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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the energy price cap continues to protect consumers in a world where gas prices have more than quintupled in a year, and I strongly expect that it will continue to do so.
Mr Sharma
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Given the pressure that families are facing in this cost of living crisis, does he agree that the best way to help families to pay their bills is through a windfall tax on oil and gas producers in the North sea to give the poorest up to £600 off their bills?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As the hon. Gentleman will know, we believe that a windfall tax in this situation would be a tax on jobs, destroy investment and add to the uncertainty in oil markets. It would send completely the wrong message to investors, as well as to people who are invested in markets. Every one of us, anyone with a pension, would be adversely affected by such a tax.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is keen to ensure that householders and landlords improve the energy performance of properties. Will he consider the effectiveness of the current energy performance certificate system and whether that genuinely reflects the energy performance of a property? In addition, will he recognise the additional costs incurred in calling for improvements in off-grid properties, where people do not have the opportunity to invest in the same technologies as those in on-grid properties?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. As he knows, the current EPC system is not perfect, but it does capture the significant improvement that has happened over the past few years. I am happy to consider people off grid and the challenges that they face from oil prices, and I would be happy to speak to him about that.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
In recent years, the UK Government have printed and borrowed hundreds of billions of pounds, which have been gathered—I emphasise the word “gathered”—not earned by billionaires and the already wealthy. As a result, we have a cost of living crisis that makes energy price rises an acute crisis. Kerosene central heating oil has seen some of the biggest price differences, which especially hits rural and island areas where there is no mains gas. Do the Government have any plan to give people in such places a hand, which would cost a damn sight less than the bailout money that the billionaires have raked in from the Treasury?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced an extensive package of support only a few weeks ago worth £9.1 billion—that included a £150 council tax rebate for bands A to D and £144 million in discretionary funding for local authorities—which affects everybody in this country. I am also very happy to engage with him on the specific issue of oil prices.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
I have been contacted by many pensioners across Hyndburn and Haslingden who are concerned about the cost of their energy bills. Will the Secretary of State set out what measures are in place to support my residents, and will he continue to work with other Departments to keep those measures under review?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As I said, the Chancellor announced a £9.1 billion package of support only a few weeks ago. That included the £150 council tax rebate for bands A to D and £144 million in discretionary funding added for local authorities—spending to help the most vulnerable. We announced a £500 million extension of the household support fund last week, but I would be happy to engage with my hon. Friend on what more we can do in the next few months to assuage the burden.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
Well, we know what measures the Government have in place to assist customers to manage the sky-high energy price increases now due in April, and frankly pretty miserable they are. They will not remotely cover the bulk of the increases, and we still do not know how some of them are to be delivered—the “lend you your own money” scheme, for example, as it relates to the 7 million customers on prepaid meters.
I am concerned about how the Government will respond to what we now know will be an equally steep additional price rise in October under the price cap, with authoritative sources calculating that we are likely to see the average energy bill rise by a further £700 to £2,900 or £3,000. What serious additional measures is the Secretary of State planning to help customers to face that further enormous rise? Might he after all be interested in a windfall tax against those companies that continue to profit enormously from escalating gas prices, which could fund substantial assistance to cope with the next price hike?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am very happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s questions. He will know that the next price cap period will be set in August. Even he, with his gifts of prophecy, does not know what the price cap level will be in August. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, we are continually reviewing actual spot markets and what is happening in the market.
The hon. Gentleman will know that nothing could be more damaging to the sector, to people employed in the sector and to the hundreds of thousands of jobs and families dependent on the sector than an arbitrary windfall tax, which would also impoverish many of the people exposed to those companies through their pensions. It is a regressive, retro measure that completely does not understand what business is all about.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Aside from saying that he drives an ageing VW Golf, the Secretary of State is using every excuse possible to try to defend the indefensible. In just a matter of days, the energy price cap will increase by some 700 quid; in just a matter of months, it is anticipated that it will increase by a further £1,000. The Government’s response is 150 quid off council tax and £200 that they say is not a loan, but that is indeed a loan. Energy bills are anticipated to increase 14 times faster than wage increases. How on earth are people supposed to get by?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As I have said, we have a £9.1 billion support package, which was announced only four weeks ago. On top of that, we allocated £500 million of additional relief only last week to help people through this difficult time. One way in which I am afraid bills would go up is if we adopted the insane SNP policy of essentially shutting down North sea oil and having no intention at all to develop nuclear. That would be an utterly irresponsible and highly expensive way of dealing with the current problem.
Stephen Flynn
The Secretary of State does himself no favours by attempting to invent policies that are simply not reflective of the SNP’s position at this moment in time—but this discussion is about energy bills. If someone lives in the north of Scotland, their energy bill standing charge will increase by some 83%; if they live in the south of Scotland, it will increase by 100%; but if they live here in Westminster, in London, it will increase by just 38%. Scotland is energy-rich—oil and gas, wave, wind, tidal, hydro pumped storage. How on earth can the Secretary of State justify the inequity in such pricing?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman is indeed correct: Scotland is extremely wealthy in its range of energy sources. That is why we have sought to encourage it through things like the £27 million Aberdeen energy transition zone and the North sea transition deal. We have constantly supported the Scottish energy industry. The hon. Gentleman refers to a report by Ofgem. I speak to it regularly, and we always try to see what we can do to justify and to equalise bills across the UK.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has announced that he will publish an energy supply strategy to deal with the UK’s energy requirements for the short, medium and long term. Can the Secretary of the State update the House on when we can expect the strategy to be published?
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
As the hon. Lady will know, few countries have done as well as we have in respect of offshore wind. We are backing a range of other technologies through our strategy, and also through the 10-point plan.
Munira Wilson
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made clear how crucial it is for the UK to press on with the push to roll out renewables and strengthen its energy security. Almost three weeks ago, the Prime Minister said that an energy independence plan would be unveiled in the next few days and there was speculation about a renewed push for onshore wind, but that plan has been delayed again, apparently because the Chancellor is blocking it. Will the Secretary of State explain why the Chancellor is now deciding energy policy?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Lady will understand that, when such publications are issued, a range of cross-Government “write-rounds” is required. We are constantly talking to colleagues across Government, not just in the Treasury, so that we can land the energy strategy as quickly as possible.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
Getting on top of energy issues, particularly those relating to renewable energy, is the most difficult challenge in rural areas such as mine. How will the Secretary of State’s strategy—to be launched soon—enable the renewable energy sector to grow from the grassroots up, so that people in fuel-poor homes, who may not have the money to buy the necessary equipment at the outset, have an opportunity to install solar panels and battery storage which will help them to deal with the rising cost of energy?
Kwasi Kwarteng
We have just cut VAT on many of those products. I have already visited my hon. Friend in his constituency, and I am happy to have further discussions about what more we can do to drive the take-up of these important technologies.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
In January 2021, we announced a robust package of measures to help to ensure that no UK organisations are complicit in the human rights violations being perpetrated in Xinjiang. We have also supplied detailed guidance to UK businesses, and will continue to engage with them.
Afzal Khan
I have lost count of the number of times I have urged the Government to take stronger, more robust action against China’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was spot on when he said that UK organisations must immediately sever their commercial ties with Russia to ensure that public money is not funding Putin’s war machine. In the light of a genocide that is happening on our watch, is it not high time that the Government applied the same rules and ensured that public organisations sever their contracts with Xinjiang? Will they also support amendments to the Health and Care Bill to prevent the NHS from being complicit in forced Uyghur labour?
Paul Scully
Evidence of the scale and severity of the human rights situation in Xinjiang paints a harrowing picture. The British Government will not stand for forced labour, wherever it takes place. We require businesses to report on how they are tackling modern slavery and forced labour in their operations and supply chains, and we plan to extend that to certain public bodies and to introduce financial penalties for organisations which do not comply. That will require legislative change, and legislation will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
That was a pretty strong-sounding answer from the Minister, but let us see whether those fine words are put into practice. An audit undertaken two years ago found that 17% of organisations—more than 2,500—that should have published a modern slavery statement had failed to do so. Can the Minister tell us what action has been taken since then to ensure that they do?
Paul Scully
On 11 March 2021, the Government launched an online modern slavery statement registry, and we are now encouraging all organisations within the scope of the legislation to submit their statements to it. More than 7,000 statements have been submitted, covering more than 23,350 organisations on that voluntary basis.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Canadian Solar wants to build a solar plant in my constituency the size of 1,400 football pitches. In 2021, four of its shipments were seized owing to its links with Uyghur blood labour, and its subsidiary GCL-Poly has been sanctioned by the United States Government because of its complicity in genocide. Will my hon. Friend assure me that we will blacklist from nationally significant infrastructure projects all those companies that are complicit in genocide, and confirm that we will not allow blood labour to stain our green and pleasant lands?
Paul Scully
As I have said, we have strong procedures to vet suppliers, and we have been given repeated written assurances from people who supply that they proactively monitor supply chains to ensure that forced labour is not used. We will of course ensure that the company to which my hon. Friend has referred comes within that robust supervision.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
As the hon. Lady knows, the standing charge is designed to reflect the costs of connectivity and usually covers the fixed costs that the suppliers incur. If it was removed, that cost would simply be passed on to consumers. Standing charges are a matter for Ofgem, which has launched a call for evidence. The Government are focused on helping consumers through the £9 billion package of relief announced by the Chancellor a few weeks ago and the £5 billion announced last week to help families and households with the cost of fuel.
Patricia Gibson
From this Friday, households will face an average 80% increase in standing charges for electricity. Negligent policy making and bad practice in the industry will be paid for by the poorest and most vulnerable consumers, who will pay the highest standing charges, with those in Scotland amongst the hardest hit. Will the Minister consider capping or even scrapping these standing charges on the basis that they are discriminatory to the poorest and most vulnerable consumers?
George Freeman
If it was as straightforward as that, the answer might be simple, but it is not—[Hon. Members: “Yes it is!”] No, it is not. The energy market is extremely complex, and there is a whole raft of charges. It is not true to say that Scottish consumers are hit particularly hard, as Scotland is also a net exporter and English and Welsh consumers are paying for it. The Government are absolutely focused on helping consumers with the cost of energy through the £9 billion relief announced in February, the £5 billion announced last week, the extra money for the warm home bonus and all the support mechanisms for the vulnerable. It is not simply a case of constantly tinkering with market price.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
Nuclear energy is crucial in providing low-carbon baseload power, which, over the long term, assists in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and our exposure to volatile global prices. We will continue to emphasise the vital role of the nuclear sector, including in the forthcoming energy supply strategy.
Suzanne Webb
Our very own atomic kitten, my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), and I are going on a road trip to Hinkley Point C. When I did my research for the visit, I noticed that £5 million-worth of business opportunities had been realised by 36 companies in the west midlands, including three in my constituency, on the back of Hinkley Point C. Does the Minister agree that our investment in nuclear energy is not just about clean energy but about the supply chain opportunities that it will bring to small and medium-sized enterprises and manufacturing in my constituency?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is right to emphasise not only the importance of nuclear in concept but the huge significance of the supply chain, which is estimated to support more than 60,000 jobs across the whole of the United Kingdom, including in SMEs in Stourbridge and Ynys Môn. And if I may shove in my knowledge of early 2000s pop music, we are working hard to make the nuclear industry whole again. [Laughter.]
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
That was written by a member of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, so we will give the Minister that.
Energy security is of vital significance, particularly at the moment, and nuclear is part of the clean energy mix. Does the Minister understand that the United Kingdom, which has the second highest tidal range on planet Earth after Canada, is not making anything like sufficient use of that permanent tidal energy? Will he look again at his Government’s policies on tidal, marine and hydro energy and give a boost not only to Cumbria and its energy coast but to the whole country?
Lee Rowley
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the importance of a diversified and secure energy supply. This is one of the reasons that the Government are looking at all forms, including tidal, and it is why we would encourage people from across the House to agree not just with tidal but with nuclear as well.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
In the 2018 nuclear sector deal, £20 million was pledged towards Britain’s first thermal hydraulic testing facility, in north Wales. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that the UK establish world-leading capabilities in thermal hydraulics, and can he provide an update on the next steps for this vital investment?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is an absolute champion of the nuclear industry. I believe that this proposal would make the UK third in the world. We are working hard to see what can be done and I will certainly pass on her keenness for progress to be made.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The contracts for difference scheme is a flagship scheme that has contributed to our fivefold increase in renewables since 2010. High environmental performance is a prerequisite for contracts for difference applications, and the next CFD round will require even more ambition from applicants.
Tommy Sheppard
I, like many people, have difficulty understanding how burning trees on an industrial scale and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can be any part of a low-carbon solution, or indeed why the British taxpayer subsidises private companies to do this. Given the Glasgow declaration and the new COP26 standards, is it not time to review whether the British taxpayer should remain the world’s largest subsidiser of tree burning and, in particular, whether contracts for difference on biomass awarded before 2015 would now be awarded were they to meet the new standards and targets?
Paul Scully
As a condition of receiving payment under the contracts for difference scheme, generators must demonstrate that they meet our biomass sustainability criteria, irrespective of where that biomass is sourced. There is no evidence that deforestation has occurred in the areas from where UK electricity generators source their biomass, but we must make sure biomass is sourced from areas that are managed consistently with sustainable forest management practices.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The UK remains one of the world’s largest manufacturing nations, and the Government agree that manufacturing plays a vital role in the health of the UK economy. It is ultimately for British manufacturers to make decisions on their own strategies, but the Government continue to support them through a range of initiatives on productivity, costs, innovation and investment, ranging from Made Smarter to the catapults and the global Britain investment fund.
Jack Brereton
I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s response last week to my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) that energy-intensive manufacturers such as ceramics will be covered by the upcoming British energy security strategy. These sectors are more important than ever, particularly for future technology, and they need support to address high energy costs now. Will my hon. Friend the Minister do more to support ceramic manufacturers to invest in new technologies and increased energy efficiency?
Lee Rowley
There is no bigger champion of the ceramics industry than my hon. Friend and his colleagues from Stoke, who work as an excellent team in supporting the industry as a whole. The Government have worked with industry for many years to mitigate the costs of energy, including an aggregate of £2 billion-worth of subsidy since 2013. From our multitude of conversations on the ceramics industry with him and his colleagues, I know he will encourage manufacturers in his constituency to consider other opportunities such as the industrial energy transformation fund.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
Earlier this month, bosses triggered a consultation on redundancies at Liberty Pressing Solutions, a business in my constituency that produces high-quality products for the automotive industry. Financial difficulties at its parent company, the Gupta Family Group Alliance, have put its future in doubt, and with it the jobs of more than 200 people. I visited the factory and met the company’s skilled, dedicated workers, who risk being plunged into unemployment just as the cost of living crisis intensifies. What is the Minister doing to protect skilled jobs such as these, which are vital in transitioning to a green and sustainable economy? Will he meet me to discuss how we can save these jobs?
Lee Rowley
The hon. Lady is right to highlight the importance of a strong manufacturing base, which is one reason why we have spent so much time supporting and having active discussions with manufacturing. The challenges around Liberty are well known, and I have also visited Liberty sites in recent weeks and months. I am happy to meet her to talk further.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Manufacturers will open their factory doors on 7 July in a UK-wide open house, which is an opportunity to showcase the diversity of the sector, the range of highly skilled jobs on offer and the amazing opportunities for reskilling and career development within UK manufacturing. Will the Minister join me in supporting National Manufacturing Day 2022?
Lee Rowley
I could hardly say no. I look forward to doing that and visiting many great manufacturers across the country. We are highlighting the brilliant work of the sector, and we continue to champion it as a vital part of the UK economy.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Government are well aware of the crisis they have created for energy-intensive industries such as those on Teesside. Now that the EU has set aside €50 million to help its firms with energy costs, British firms such as CF Fertilisers, which have no such support, face even tougher competition. I know the Minister is visiting the company tomorrow, but what will the Government do to address the impact of this EU funding on UK fertiliser production? Can he advise on when a decision will be taken about renewing the electricity compensation scheme for energy-intensive industries, which runs out on Thursday?
Lee Rowley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He will be aware of the substantial support we have given manufacturers over many years, including more than £2 billion to mitigate energy prices. I note that in Teesside there have been recent announcements that demonstrate the confidence people have within manufacturing as a whole.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
My hon. Friend will know that small and medium-sized manufacturers make up the core of the manufacturing base in the Black Country, but many of mine in Wednesbury, Oldbury and Tipton will be slightly concerned that they have missed out on investment because of their size. Will he meet me and manufacturers from the Black Country to discuss how we can ensure that they make the most of the packages on offer for them to succeed?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is a great champion for his constituency. I have been to the west midlands regularly to talk about the importance of the manufacturing base, and I would be happy to meet him to talk about West Bromwich.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
In the past, the Nigg oil fabrication facility in Easter Ross built some of the mightiest production platforms for the UK—I worked in that yard. Today, wind turbines for both onshore and offshore power seem to be built anywhere but in Scotland. The firm that owns the Nigg yard announced plans almost four months to get into fabrication, but since then we have not heard a lot. I do not expect the Minister to have the answer at his fingertips, but will he ask his Department to see how progress is- coming along on that front, because it is crucial for the local workforce?
Lee Rowley
I would be very happy to speak to the Department and come back to the hon. Gentleman on that.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Investment is attracted to areas that have agile, pro-growth regulatory environments. In this country, we delegate a lot of the implementation of regulation to agencies, but the oversight and assessment of regulatory agency performance is weak. Will the Minister look at ways in which we can improve how we regulate the regulators?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend highlights an important point about getting the balance right between regulation, and ensuring that the output and productivity of these industries works. I would be happy to talk to him more if that is helpful.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The spring statement did not
“address the complex challenges facing the manufacturing sector”.
It just is not
“tenable for thousands of businesses”
and it is
“kicking the can down the road”.
Those are the words of three businesses that are asking for help. So how about this: first, cancel the 10% increase in national insurance payroll tax; secondly, cut energy bills by up to £600 per household; and, thirdly, set up a £600 million energy-intensive industries contingency fund? Our plan is following the evidence from the business community of what is needed. Why will this Government not help businesses that are crying out for support?
Lee Rowley
The hon. Gentleman highlights the importance of manufacturing, which we have already talked about in these questions. This Government are a champion of manufacturing—[Interruption.] I am so glad that all Opposition Members agree with me. If they really do, they would recognise that ensuring a strong manufacturing base is incredibly important. The Labour party can provide no lessons, on the basis that it decimated manufacturing before 2010.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I am glad now to know who the Minister’s favourite in Stoke-on-Trent is. Steelite, based in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, received funding from the regional growth fund, but it is being asked to pay back £685,000 plus interest due to capital underspend. The reason for that is simple: a global pandemic came across in March 2020, so it was not viable for Steelite to invest in capital when it did not even know whether it was going to continue to exist or how long the pandemic was going to last. Will my hon. Friend meet me and representatives of Steelite to discuss how that funding can continue to stay, so that Steelite can add to its factory and therefore employ more people locally?
Lee Rowley
I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to talk about that in more detail.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government are cutting fuel duty, at a cost of £5 billion over the next 12 months; raising the employment allowance to £5,000; and zero-rating VAT on energy-saving materials. That builds on existing support, including business rates relief worth £7 billion over five years.
Mary Glindon
Businesses such as Sidhu’s chippies in my constituency had pinned their hopes on the Chancellor reducing VAT to 12.5%. They are now going to be pushed to the brink as energy costs are set to almost triple this financial year. What hope can the Minister offer Sidhu’s and other businesses that have served their local communities for decades but now cannot guarantee jobs and services into the future?
Paul Scully
Our hospitality strategy, which includes fish and chip shops and other restaurants around the country, has a number of workstreams to co-create solutions with businesses rather than the Government having all the answers. The hon. Lady needs to consider the issue in the round, including the business rates relief and other support that we have given of £408 billion over the past two years.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
Supporting businesses to manage their costs must not come at the expense of employment rights. The P&O ferry scandal is not about fire and rehire, but it puts the issue back in the spotlight because it exposes how vulnerable workers can be when faced with an exploitative employer who is willing to trample over their statutory rights to slash wages. At the Dispatch Box last week, my hon. Friend the Minister intimated that the Government would make further announcements on the issue. May I press him to tell the House today whether the Government are prepared to act definitively on fire and rehire?
Paul Scully
I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a doughty champion on the issue. The Government have always been clear that it is completely unacceptable for any sized business to use threats of fire and rehire simply as a negotiation tactic. We have already taken action. In November last year, we commissioned ACAS, which published guidance. I promised to take further steps, as she rightly said, and I am pleased to announce that we will bring forward a statutory code later this year under section 203 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. We will introduce that as soon as parliamentary time allows. The code will have legal teeth; it will be admissible in evidence before courts and employment tribunals in England, Scotland and Wales.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Businesses face a barrage of rising costs: inflation at a 30-year high, taxation at an 80-year high, and rocketing prices for materials, energy, food and fuel that are hitting businesses and consumers hard. This is a Government of photo ops but shuttered shops, with no clear plan to support businesses and workers, and their spring statement does not go far enough. Does that not make Labour’s call for an increase to the small business rates relief threshold even more urgent? Or is the truth not plain to see that small businesses can no longer afford the Conservatives?
Paul Scully
Nobody—whether in a domestic or business setting—can afford Labour. We have put £408 billion of support into wrapping our arms around jobs, livelihoods and businesses. We have 408 billion reasons to get this next bit right. The Labour party can talk about scrapping business rates, but it has not made any suggestion of what to replace them with. Fine words, but we will act.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
Achieving the UK’s ambitious net zero target to prevent global warming and climate emergency beyond 1.5° and protect consumers from global price volatility will require significant extra investment in renewable electricity generation. We have seen the cost of renewable technologies, most notably offshore wind, reduce fast and as more renewables are added to the system, household electricity bills will be less affected by fluctuations in volatile global gas prices.
Karl MᶜCartney
An effective way for household energy bills in Lincoln and across the UK to be cut by 25% right now is through the removal of the renewables surcharge on everyone’s bills, even temporarily. Have the Minister and his colleagues put that simple idea to their Treasury colleagues?
George Freeman
I can assure my hon. Friend that lots of ideas have been put to Treasury colleagues. The truth is that the falling cost of UK renewables, with offshore wind now down 60% through the contract for difference, is the best protection against global supply chain volatility. This country has led the way. In the past 30 years, we have grown the economy by 78% and reduced emissions by 44%. The Government focused on helping consumers, households and businesses with direct support and that is why the Chancellor announced £9 billion of relief in his February package, £5 billion last week, contrary to the claim from the Opposition that nothing was done, and extra funding for the warm home scheme and winter fuel levy.
Dr Evans
Constituents in Bosworth are concerned about three things: the cost of their energy bills, the environmental impact and the security of our energy supply. While being mindful of those three things, does my hon. Friend agree that a transition period is paramount while we deal with the fallout of a war, with rising energy prices and, of course, with meeting our net zero targets?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an important point that has not been picked up by the Opposition. We are emerging from a global pandemic and experiencing a war in Europe. Those are two unprecedented shocks to the global energy system. The Government have done everything necessary through the pandemic and we are doing it again on energy, but in the end we are in a global energy market and the best strategy, as my hon. Friend sets out, is the transition plan we have put in place, with strong support for renewables and help with the cost of energy in the short term for consumers, businesses and households.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
For Norway to feed energy into our national grid it costs £1.36 per MWh, for Belgium it is 77p per MWh, for France, 17p and for Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands it costs not a penny. Can the Minister explain how Scotland can exploit its renewable potential when it costs £7.36 per MWh to feed into the grid?
George Freeman
I am delighted to explain how Scotland can benefit from our renewables programme: the North sea transition deal, the net zero hydrogen fund, the industrial energy transformation fund, £20 million ringfenced for Scottish tidal, £40 million for carbon capture and storage, and £27 million for the Aberdeen energy transition zone. Frankly, we need fewer complaints from the Scottish nationalists and more support for the Scottish energy sector.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a little disappointing that the Minister could not just give a straightforward no to the question from the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney). Moving on, however, there are more than 600 wind and solar projects in the UK that already have planning permission. Will the Government admit they made a mistake in stopping the development of onshore wind, and fast-track those projects? They already have planning permission and are ready to go ahead. They are the answer to meeting our energy needs in the future.
George Freeman
The evidence suggests that the UK is the fastest economy in the G7 in deploying renewables. Offshore wind costs have fallen by 60%. Of course, everyone can do more, but I do not accept the criticism that we have not been in the vanguard; we have been, and we are, and offshore wind and solar have been fundamental to reducing the cost of renewables. That is the best support against rising energy prices.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
I am delighted to assure hon. Members that Scotland is at the heart of the UK’s transition to net zero—something I hope they will welcome. In November last year, we committed £20 million to the funding for tidal stream projects through the contracts for difference, giving Scotland’s significant marine energy sector a chance to develop its expertise. We have also allocated £40 million in carbon capture development funding for the Acorn Project and £27 million for the Aberdeen energy transition zone.
Patrick Grady
I am sure the rest of the UK welcomes that contribution to renewable energy as well, but local communities up and down the country, such as Partick in Glasgow North, want to champion the just transition by generating their own local renewable electricity. If the Local Electricity Bill, which has cross-party support on both sides of the House, is brought back in the next Session, will the Government make time and support it?
George Freeman
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I will pass on to my hon. Friend the Energy Minister, who is currently suffering from covid. We have put money into the community energy fund. We are supporting community energy and we are passionate not just about the big infrastructure but, as the hon. Gentleman says, about community energy schemes.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
The University of Stirling has cut its carbon emissions by 43.8% since 2007. It has an ambitious target to achieve net zero by 2040, with fantastic plans for a solar farm, geothermal developments, the repurposing of an existing combined heat and power plant, and hydro. However, it is finding that those developments are held back by a lack of UK Government support and the rhetoric is often not matched by the reality. Will the Minister, in a constructive spirit, meet me to see whether we can crack through the paperwork and support those great projects?
George Freeman
As Minister for Science, Research and Innovation I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman. The university is doing great work. We have just announced and made the allocation of the biggest increase for a generation in science, research and innovation funding for universities, and I would be very happy to meet him and see what we can do to support that cluster.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
I thank the Minister for reminding the House that this is a transition, not an extinction. Can he confirm that, as part of the North sea transition deal, we need to keep extracting hydrocarbons for the ongoing, albeit declining, demand that we have in this country and to support investment and jobs in that industry? Finally, does he agree that the companies on which the Opposition parties, including the SNP, want to slap an arbitrary windfall tax are precisely those companies that have the skills, the knowledge, the expertise, the technology and the capital to invest in the energy transition that this country desperately needs, and that we can show the world how it is done?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. It is surprising not to hear the Scottish nationalists welcoming the North sea transition deal a bit more. To remind the House, it is a programme that will draw on the expertise in Scotland’s offshore North sea oil and gas sector and help it to lead the transition to carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, offshore wind and tidal, and it is set to create over 40,000 jobs and attract £14 billion of investment. That is the best way—and frankly, the best thing the SNP here could do is to help their colleagues in Scotland to support it.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The net zero strategy highlighted the potential importance of sustainable and synthetic fuels as part of the transition to net zero and committed to additional strategies. In aviation, the Government have already announced their ambition to deliver 10% sustainable aviation fuels by 2030.
Greg Smith
In our inquiry, “Fuelling the future”, the Transport Committee has heard significant evidence of the role that synthetic fuels can play as drop-in fuels that mean that vehicles, aircraft, ships, cars and plant do not have to be changed—the fuel just works in them. Given this, will my hon. Friend commit to ensure that synthetic fuels and their development are given equal billing with other energy sources?
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend makes two crucial points: first, that technological innovation—the ingenuity of human endeavour—is crucially important in helping us to get to net zero in the first place; and secondly, that it is very important that we let a multitude of technologies and innovations grow and develop, working in conjunction with private enterprise, to help to solve society’s challenges.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
The North Sea Transition Authority decided to change its name to reflect its important role in the energy transition, driving the UK upstream oil and gas industry towards net zero. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was consulted on and supported this change.
Caroline Lucas
No amount of greenwash can hide the fact that the Oil and Gas Authority’s primary purpose is to pump every last drop of oil and gas from the North sea, but the International Energy Agency report that was commissioned by this Government is clear that there can be no new exploration for fossil fuels. Let me pre-empt the Minister’s response by saying that no one is suggesting turning off the taps tomorrow, as he regularly claims. We absolutely need a transition that is fair to workers; what we do not need is a so-called climate pass to allow the Government to ignore climate consequences and license more explorations supposedly on the grounds of national security. Can he assure us that he recognises that climate change is itself an issue of national security, and that if we are serious about our net zero commitments there can be no exemptions from the climate compatibility checkpoints?
Lee Rowley
If the hon. Lady accepts the principle of transition, then she needs to accept the principle that we will need oil and gas for a number of years yet. That is logical, simple and understood. The only greenwashing that is going on is the Green party pretending that it is interested in green issues when it is only interested in socialism.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)
Since we last met, my Department has been focused on three central strands. First, we are pleased to announce the passing of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022. Secondly, we have worked with Ukrainian colleagues to make sure that generators are arriving in Ukraine so that their public services can be powered and delivered. Thirdly, I am pleased to announce that we are phasing out imports of Russian oil over a nine-month period to make sure, with our allies, that the Kremlin does not benefit from its sale of hydrocarbons.
Munira Wilson
Small businesses across my constituency are struggling, like households, with spiralling energy costs. The British Chambers of Commerce reports that three out of four firms it surveyed will be passing on these costs to customers through higher prices, thus further fuelling the cost of living crisis for many people in Twickenham and across the country. What will the Secretary of State do to alleviate the pressure on small and medium-sized enterprises that are facing rising energy bills?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Lady will know that not only did my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announce a £9 billion package particularly for the most vulnerable, but for all our citizens, a few weeks ago, but last week we announced a support package, again, for vulnerable customers. In relation to small business, she will know that over the past two years this Government have spent £405 billion in supporting businesses of all sizes through a very difficult pandemic and, again, through the heightened crisis that has been brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
It is great that my hon. Friend is supporting Rodale and other companies in her area. We know that this is a worrying time for business, which is facing significant increases in global gas prices. My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is in regular contact with the energy industry and Ofgem to manage the impact of price increases on businesses. Clearly, we need to look at this in the round, and in the context of the £408 billion that we provided throughout covid to allow businesses such as Rodale to survive.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Last October the Secretary of State promised support for energy-intensive industries such as steel, glass and ceramics. His exact words were that it was his
“priority…to ensure costs are managed and supplies of energy are maintained.”
Yet six months later there is still no action, and there was nothing in last week’s spring statement, so when will this promised support be presented?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will know that support is ongoing. We have the industrial energy transformation fund, which has allocated more than £50 million. We have also supported EIIs—energy-intensive industries—to the tune of £2 billion since 2013, so support is always there and has been ongoing.
Jonathan Reynolds
A chemicals manufacturer in Grimsby has been in touch with me this week. Its energy bill last year was £10 million; it has now gone up to £50 million a year. And it gets worse, because as we have heard in questions today, in two days’ time, compensation for the UK emissions trading scheme and the carbon price support mechanism comes to an end, so support is actually decreasing. Will the Secretary of State at least do the bare minimum and reassure firms today that that support fund will be extended?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I will reassure businesses that I engage with that we are constantly engaging in conversations with our Treasury colleagues and across Government to see how best we can use the existing schemes to support industries—the steel industry, ceramics industry and chemicals industry—in this difficult time.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Paul Scully
It was a pleasure to speak to the Staffordshire chamber of commerce. The Department for Work and Pensions’ “Way to Work” campaign is a drive to help employers to fill vacancies faster by streamlining recruitment processes and offering employers a named adviser. The Department is also supporting people to upskill through skills boot camps and sector-based work academies.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
As former Minister for life science and Minister for research, I would be very happy to meet with the hon. Member to talk that through. We have just made the biggest allocation for science, research and innovation, which included £9 billion for health research.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend knows that energy efficiency is at the centre of any net zero strategy, and I would be happy to work with him to ensure that we can drive progress in this area.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Department continually looks at a range of schemes to see how best we can lighten the burden of rising energy prices.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
George Freeman
That is an excellent question. We can be very proud: UK scientists at Harwell recently demonstrated the ability to generate temperatures equivalent to those on the sun at the flick of a switch, and Rolls-Royce is ready to roll out and industrialise small nuclear reactors over the next 10 to 15 years. We are looking to accelerate their deployment to help tackle the global energy crisis.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
Kwasi Kwarteng
As the hon. Lady is aware, we have made a number of interventions that have gone some way to lightening the burden. There is the £9 billion that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced a few weeks ago, and £150 off council tax for those in bands A to D. I have reassured the House that we are looking at a range of measures to see how best we can meet the challenge of the next few months. Nobody knows where the price cap will be in October.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Kwasi Kwarteng
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify this as an issue. That is why we are working, not only in Government but across G7 partners, to ensure diverse sources of energy supply, which can keep prices down.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
In Chopwell in my constituency, over 200 homes were due to benefit from cladding under the green homes grant local authority delivery scheme, but due to escalating costs, that work has been cancelled. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can ensure that the work is carried out?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As the hon. Lady knows, local authority delivery of the green homes grant was very successful, but I would be very happy to meet her to discuss the case she mentions.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
Last year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the welcome announcement that employment leave would be extended to unpaid carers. Will he please update the House on when that is likely to be delivered?
