should hang her head in shame and explain why we are the only country in Europe that has failed to offer an accessible route to reunite refugees with their families. By comparison, our partners across Europe have thrown open their borders, slashed red tape and taken countless vulnerable families.
In their hour of need, we can and must do better for millions of Ukrainians. It is completely unacceptable that already exhausted people, who have travelled hundreds of miles, women and children, are being asked to jump through multiple arduous and unrealistic hoops, while they wait nervously for weeks to find out whether they will be admitted. The best our Government appear to be able to offer is a do-it-yourself asylum scheme, where UK householders are asked to name refugees they wish to sponsor, which would suggest we are asking Ukrainian refugees to essentially crowd source their own asylum applications.
That is why we in the Labour party are calling for emergency protection visas for those fleeing Ukraine who wish to reach the UK. This would lift normal visa requirements other than biometrics and security checks, which can be swiftly done en route. That would provide a quick, simple and safe route to sanctuary for all who need it.
It will have escaped no one that, despite so little being done to help Ukrainians as they face the horrors of war, it is still far more support than was offered just months ago to those who were fleeing the brutal horrors of the oncoming Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In my Ilford South office, we still have more than 220 active cases of Afghan refugees, some of which are still receiving boiler-plate responses from the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Many are of people trying to flee Afghanistan because they continue to face oppression and threats to their lives; they are often people who worked directly with the UK Government. That is totally unacceptable. The promises we made at the time to take only 20,000 people over the next four years were deplorable, but showed the true face of our immigration and refugee policy.
On the issue of sanctions against Russia, it is clear we must go far further to cut out the rot of dirty Russian money in our political system. Despite repeated warnings over many years, our Government, far from failing to act, have openly embraced the oligarchic wealth that was stolen from the Russian people after the fall of the Soviet Union, and made Britain the destination of choice for kleptocrats, who hide their loot under our noses, not far from the very building we sit in. It should not have taken the invasion of Ukraine for the Government to take action. The moves to sanction individuals and freeze assets are long overdue, after repeated calls by Members on both sides of this House.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Did my hon. Friend watch the coverage of the occupation of Mr Deripaska’s mansion yesterday? None of us condones that kind of behaviour, but there were more Crown servants there yesterday than there are in the Treasury asset freezing team. Surely, for too long now, we have been soft on oligarchs and soft on the causes of oligarchs, and what we now need are proper sanction powers to go after the properties and to actually seize, not merely freeze, the assets.
Sam Tarry
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, and I see the frustration that people have felt that has led them to take direct action to make the point he makes.
That nicely brings me to my next point, which is about how unsurprising it is that the Conservative party has been so reluctant to crack down on these individuals as it would mean biting the hand that feeds it, whether that is our own Prime Minister ignoring the warnings of our security services before ennobling Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a billionaire Russian banker and former KGB officer, or as I said earlier in the debate, accepting £30,000 from the wife of a former crony of Vladimir Putin so they could dine with a former Defence Secretary and be given a private tour of the Churchill war rooms. That is unacceptable. These people walk in the same circles. This is the problem we see today.
Given that the Conservative party is so easily bought, major questions over Russian financial influence need to be addressed. That has potentially jeopardised our national security and corrupted the very politics and democracy that we seek to uphold. If Britain is to be seen at this moment as taking a new approach of compassion—genuine compassion—towards refugees, we should also take this moment to root out that dark money and truly defend democracy by cleaning up our politics, so that we can look Mr Putin and the people in the Kremlin in the eye with democracy in our hearts and defiance against totalitarianism in our eyes.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry). I am not going to make a party political point, I hope, but I would just gently remind him and the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) that it was in 2008 that the golden visas were introduced—2008—and who was the Prime Minister then?
Can I begin by thanking all those across my North Dorset constituency who have helped, donated goods or raised money for the people of Ukraine? Svetlana Parkinson is a volunteer who has galvanised a whole army of people operating out of the Exchange in Sturminster Newton, Shaftesbury town hall and Blandford Forum’s Ginger Viking. Tonnes of aid are coming through, with Johnson’s of Gillingham, South West Packaging, Dike & Son, Dorset Council and everybody rallying to help. I think this is important, and we will all have stories such as this in our constituencies. As Russia shows us the worst of mankind, we show our best and others show their best.
A lot of colleagues have spoken about the history of Ukraine, and many of us will recall the dead hand of Russia and its influence over its then satellite states and empire. When I was a young boy growing up in Cardiff, we had a large Polish Catholic community, and I share their faith group. The only time I ever raised money for a trade union was when we had bring and buys or jumble sales for Solidarity, which fought against Russia to bring democracy and liberty. Many of us will remember the moving scenes at Mrs Thatcher’s last party conference as Prime Minister when lots of leaders of newly liberated countries hugged her in thanks for the sterling work that she and Ronald Reagan did in pointing out to people that the flame of human liberty was still alive, and would never and could never be extinguished. The challenge we have with Ukraine today is that we cannot see a resurrection of that Russian empire.
I am principally motivated in my political life by Stefan Terlezki, who, as you will remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, was the Member for Cardiff West. His story was the story of the tragedy of Ukraine during the war. As a young man, he was sold into slavery by the Germans and the Russians, and then back again, but went on to become a Member of Parliament. I remember him telling me the horror stories of that time, and we should never allow Ukraine to go back to that.
Let me say a few words about refugees. I welcomed yesterday’s announcement. The scheme needs to be safe and swift, kept under constant review, and tweaked to meet new demands. The Home Office now needs to change its response attitude and its mindset. Hitherto, it has been trying to make peacetime rules serve wartime needs. That will not work; it has to change, and it has to show flexibility. I would much prefer it that we mirrored what the Republic of Ireland has done, rather than criticise that.
I hear Ministers talk about security. Nick Bailey, my constituent, nearly lost his life because of the Salisbury poisoning. My constituency is close to Salisbury, and many people go there. I cannot believe that we are the only country that takes the security of our nation and people seriously. We all do, and I urge that even at this stage, we give serious consideration to waiving visas. Principally, we are taking in only elderly men and women, and women with children.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is doing a fantastic job in rallying and corralling the international response. However, some of the narrative suggests that it is a competition of league tables about who is doing best and who has done more. We are all in this together, because politics, when it is at its best, is values-based. Actions and inactions have consequences, and we need to pull together.
Bob Stewart
I want to place on record something about which I think the House will agree, which is that our Defence Ministers were far-sighted in the way they helped Ukraine. They gave Ukraine the means to fight back, and the training to help it, and some percentage of the success is down to what the Ministry of Defence in this country did to help our Ukrainian friends. Thank you, Defence Ministers, all of you.
Simon Hoare
I agree with my right hon. Friend, and if our MOD ministerial team did not exist, we would have to create them. They have done a sterling job, and thank heavens for the Secretary of State.
Actions have to have consequences, and not just for Russia. The Government should enter into no free trade agreement, or indeed free trade agreement talks, with any country that is either supporting Russia or being ambivalent in resolutions condemning it. If the Commonwealth is anything, it is a Commonwealth of values, and those who are not prepared to step up to the plate and champion those values collectively should probably see their membership suspended. I was a rebel on what the Government wanted to do with aid. I am a firm supporter of overseas aid, and I voted against the cut. However, aid should not be given to those countries that will not stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the international community and ensure that our values are defended. It is an outrage that Russia still has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. If we are not seeking ways to remove it, we jolly well should be.
I have mentioned values-based politics, and in my judgment, NATO can and indeed should be a values- defending organisation, as well as defending the physical territory of member states. NATO could act now in a far more robust way than it is doing. I urge our American friends to understand that leadership of the free world is more than a lapel badge, and that it carries responsibilities to act in defence of those values. I hear people say, “Ah, but Russia has got a nuclear deterrent. That has to constrain our response.” Well Russia is always going to have a nuclear deterrent. What happens if Russia moves into the Baltic states, or others? It will still have a nuclear deterrent, and Putin is still unstable enough to wish to use it. We need the international resolve that we rightly deployed in Kuwait—a sovereign country was invaded aggressively and unnecessarily, and the international community rallied to defend it. We have to defend Ukraine. We have to do as much as we can, whatever and however it needs to be done, and pray God we do it quickly. Ukraine will prevail. We can envisage no other finale.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Member for mentioning Stefan Terlezki. He was a man of true spirit and full of enthusiasm who gave me massive support as a young Conservative to enter politics.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
It is a genuine pleasure to be part of this instructive and informative debate. We have had excellent contributions from across the House, reflecting how the House is united in standing with Ukraine. The integrity and resolve of both the Ukrainian Government and the Ukrainian people have awakened and unified the world. We were all inspired last week by President Zelensky’s address to the House. We stand with Ukraine and are determined to do all that we can to defeat Russia. As has been said many times, Putin cannot win.
I want to reflect, as other hon. Members have, on Marina Ovsyannikova’s incredible protest yesterday on Russian television. We must not forget that Putin does not act in the name of every Russian, so I want to take the opportunity to express solidarity with those Russian people fighting within Russia against the oppression that they face.
I will reflect on what my constituents have been saying to me and raise refugees and visas. In particular, I will talk about constituent casework from people who have been trying to get family members out of Ukraine. Charlie Hewitt and his Ukrainian wife Olga have been trying to get family members over, but they have battled and battled with UK visa processes. Charlie told me that he felt “baffled, ashamed and insulted”. He has taken his wife and her relatives to his second home in Spain, which does not demand visas from refugees.
Emma Truman raised the case of a friend of hers, who is another constituent of mine. He travelled to Ukraine to collect his elderly father. His father was forced to travel from Warsaw to the British embassy in Italy to collect his visa and, having travelled there the week before, could not get an appointment until Friday 11 March, so my constituent had to leave him there. Now he has to wait another five days while his elderly father is alone in Italy.
Tanya Luczkiw contacted us about her family members who had applied for visas. She has paid over €1,000 for visas, including for Valeria, an unaccompanied minor who turned 11 years old yesterday. Again, we see backlog, delay and difficulty. I am offended on behalf of my constituents that they are struggling with the system. So many of us have stood here so many times and said that we stand with Ukraine, but we are not standing with these Ukrainians. We are not making it easier for them. We are not helping them in their battle against the Russian state.
I welcome yesterday’s announcement by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, not least because nearly 100 constituents have contacted me to say that they are desperate to help, have space in their homes and want to accommodate Ukrainians. I was really pleased to hear that announcement, but I am anxious about us having to find our own refugees and name them before they can come here.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Most of us will have similar cases of both those who want to help and those who need help with family members. Does the hon. Member agree that that Government ought, as they did over covid, to start taking out massive advertisements in local newspapers to explain to people how the system is adapting and how people can help or get help?
Sarah Olney
I agree. I am also getting an awful lot of inquiries from people who do not have rooms to offer but want to help in other ways, so I would really like to see a co-ordinated campaign to harness all the good will that people have towards the people of Ukraine and what we can do practically to support them.
The Government are not providing people in this country with a way to identify refugees whom they can sponsor—they have outsourced that or said that charities could provide it. It is really important that we can match the incredible good will and effort with those people who really need it. The Government must do more to match refugees in Poland or other countries who need shelter with people here who are willing to help. Just saying that people can sponsor a refugee is not good enough if they do not know how to find or help them.
I am really grateful to a charity in my constituency called Refugees Welcome in Richmond, which came to see me on Friday. It is very concerned that the renewed focus on Ukrainian refugees will obscure the effort that is still going on to rehome our Afghan refugees. So many of them are still in hotels and I would really like to see a renewed focus on getting them resettled. I think the situations are different: we need immediate, potentially temporary shelter for women and children fleeing Ukraine; and our Afghan refugees—whole families—need permanent resettlement. The requirements are different. The effort to resettle one group does not need to take up the efforts already employed in resettling the other.
I want to talk a little about energy supply. The current crisis has focused everybody’s minds on where we get our energy from. I welcome the moves, not just from the UK but across the EU and elsewhere, to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas. That will be a pivotal part of our sanctions. The transition away has to be a green one. We have to focus on investing in renewables and a comprehensive retrofitting scheme to improve energy efficiency and reduce demand. As well as helping us to achieve our net zero goals and reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas, it will be a huge help to low-income families in the face of rising fuel prices. I want to see a replacement for the green homes grant, which failed so desperately to deliver the commitment to insulation, in particular for low-income families.
I worry about our Prime Minister’s visit today to Saudi Arabia. My understanding is that he has gone to speak to the Saudi regime about increasing its oil output. I worry he has taken the wrong lessons from the past few weeks, if he is cosying up to another autocratic regime who, let us not forget, executed 81 people last week. If we are merely reorienting the supply of oil to us from Russia to Saudi Arabia, that is not sustainable and that is not the way forward.
I reiterate that if we are standing with Ukraine, we are standing with Ukrainian refugees. We must do more. People in this country want to help them, identify them and bring them over. I really want us to use this moment to recommit to renewable energy and an insulation revolution right across this country, starting with our low-income households, so we can provide them with real support in reducing their fuel bills.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Poland is playing such a critical role at this juncture in helping her neighbour to the east, I just want to say a few words as the only Polish-born British Member of Parliament in the Chamber and as chairman of the all- party parliamentary group on Poland. Some 84 Members have joined our group, making it one of the largest. If any colleague wishes to join, we would welcome them with open arms.
I remember 40 years ago being at school in Buckinghamshire when martial law was declared in Poland. The Russians, 40 years ago, were threatening an invasion of Poland to suppress and destroy the Solidarity movement and Lech Wałęsa, who were fighting for their freedom to escape the clutches of Soviet oppression and get out from behind the iron curtain. One of the most emotional things I experienced as a child was coming to school one day in 1982 and seeing huge numbers of lorries parked outside. Every child had brought food parcels to the school to send to Poland, because they saw on their television screens how the economy had disintegrated, and how martial law and the brutal communist dictator Jaruzelski had created food queues. Nothing was actually functioning. Now, 40 years on, I am very proud that the Polish diaspora here in the United Kingdom has played a tremendous role in gathering food, medicines and clothing to be sent to Poland to help Ukrainian refugees. The Polish community in this country is now almost 1 million strong. I pay tribute to my close friend Anna Buckley, who runs a Polish school in Wrexham, and to my friend Bogusław Malinowski, who is a member of the Shrewsbury Conservatives; they and many other Poles have been in touch with me and have been organising deliveries of food, clothing and medicine to Ukrainians. Poland has taken in more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, and the figure is rising all the time. Polish people understand how interdependent they are with their eastern neighbour and how important it is to help at this time.
I have got to know the Ukrainian ambassador, my friend Vadym Prystaiko, over the past few years in my campaign against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which many of us see as a tremendous threat to Ukraine and to our NATO partners in central and eastern Europe. I bowed my head to him and apologised that so many of us did not fully come to terms with or recognise the step-by-step salami-slicing tactics of the Russian Government. We should have realised that South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea were major warning signs that this lunatic was starting to get out of control and would cause a major conflagration on our continent. When I was on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, we visited Donetsk and Luhansk, but even then, when we saw the tremendous destruction, I was not fully cognisant of the potential dangers ahead, so I have apologised to the Ukrainian ambassador.
Putin is trying to ethnically cleanse Ukraine. He wants to target civilians and destroy residential areas because he wants to ethnically cleanse that beautiful country and Russify it. That is why it is essential for Britain to take a lead in creating a Marshall plan to help countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, which between them have taken more than 95% of all Ukrainian refugees. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania have the comfort of being NATO partners, so we know we stand by them under article 5—if the Russians cross that fence, both sides know what the ramifications will be for both sides—but Moldova does not have that protection. Just yesterday, the Prime Minister of Moldova, Natalia Gavrilita, said that her country is really struggling to cope with the 200,000 refugees who have poured across the border.
I recognise the need for us in the United Kingdom to support Ukrainian refugees coming to our shores, particularly those who have family already here; I have reached out to my Ukrainians in Shrewsbury. I appeal to the Opposition: if you want to hold the Government to account, as we do, please focus on how they are going to take a lead on our continent to create a Marshall plan in conjunction with the European Union and America to help our NATO partners such as Poland. We do not know how long this war will go on. We want to stand by them financially to give them the support they need to sustain looking after the Ukrainians, so that the Ukrainians are never ethnically driven away from their region by this brutal dictator.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
This week marks eight years since the late, great Tony Benn sadly passed away. In one of his most famous speeches in this House, he recounted living in London during the blitz. He spoke of huddling in bomb shelters each night and of awaking each morning to a city on fire. Speaking to oppose military intervention in Iraq, he recounted the horror that he had felt as Nazi bombs rained down on London. With plans to give the green light for British bombs to fall on Iraq, he asked Parliament to see Iraqis’ humanity too. “Don’t Iraqis feel terror?”, he asked. “Don’t they weep when their children die?”
Benn’s speech has become a universal anti-war statement and is just as relevant today. Today, it is Ukrainians huddling in shelters each night and seeing their cities on fire each morning. Today, it is Ukrainians who live in terror as Putin’s bombs rain down on them, and who weep for their murdered children.
Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has rightly been unequivocally condemned throughout the House, and I join colleagues in calling for an urgent ceasefire with every effort made to reach a diplomatic end before more lives are lost and an even more terrifying wider European war is triggered. However, amid the darkness we have seen extraordinary bravery and humanity, and not just from the Ukrainian people themselves—from the courage of Russian anti-war activists risking repression to speak out against the war, such as Marina Ovsyannikova, who last night protested live on national television, to the compassion of the British public who have opened their hearts to the Ukrainian people. I am proud that in Coventry, a city of sanctuary, local groups have been collecting donations for refugees. Across the country, more than 100,000 people have signed up to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their homes.
This is a testament to the common decency of the people, but, for all their talk, the Government have not matched that decency. Their DIY asylum scheme passes the buck, individualising a problem that demands a collective solution. Refugee groups warn that it does not go far or fast enough, with the most vulnerable, such as unaccompanied children, the most likely to be left behind. I therefore join the likes of the Refugee Council in calling on the Government to follow the example set by our European neighbours and waive visas for Ukrainians seeking sanctuary.
This brutal war has exposed some uncomfortable truths. Each night on TV we witness new horrors befalling the people of Ukraine. We hear the terror in their voices, and see the tears as they weep for their children. We rightly stand in solidarity with them and welcome Ukrainian refugees, but the Government should not limit that solidarity. This month marks eight years since the beginning of the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which has claimed more than a quarter of a million lives and pushed 20 million people to the brink of starvation. As experts have made clear, that war would not be possible without the Government’s support and the £20 billion-worth of arms that they have sold to the Saudi regime since it began.