Paul Scully
I recommit to our manifesto commitment to introduce carers’ leave. That will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows. We are looking forward to getting on with that as soon as possible.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
South Yorkshire is home to some extraordinary research and development assets, including the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and the Advanced Wellbeing and Research Centre. It was great to meet the Minister recently to discuss the issue. Will he continue to work with me and others on unlocking the undoubtedly huge potential in South Yorkshire?
George Freeman
With absolute pleasure. The South Yorkshire cluster is becoming a world-class, globally recognised leader in advanced manufacturing and associated industries. I look forward to supporting that cluster.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Geothermal energy from old coalmines can heat our homes for years to come. Will the Secretary of State please assure me that he is doing all he can to support the Coal Authority in developing this fantastic new energy opportunity?
Kwasi Kwarteng
We are, absolutely, excited about the prospects for geothermal. I would be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss this. I was happy, also, to talk to my Cornish colleagues about this exciting new technology; it is something on which we are focused.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The pupils of Boroughmuir High School’s climate change society in my constituency have impressed on me that their generation is relying on us to take action right now, because by the time they are old enough to do so it will be too late for systemic change. Can the Secretary of State reassure school students in my constituency that his plans for transition have the requisite urgency?
Kwasi Kwarteng
They do. I was very pleased to take up my office as Minister of State for Energy a month after the net zero legislation was passed, and for the last three years we have been resolutely focused on living up to the letter of the law, fulfilling our bargain and making sure we reach net zero in 2050.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Secretary of State is well aware of the opportunities for further developing the renewables sector in my Cleethorpes constituency and the wider Humber region. However, as he is also aware, there have been one or two setbacks of late. Will he meet me and neighbouring colleagues to discuss how we can move forward and maximise such opportunities?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend. I am very excited about what is going on in his constituency and the wider Humber area, and I look forward to talking to him about decarbonisation.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Unscrupulous company directors make use of the compulsory strike-off process to avoid paying debts to both private and public sector creditors. In considering reform of Companies House, what can Ministers do to tackle this practice?
Paul Scully
We are looking at a range of methods of reforming Companies House, including unscrupulous behaviour by directors. It will be the biggest upheaval of companies law for the last 150 years, and we will legislate for new powers in the economic crime Bill when parliamentary time allows.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will know that there is a distinct difference between the current energy price spikes and the long-standing unfairness that UK steel makers face when it comes to the charges and levies they pay on their energy costs. Does he agree that, when the energy strategy that the Prime Minister promised comes out, it must address both these distinct and separate issues?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I would be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about those issues. I would like to point out that we had a significant victory in extending the safeguards last summer, and there has been some very good news on trade talks about the quotas that steel companies in this country are allowed by the US.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The energy crisis is leaving some people in my constituency struggling to pay their bills, and the situation is even worse for those whose heating is paid for centrally and is not protected by the energy price cap. In some cases, many have seen their bills go up by more than 500%, so when will the Secretary of State bring forward legislation that will give Ofgem the powers to regulate these prices and end these excessive energy price increases?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Member will know that we are speaking with Ofgem about this very issue. Yes, the price cap does protect the vast majority of people, but there is an issue with people off grid, which I would be very happy to talk to her about.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
There is great concern in North West Durham among constituents affected by Storm Arwen about the prospect of being left without a landline as well as without power during a storm, due to the switch to the voice over internet protocol. Given that, does the Secretary of State, like me, welcome the announcement from BT today that this forced switch will now be paused and be on request only, as BT looks to ensure that proper back-up systems are in place during power cuts before returning to the broader roll-out?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I welcome the announcement. I was also very pleased to spend time with my hon. Friend in the unfortunate circumstances of Storm Arwen, and I look forward to the publication of that report soon.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Returning to off grid, Ofgem’s mission statement says that it aims
“to make a positive difference for all energy consumers, both now and in the future”,
yet off-gas grid consumers using electricity, oil and liquid gas face price rises in April four times that of Ofgem’s average consumer. Will the Secretary of State support my calls to regulate this for off-gas grid customers through Ofgem, and indeed support my Energy Pricing (Off Gas Grid Households) Bill?
Kwasi Kwarteng
Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that we need to have a more robust offer for people who are off grid. This issue has been raised continually in these exceptional times, and I look forward to speaking to Ofgem—and perhaps him—about these issues.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. That finishes questions, but before we come to the statement, I would like to point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about our mission to level up opportunities for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England. Before I do, I want to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the fantastic Minister for Children and Families, who has been supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) and for Wantage (David Johnston). I thank them for the level of engagement they have had with Members across the House, as well as with many wonderful people from across the SEND and alternative provision system. I also thank all those working in early years, schools and colleges, including specialist and alternative provision, for their dedication to service in the face of ongoing covid difficulties. I am sure my gratitude will be echoed across the House.
This review has been shaped by children with special educational needs and disabilities and in alternative provision, by their families and teachers, and by the committed workforce across education, health and care sharing their experiences and stories. I send them huge thanks for their openness in sharing emotional, and sometimes difficult experiences with us. We have listened, and in response today I am publishing for public consultation the Government’s “Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Green Paper.”
In schools in England alone there are 1.4 million pupils with a diverse range of special educational needs, and too often they do not get the support they need. In 2014 we made far-reaching changes to support children with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families—indeed, in 2016 I was the Minister for Children and Families. Those reforms gave critical support to more children, but in reality the system is not working as it should. Too often decisions about support are based on where a child lives, not on what they need, and many have lost confidence in the system. On top of that, the alternative provision system is increasingly used to support children with special educational needs, but the outcomes for many of those children remain shockingly poor. We have therefore considered alternative provision within this review.
Despite unprecedented investment through a £1 billion increase in high needs funding, taking total funding to £9.1 billion in the coming financial year on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last two years, the system has become financially unsustainable. Local authorities are in deficit and overspending on their dedicated schools grant, with total deficits now standing at more than £1 billion. The publication of the Green Paper is long-awaited, and I am proud to announce that our proposals will build a more inclusive and financially sustainable system, where every child and young person will have access to the right support, in the right place, at the right time.
To meet our ambitions, and the ambitions of so many children and their families, we propose to establish a new single, national special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision system across education, health and care, setting clear standards for how children and young people’s needs are identified and met. To enable effective local delivery, we propose establishing new statutory SEND partnerships, bringing together education, health and care partners with local government, to create a local inclusion plan. That plan will set out how each local area will meet the needs of children in line with national standards. We will also clarify the roles and responsibilities of every partner in the system, with robust accountabilities to build confidence and transparency.
Locally and nationally published inclusion dashboards will capture and track metrics to drive system performance, and mean that areas respond quickly to emerging local needs. Data and transparency are our allies on this journey. Parents should not need to fight the system; the system should be working and fighting for them. The proposed changes will help parents to know exactly what their child is entitled to, removing their need to fight and guaranteeing them access to mediation, leading to better, earlier and more effective interventions for their child.
I will always be on the side of children and parents. Wherever possible, I want our children to be educated close to home, near to friends and within local communities. Frustratingly for families, that is not happening consistently enough. Today, building on the schools White Paper published yesterday, we are committing to improve mainstream education through early and accurate identification of need, through high-quality teaching of a knowledge-rich curriculum, and through timely access to specialist support, where needed. Change will be underpinned by the increase in our total investment in the national schools budget. As set out in last year’s spending review, we will invest an additional £7 billion by 2024-25, compared with 2021-22, including an additional £1 billion in 2022-23 for children and young people with high needs.
I recognise the importance of a confident and empowered workforce with access to the best training to support this cohort of children, and many of my colleagues have made representations to me on that. We will consult on the introduction of a new special educational needs co-ordinator national professional qualification for schools and increase the number of staff with an accredited level 3 SENCO qualification in early years settings.
For some children and young people, specialist provision will be the most appropriate place for them to be able to learn and succeed. For those requiring specialist provision, whether in a mainstream or special school, we propose a simplified process. We will support parents to make informed choices by providing them with a list of appropriate placements tailored to their child’s needs, meaning less time spent researching the right school. To prevent needs from escalating, for children with challenging behaviour we want to use the best practice of alternative provision to intervene earlier so that children and young people are supported to thrive, and that the risk of these vulnerable children and young people being exploited or, sadly, involved in serious criminal activities is minimised.
At last year’s spending review, we announced an investment of £2.6 billion over three years, delivering tens of thousands more specialist places and improving existing specialist and alternative provision. Today, I can confirm that £1.4 billion of that funding will be capital spending for high needs for academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25, to help local authorities deliver new places quickly. We cannot wait for the Green Paper consultation; we need to do that now for those with additional needs. That means up to 40 new alternative provision and specialist settings. Taken together, these proposals will improve the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision system, delivering the right support in the right place at the right time for children and young people.
Today, I am launching a 13-week consultation on the proposals set out in my Green Paper. This is the opportunity for children and young people, their families, and those working across the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision sector to help shape the next stage. We will pay close attention to implementation so that the mistakes of past reforms are not repeated. These reforms are about outcomes, but they are also about fairness: fairness to families who have struggled to get support for their children, to the sector which has gone above and beyond for years, and to children and young people who deserve excellent support to achieve their ambitions. I commend this statement to the House.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I start by thanking the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Children with special educational needs and disabilities and how we support them are subjects close to my heart, as they are to so many of us across the House. I had sincerely hoped to speak today with optimism and enthusiasm about the review the Secretary of State has set out today, because one in six children in England have a special educational need or disability—five in every class.
Supporting children and learners with special educational needs or disabilities is at the heart of our education system and the work that teachers and school staff are doing every day, and it should be central to the work of Government too. But right now children are being let down. Needs are going unmet. Children are stuck on waiting lists, for occupation therapy to speech and language support. Thousands of families are waiting months for education health and care plans. Children and families are facing a postcode lottery in availability and quality of specialist provision, and parents are increasingly turning to the courts to get the support that is their children’s right.
The system is broken. Parents know it, teachers know it, children know it and the Government know it, too. But we have not got here by accident. The Secretary of State says he is ambitious for young people, but where has that ambition been for the past 12 years? Where was that ambition when he was Minister for Children and Families? The Secretary of State cannot disown the legacy of 12 years of Conservative Governments which has left us with a broken, adversarial and aggressive system that is letting down young people and leaving families in despair.
Against that backdrop, it is hard not to be optimistic about any changes to the system. Early intervention, support in mainstream settings, changing culture, supporting families and making the system financially sustainable—who could object to those ambitions? However, just as we saw yesterday, those ambitions remain sadly hollow: hollow because there is no plan to deliver; hollow because other Government policies are working against those aims; and hollow because children and families are still waiting on a pandemic recovery plan. Too many parents told us that during the pandemic support for their children was removed, was not available and to this day has not been restored.
When Labour says it is ambitious for children, it means every child. Labour’s children’s recovery plan sets out the support it would put in place for children and young people now: mental health support in every school, wraparound activities that support every child’s development, and targeted learning support for the children who need it most. The pandemic was hard on us all, but for children with SEND and their families it was harder still. The long shadow of those months in lockdown is holding children back, so I ask the Secretary of State again when will he finally give children and families the recovery plan they need and deserve? At every school I visit, teachers and staff raise as one of their biggest concerns the broken system facing children with SEND. That is why we all want reforms to succeed: intervention earlier, children’s needs identified sooner and support provided more quickly.
Under the previous Labour Government, children’s centres were also crucial. With millions of families accessing those services, children’s needs were identified quickly and support put in place, but more than 1,000 children’s centres have closed. The family hubs that the Secretary of State announced are a pale imitation of that network of services, yet the evidence is even clearer now than it was then that early intervention and co-ordinated support for families transforms children’s lives. As the Minister is keen to consider the evidence—I know he is—will he not look again at the much wider support and services that families across our country are so desperate to see? Many parents who have had to fight for their children’s support will today also want assurances from him that there will be no compromising on care to cut costs. Can he say when he expects promised additional educational psychologists to be in place supporting children and schools?
Families have had to wait almost 1,000 days since the SEND review was announced for the Government to launch the consultation. Families will wait another 13 weeks for that consultation to close. They will wait longer for a Government response and then again before changes are seen on the frontline. Years have passed since reform was needed and children’s time in the education system is slipping away. Nothing we do in this place can be more important than giving children support to thrive and opportunities for the future, but over the past two years of the pandemic, and the past 12 years of Conservative Governments, all too often our children have been an afterthought. When staff across our schools have been asked to do more with less, they have stepped in and stepped up. They have plugged gaps, taken on more, delivered time and again for the children they are desperate to see succeed. They have put children first and done everything they could. It is long past time the Government did the same.
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady talked about recovery; she will know about the £5 billion announced for education recovery. We have consistently prioritised children and young people with SEND, including through additional weighting for specialist settings. The £1 billion of funding that was announced at the spending review to extend the recovery premium over the next two academic years—2022-23 and 2023-24—should be used by schools to prioritise support for children and young people with SEND.
The hon. Lady also spoke about family hubs. I am disappointed that she is not at least giving herself the opportunity to look at the evidence, which is clear, whether in respect of the Harlow family hub that I visited or the one not far from here in Westminster, where she can go—it is probably within walking distance—to see the great work of multiple agencies that are coming together to deliver the most important must-have services to the families towards whom we need to target help. That contrasts with the Labour plan, which sounded great on paper but did not work implementation-wise because it was obsessed with bricks and mortar rather than helping families.
I do not recall any other question from the statement that the hon. Lady made. Suffice it to say that, yet again, as she demonstrated yesterday, there is no plan from Labour.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
My father, like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s, was an immigrant who came here with very little. He worked hard to send me to private school, but I spent much of my childhood having operations and not being in school. I know very well what it is like to be a child with special educational needs and to have a disability, and I care about this issue very deeply.
I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is getting a grip on this issue, but it is wrong that it has taken almost three years for this Green Paper to come to fruition. It is wrong that for so long parents have had to wade through a treacle of unkind bureaucracy and that, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, they have been subject to this awful postcode-lottery provision, whereby they wait for months on end to get the EHCP that they should have. There are not enough trained staff—an issue that I recognise the White Paper looks at.
Our Education Committee report made two key recommendations: that there should be a neutral advocate for parents to help them to wade through the bureaucracy—an idea that I urge the Secretary of State to look at again, so that everyone has a fair chance—and that the powers of the social care ombudsman should be extended beyond the school gates, to make sure that children are properly looked after.
The test for us all will be whether parents soon come to our constituency surgeries—I wish it did not have to take more months of consultation—and we no longer hear the awful stories of the struggles they face, and they no longer have to appeal to their MP to try to navigate their way through the system. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to get this done as soon as possible and to sort it out once and for all, because it is a major social injustice in our education system that children with special educational needs do not have a level playing field.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Education Committee; I will always listen to what he and his Committee have to say, because his Committee follows the evidence and works on a cross-party basis.
My right hon. Friend raised a number of important points that the Green Paper attempts to address, although there is of course a consultation. One of his points was about clarity for parents. Our proposal to establish a single national integrated SEND and AP system in England will help to inform parents wherever they live. If they move house, they will be able to find out what they should expect from the system for their child. It will help them to make informed choices from a tailored list of settings. It will strengthen mediation arrangements so that they do not feel they have to go to tribunal and line the pockets of expensive consultants or lawyers. All these things are addressed in the important Green Paper. Part of the work is to ensure excellent provision from the early years to adulthood and to build inclusivity into the system. We will always listen to what my right hon. Friend has to say.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Following a number of emotional meetings with desperate families in Batley and Spen, I can confirm that the Secretary of State was absolutely right to say that people have lost faith in the system. Demand for EHCPs has soared, rising by 480% in the past five years, and almost half of all plans are issued outside the statutory 20-week period, which in my view is too long in itself. Why has increasing capacity and ending delays not been a focus of the review?
Nadhim Zahawi
Increasing capacity came before the Green Paper, deliberately. I did not want to publish the Green Paper and come to the House and say we were going to wait another 13 weeks. Today’s announcement of that first tranche of funding—the £1.4 billion—is all about increasing capacity. There is also, of course, the safety valve that we introduced at the spending review to help local authorities to cope. Over the past three years, the SEND and high-needs budget has increased by 40%, including the £1 billion that we announced at the SR. It needs to be put on a sustainable footing and that is what the Green Paper will do. We will of course always listen to parents, families and those who work so hard in the sector.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I welcome the Green Paper, the new educational psychologists and the new SENCO qualification, but I was concerned to read that just 41% of regular teachers think they have adequate understanding to support young people with special educational needs. We need to make sure that every teacher has a base level of understanding of all types of learning disabilities and of how different brains work differently—as I know as somebody who is dyslexic and dyspraxic and generally a bit eccentric.
I welcome the fact that Ofsted will have a role in looking at the new local inclusion plans, but will the Secretary of State promise me that he will monitor the new Ofsted framework to make sure that it properly holds schools to account, and that if schools fail kids with special needs, that is reflected in their inspection reports?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is a great champion of those with dyslexia and dyspraxia and has been a great advocate for the need to make sure that every teacher has the required knowledge. I visited Monega school yesterday; a school can be outstanding only if it is outstanding in all areas, including its SEND provision. I will always listen to what my hon. Friend has to say on that.
The White Paper that I published yesterday includes the parent pledge, which is that teachers will identify students’ gaps in reading and English language and share that with parents. That should get us to the place where my hon. Friend wants us to be: one where every teacher feels confident that they have the training to identify dyslexia and dyspraxia and deal with them in the appropriate way.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for finally publishing the Green Paper, which is long overdue. How will he ensure that when the system is standardised and simplified, standards improve and are not reduced and truly recognise the unique needs of children with complex disabilities?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that important question. We will make sure that the standards and the single national integrated SEND and AP system are co-created with families, specialists and the whole sector, to make sure we get them right.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
My mailbag—much like, I suspect, the mailbags of many other Members—is full of tales from parents who have had difficulty accessing the right care for their children. They say that the process has taken too long and often reaches an unsatisfactory conclusion. Some parents have been pushed into home education to try to meet their children’s needs. Will the Secretary of State reassure me and the House that such things will not happen again once his plan is in place?
Nadhim Zahawi
I had a similar experience with a parent in my constituency who got so frustrated that they chose to home-school. They do it very well, but nevertheless that should not happen. The single integrated vision for SEND and AP, the greater focus on the mainstream and the emphasis on early intervention should allow us to regain the confidence of parents. I hope that the ability of parents to navigate the system in a much clearer way, without having to research for themselves which provision is most appropriate for their child, will make that difference. Of course, the consultation means that we will continue to focus on parental rights, including through making sure that parents and carers will continue to express a preference as to which school—from a tailored list of settings, across mainstream, specialist and independent schools—they would like their child to attend.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Green Paper is welcome; it is better late than never. The Secretary of State will know about my great interest as chair of the Westminster Commission on Autism and because a family member has still not had a proper assessment after 15 years. Families need action now and they need resources, because provision is expensive for local councils and schools. It is expensive, but we have to be willing to pay for it. We will work with the Secretary of State to make his proposals into the finest piece of legislation in this policy area for a generation.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he has always been a champion for those with special educational needs and disabilities, not just in his constituency, but around the country. We have continued to provide funding for autism training and professional development in schools and colleges throughout last year and this year. We provided a further £8.6 million to strengthen the participation of parents and young people, including those who are autistic. We are strengthening and promoting the pathways to employment. Supported internships have been a great programme—Premier Inn in my constituency does a brilliant job—with £18 million of investment over the spending review period to increase the number of those who are participating to 4,500 from about 2,500 at the moment.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
If we were to read through the SEND reforms in the Children and Families Act 2014 and the accompanying code of practice, we would see that that is a blueprint for the system that we all want. This review seeks to address the issues with the implementation of the Act and the code of practice. To that end, I suggest that the national standards, which I welcome, should be based around quality rather than a de minimis principle. On alternative provision, will my right hon. Friend say more about how he will use the excellence within alternative provision so that early intervention, which we want to see more of in mainstream schools, can work more effectively?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course, we considered very carefully the recommendations from the Timpson review in regard to our recommendations for the AP system and, from that review, we developed our ambitious programme of reforms. The Green Paper sets out how we will improve early intervention and quality AP and learn from what is happening around the country, whether that is in mainstream schools, such as in Dixons City Academy in Bradford, or in some of the excellent work and case studies from the Green Paper of specialist AP that makes a real difference when it is identified early, and the help can therefore be put in early.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I put on record my thanks to the Secretary of State for briefing me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) last week on today’s Green Paper and yesterday’s White Paper.
The Green Paper mentions that the SEND system is “bureaucratic and adversarial”, “not equally accessible”, and takes a
“heavy emotional—and sometimes financial—”
toll on parents. Parents in my constituency would very much identify with that. People have been waiting three long years for this Green Paper, which is a welcome step forward, but parents, school staff and children alike are dismayed that there will be a further 13-week consultation, with legislation some time after that. The Secretary of State has said that the review has been shaped by parents and teachers, so when will parents in Twickenham and across the country see the impact of the changes?
Nadhim Zahawi
It was good to brief the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. The Green Paper has had a warm welcome from the unions the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Association of Head Teachers, with some challenges around implementation and how we do this well on the ground from the Local Government Association. Our work in early years and post-16 education has also been welcomed.
The hon. Lady asks when people will see the difference. The reason why I went to the Chancellor during the spending review and got the £2.6 billion, the additional £1 billion and the safety valve money is that I do not think we can wait until we have a consultation and get to a place where the whole Green Paper is a reality on the ground. That is why we are today announcing £1.4 billion—the first tranche of the £2.6 billion—for up to 40 new settings, which will see additional provision going into the system so that parents have the confidence that the provision will be there for their child. However, she is right: this has been a long time coming, and I will make sure that we move at pace on the further reforms that are outlined in the Green Paper.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which builds on the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and others in the Children and Families Act, in which I know the Secretary of State took a close interest when he was Children and Families Minister. However, is not the key point that without health in the room, everything falls down? Despite the best attempts to make that happen under EHCPs, that has not been happening enough, so I welcome statutory provision. Is not the other test that if the Secretary of State achieves anything, it must be a reduction in school exclusions? Too many young people with vulnerabilities and susceptibilities are exploited and end up in the system that I stewarded for a number of years. Can he make this as much an issue of justice as it is of education and health?
Nadhim Zahawi
I know that my right hon. and learned Friend is passionate about this issue. It is important to remind ourselves that the co-signatories on today’s Green Paper are myself and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and his ministerial team is here on the Front Bench with us. His pledge is that health will look at the local provision and local resources, and of course, we will publish the dashboard. I spoke about data and transparency, and the best way to reform complex systems is through data and transparency. However, we are going further by simplifying the EHCP process, because there is no consistency in that. That also needs to be identified and dealt with, and we will do that. My right hon. and learned Friend is also right to point out that we need to ensure that every school—this is what my schools White Paper dealt with yesterday—is a great SEND school, because we have an equal ambition for children with special educational needs and disabilities as for all the children in our school system.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I wonder whether the Secretary of State is slightly divorced from reality and is seeing the school system for what he wishes it was, rather than what it is. In many schools, SENCOs are also full-time teachers, deputy heads, subject leads and, often, the safeguarding leads in their schools. Although the additional training and qualification is welcome, if the SENCOs do not have the time, they are not able to do justice to the role in the way it deserves. Where is the additional funding, resourcing and support to give SENCOs the time to focus as much as they need to on that crucial role?
Nadhim Zahawi
I respectfully remind the hon. Lady that, in my opening remarks, I mentioned that, in early years, up to 5,000 new SENCOs will go into the school system to be able to do that work, and there is the support that we are putting in, including the £7 billion that is going into the school system, the £5 billion for recovery and the £2.6 billion in certain places. I also remind the House that change and change management are difficult. One area that I looked at, where we perhaps fell over in implementing the very good reforms that were introduced with the EHCPs, is how we deliver that change. I have £70 million going into change management to ensure that we have the resources in place, and I am confident that we can do this well.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
I welcome the statement, and I have two points to make. First, the fight—time and again, parents talk about the fight that they have had to have with the system. Will the Secretary of State explain how these changes will bring transparency? Secondly, he mentioned that we cannot wait for the Green Paper process to finish, and I have read that he would like to build a further tranche of new special and alternative provision free schools. When will that take place and when can Leicestershire have its fair share?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The changes that I spoke about include the single national integrated SEND and AP system; excellent provision from early years to adulthood; building an inclusive system; a single integrated vision for AP; setting out clear roles and responsibilities; and accountability, because the fight begins when parents are confused, when they do not know who is accountable or where to go, and they feel alone. That is not the way it will be, because they will be able to see—we will co-create this with the sector—what they should be entitled to anywhere in the country. I will wipe out the postcode lottery, which is part of the issue relating to the fight, and set out plans to support effective implementation. One of the lessons that I learned in vaccine deployment is that however ambitious we are, if we do not have the team and have not thought through how we are going to succeed on the ground operationally, we will fall over, and I promise to think that through.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, but as Members across the House have highlighted, this is an issue right across the country. I am contacted about it by Vauxhall parents, carers and teachers on an almost weekly basis. Just two weeks ago, a constituent contacted me about his two sons, who are 10 and 12 and have muscular dystrophy, physical disabilities and autism. They have been waiting for over 12 weeks to get support from the local authority. Many local authorities such as Lambeth are without funding.
The Secretary of State outlined in his statement that he is launching a consultation and wants the very same families, teachers and carers to engage with him. Does he appreciate that they are tired? I do not think that they have the energy to engage in yet another consultation, because they are still trying to provide a service for the very children we want to see flourish. How is the Secretary of State confident that he will get the right views to make sure that this works?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who I know is passionate about the issue and whose constituency I have promised to visit. She is absolutely right that parents are tired. My promise to them is that what we are doing here, and the consultation, mean that we will get this right—and get it right with them.
I urge the hon. Lady’s local authority to look around. Areas in London such as Barnet and Islington are doing incredibly well in local provision and in the ability to co-create with families what they need. Where the hon. Lady has a point is that that is not uniformly delivered across the country. That is what the Green Paper will do, but we are not waiting for it: in the meantime, we are investing £2.6 billion in thousands of additional places, both specialist and mainstream.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
Publishing this Green Paper within six months of his taking office as Secretary of State demonstrates, alongside the resources that he won in the spending review, my right hon. Friend’s drive and determination in this critical area. I welcome the Green Paper’s focus on early identification of neurodiverse conditions and on the need for more initial teacher training, continuous professional development and support, but will he confirm that he believes that to get that early identification we need universal screening to get the data? It is only by basing decisions on data as well as on teacher observation that we can get the early identification that is so critical and is at the heart of the new Green Paper.
Nadhim Zahawi
My right hon. Friend and I share a passion for data and transparency. I know that he is looking at the evidence of what really works in the early identification of and screening for dyslexia, about which he is passionate.
The Green Paper is about a whole system review and, together with yesterday’s White Paper and our parent pledge that teachers will identify the gaps in English language, reading and writing and share them with parents, it is our greatest lever to begin to look at how we do this well. I am looking forward to working with my right hon. Friend on the evidence of best practice around the world.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The request for diagnosis of special educational needs is the beginning of a long battle for far too many families. Local authorities with stretched resources are often pushing in the opposite direction; parents can wait years for EHCPs, and requests for specific schools are often denied by local authorities for financial reasons. That all points to the need for independent advocacy from the very beginning for parents of children with special educational needs. We cannot assume that every parent starts with the same capacity to deal with the minefield of taking their child through EHCPs, and requests for support in the classroom and other support with educational needs. Will the Secretary of State commit to creating an independent advocacy service that supports parents from the very beginning and holds their hand all the way through the process?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful question, which the Chair of the Education Committee also raised. Essentially, the Green Paper will make sure that we hold local authorities to account through the new funding agreements, through the local inclusion dashboard, which will provide transparency so that people can see how areas are performing locally, and through the new area inspection. As well as making sure that we do as the Minister for Children and Families did with the written statement of action in Birmingham, we want to learn from the best. Manchester is doing well; Dixons City Academy in Bradford is an excellent example of how this works well; Passmores Academy, a mainstream academy in Harlow, is doing incredible work. We learn from the best and scale it across the system.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his commitment to ensure that every child with SEND has the best opportunities and chances in education. Does he agree that many of those children’s needs are met well in mainstream schools by SENCOs and family support workers, but we have to go further and faster to ensure that every teacher has the opportunity, the skills, the support and everything they need to be brilliant teachers of all children with special educational needs?
Nadhim Zahawi
I could not have put it better myself—my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our proposals include the national professional qualification, up to 5,000 SENCOs in early years, and getting early identification in place. The schools White Paper and the parent pledge will also drive the thirst for knowledge to ensure that every teacher is confident in identifying the needs of their students.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
While this is a welcome move, I think that there is an issue with the maths. It does not seem that much newer money is coming in as a result of the Secretary of State’s announcement today. We know that there is an in-built cost to supporting our young people, so perhaps he could be very specific about the money for SENCOs and particularly for one-to-one support workers. Will more one-to-one support workers be recruited? They are critical for many children in making sure that their EHCP is properly implemented.
Nadhim Zahawi
I know that the hon. Lady is passionate about maths. She will know that over the past three years the overall budget has risen by 40% to £9.1 billion—a pretty big increase. She talks about SENCOs; today we have announced training for up to 5,000 more SENCOs in early years. The important thing to remember is that much of what is in the Green Paper has been produced through consultation with those in the system, with parents and with practitioners. All I ask is that colleagues read it carefully and engage with us on the consultation. It is a true consultation, because I want to get this right.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Having been a special adviser in the Department when the SEND review was launched, I remember it well. I am really glad that the public consultation is happening. It has also been great to see extra funding in the past couple of years.
I recently visited Villa Real School, a special school in my constituency. One issue that the school faces is that it was built for a smaller number of pupils than it now has because of the rising need for special school places. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the school? Will he also look at the capital building programme? It is essential that as part of the review we deliver the places needed for children in the environment they wish to be educated in.
Nadhim Zahawi
I will happily meet my hon. Friend. Today, we announced the first tranche of £1.4 billion out of £2.6 billion for up to 40 specialist and AP settings.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Parents and carers find it extremely stressful when there is a lack of school places, and a lack of choice of places, for children with special educational needs. In the meantime, it is the children who really suffer. It has been brought again to my attention that the exclusion rate for children with SEND is disproportionately high. That is just not acceptable. Can the Secretary of State say how that will be addressed in his review and what he will do?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady’s final point is absolutely right. The plans for supporting parents will lead to much greater transparency and improved choice through more local inclusive mainstream provision. The combination of the schools White Paper, the Green Paper and the children’s social care review that Josh MacAlister is carrying out for me will allow me for the first time, working with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to knit together a system that really delivers for parents and delivers clarity on what they should be getting for their child, wherever in England they live.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I am losing my voice—I apologise for that—but I wanted to contribute because these proposals are so important for parents in my constituency who have been battling for this, and also because our schools are so committed to children with special educational needs. I welcome the news that there is to be a new special school in Stroud.
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that he will work to eradicate the various financial penalties that schools suffer when they take on more SEND children? Some of them constitute very strange and up-front costs. Will he look into the way in which the league tables are communicated, to ensure that schools that are looking after children with more complex needs are not treated unfairly for doing so?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank my hon. Friend for making it here today, and I am glad that her voice is holding up. I can absolutely reassure her. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Highfurlong SEN school in Blackpool, a brilliant specialist school which is doing incredible work. Some of the children there have end-of-life EHCPs. Some came in unable to walk and are now walking, and, of course, learning as well. We will learn from the best, but we also want to ensure that schools are not penalised for doing the right thing.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
A quick read through the Green Paper did not reveal much reference to higher education. I hope that that does not reflect a lack of ambition for these children. May I ask the Secretary of State specifically about the current procurement exercise relating to the disabled students allowance? How can he assure the House that it will not lead to a loss of expertise and understanding of the equipment and services needs of disabled students?
Nadhim Zahawi
I hope to be able to write to the hon. Lady giving her those details about the Green Paper, but suffice it to say that we have tried to look not just at early years provision but at the whole system, including further and higher education. The increased investment in supported internships has worked very well. When I was Minister for Children and Families, I visited West London College, which was doing brilliant work with L’Oreal, and I spoke about my own constituency and the work that was being done there with Premier Inn. I want to see the number of enrolments rise from 2,250 to 4,500. Supported internships give young people a fulfilling career, and give employers great employees who are loyal and strongly committed to their businesses.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State and his ministerial team for the emphasis that they place on this vital area. In Sevenoaks and Swanley—and in the rest of the country—EHCP referrals shot up during the pandemic, and the extra money will help greatly in that regard, but can the Secretary of State confirm that where backlogs remain he will consider providing extra resources, and that he will monitor the position centrally, so that I can go back and say to the families in my constituency that these agonising waits are over?
Nadhim Zahawi
Part of the reason why the Chancellor was so committed to this area and made £2.6 billion available—as well as the £1 billion that took the budget up to £9.1 billion—is that we knew we needed to put additional capacity into the system now, rather than waiting until after the consultation and the Green Paper. We are also providing £300 million for a “safety valve” to help local authorities with a deficit of about £1 billion.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
I am not going to join in the festival of patting the Secretary of State on the back at this stage—
Mike Amesbury
After 12 years of Conservative government, we are seeing what is almost a scorecard of failure. Nevertheless, I will give the Secretary of State and his team the benefit of the doubt. What guarantees can he give that, for instance, a child with dyslexia who requires specialist equipment will be given that equipment quickly, that it will be fully funded and that it will not be about ability to pay?
Nadhim Zahawi
The drive behind the Green Paper is to ensure that we deliver across the board for every child with dyslexia, dyspraxia or autism, and that the system is sustainable and works for both the family and the child. The national SEND and AP single system will enable parents to see what they will get if their child has dyslexia. That will, I hope, give them a much better experience than what they are having today—which, as we have heard from many Members, is a big fight.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Not surprisingly, there are some excellent proposals of real substance in the Green Paper. I think they will give people hope. I also think it important that the Secretary of State said people should not need to fight the system, but the truth is that, when it comes to access to child and adolescent mental health services in my area, people would love to be able to get hold of the system, let alone fight it. As a result, early diagnosis is often missing and children are falling further down the list, which means that the need for intervention becomes significantly more acute.
I am pleased to see that Health Ministers are present. The Government recently announced the My Planned Care website to keep patients up to date on their wait for NHS treatment. Many parents tell me that they are often instructed not even to ask about the wait that they face. Should not parity of esteem between physical and other conditions demand the inclusion of the wait for CAMHS on that site, not just so that parents can see what the national standard is, but so that they can see exactly where their child stands and how long they will have to wait?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his characteristically thoughtful and well-evidenced question. The Green Paper contains a commitment from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to local inclusion dashboards, providing transparency so that parents can see the position locally. It is all well and good having a national view, but parents want to know how they and their child, and the rest of the family, are affected. This transparency will mean reform of the system, and CAMHS delivering what parents and children really need. Early identification is important. The long wait is adding cost to the system in many ways, and disadvantaging children in doing so. The Health Secretary has also given a commitment that those in the health system will look at resources and provision to ensure that we deliver consistency throughout the country.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
I know from my own experience how important it is to receive the right support at the right time, and I hope that when the Secretary of State is carrying out his consultation he will make a special effort to engage with parents and families of children who are blind and partially sighted. Surely, however, the purpose should be to ensure that we get the decision right in the first instance. We know that, in 95% of cases that go to tribunals, the finding is in favour of the parents. The Secretary of State referred to a new system of local dispute resolution through mediation, but how will adding a new process make the experience of families simpler?
Nadhim Zahawi
I know that the hon. Lady is a passionate champion for blind and partially sighted people. We will ensure that we consult them, as we have done already in formulating the Green Paper.
When things go wrong, parents will continue to have the right to redress. The proposals we have presented today are intended to resolve issues earlier. Parents will still be able to go to tribunals if they want to, but we are proposing to strengthen mediation overall so that we improve relationships locally and bring quick resolution. If we all agree that that early intervention is important, it is only right that we do this. We are of course consulting on mandatory mediation. There is evidence that all these measures work and that they improve the system, which is why I am launching the 13-week consultation.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I know from visits to primary schools in my constituency—and the Green Paper underlines this—that the most common special need that people have in respect of speech and language therapy is access. Given the importance of communication skills to young people’s development, may I ask how the proposals in the Green Paper will improve access to those vital skills?
Nadhim Zahawi
As I have said, both yesterday and today, the combination of the schools White Paper and the parent pledge—whereby teachers identify gaps in reading, writing and speech and share that information with parents—will be the catalyst to ensure that early identification is working. Our work with the Department for Health and Social Care means we can create a system that, when it comes together, truly delivers for children and for parents.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I appreciate the Government’s honesty when they talk about the vicious cycle of late intervention, low confidence and inefficient resource allocation. Sadly, that is very much the experience of my constituents who have needed to access these services, so I appreciate the ambition to try to get away from that. My concern is similar to that expressed by a couple of Conservative Back Benchers about the lack of detail on the interaction with the health service, particularly when it comes to tier 4 CAMHS children who are in real crisis. What reassurance can the Secretary of State give us that those children will be helped as part of this initiative?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady raises an important point. Part of my ambition and that of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is to ensure that we knit together a system that delivers both elements, and I hope that the standards will provide clear guidance on when a child or young person needs that EHCP. We are simplifying the EHCP process overall to ensure that we improve efficiency, make it frictionless if we can, and reduce waiting times, including through standardising and digitising the EHCPs. One thing parents have told me is that if they move address, they suddenly have to make themselves familiar with a whole other EHCP. The work with Health will, I hope, make a real difference.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
Last week my constituent Holly and the National Deaf Children’s Society came to see me to discuss the need for better support for deaf children in school. In particular, they highlighted the incredible difference that their teacher of the deaf had made. Can my right hon. Friend outline how the Government will invest in teachers of the deaf, so that all deaf children can have more regular access to the brilliant support they provide?
Nadhim Zahawi
I know that my hon. Friend is a great champion of children who are deaf. When I was Children and Families Minister, I saw at first hand the incredible work that the stakeholders and charities do in this area. I want to see best practice, and we will ensure that we learn from the best and see how we can scale this up throughout the whole school system. The White Paper and the Green Paper will give us the opportunity to knit together a system that delivers for deaf children in our education system.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The success rate for parents at appeal is indicative of a system that is completely broken. Of course, parents should not have to go to appeal to get the education that their children deserve, and they should not feel that they have to fight every step of the way, so I hope that what the Secretary of State has announced today will begin to change that. I want to ask about getting children to school in the first place. The Secretary of State will be aware of reports over the weekend of a real crisis in special educational needs transport because of rising fuel prices. What will he do to address that issue?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the success rate at tribunals is symptomatic of a system that is failing, which is why this Green Paper is long overdue, as I said earlier. We are keeping a close eye on school budgets, because energy prices are volatile and transport costs are going up because of energy costs. Energy costs are about 1.4% or 1.5% of the budget—the big spend is obviously on wages—but nevertheless, if energy costs are going up by 100%, that will put on additional pressure, so I will keep that closely under review and ensure that we work with the schools system. We have the £7 billion funding, of which £4 billion is front-loaded for this year and next, but I assure him that I will keep a close eye on this.
Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)
As another dyspraxic Member of Parliament, I wholeheartedly thank the Secretary of State for his excellent Green Paper today. My constituency has many excellent mainstream schools, and also specialist schools such as St Giles in Retford. When parents choose a school for their children, they generally look not only at reviews from other parents but at the Ofsted reports. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that Ofsted will continue to play that key role in transparently assessing the performance of our schools, including SEND provision, so that parents can make an informed choice on what is right for them and their children?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is a great champion of those who have dyspraxia, and he has real in-depth knowledge of the sector, as was discussed yesterday in the statement on the schools White Paper. He is right to say that Ofsted will continue, and from early years, all children will be taught a broad ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum and also have access to high-quality extracurricular activities. A school cannot be outstanding unless it is outstanding in its SEND provision as well.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talked about the importance of early intervention, which many organisations that I work with, such as the Child Brain Injury Trust, are keen to ensure happens and that support is given. More generally, can he talk more about the local SEND partnerships and how parents can have a voice and a say in them?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. In that partnership, we are proposing to ensure that parents are an important part of the local SEND plan, as we have seen in the best co-created plans in those areas around the country that I mentioned earlier, such as North Tyneside and Manchester.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I am so grateful to my right hon. Friend for his work on this, and also to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is unable to be here in the Chamber today. Too many parents in my constituency come to me broken by the system. They are tired of fighting and particularly tired of going to court. How will the system help with those issues? Will my right hon. Friend also take into account the difficulties of provision in rural areas and in small unitary councils, for which this can be a heavy and difficult cross to bear?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend speaks with passion and probably pain from having to consult those parents who have fought and feel that they are sometimes let down by the system. We have to ensure that the system works equally well in rural areas. Lincolnshire, for example, co-created the local system. It brought families and stakeholders in and said, “Look, we have got £50 million. How should we spend that to make sure the provision is the best we can make it?”
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Secretary of State has said that decisions about support are too often based on where a child lives and not on what they need. That is the problem facing children in St Albans and across Hertfordshire. The reason is that the Government’s flawed funding formula for SEND is based on historical spend, not current need. This has produced the problem that SEND people in Hertfordshire get only £549 per head, compared with the neighbouring authority of Buckinghamshire, where the figure is £823 per head. That is a whopping 50% more. I met one of the Secretary of State’s Ministers in December and he committed to look at the specific anomaly of Hertfordshire once the Green Paper was published. Now that it has been published, will the Secretary of State confirm that his Department will look at this specific issue in Hertfordshire, and will he write to me in the coming weeks to outline what steps the Department is taking to tackle this anomaly?
Nadhim Zahawi
Yes, I will write to the hon. Lady. I also want to remind the House that the national funding formula is where we are moving to, to ensure that there is fairness in the system for all schools, including special schools.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Having the right support in the right place at the right time is undoubtedly the correct approach to this. As part of the welcome consultation that my right hon. Friend has announced, will he ensure that his Department reaches out to charitable and private sector providers such as Autism Early Support at the Circle Centre in Middle Claydon in my constituency, not just to look through the lens of the excellence in provision that they supply, but to learn about the challenges, particularly in getting the right support to children in rural communities, who often have to travel considerable distances to get the SEND support they need?
Nadhim Zahawi
I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will reach out to them.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Parents are battling and children are struggling every day in York, in that tug of war between the services, the available funding and the available practitioners. I was disappointed that the proposals do not contain a workforce plan covering the comprehensive range of services needed, including speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychological services and CAMHS. In the consultation, can the Secretary of State put a focus on workforce planning and ensure that at the end of that consultation, a workforce plan is published alongside the Government response?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s characteristically thoughtful question. We made a commitment in the Green Paper, and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has also made this commitment, to ensure the workforce provision is adequate. The best way to ensure that is through the transparency of a local data dashboard so people can see their child has consistency of support.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The Green Paper highlights that many families find the current system bureaucratic and adversarial, which is exactly what I hear from incredibly frustrated local parents in Aylesbury. Can my right hon. Friend tell me how local parents can feel absolutely confident that these proposals will mean that everyone, whether in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education or the local authority, is genuinely working together to secure one and the same thing: the best provision for children with SEND?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank my hon. Friend for his thoughtful question. He is right that we intend to make a number of changes after consultation on the Green Paper, whether it is a national system so that parents can see exactly what provision they should be getting so that their area is consistent with every other postcode in the country, or whether it is a local plan co-produced with all stakeholders around the table—including parents—a local dashboard and consistency on EHCPs. In many ways, it is frustrating when parents say, “My plan and this person’s plan are completely different.” There should be consistency across the board to make the system as frictionless as possible for parents.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his positive statement. Covid-19 has been a big burden on pupils, and especially pupils with SEND. It is estimated that 25% of children are in that category. Our education system is incredible, but today’s statement is only the first step. Will the Secretary of State give a confirmed date for a review of the money put in to achieve the goal of giving that extra bit of help and, if necessary, a different way of working and delivering? Will the extra moneys, £2.6 billion plus £1 billion, be subject to the Barnett formula?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. He is right to say this is the first step. I can come to the House to share this Green Paper, but we have to make sure the consultation is delivered, and then we have to ensure the implementation is in place. I asked the Treasury for £70 million to support the implementation. When I look back at the lessons learned, we fell over because there was little money for the implementation to happen well. Of course, Barnett applies to the Chancellor’s announcement on the spending review in the usual way.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and particularly his reference to ensuring children are educated closer to home. The Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), referenced how his education was interrupted because of the constant treatment he required. Many young people go through that, and they reach the end of their compulsory education without achieving all that they could have achieved. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State assure me that resources will be made available for them to catch up and to achieve all that they could achieve?
Nadhim Zahawi
I certainly can. We are putting the best part of £5 billion into recovery.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The prize for perseverance and patience goes to Holly Mumby-Croft.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I recently visited St Hugh’s, an outstanding special school in my constituency. I was shown around by Thomas and Spencer, and I was incredibly impressed by both of them—they made a big impression on me. They are brilliant tour guides, and I hope to pay them back by giving them a tour of this place as soon as it can be arranged. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State join me in thanking the staff and teachers at schools such as St Hugh’s for the brilliant work they are already doing, alongside the Government, to support our great young people like Thomas and Spencer?
Nadhim Zahawi
I certainly join my hon. Friend in thanking them. They go above and beyond. It has not been easy over the past couple of years, when they have had to deal with a global pandemic and, of course, deliver care and education for these children. I express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for everything they do, and of course for everything this sector does across the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That concludes the statement. I thank the Secretary of State for answering so many questions so thoroughly.
Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments
Tuesday 29th March 2022
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill 2021-22 View all Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to place a duty on the Secretary of State to improve the diagnosis and treatment of persons who have suffered or continue to suffer ill effects from Covid-19 vaccines; to make provision about financial assistance to persons who have suffered disablement following vaccination against Covid-19 and to the next of kin of persons who have died shortly after vaccination against Covid-19; to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the merits of a no-fault compensation scheme to provide such financial assistance, on whether there should be any upper limit on the financial assistance available, on the criteria for eligibility and on whether payment should be made in all cases where there is no other reasonable cause for the death or disablement suffered; and for connected purposes.
This Bill is not about the tens of millions of people in the United Kingdom who have benefited from the vaccination programme; it is about the tens of thousands for whom the harm caused by the vaccines is greater than the benefit. The specific focus of this Bill is on the families of those who tragically died or suffered severe injury or life-changing conditions as a result of doing their public duty and being vaccinated.
The issue at stake is one of trust. To their credit, the Government recognised that some people might be adversely affected by the vaccines, so they extended the provisions of the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 to enable those who suffer vaccine damage causing at least 60% disablement to receive an ex gratia lump-sum payment of £120,000.
The 1979 Act, however, is not working. No payments have yet been made under its provisions, even in respect of those whom a coroner’s verdict found to have died because of the vaccine. The impatience and frustration of those so affected is now palpable. Having lost their loved ones more than a year ago, some have been badgering the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), for action—I am pleased to see her on the Front Bench. I understand that yesterday she blocked vaccine victims on her Twitter account, and today she closed her Twitter account completely. This is an indication of the strength of feeling among the public.
Experience shows that we need bespoke legislation to provide timely redress to those who suffered as a result of doing the right thing. Indeed, the Prime Minister was right to draw attention to this issue when, on 11 August 2021, he wrote to Kate Scott, whose husband Jamie, a fit 44-year-old software engineer, spent 124 days in hospital following severe brain injury caused by the vaccine. Jamie and his family are from Warwickshire, and I am delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) is here to support the Bill. The Prime Minister said:
“You are not a statistic and must not be ignored.”
He went on to thank Kate Scott for her suggested changes to the vaccine damage payments scheme and promised that the Government would consider the case for reform. This Bill is my contribution to the Prime Minister’s call for consideration of reform.
This Bill is not just about the payment process; it is also about diagnosis and treatment for those patients who have suffered or continue to suffer ill effects from the vaccines. The current situation is totally inadequate, which is why the Bill places a duty on the Secretary of State to improve both diagnosis and treatment.
Those who were in perfect health before their vaccine have encountered too much ignorance and scepticism when seeking medical help. For some, their general practitioner has refused to engage, to the extent that they are made to feel gaslighted, with their physical pain being dismissed or explained away as mental illness. How insulting and humiliating is that, and how at odds with the principles of the national health service?
The Bill also makes provision about financial assistance to those who have suffered disablement following vaccination against covid-19 and to the next of kin of those who have died. An ex gratia payment of £120,000 is available, but this has not been increased for 15 years and needs to be raised to £177,000 to keep up with inflation. Even that would fall far short of the compensation that should be available for the most serious life-limiting injuries, which is why the Bill calls on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on whether there should be any upper limit at all. Other jurisdictions have taken the view that fully compensating those who do the right thing for public health reasons by having a vaccine should be looked after by the state if the consequences of having that vaccine result in disability or injury. That approach is taken in order to promote vaccine confidence among those who might otherwise be hesitant about having a vaccine. This Government’s approach, however, seems to be to try to promote vaccine confidence by covering up the adverse consequences for some of having been vaccinated. The Secretary of State’s report under this provision would also address the 60% disability threshold, which is a major constraint of the current system. Why should somebody who is 50% disabled as a result of vaccine damage be ineligible for any payment? Is there not a strong case for relating the payments made to the extent of the disability suffered? There is much public concern that the Government are going to use lack of proven causation as an excuse for not making payments under the scheme. Should the test therefore not be whether there is any other reasonable explanation for the disablement or death suffered?
The scale of this is enormous, and I do not think the Government have come to terms with that; more than 450,000 yellow cards have been submitted to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency detailing adverse reactions to covid-19 vaccines. That number is an underestimate of the actual number of people adversely affected, which may be 4.5 million or more. I adduce what the MHRA said on 17 May 2019:
“only 10% of serious reactions and between 2% and 4% of non-serious reactions are reported”
under the yellow card scheme. The MHRA says that those figures do not apply now, but it has not said what figures do.
This Bill cannot make progress on its own in this Session, as prorogation is set for 29 April, but it is and can be a catalyst for Government action. I welcome the agreement of the vaccines Minister to meet me on 19 April, and I look forward to that meeting. I also welcome very much the Secretary of State’s promise to respond in writing in full to the points raised in my Adjournment debate on 2 March. He promised to do that before the recess, but we have not yet had that response. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) is also yet to receive the outcome she was promised in that debate. I have also asked for answers to all my outstanding parliamentary questions, of which there are probably about a dozen. Today, at 12.55 pm, two were answered—they came in just as I was leaving my office. Picking up on just two of those answers shows how the Government are still in denial about the importance and extent of this issue. I was asking why the cases of people who have already been found to have died as a result of the vaccination cannot be processed automatically for the claims. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) said in her answer:
“The NHS Business Service Authority has requested that the relevant authorities provide medical records”.
But I also have correspondence here from somebody who directly corresponded with that authority and was informed that it was trying to get the Ministers to change their policy so that they could have a much less bureaucratic response. So we have a situation where the Minister is blaming the service authority and it is blaming the Minister, and the victims of these vaccine damage incident are the ones suffering. Those victims are not going to go away and nor is this issue, and I hope that the Government are going to address it.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Sir Christopher Chope, Hannah Bardell, Mr Peter Bone, Miriam Cates, Philip Davies, Richard Drax, Esther McVey, Nigel Mills, Jim Shannon, Sir Desmond Swayne, Mr William Wragg and Jeremy Wright present the Bill.
Sir Christopher Chope accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 May, and to be printed (Bill 295).
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That at this day’s sitting:
(1) notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (1) (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), proceedings on the Motions (a) in the name of Secretary Dominic Raab relating to the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Delay in Expiry: Inquests, Courts and Tribunals, and Statutory Sick Pay) (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022 (SI, 2022, No. 362) and (b) in the name of Secretary Sajid Javid relating to the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions) (No. 4), shall be brought to a conclusion not later than 90 minutes after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this order; the Speaker shall then put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on those Motions forthwith;
(2) notwithstanding paragraph (2)(c)(i) of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business), business in the name of the Leader of the Opposition may be entered upon at any hour and may be proceeded with, though opposed, for three hours, proceedings shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and proceedings on these items of business may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Mark Spencer.)
Civil Proceedings
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Motions 3 and 4 will be debated together. Under the terms of the Business of the House (Today) order, the Questions on the motions will be put separately, no later than 90 minutes after the start of this debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)
I beg to move,
That the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Delay in Expiry: Inquests, Courts and Tribunals, and Statutory Sick Pay) (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022 (SI, 2022, No. 362), dated 23 March 2022, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 March, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion on the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions) (No.4):
That the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not yet expire.
Maggie Throup
Throughout the pandemic, the Government have done everything in our power to protect the lives and livelihoods of people across the country .The Coronavirus Act has been a vital tool, allowing us to do that. Last week marks two years since the Act gained Royal Assent and the automatic expiry date for its temporary provisions. This is an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made in our fight against covid-19 and on how the Act has supported us in that fight, as well as in encouraging important innovations in some of our public services, which we want to take forward.
First, I come to the support the Act has given us. It was an extraordinary piece of legislation for an extraordinary time in this country’s history, giving us the powers we needed to keep the country safe, and the economy and public services open at the time of need. It helped us to bolster the health and social care workforce by suspending rules in the NHS pension schemes for England and Wales, and allowing the creation of temporary registers enabling recently retired NHS and social care staff to return to the workforce and play their part. Almost 15,000 nurses, midwives and, in England, nursing associates joined these temporary registers to help deal with the impact of the pandemic, as well as more than 10,000 paramedics, operating department practitioners and other professionals, and about 6,500 social workers.
The Act also helped the Government to offer unprecedented economic support and to help people and businesses at a time when so many businesses faced disruption. That includes the coronavirus job retention scheme, also known as furlough, which has supported 11.7 million jobs.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Will the Minister comment on the figures released by the Office for National Statistics today, which state that men and women living in the most deprived parts of the country were five and six times more likely to die from covid than those in the least deprived areas? What can she say about the adequacy of the regulations for those people?
Maggie Throup
It has been clear throughout the pandemic that people living in areas of deprivation and different ethnic minorities have been impacted more than others. We are committed to addressing that, which is why we will launch a health disparities White Paper shortly that will look at all the different issues.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Following on from the point that was just made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), the Minister must be aware of the massive effect of the whole coronavirus process on mental health, particularly among young people—even among children in primary school. Are the Government committed to putting the necessary resources into the hardest-hit communities where the mental health crisis is at its worst?
Maggie Throup
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. We know that the pandemic has had a mental health impact not just on children and young people, but on people of all ages. That is why it is important that we are now living with covid and getting our lives back to normal, which is one way of helping restore that normality that we are so desperate to get back to.
The Government helped businesses at a time when many faced disruption, including through the coronavirus job retention scheme. We have also supported the self-employment income support scheme, which paid out more than £28 billion to nearly 3 million self-employed people and was one of the most generous schemes for the self-employed in the world.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The legislation covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Will the Minister reassure me that full consultation has taken place with the Health Minister and the Economy Minister in Northern Ireland to ensure that what she is mentioning is endorsed by the Northern Ireland Assembly?
Maggie Throup
I shall come shortly to the specific parts of the extension that are relevant to Northern Ireland. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that we have had ongoing conversations with the devolved Administrations throughout the whole two years.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 also helped to ease the burden on frontline staff in our critical public services. For example, provisions in the Act have helped the courts and tribunal system to keep functioning throughout the pandemic by allowing thousands of hearings to take place remotely.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister has now turned to the subject I wanted to ask her about. She talks about our courts, but the reality is that they are in a terrible position. We are up to a record 708 days for the average time it takes to prosecute suspected criminals. The longer those delays go on, the more victims wait. No party can seriously claim to be tough on crime while allowing victims to be left waiting and allowing criminals to spend 708 days before they are prosecuted. Will the Minister apologise to those people who are waiting and tell us that the Government have some kind of strategy to address that appalling record backlog?
Maggie Throup
I was about to come on to why we have tabled this statutory instrument today, but I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the backlog is now falling. The Ministry of Justice’s spending review settlement has put £500 million into addressing the issue.
Currently, more than 11,000 hearings take place each week using remote technology across 3,200 virtual courtrooms. The Act has allowed the courts to deal promptly and safely with proceedings, avoiding unnecessary social contact and travel and keeping justice going while upholding the principle of open justice. That shows how the Act has not just offered support at a time of emergency but has driven modernisation of important services that we want to take forward. We are looking to replicate several of those powers in other primary legislation.
We have always said that we would not keep these measures in place for a day longer than needed. When the Act was introduced, the temporary provisions within it were given a two-year lifespan so that we could make sure that those powers would be in force only for as long as they were necessary and proportionate to respond to the pandemic. Since the Act was first introduced, we have made huge progress in our fight against the virus thanks to a national vaccination programme that has now put more than 140 million doses in arms.
The scientific protection that we have built up, together with our greater understanding of the virus, has shifted the odds. Our fight against the virus is not over, but our living with covid plan showed how we can now take a different approach, protecting ourselves without restricting our freedoms. To do that, we are moving away from legal curbs towards an approach based on personal responsibility and public health guidance where we trust people to take the right decision for those around them. As we have built up greater defences against the virus, we have been able to suspend or expire early more and more temporary provisions from the Act and the vast majority of temporary non-devolved provisions are now expired. Only five temporary non-devolved provisions remain in force and they would be extended by the regulations.
I will now set out the detail of the regulations. Four of the provisions relate to taking forward innovations in the justice system until we make them permanent by other means. Section 30 of the Act removes the obligation for coroners to hold inquests with a jury when covid-19 is suspected to be the cause of death. Subject to parliamentary approval, that will be made permanent in the spring through the Judicial Review and Courts Bill.
Sections 53 to 55 enable participation in court and tribunal hearings to take place remotely by video or audio links, which will be made permanent this summer through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Again, that will be subject to parliamentary approval.
Covid has meant that a backlog of cases has built up in our justice system. Those provisions are helping courts to work more quickly through that backlog. They are therefore crucial to court recovery and it is vital that the powers are not allowed to lapse. A maximum six-month extension to those provisions in the Act is important to enable a smooth transition and avoid disruption to service before the primary legislation comes into force. The provisions will be expired once the new primary legislation is in place.
The regulations also extend section 43 of the Act on statutory sick pay in Northern Ireland for a period of six months. That enables the continuation of statutory sick pay to be paid from day one for absences related to covid-19 in Northern Ireland. Although statutory sick pay is a transferred matter in Northern Ireland, section 43 confers on the Secretary of State the power to make regulations in respect of Northern Ireland. As a result, the UK Government are asking for section 43 to be extended on the formal request of the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland.
I take this opportunity to note an addendum in the 12th two-monthly report on the Act, which was published on 24 March. It is regrettable that there was an omission of status updates for two temporary provisions in previous reports on the Act. Those are sections 42 and 43, which relate to provision of statutory sick pay and extend to Northern Ireland only. My Department apologises for the omission and welcomes the opportunity to correct it. The addendum provides information about the status of those provisions over the course of the pandemic. I reassure the House that the reporting omission has not had an impact on the policy relating to those provisions.
I thank hon. Members from all parties for the valuable scrutiny they have provided as we have debated the Act over the past two years. I am pleased to come before the House today with the vast majority of the temporary provisions in the Act having expired. That shows our commitment to removing powers that are no longer necessary, but also shows how far we have come since the Act was introduced.
Let me finish by thanking the health and care staff and all key workers who have worked so tirelessly throughout the pandemic as well as the British people for the extraordinary efforts they have made. The pandemic is not over, but we have made huge strides in our fight against the virus, which is why we can take these steps. I commend the regulations to the House.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I start by echoing the Minister’s thanks to healthcare and frontline public service workers and, indeed, the public for all they have done to get us to this point after two years of the pandemic. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the two motions before the House today on behalf of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition.
Clearly, as the shadow public health Minister, I will be focusing primarily on elements of the motions that relate to public health, but I will also touch on the extension of the justice provisions relating to coroners’ inquests and remote hearings. I know my colleagues on the Bill Committees for the Judicial Review and Courts Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill have already engaged constructively with the Government on those provisions and supported their being moved on to statute.
However, we have called for the Government to provide further evidence on the impact that those measures, particularly remote hearings, may have on people with disabilities and those who are digitally excluded. I would be grateful if the Minister reiterated those concerns to her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice—I notice the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) sitting alongside her—and urge them to put the appropriate safeguards in place. With a Crown court backlog already at 60,000—caused, I may add, by the Government’s short-sightedness and incompetence—we must ensure that inequality is not further entrenched in our justice system.
Moving on to public health, the Coronavirus Act 2020 was an unprecedented Act for unprecedented times. It enabled the Government to take rapid and wide-ranging steps to limit the spread of covid-19, and in turn to protect lives, livelihoods and our national health service. Correctly, it was never intended to last forever. Vaccination, as the Minister has said, has proved an invaluable tool in our fight against coronavirus, and it is thanks to our incredible scientists, our NHS staff and the British public that we are able to be here today to debate the end of many of the Act’s provisions.
It is important to note, however, that covid has not gone anywhere—it is still very much here. It has certainly not gone anywhere for the 1.5 million people who are living with the symptoms of long covid, or the 800,000 clinically vulnerable and immunosuppressed people who continue to call on the Government for better clarity and access to antiviral and retroviral treatment. I would be grateful if, in her closing remarks, the Minister outlined what steps the Government will be taking to better support those communities, and when full guidance will be given on free testing provision. In three days’ time, the general public will be unable to access free lateral flow tests, yet there is still no guidance on which groups will remain eligible for free testing.
Mr Perkins
On behalf of the numerous immuno-suppressed people in Chesterfield and their families who have contacted me, I thank my hon. Friend for what he has just said. He is absolutely right that many of them still feel prisoners in their own home and feel utterly ignored, and the Government’s failure on sick pay has only added to their sense of being forgotten. Will he reinforce the message to the Government that those people are not being properly catered for?
Andrew Gwynne
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. I have met numerous groups representing the clinically vulnerable, the clinically extremely vulnerable and the immunosuppressed communities, and the level of anxiety and worry in those communities is clear. While we have all, to some extent, been able to get back to as near a normal life as possible, those communities still feel isolated, under pressure and incredibly concerned about what mixing and social interaction would mean for them, were they to get coronavirus.
Debbie Abrahams
On top of those groups, which my hon. Friend is right to mention, there are also family carers, who are concerned that they may be prevented from having access to their family members in care homes without adequate testing, which they will be forced to pay for if it is not clear that they are included in the free testing.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many of the people who are classed as clinically vulnerable, clinically extremely vulnerable or immunosuppressed are looked after by members of the family or friends who will come into the house to look after them, rather than by paid carers. Were free lateral flow testing to be extended at least to the CV, CEV and IS communities—not for those people themselves, but for the people coming in to communicate and interact with them—it would at least give them some degree of confidence that coronavirus is not being brought through the front door.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I reiterate what my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) have said about the immunosuppressed community and the most vulnerable. I too have had numerous emails from those who are very concerned about the direction of travel. The lack of access to lateral flow tests is particularly concerning, not only for those people, but for those they come into contact with. My general practitioner has spoken to me about his concerns about antivirals. Does my hon. Friend agree that the limited cohort to whom antivirals are available is very small? My GP and I are concerned that the Government are missing a trick on this one: allowing GPs to prescribe antivirals where they think it is essential might help massively to keep people out of hospital.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend hits on an important point for debate at some stage in the near future. There is a concern that the cohort that has been drawn up for access to antivirals is not as wide as it could be, and certainly not as wide as in other European countries. We must also think about how we provide the maximum level of confidence to those communities.
For me, an ideal package to protect the immunosuppressed and clinically vulnerable would be the availability of free lateral flow tests for people coming to visit those who are clinically vulnerable or immunosuppressed, a drug such as Evusheld that would give at least 70% confidence—similar to the efficacy of the vaccine—to those people who are not able to be protected by the vaccine, and then access to antivirals if they become symptomatic.