Like Tony Benn, I ask, “Don’t Yemenis feel terror as well? Don’t they weep for their children when they die? Do we not owe them solidarity too?” From Putin’s slaughter in Syria, where he aided and abetted Assad in war crimes, to the bombs dropped in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, events make us ask, “Don’t they feel terror when bombs are dropped on their homes? Don’t they weep when their children die? Do we not owe them solidarity too?” But instead, our Government respond with laws such as the Nationality and Borders Bill, dubbed the anti-refugee Bill because it will break our 70-year-long commitment to the 1951 refugee convention.
In that speech, Tony Benn brought to light our shared humanity and the horrors of war. As Putin’s bombs rain down on Ukrainian cities and destroy them, it is as clear as ever that that lesson still applies today. We must stand firm against wars of aggression, and in solidarity with all who flee their horrors.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
My constituents and I have watched the plight of Ukrainians in horror. We have witnessed the appalling actions of Putin and Russia, the murder of civilians, senseless bloodshed to satisfy a man’s historical grievance. People often try to make sense of evil actions by ascribing them to some form of mental illness—lunacy, insanity, not thinking rationally—rather than confronting the sad truth that evil actions are performed by evil men. Levelling cities, forcing women and children in their millions to flee, lying and lying while watching one’s own country and its citizens become impoverished—that is not insanity; it is evil. It is often said that liberty is not free and peace comes at a price, but central to peace is a commitment to the rule of law. Evil men and evil deeds must be countered, condemned and criminalised, and the perpetrators must be convicted.
I strongly support the UK’s approach in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—the supply of defensive weapons, the sanctions, the humanitarian aid and our refugee response—and I want to speak briefly about the last two of those.
I support the UK embargo on Russian oil and gas. It cannot be right that as we heat our homes and fill our cars and trucks, we are bankrolling the Russian war machine, but we need to go further and faster: we need to stop dead the imports of Russian war fuel. Someone said that the current situation demonstrates why we cannot pursue net zero. I strongly believe that it shows the opposite. Never has it been more important to have clean, domestic energy and to be dependent on no one else but ourselves. Imagine if we had that now. I am reminded of the saying that the best time to plant a tree is 50 years ago, but the second best time is today. This is why we need to crack on with expanding renewables and nuclear and supporting UK gas and oil during this transition period to clean domestic energy production.
Turning to the humanitarian response and our support for refugees, the people of Runnymede and Weybridge stand ready and willing to help. As always, our community response and the incredible offers of help have been amazing. It is not surprising that my constituents have come forward in such a way to support Ukrainians, as was seen just a couple of weeks ago at the “Stand with Ukraine” rally in Weybridge. I welcome the recent Homes for Ukraine announcement. I am concerned however, that the most vulnerable refugees may end up being disenfranchised. It strikes me that there is a danger that the system may be easier to go through for Ukrainian refugees who are more internationalist or who speak English. It is important that the scheme is monitored carefully as it is rolled out, enhanced and changed, to ensure that we support all refugees, not just people who have particular strengths in personal advocacy.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
The hon. Member is making a powerful speech. On that note, we have heard throughout this debate that the Ukrainian refugees coming to the UK will be some of the most vulnerable, including older people, children and, especially, unaccompanied children. Is it not important that we ensure that the people offering their homes are fully vetted to ensure that they are providing a genuine safe haven for people fleeing a war zone?
Dr Spencer
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Just yesterday, I asked the Secretary of State to ensure that there was not only historical vetting but ongoing support for the people and the families who open their homes, to ensure that no one takes advantage of people’s vulnerability. Of course, there is always going to be a balance, and we need to crack on and get people over here as soon as possible, but the hon. Lady is right to say that ongoing safeguarding is a critical issue.
I worry that we will see even more huge movements of people. That is inevitable, and we need to strongly support dispersing people from Poland, where they are struggling. I repeat my call to work with our European allies to do this and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, to tackle the people smugglers and support the most vulnerable refugees. As we watch the horror and bloodshed in Ukraine and the murder of our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters, we are all hurting. We want to do more and we want to see it stop, but the future is murky. Each path forward is beset with challenge and danger. Where is the golden bridge for Putin and Russia? I hope and pray that it is found soon, but if anyone can find it, President Zelensky can.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
As Russia’s unjustifiable assault continues, it is important that we in the international community do everything in our power to bring this unprovoked invasion to an end. Equally, while we wait for that time, we should be doing all we can to support those most affected—those who are fleeing. We have heard a great deal of criticism of the Government’s response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Unfortunately, the overwhelming bulk of that criticism is fully justified. The Government’s response has been late, half-hearted, partial and discriminatory. We can rightly be proud of the response of the British public to the crisis, however. So many of them have opened their hearts and their purses, and now we hear that hundreds of thousands have even offered to open their homes. The response of the Government in no way reflects this generosity of spirit or this international solidarity. Worse, Ministers seem to believe that the appropriate response to justified criticism is to attack, or that the response to serious shortcomings is self-congratulation. It is simply not enough compared with our counterparts across Europe.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), the shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, was right to be critical of the latest Government plan. As she said, it is not a plan but a press release. It is a DIY refugee scheme. I remind Ministers that we are a signatory to international treaties governing the treatment of refugees. None of them states, “You can let in some people who want to come, depending on the generosity of your own citizens.” That is not international law. The legal position is that refugees have the right to seek asylum and that states are obligated to grant it, where appropriate. That does not mean directing people to non-existent processing centres in Calais or to a secretly located centre somewhere in Lille. It does not mean denying refuge to people from a war-torn region because they do not have relatives here. I know the visa scheme has since been extended, but it is a visa scheme, which is not how the asylum system has worked.
I am sorry to say these failings have become customary under this Government and their predecessors. The Government have failed to meet either their legal or moral obligations since they took office in 2010. There have been attempts to push back refugees in the channel, refugees have been kept in buildings that are not fit for habitation and some have contracted serious disease in unsanitary conditions. We have seen others, including British citizens, wrongly deported from this country.
It should never be forgotten that this Government and their predecessors are indelibly stained by the continuing Windrush scandal. They are also yet to provide an adequate response to the many hon. Members who have raised the situation of African and Asian students in Ukraine who face discrimination while fleeing the war. Many might ask what that has to do with us, but this Government would surely like to send a message that no race or nationality is more worthy of safe passage or refuge than any other. The Government’s responses to date are woefully lacking.
Even in the light of all that, the Government persist with their anti-refugee Nationality and Borders Bill. We have to conclude that, like Pavlov’s dog, Ministers’ reflexes take over when they hear the words “migrants” and “refugees,” and their reflexes are distasteful and objectionable. They are not the reflexes of the people of this country, who are empathetic, charitable and giving.
As we have already heard, yesterday we marked eight years since the death of the late, great Tony Benn. Whenever I speak about this Government’s treatment of refugees, I am reminded that he said:
“The way a Government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.”
My advice to this Government would be to be more like the British people in their treatment of refugees, before the British people see them for who they really are.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
This has been a fascinating and wide-ranging debate. The hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) made an incredible speech. It was one of the best, and it got to the nub of the military side. It was a fantastic speech.
I was at the Rose-Roth seminar of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Kyiv in 2016, and it was noticeable that a Ukrainian former member of the Minsk group said:
“Appeasers of Russia must go.”
He called it a “Chamberlain complex” and believed it was
“a fundamental failure that people feel they can work with Putin. He gets away with it. The international community must recognise that Russia’s actions are not against just Ukraine, but the whole world.”
That was in relation to the invasion of Crimea.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) had a Backbench Business debate in our first week back this year on the Russian threat, and at the end of my speech I made the point that we have to accept that we are back in a cold war situation and that we must adopt a cold war mentality again. That includes increases in defence spending, on which we have seen an incredible and welcome change in position—I do not call it a U-turn—from the German Government, who have said they will spend 2.2% of GDP on defence, as laid down in the 2014 Wales summit. That is indeed welcome in bolstering NATO, because people are now recognising that whether we like it or not, we are back in a cold war scenario, which means that we have to get the playbooks back out. They are about standing up and pushing back. I have often spoken in the House on various issues about countermeasures and counterbalances, and this situation is about counterbalances. This is about saying to Russia, “Don’t try to push the envelope, because we will push back.”
People who are trying to be apologists for Putin have said, “It was the NATO expansion to the east.” NATO did not expand to the east; the east wanted to join NATO. That is a very subtle difference. The people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are jolly well grateful today that they have got the backing of NATO, because I do not think they would be sleeping easily in their beds if they felt that Russia may be able to just walk through.
Dr Julian Lewis
Does my right hon. Friend agree that Mr Putin’s claim that he is worried about having a NATO country directly on his border if Ukraine joins NATO is rather given the lie by the fact that if he occupies Ukraine, he will have several NATO countries on his border?
Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for that, because he touches on something very important. The drive to NATO membership accelerated substantially after Russia had invaded Crimea. Putin invited that move of the Ukrainian Government to look further to the west, as they saw their security threatened. A real analysis could be done of what Putin was doing in and around Ukraine three or four months ago. Was he probing to see what the reactions of the west would be? Was he thinking, “What could happen here? Perhaps I will focus my attentions elsewhere, in the ‘Stans or areas like that.” We have merely to read or analyse the Putin essay for it to become apparent how far this Third Reich mentality of his goes. He makes clear in that essay the centuries-held hatred towards the sacking of Kyiv, the capital of Rus. He also makes clear in that essay the countries he is going to go after—Lithuania, eastern Poland, Belarus; he basically names them. He uses the phrase “Russia was robbed”.
Simon Hoare
My right hon. Friend is hitting the nail on the head, because we know where this ends. Adolf Hitler did not accept the settlement at the end of the first world war and sought vengeance, and Putin has never taken the almost self-inflicted degradation of the Russian empire internally. He is like a bear with a sore head and that is potentially dangerous for a large number of people on the European continent.
Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as it leads on to what my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) was saying—that the analysis that Putin has gone mad, has a terminal disease or is suffering as a result of steroids is probably just our trying to understand the reasoning of an evil man. There are more history books that analyse Hitler’s motivations and what happened than are written on anything else. There are so many parallels to be drawn with the situation we find ourselves in today, because Putin has kept testing and pushing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said, when the chemical weapons were dropped in Syria it was a huge mistake that nothing was done, purely because President Obama had said that it was a red line that would not be tolerated. If we are going to tolerate it, we should not say that in the first place, because we can now draw a chronological line from that moment to what has happened.
Let us remember that Putin has caused the assassination of people in Berlin, and the Russians have blown up a NATO arms depot in the Czech Republic and launched a chemical weapon attack on the UK. All those things happened in NATO countries and all were met with a limited response, although it was notable that after the Salisbury attack allies from countries outside NATO also got together to remove diplomats from their embassies. Nevertheless, Putin has disregarded the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, used Syria as a training ground and is agitating the situation in the Balkans.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that we must be responsible to ensure there is not an escalation, but if we do not stand strong, we invite that escalation. As I have said, we have to take a cold war approach, which means doing things that, quite frankly, will probably frighten us all, but we must make sure that the message is clear: our NATO nuclear arsenal is on the same stand-by as the Russian nuclear arsenal. We do not have nuclear weapons in order to use them; we have nuclear weapons to ensure they are not used. That is why Trident is described as a nuclear deterrent: it is a weapon used every day to prevent it from being used. If it is used, it is a complete failure of everything—but frankly we will not be here to have that argument. It is a weapon used every day to keep the peace.
Every day, we are seeing murder take place on a wide scale, at the hands of an invading country. We have not yet seen the destruction of Kyiv, as Putin did to Grozny, or the use of chemical weapons. If those things happen, there will be huge demands for intervention—not necessarily from NATO but from countries that want to help with air support. Please let us not get to that stage. As other right hon. and hon. Members have said, let us make sure that the MiG fighters can get to Ukraine. They do not have to match in numbers the Ukrainian air force because—I remind everybody—in the second world war the Luftwaffe considerably outnumbered the RAF, but that absolute determination to defend our homeland came through.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
My thoughts and prayers and those of the constituents of Rutherglen and Hamilton West remain with the people of Ukraine throughout this time of hardship. Their bravery in the face of this conflict is admirable.
There have been times in recent weeks when the Government’s humanitarian response has been somewhat lacking, but I thank the FCDO for its daily briefings and the Secretary of State for Defence for his considered and informative updates to the House. I am also grateful for the meetings and work that goes on behind the scenes, which our constituents do not see.
The outpouring of generosity across the UK has been extraordinary, and my constituency has been no exception. I mention in particular Rain or Shine in Cambuslang, which has co-ordinated at great speed an overwhelming response from the community and organised getting the many, many donations to where they are needed. The UK public has shown beyond doubt that we stand with Ukraine and do not accept the illegal and reprehensible actions of President Putin.
In the January debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, I said that we might take for granted the privilege of freedom that we have if we cannot imagine the atrocities of the war occurring now on UK soil. The escalation of events in Ukraine since January have brought that sentiment into much sharper focus. I am sure none of us imagined that a war of this scale would be seen in Europe in modern times.
Putin’s invasion is not just illegal, or immoral: it is an affront to democracy and to the values of Europe and its people. It is the oppression of the freedom of hundreds of thousands of innocent people to feed the ego of one man. It is imperative that we all bear in mind that this is not about the millions of ordinary Russian citizens, both those still in Russia and those here in the UK. The huge number of Russians who put themselves at risk by going out to protest against this war perfectly illustrate that. We should condemn Putin and the enablers who surround him, but we must not allow a generalised anti-Russian sentiment to grow. Not only are ordinary Russians not responsible for this conflict, but so many of them fundamentally disagree with it.
Like all Members, I have been inundated with emails from constituents sharing their thoughts on the conflict. Although our individual and personal power to do anything might be limited, there is power in numbers. By far the most common issue that my constituents want to see addressed is visas and our offer to Ukrainian refugees. There has been some movement on that. I spoke in yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate, so I will not labour the point. I will, however, reiterate that the Government must do all they can to remove the red tape and now move at speed to ensure that Ukrainians can access sanctuary in the UK. The Scottish Government have been vocal about their intention to take in as many refugees as they can under their super-sponsor status. I hope that the UK Government will enable them to do so as swiftly as possible.
My constituents would also like to see the Government providing substantial humanitarian aid to the countries neighbouring Ukraine, such as Poland, Romania and Moldova, which are on the frontline of the refugee crisis and taking the lion’s share of the humanitarian response right now. I have also seen a huge number of constituents extremely concerned about the measures in the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will come back to this House soon. That is not by any means a new concern, but this new context has renewed the strength of feeling, and the calls in opposition, to legislation that is in direct contrast to the UK’s proud history of providing safety to those who need it most. The Bill fails to make the essential distinction between refugee and migrant and my constituents have highlighted the need for more safe routes to the UK and the removal of the criminalisation of refugees.
At the heart of any war are the people. Ukrainians have shown pride in their country and have fought back commendably. Most refugees are only looking for a brief reprieve and a safe house until it is safe to return home. My constituents and I wholeheartedly support any measures that will provide that. Imagine having suddenly to flee your home and leave the life you knew behind, with only a few belongings to your name, not knowing if your home will still be standing, if and when you are ever able to return, and knowing that you are unlikely to be able to communicate effectively and ask for help because you do not know the language wherever you first land.
That applies even more so for children, the elderly and the vulnerable who do not have the same autonomy as a healthy, able-bodied adult. They may not even grasp what is happening when they are having to leave. Any one of us would be frightened at the very thought of it, never mind the reality. Any assurances or comfort that are within this Government’s gift must be freely given to alleviate whatever small part of that fear we can.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
First, I wish to send my solidarity to all the victims of Putin’s invasion. Thousands have lost their lives, so many have been injured, many more have been forced to flee their homes or now face a humanitarian crisis. We need an immediate end to the loss of life and suffering. That means that the Russian state must call a permanent ceasefire and withdraw its troops. As the United Nations General Secretary has repeatedly said, instead of more war, there must be a diplomatic solution to this dangerous crisis, one that respects the UN charter and delivers peace, security and human rights. Reports overnight, including from President Zelensky, suggest a glimmer of hope on that front. We must do all we can to support such efforts.
No matter how quickly this horrific situation ends, it will take years for Ukraine’s economy to recover and for lives to be rebuilt. So Ukrainians should not be forced to divert desperately needed resources to debt repayments. Ukraine faces debt payments of $7 billion this year alone and, so far, there has been no offer of suspension or cancellation of debts. The vast majority of emergency funding has been new loans, so Ukraine’s debt is ballooning. Surely, as an act of solidarity, all of Ukraine’s debts should be cancelled.
I want to put on record my utter shame at the way our Government have delayed and restricted those fleeing the war in Ukraine from seeking sanctuary here. The Government should have waived all visa restrictions, as other countries have, and that should still be done. Let this be the moment when, after years of the hostile environment, we say with one resounding voice, “Refugees fleeing war, torture and persecution are welcome here. Refugees from the world over are welcome here.” Let us remember, too, the refugees fleeing conflicts that are often driven by our Government’s selling weapons to tyrants who then create humanitarian catastrophes, as we have seen, and as we see with horrific consequences in Yemen.
The people in our country have been so generous in spirit and have shown such practical solidarity, in contrast with a Government who have not gone far enough. Only the other weekend, I went to the Polish Catholic Centre in Leeds. People from all backgrounds across our community were arriving there in huge numbers to donate toothpaste, sanitary products, clothes and so many other things needed by people fleeing from Ukraine to Poland.
Beyond the immense suffering in Ukraine, however, this is a dangerous moment for the wider world. We must do all we can to ensure that this war does not spiral into a wider one, creating even more bloodshed. For example, a no-fly zone could lead to the nightmare scenario of direct conflict between Russia and NATO countries, which in turn risks a nuclear war between the two biggest nuclear powers on earth. Everything must be done to avoid that.
Finally, I extend a hand of solidarity to the brave protesters campaigning in Russia for an end to the war. Already this century we have seen too many wars. The example that Russian citizens protesting Putin’s war are setting us is truly inspirational. Who could not be moved by the recent scenes of the arrest of 76-year-old pensioner Yelena Osipova for opposing the war? Yelena survived the siege of Leningrad that killed an estimated 800,000 Russians in the second world war. Yelena knows the horrors of war and bravely opposes her Government’s adding to that suffering.