I have asked the Minister on a number of occasions when we can expect information on the eligibility for free testing and have not even received an approximate date for when it will be published. That is totally unacceptable. We urgently need that clarity, given that we are three days away.
I draw colleagues’ attention to the provisions in the motions relating to sick pay that are set to expire. Here in the United Kingdom, we have one of the worst levels of sick pay in the OECD. Statutory sick pay currently sits at just £96.35; that, I am afraid, is shameful. I could not live on that and feed my family, and I am not sure the Minister could either. The 2 million low-paid workers who earn less than the lower earnings limit of £120 receive nothing. That is before we consider self-employed people, who continue to remain ineligible for statutory sick pay. Self-employed people were badly let down over the course of the pandemic. A recent study by the Community trade union shows that a majority of self-employed people were rejected from vital covid isolation support payments. In suspending the temporary provision that allowed workers to receive statutory sick pay from the first day of their illness, the Government are stubbornly sticking to their regressive attitude to sick pay, which will continue to have a lasting negative impact on public health.
In recent remarks, the Prime Minister urged the public to exercise “restraint and responsibility” to avoid spreading the virus. This Government love to lecture us on personal responsibility while also pricing people out of making the right decisions. We should not be forcing people to choose between putting food on the table or infecting their colleagues. As well as being morally reprehensible, the sorry state of sick pay in this country will lead to more workers getting sick, leading to worse public health outcomes and, in the long term, costing the country far more in reduced productivity.
Jeremy Corbyn
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about rates of sick pay. Is he aware that the levels of poverty since the end of the pandemic are increasing, that access to food banks is in greater demand than ever before, and that statutory sick pay often leads people to take serious risks because they have no alternative but to go out and try to work, even though they may well be displaying symptoms, in order to feed themselves and their families? That is a disgraceful situation in this country, and it can be dealt with by having a proper system of decent statutory sick pay as every other European country does.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, for too many people in this country, that is the reality of their day-to-day to living—and we know that it is going to get worse. I should remind the Government that we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis, although I appreciate that they may not have realised that given the Chancellor’s spring statement last week and his inexplicable decision to clobber working people with the highest tax burden in 70 years. Inflation is at a 30-year high, energy prices are sky-rocketing, and we are facing the biggest drop in living standards since the 1950s. I really do fear that, as my right hon. Friend said, more and more people will be drawn into levels of poverty that we have not seen in this country for a very long time.
This is completely the wrong time for the Government to remove provisions that give people the financial support to self-isolate while also ending free tests. Surely the Minister cannot continue to defend this patently self-defeating policy. If people cannot afford to test and they cannot afford to self-isolate, what does the Minister think will happen? Do the Government think that covid will magically vanish? Of course it will not. Living with covid does not mean ignoring the fact that it exists. It does not mean turning back the clock to 2019 and forgetting that the pandemic ever happened. The pandemic happened, covid is here, and for too many people covid will still be an issue going forward.
In terms of living with covid, only Labour has set out a proper plan that would prepare us for new variants while securing our lives, livelihoods, and liberties. We would prioritise testing and make it fit for the future, fix sick pay, and learn the lessons of the pandemic. The Conservatives’ plan is to repeat the phrase “personal responsibility” over and over again, and hope that no one notices that there actually is no plan. We cannot simply turn back the clock and pretend that covid never happened.
Mr Perkins
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Does he, like me, feel that the term “personal responsibility” would be slightly less nauseating if it did not come from a Prime Minister in Downing Street where 20 people are today receiving fines from the police for their failure to display any kind of personal responsibility while demanding it from some of the poorest people in the country?
Andrew Gwynne
It does stick in the throat a little hearing “personal responsibility” regurgitated time and again when we now know what happened in Downing Street, that the rules were broken and that the laws made in this House were broken. [Interruption.] The Minister says, “We don’t know that”, but we do, because 20 people have just received fines, and that means the law was broken.
We must not simply turn the clock back and pretend that covid never happened. Over the past two years we have seen the impact of painfully inadequate sick pay, and we have seen the benefits of access to free testing. We must learn from both those things. We have also lost more than 160,000 citizens in the course of this pandemic. I fear that, although the numbers are much smaller than they were, that toll will rise day on day, week on week, and year on year. We have real lessons to learn.
Debbie Abrahams
We would also make sure that we fulfilled our commitment to the international community on providing the vaccinations that it needs. There are still more than 2 billion people who are unvaccinated, and that will accelerate the risk of new variants that may be even more lethal.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Although we will continue to hold this Government to account, we will not oppose these measures today. There are real questions about covid that have to be asked by us and answered by Ministers, because too many are still unanswered. We owe that to the families of those who did not survive the pandemic, and we owe it to the whole country that stood by the rules throughout thick and thin to get us to where we are today, even when some in Government were not doing that. It is time for the Government to get serious. It is time for the Government to treat the British public with the respect that they deserve. It is time for a proper plan to live with covid.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I rise briefly to speak on these measures with regard to the coroners process and particularly the registration of deaths.
In my local authority of Bradford, some of the measures over the past two years have seen a significant reduction in the bureaucratic hurdles and red tape that people face in registering deaths. That includes a significant decrease in the delay between the death of an individual and their burial. Some may see that as trivial, but for those of the Muslim faith it is particularly important, as it is a key requirement for the recently deceased to be buried as soon as possible. I strongly believe that it would also be a good thing for those of all faiths as well as of no faith, because it enhances the dignity that is afforded to an individual after their passing; the deceased can be put to rest as soon as their relatives wish.
However, what the Government propose in this statutory instrument does not include the measures that we have seen over the past two years that have helped such a rapid turnaround. The SI does not include measures that allowed for deaths to be registered over the phone rather than solely in person, which is incredibly useful for the bereaved at a difficult time; measures that allowed the medical certificate of cause of death to be issued if the patient had been seen by a doctor within 28 days of their death rather than the previous 14 days; or measures that allowed certificates to be issued on the same or next working day, overnight, at weekends, or on bank holidays. Following their expiry last week, these measures are no longer in force. As a result, families will begin to see longer wait times and greater difficulties in their relatives being released from mortuaries, which will understandably cause great distress.
The measures that the Government are extending today are essentially intended to clear a backlog in the legal system, but we must remember the backlogs elsewhere in the public sector, such as in GP surgeries and hospitals more broadly. That is a particular concern to bodies in Bradford such as the clinical commissioning groups, Bradford Council, NHS organisations and other partners, which all feel that the changes of the last two years have worked well to make the system more efficient and sympathetic, at a time of immense distress for families. While I fully understand the need for protections to be put in place, I implore the Minister to work with Health Ministers—I am also happy to work with the Minister to discuss this further—to see what can be done to ensure that the deceased can be released quickly.
Jeremy Corbyn
I endorse what my hon. Friend says. Can he think of any reason why regulations cannot be introduced now to ensure that the speedy turnaround of death certificates that has been achieved, which has been of great comfort to the Muslim and Jewish communities in Britain, can be introduced urgently, so that this process can continue without causing stress to families who, by tradition, want if at all possible to undertake a burial within 24 hours of death?
Imran Hussain
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which is the one I was coming to. I implore the Minister, because not only is this hugely important to our Muslim and Jewish communities; as I said earlier, dignity in death is important to those of all faiths and none. My right hon. Friend makes a valid point. This is an area where the Minister maybe has the power to work with us to bring something to the House that can secure cross-party support, in order to make a real difference and give people dignity in death. Again, I offer the Minister my support to work on this in all sincerity.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I, too, put on record my enormous thanks to all the health and social care workers as well as the many unpaid carers—who have demonstrated extraordinary public service over the last couple of years, and also on a daily basis, day in day out—for the instances of love, care and medical attention for the thousands of people who have recovered, but also the 165,000 who did not.
Two years ago, in March 2020, the Liberal Democrats recognised the seriousness of the emergency. We worked constructively with the Government, along with other Opposition parties, to introduce this emergency legislation. In the course of time it became clear that some of the provisions were indeed necessary to tackle the impact of the pandemic, such as enabling the emergency registration of nurses and other healthcare workers, and allowing people to receive statutory sick pay. However, many of the powers in the 2020 Act have serious implications for people’s wellbeing and for their rights and freedoms, such as the relaxation of duties on local authorities to assess and meet people’s care needs, the extra powers for police and immigration officers to detain people, and the powers to restrict or ban events and gatherings.
This is the third time that the Act has come up for renewal. We are glad that the Government have retired many of the most controversial provisions. However, I ask the Minister whether the Department of Health and Social Care will work with the Cabinet Office to review the use of emergency legislation over the last couple of years, because we must not end up in this situation again. It is vital that we as a House ensure that there are safeguards in place to guard against the assumption that this or any future Government may use emergency legislation outside of an emergency.
Although the emergency legislation is effectively being retired bit by bit—we have just six months left—I share the concerns of a number of colleagues about the creeping complacency that has shown its face in the Department of Health and Social Care, particularly towards some of our most vulnerable residents, the immunocompromised. Other colleagues have talked about the importance of free covid tests, clear guidance and sick pay. The Government have talked very much about taking a vaccine-led approach, yet they are falling down in that approach when it comes to the immunocompromised.
There is a life-saving drug, Evusheld, the trials for which have shown that it can reduce the chances of developing symptomatic covid-19 among immunocompromised patients by 77% after three months and 83% after six months. I ask every Member of the House to take a second to put themselves in the shoes of immuno-compromised people. Two years ago, the Prime Minister wrote to every person in this country and asked them to stay at home. Those who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed have never left. Many of them are still in lockdown. They cannot benefit from the vaccines that the rest of us have enjoyed. For them, the decision of whether to go back to work or just to the shops is a life or death decision. It is a huge health inequality in our country that all of us can benefit from vaccines but those who cannot are not being given access to this life-saving drug.
I therefore ask the Minister not only to respond to the point about how we deal with emergency legislation in future, but to confirm on record today that the Government intend to place an order for this drug, and to do so within days not weeks, because, now that it has approval from the European Medicines Agency, the window within which there is still manufacturing capacity and the UK can place an order is shrinking fast. Although it is vital that the legislation that we have used during the pandemic comes to an end slowly—in six months hopefully it will all be retired—many people are still living in lockdown because of covid, so I would ask the Minister to respond to those points.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I want to speak briefly about the courts provisions. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), I do not have any particular issues—in fact, I welcome the recognition of the need to speed up the processes in court. However, we cannot discuss this issue without stopping for a moment to recognise the hugely damaging impact of the current court delays on victims of crime and the extent to which they continue to be doubly punished: punished initially because of the offence against them and punished again when they are forced to wait months or even years for justice.
I have never heard such a self-congratulatory response from the Government than that given by the Minister, especially when we consider that their record, on both the death rate in the country and the economic consequences, pales in comparison with the performance of many European nations. However, Ministers stand there and talk about how wonderfully we did. When it comes to the courts, the reality, as victims in my constituency and those across the country know, is that although things got much worse during the pandemic, they were disastrous before that. They were disastrous because of the scale of court closures between 2010 and 2019, and because legal aid cuts meant that many people ended up representing themselves, which causes court cases to take much longer because those people do not have access to proper judicial advice. The court delays are leaving victims in our constituencies simply waiting and waiting to a totally unreasonable degree. We hear from the police that when victims are left waiting, the stress of that, and of being unable to put an end to their ordeal, often leads them to withdraw permission to go ahead with the case, and criminals get away with what they have done. Not only are victims waiting 708 days—the average time it takes to go from offence to completion of a case—in torment, but criminals are out on the street when they should be banged up, because of the failure of this Government. I welcome these temporary provisions, but there needs to be real acceptance of what is actually happening to victims.
I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish and the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) said about Evusheld—a drug for those who are immunosuppressed. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that for many of them the last years have been a prison sentence. Somebody who I know and have been to football with over many years has not been to a game for two and a half years. I never thought he would miss a game, but he has not been along since the start of the pandemic. He feels trapped, and absolutely unable to do the things that he would like to. There needs to be progress on that.
I also support what my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said about the need to investigate putting on a longer-term basis the welcome provisions that speed up the issuing of death certificates.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)
We have had an interesting debate on these important measures. I am grateful to all colleagues who have contributed. Like the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), I thank all the workers in the NHS, and in social care, who put in such a shift over the pandemic. As a Justice Minister, I would say the same about all those working in the courts, particularly the clerks and others who had to go into work in the spring of 2020, when there was fear across society about the consequences of working face to face with others. They did that to keep justice going, and we owe them a great debt.
The hon. Lady asked about emergency legislation. Of course we want to learn lessons from covid-19, and we continue to review the effectiveness of our legal framework, and the lessons learned from our response to covid-19, as part of our preparedness for future pandemics and other health emergencies.
The hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) movingly discussed an important subject that matters a great deal to him, and to his constituents, and I pay tribute to him for speaking up for his constituents. These are very important matters. I can confirm that the general register office measures on death registration have been replaced in permanent legislation, except for the provisions for telephone death registration. We are trying to identify a legislative vehicle through which to put those provisions in place.
There were a number of comments on the immunosuppressed. I understand the concerns on the subject; it is one that my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care take seriously. I remind colleagues that those who are immunosuppressed are eligible for three primary vaccine doses and a booster, and will be called forward for a spring booster when appropriate. We made 5 million doses of antivirals available for the immunosuppressed.
Ms Lyn Brown
Does the Minister agree with my GP that expansion of the use of antivirals might be a necessary tool in our campaign to keep people safe, as we learn to live with covid?
James Cartlidge
I am a Justice Minister, but I am happy to pass on from my health colleagues that they keep that issue under review. The hon. Lady raised a point about tests; from 1 April, free tests will be available for those in certain groups most at risk from the virus. More details will be set out shortly; I cannot say more than that at this stage, I am afraid.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) is absolutely right—the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) made a similar point—that we went through matters relating to remote hearings in detail when the Judicial Review and Courts Bill was in Committee. That was my first Bill as a Minister. We went through in great detail the support for vulnerable users, but let me restate this for the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish: remote technology has a huge role to play in our courts, and we should not underestimate the extent to which its use kept justice going, which was very positive for vulnerable users. He is right, however, that there must be measures in place, and we have set them out in detail. Only recently, we awarded a new contract that provides for a technical support line to assist remote hearing users, and to enable them to access their hearing in the most appropriate fashion. Of course, the type of hearing held is always up to judicial discretion, and dependent on the circumstances.
On the point about the backlog, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said—I address this to the hon. Member for Chesterfield, too—that we want to forget about the pandemic, but also that the backlog is entirely the result of Government incompetence. Let us be clear: before we went into lockdown, the backlog was smaller than when Labour was last in power. When we went into lockdown, the courts closed. The Crown Court’s output collapsed. That should not be a surprise; we did not have jury trials because of social distancing.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), then Lord Chancellor, who has just emerged into the Chamber—he is probably out of sight to most Members—put in an extraordinary shift, together with the Lord Chief Justice and others in our courts, to get courts reopened, and to get jury trials going again in this country, but there was a consequence: a huge bottleneck of cases. That is why we had this record backlog. The good news is that the number of cases in the backlog is falling; it has gone from a peak of around 61,000 last June to around 59,000. However, we recognise that we have to go further, which is why court recovery is a priority for this Government.
The measures that we propose extending through the statutory instrument that is before us are helping to ensure that courts and tribunals have the resources necessary to deal with these outstanding cases. To be clear, sections 53 to 55 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 enable thousands of hearings to be conducted online—currently around 11,000 per week—so that courts and tribunals can be reserved for hearings, such as trials, that must be heard in court. Without section 30, the backlogs in our coroners courts would have been larger, which would have further increased the demand on local authority-funded coroner services. These temporary measures are in fact so important to court recovery that we intend to make them permanent, but we cannot afford any gap in provision while we wait for that legislation to complete its passage through Parliament. If courts were unable to continue to use these provisions, even for a few months, there would be a significant impact on our court recovery programme. That would mean defendants waiting longer than necessary for trial, more victims waiting longer than necessary for justice, and the bereaved waiting longer than necessary for inquests.
I express my thanks to all those who work in our courts for the sterling work that they did to keep the courts running during the pandemic. I hope that Members agree with me that, by extending the four provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 that are under consideration for a maximum of six months, we can continue to build on the progress that we have made in managing the virus, and in ensuring that our courts and tribunals can recover as quickly as possible from the effects of the pandemic. I reassure the House—this is crucial—that the four provisions will be expired under the Act once new legislation comes into force.
As was noted by the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), who has responsibility for vaccines, statutory sick pay is a transferred matter, and the Government are simply facilitating an extension of the provision relating to it, following a formal request by the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Delay in Expiry: Inquests, Courts and Tribunals, and Statutory Sick Pay) (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022 (SI, 2022, No. 362), dated 23 March 2022, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 March, be approved.
Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions) (No. 4)
Resolved,
That the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not yet expire.—(James Cartlidge.)
Opposition Day
Appointment of Lord Lebedev
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before we commence the debate, I have to say something about orderly language. As the House knows, reflections on the conduct of Members of either House may only be made on a substantive motion; this matter has been dealt with in points of order several times in recent weeks, so those who attend the Chamber regularly will be aware of that. The motion before us today is substantive, so there is greater leeway in what may be said than would otherwise be the case, but that does not mean that no rules apply at all. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) looks disappointed.
The motion refers to concerns raised about the appropriateness of appointing Lord Lebedev to the House of Lords. Therefore, debate may cover those concerns. Members should bear in mind, however, that raising a concern is not the same as making unproven allegations about personal conduct.
In relation to the Prime Minister, his behaviour can be discussed in so far as it relates to the appointment of Lord Lebedev to the House of Lords. Again, Members should be cautious about making unproven allegations, but they can refer to concerns about the process. Even so, it is not in order to criticise the conduct of the Prime Minister in ways that do not relate to the substance of this motion.
Finally, as with all our proceedings, the precise context of what is said will influence the decision of the Chair in deciding what is orderly or not. I do sincerely hope that, as ever—and you have all heard Mr Speaker say this many times—in the words of Erskine May, “moderation and good temper” will characterise the debate we are about to have.
I know the right hon. Lady appreciates that, and I call Angela Rayner to move the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I heard you loud and clear.
I beg to move,
That, given the concerns raised about the appropriateness of, and process for, appointing Lord Lebedev as a member of the House of Lords and the role of the Prime Minister in that process, an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House, no later than 28 April,
(a) any document held by the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office containing or relating to advice from, or provided to, the House of Lords Appointments Commission concerning the appointment of Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev as a Member of the House of Lords; and
(b) the minutes of, submissions relevant to and electronic communications relating to, any meeting within the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office at which the appointment of Lord Lebedev, or advice relating to that appointment, was discussed in a form which may contain redactions, but such redactions shall be solely for the purposes of national security.
May I start by noting the latest news from Ukraine? I know the whole House will be united in our outrage at the atrocities that have been reported, our deepest sympathy to the victims, and our ongoing support and our solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We will be united, too, in the message that we send to Putin. We will not waver in standing firm against his aggression, and the unity in this House reflects that in the country and among the constituents whom we represent.
It is all the more important, in that context, that we make sure that we do all we can to protect our country’s security and our people’s safety. This Government’s ultimate responsibility to this House is to keep people safe, and it is all the more important that we stand up for the fundamental values of democracy in stark contrast to authoritarian regimes and dictatorships such as that in the Kremlin today. That is why we are here today—to defend our country’s security and its democracy, and to hold our Government to the highest standards in doing the same.
Every Minister has a fundamental duty to protect the people of this country and to prioritise their safety above all else. We have tabled this motion because serious questions have been asked about whether the current Prime Minister upheld that duty to the standard that we would expect, and because those questions have not been answered with the transparency that we would expect.
We must get to the facts of the case. An investigation by The Sunday Times found that, on 17 March 2020, British intelligence warned the House of Lords Appointments Commission against granting a peerage to the Prime Minister’s close friend, now the Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. The commission concluded it could not support his nomination. Forty-eight hours later, the Prime Minister visited Lebedev at his home in London. Details of that meeting have never been released to the public, and questions remain about whether the security services knew about this meeting, or whether their assessments show that the Kremlin was keeping tabs on these activities.
In July 2020, Lebedev’s appointment as a peer was announced, so the question is this: what changed between the security warning and the appointment? The British public have a right to know if, and how, an individual of apparent concern to our intelligence services was granted a seat at the heart of Parliament by personal order of the Prime Minister, and whether the Prime Minister was aware of that security advice, but chose to ignore it, overrule it or even demand that it be changed.
This is not the first time concerns have been raised about Lebedev by the British security services. As long as a decade ago, Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, made it clear that he did not deem Lebedev a suitable person to meet. It remains unclear if the Prime Minister—then Foreign Secretary—was made aware of these security concerns, but his deeply concerning links to Putin are well known. He has been open about them on Twitter, where he has promoted the worst conspiracy theories and defences of Vladimir Putin, and raised questions over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the Kremlin critic poisoned in a London hotel.
Lebedev’s father and business partner is a former KGB spy turned billionaire oligarch, who continues to fill his coffers with investments in occupied Crimea and in Russian munitions. We have heard worrying reports about the existence of a private back channel between our Prime Minister and President Putin, facilitated by Lebedev. Can the Minister shed light on this deeply concerning allegation and rule out the existence of such a back channel? As the bombing of Ukraine and the tragedy continue and the threat from Russia in the west intensifies, does the Minister think this appointment, in apparent opposition to the security services, was appropriate?
The Cabinet Office plays a central role in the vetting process of Lords appointments. In Lord Lebedev’s case, Cabinet Office security officials were responsible for relaying the intelligence and guidance to the House of Lords Appointments Commission that formed the basis of its objections to his appointment. However, reports by The Sunday Times and a written statement by the then chief of staff to the Prime Minister allege that he “cut a deal” to provide the appointments commission with a “sanitised” version of the advice.
Could the Minister outline how, when and why the guidance changed after communication with the Prime Minister, and could he confirm whether the Cabinet Office had sight of security advice warnings against the appointment of Lord Lebedev? This is a matter of national security, and there can be no delay in getting transparency in this case. There are also serious questions about whether the Prime Minister put his personal interests before the public interest in this case. The Prime Minister’s apparent cavalier disregard for those serious security warnings speaks to a wider culture at the heart of this Government where the rules do not apply when it comes to appointing friends and donors to public office.
If the Prime Minister himself is willing to overrule British intelligence agencies, this raises serious questions about appointments more generally, and specifically in the House of Lords. Appointments to the Lords should be made based on integrity and contribution to our country. They are not some free pass. They are not a golden ticket for Prime Ministers to grant to their mates, like a membership of some posh London boys club, or a way to say thanks to billionaire mates after years of wining and dining, and champagne receptions and holidaying, not to mention the favourable headlines. But seriously, appointment to this Parliament should be on the basis of dedication, integrity and contribution to public life in Britain.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Clearly, I represent a far-flung part of the United Kingdom, and there are good and hard-working citizens who give their entire working lives for such communities. In the past, this has been recognised by means of an honour—Order of the British Empire, British Empire Medal or whatever. Can I suggest to the right hon. Lady and to everyone in this place that the Lebedev peerage cheapens the whole system of honours and reduces its value to those people who genuinely deserve to be recognised in civil society?
Angela Rayner
Absolutely. I fully agree with the hon. Member’s contribution. During the pandemic, we saw such dedication by our key workers, with doctors and nurses putting their lives on the line to save the lives of others.
Instead, we see reports that the Prime Minister parachuted his close friend Lord Lebedev into the heart of the UK’s Parliament, a man with whom the Prime Minister has enjoyed a decade-long courtship, which included a stay at the oligarch’s castle in 2018, where he is reported to have attended a party over the course of a weekend, with all his flights and accommodation paid for by Lebedev. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that during his stay, the Prime Minister, who was then Foreign Secretary, is reported to have met Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB agent and father of Lord Lebedev. The party took place just days after the Prime Minister—then Foreign Secretary—attended a NATO meeting to discuss the response to the Salisbury poisoning, in which the nerve agent Novichok was used in an assassination attempt on the Skripals. Immediately following the meeting in which Putin’s deadly attack on British soil was discussed, the Prime Minister reportedly ditched his security protection to attend the Lebedev party, where a former KGB agent was in attendance. The Prime Minister seems more interested in attending parties with his Russian billionaire mates than listening to the concerns of the British security services.
Culture is set from the top. Appointments matter. Politicians come and go, but Lord Lebedev will be a permanent fixture of our Parliament in the other place for decades. There is a serious precedent to be set in this case about how Parliament chooses to appoint those who represent us. It also raises serious questions about the relaxed vetting process of Lords appointments, creating a security risk at the heart of our democracy. This must be taken seriously, and for that reason I ask the Minister this: will there be a review of the House of Lords appointment process?
We must ensure that a robust vetting system is in place that safeguards our democracy and ensures transparency for the public. Indeed, the Lord Speaker recently called for a more rigorous appointment process for peers. We have a Prime Minister who appears willing to jeopardise the security of the British public for the sake of a personal friendship. The culture is set from the top, and in this case it raises much wider concerns about public appointments. It is time for the Prime Minister to come clean today about whether and why he interfered with British intelligence to award a peerage to his close personal friend. The full Cabinet Office guidance about a peerage for Mr Lebedev, which was mysteriously airbrushed, must now be published in the national interest. The Prime Minister claims that that advice cannot be published because it will undermine confidence in the appointments process. Well, it is a bit late for that. This is about his actions. He has run roughshod over the integrity of the process, and put his own interests before those of Britain.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I am sorry to intervene on my right hon. Friend and I hope speak later in the debate, but I thought she should be aware that since this debate started, Lord Lebedev has been tweeting furiously, implying the inappropriateness of this House to even have this debate. That from a Member of the other place is completely unacceptable and, if I may advise Lord Lebedev, extremely unwise.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
If what the right hon. Gentleman says is correct—I have no reason to doubt him although I have not seen the content of the tweets—let me say that if it was inappropriate for any debate to be occurring in this Chamber, it would not be occurring.
Angela Rayner
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Woe betide anyone who tells Madam Deputy Speaker what is or is not appropriate for debate in this Chamber.
By his actions the Prime Minister has run roughshod over the integrity of the process, and put his own interests before those of Britain. The suggestion that questions of suitability are for the Prime Minister alone will not cut it. When it is a clear as day that he so flagrantly disregarded advice and intervened in this process, I suggest that it is he who has undermined that process time and again.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way and apologise for interrupting her. Is it the Labour party’s position that the House of Lords Appointments Commission should have a veto? Given that it is part of her shadow portfolio, I am keen to understand. She is talking about the Prime Minister’s role in this, but does she believe that the House of Lords Appointments Commission should have that veto?
Angela Rayner
The hon. Gentleman makes a point, but the point I am making is that security advice was given, and the commission made a recommendation. If the Prime Minister overrides that advice, surely we should have a reason and transparency about why he went against the advice of the security services and the commission. That is very important and a robust way of dealing with things.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
According to allegations in The Sunday Times, the Prime Minister went to visit the now Lord Lebedev about the advice he had been given by security services, and to assure him that he wanted to give him this peerage, at a time when coronavirus was raging, businesses were being asked to close, and schools were about to be asked to shut. That was a priority for the Prime Minister when the rest of us were having to put our entire lives on hold. Does the right hon. Lady think that is an appropriate priority for the Prime Minister in the middle of a national and global crisis?
Angela Rayner
The hon. Lady makes a good point, and no, I do not think that is a good priority. I cannot get into concerns about what the Prime Minister thought was appropriate under his own lockdown rules during this debate, because it is not on the motion.
These dangerous links to Putin’s oligarchs threaten our national security, but today we can take a step to defend it. There can be no better answer to the aggression of a dictator than to show that in a democracy, our leaders answer to the country they serve. The Minister should stop hiding behind the excuses and denials that we have heard about why we cannot have this transparency. I urge the House: let us get to the facts behind this whole murky business, publish the advice, and come clean with the British people. I commend the motion to the House.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
Let me first address the situation in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of the Prime Minister and people of the United Kingdom as being among his greatest allies, and the Kremlin has spoken of the United Kingdom as a leading opponent. I am proud of that position, and we will continue to support Ukraine—as I know will the whole House—and the courageous people of that sovereign and independent country.
The motion before the House calls on the Government to release advice provided by or to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, and relevant communications thereto. The Government regret today’s motion for any number of reasons—I will come on to those—but particularly because, for the first time in many decades there is a war in Europe, and there are many pressing domestic concerns and issues. It is somewhat surprising that the Opposition have brought forward for discussion this afternoon an ad hominem attack on a single individual.
Although Parliament has unlimited power to call for papers, persons and records, historically the House has exercised restraint in the use of that power, and for good reason. That the motion seeks not to show restraint is, in my submission, unfortunate. I accept that Parliament has a vital scrutiny role and should use its power to facilitate it, but that does not extend to making use of the procedures of this place to single out an individual by making unsavoury and ad hominem attacks of the kind we have heard and will be hearing this afternoon.
Several hon. Members rose—
Michael Ellis
Before I give way, which I will be happy to do, may I gently point out to the Opposition that—and I say this in all candour—they ought to be careful of intolerant messaging? Not all Russians are our enemy. Many British citizens of Russian extraction came to this country with a view to an opposition to President Putin. People cancelling Tchaikovsky concerts is not appropriate, and Labour seeking to whip up anti-Russian feeling or casting all persons of Russian extraction in a negative light is wrong.
Furthermore, the disclosure of the information sought here today would undermine the very role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Labour is asking for something that would break the appointments process in the House of Lords. It would chip away at the careful vetting procedures and the exchange of information that necessarily has to be discreet.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Michael Ellis
If I may, I will just finish this thought.
Let us not forget that the commission of which we are speaking is independent, expert, advisory, and cross-party, with Labour, Liberal and Conservative members, and it was set up by Tony Blair and the Labour party in the year 2000—more than 20 years ago.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
On the Minister’s point about Labour being Russophobic, I lived and worked in Russia for three years as director of the British Council in St Petersburg, and we worked every day with ordinary Russians—good people—who want that country to be a normal country connected to the rest of the world. The people we are talking about today are not ordinary Russians. We are talking about a former KGB spy and the woman who was married to a former deputy Finance Minister who has given millions of pounds to the Conservative party. I humbly ask the Minister to withdraw the comment about Russophobia. We have no problem with the Russian people; we have a big problem with what he is talking about today.
Michael Ellis
No, I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. In fact, the noble Lord who is the subject of this debate is not a Conservative party donor and never has been, so the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong on all those fronts. The motion before the House today is what I have said it is.
Shaun Bailey
Further to the point of the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), I wonder whether my right hon. Friend and learned Friend could give me his thoughts on this tweet that has just come through, which contains this from the Leader of the Opposition:
“Congratulations on your elevation to the House of Lords. All best wishes, Keir”?
Is what is good for the goose good for the gander? What does the Minister think about that?
Michael Ellis
It has been mentioned that Lord Lebedev has been tweeting this afternoon, and I understand that he has tweeted in the past few minutes that the Leader of the Opposition congratulated him on his appointment as a peer. That must be rather embarrassing for the Labour party.
Matt Western
I sometimes think that the Minister must be the Derek Underwood of the Front Bench in that he is the nightwatchman defending the indefensible.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) just said, we are clearly talking about someone with huge influence who has worked closely with the Prime Minister and collaborated in delivering certain election victories for him as the Mayor of London.
Michael Ellis
Lord Lebedev is a British citizen of Russian extraction who, I understand, had his primary and secondary education in this country. I see no logic in the Labour party’s assessment.
In order to put this issue in its true context, it is necessary to remind hon. Members of the process for nominations for peerages. The power to confer a peerage, with the entitlement to sit in the House of Lords, is vested in Her Majesty the Queen and is exercised on the advice of the Prime Minister. It is a long-established feature of our constitutional arrangements. The Prime Minister is ultimately responsible to Parliament, as he is in all matters, and to the people of the country for any nominations he makes.
Two events have served to shape that process. First, the House of Lords Act 1999 ended the right of hereditary peers to pass membership of the other place down through their families. Secondly, the House of Lords Appointments Commission was created in May 2000—under Labour, which now wishes to break it—and it recommends individuals for appointment as non-party political life peers, such as those on the Cross Benches, and has political representation from the three parties within its members. The vetting process is at the heart of its work. The commission seeks to ensure the highest standards of propriety, and I include party political nominees within that.