We must be clear that ordinary Russian people, whether in Russia or this country, are not to blame for the actions of their Government. It is a Government of kleptocrats, representing the interests of the billionaire robber barons, with their palaces and yachts paid for with the wealth stolen from the Russian people—so solidarity with those anti-war protesters. Already this century we have seen too many wars, and “Not in my name” has been the call of peace movements worldwide against them. Today, brave protesters in Russia are saying, “Not in my name.” I stand fully with them.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak in this important debate. I begin by paying tribute to President Zelensky, to the heroic men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces and to all the people of Ukraine, whose grit, resolve and courage in the face of this war and this bully are an inspiration to us all. I also commend our own excellent armed forces for the support they have given the Ukrainian army.
Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is a grave attack not only on the Ukrainian people, but on sovereignty, democracy, freedom and the rule of law. I welcome the aid promised by our Government, but I have some questions about it. Can the Minister tell us how much has already been disbursed and where the aid will be disbursed to, and can he give us an assurance that projects for building peace in other areas around the world will not be displaced by the money being given to Ukraine? It would be not only morally wrong, but a false economy to stop peace and development in one region for Ukrainian aid in another. I hope he can give us assurances of that today.
I echo the sentiments of so many hon. Members and so many of my Putney constituents: refugees are welcome here. Too often until now, in their hour of need, desperate Ukrainians have been met with chaos, confusion and bureaucracy by the Home Office. We have been letting them down. I am pleased to see the improvements in the visa process, but I call on the Government to introduce an emergency protection visa for those fleeing Ukraine, who need to reach the UK as soon as possible. That would lift normal visa conditions, other than biometrics and security checks that can be swiftly done en route, providing a quick, simple and safe route to sanctuary for all who need it. They must also accept the Ministry of Defence’s offer of assistance to speed up the system and set up emergency centres, with information in Ukrainian about projects that we have here—the Homes for Ukraine project and others—so that people who are fleeing Ukraine can find out what they can do straightaway.
In my own constituency, I have been overwhelmed by the support and generosity of the people of Putney, who have written to me offering essential items and their spare rooms. I have spoken to churches, my local synagogue and local charities, which are unanimous in their belief that the Government must do more and which are ready to step up when called on.
One brilliant local charity, Refugees at Home, has already been working hard to pair residents with refugees. Its members have been finding host families for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK since 2015. They really are experts in the field of pairing refugees with homes. However, they are frustrated that better use is not being made of experienced schemes such as theirs. I seek assurance from the Minister that experienced local organisations will receive the support they need to contribute to making this scheme work and that it will not be set up to fail. Refugees at Home has said that
“matching hosts to guests requires sensitivity and experience, and it is important that homes are properly assessed prior to a placement being made. A simple DBS check is not enough. A proper home visit needs to be undertaken”,
there needs to be “follow-up support”, and
“move-on plans must be put in place”.
I call on the Minister to tell us how the pairings will be made. When I was an aid worker in Bosnia, I saw a lot of things during the war and after it, but the thing I most remember and most haunts me is the times I had to turn away people who were seeking aid—I had to make choices about whose home I could rebuild and not rebuild, the people I could give a food package to and not give a food package to. I will never forget that. We cannot put British people in the situation of having to do that. If they hear of a family desperate to come here, we cannot ask them to choose who they will pair with—who they will have in their home and who they will not—because that will be a decision they will never, ever be able to forget.
I would also like to highlight the risk to peace in the western Balkans. The violence in Ukraine makes clear Putin’s intention to fuel instability and division across the whole region, and the Balkans is no exception. Given the growing concerns about war in Bosnia, I hope that there will not be any destruction and that efforts for peace are redoubled. A good start would be a smart and creative sanctions policy on leaders in the western Balkans such as Milorad Dodik, who has already been sanctioned by the US and the EU for destabilising and corrupt activity and for attempts to dismantle the Dayton peace accords. Should we not consider sanctioning him and others, and not wait until it is too late to start talking about sanctions, as we did with Russia?
We can see the threat to peace in the western Balkans now and work with civil society organisations on the ground. The biggest threat to peace is to not have civil society organisations—the ordinary public—working for peace, and we can play our part in working with them. I have recently spoken to many that are doing fantastic work and they can do so much more with our support, as well as bolstering our NATO base there. There is not a moment to lose. It is not too late to take action for the western Balkans and we should act now before it is too late.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
A week ago, this House stood as one to salute President Zelensky, who told us:
“We will not give up and we will not lose.”
His address, like his leadership, was deeply moving and deeply inspiring. Our Parliament, that day, truly spoke for the British people. The House has done so again today, with 26 speakers making a wide range of points. But at the heart of what every speaker has said is that we in this House, and in this country, are unified in our solidarity with Ukraine and in our condemnation of President Putin’s invasion.
The Ukrainians are showing massive bravery—military and civilians alike. We must do all we can to support their resistance, and the Government have Labour’s full backing for military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine to defend itself. We welcomed the delivery of more than 3,600 NLAW anti-tank weapons. I hope that the Minister this afternoon will be able to confirm that the Starstreak missiles that the Ukrainians need to defend against Russian air attacks are also now being delivered.
It is clear that President Putin miscalculated on the resolve of the Ukrainian military and on the strength of his own Russian forces. Three weeks in, his forces are still only making limited progress. They have still only taken three cities, all in southern Ukraine. However, Russia has such crushing firepower and Putin has such utter ruthlessness that we must expect more of their military objectives to be taken in the weeks to come. Whatever the short-term gains Putin may secure, we must ensure that he fails in the long run through Ukrainian resistance, tougher sanctions, more humanitarian help, wider international isolation, justice for war crimes being committed and, above all, long-term western unity and NATO unity.
More immediately, I fear that we must expect further escalation in Kremlin rhetoric and in the merciless attacks on civilians, yet these are the very tactics that are hardening resistance in Ukraine, and leading to protests in Russia and unified opposition in the wider world. Putin will have to negotiate, perhaps from a position of weakness, rather than strength, but certainly we must make that happen sooner, rather than later. All diplomatic efforts are needed to secure a ceasefire, negotiations and a full Russian withdrawal.
When Britain was one of the original guarantors, alongside Russia and the US, of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the 1994 Budapest agreement, it is deeply disappointing that today our British Prime Minister is playing a bit part on the margins of international diplomacy as France, Germany and the US—not Britain—lead the way.
John Healey
The Minister shakes his head, but let me ask about China. China called yesterday for maximum restraint in Ukraine. Has the Prime Minister spoken to President Xi since the conflict began? When did the Foreign Secretary last speak to her Chinese counterpart? Was that since or before the invasion?
I turn to the contributions from many Members, which I think were in four sections and had four hallmarks. The first was great insight and expertise, and I will only recognise those Members who have returned to the Chamber for the wind-ups.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am checking on that, and it is somewhat disgraceful that there are Members who have taken part in this debate who are not here for the wind-ups. I am saying that as loudly as I can in the hope that it will be heard across this building. The right hon. Gentleman is right to make that point. As a matter of courtesy to him, those Members ought to be here.
John Healey
I am less concerned about courtesy to me; I am concerned about courtesy to the House and the public, for whom we speak and are here to represent.
Turning to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), when I talk about great expertise and insight, no one has done more about and knows more about human trafficking, and her warning about traffickers operating from day one among the refugees fleeing Ukraine is a serious wake-up call. She urges work with the UN agencies, tech companies, refugee groups and law enforcement agencies. She urges the Home Secretary to act, and I hope she gets more of a response than we have seen to date.
Turning to another true expert in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is an expert on Russia, with a long track record of exposing Russian corruption and urging action on the dirty money that keeps Putin in power. He has worked hard to get the Government to this point, and he is clearly not going to give up.
I will pass over my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), as he is not in his place. [Hon. Members: “He is!”] I beg your pardon; he has moved. Hon. Members have talked about defence spending, but he made the important point that it is how well, not how much that matters. Bearing in mind that the Public Accounts Committee report on the Ministry of Defence, published just before Christmas, described its system for delivering major equipment capabilities as “broken”, that may be a message that the Chancellor wants to hear and he may be wary of throwing good money after bad. The right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) is not here so I will move on.
The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) said that we are back in a cold war scenario. I am not sure that he is right; the circumstances are new but some of the old determination on deterrence will certainly be required.
The second hallmark of the debate was the profound gravity with which hon. Members spoke about Russia invading and killing people in that sovereign country. I am disappointed that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is not here because he rightly said that Russia is a member of the UN Security Council and is tearing up 75 years of international law.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) said that he was making a short speech but rightly warned us to prepare for a long conflict. He said that securing long-term peace will require resolve and strength. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) treated us to a history of European treaties, including Maastricht, that have taken for granted our geopolitical stability in Europe over recent years.
The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) was passionate and profoundly expert. He, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) all spoke about the protest and bravery of Marina Ovsyannikova on Russian state TV yesterday. That is a clear image that Putin is fighting not just in Ukraine now—this is his new front. Domestic doubts about the invasion, protesters on the streets and western sanctions are all putting pressure on him. This must become his costly failure. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) was right to remind us of, and to offer the solidarity of this House and Britain to, the brave anti-war protesters in Ukraine.