It does not apply in the instant case, but it should not be a matter of opprobrium that somebody be a party political supporter. Labour has hundreds of peers in the House of Lords. The Liberal Democrats have some 83 peers despite them having barely enough Members of Parliament to fill a minicab. There is nothing wrong with having a political affiliation.
The House of Lords Appointments Commission seeks advice from a number of sources during its deliberations. Any time we ask any independent advisory body to obtain advice, and it does so discreetly and in confidence, if we seek to break that process, said body will not be able to function. Once all the evidence has been considered, the commission will either advise the Prime Minister that it has no concerns about an appointment or will draw its concerns to the Prime Minister’s attention. It is a long-standing position that it is for the Prime Minister of the day to recommend appointments to the House of Lords. For that reason, the Prime Minister continues to place great weight on the commission’s careful and considered advice before making any recommendations. That arrangement has served successive Prime Ministers of both parties but, as in other areas, they must carefully balance a range of evidence.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to a Liberal Democrat, few as we are. Nevertheless, I draw his attention to another tweet from Lord Lebedev:
“Openness and transparency are pillars of our democratic system, so I welcome the call for security advice about me…to be released. I have nothing to hide.”
The Minister is highlighting the fact that the appointment was questioned by that commission, so I do not see his argument, because it sounds like there were concerns. If Lord Lebedev has nothing to hide and the commission made its recommendation, that prompts the question: what do the Government have to hide?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Lady for asking that question. This is not about any one individual. The Opposition are seeking it to be about one individual who cannot answer for himself in this House, which is wrong. The Government are seeking to protect the system, so even if Lord Lebedev has said that he does not mind, it is not, with the greatest respect, only about him; this is about protecting the system, because the House of Lords Appointments Commission would not be able to function.
The Leader of the Opposition wrote to the commission earlier this month and received a reply a week or two ago, which I believe is in the public domain, in which it outlined the process and did not highlight any problems. The reality is that the Government are seeking to protect a system that has worked well for 22 years, so I ask the House to bear that in mind.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
The Minister has said that the House of Lords Appointments Commission takes a variety of information from a variety of sources and organisations. That is perfectly reasonable. Is he suggesting, however, that the opinions or information of the intelligence services should somehow be of less importance than information from another body?
Michael Ellis
No, I am not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, I have no personal knowledge of those from whom the commission obtains its information. It is for the commission, which has Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat and independent members, to make its own judgments, and we heard from the commission in the letter I mentioned, which I think was from Lord Bew.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
Quite rightly, we should be concerned about Russian money coming into our political system, but my right hon. and learned Friend at the Dispatch Box is right in what he says. We really should point out who the Prime Minister was who let the fox into the chicken coup. Who was it, for instance, in 2003 when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea football club? It was none other than the new Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
Michael Ellis
Yes, well, I will leave the House to draw its own conclusions about that.
I have to say that the individual who is the subject of this debate is a British citizen. He happens to be of Russian extraction. I understand that he has been in this country since primary school age. It is important to emphasise that this is about British people whose ancestry and heritage should not be relevant. As the owner of a regional newspaper, I understand that the London Evening Standard has raised £300,000 for its Ukraine appeal, £3 million for its AIDSfree campaign, and £13 million for its Dispossessed fund for persons in poverty in London and the Grenfell tragedy. I think that is something to be applauded.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Let us just get this right: this Lord Lebedev is educated here at primary school and senior school, he does not donate to political parties, he donates to charities and he is a good citizen. That lot over there on the Opposition Benches do not want to be involved in democracy. Is it the case that they just do not like foreign names? [Interruption.]
Michael Ellis
Well, I will invite the House to draw its own conclusion. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I did say at the beginning that we must have good temper in this debate. Shouting at the Minister or anyone else does not help.
Shaun Bailey
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In a bit of chuntering from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), she referred to this as the most xenophobic Conservative party. Can I just say to the hon. Lady that I am certainly not a xenophobe and I take real exception to that? I invite her to withdraw those comments. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Let me make this absolutely clear: nobody in this Chamber is calling anybody xenophobic. If anybody has used phrases like that, stop it now. I am not having it repeated. I am taking it that these things have not been said, because it would be better if they have not. Now, let us keep this at the right level. There is no need for superlative insults to go from one side to the other.
Michael Ellis
To return to where I started, there are so many issues that affect people’s lives that we could be debating today, for example: my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s income tax cuts, the first in 16 years; the 5p cut in fuel duty; or my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary’s plans to make sure that any child who falls behind in English or maths gets the support they need to get back on track. I find it surprising, at the very least, that the Opposition have chosen this particular motion, one that, at best, would compromise the ability of an independent body, which is respected for its independence, to fulfil its mandate simply to make a short-term political point. At worst, it would be negligent of the long-term consequences to the key role of the House of Lords in scrutinising the Executive and being a revising Chamber, and the valued expertise and specialist knowledge and experience of its Members.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I think lots of my colleagues would say that we have tabled the motion because it gets to the heart of who we are as a country and a democracy. Given the Prime Minister’s long-term relationship with the Lebedev family, what does the Minister think it looks like not to have published the Intelligence and Security Committee report before the 2019 general election?
Michael Ellis
That is not relevant to this debate. I will tell the hon. Lady what this debate looks like: it looks like the Labour party is focusing on an individual because of who he is. It is doing so unfairly and improperly, and it is seeking to break a process. The reality, as we have heard, is that Labour Members have also supported this individual, socialised with him and sent him messages of support. There is nothing wrong with that. I do not criticise Labour Members if they have sent supportive text messages to Lord Lebedev. I do not criticise anyone in this House for doing so. As the owner of newspapers, no doubt he interacts with a large number of individuals, even though he is a Cross Bencher. What I criticise, and what I urge the House to exercise with considerable caution, is how it looks to attack an individual because of his heritage or because of his extraction. That is the key point.
The other key point to make here is that confidentiality in respect of the process ensures that it operates in the interests of the Labour party and the Conservative party, and that the process of appointing peers of this realm is a fair and dutiful one. The probity and the confidence of the system would be compromised if we broke it. If we said that henceforth we cannot ask people to send in confidence their opinions of individuals whom the Leader of the Opposition or the Conservative party have put forward for a peerage, anyone would know in future that if they wrote to the commission in confidence it could then be out in the public domain. They would not do it and that would damage the process. I would have thought that is rather obvious.
The Government believe that to ensure the ability of the commission to conduct robust vetting and to provide advice that is not compromised, the process should continue to be conducted confidentially, with disclosure at the discretion of the Prime Minister, who is ultimately responsible for making recommendations to Her Majesty on appointments to the Lords, or of the commission, as a body independent of Government and responsible for the vetting of nominations.
Before I sit, I would like to address, if I may, the use today of the Humble Address procedure. The House itself has recognised the need for this process to be used responsibly. The Government response to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s 15th report said:
“The Government therefore agrees with PACAC that this device should not be used irresponsibly or over-used.”
The Procedure Committee observed in its May 2019 report:
“The House, by its practice, has observed limitations on the power: it does not use the power to call for papers which Ministers do not have the authority to obtain, nor does it use it to obtain papers of a personal nature.”
That is a fundamental point. Today’s motion is a breach of that process. It demonstrates why the motion is unwise and irresponsible. Motions such as the one before us today crystallise the potential tension between the use of the Humble Address procedure and the responsibility of Ministers not to release information where disclosure would not be in the public interest. We have heard it said that the particular peer himself does not mind whether that information is released, but I submit that that is irrelevant. What we seek to do is protect the process, more than the individual, and that verifies that. The responsibility of Ministers, which I take very seriously, is carefully to balance and weigh up the need for the transparency and openness that we all try to achieve against the equally important, long-standing and competing principle in respect of data protection legislation, which the motion challenges. The Government reiterated, in our response to the Procedure Committee report, the principle of restraint and caution in recognition of the importance of ensuring that the wider public interest is protected.
Matt Western
I thank the Minister for giving way a second time; he is being generous. I am sure we all agree how critical transparency is to our democracy. Would that in part of the process there had been any transparency in the origin or source of Lord Lebedev’s wealth, which is particularly pertinent today and has been for the past five weeks since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Minister may refer to a message texted to Lord Lebedev 18 months ago, but that was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Michael Ellis
Were the hon. Gentleman to look into the matter, he would find that Lord Lebedev has, through his newspapers, publicly criticised the Putin invasion of Ukraine, as one would expect him to do. He has done so on the record.
The motion provides a saving in respect of national security considerations, in that it would allow for the redaction of material
“for the purposes of national security.”
For that reason, I shall not dwell on the national security considerations in depth. I remind the House that Ministers do not comment on national security issues; nevertheless, I stress that weighty public issues are in play that should not be treated lightly.
As I say, when we balance a commitment to transparency against the protection of information when disclosure is not in the public interest, national security is one consideration that the Government must weigh up. Rather than engage in insinuation and speculation—I am afraid that is what has been happening—in respect of matters of national security that must be handled with care and caution, I emphasise that it is and always will be Her Majesty’s Government’s absolute priority to protect the United Kingdom against foreign interference.
It is easy for those in the media or on the Opposition Benches to cast aspersions and invite people to draw assumptions. We cannot answer points about national security in detail, but I emphasise that we in the Government will always give absolute priority to the protection of the United Kingdom from foreign interference. As proof of that, I remind the House that, as announced in the Queen’s Speech, we will introduce new legislation to provide the security services and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to disrupt state threats.
In conclusion, the passing of the motion would have long-term and damaging consequences for the system of appointments to the peerage. It would breach the principles of confidentiality that underpin the process; impugn the reputation of an independent body and damage its ability to undertake its role; and impact on the right of individuals not to have their private lives splashed across the media at the whim of the Opposition Front-Bench team.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
If the motion is as potentially damaging as the Minister says it is, why will Government Members not vote against it this afternoon?
Michael Ellis
It is quite normal practice to ignore Opposition motions; they are given the careful attention they deserve. That is common practice.
The Government regret the fact that the official Opposition have sought to use the procedures of the House to call for the release of information which, if released, would have lasting consequences and undermine the established system of appointments to the peerage. That system has served successive Governments and it is vital to preserving the commission’s ability to undertake its role.
Shaun Bailey
In her speech, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) articulated quite an interesting point. I tried to prise an answer out of her in my intervention, when I asked about the idea of the commission perhaps having a veto. Whether or not we disagree with that idea, does my right hon. and learned Friend not find it interesting that the Labour party will not state its definitive position on that? What is his opinion of that? Perhaps it is because Labour wants to use the existing system at some future point to benefit itself.
Michael Ellis
I have the feeling it will be a very long time before the Labour party is in a position to do that from the Government Benches.
The broader point is that the privacy rights of individuals need to be protected. The information shared to facilitate the vetting process is and must be handled carefully. It would be unwelcome for this House to set a precedent that such information is released, because, as I have said, to do so could deter individuals from putting themselves forward for such positions. I urge the House to reflect on whether the motion before us accords with the principle of restraint that Parliament has characteristically applied to the use of its powers. The passing of the motion would risk compromising the ability of an independent body to perform its role and, constitutionally, would impede the role of the Prime Minister in advising the sovereign on appointments. The process is necessarily confidential and the Government think it is unwise for the House to call for such information.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Scottish National party spokesperson, Brendan O’Hara.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I shall heed the warning about moderation and good temper, which I am sure my SNP colleagues would say is in my DNA and runs through me like the writing in a stock of rock. Should I stray, I am sure that you would bring me back into line, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I was fascinated by the start of the Minister’s speech and I tried to intervene, but he would not take my multiple attempts to do so. When he got to his feet, he began by questioning the appropriateness of the Opposition holding such a debate on this topic. Literally minutes before he questioned how appropriate it was, Lord Lebedev said:
“There’s a war in Europe”—
hon. Members will recognise the phrase—
“Britain is facing the highest cost of living since the 1950s. And you choose to debate me based on no facts and pure innuendo.”
That was precisely the Minister’s opening gambit, which prompts the question: did he write the Minister’s speech or did the Minister write his tweet?
That assertion was absurd, because we have come to learn, often through painful experience in this place, that when this Government and this Prime Minister assure us that there is nothing to see, it is wise to keep looking. That is why we fully support the motion and why, when the House divides, we will vote for the Government to hand over all documents, all minutes of meetings and all electronic communications containing or relating to the advice that they received about the appointment of Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords.
I reiterate in the strongest possible terms that today’s debate is absolutely not about being Russophobic, as the Minister would shamefully have us believe. He said that to try to throw up a smokescreen cover for his beleaguered Prime Minister, and it does the Prime Minister and this House no service whatever to try to suggest otherwise. As has been said many, many times in this Chamber, our fight is not with the ordinary Russian citizen, but with Putin, his political leadership in the Kremlin and his friends, including the oligarch billionaires who have plundered Russia’s wealth and resources and shipped them overseas, all too often to the UK and the City of London. Once they were in the UK, those billionaire oligarchs found many people in business and politics who, in return for their slice of the cake, were only too willing to facilitate the kleptocracy by hiding the oligarchs’ plunder for them while providing them with what they desired most: a cloak of respectability.
The UK’s willingness to welcome vast amounts of Russian money with very few questions asked about the source of that wealth means that there are now many Russians with close links to Putin who are very well integrated into the UK and who simply, because of that enormous wealth, have attained significant influence among the UK’s business, social and political elites.
Since this Prime Minister came into office in 2019, £2.3 million of Russian-linked cash has been funnelled directly into the Conservative party. That has happened to such an extent that even the Intelligence and Security Committee raised serious concerns about undue influence being sought and, indeed, gained by friends of President Putin with the UK governing party.
That influence of dirty Russian money has not gone unnoticed abroad. Professor Sadiq Isah Radda, the most senior adviser to Nigeria’s President on all matters of anti-corruption, described London as
“the most notorious safe haven for looted funds in the world today”.
That is where we currently are in the world standings.
In January this year, as Putin prepared to invade Ukraine, the Centre for American Progress warned the City of London that
“uprooting Kremlin-linked oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative party, the press, and its real estate and financial industry”.
It was always going to be the case that when Putin finally did unleash his illegal war in Ukraine, the UK would be forced to look at our role and how we have facilitated his gangster regime.
Stewart Hosie
My hon. Friend will have noticed that the Minister described the motion as a misuse of powers, implied that it would impede the Prime Minister in his constitutional role and argued that it is about a witch hunt against a single person. Is the truth not that the motion is about allowing us to understand whether or not the process of appointment has been corrupted? As my hon. Friend has mentioned Russian money, can he throw some light on why the Minister has doubled down on those ridiculous arguments?
Brendan O’Hara
Perhaps the Minister could reply for himself. I have no idea why he would double down on those ridiculous arguments.
My right hon. Friend is right that this is not about an individual. It is about a corruption of process, and that was always going to lead us to a re-examination of the Prime Minister’s decision to send Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords for philanthropy and services to the media, as he put it. As we have heard, Mr Lebedev is a Russian businessman who derives his enormous wealth from his father, Alexander Lebedev, a former London-based KGB spy turned oligarch who still has investments in illegally occupied Crimea. At the start of this month, The New York Times said of Evgeny:
“Nobody is a better example of the cozy ties between Russians and the establishment than Mr. Lebedev.”
Just how cosy that relationship is can be seen from the fact that the British Prime Minister personally campaigned for a peerage to turn plain old Evgeny into Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, for the rest of his life.
I could go on about the absurdity of the House of Lords—the absurdity of a so-called democratic Parliament having an unelected upper Chamber into which family chieftains, high-ranking clerics of one denomination, failed and retired politicians and those with deep pockets who are prepared to bankroll a political party are thrust—but I will resist.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
I make it clear that I have never met Lord Lebedev; I do not think I have ever been in the same room as him—but Dmitry Muratov has. He is editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper in Russia. The House will remember that he is also a Nobel peace laureate. He has said:
“The narrative being peddled in parts of the British media about him and his family is not only misjudged but actively dangerous. I urge you to consider who benefits from such untruths being told about a family that is known to be vocally critical of the Kremlin.”
Is the Scottish National party doing the same thing?
Brendan O’Hara
With the greatest respect, we most certainly are not. If this Government are so scared of shining a light that has to be shone, at this of all times, there will be accusations of a cover-up and a belief that there is something to be hidden—something that this Government do not want seen. The debate today is all about allowing transparency. That is what this House should be all about, but unfortunately the Government and Conservative Members seem to be terrified of it.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Is not the real concern that the Prime Minister seemingly ignored Security Service advice? That is the issue. We do not make criticism of appointing the person as a peer; the concern is that the Prime Minister ignored security advice and appointed him despite that advice.
Brendan O’Hara
The hon. Member is absolutely right. This is about why the Prime Minister chose to ignore the advice of the security services, but there is also a hugely important back story about what got us into the position where he did so, and the implications of that.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
My point is a rather similar one: if there was no problem with Lebedev being appointed as a peer and if the guidance from the security services was benign, what is the problem with scrutiny of that advice, which would put to rest all the concerns that people have?
Brendan O’Hara
That is right. A theme appears to be emerging on this side of the House. All we want to do is see what was there. All we want is to be reassured that the advice of the security services was not ignored, and that the appointment of Lord Lebedev was above board and beyond reproach. I do not think that, in a democratic system, that is too much for the House to ask.
As Putin’s army continues to commit its war crimes in Ukraine, we have to get to the bottom of how a man with such close connections to the Kremlin was parachuted into this Parliament. We have to establish exactly what advice was given to the Prime Minister by the security and intelligence services in the summer of 2020, and whether or not he chose to overrule that advice, or sought to alter it in any way, in order to get the outcome that he required.
We know that this was not a straightforward appointment. It could not possibly have been, particularly since, almost a decade ago, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, made it clear that he did not consider it at all appropriate for Mr Lebedev, then the owner of the Evening Standard and The Independent, to join him at MI6 headquarters for lunch. Advisers to the Prime Minister would have known for years of those security service concerns, and one would have hoped that an aspiring politician—or an aspiring Prime Minister—might be wary of becoming too close to Mr Lebedev, but that was not the case. It would appear that in return for favourable headlines in the Evening Standard, Mr Lebedev gained access to the centre of power in the Conservative party, and, particularly after 2019, the centre of the UK Government itself.
Surely Mr Lebedev’s very public utterings about the illegal annexation of Crimea should have set alarm bells ringing in the Conservative party. Did no one in the Conservative party hear or take notice of him calling on western Governments to “stop cold war rhetoric” when they condemned Russia for its aggression in Crimea? Did no one notice his justification that because Crimea had been Russian “for many years”, this was not something to get overly upset about? Did his claim in 2014 that Russia would not be making
“any further incursions into any land”
fall on deaf ears?
The clues were all there, if people chose to look for them. On Syria, Mr Lebedev said that Putin had “shown leadership” in the conflict, and urged the west to accept his offer of a coalition. He followed that up by saying, “Let us keep Assad in power”, because it would be the least worst option, and he doubled down on that by saying:
“On this point I am emphatically with Putin.”
The list is endless. Where was the condemnation of the events surrounding the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, and how in the name of the wee man did our Prime Minister end up having an off-the-record talk with Lord Lebedev—or Evgeny Lebedev, as he was then—48 hours after the Skripal poisonings?
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman at least concede that it was the Conservative Government who led a very robust international effort to respond to the Skripal poisonings, and that the Labour party was, at that time, led by someone who refused to condemn them?
Brendan O’Hara
The Skripal poisonings fit into this debate beautifully, because the fact is that an off-the-record meeting was held between the Prime Minister and Mr Lebedev within 48 hours, at the time of an international crisis, and we do not know why. [Interruption.] I am sorry; I thought that Members wished to intervene, but they are just chuntering.
Mr Lebedev and the Prime Minister socialised. They are widely known to have socialised in Mr Lebedev’s castles in Italy and elsewhere, and in London regularly. Mr Lebedev was present in 2016 at the private dinner when the now Prime Minister decided he was going to back the Brexit campaign. I have no idea what Mr Lebedev’s view on Brexit is, but I do know that, in the year before, he wrote this in his newspaper:
“I have no doubt, based on conversations with senior figures in Moscow, that the Kremlin wants to make an ally rather than an enemy of Britain. And I also believe that it is in Britain’s best interest not only to work constructively with Moscow, but to be an active, engaged player on the world stage.”
I opened this speech by saying that when the Government tell us there is “nothing to see here”, we should keep looking. The danger here, however, is that there is almost too much to see to make sense of. We know that the Prime Minister has been absolutely compromised by his relationship with Lord Lebedev. The public have a right to know if the Prime Minister gave an individual a seat for life in this Parliament against the advice of the security services. Desperately not wanting that to be the case is no reason for Conservative Members to block the release of this material. If there is nothing untoward, the Government should publish the material and put the matter to bed for once and for all. Then we could let Baron Lebedev return to doing hee-haw in the other place, as he has done with aplomb since he arrived there 18 months ago.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Obviously this debate is very well subscribed. I would prefer not to put a time limit on, and if colleagues could speak for around six minutes, we might get everybody in.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
The core part of the proposed Humble Address is a demand that we publish the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission in relation to Lord Lebedev. Labour Members know that, were we to do so, we would be in breach of the rules of that very commission, and they know that because the chair of the commission wrote to the leader of Labour party on 17 March this year saying that the commission’s
“formal advice to the Prime Minister is confidential.”
There is a reason for that. Labour Members also know what that reason is, because it was set out in that letter. According to the commission, the nominees consent to intrusive checks into their background, and they do so on the basis of confidentiality. As we have heard, other non-governmental contributors to that assessment process also provide their information on the basis of confidentiality. The chair of the commission says of publishing such information that it would be
“highly unfair on individuals to do so and risks undermining nominees’ confidence in the confidentiality of vetting processes.”
Labour knows this, and those views are not coming from a Conservative body. The commission has seven members, and only one is a Conservative appointee. There is a Labour member, Lord Clark of Windermere, as well as a Liberal Democrat and four independents, including the Chair. There is no suggestion from the commission that any rules have been breached. If there had been, of course there would be resignations. Lord Clark of Windermere has not resigned, and neither has the Liberal Democrat representative. So why do we have this motion, when it is clear that no rules have been breached? I think it is because Labour Members are trying to smear the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, and they are prepared to damage our institutions to achieve that goal.
I do not know Lord Lebedev. I have never met him. The Labour narrative is that he and people like him are trying to corrupt the Conservatives through Russian influence, but if that is so, it is not working very well. Look at Lord Lebedev’s voting record. He is a Cross Bencher; he is not even a Conservative supporter. I had a look at his maiden speech, in which he said:
“I was raised here for a large part of my life, went to state school and consider myself British, but I am also Russian, which means that I can never be casual about liberty, free speech or the rule of law. Freedom of expression needs its champions. In the post-war era it has rarely been as under assault as it is now. I intend to join hands with noble Lords who can see that and are determined to fight it. A democratic, liberal nation, strong, healthy and free”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2021; Vol. 812, c. 63.]
How subversive! His two written questions were on food banks and food security, and we have already heard that he has made no donations to the Conservative party. So where is the evidence that requires this exceptional approach to Lord Lebedev and the commission’s assessment? There simply is none, other than smear and innuendo.
In response to the invasion of Ukraine, the Conservative Government have been at the forefront of global sanctions. They have supplied more than 10,000 anti-tank and anti-air missiles, trained more than 22,000 troops since 2015, sanctioned more than 1,000 individuals—the oligarchs with whom the Labour party is trying to smear the Government—to a value of £150 billion in the UK and sanctioned Russian banks to a value of over £500 billion in the UK. If the aim was to corrupt this Conservative Government, it is not working.
We are left with what seems to be a clever wheeze by the Labour party to smear and cause damage to the Government and the Prime Minister, but Labour Members should hesitate and look at themselves today because they are doing it at a cost to our institutions. The independent chair of the House of Lords Appointments Commission said it is
“highly unfair on individuals…and risks undermining…confidence in the…processes.”
Labour Members should not be proud of themselves.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I am puzzled by the Solicitor General’s speech, which sounded as if he had written it before the Government decided at lunchtime not to oppose the motion after a revolt by their Back-Bench Members. Perhaps he, or his fellow Minister, will be able to clarify that in their response to the debate. Madam Deputy Speaker, perhaps you or Mr Speaker will be able to clarify the consequences were the Government to refuse to comply with the demands of this motion, if it is passed.
It would have been an easy solution for the Government to get out of this mess with their own Back Benchers, and out of the mess on Russian interference altogether, if only they had published and implemented in full the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. They finally published the report after months of resistance by the Prime Minister and an attempt to fix the Committee by putting in a Chair who would not publish the report, but they still have not implemented its recommendations. Most importantly, the Government have not implemented the report’s central recommendation to hold a proper inquiry into Russian interference in Britain’s democracy. I do not understand why that still has not happened.
There is a pattern, because it was this Prime Minister, when I first asked him and his predecessor about this in 2016, who told the House that there was no evidence of “successful” Russian interference in our democracy and democratic processes. They have stuck very carefully to that description. Time and again I was treated as some kind of eccentric, batty person when I first starting raising this as a genuine concern. I was simply expressing the concerns I had picked up from our intelligence and security services, which we now know made those concerns very plain to the Prime Minister in relation to his intention to give a peerage to Lord Lebedev.
There is a pattern here. We saw it in the Prime Minister’s extraordinary trip, in the immediate aftermath of a NATO summit following the Skripal poisoning and chemical weapon attack in Salisbury, to the Lebedev castle in Tuscany for one of those parties—rather over-the-top parties, by the sound of it. The senior Lebedev was also present at that party, and of course it was President Putin who said, “Once a KGB officer, always a KGB officer.” And the Prime Minister sent his close-protection officers away in an absolutely extraordinary breach of normal protocol.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Alex Lebedev owns Lebedev Holdings, which owns 75% of the Evening Standard. He supported the invasion of Crimea, on which he held a number of events in 2014. We do not know whether he tried to influence the Prime Minister at that point on Ukraine’s territorial integrity; we now see that the invasion of the whole Ukraine was emboldened by that earlier invasion. The Government should release more information, because we just do not know what has happened.
Mr Bradshaw
Mr Lebedev’s public statements were mealy-mouthed after the invasion of Crimea and we know that Lebedev senior has ongoing business interests in illegally occupied Crimea. I would be interested to know whether the Paymaster General knows or has even bothered to try to find out whether Lebedev junior does as well or whether he benefits from those business interests. We have had years of denials and obfuscation from this Prime Minister. We know, thanks to what the intelligence services have put on the public record, that they did warn the Prime Minister against this peerage, he ignored the advice and the rest is history, which is why we are debating this motion today. So when the Paymaster General or his colleague responds to this debate, will they confirm that if the House passes this motion, they will comply with it and publish all the relevant documentation in full, including the WhatsApp messages of the Prime Minister? We have heard other reports elsewhere in recent days that WhatsApp messages have mysteriously and conveniently disappeared from the Prime Minister’s telephone. This is a completely unacceptable way of running a Government in a democracy, particularly one as precious and long standing as ours. That confirmation about all of those documents and the Government adhering to this motion will be very important.
Let us recall the credulity of the Minister at the Dispatch Box when he said, “Oh, Lebedev has been critical of Putin and of Crimea, and has done all these great charitable works.” An effective Kremlin asset in this country is not exactly going to make a reputation for themselves as being a massive supporter of the Kremlin, are they? The credulity of successive Ministers in this Conservative Government makes me feel as though something does not smell right here. They are still refusing to implement the recommendations of the Russia report and I do not see how that position is sustainable after the war in Ukraine—everything has changed. They could get away with this before that. They could get away with, as the Intelligence and Security Committee described it, the wilful ignoring of Russian interference—that is what it said happened under successive Conservative Prime Ministers and under this Government. They cannot get away with that any more. I advise the Paymaster General to go back to Downing Street and speak to the Cabinet and say, “Look, this is the way we are going to avoid this problem.” These problems are going to be repeated in the weeks and months to come, because more stories like this are going to come out about Russian interference and influence in our political system, many of which will touch the Conservative party. But this is not a party political thing, as there are Labour peers who are in equally invidious situations, but the Conservatives are in government and that makes this much more serious. This is friendly advice to the Paymaster General and his ministerial colleagues: come clean and put it all out in the open; implement the recommendations of the Russia report—stop running away from them and hiding from them; and have that inquiry into Russian interference and then everything can be out in the open and transparent. That is the only way, in the medium and long run, that we are going to be confident and satisfied in this country that our politics, democracy, political parties and individuals are not being subverted by the sort of behaviour we have seen from Putin, not just in this country, but in the United States and across the western and democratic world. I support the motion moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and I hope the House will vote for it today, but the Government are going to have to implement it, and quickly.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
This is an interesting one, as I came in with a different speech from the one I am about to give. What can I say? I must touch on the point made by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) about this not being party political. I do not know what debate he has been sitting in for the past hour and a half, but I would certainly disagree with him on that statement. Let us consider this road to Damascus that the Labour party seems to have been on in respect of Russia. When we had the Salisbury attack, Labour’s previous leader was calling for Russia to be allowed to take back samples to test. This is absolutely crazy; it is like to Saul to Paul. The disbelief with which I have sat here today is incredible.
The issue of awarding peerages had dogged this place for a long time—we all remember Lord Levy, although the Labour party does not want to remember the investigations that went on then—but it is as problem. As I said in my intervention, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) gave an articulate speech and touched on a really important point, which is about the broader process of peerages. I wish a more definitive answer had been given for how we solve this. That is the core of the debate. I appreciate that we are considering a specific motion on the release of information, but if we consider the principles behind the debate, it is very bizarre that the Labour party does not appear to offer up solutions to fix the problem for the longer term. Clearly, there is a longer-term issue and concerns about the advice given to Prime Ministers and from Prime Ministers in the appointment of peers. Would it not make sense to open up that debate?
My understanding of the role of an Opposition is that they are meant to put forward credible alternatives, not just sit here and moan. My concern is that I could not quite get a credible alternative from the Opposition in two times of asking—[Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) chuntering from a sedentary position, as usual, on that point.
When the Mayor of London was partying with Lord Lebedev in 2017, or when Labour Front Benchers were partying with him in 2011 and 2012, there was silence. What confuses me about this whole situation is the fact that it is one rule for them, as always, but another rule for everyone else. But that is the Labour party, Madam Deputy Speaker—
Shaun Bailey
No, I do not think so. The hon. Member has articulated her position from a sedentary position for a long time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) said that the core of the debate was a process issue. We do not want to undermine the process of the commission when there are GDPR and legal consequences of the motion passing. People put themselves before the process on the basis that it is confidential and they can give the full transparent disclosure that they are required to give. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General has articulated, there is a real risk—
Shaun Bailey
As the hon. Member has been so persistent, I will give way to her.
Sarah Owen
I thank the hon. Member for giving way on this point. Transparency is key to today’s motion. If he is all for transparency, why is his party not supporting this motion to be transparent and honest with the British public? The Minister talked about protecting processes, but this is a question about whether the process protects the British people.
Shaun Bailey
I hear the hon. Member’s point about transparency and I get that—there is a broader conversation to be had about that—but as my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General stated, we cannot do that at the risk of undermining the processes that are there. What I will say to the hon. Member—perhaps she and I will agree on this—is let us change the process. How about that? There is stunned silence at a Conservative MP suggesting changing the process, but that is the point I am trying to make.
There is a fundamental flaw in today’s motion. Okay, the documentation is released, but what then? Labour seems to be clamouring for something that it skirts around in the motion but does not go forward to suggest change. It strikes me as absurd.
Munira Wilson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that there are no ideas forthcoming from the Opposition on how to change the process. Let me give him a bold and radical idea that my party has been championing for decades, which is that we should have a fully elected upper Chamber, not an appointed one. We would therefore not have to have this appointment process at all, and we would not have to have this discussion at all.
Shaun Bailey
Just to clarify, I never said that the Liberal Democrats did not have an idea, just the Labour party. I am fully aware of the hon. Member’s party’s position.
Let me respond to the undertones of the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland pointed out, our response to Ukraine has not been hindered by this situation at all—with the 22,000 troops that have been trained, 10,000 missiles, the fact that we had the President of Ukraine appear in this Chamber and that he has thanked this Government for their intervention in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people say that this country stepped forward and they see us as their biggest ally in their fight for freedom—the undertone of the motion and the debate is disgraceful.
The motion is fundamentally flawed. I have no issue with backing a motion when it works, but this one does not even meet the procedure it tries to use. I come back to the point that we have been told that this is not party political, but I have been sitting in the debate for an hour now and I do not know how it could not be perceived as party political. Clearly, there are broader conversations to be had and I look forward to those ideas, but the motion is flawed and does not work. It is procedurally just not right and it seeks to undermine the existing processes, putting at risk the disclosure and transparency that we are trying to put across and the confidence people have to engage with the system. The motion is completely flawed, as I say, and it cannot be supported today.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
This is a timely debate. In these historic and trying times, this country and our allies must be able to have trust in the Prime Minister on defence, on national security and on Russia. I am afraid to say that on all those fronts there are enormous questions for him to answer. My hon. Friends have outlined the concerns regarding the appointment of Lord Lebedev to the House of Lords. That is why this motion calling for the relevant documents to be published is so crucial. However, that is not the only cause for concern regarding the Prime Minister’s judgment on the Lebedev family.
On 16 March this year I wrote to the Security Minister regarding the now Prime Minister’s actions and his encounters with the Lebedev family in April 2018, which, as others have said, was just a month after the Salisbury poisonings. We all remember the events of 4 March 2018, when the Novichok nerve agent was used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who both became seriously ill following their contact with the deadly substance. Detective sergeant Nick Bailey, one of the first on the scene, was admitted to intensive care but thankfully survived.
On 12 March the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) came to the House of Commons and told honourable Members that it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the Salisbury attack, saying,
“either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country; or the Russian Government lost control of their potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”—[Official Report, 12 March 2018; Vol. 637, c.620-21.]
Crucially, she said that the Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the Foreign Office that afternoon to provide an explanation.
The following month, the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) attended a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. In advance of the meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg outlined that Russia would be first item on the agenda, after what he said were several years of Moscow’s “pattern of dangerous behaviour”. He went on to say:
“It is also highly likely that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.”
That NATO meeting was on the 27 April 2018. I outline the timeline and context to make it crystal clear that the then Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, would have fully understood how serious the situation with Russia was back in April 2018, in the middle of the Salisbury incident. It is therefore incredible that he went straight from that NATO meeting to Palazzo Terranova in Italy for a weekend-long party hosted by Evgeny Lebedev, now Lord Lebedev.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) has already said, there the then Foreign Secretary met with Evgeny Lebedev’s father Alexander Lebedev, an ex-KGB officer. That was confirmed by a spokesperson for Alexander Lebedev to The Guardian, which published the story in November 2019. When asked about the meeting, Downing Street declined to comment.
It is reported that the then Foreign Secretary attended the party with no security, and, other than a brief entry of ministerial interests on the Foreign Office website, where he declared an “overnight stay” there on 28 April—so we know it happened—there appears to be no official record of his time there, nor any details of any meetings or who else was in attendance. He left his officials and close protection officers behind, despite the Foreign Secretary’s position being deemed to require round-the-clock protection from the Metropolitan Police.
While the Foreign Secretary was off the grid, partying with Lord Lebedev and his father the ex-KGB agent, the Novichok was still waiting to be found, in a bin seven miles north of Salisbury. It was found by Charlie Rowley on 30 June. Charlie survived his exposure to the Novichok, but sadly his girlfriend Dawn did not, having sprayed it directly onto her skin, believing it to be perfume. It is nothing short of a miracle, given what we know about the Novichok and its reckless use, that more people were not seriously injured, with greater loss of life. A great deal of thanks is due to the professionals who worked tirelessly to respond to the risk and make the area safe. To leave a NATO meeting intended to co-ordinate the response of NATO members to the Salisbury poisoning, as Foreign Secretary, and fly directly to a party where a former KGB agent was in attendance, without security or officials, shows a somewhat catastrophic error of judgment. In September 2018, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, returned to update the House of Commons to confirm that, based on a body of intelligence, the Government had concluded that the two individuals named by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service were officers from the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) Neston raised this at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, the Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), said:
“The hon. Gentleman is talking total nonsense and I do not have anything to add to what I have already said.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 889.]
This is utterly, utterly unacceptable. The Deputy Prime Minister might think that this sounds unbelievable, and he would be absolutely right—it does—but I have only outlined what has already been confirmed and published and is in the public domain. As a minimum, he owes my hon. Friend an apology. But beyond that, this Government and the Prime Minister owe the country an explanation. I am still waiting for a response to my letter to my counterpart, the Minister for Security and Borders, asking for answers. It is entirely right that the documents requested in the motion are published within the same spirit of transparency on this matter.
In addition to the documents relating to Lord Lebedev’s peerage, may I also ask that an urgent explanation is made to this House regarding the Prime Minister’s movements in April 2018? For him to decide to go to that party attended by a former KGB officer, at the height of the Salisbury poisoning, on the way back from a NATO meeting on Russia, left both himself and the country horribly exposed. I put on record my thanks to the fearless journalists who have put this information in the public domain. The Deputy Prime Minister’s dismissal of the PMQ from my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston is frankly beneath him. This is incredibly serious. The general public and our allies need an explanation from the Prime Minister, and we need the documents outlined in the motion to be published without delay.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Lord Lebedev’s case raises a wider question of the huge weaknesses that exist within our political donations system. For over a decade, foreign money has flooded our democracy. The Minister may like to claim, when he winds up this debate, that his party does not raise money from Russian oligarchs, but nearly £2 million in donations from Russia has found its way into either the Tory party or constituency association coffers since the Prime Minister took office.
A further £1.6 million has been donated to the party, its MPs and local associations by Aquind or its company directors. Recent investigations have revealed that one of its directors, Mr Fedotov, benefited from $4 billion alleged fraud in Putin’s Russia. Both Mr Fedotov and Mr Temerko have undertaken a co-ordinated effort to influence the Conservative party into support for their disastrous project, which would have caused untold disruption to my constituency. Since the project began, directors have bankrolled the equivalent of one in 10 Tory MPs, including the Paymaster General. That includes a string of current and former Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and a serving member of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
We are still not completely clear where the company’s money has come from or what the company’s owners expected in return for their cash, but, like the concern expressed in the motion, it does not take much to connect the dots. In 2018, the project was magically designated a national infrastructure project by the then Business Secretary, taking the planning decision away from the local authority and giving it to central Government. Until the Paterson fiasco, it seemed a nailed-on certainty that the project would go ahead, despite the dedicated and unified opposition from my city and, specifically, the #LetsStopAquind campaign group. The Business Secretary faced a choice between the people of Portsmouth and a billionaire Tory donor facing fraud allegations. After much dither and delay, and a concerted local campaign, he narrowly made the right choice. However, my constituents continue to ask how Conservative Ministers came so close to allowing party donors facing corruption allegations to control a national infrastructure project. Can those who receive the funds from Aquind or its directors be sure that they are not indirectly benefiting from fraud? Like the motion today, the answers are uncomfortable for the Conservatives and worrying for our country.
The case of Lord Lebedev and the Aquind fiasco threaten to undermine our democracy and our national security. Now more than ever, we should be taking every possible step to insulate ourselves from the threat posed by those with links to Putin’s political power, but for every second that the Conservatives are in power, their cronyism makes our whole country more vulnerable.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is talking about party political donations. When Unite, for example, donates £1 million to the Labour party and Labour Members of Parliament, or when many other trade unions make donations, what influence does that buy those trade unions? Do they write the manifesto, for example?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Sorry, I think there is a bit of confusion: I thought the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) was taking an intervention.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The suggestion that Labour Members are somehow anti-Russian is not borne out by the facts and is just an attempt by Government Members to avoid the criticism that the motion makes of the way they handled the appointment of Lord Lebedev. In order to understand why his appointment to the House of Lords is concerning, we have to look at the history of where the family money came from.
Evgeny Lebedev’s father is a former KGB operative. He joined the KGB in the early 1980s, he was active in the KGB through perestroika and he was active in London. Although as a diplomat he had diplomatic cover, he operated as a spy out of Kensington Palace Gardens from 1988 to 1992. During perestroika, the KGB reformed itself. Rather than being an anti-capitalist organisation, it used the knowledge it had gained of capitalism, and members of the KGB became capitalists themselves. In an extraordinary way, many became extraordinarily rich in a very short space of time.
In the early ’90s, Alexander Lebedev set up his first business. By 1995, he was able to buy a bank, the National Reserve Bank. It was a bank in financial difficulties; none the less, he had enough money to buy it. Its assets grew incredibly fast, and by 2006 his fortune was estimated to be $3.5 billion. Not bad work for a member of the KGB. He was listed by “Forbes” as Russia’s 39th richest man. He also purchased newspapers along the way—something that would be repeated by the family in later years.
In 1997, the Russian prosecutor general, Yury Skuratov, opened multiple investigations into Lebedev and the NRB, accusing the bank of tax avoidance and fraud. Skuratov also investigated Yeltsin’s Government in the late 1990s, and he believed that Lebedev was spying on him to counteract the investigations into the NRB and the Kremlin. Leaks about Skuratov’s personal life went on the internet and were traced back to an organisation called Konus, a security company linked to Lebedev’s bank, the NRB. In 1999, a sex kompromat tape appeared showing a man who looked like Skuratov with two young sex workers. Kompromat is a set-up—basically, a honey trap—where people are filmed in compromising situations. Skuratov denied that it was him.
At the time that the tape was leaked, Putin was head of the FSB, the Russian spy organisation that replaced the KGB. Putin declared on national television that the man on the tape was Skuratov. Skuratov was sacked and the corruption investigations into Alexander Lebedev’s bank and the Government collapsed. Putin then entered the Kremlin, and Lebedev’s wealth increased exponentially.
Kompromats are used by secret services, especially the KGB. Our secret services have said that if someone put themselves in a compromising position, as the Prime Minister did when he went to the Palazzo Terranova, they too would have been on it, and would have tried to find evidence that the subject they were investigating had compromised themselves. That is why the security services are so alarmed by the behaviour of the Prime Minister—by the fact that he would leave behind his security detail and go to bunga bunga parties at Palazzo Terranova.
We have to understand that we are talking about a pattern of behaviour by Russian oligarchs. They have used London to launder their money—to turn dirty money into clean money—and then meticulously set about buying influence in various parts of British society. They are starting to buy political influence, social influence, football clubs, and newspapers—you name it, they are seeking to influence it. They are using strategic lawsuits against public participation against any journalist, newspaper or book writer who investigates what they are up to. Political donations are part of this; £2.2 million has been donated since the Prime Minister became leader of the Conservative party.
Then there is VTB Bank, the second largest bank in Russia, which has been sanctioned by the Government. An individual who works for it, in global fixed income trading, has given £44,000 to the Tory party in the last two years, including £3,000 to the Conservative party in Greenwich, my borough. We are fighting local elections; why should they be paid for by Russian money that comes from a bank that is associated with the Kremlin? Why should somebody who is paid by a Russian bank finance local government elections in this country? How is that justifiable?
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Given what my hon. Friend says, he will be interested to hear that Lord Wharton, who was appointed to the Lords on the same day as Mr Lebedev, is a former adviser to Alexander Temerko, who has distributed money to Tory MPs and the Tees Valley Mayor. Yesterday, it was revealed that the Mayor’s close relative has been appointed to Lord Wharton’s Office for Students. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister’s dodgy actions are perpetuated throughout the Tory party?
Clive Efford
I absolutely do. We need to shine the light of accountability on what has been going on. That is what the motion calls for. It calls for the evidence to be published—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. It is important that references are not made to Members of the House of Lords who are outside the scope of this motion; I say that just so that Mr Cunningham is clear.
Clive Efford
I am grateful for that clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was concerned; I was worried. I will finish off, before you criticise me for going on too long.
The motion calls for the evidence to be published—simple as that. That is why there has been a collapse in the number of Tory Back Benchers in the Chamber, and why the Government are not voting against the motion—because their Back Benchers will not vote against it; it is a perfectly reasonable motion, calling for accountability from a Prime Minister who has behaved disgracefully and could have compromised the security of this country. That is what the motion is about. It is a disgrace that the Conservatives are not voting for it and not holding the Prime Minister to account.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). He is absolutely right: the logic, or rather lack of logic, of the Government’s argument beggars belief. If the Government believe that what is in the motion is wrong, and that it should not be agreed to, they have the option of voting against it, but they will not do that because their Back Benchers will not allow them to.
Actually, what is being asked of this House is not unreasonable. We are asking for the release of the information that led to the appointment of Lord Lebedev. Ultimately, the issue of the appointment of Lord Lebedev hinges on two things—transparency and national security. The Government’s dangerous links to Putin’s oligarchs are putting Britain at risk. The British public deserve to know why the son and business partner of an ex-KGB agent was allowed to be nominated to the House of Lords. That is not and should not be a controversial thing to ask of the Government.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
I hope this is also not a controversial point to raise, but could the hon. Member just confirm whether he campaigned for the former leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), to sit on the Front Bench and lead his party?
Andrew Gwynne
The hon. Lady knows that I have been a Member of Parliament for 17 years, and as a Labour MP, I want a Labour Government. I have to say to the hon. Lady that if we had a Labour Government right now, we would not be allowing dirty money in British politics. We have made it quite clear, year after year, that we need to clean up the financing of our political system.
Andrew Gwynne
I have already given way, and I will give way a bit later if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make my argument.
I would argue that this is not and should not be a controversial thing to ask of the Government, but the Conservative Government are asking us to do an extraordinary amount on their behalf. They are asking us to take their word for it that the appointment of Lord Lebedev had absolutely nothing to do with the Prime Minister’s cosy relationship with the newspaper owner. They are asking us to ignore the overnight stay the Prime Minister had with the mogul in his flashy villa in Perugia when he was Foreign Secretary. They are asking us to ignore the trips in Lebedev’s private jet and the lavish parties, as well as to ignore the staunch support of the Evening Standard for the Prime Minister when he was running for a second term as Mayor of London.
The Government are asking us to ignore the comments from the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser; to ignore reports that the House of Lords Appointments Commission advised against the appointment of Lord Lebedev, only for the Prime Minister to personally intervene and push through the appointment; and to ignore the concerns raised by the security services, and the fact that the Prime Minister reportedly got very cross when he was told that Lord Lebedev represented a security concern. They are asking us to ignore Lord Lebedev’s defence of Vladimir Putin and his illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014, to ignore Lebedev’s calls for Britain to make Vladimir Putin an ally, and to ignore his parroting of Kremlin conspiracy theories and his doubts over Putin’s links to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
I ask colleagues: is this a fair thing for the Government to ask Members of the House of Commons to do? Does this seem like the actions of a responsible Government and Prime Minister? I know that some on the Government Benches will say that the Government’s pre-packaged response lines are almost as nonsensical as they are predictable, and on that point I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Jonathan Gullis
The hon. Gentleman talks about the dangers, apparently, of this Conservative Government, but I am terrified by the fact that, at the last general election, the then Leader of the Opposition was someone who had been friends with the IRA not long after the Brighton bombing and laid wreaths for Black September. Those are the scandalous things that are dangers—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has to be very careful if he has not notified somebody when he intends to make allegations about them, and he should know that.
Andrew Gwynne
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not noticed that the Labour party has changed, but certainly people in the country have, and I would say to him that I hope the Whip on the Treasury Bench is paying due attention, because he did read out some of the points on page 4 of the Conservative party brief.
The Government claim that Lord Lebedev was nominated in recognition of his contribution to the UK and his charitable ventures. If that is the case, let us see the formal information concerning the appointment of Lord Lebedev. If there is nothing untoward, there is no reason not to publish the advice.
The urgency of this request cannot be overstated. As we debate here in this Chamber, Vladimir Putin is wreaking destruction on the people of Ukraine. His forces are murdering people in their thousands, and displacing millions more. We speak with one voice in this House of Commons and this British Parliament when it comes to the disgraceful actions of Putin in Ukraine.
For over a decade, however, Putin’s money has been allowed to flood into our democracy. Nearly £2 million of Kremlin cash has found its way either to the Tory party or into constituency association coffers since this Prime Minister took office. That should be a profound mark of shame for Conservative Members. In that context, Labour Members are requesting this vital information. We, and the people we represent, need to know whether the Prime Minister puts the national security of this country ahead of personal relationships. This is about a basic prerequisite for the job.
I have no doubt that most Conservative colleagues will abstain from voting, and therefore this humble address will pass. I hope, and sincerely expect, that the Government will follow the letter of the humble address, and release the information forthwith. However, I urge colleagues to think carefully about the message that their actions send out of this place, and I urge them to do more than abstain and to vote with Labour Members. Let us send a strong message that Putin’s cronies will not be tolerated in British democracy, and that we in this House uphold the highest standards of integrity and transparency. Release the Security Service’s advice to the Prime Minister, so that we all know what he was told and the actions that followed.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
I have spoken many times in this House in recent weeks about the troubling closeness of the relationship between many in this Government and Russian oligarchs, often with direct links to the Kremlin. Yet despite the clear evidence presented to the Prime Minister, much of it from our own intelligence services, the Government have repeatedly and deliberately turned a blind eye to those concerns. Even now, when presented with overwhelming facts about Evgeny Lebedev, and his father’s past in the KGB, far from acting swiftly and decisively to cut out the Kremlin’s insidious influence, Conservative Members have instead welcomed Putin’s cronies with open arms. Flush with oligarchic cash, it is little wonder that they have done little more than sanction a few prominent Russians, none of whom are Tory party donors. As bombs continue to rain down on Kharkiv and Kyiv, that is an insult to the millions of Ukrainians who are fleeing for their lives amid the ongoing bloodshed. It is an outrage.
As I have already alluded to, just a few thousand roubles is all it takes to gain access to the corridors of Whitehall. One such example was when the Conservative party accepted £30,000 from the wife of a former crony of Vladimir Putin. The donation was from Lubov Chernukhin, who is married to former Russian Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Chernukhin. That was despite the then Defence Secretary’s own warnings, just weeks earlier, about Russian cyber-attacks, and it led to farcical scenes that included the UK Defence Secretary giving Mrs Chernukhin a private tour of the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall.
Given that influence in the Conservative party is so easily bought, major questions over Russian financial influence need to be addressed urgently. Such actions put our national security at risk and potentially corrupt the very politics and democracy that we seek to uphold. We need to root out that dark money and truly defend democracy by cleaning up the malevolent foreign influence that is a consequence of that money. The Government have done none of that, though, because their insatiable greed has blinded them and continues to see them play fast and loose with our national security.
It is important to make the point, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) did earlier, that the vast majority of Russians are decent people. Not everyone is linked to Putin just in the same way that, fortunately, not everyone in the UK is linked to our corrupt Government. That is why Labour is calling for Lebedev to be stripped of his peerage not because of his Russian citizenship, but because of his links to the Kremlin.
Lebedev’s father was a member of the KGB, as exposed so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and many other Labour colleagues. In this post-cold war era, we may well have previously been able to plant that fact firmly in the rear view mirror, but when the current President of Russia is a former KGB agent who continues to act as if he is carrying out orders directly from the Lubyanka, killing people on British soil in the process, it cannot be right that one of Putin’s close associates is sat in his robes able to influence our democracy in the opulence of the other place.
The Prime Minister cannot claim that he was not aware. His former chief of staff recently stated that he was in the room when the Prime Minister was told that intelligence officials had serious reservations about giving Lebedev the honour. That same advice was changed after the Prime Minister personally intervened and then, just months later, the first Lord of Siberia was ennobled. It is patently clear that the Prime Minister bent the rules to suit himself and put his personal interests and friendships first. Why? The truth is that he has been in hock to Lebedev for years. Lord Lebedev of Siberia quite literally helped him to secure two terms as Mayor of London, while also ensuring the Conservative party remained in Government.
As proprietor of the Evening Standard, London’s largest newspaper, Lebedev has repeatedly intervened to influence the outcome of elections. On 30 April 2012, just before the now Prime Minister was facing an election to secure a second term as Mayor, the front page of the Evening Standard, issued to almost a million Londoners, screamed:
“Boris Johnson: The right choice for London”.
Then, on 5 May 2015, just days before the general election, the front page once again instructed its readers:
“As we prepare to go to the polls in a knife-edge election, the Standard urges its readers to consider what is best for our capital… and support the Tories”.
The link is clear, present and direct.
In any functioning democracy, that level of propaganda would be called out, but sadly in the UK the press barons wield enormous influence, and one must question whether organs such as the Evening Standard are pulling the Prime Minister’s strings. Is that not the real reason why the Prime Minister is so averse to stripping Lebedev of his peerage? To do so would mean biting the hand of the puppet masters who feed him.
The Government can and must do more to help the people of Ukraine, as Opposition Members have said. As Declassified UK and openDemocracy recently revealed, British businesses recently sponsored an arms fair where sanctioned Russian weapons makers showed off munitions currently being used to attack Ukraine. It gets worse. While the Government were repeatedly spouting rhetoric in this Chamber about taking tough measures—this is scandalous—the Minister for Defence Procurement, the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), was among the guests at the world defence show in Riyadh. Other attendees included at least four Russian firms sanctioned by the UK Government as well as others whose executives have been personally sanctioned. Perhaps the Minister, in winding up, can tell us why his colleague was there, and why he was at the same murderous arms fair as Russia’s biggest arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, part of the sanctioned state conglomerate Rostec, which was busy promoting tanks and drones that independent arms researchers at the Omega Research Foundation identified as weapons used by Russia in the current war in Ukraine. Earlier this month the Russian Ministry of Defence even shared videos on social media of helicopters, exhibited at that very same fair by Rosoboronexport, firing at Ukrainian forces, yet our Government were there and present. That is shameful.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sam Tarry
No, I won’t. Our defence procurement Minister was also rubbing shoulders—[Interruption.] I will give way at the end. Hear how bad it gets. Our defence procurement Minister was also rubbing shoulders with representatives of Almaz-Antey, a Russian state-owned anti-aircraft manufacturer also sanctioned by the UK for
“providing heavy weaponry to separatists in eastern Ukraine, contributing to the destabilisation of Ukraine”
that we see today in Russia’s all-out war. He was also pressing the flesh with representatives of UralVagonZavod, another sanctioned state-owned company exhibiting at the fair that manufactures tanks.
The reality is that the Government’s empty rhetoric, weak actions and toothless sanctions are giving cover to Putin’s murderous regime and costing lives in Ukraine. It is shameful. All of us on the Labour Benches would like the Minister to show some gumption and tell us the real reason why the Prime Minister is so unwilling to so much as even entertain the possibility of stripping Lebedev of his peerage and sharing the information we have requested. The Prime Minister’s continual failure to act makes a mockery of our democracy. It highlights the cesspool of cronyism and corruption that the Government are wallowing in and is an insult to the families of the dead who have lost their lives in this ongoing conflict.
Mr Holden
The real insult the hon. Gentleman should be thinking about is the insult to the dead people killed on the streets of Britain when the leader he supported asked the Kremlin to check whether it was their poison that had killed them or not. Does he not reflect on the fact that Britain was the first country in the world to provide military training and defensive weapons in support of the Ukrainian people, or that it was his party, under Ed Miliband, that did everything possible to stop our support for the Syrian opposition at that time? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. First of all, the hon. Gentleman knows that he should not refer to another Member by name; he needs to refer to their constituency. Secondly, it is important that we stick to the motion in front of us. There is a bit of a tendency to wander off into different subjects that are perhaps leading us slightly astray from the matter in hand, which is the process we are discussing with regard to peerages and so on. It was said at the beginning that we should try to keep our language moderate and calm. I think we need to return to that and I am sure Mr Tarry will now do so.
Sam Tarry
Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was merely thinking about the wanderings of the defence procurement Minister, which ended up at Russian arms fairs.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s comments, the irony is that if people had listened to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who for years and years has been calling for sanctions and actions against Russia, then perhaps those guys on the Government Benches would not have been—[Interruption.] I was just trying to answer the question. If only they had listened to the advice of Labour Members who were saying how dangerous it was that relationships with the Russians and our Government were far too cosy.
The Prime Minister’s continual failure to act makes a mockery of our democracy, and highlights the cesspool of cronyism and corruption at the heart of this Government. I am saying that this is a moment to reflect. The unwillingness to share that information and to shine a light of truth—a light of truth—into what many people across the country are wondering, led me to reflect on something I once read. Professor Richard Sakwa said in his seminal book “Russian Politics and Society”:
“Under late communism, nepotism and patron client relations undermined the political criteria of elite recruitment in the nomenklatura system. The political elite began to degenerate into a social class, perhaps one of the most economically useless in history…the Party fostered a class that grew at its expense and began to transform itself into a traditional oligarchy.”
That is a description of the collapsing Soviet Union, yet it could be used to describe the regime of the Conservative party.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I have attended almost every debate we have had on an economic crime Bill up until this point. In my role as my party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs when the Navalny list first came out well over a year ago, I started to name some of the names, and I have since done that in a more comprehensive form. Every single time this issue has come to this place, it has generally been discussed in a cross-party spirit. If we possibly can, I really want us to elevate ourselves from where the debate has been so far. It is in everyone’s interest to root out even suggestions of corruption in our politics, in any form and undertaken by any party.
I put it to all Members that this issue is not easy for any party. Parties of all colours, of mixed colours and all the rest of it have at some point floated close to this. It is absolutely right that our free media asks questions and that this House is allowed to scrutinise. That is exactly what unpins the very thing that Putin does not want, which is democracy. I sincerely hope that in all that we are agreed.
Although on the face of it this debate is about process, I believe it to be a debate about questions and the fundamental integrity of those who take their places not just in this Chamber but in the other place. While we have a democracy—a democracy that the Intelligence and Security Committee suggests has been under the threat of Russian interference—it is right to ask questions about how someone may have reached a level at which they have influence and, indeed, the ability to vote on the law of this land.
I point out that the Liberal Democrats have long campaigned on this issue—indeed, every single Liberal Democrat Lord is signed up to losing their own job because we believe we should have an elected House of Lords. That is our proposal. Were that system in place, they would be appointed by their constituents—the voters of this country—and we would not be having these discussions, or at least not in this way. But that is not what currently happens, so let me come back to the process.
The problem with the appointment of Lord Lebedev is that our free media, with its ability to root around in these questions and shine light into the darkness, came across evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister overruled or bent—whatever it may be—the advice of the security services and the commission. The question being asked is why we are focusing on Lord Lebedev; well, because this has not happened in this way before. The advice of the commission was overruled one other time, and that was also by this Prime Minister—indeed, that was the first time—so there is form. That was the first time ever that a Prime Minister did that.
Let me put this all into context. Today, the Metropolitan police have issued fines for parties that the Prime Minister told us categorically from the Dispatch Box never happened. The problem is not the process; I argue that it seems the process is actually working. The commission makes recommendations based on what it heard from the security services. It seems that the problem might be the Prime Minister, which is why this debate is important. We have to separate the wheat from the chaff. To what extent is the process working—actually, I think it is—and to what extent have we had interference in our democracy at a number of levels, of which this is potentially one example? I say “potentially” because we just do not know. The purpose of the motion is to shed light. Let the truth be out.
I hear what the Minister said about the process somehow being denigrated. However, it sounds to me as though the process would be reinforced, because the process said that Lord Lebedev should not be given a peerage, and that therefore reinforces the need for the commission in the first place. It was just doing its job, which it did well, but it seems that the Prime Minister overruled it. He claims that he never did that, and there is a counter-claim by Dominic Cummings—let us all take that with the pinch of salt it absolutely deserves.
I think the Government should welcome the publication of this information. I have spoken to Government Members who want to see this come out. I am proudly in WhatsApp groups with Government Members who, like me, care about our democracy, who are trying to push through the economic crime legislation, who are frustrated that it took six years for part one to come and are desperate for part two, and who have spoken collectively and positively about what the Government are finally doing, for example, on SLAPPs—strategic lawsuits against public participation—and other issues. We are grasping the nettle and it will be difficult for all of us. However, the Government are somehow now standing at the Dispatch Box and twisting this into anything other than what it is, which is a cool-headed look at how our democracy has been functioning for decades and an understanding of how Russian interference has permeated, like a rot, through our economy, society and even our politics.
We all have to admit that this process is going to be difficult. I wish that the Government would admit that and say, “Yes, it will be difficult, but we are going to do this anyway because it is the right thing to do.” By looking into that Pandora’s box, they may well find things that they do not want to know about. The Government seem to be taking an ostrich mentality, and I kind of get it, except we are all here as custodians of our democracy, putting the country first. I genuinely think that any Government who chose to deal with this matter would be rewarded by the public for doing so, because they would be grateful, especially at a time of national crisis, when people and authoritarian regimes are seeking to undermine our democracy. There has never been a better time to root out of the evil of corruption, no matter where that leads.
Fundamentally, this is what needs to happen: we need not only all the information to be published, but an independent inquiry into what happened and how the Prime Minister was involved, or was not. I am genuinely sorry to say this, because it reflects on our whole country when we do not know if our Prime Minister is telling the truth or not, but we just do not know. In the same way that Sue Gray has rooted out what happened after the Prime Minister said that no parties ever took place, and they did—I am afraid that we cannot trust his word at this moment—we need an independent inquiry to verify whether or not he may have inadvertently misled the House previously. That is why this Humble Address is important: it will help, not hinder, the situation.
The other thing that I do not understand is why the Russia report recommendation to investigate and publish fully the extent of Russian interference in our democracy has not been carried out.
I will quote from the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report, because it is so important:
“Several members of the Russian elite who are closely linked to Putin are identified as being involved with charitable and/or political organisations in the UK, having donated to political parties, with a public profile which positions them to assist Russian influence operations. It is notable that a number of Members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state—these relationships should be carefully scrutinised, given the potential for the Russian state to exploit them.”
I commend the speech of the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who hit the nail on the head. It is not necessarily a question of the words of Lord Lebedev, which other hon. Members have quoted; I fundamentally disagree with him, but there were Members of this House with the same views and it could be said that those views are genuinely held. That is fine, but the point is how the Russian state and particularly the oligarchs have acquired their money. I used to sit on the Public Accounts Committee, and we had a phrase: “Follow the money.” Following the money very often leads to where the power really lies.
The issue in this case is that the money has been used to buy access and influence. We know how these oligarchs operate: they do things that, on the face of it, look great. They quite often fundraise for causes that may publicly be different from what they are being told to do. It is very sophisticated. The face of corruption looks nice—it gives people champagne, it buys them nice things, it lets them have a good time. I am not suggesting straight out that that is what Lord Lebedev has done, but it is right that we ask questions, because that is the modus operandi of the entire oligarch system.
Andrew Gwynne
I would argue that the Ukraine invasion by Putin’s forces has brought sharply into view the extent of the involvement of Kremlin-linked people and organisations, not just in this country—although obviously we are concerned about this country—but across the west. As we speak with one voice on Ukraine, is it now time to speak with one voice on cleaning up British politics once and for all? If not now, when?
Layla Moran
I absolutely agree: now is the time. It is worth saying that that would not just apply to Russian oligarchs, because we know that other countries have sought to do the same thing. Investigating the extent of the interference in our democracy would set us up for a much stronger future, so I believe that this is the right motion at the right time.
I also argue that we should have rooted out the corruption years ago. In fact, it was a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative Chancellor who first suggested that at the Dispatch Box. I have said several times that it should not be this hard to implement a Conservative party manifesto promise. We are getting there, so, please, let us continue the cross-party spirit in how we go about rooting out corruption. That extends, I am afraid, to the dealings of Lord Lebedev as someone who is allowed to vote on this country’s laws—the one oligarch who seems to have been allowed to do that. I urge the House to back the motion.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I would dearly love to speak at length about some of the Conservative party’s many friends and donors and those of the Prime Minister, but of course that would be out of scope, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you will be delighted to hear that I will stick to the subject of the debate: the appointment of Lord Lebedev.
“A democratic, liberal nation, strong, healthy and free: I pledge that everything I do in this House will be to defend and further these principles.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2021; Vol. 812, c. 63.]
Those were the concluding words of the maiden speech of Lord Lebedev of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, to give him his full title—a title that sounds as if he may have a foot in both camps. That five-minute maiden speech is the only contribution that he has made in the other place since his appointment in July 2020, almost two years ago. “Everything I do”, he said: nice claim, but—I hate to disappoint—he does not appear to have done anything.
The problem, as I see it, is that Lord Lebedev’s elevation to the other place bears all the hallmarks of an undemocratic, illiberal nation with increasingly weak and unhealthy institutions. We are meant to have processes in place to stop what has happened in this case. As I understand it, ordinarily the House of Lords Appointments Commission vets and approves nominations for life peerages, relying on the security advice provided by the Cabinet Office and the security services. The commission’s recommendations are almost always followed. I say “almost always” because the Prime Minister, in this case, seems to have put his personal interest above the national interest, and may have overruled the advice of the security services in the commission’s recommendations in awarding Evgeny Lebedev a peerage.