The third hallmark of the debate was great emotional power and passion. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) said that the Ukrainians are fighting this war for all of us and we must do everything possible, short of NATO involvement. She is right. I pass over the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who is not in his place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) rightly said that an attack on Ukraine is an attack on democracy, on peace, on freedom and on the rule of law. She pointed out what is at stake in this war. The hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) warned us never to allow Ukraine to go back to the horrors of the Soviet era of control, and he is right. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) reminded us that ordinary Russians are not responsible for this conflict. It is President Putin’s war and it must become President Putin’s failure.
The fourth hallmark of the debate was the strong solidarity that the House expressed with Ukrainians, led by the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who said that Ukrainians look to the west, not to the east. That is what they are fighting for: the right to determine their own future as a democratic sovereign nation. He had the whole House behind him when he said that. I pass over the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is not here.
The sense of solidarity with Ukrainians was particularly strong in several contributions about the Government’s response to refugees, which, honestly, has been shameful and shambolic. They used the Home Office’s existing systems as a starting point, but they are simply not suitable in a period of war with almost 3 million refugees in three weeks. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) rightly made the point that the system is not suited to the emergency. She said that the Government must be more like the British people with refugees.
I hope the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), gets her answers from the Minister about the support to local authorities that will accompany the DIY refugee scheme announced yesterday. Her hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) described the Government’s response on refugees as “pitiful”, although I thought my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was more balanced and made a better case. She quite rightly said that in having a DIY asylum scheme, as announced yesterday, there is a risk that the Government are absolving themselves of the proper responsibility of the state for refugees.
Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) took the Government to task for failing to provide what is needed most—a simple sanctuary route. He said we can and must do better for Ukrainians, as did the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who was asking for answers and for a better system for her constituents.
It is clear that Putin has miscalculated not just on the strength of the Ukrainian resistance and the weakness of his own forces, but on the international resolve to isolate Russia and on the strength of western unity and NATO unity. Our Labour commitment to NATO is unshakeable. The Government therefore have our full support for reinforcing NATO nations on the alliance’s eastern border with Russia. The Labour leader and I were able last week to fly to Tallinn and Tapa in Estonia to reassure Estonia of the united UK determination to defend their security and to thank our British troops deployed there from the Royal Tank Regiment and the Royal Welsh battle group.
Let President Putin be in no doubt that our commitment to article 5 is absolute. Let him not mistake NATO’s restraint for any lack of resolve. When Defence Ministers go to NATO tomorrow for the NATO meeting, we want the UK Government to demonstrate a leadership role in NATO again; to further reinforce the eastern flank of NATO; to encourage the nations to take a decision on an initiating directive to SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe; and to argue for new priorities in the NATO strategic concepts to be agreed in June, for closer co-ordination with the European Union, and for greater collaboration with the countries of the joint expeditionary force.
As we strengthen our defences abroad, we must also strengthen our defences at home. We need the Government to publish the national resilience strategy they promised a year ago, and to halt further cuts to the Army. We need the Government to reboot defence spending to respond to new threats that the UK and Europe face. Labour in government did exactly that, with a big boost to defence after the 9/11 terror attack on the twin towers. We introduced the largest sustained real-terms increase in spending for two decades. If the Government act to boost defence as Labour did after 9/11, the Government will again have our full support.
When he opened this debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), the shadow Foreign Secretary, said that three weeks ago the world changed. Putin’s invasion was a grave violation of international law and UN conventions. It was also the start of an assault on the fundamental aims of post-war Europe: peace, freedom, democracy and national sovereignty. We have taken peace and security for granted in Europe since the end of the cold war. We have failed to confront Russian aggression. We must now be ready to deal with the consequences of this Russian invasion for years to come.
James Cleverly
With the leave of the House, I would like to conclude this debate on behalf of my hon. and gallant Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces, who was unfortunately detained in his Department at the opening of this debate. He has apologised to the Chair, and he has asked me to put on record his apologies to the House.
Earlier I outlined the Government’s main objective in this conflict, which is for President Putin to fail in Ukraine, and I set out the means we are employing to ensure that this is the case. With the addition of 360 people sanctioned today, the United Kingdom has now taken action against over 1,000 Russian individuals and entities. The new powers afforded to the Government under the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 have been put to use and will continue to be used over the coming weeks and months. Bank assets worth over £350 billion have been frozen. We have cut off key sectors of the Russian economy, including those essential to the Russian war machine, and we have rallied allies to remove Russia from the SWIFT banking system.
These sanctions are already biting. The Russian stock market has not opened since the start of the conflict, which I understand is the most prolonged closure of the Russian stock market since the Bolshevik revolution. The Kremlin is desperately trying to hold back capital flight, even from its sovereign wealth fund. Putin’s economy is now desperately exposed, and the elites around him feel the pain. They must tell him to stop the war, because the international consensus that now threatens their wealth will not be broken. This conflict stops when Putin decides it stops, and he should realise that it should stop now.
The international community has also moved to ostracise Russia from international sporting and cultural events. Russian and Belarusian athletes have been blocked from the Paralympics, and they are out of the World cup. Major western corporations are ceasing business in Russia, and the Bolshoi ballet will not be coming on its planned tour of the UK. Russian sports fans are left without international games to watch. The artists, athletes and performers blocked from performing overseas and the hundreds of people queuing in recent days for their last McDonald’s must be dismal signals to all Russians that Putin is damaging their country.
In his desperate attempts to control the news, Putin has inflicted on his own people the blocking of western social media platforms, and the highly connected and often influential Russian influencers must be devastated. As trivial as their tears may seem in the face of the suffering in Sumy or Kharkiv, their tears reflect the anger of a generation of young Russian people whom Putin does not understand and does not represent. They do not want the digital and cultural isolation from the west that he is now inflicting on them, and they should follow the brave example of Marina Ovsyannikova in challenging the repression of free speech and access to the world of online information. Putin is inflicting on this generation of millennial Russians a complete and total change of their way of life, and I have no doubt that they will want to push back.
Chris Bryant
I am full of praise for the Government for now being able to sanction 1,000 individuals, but will the Minister confirm two things? First, can he confirm that a large number of them can be sanctioned for only 56 days under our rules, because it depends on the Act that we passed yesterday? Secondly, can he confirm that we will proceed with many more sanctions? The tiny number of people around Putin may not be moved by all of this, but the people who have £750,000 tucked away here as their possible bolthole are terrified of what may happen, and we need to get to them as well.
James Cleverly
I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that we will continue applying sanctions to the Russians to continue the pressure on Vladimir Putin and to choke off the supply of money to his war machine.
The Government have announced nearly £400 million in both humanitarian and economic support to Ukraine. We are providing medical supplies, generators and other essentials. We are bringing Ukrainian children to the UK to continue their cancer treatment, and we have made the offer that the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and other UK military medical facilities will be made available to injured Ukrainian service personnel. We will also welcome here Ukrainians fleeing from the conflict. We have put no cap on that number, and we have already seen that over 100,000 British families have offered to make their homes available to the refugees.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I appreciate that there might be difficulties with this, but would the Minister consider whether our offer should be open to injured Russian military personnel as well? If they are captured on the battlefield and they are injured, we should show them the humanity that we are obliged to under the Geneva conventions.
James Cleverly
I will listen to what my hon. Friend has said. As with all military conflict this is based on medical need, but I will take the point he has made.
I feel that a number of Labour Members sought to create a grievance where I do not think there should be one. It is important that people recognise that the £350 some hon. Members have mentioned will go to the householder, but more than £10,000 of support will be made available to local councils for those being homed in the UK. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) made an incredibly important point—I am glad it was recognised by those on the shadow Front Bench—about the risk of people traffickers taking advantage of those who have been displaced by this conflict. We know that bad people take advantage of good people in times of difficulty, and that is why it is so important that we remain observant and vigilant, and that we prevent those evil people from prospering through the hurt of others.
The shadow Secretary of State for Defence was assiduous in reflecting the comments made to the House today, and rather than repeat the names of the right hon. and hon. Members he mentioned, I wish to put on record my thanks for their contributions. We heard from Opposition Members a commitment to the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and a commitment to collective defence. It is great, once again, to see Her Majesty’s Opposition being the true heirs of Attlee. It is incredibly important that at times such as this, although we may have differences, which have been aired today, the message sent out to our friends and adversaries alike is that we stand united as a House, and we stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
We recognise that Ukrainians do not want to be refugees. They want to get home and back to the country that they love and are defending with such passion. We are keen to help them do so, which is why we will continue to provide the military aid they need. At the international donor conference, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary two weeks ago, there was a commitment of 4,241 next-generation light anti-tank weapons—NLAWS—which have been delivered. Other countries will also make donations. Thousands of sets of body armour and helmets, and a huge volume of small arms ammunition, rations, and communications equipment have been flown forward and moved onwards into Ukraine.
The shadow Secretary of State asked specifically about the provision of Starstreak high velocity anti-aircraft missiles. Those are being delivered, but he will understand that we wish to keep the timing, location and nature of that discreet. I assure him that we will help the Ukrainians to defend themselves against attacks from the air. The donor community grows because of the intervention of the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary, and others.
Bob Stewart
May I press the Minister on MiG-29s, and trying to get them to Ukraine? They could be picked up by Ukrainian pilots and flown in.