Jerome Mayhew
Since the allegation appears to be that Lord Lebedev is using his position in the other place as a way of subverting our laws, is it not rather surprising that he has not taken the opportunity over the last two years to exercise that vote even once?
Matt Western
Why should he? Why does he need actually to speak in the House of Lords? He has the power, the status and the influence, and, may I say, the protection that that peerage affords him, which is why we are limited in what we can say about him now. He has all the power that he wanted, all the influence he seeks, just by the very nature of that peerage. He need not say a word down the other end, and he probably will not, although we look forward to the moment when he does, and I am sure we will all be in the Chamber listening to him.
Alex Cunningham
I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that those friendships and networks go right to the top of Government, all the way to No. 10 Downing Street and the Prime Minister, who has enjoyed this person’s hospitality, travelled on his jets and holidayed with him. He has that contact, that influence, at the highest point of Government.
Matt Western
I do indeed agree with my hon. Friend. Just last week I mentioned the bunga bunga parties, which I think we should know a great deal more about. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned, in connection with another case, the videotapes and negatives that may exist. I would not be surprised if they were held somewhere else.
Let me return to the issue of the appointment through the commission. I should be interested to know how many nominations it has rejected, and I have tabled a parliamentary question to that effect.
The Prime Minister’s relationship with Lord Lebedev is extensive, intimate and long-standing, and it should be of real public and national interest. However, for far too long their alleged collaboration has been ignored. As the proprietor of both the Evening Standard and The Independent, Lord Lebedev was clearly a useful contact for the Prime Minister in his role as Mayor of London, but the professional soon turned personal. It is reported that the Prime Minister attended four parties at Lord Lebedev’s Umbrian villa during his time as London Mayor—and then there are the bunga bunga parties. According to The Times, the Prime Minister visited Lord Lebedev’s fantasy castle in Perugia every October for five consecutive years, from 2012 to 2016. Remarkably, none of that has been reported by the Evening Standard or The Independent. I should have thought that, published in the celebrity or showbiz columns, it would attract a great deal of interest. However, The Times, thankfully, reports that the Prime Minister accepted £7,150 worth of flights, cars and accommodation from Lord Lebedev between 2013 and 2015.
According to the Prime Minister’s biographer, Tom Bower, the Prime Minister was told that when attending these parties, he could behave like a “naughty schoolboy”, and we know from a former Minister that “girls” were promised by Lord Lebedev. One particular trip, reported in April 2018, occurred just weeks after the attempted assassination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. The Prime Minister managed to evade his close protection officers and, as has happened time and again, he refused to account for what took place. We know that Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB colonel—we say “former”, but we never know with these things—was also in attendance. What we also know is that the Prime Minister was on his way home—a very circuitous way home—from a conference of NATO Foreign Ministers. So, what was discussed with Alexander Lebedev and Lord Lebedev? Of course we do not know, but given its proximity to that meeting, it would be of real interest to find out.
The concern is not necessarily the friendship itself, although that is of course relevant, but the threat that it poses to national security. These concerns have been continually raised, going as far back as a decade. Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, reportedly made it clear that he did not deem Evgeny Lebedev a suitable person to meet, ahead of his meeting with Chris Blackhurst, the then editor of The Independent, which was soon to be bought by Lord Lebedev for a mere £1. Of course, it was not that cheap, given the sizeable debts that the newspaper carried. Since then, in 2013, Lord Lebedev has publicly questioned the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, tweeting an article casting doubt on who was behind the murder and writing:
“Was Litvinenko murdered by MI6?…Certainly more to it than the generally accepted Putin link.”
Let us follow the money. While Lord Lebedev has publicly come out against the invasion of Ukraine, his father, the ex-KGB agent with large shares in Gazprom and Aeroflot, remains silent as millions flee and thousands perish in the dreadful war in Ukraine. Lord Lebedev’s father, who has held significant investments in Crimea since Russia occupied it in 2014, also retains a significant share of the newspaper via Lebedev Holdings.
I raise the personal relationship between Lord Lebedev and the Prime Minister only to highlight the extent to which it has obviously influenced the decision to award Lord Lebedev a peerage. It has been reported that civil servants were stunned by the Prime Minister’s move to question the security services’ assessment of the appointment. The only justification I can find for the Prime Minister’s dismissal of this security advice is his personal relationship with Lord Lebedev. Personal interests over national security. Whatever happened to Sir Mark Sedwill, the former Cabinet Secretary and, as I understand it, the lead on UK intelligence?
Lord Lebedev’s case also raises wider questions about the glaring weaknesses that exist within our political donations system. A Labour party calculation based on Electoral Commission information estimates that donors who have made money from Russia or Russians have given £1.93 million to either the Tory party or constituency associations since the Prime Minister took up his position. Since 2010, the figure is £4.3 million. For example, Lubov Chernukhin, who is married to Vladimir Chernukhin, a former Finance Minister under Putin, has donated £700,000 to the Conservative party. In October, the Pandora papers revealed that Vladimir Chernukhin was allowed to leave Russia in 2004 with assets worth about $500 million and that he retains Russian business connections. In October 2020, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), now the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, posted a picture on Instagram of herself and Lubov Chernukhin at a party at the Goring hotel, with the hashtag “#cabinetandfriends”. Unfortunately, foreign money and foreign interference go hand in hand, and I am afraid that this Government are compromised by both.
In summary, the appointment of Lord Lebedev, the dismissal of security service advice in favour of personal interest, and the wide-ranging influence of dubious Russian money in our politics are deeply concerning and worrisome. A Prime Minister acting in his own self-interest, not the national interest, is extremely serious. This Humble Address will merely scratch the surface, for I fear that there are decades-worth of personal connections to unearth, financial loopholes to close and national vetting procedures to tighten before we can truly say we are a
“democratic, liberal nation, strong, healthy and free”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2021; Vol. 812, c. 63.]
That is why I will be supporting our motion.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The United Kingdom has long been a defender of freedom, democracy and human rights, and our country has proudly stood firm against crime and corruption at every opportunity. It is, therefore, frankly astonishing that, at a time when Vladimir Putin is committing war crimes in Europe, a UK Government Minister has been dragged to the Dispatch Box to defend his own Prime Minister’s murky and deep links to Russian oligarchs.
It tells us all we need to know about this Government that, in his previous role as Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister chose to party with the family of an ex-KGB agent, just weeks after the attempted assassination of British citizens by Russian state agents on our own soil.
It is utterly outrageous that the Prime Minister would nominate to the House of Lords someone who has promoted some of the very worst conspiracy theories in defence of the Putin regime. We are used to the Prime Minister putting his own interests before the interests of the British people, but on this occasion he has gone further by putting his personal friendship with the son and business partner of an ex-KGB agent before the safety and security of the British people. He has put his friendship with Lebedev ahead of his primary duty to the British public: to keep our country and our people safe and secure.
That is why Labour is today calling for the Government to publish the full security guidance on Mr Lebedev’s peerage, by which we mean the version before it might have been mysteriously airbrushed or sanitised, so that the British public can really understand the severity of the Prime Minister’s miscalculations and misjudgments. This is in the national interest, and it must happen immediately.
We also know that the Prime Minister flew to Italy to attend a party hosted by the Lebedevs just two days after attending a high-level NATO summit focusing on Russia in the wake of the Salisbury poisonings, without any officials present and without his security detail. We know that he met the former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at that party. We need to know what was discussed at that party and why the Prime Minister thought it was a priority to go to that party to meet influential members of the Russian elite at that time.
This blasé attitude to national security is not just a one-off; it is part of a pattern of behaviour that dates back several years. There are countless examples of the Government playing fast and loose with our national security. Just look at the Conservative party’s ongoing reliance on donations from individuals with close links to the Kremlin. The most concerning is the £2 million of donations from Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Putin’s former deputy Finance Minister. She moved in Conservative inner circles, even playing tennis with the Prime Minister. We may never quite know just how much influence that money bought for Putin’s allies.
In connection to this, I am deeply concerned by the Conservative party’s use of lawfare to bat away the questions I have asked about potential national security threats that predate the issues we are discussing today. In February 2019, I wrote to the then chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), asking him to investigate donations by Ehud “Udi” Sheleg, who had been reported in the media as having strong connections to Russia and as probably not being able to afford the £1.8 million of donations that may or may not be connected to his being appointed treasurer of the Conservative party—I would not wish to speculate.
The reply I received from the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that Mr Sheleg should not need to reveal the source of his wealth. It also threatened me with libel action, with the right hon. Gentleman, who is now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using the same tactics that Russian oligarchs have been using to silence criticism and block investigations.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I need to make sure that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the matter in hand, which is Lord Lebedev and the appointment process.
Stephen Kinnock
Thank you, Madam Speaker. What I am trying to do is set out clearly the worrying pattern of behaviour, but I take your feedback and I will move on.
That brings us to the issue of the Russia report, the delay in publishing it and the failure to implement the vast majority of its recommendations until after Vladimir Putin clearly felt he could invade Ukraine with impunity. This is part of the challenge we face in standing up to the bullying and intimidation from authoritarian rulers around the world. The delays in implementing that report’s recommendations are deeply troubling. Why was this action delayed? We have repeatedly asked that in this House. Perhaps it was because on this Government’s watch we have seen the City of London become a laundromat for the dirty money of kleptocrats and because the Conservative party has been all too reliant on those highly questionable donations we are discussing today. We have also seen serious issues associated with the underfunding of our armed forces, which has left us with Putin being able to go on the march from Georgia to Crimea and authoritarian regimes having grown in confidence over the past decade because of the weakness of western leaders, because of the conflict of interests that undermines their authority. We are exposing that conflict of interests in this debate. It is time for us to shore up our national defences. That needs to be done through legislation such as the Bill that became the National Security and Investment Act 2021. Disappointingly, we have not seen a clear enough position on that, with the Government watering down definitions of critical national infrastructure in that Bill, which makes it harder for the Secretary of State to call in investments suspected of being a danger to our national security. Our legislation on foreign takeovers and investment is far weaker than the equivalent legislation of our allies in all the other Five Eyes countries.
Let me end my saying this: national security is the first duty of any Government, but Conservative Ministers have been putting roubles before resilience, and investment before integrity. We need to see what was in this security advice and we need to know on which date the Prime Minister received the security services’ concerns with regard to Lord Lebedev’s appointment. We also need to know why that was watered down. Appointments to the House of Lords should be on the basis of loyal public service to our country, not friendship with the Prime Minister. Yet the Prime Minister continues to dismiss vital advice time and again, even when Britain's national security is at stake, to serve his own personal interests. I therefore encourage Conservative Members to join us today in standing up for Britain’s national security.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
On Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending a 2050 Climate Group young leaders event, where young leaders were being given some ideas about how they might want to influence politics. It was a great event and the young people at it truly gave me faith for our future, as they had some excellent questions. Aimee Dobie, from the parliamentary outreach service, does outreach right across Scotland and was explaining to them about influencing MPs and Lords, and about how they could get in touch with Members of the House of Lords. One young person in the room put up their hand and said, “What are the checks on the House of Lords? How does that work?” I said, “In reality, there are very little checks on the House of Lords. Members of the House of Lords are appointed and they can be there for life. Removing those Members is all but impossible.” This young person asked about the appointments to the House of Lords and about the House of Lords Appointments Commission, because he was very switched on.
That goes to the heart of why we are here today, because the House of Lords Appointments Commission should be a brake on the appointment of people to the House of Lords, yet even though we hear that security concerns were raised about Lord Lebedev, this advice was overturned by the Prime Minister. The Paymaster General was very clear earlier when he stressed that the commission would draw concerns about any issue to the attention of the Prime Minister, but that seems to me to miss the point because the Prime Minister is at the heart of this shoddy appointment. There has been a clear misjudgment on the basis of his friendship with Lord Lebedev and, of course, the Prime Minister has some form on that as well, having overruled the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a previous appointment in 2020.
The Paymaster General also stressed that Lord Lebedev is a British citizen of Russian extraction, and that is true. We do not cast aspersions on British citizens who are of Russian extraction in general, but in this case and a number of others that is exactly how the kleptocrats and oligarchs buy their way in. They buy their children the finest education at the most expensive private schools. They buy themselves a clean reputation by becoming patrons of the arts, universities and charities, buying football clubs and giving philanthropic donations, laundering their reputations. The Foreign Secretary said on television regarding the photograph of her with Lubov Chernukhin:
“I think we’ve got to be very careful to distinguish between those who are supporters of the regime, those who are propping up Vladimir Putin and those people who may have moved from Russia years ago and who are part of the British political system.”
Someof these people have bought their way in to the British political system, and that is part of the problem.
Putin’s cronies, these oligarchs, have bought their way in to the political system in many different ways. They are sealed in on a super yacht with a golden visa and they are spending their lucre via a protective web of companies and vehicles such as Scottish limited partnerships, unheeded and unimpeded until the war in Ukraine, which suddenly made things bad for business. All that money coming in did not happen overnight.
I noticed earlier that Oliver Bullough’s new book, “Butler to the World”, is available in the Commons Library. It has not yet been checked out and I recommend that Members rush along the corridor to get it, because it is instructive about the scale at which people buy influence in this country and the way in which people in this country have allowed that to happen through the lawyers, the accountants and the very expensive reputation management firms that do that. Britain has become butler to the world, and this Government are allowing it to continue.
That is all a symptom of a higher problem, which is the problem of the House of Lords. I would not impugn their lordships individually, of course, but the whole system of inherited privilege exists here with patronage and rewards for pals, cronies and donors. Unlike all the other parties in this place, the SNP does not appoint people to the House of Lords. We never have and I hope very much that we never will, because, given the reputation of that place, it is not worth it. Despite what my good friend the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) says about her colleagues signing up to abolish themselves, I am certain that if the Liberal Democrats were offered a place in the House of Lords tomorrow, they would take it up. That is how the system works, and it stinks.
Appointment to the House of Lords is, of course, for life. There is no longer a Titles Deprivation Act as there was in 2017 and despite the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) during the cash for honours scandal there is no simple way to remove people from the House of Lords. At various points Members of the House of Lords of various different parties have been up to their chebs in scandal. Transparency is not present there at all in the way that it is in this place. The Russia report points out in very clear language that the House of Lords registers are not as open to scrutiny as those in the House of Commons. It is fundamentally opaque. They are not held to the same standards as people in this place, and this place is not always held to the best of standards.
The response to the young man who asked me that question on Saturday is that there is a whole lot more that this place could do to enhance the scrutiny of the House of Lords, but my view is that it is beyond help and should be abolished altogether.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
I thank all those who have spoken in this debate; we have had many excellent contributions on the importance of ascertaining with clarity the Prime Minister’s role in the appointment of Lord Lebedev. It is a matter of national security. We have heard some compelling speeches from hon. Members on the Opposition Benches, cutting to the heart of why the debate is so important to the functioning of our democracy.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who gave a detailed timeline of the events in 2018 when the Prime Minister visited Lebedev’s castle two days after the NATO meeting. She also raised an important point about thanking journalists for the role they have played in ascertaining much of this information.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who outlined how potentially being placed in a compromising position is a security risk. My hon. Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) made the point, among others, that the Prime Minister appears to put his personal interests above the public interest. My hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) spoke about the importance of freedom and democracy, and the worrying pattern of behaviour of playing fast and loose with national security.
The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) asked what Labour would do with the appointments process. Our answer is simply that there should not be an appointed upper Chamber at all. Government Members seem finally to be waking up to that: yesterday, the Policing Minister condemned what he called the “unelected partially hereditary House”, and said it was right for,
“the views of those of us who took the trouble to get elected to prevail”.—[Official Report, 28 March 2022; Vol. 711, c. 629.]
The Conservatives are in government, and we look forward to any proposals that match ours for an elected, democratic upper Chamber. In the meantime, however, it is quite reasonable that we propose some level of scrutiny and transparency for the current system.
That is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) asked whether the Government would review the House of Lords appointment process and called for a robust vetting system, as has the Lord Speaker recently. I hope the Minister can say whether they will consider that request from the other place, as well as from the Opposition Benches.
Today, hon. Members across the House have spoken in defence of democracy and the parliamentary sovereignty that many Government Members have spoken so passionately for, so I was particularly concerned to hear the Paymaster General’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) that he would refuse to honour a resolution of this House simply on the grounds that it was proposed by the Opposition. I hope the Minister will retract that and confirm that, if the motion is passed, the Government will accept the will of this elected House.
As speakers have alluded to, this debate’s binding vote is about transparency and holding those in power to account for the decisions they make—an essential factor in a healthy democracy. The British public have a right to know how an individual of apparent concern to our intelligence services was granted a seat at the heart of our Parliament by the Prime Minister against security advice. Such action is a complete abdication of his responsibility as Prime Minister.
As the arbitrator of the ministerial code, the Prime Minister has a duty to oversee the standards of conduct expected of Ministers. His foreword to the code in 2019 stated that to
“win back the trust of the British people, we must uphold the very highest standards of propriety”.
This is what our Humble Address aims to do. By publishing the minutes, documents and advice relating to the appointment of Lord Lebedev, we can peel back the opaque rhetoric and rumours to find out what advice was provided to the Prime Minister and what course of action he decided to take. I am sure many will agree that 2019 feels like a lifetime ago, as we have sacrificed so much since then to tackle the spread of coronavirus and sadly lost loved ones, but those were the Prime Minister’s words then and he should fully abide by them now.
I am sure both the Prime Minister and the Minister are fully aware of the seven principles of public life—the set of principles that we expect all in public life to abide by, be they civil servant, local councillor or even Prime Minister of Great Britain: integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership. All of us in this place are accountable to those standards, and they are the bare minimum that we expect from our leaders. The first duty of any Government led by any party is to keep the British public safe. This debate is not the first time that the Prime Minister’s priorities have been brought into question. What the British public are presented with is a Prime Minister with a track record of playing fast and loose with the rules that govern institutions.
Today’s Humble Address aims to ascertain additional information on the process that led to the appointment of Lord Lebedev. If the allegations are proven to be true, they will cast doubt on whether the Prime Minister can be trusted to uphold national security. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne said, the Prime Minister’s long and close friendship with Lord Lebedev appears to have clouded his judgment when considering matters of national security. Earlier this month, The Times reported that in 2013, Sir John Sawers, the then head of MI6, made it clear that he did not deem Lebedev to be a suitable person to meet. As the son of an ex-KGB agent, it was believed that Lebedev, a Russian citizen with ties to celebrities, politicians and musicians, was keen to ingratiate himself with the British establishment and glitterati. If reports are true, it seems as though the Prime Minister, in his previous roles, was willing to assist. The friendship developed and the Prime Minister accepted the litany of expensive meals that we have heard so much about today, and holidays at Lord Lebedev’s 12th-century Italian castle in Perugia. A source told The Times that after the 2019 election the Prime Minister “pathologically wanted to get” Lord Lebedev’s
“peerage over the line…it was immediate.”
The Cabinet Office plays a vital role in the vetting process of Lords’ appointments and is responsible for relaying intelligence and guidance to the House of Lords Appointments Commission. The vetting process uncovered that the security services’ assessment of Lord Lebedev allegedly remained unchanged from 2013: he still posed a national security risk, leading to reports that the House of Lords Appointments Commission advised the Prime Minister to appoint someone else. However, it took just some seven months after the 2019 election for the Prime Minister to push Lord Lebedev’s nomination through. So while the public’s priority was addressing the uncertainty around leaving the EU and the devastating pandemic that took hold in the early part of 2020, the Prime Minister’s priority was securing a peerage for an old friend.
Shockingly, reports by The Sunday Times and a written statement by the then chief of staff to the Prime Minister allege that he “cut a deal” to provide the House of Lords Appointments Commission with a “sanitised” version of the advice. If that is the case, that is an irresponsible undermining of due process. The Prime Minister has prioritised his personal friendship with the son and business partner of an ex-KGB agent ahead of his duty to ensure that the British public are safe. For the Prime Minister to nominate to the House of Lords someone who has promoted the worst conspiracy theories and defences of Vladimir Putin shows just how flawed the Prime Minister’s judgment is and shows that the Conservative Government’s dangerous links to Putin’s oligarchs are putting Britain at risk.
Appointments to the House of Lords should be on the basis of loyal public service to our country, not friendship with the Prime Minister. This issue cannot simply be brushed under the carpet. The British public deserve answers on whether the Prime Minister, with assistance from the Cabinet Office, has ridden roughshod over the Lords nomination process. The Prime Minister continues to dismiss vital advice time and again, even when Britain’s national security is at risk.
Thankfully, we are proud to live in an open democracy where transparency is a key factor of good governance, ensuring that those in power are held to account. To protect the public’s trust in our institutions and our obligations to abide by the principles of integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership, today’s Humble Address needs to pass. Questions must be answered about the Prime Minister’s role in the nomination process of Lord Lebedev. Let us uncover what has taken place and whether national security has been sidelined in the Prime Minister’s pursuit of personal interests. If Conservative Members believe in decency, honesty and standards, I urge them all to join us in voting in favour of our Humble Address.
Michael Ellis
With the leave of the House and yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to close the debate.
Let me thank the House for the robust debate on this motion. As has become only too clear, it has, I am sorry to say, become something of an excuse for the Opposition to bring their usual, unfounded criticisms to the table. The insinuation that this Government are soft on Russia—which I think is what this debate is supposed to be about in the eyes of Labour—is obviously nonsense. In fact, our support for Ukraine is second to none. President Zelensky himself has spoken of the United Kingdom in glowing terms; the Russian Kremlin has spoken of this Prime Minister as its principal opponent. We are doing everything and more, and we will continue to do that, to support the people of that sovereign and independent state, so I rebut any suggestion that this Government are in anything other than an exemplary position in supporting the people of Ukraine and resisting the Putin regime’s actions.
But this is not about the people of Russia. This is not about British citizens who are of Russian extraction. To smear a British citizen of Russian extraction in order to score cheap political points against the Prime Minister, who has been Ukraine’s principal ally and is doing a superlative job, seems counterproductive when—if I can say this with the greatest possible respect—Members on the Labour Front Bench and Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London, have taken hospitality from Lord Lebedev, and when the Leader of the Opposition has sent a congratulatory text message, apparently, to Lord Lebedev on his appointment. As I have said, I do not personally criticise that, but it does seem counterproductive in the light of this debate.
However, back to the topic in hand. We should not visit the sins of any father on his sons or daughters. We did away with Acts of Attainder a very long time ago, but there has been frequent reference to people’s parentage, which I do not think is appropriate. If we look at the topic at hand, we see that, as has been reiterated throughout the debate, the motion is focused on a misunderstanding of the constitutional position. The House of Lords Appointments Commission, HOLAC, is an independent body. It seeks advice from the appropriate vetting agencies. The advice it gives to the Prime Minister—which it has given to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and so on, since 2000—is confidential. However, today’s motion would breach the critical confidentiality that underpins the process, damaging the ability of that valued committee, and its independent members, to undertake its role. The motion is careless of the question of the data of private individuals and would allow private information about individuals to be disclosed whenever a political party—any political party—wished for that to happen for purely partisan purposes.
Clive Efford
If the motion is nonsense and we are wrong, will the Minister confirm that he has enough votes on the Benches behind him to vote it down?
Michael Ellis
I think the hon. Member knows that the common practice is not to vote on Opposition motions—[Laughter]—and for very good reason.
This motion, as the hon. Member knows and as the House knows, is very careless of the position I have outlined. We need to ensure the ability of that committee to conduct robust vetting and to provide advice that is not compromised. The process should continue to be conducted confidentially.
Reference was made by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) earlier in the debate to the ISC’s report, which was published in July 2020. That was welcomed by the Government. The Government’s response was published on the same day as the ISC’s report, and I would say this on Russian intelligence. We expelled 23 undeclared Russian intelligence officers after Salisbury. We have attributed cyber-attacks where appropriate to Russian intelligence, we have exposed those involved in hacking, and we have exposed the military build-up on the Ukrainian border. We do what we need to do to protect the national security and national interests of this country.
Layla Moran
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. All those things are very laudable, but will he enlighten the House on how many of the recommendations to the Government in the Russia report have been implemented?
Michael Ellis
That has nothing to do with this matter, as I am sure the hon. Lady well knows. I reiterate that we must ensure the ability of the House of Lords Appointments Commission to conduct robust vetting, and to provide advice that is not compromised. That process should continue. I have heard hon. Members say that certain individuals do not mind if detail of the vetting process is disclosed as far as it concerns them. Well, I reiterate that this is not about any one individual. If someone wishes to show that they have nothing to hide, that is laudable and understandable, but we need to protect the process for all. This is not about one individual; it is about protecting the integrity of the system—a system that serves this nation very well. The process should continue to be conducted confidentially, and disclosure should be at the discretion of the Prime Minister.
Mr Bradshaw
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, given that he referred a moment or two ago to my remarks on the Russia report, and claimed that the Government welcomed its publication. I have to remind him and the House that the Prime Minister tried his darnedest to prevent the report’s publication—so much so, that he tried to put a patsy in the Intelligence and Security Committee as Chair, but failed. It was only when that failed that the Committee published the report. The Prime Minister did everything in his power to prevent the publication of the report, and has failed to implement its recommendations.
Michael Ellis
I do not recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of the Prime Minister’s position. The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that no one can hold a candle to this Prime Minister in his integrity, honesty and opposition to the Putin regime. That has been proven time and again, throughout the international arena.
Holly Lynch
Will the Minister put some speculation to bed right now by either confirming or denying that the Prime Minister met Alexander Lebedev in April 2018?
Michael Ellis
I have no individual knowledge on that point, but the House of Lords Appointments Commission, in the person of Lord Bew, wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, after he wrote to Lord Bew, and addressed the matter, and nothing disorderly is said to have occurred. The fact of the matter is that the processes are followed routinely, as they have been throughout. How the vetting process works in any individual case is outwith my knowledge, but the Labour party ought to exercise caution—I say it respectfully—in casting aspersions on individuals because they happen to have Russian ancestry or heritage. That is the effect of the motion, and it is unworthy and certainly inappropriate.
In conclusion, we must ensure the ability of the commission to conduct robust vetting, and to provide advice that is not compromised. This process should continue to be conducted confidentially, with disclosure being at the discretion of the Prime Minister, who is, after all, ultimately responsible for making recommendations to the sovereign on appointments to the House of Peers; and the commission, independent of Government, is responsible for vetting nominations. I urge the House to reflect on whether this motion is a responsible use of its powers.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, given the concerns raised about the appropriateness of, and process for, appointing Lord Lebedev as a member of the House of Lords and the role of the Prime Minister in that process, an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty that she will be graciously be pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House, no later than 28 April,
(a) any document held by the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office containing or relating to advice from, or provided to, the House of Lords Appointments Commission concerning the appointment of Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev as a Member of the House of Lords; and
(b) the minutes of, submissions relevant to and electronic communications relating to, any meeting within the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office at which the appointment of Lord Lebedev, or advice relating to that appointment, was discussed in a form which may contain redactions, but such redactions shall be solely for the purposes of national security.
Business without Debate
17:49 - The House divided: - Ayes: 268 / Noes: 195 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have just voted on the social security motion and ought not to have done so, as I chaired the Delegated Legislation Committee yesterday. I have voted in the Aye Lobby and the No Lobby to nullify the vote, but I owe you and the House an apology for that error of judgment.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I think we will accept the apology. We do not want another Division, do we? Thank you very much for your point of order and your forward notice of it.
Education Committee
Ordered,
That Nicola Richards be discharged from the Education Committee and Angela Richardson be added.—(Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
Ordered,
That Brendan Clarke-Smith be discharged from the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and Darren Henry be added.—(Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Petitions
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
My constituents call upon the Government to select Halton and Warrington for major investment to create two new first-class hospital campuses, one in Halton and one in Warrington. The current hospital site is not only located in a deprived neighbourhood, but parts of the hospital estate are more than 45 years old and it is no longer fit for purpose. An online petition on the same cause received 1,526 signatures, which demonstrates the very strong local support for the two new hospitals for the future. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to prioritise Halton and Warrington and create two new hospital campuses, one in each area, as part of the new hospital programme.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the people of Halton should be able to access first class NHS facilities and services on their doorstep; further that tackling health inequalities must be considered as part of the Government’s approach to levelling up; further that Halton Hospital is located in a deprived neighbourhood; and notes that a third funding bid to create two new hospital campuses in Warrington and Halton was recently lodged after two previous pleas for more capital investment fell on deaf ears.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to prioritise Halton and Warrington and create two new hospital campuses, one in each area, as part of the New Hospital Programme.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002724]
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Capstone Valley and its surrounding areas, which sit between my constituency and that of my hon. Friend for Gillingham & Rainham (Rehman Chishti), is under constant threat of housing development. The petition, first posted online and signed by 3,681 local residents, makes clear the opposition to the potential decimation of an area of outstanding natural beauty. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage Maidstone Borough Council to consider the concerns of local residents and cancel plans to develop Lidsing Garden Village.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that Maidstone Borough Council is proposing to build over 2000 houses, named Lidsing Garden Village, on farmland at Lidsing, a small hamlet of 13 houses near Hempstead, Lordswood and Bredhurst; further that there has been very little community engagement on the proposed development, with many local residents finding out via social media; further that the area is accessed by country roads which would be completely grid-locked by the development if it went ahead; further that the only road improvement proposed to support the additional traffic – an additional 4000 cars or 10,000 extra car journeys every day – is a spur road to the M2 motorway which will destroy an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; and further that health services locally are already over-stretched and will not cope with the needs of potentially 8000 extra residents.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage Maidstone Borough Council to consider the concerns of petitioners and cancel plans to develop Lidsing Garden Village.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002726]
Adjournment
Ministerial Corrections
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Home Department
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kit Malthouse
One of the improvements that the inspectorate did note that the Metropolitan police has achieved over the past couple of years is an elimination almost of the vetting backlog, which just three or four years ago stood at something like 37,000, astonishingly.
[Official Report, 23 March 2022, Vol. 711, c. 381.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Crime and Policing, the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse):
An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck).
The information should have been:
Kit Malthouse
One of the improvements that the inspectorate did note that the Metropolitan police has achieved over the past couple of years is an elimination almost of the vetting backlog, which just three or four years ago stood at something like 16,000, astonishingly.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Elizabeth Truss
President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people know that everybody in the United Kingdom stands firm with them. We were the first European country to recognise Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. Thirty years on, we are the first to strengthen its defences against Putin’s invasion, and lead the way in our support.
[Official Report, 28 March 2022, Vol. 711, c. 593.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs:
An error has been identified in my statement.
The correct information should have been:
Elizabeth Truss
President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people know that everybody in the United Kingdom stands firm with them. We were the first to strengthen Ukraine’s defences against Putin’s invasion, and lead the way in our support.
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
General Practice: Large Housing Developments
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered general practice capacity for large-scale housing developments.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting me this important debate and to colleagues who have come along this morning and who clearly have the same issues in their constituencies.
Every one of our constituents hugely values the ability to get a timely appointment, without too much hassle, at their local surgery. General practice is the front door of the NHS and all GPs, practice nurses, clinical pharmacists and the whole primary care team do an amazing job under enormous pressure. I express my profound gratitude to them.
In parts of England a third more GP appointments were delivered between September and November 2021 compared to the same period in 2019, yet many of our constituents regularly tell us of the difficulties they have getting a timely appointment at their surgery. GPs and primary care staff are exercised about the strain on the system. In addition, there is considerable variability in the numbers of GPs, practice nurses and people in direct patient care roles per 10,000 registered patients. I think there should be a recommendation as to how many patients a GP should have. I accept that different populations in different parts of the country will have different demands, so a number of indicative levels would be required. We have requirements in relation to the number of children who can be in a class, so why is it different for patients in GP practices?
I have analysed the numbers of GPs, practice nurses and direct patient care staff per 10,000 registered patients in each of the three primary care networks that cover my constituency and, with one exception for GPs in one primary care network, the whole of my constituency has fewer GPs, practice nurses and direct patient care staff per 10,000 patients than the averages for England and for the east of England. From the plans I have seen from my clinical commissioning group, the projected increases in primary care staff will not be enough to bring my constituency up to the average, and I am told that no figures for future GP recruitment are available from the CCG because GP recruitment is left to individual practices.
As a country, we know that we need to build more homes. and I want everyone to be decently housed. Too many people still do not have a decent home. As elected representatives, we also know that new housing development is often vigorously opposed by existing residents. That opposition has some merit to it if the existing services in that area are already under strain and are going to be put under even greater strain.