James Cleverly
My right hon. Friend is running ahead—he can clearly see the next page of my speech.
Through the work of the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and others, the donor community grows all the time, and a further donor conference will be convened by the Defence Secretary in the near future. We will push for more, just as the Prime Minister did with member states of the joint expeditionary force, a meeting of which he hosted this morning at Lancaster House. Countries that have not had appropriate weapons in their stockpiles have sent cash; others have provided transport planes to work alongside the RAF in making deliveries. All of that is co-ordinated thorough the fantastic work of the international donor co-ordination centre led by the UK’s 104 Theatre Sustainment Brigade, who are now established in Stuttgart alongside the US European Command.
Many colleagues on both sides of the House asked for more support for the Ukrainian armed forces and for more complex weapons to be made available. We speak regularly—every day—with our friends in Ukraine and are working day and night to deliver on the requests that they make of us. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) asked in particular, as others have done, about the delivery of MiG-29s from Poland and other western countries who operate those jets. The delivery of those jets to Ukraine is a matter for those donor countries, each of which will need to make its calculations about the risk of donating weapons, as we do when we donate ours. Whatever they decide to do, we will of course support them.
Many colleagues also focused on the work of our armed forces. Yes, I am biased, but we know, because the Ukrainians tell us, that both the equipment and training support that the UK armed forces have provided them over a number of years through Operation Orbital has been incredibly useful to them. We should all be proud of our armed forces personnel’s work in support of the Ukrainians. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and others are all determined that the UK’s foreign and security policy reflects the threat that we face in the world today and that we have the opportunity to project UK influence. Despite the Opposition’s habitual narrative—I understand that Oppositions have to oppose—I assure the House that the UK is still a significant influencer on the world stage and a force for good in the world.
We are determined to support the Ukrainians. A number of right hon. and hon. Members spoke passionately—they were right to do so—about the bravery and resilience of the Ukrainians that we have seen, both in the military and civilians who have taken up arms in defence of their homeland. We are also witnessing incredible bravery from protestors in Russia. That brave resistance to Putin and the elites around him inspires us all. The UK and the world stand with Ukraine.
But for all the hubris in Putin’s planning, for all the incompetence in the execution and for all the lies told about the losses suffered, the Russian army remains a formidable foe. We must therefore recognise and, I am afraid, prepare ourselves for the potential of worse than what we have already seen. But the Ukrainian people must not give up hope. They are fighting heroically and holding back an invading armoured army.
Putin may feel that he has overwhelming power at his disposal, and he may feel that a decisive victory is still in his gift, but the Ukrainians are proving him wrong. He has already failed in his strategic objective. The international community has pulled together. The Ukrainians have pulled together and have fought like tigers. The international community and the Ukrainian people have seen him for what he is, and increasingly the Russian people are seeing it, too.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the situation in Ukraine.
Business without Debate
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 3 to 5 together.
Ordered,
Backbench Business
That Duncan Baker and David Johnston be discharged from the Backbench Business Committee and Chris Green and Jerome Mayhew be added.
Education
That Brendan Clarke-Smith and Christian Wakeford be discharged from the Education Committee and Caroline Ansell and Anna Firth be added.
Home Affairs
That James Daly and Laura Farris be discharged from the Home Affairs Committee and Lee Anderson and Matt Vickers be added.—(Sir Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Madam Deputy Speaker
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 6 to 8 together.
Ordered,
Justice
That James Daly be discharged from the Justice Committee and Matt Vickers be added.
Petitions
That Taiwo Owatemi be discharged from the Petitions Committee and Marsha De Cordova be added.
Public Accounts
That Mr Richard Holden and Gareth Bacon be discharged from the Committee of Public Accounts and Mr Louie French and Angela Richardson be added. —(Sir Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Petitions
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
The loss of the 236 bus service between Glossop and Ashton has left people in Glossop, Hadfield and Gamesley without a direct bus route to Tameside Hospital or Ashton College. I fought hard to try to save this service and 750 local bus users have signed my petition to reinstate this vital transport link, which I am proud to present to Parliament today.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that, as a result of the loss of the 236 bus, Glossop has no connection and no direct bus route to Tameside Hospital and Ashton College.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to note this loss and, in light of the recent outcome of the Judicial Review into bus franchising in Greater Manchester, urge Derbyshire County Council and Transport for Greater Manchester to work together to restore the 236 bus service.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002718]
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
The petition is supported by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who is in her place.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that Carnforth would be an ideal location for the new headquarters of Great British Railways; further that the creation of the headquarters would bring additional jobs to the community, as well as encourage new investment; further that Lancashire County Council should note the importance of this proposal; and further that an initial petition organised by Lancaster Civic Vision gained over 500 signatories from the whole community.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to note the nomination of Carnforth to house the new headquarters of Great British Railways.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002719]
Physical Activity and Health Outcomes
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I am very grateful to Mr Speaker for granting me this debate.
For many years, I have championed the issue of supporting as many people as possible to achieve a healthy weight, an important issue in health prevention which matters today more than it ever has. It is also so important to remember that even if achieving a healthy weight is a real challenge and our body mass index is not yet as we would want it, the more physical activity we can do the better. Tonight, I want to issue a call to arms on the related issue of being sufficiently physically active to help us all lead healthy lives.
I start by paying tribute to Peter Walker, a parliamentary correspondent who works in this building, for his outstanding book “The Miracle Pill”. It was published last year and it should be required reading for everyone working in health and social care, everyone who cares about the NHS, and leaders across central Government and local government, as well as in business.
Let us look at the health benefits of regular physical activity. If we could achieve those outcomes with a pill, it would indeed be the miracle pill. Regular physical activity reduces the risk of breast cancer by 20%, the risk of dementia, depression and colon cancer by 30%, the risk of cardiovascular disease by 35% and the risk of type 2 diabetes by up to 40%. Hip fractures, which are so often catastrophic in their consequences for the frail and elderly, are reduced by up to a whopping 68% by regular physical activity. Those are all NHS figures.
I am grateful for the good work of the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK on its Moving Medicine programme, which is designed to promote a person-centred approach to physical activity in health, and its Active Hospitals programme, which focuses on delivering physical activity through secondary care. Both programmes have won awards from the Royal College of Physicians and have now been adopted in Australasia and the United States. Active Conversations is also an excellent training course to increase physical activity for all health and social care professionals, social prescribers and the fitness industry.
It is good to see that the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, a very important new part of the Department of Health and Social Care, has a number of important online resources on physical activity and health, including on the treatment of long-term conditions. As a leading academic in the area, Ralph Paffenbarger, said, “Anything that gets worse as you grow older gets better when you exercise.” As another public health expert put it, slightly more bluntly,
“being active throughout your life is about being able to get to the loo on time in your old age”.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am not someone who has to get to the toilet early, but I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate; I spoke to him beforehand.
I make a plug for children to take action early against physical and health conditions. In Northern Ireland, 20% of children are classed as overweight and 6% are classed as obese, and I understand that those figures are reflected on the mainland. The need to change our way of doing things is very clear. Targeted funding for children in schools, which has fallen by the wayside as a result of covid, must be re-established, as I think the hon. Gentleman will agree. The importance of daily mile walks must be promoted in every region of the UK. Start it early—and at a later stage, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will not have to run to the toilet.
Andrew Selous
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the daily mile. I thank him for championing it in Northern Ireland. It will absolutely make a difference; I hope he will encourage all schools in Northern Ireland to take part.
How are we doing as a nation in achieving the necessary levels of physical activity? The answer, I am afraid, is not very well at all. According to a briefing that I have received from the Royal College of General Practitioners, 34% of men and 42% of women in the UK are not active enough for good health, and physical inactivity is responsible for one in every six UK deaths—the same proportion as is caused by smoking. Some 27% of the population are classified as inactive, meaning that they do less than 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, such as walking, each week.
It is getting worse. By 2030, we are on track to be 35% less active than we were in 1960. Most shockingly of all, a third of children do less than half the recommended physical activity for their age. The findings of the 2015 NHS health survey for children are even worse: they show that fewer than a quarter of children reach the required minimum of one hour’s moderate to vigorous physical activity every day on average. It is worth pausing to consider what to do about that. The curriculum is very full and the Department for Education is reluctant to mandate physical activity, while the Department of Health and Social Care’s remit does not extend to ordering the school day. Do we need the Cabinet Office to start taking a serious cross-Government interest in the issue for children, and indeed throughout later life?
What will happen if we continue on current trends? Justin Varney, who was formerly the head of adult wellbeing for Public Health England and is now in charge of public health in Birmingham, says that
“the whole concept of an NHS and welfare state, in whatever form we have it, is completely unsustainable if a third or more of the population remain physically inactive.”
It is not as if we have only just realised the importance of sufficient physical activity to our health. Back in 1948, Dr Jerry Morris was appointed the first director of the Social Medicine Unit, a Government body tasked with examining the way in which health issues interacted with people’s circumstances. His major initial research involved looking into why the drivers of London’s double-decker buses had significantly higher rates of heart attacks than their conductor colleagues. His conclusion was that the only real difference between the groups, who were from identical backgrounds, was that the former spent their days sitting down, while the latter were constantly on their feet going up and down flights of stairs. The hard facts are that for many of us, the way in which we work and the way in which we travel are taking years off what should be our healthy life expectancy. This is a big issue, but it is not remotely getting the attention that it deserves.
What can we do about it? The answer is a very great deal, if we have the political will and really value our NHS rather than just paying lip service to it, and if we follow the academic research and learn from existing best practice around the world. Making active travel possible is the single biggest health intervention that the Government could make. Walking and cycling are the easiest ways to integrate physical activity into our daily lives. Two thirds of journeys in the UK are under 5 miles and could be cycled in half an hour by those who are capable, but only 2% are cycled. E-bikes, of course, help the elderly and those in less good health, and make cycling much more inclusive. Staggeringly, 1.5 billion journeys of less than a mile are made in cars every year, so there is an enormous potential to do better. Active travel can meet 23% of the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity needs on school days for primary-age children and 36% for secondary-age children. People who cycle to work take fewer days off sick than their car-driving colleagues, so cycling is good for the economy.
Those who are not so far tempted to consider a daily commute by bicycle should read a 2017 British Medical Journal article by Carlos Celis-Morales, which used UK Biobank data to follow 250,000 people over five years. It showed that people who commuted by bicycle had a 40% lower chance of dying during the study period. I am among those who want cycling to be for the many not the brave, and we need our roads to be safe, but the statistical reality is that for many of us, it is far safer in health terms to be on a bicycle than in a car or on the sofa.
I support the work that the Department for Transport is doing to deliver the Prime Minister‘s vision in which half all journeys in towns and cities will be cycled or walked by 2030. This plan is backed by a £2 billion package of funding for active travel over five years under the inspirational leadership of Chris Boardman, the interim active travel commissioner for Active Travel England. The plan includes delivering safe routes for cycling and walking, cycle training for all children and adults who want it, and creating active travel social prescribing pilots. Employers who care about the wellbeing of their staff as well as the productivity of their businesses should be right behind that. I also look forward to the publication of the second four-year statutory cycling and walking investment strategy this spring to reflect the new policies in “Gear Change” and the multi-year funding settlement from the spending review.
This is not a pipe dream. It is happening now in Copenhagen, where 40% of commuting trips are made by bike, and I suspect that the rate is not much lower in Amsterdam. That did not happen by chance in either of those cities; it happened because of visionary leaders who cared about the wellbeing of their residents and pursued this policy over decades.
We can do more in the workplace as well. The Googleplex offices in Mountain View, California, are designed to encourage as much physical movement by staff as possible. That includes using nature between buildings as well as what happens in them. Most of the workspace is on the second storey, and all the meeting rooms and cafés, and every single toilet apart from the accessible ones, are on the ground level, connected by courtyard-style staircases.
So, what are UK businesses doing to build some mobility into what has become an excessively sedentary culture? Sitting still for too long is not good for us. I have come across one Defence Minister, one female general, one House of Commons Clerk and one Hansard recorder who conduct meetings standing up or who have a standing desk. It is the exception rather than the rule, and when I had the pleasure of discussing Peter Walker’s excellent book with him recently, I made sure we did so while walking around St James’s Park. I wonder whether the Department of Health and Social Care and the House of Commons Commission have looked at the BeUpstanding programme, a free world-leading project that improves the health and wellbeing of desk-based workers ? If not, why not?
I mentioned earlier that only between a quarter and a third of UK schoolchildren were undertaking the recommended amount of physical activity. I am a huge fan of the daily mile initiative, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) referred to, where children run or walk a mile at the start of each day. There are 7,289 schools in England and 1,191 in Scotland doing this, which is commendable. I would like to see that number grow substantially, including in Wales and Northern Ireland.
There is another country in Europe, however, that is doing even better. The global report card shows that of the 49 countries covered, Slovenia has the best results for activity levels in children, with more than 80% of those aged six to 19 meeting the one-hour-a-day threshold for activity. Frankly, that puts the United Kingdom to shame, notwithstanding the tremendous daily mile initiative. Again, this did not happen by chance. It was a conscious decision that equipped every school with two gyms and an outdoor play area as well as track and field facilities, and with five sports days per year and another week off for outdoor activities.
I wonder whether we fully use the fantastic expertise of our diplomatic network to really understand the best practice in public health around the world. If the Department of Health and Social Care is unaware of the level of commuting in Copenhagen or the outstanding physical activity achievements of Slovenian children, I would urge the Minister to speak to her colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to ensure that the relevant briefings are provided to her and her officials so that we can copy what is working well elsewhere.
It is really important to emphasise that even if we cannot do our 10,000 steps every day or, as adults, 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of intense exercise a week, every little helps. It is also really important to understand the difference between formal activity and incidental activity. Sport is brilliant and I want to see as many people as possible of both sexes and all ages participating, but the evidence suggests that the biggest gains will be from the minor adjustments we make in our everyday lives, such as using the stairs rather than the lift, getting off the bus one stop early, finding a parking space some way away from our office or meeting, or taking up a hobby we enjoy such as dancing. One of the best things that the Whips Office has ever done for me is to put me on the fifth floor of Portcullis House, giving me the opportunity to climb the 137 steps to my office on a regular basis throughout the day. I am not sure it was meant as a favour, but I am genuinely grateful.
I implore the whole of central and local government to wake up to the importance of this issue and all of us to play our part in keeping as active as possible in every way that is open to us. With good policies and the political will, we can make the right thing to do the easy and affordable thing to do for more and more people.
The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on bringing forward today’s debate on this important topic. In his excellent speech, he has outlined the many benefits of physical activity, and I am grateful for his challenge on what more the Government need to do to address the critical health issues of inactivity, poor diet and obesity. I would like to put on record my thanks to all those who work in our local authorities, in the NHS, in our schools, in voluntary and community organisations and in the fitness and leisure sector for their efforts in supporting people of all ages and abilities to stay active, particularly during the pandemic, which as we know, was very challenging.
As my hon. Friend so eloquently outlined, physical activity can contribute to reducing the risk of many chronic health diseases, including some cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Being physically active can also help to improve our mental health and wellbeing and help to keep people, friends and communities connected. Before the pandemic there were disparities in physical activity levels, but we were seeing some improvements. Those gains have diminished. The people most impacted by the pandemic were those we most need to support, including older adults, those in more deprived areas, those with a disability, those with long-term health conditions, those who were asked to shield and those from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. We need to do more to achieve a level playing field and to create local places where everybody, no matter their age or circumstances, can find safe, accessible ways to be active every day and to stay fit and strong. Indeed, active travel is an important part of that.
I will shortly reflect on some of what the Government are doing to help, but first I stress that scientific evidence underpins what we and the NHS are doing to support and promote a more active nation, and advice from the UK chief medical officers is at the heart of our physical activity policies. The guidelines published in 2019 set out the types and levels of activity that are most likely to provide physical and mental health benefits for children, young people, adults, older adults, disabled adults, disabled children, disabled young people, and women during pregnancy and after birth.
As my hon. Friend knows, the Government are supporting primary schools with £320 million a year through the physical education and sport premium. We have also funded the school games network. This enables schools, through the school sport and activity action plan, to deliver a whole-school approach to physical activity, and many of us have seen the successful daily mile programme in our schools on our Friday constituency visits.
The plan, first published in 2019, is a joined-up approach by the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and it has provided the blueprint for cross-Government working on physical activity. This plan has enabled a range of non-competitive opportunities to engage the least active groups. To tackle gender disparities, the plan has enabled nearly 9,000 girls to take part in competitive sport.
Our work to promote physical activity does not stop at the school gates. Through the world-beating “Better Health” social-marketing campaign, we will continue to provide digital resources, such as the popular Couch to 5k and Active 10 applications, and to signpost people to local opportunities to get active. Our commitment to exploring new ways to help people get active is demonstrated through the health incentives pilot, which will take place in Wolverhampton with the support of the local authority, the NHS and the local community.
Birmingham will host the Commonwealth games in summer 2022. Such sporting events provide moments of inspiration, and the Government, Birmingham City Council and others are investing in providing local communities with opportunities to participate in sporting activities.
My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the contribution that an active, fitter nation could make to helping to protect the NHS and social care. The Department, through the work of the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and in partnership with Sport England, has been working across the NHS to deliver the moving healthcare professionals programme. This work enables healthcare professionals to increase their awareness, knowledge and skills in promoting physical activity to patients, managing ill health and reducing inactivity.
The Government’s health promotion taskforce is bringing Departments together to develop actions that will deliver on our ambition to get the nation more active and provide equitable opportunities to those who will benefit most. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that everybody can lead more active lives, and my hon. Friend mentioned the work of my colleagues in the Department for Transport and their vision for active travel. There is unequivocal evidence that physical activity has a role to play in enabling people to live healthier, longer lives. As the Minister responsible for dementia and the dementia strategy, I know how critical physical activity is to diseases that people might not imagine have a link to it. It really is the answer to almost any health question.
As I mentioned, we remain committed to introducing actions that will help current and future generations to access, participate in and enjoy all forms of activity, play and sport and, as my hon. Friend said, to integrate them into their daily life. We understand there is still a lot of work to do to create equal access for everybody and to address disparities. We will need the help of every single local authority, school and community and a truly collaborative cross-Government and NHS approach. I genuinely believe that, by working together, we can make a huge difference to the health of our nation.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on such a vital issue.
Question put and agreed to.