A constituent wrote to me on Saturday to say:
“Leighton Buzzard has expanded massively in the last 20 years, however the investment in infrastructure and facilities has in no way kept pace with this and access to healthcare is inadequate leaving the GP surgeries under great pressure despite the best efforts. I dread to think what the situation will be like when the massive building programme is completed.”
That is spot on. Everyone pays taxes, and those new residents will make their contribution, so it is essential and only fair that the services in an area expand as the population rises to meet that growth.
I am told that in Norwich North, the seat of my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, who is not here to speak for herself, wave 4b CCG funding will provide an extension for one local surgery, but that will accommodate only a small fraction of the population increase and no provision is being offered for another GP practice or through section 106 money.
I understand that in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), who, as Leader of the House, is a member of the Cabinet, 6,000 new homes are planned for Hucknall, a town where the GPs are already oversubscribed and there is no commitment to a new Cavell health centre to meet the needs of existing and new residents.
I have rarely found children without a school place to go to. However we plan for additional school capacity when massive new housing schemes come along, the system seems to work reasonably well. The classrooms get built and the teachers employed to welcome those new children and to give them a good-quality education. That is not my experience with general practice capacity, however. I represent an area that is due to have about 14,000 new homes built and that already has, before those new residents arrive, below-average numbers of GPs and primary care staff.
Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend made an important point about the planning on education places. What we need to see from Government and local authorities alike is a much more robust approach to developers, to ensure that they are paying for what is required and that they are not leaving it to the NHS and local communities pick up the bill. We need to see that strong lead from Ministers, for them to be standing up for communities and not for developers.
Andrew Selous
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend and I defer to his expertise on education. I would add that an element of retrospection is needed, because many of those new housing estates have already been rolled out in our constituencies. The new infrastructure levy cannot be just going forward; there is an immediate deficit that we need to remedy.
The system is broken, and that is the reason I have been campaigning on the issue and have called this debate. Contributions from section 106 funding or from the community infrastructure levy often go to provide other facilities rather than for health. The guidance states:
“It is helpful if the Director of Public Health is consulted on any planning applications (including at the pre-application stage) that are likely to have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of the local population”.
I do not think it is “helpful”—it is absolutely essential. It should be a requirement that leads to a clear outcome of additional ring-fenced health funding to employ and accommodate the necessary GPs and practice nurses that the area’s population requires.
I have good support in my request. When I put that point to the Prime Minister on 5 January this year, he replied:
“Yes...my hon. Friend…is completely right: we cannot build new homes without putting in the infrastructure to go with it.”—[Official Report, 5 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 20.]
I can quote no higher authority, Minister.
My argument is that no new infrastructure is more important than looking after the health of the existing and new population in an area. At the moment, the system is fragmented and uncertain, in that we might be lucky and be funded through section 106 money or we might be lucky and get it from the community infrastructure levy. Again, we might be lucky and get what is needed from the housing infrastructure fund. If we are fortunate, the local authority might come to the rescue, or it could be that Treasury funding to the Department of Health and Social Care will do the job. My CCG tells me, however, that capital funding from the Treasury for new general practice capacity appears too late to be of any use in making a sensible forward plan, and disappears equally quickly.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that while developers sometimes offer to create new premises for additional GP practice, that does not resolve the problem? The shortage is of people, of qualified GPs, so even if there are brand-new premises, without the doctors to see the patients, the problem he is talking about is not solved.
Andrew Selous
This is the benefit of having former members of the Cabinet in a debate such as this: they know what they are talking about. My right hon. Friend is completely right. We are talking about capital and ongoing revenue funding. Those new residents come with a stream of tax revenue—their council tax, their income tax and the tax from their businesses, which they will pay—so we are not asking for anything unreasonable; it is about an equitable allocation given where people live, when there are big increases in the local population.
In my local authority, there were proposals to build four health hubs. The original commitment was that those would be built by 31 March 2020, then by 2024, and we have one being built, another progressing, and complete silence on the other two. Initially, the funding was due to come from the primary care infrastructure fund, then the primary care transformation fund, with the CCG and the local authority due to make contributions at various points—but none of those routes has led to the delivery of two much-needed health hubs in my constituency.
I propose that there should be guaranteed primary care health funding for each 1,000 new homes, allocated at the time planning permission is granted and delivered as the new residents arrive, although smaller developments must also be catered for.
The current capitation figures, based on the Office for National Statistics population figures, always lag. Therefore, the infrastructure always comes too late, leaving unacceptable strain on local primary care services. We will, in the end, pay for the primary care services needed but, instead of always doing it too late, let us get ahead of the curve and stop the anxiety and upset that our constituents and primary care staff experience as a result.
I observe that the process is often shrouded in secrecy, with very little engagement with local Members of Parliament and councillors. We are the ones who feel the anger of our residents when these facilities arrive too late, but there is limited local accountability from those taking the decisions, and a confused and uncertain national funding process. We could learn from the way education funding is allocated to accommodate significant population growth. I recommend that the Prime Minister urgently convene a Cabinet Sub-Committee between the Treasury, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to deal with the issue once and for all.
I repeat the point I made to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers). I understand that the new infrastructure levy may come to our rescue, but if it just looks forward and does not deal with these vast new housing estates—14,000 homes being built in my constituency and many thousands in the constituencies of colleagues here—we will have let down our constituents. Our country generally does public administration well; we are better than this and can fix it. I implore the Minister to go back to his Secretary of State to have a focused, cross-Government effort, led by the Prime Minister, to get this right once and for all.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to speak in a debate in Westminster Hall, and today I basically support what the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has put forward. I always give the perspective from Northern Ireland. What is happening there mirrors what the hon. Gentleman has introduced, and I thank him for setting the scene so well.
Access to GPs would probably make a debate on its own. I think we could all give myriad examples of where the system is failing. I know that Northern Ireland is not the responsibility of the Minister, but I want to add weight to what the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said. I am convinced that others, including the shadow Minister, will also mirror that. We could all speak for ages about access to GPs, but I will fight the urge to spend my time discussing the disgraceful routine that too many practices have adopted of withholding face-to-face appointments, and the problems caused, including with house calls to vulnerable patients.
One of my constituents, who uses a wheelchair, was the only family member to have covid. Her carers and the district nurse expressed concern about sores on her legs, because she is a type 1 diabetic. Her GP refused the call-out and asked an 80-year-old woman to WhatsApp a photograph. My goodness, how ridiculous! Not to be disrespectful, but the lady has no idea what a WhatsApp photograph is or how to take one. That says more about the GP, who has not understood the issues. It seems I did not resist the urge well, but I remain infuriated at the abject dereliction of duty that GP practices continue to hold fast to. That was one example, but many other GPs, as referred to by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, do it right and do their best to help people, as they should.
I will not say any more about that at this stage, because it is not the purpose of this debate. I want to talk about the other part of the debate, which we need to take steps to address. We need to ensure that enough thought is put into not simply whether the roads can handle the additional pressure from large-scale housing developments but whether community GPs and pharmacies can handle it as well.
My GP cannot take another patient without expanding. I have been with that practice for all my life. It has expanded once and will expand again—a planning application is pending—within its property because there is room to do that. It is not the same in every case, but we need flexibility for that in the planning process. To back up what the hon. Gentleman said, I will give an example of where the process fails badly—I know that my area is not the Minister’s responsibility—and there does not seem to be any vision or idea of how to do it the right way.
I live in a village between Greyabbey and Kircubbin and patient numbers in the GP surgeries in Kircubbin are growing, so an extension has been accepted by the trust and will go ahead. There is money to invest in that surgery as well. I know that is not the Minister’s responsibility, but this ties in with what the hon. Gentleman said: we need funding from the Minister’s sister Department in Northern Ireland, the Department of Health, to ensure that moneys are there to help with those extensions.
A local doctor’s surgery in Newtownards has a wonderful idea, similar to that described by the hon. Gentleman and what he wants to see for his constituency. It is currently based above a pharmacy, and its vision is to expand. It put in an application to build a further three rooms for a physiotherapist, a nutritionist and a mental health nurse so that, when someone goes to their clinic to see their GP, they can do almost everything. That would take the pressure off the NHS—or the HSC as it is in Northern Ireland. It is important to have a strategy in place. I was incredibly impressed by that vision and drive for my constituency, which is like the vision to which the hon. Gentleman referred. That could address the needs of the adolescent having difficulty with their relationship with food, the needs of the grieving widower by giving them something other than anti-depressants and making sure that they always have a face-to-face consultation, and the needs of the overweight working mother who needs an adaptive plan to help her achieve her goals in her busy life. That is not a criticism but a fact of life—it happens sometimes. However, the planners turned the application down.
The planners did not have the vision or the strategy to see how important it was to have a better surgery and a better clinic, so a project that could provide a benefit was turned down. Where is the planners’ vision? Where is the co-operation between the health departments and the housing and planning departments? I do not see that in this application and I feel greatly aggrieved. I will fight the issue—I intend to take it as far as I can, along with others—because it infuriates me. The planners look at it as a tick-box exercise and think, “It doesn’t do this and it doesn’t do that,” and yet this is the place for the project. There is room to do it on site, so why not let it take place?
The choice for the GP service is to move out of town or simply to carry on as it is, which will not meet the needs of the practice, with the growing numbers coming. We need fully serviced practices and must be able to host them. We must also ensure that large-scale developments recognise that integral need of the community and address this issue. It is no longer enough to tick the box and build a play park when people need access to GPs in their areas. To continue to ignore that will only move concerns down the line.
I see the Minister in his place and know that he is consistently interested and committed to the change that the hon. Gentleman is asking for and that others will ask for. I am confident that he will respond positively—he always does, as that is in his very nature—so I will be pleased to hear his response.
On 2 November 2021, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care acknowledged that the Government were not on track to meet their plans to recruit an additional 6,000 GPs by 2024—that is not a criticism but an observation of his comments—and the Government had a manifesto commitment to expand the number of other primary care professionals by 26,000. How can we entice young people to be doctors when they go for work experience in poky offices and are inundated with unsafe patient numbers, and when GPs tell them to run? The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) referred to that and to some of the issues.
That situation will only continue, and the Minister can respond in a positive fashion only if he has co-operation from the Health Department to make things happen; we need a two-pronged attack on this one. Do we, as I would like to see and as the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said, invest in practices now and entice medical students into seeing that the dream of holistic general practice is a reality? That vision of a future in which we can do better and look after more people in a focused way is what I would like to see and what I think everybody else wants to see as well.
Having specifically designed facilities is key to that aim. That is why the application in Newtownards addresses a number of things, which are all part of what comes to a GP every day. That GP surgery and clinic is in the centre of Newtownards. It is accessible; there is car parking. It is right in the middle of the town. It makes more sense to let it do what it wants to do within the room that it has on site, but the planners do not want that to happen. There is no vision, no strategy, no co-operation with the Health Department and no helping to address the issue.
Therefore I find myself fully supporting the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, and I implore the Minister to make this initiative—although it is not his responsibility—UK-wide. What starts here can ripple out, like when a stone hits water, and when it gets to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we can have some vision as well. I will send a copy of the Hansard record of this debate to the planning department in Newtownards and make it aware of my plea on behalf of the GP surgery there. Planners and healthcare commissioning groups alike should be legally obligated to abide by this initiative. They should have a strategy, a vision, and do it right. The future of our NHS depends on change, and this change is fit for every area. We must move on this need now, before the implosion of general practice that is on the horizon and becoming ever clearer.
I again thank the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire. I look forward very much to other contributions and I look forward especially to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Several hon. Members rose—
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
Order. We have seven more Back-Bench speakers. We will start the winding-up speeches no later than 10.38 am to give Mr Selous time for a two-minute response. There is no formal imposition of a time limit, but if colleagues could keep to about six minutes maximum, that would be best.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for securing a debate on this important issue this morning.
The Mayor of London wants 2,364 new flats and houses to be built in the borough of Barnet every year for years to come. I did a rough calculation for some of the bigger developments recently built, approved or pending in the planning system in my constituency alone, and the figure is nearly 4,000 units, with another 691 rejected but liable to come back on appeal or possibly with a revised proposal. That could mean anything up to about 9,000 people trying to find a place on a GP’s list of patients. I pay tribute to all the GPs in my constituency. They are the bedrock of our NHS. We all depend on them, and they have done magnificently in so many ways during the pandemic.
It is clear that rising healthcare need is already placing great pressure on our national health service, including general practice, as we grow older as a society and as our frail elderly population gets larger. But at the same time, council planning committees are finding it harder and harder to turn down planning applications even where it is clear that the area does not have the GP capacity to service the population increase that the proposed new flats could involve. Elected councillors are increasingly advised by officers that they should not turn down an application even if it contravenes long-established planning principles on matters such as character, conservation, height, density or pressure on local services and infrastructure, because their decision could be overturned on appeal, on the grounds that housing targets are not being met. To compound the pressure, elected representatives are threatened with high costs being awarded against councils if they lose planning appeals. That is forcing councils to produce long lists of development sites to meet the requirement of a five-year land supply, many of which may be wholly inappropriate for new housing—certainly high-density new housing. Even where developers offer to build facilities for a new GP practice as part of their plan, that does not solve the problem, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, because it is a shortage of doctors, not premises, that is causing the greatest pressure on primary care.
My hon. Friend clearly articulated a solution in his speech, but I would like the Minister to consider a threefold solution. First, housing targets should be advisory, not mandatory. They should not be taken into account in planning decisions or appeals. Secondly, whether or not a local authority has a five-year land supply should no longer determine planning applications. Thirdly, we need to accelerate efforts to train, recruit and retain more family doctors. The Government take the expansion of the NHS workforce very seriously, and it is a proud achievement that there are more doctors in hospitals than ever before in the long history of our national health service. The Government have ensured that there are more GPs in training than ever before, and five new medical schools have opened. That good progress is all welcome, but as the Health Secretary has admitted, plans to recruit 6,000 additional GPs by 2024 are not on track. We need to turn that situation around if we are to tackle the covid backlog and ensure that, where new homes are built, all residents—existing ones and new ones—continue to be able to access the GP appointments they need.
I hope the Minister will set out the care improvements delivered by the £250 million package announced last year to relieve immediate pressures on GP practice. I hope he will also give us the latest numbers on the recruitment of other professionals, such as nurses and pharmacists, to support GPs as part of multidisciplinary practices. Will he commit the Government to redoubling their efforts to plan effectively for the future workforce needs of our national health service?
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
Thank you for your remarks and for keeping within the advisory time limit.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing a very popular debate. I declare that I am still a borough councillor for Charnwood Borough Council, which I will refer to. I am also the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for district councils.
As the Minister can see, he has many friends on the Government Benches, but we suffer some frustrations, and I look to him for advice and assistance. We have two main frustrations: one he can clearly do something about, and the other we need his help with in tackling it with the Department for Health and Social Care. We have GP contracts and the related health profile, and we have planning law—and never the twain shall meet, it would seem. I would like to do something about that.
I would like to be able to support housing developments where they are appropriate and needed and of the size and type required for the local area. More importantly, I want local communities to be created. Three thousand houses in one place is a village, not a housing estate, and I would like to create communities with proper infrastructure. I would also like to support my GPs and constituents. I have had many meetings with GPs in my constituency over recent months. They have worked incredibly hard, particularly during covid. We talk about going to see “our GP” an awful lot, rather than going to see a medical professional in a medical centre, perhaps run by a GP. There is something that needs to be done there.
In my constituency, I could talk about the village of Sileby, which has grown hugely, or about Loughborough or Mountsorrel, but I will talk about Shepshed and west Loughborough. The town of Shepshed has grown enormously over recent years, with the addition of thousands of houses. In the Garendon estate, right next door in west Loughborough, 3,000 homes are due to be built. There are two GP surgeries in the whole area and so, whatever they try to do, the situation is completely unsustainable.
I have talked to the clinical commissioning group and the local health service. Everybody is keen to do something, but there is a definite reluctance, because of the risk factor. There is less incentive to run a GP surgery than to just work in one or be a locum; there is a lot of risk involved. We need to take that into account; we need to consider the cost and the risk of extending a GP surgery or starting a new one.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) spoke about the lack of a five-year housing land supply. That is absolutely crippling my constituency. We need to stop indiscriminate development that has no forward planning. Planning staff in the council work hard on local plans—they are looking forward to 2036—and on delivery, but without a five-year land supply, it is impossible. The intentions are good but in practice we are not delivering in Loughborough.
The Conservative manifesto stated:
“Infrastructure first: We will amend planning rules so that the infrastructure—roads, schools, GP surgeries—comes before people move into new homes.”
We must do that. The housing infrastructure fund has not created the atmosphere and the momentum we were expecting. I would like to see more.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire on the recommendation as regards the number of patients per GP. I also ask the Minister to consider age profiles. The people who live in the Shepshed area have an older age profile and, generally speaking, older patients need GP surgeries more.
We need cultural change—a shift towards seeing a nurse or another professional in a medical centre, not necessarily having a face-to-face appointment with a GP. We absolutely must start five-year land supply. I would also like to see feasibility studies and infrastructure funded up front, either by the developer or through the fund, so that feasibility studies of GP surgeries do not require GPs to stump up the money first.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate. He and I got talking a few weeks ago because I asked a question at Prime Minister’s questions too. In it, I gave some figures about the growth in my constituency. The largest town, Didcot, is set to be 42% larger in 2027 than it was just a decade earlier. Wantage and Grove, the second largest area, is set to be 59% larger than it was just a decade earlier. Thousands of houses are also being built in the other two towns, Faringdon and Wallingford, and in the 64 villages I represent. My hon. Friend and I decided we would be better combining forces and working with other colleagues, as the issues we face are similar.
People know what the growth figures mean: it is harder and harder to get a GP appointment. It is a separate issue to the post-covid debate on face-to-face, telephone appointments or an e-consultation. This issue is much longer running. It is also distinct from the 6,000 GPs and 26,000 other primary care staff that the Government have committed to recruiting, which I warmly welcome.
It should go without saying—although I will say it anyway—that our GPs and primary care staff work incredibly hard. They want a solution to the problem as much as anybody else, because they are working flat out and are presented with more and more patients. I have a surgery in Wallingford that actually closed its books recently because it simply cannot take any more patients.
Depending on what measure we look at, different parts of my constituency look the worst, but Didcot ranks lowest on the measure of permanent qualified GPs. Didcot is a good example, because we have had a development there called Great Western Park, which is 3,500 houses. On the basis that 2.4 people live in every house, 8,400 people have been added to the constituency, and they have now been waiting seven years for the GP surgery that was promised with the development. There is still no sign of it, but what they do know is coming is Valley Park right next to them—4,200 more houses, and a further 9,600 people. That is 18,000 people just in those two developments, but there is no prospect at the moment of additional GP surgeries.
Who is accountable? Part of the problem is that it is very unclear. Many people think it must be the Government, and of course it is partly down to the Government and the rules for infrastructure not keeping up with house building. As hon. Members have said, there is a difference between what the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Treasury want. Of course that is true, but the provision of GP surgeries is also down to councils and what they do with the section 106 money and community infrastructure levy that they are given. It is also down to the developers and the promises they make, the CCGs and how they plan for things, and the national planning bodies such as NHS England and Health Education England. Part of the problem is that there is no directly responsible body that can ensure that people get the services they need.
There is no shortage of people wanting to be medical students. I used to work in social mobility, and studying medicine is one of the most popular things that young people want to do. The issue is partly the diversity of the people who get into it: only 6% of doctors are from a working-class background, and someone is 24 times more likely to be a doctor if a parent is a doctor. I cannot help but feel that we are missing out on a talent pool of people who want to be doctors, yet we do not have enough GPs.
A number of Members have made important points about the things we need to do. Of course, it is not just about GPs. Lots of things I campaign on are about infrastructure—reopening Grove station, improving the A420 and A34, having more school places and so on—but there are three things that I would draw attention to. First, we need the infrastructure before the houses go in. In this case, that means knowing precisely who will run the GP surgery and having them signed up with the contract to do so before we start. We recognise that most GP surgeries are private businesses. It should not be as difficult as it is to get somebody committed and to know what we will do with the money.
The second point is that I am not persuaded that we should not have a limit on the number of patients that a GP or practice should have. It would be extraordinary in other fields if we did not have a limit on the number of people that we thought was suitable. I totally accept that areas are very different, but surely we can have an upper limit that triggers additional services once it has been reached or exceeded, as it clearly has been in my constituency.
The third point is about the talent pool. We have shortages of all sorts of things in this country, but a lot of people want to study medicine and we are not using them. We could be much better at recruiting people.
We will not solve this problem today, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but if we want people to not feel that houses are a curse on their local area, they need to know that their quality of life will not decline. That means putting in the right infrastructure, particularly GP surgeries.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my county colleague and hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate. He will know that this is a particular issue for Bedfordshire.
In my own constituency over the course of the last decade, the town of Biggleswade, the village of Stotfold and the newly parished area of Fairfield Park have been dramatically transformed by housing growth. In many instances, that has created very welcome, happy communities and neighbourhoods for people, which have grown and become a natural part of the environment; but we cannot ignore the pace of growth and the impact that it has had on those residents new to the area, and on the existing residents who have accepted the additional growth in their areas.
Two issues make for happy communities. First, is the pace of growth sustainable and are the services there that people come to expect from the Government, in terms of school places and, as we are discussing today, of GPs?
My constituency is growing at a rate of about five times the national average. Between 2015 and 2020, the population of this country grew by about 1.9 million people. If all constituencies grew at the same pace as mine, there would be over 5 million new people in this country. I ask the Minister, when it comes to housing, could we please consider an absolute cap on what local communities are expected to have in any long period of time? If we do not have that pressure against market forces, I fear that we are building some concerns for the future.
I know that Conservative colleagues—replete in their number here today—have a large number of questions about planning reforms. I would just say this to the Minister. The previous Secretary of State focused, I think rightly, on the efficiency of the process of planning: how do we get more houses built? That is important. Will the Minister also focus on how effective the planning is for the communities where those houses are built? If we have that slight nuance in the approach on planning, I think that would be helpful.
Of course, I come today not to bury the Minister, but to praise him; because he knows that his colleague in, I think, June 2021, in response to a debate that I called on housing growth in my constituency, killed the 1 million housing target that was in the Labour peer Lord Adonis’s housing target for the Ox-Cam arc. The Minister also knows that his Department, under the new Secretary of State, has said that it wishes to de-emphasise—to flush away—the Ox-Cam arc, which Lord Adonis, the Labour peer, was using as his Trojan horse to build a million houses in the play spaces of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. It is welcome that those changes were made, so I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister and ask him to make sure that we follow through to ensure that unreasonable targets are not placed on councils in the Ox-Cam arc area.
The Minister also knows that his colleague said that he would arrange meetings for me with the Department for Education for school places and with the Department of Health and Social Care on GP places. I am grateful to the Department for allowing that meeting to take place with school places; we had a very good meeting with the Department for Education, but I am interested to learn more from the NHS. I am completing a survey of GPs and around June this year will have the opportunity to present a report. Will the Minister follow up on that with his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that I get access to the Secretary of State when that report is ready?
I just want to make a couple of points on GPs, if I may. As many colleagues have said, I know that people are frustrated that they cannot get access, but they should know that their GPs are working very hard. I would make this point: abuse is never acceptable when people contact their GP surgery. People should hold back. Don’t go all Will Smith, right?—don’t go all Will Smith when you call your GP surgery. Make sure you take that extra breath when you talk, because the people you are talking to are under considerable pressure.
We need to look at the GP partner model. I know there are many who would like to say that that model is an oddity in the new world. No, it is not. Entrepreneurship and the idea of running your own business has its place in primary care. We need to make sure that we open up and broaden the way in which we give people access to primary care. We have to recognise that GP access is a bottleneck in the system. I fully support infrastructure first, but the answer is not always more people. Often, it is more efficient processes with the existing people, or new avenues for people to access the care.
Will the Minister go back to his colleagues, as he considers GP practice and housing growth, and say, “Please make more progress on giving people the power to understand how they can access primary care”? We are making good progress with the NHS app, but it is an NHS app designed for us that actually looks like it was designed for doctors; it is very hard to make effective consumer decisions using the app. I ask the Minister to broaden the access for people to get into primary care through chemists and other facilities, and to please move forward with diagnostic centres.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this important debate. The provision for affordable housing and access to good healthcare are among the top issues raised with me by constituents in Truro and Falmouth in Cornwall. Those issues must be tackled in conjunction. I thank all the GPs and primary healthcare professionals in my constituency who have been working so hard over the last few years—as they always do.
I recognise people’s concern about the impact of large-scale developments on local services. That is why we must increase the provision of affordable housing while keeping in mind that for local communities to accept the new housing developments, new developments must be supported by health infrastructure. In the right place, large-scale developments can not only ease the housing crisis but act as a catalyst for reforming and tackling health issues and inequalities. We need to ensure that large developments can provide those opportunities.
Primary care delivery always requires funding, a physical site and willing providers. Those providers are GPs, which are generally private businesses and differ in their capacity. They will also differ in the demographic that they serve. Large-scale developments should be able to assist with that funding, and we must continue to ensure that local planning authorities can enforce that through mechanisms such as section 106 and the community infrastructure levy. I am pleased the Government have committed to further reform in that area, including proposals in the levelling-up White Paper for a new infrastructure levy that will enable local authorities to capture value from development much more efficiently. However, I echo the call of others that co-ordination with the Department of Health and Social Care is an utterly sensible way forward.
Developers can also provide physical sites by reserving land to deliver health services. I am pleased that developers for the controversial Langarth Garden Village in my constituency, which will eventually provide up to 10,000 new homes, are committed to doing the right thing and have secured, through the planning system and with the council’s involvement, permission to develop a new health infrastructure. I would like to thank, since he is in the Chamber, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) for providing a new free school on the north coast of Cornwall that will, in part, deliver school places for that very controversial new estate in my constituency.
The health infrastructure plans include a new health and wellbeing centre embedded in the Langarth community, a state-of-the-art health hub to provide a one-stop shop that includes GPs and primary care treatment as well as other health facilities that have been mentioned today, such as a dentists, a pharmacy and diagnostic services to reduce pressure on existing local services. However, it is important that we remember that GPs are a private business, and as such the Government must create the right conditions to ensure they can supply and maintain that service.
In Cornwall we have a housing crisis and a health and social care crisis. We have mentioned today that solutions to the two crises come together—one absolutely affects the other. GP surgeries in Cornwall frequently report that they are short-staffed; they have offered jobs across the entire health service in Cornwall, but people cannot take the work because they cannot find housing. That applies to any kind of healthcare worker, right up to consultant level, but certainly applies to GPs and dentists. We must ensure that key workers from both the public and private sectors can buy and rent affordably in the area. I would like more key worker housing to be set aside in the Langarth development.
Key workers are vital, but they tend to earn less than the national average, have fewer assets and have more limited choices about where they can work. That means that they find it harder to get on to the property ladder or to rent decent homes close to where they need to work. It is worth mentioning that the Langarth development is very close to our hospital. I would also like to see more one-level, one-front-door properties in the development for our growing elderly population. Let us create communities where they need to be. I am pleased that the Government have already taken several steps to ensure that we meet the needs of key workers in local communities, including the 30% discount under the First Homes scheme or the assistance available under Help to Buy. However, even with those schemes in place, many key workers struggle to get on the housing ladder, and there is a huge shortage in Cornwall.
There are various options available to the Government; I will mention a few. In areas with key worker staff shortages, local authorities and housing associations should consider giving greater priority to local key workers in their respective allocations and lettings policies. In addition, the Government’s future affordable housing funding programmes should prioritise allocating grant funding to affordable housing schemes in which a significant proportion of homes are reserved for key workers. It is especially relevant to places such as Cornwall, where we are on a peninsula and cannot borrow key workers from other local authorities.
It is clear that new housing developments must be supported by the appropriate health infrastructure. Developers can help to provide funding for sites, but GPs and other health providers supply the service and we must do more to ensure that those workers can afford to buy or rent near their place of work.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for securing this really important debate.
Being able to access GP services is an incredibly important issue for my constituents. In fact, I receive almost as much correspondence on that issue as I do any other topic, and my constituents have expressed a real frustration with the difficulty of being able to secure a local appointment with their GP, as well as not being able to see their GP face to face as much as they would like. I appreciate that this is no fault of the GPs themselves, and I would like to put on record my thanks and pay tribute to all the GPs across my constituency, who have done an extraordinary job over the past 24 months—and indeed also worked incredibly hard before that, and continue to do so.
I recently met some GPs from the Modality Partnership, who told me that much more needs to be done if we are to deliver the level and provision of service that the public so desperately want. It is clear that approving large-scale housing developments will only make the problems worse, when we allow the housing developments to take place with no thought to increasing healthcare services by providing physical facilities and revenue expenditure for employing and recruiting more GPs. That is currently a big concern for many of my constituents, right across Keighley and Ilkley.
Only last year, the Labour-run Bradford Council proposed in its draft local plan to increase the number of houses to be built right across my community by 3,000. That includes 314 new houses in Ilkley and Ben Rhydding; 181 new houses in Addingham; 188 houses in Steeton and Eastburn; 191 houses in Riddlesden; and 204 houses in Haworth and Cross Roads—I could go on. In the context of this debate, those proposals will have a damaging impact on the numerous GP services and facilities that many constituents are still finding it very difficult to access.
We can look at Long Lee, a small community on the outskirts of Keighley, where Bradford Council proposes in its local plan to build an extra 236 new houses. That will have an extra damaging impact on the local GP practice, which is already at capacity. Luckily, a recent housing application for that area was postponed; I can only hope that local healthcare provision will be a vital consideration when that housing application is put forward to the committee again.
In Silsden, the town is currently facing many housing developments, including from Barratt Homes, Linden Homes, Skipton Properties, and Countrywide, with an application that has recently been put forward. More recently, a 140-unit proposal has been put forward by Persimmon Homes, which is a live application. The town is being inundated and services just cannot cope. The town is being asked to put up with too many houses when the local healthcare provision cannot cope as it is already at capacity. It is completely wrong, and something must be done.
I commend the work being done by Silsden’s District Councillor Rebecca Whitaker, who is leading the fight against these proposals and standing up for our local services. I am supportive of the work being done by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), who has, as the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, launched an inquiry into local GP provision. I wholeheartedly hope that that inquiry looks at how we can make sure that expenditure is put into both capital and revenue in order to get better facilities put in place, and also that recruitment for GPs and GP services is given as much emphasis as possible.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made the important point that when planning applications are being considered, local healthcare service providers should have a statutory duty and responsibility to have a say in those applications, so that we can ensure that capacity is delivered for healthcare at a local level. When local authorities put forward their draft local plan, there should be an onus on them to have at least a conversation, but also to explore the facts about where capacity lies beforehand. In my area, when Bradford Council put forward their draft local plan last year, it had not even looked at the capacity available within local healthcare facilities. That cannot be acceptable.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), I make the point about where accountability sits and whether it lies with the Government, local authorities, GP services, local communities or housing developers when applications come forward. In summary, it is vital that we acknowledge these issues, as we cannot continue this endless cycle of allowing large-scale housing developments or additional housing to be built in small communities, producing a dramatic impact, without any acknowledgment of general practice capacity.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this incredibly important debate. The debate brings together two of the biggest categories of complaints that I receive in my constituency: housing development and GP services.
The town of Aylesbury has been expanding for more than 50 years. Indeed, the area of Bedgrove, where my parents had their first home together and where they took me home as their newborn son, more than 50 years ago, was built on the site of a farm, and many more farms and green spaces have been subsumed by housing developments in the ensuing half century—Walton Court in the 1970s, Quarrendon and Watermead in the 1980s and Fairford Leys in the 1990s and early 2000s. All have attracted many more people to make their homes in the proud county town of Buckinghamshire. With each new development, new pressures have been placed on existing communities and the infrastructure that serves them. Key among those services is the provision of healthcare, especially GP surgeries.
I want to be clear that neither I nor my constituents are opposed to development. We recognise that the next generation needs somewhere to live, and Aylesbury is a fine place to choose. However, since 2000, more than 16,000 homes have been added to the town. The newly approved local plan will add that same number again. The people who come to live in those new homes need excellent local services. They need road and rail connections, such as the Aylesbury link road and the Aylesbury spur. They need schools with enough spaces for all the children living locally. Crucially, they need sufficient healthcare provision, particularly at primary level. Yet GP surgeries in my constituency are already at breaking point.
Like other hon. Members present, one of the most familiar refrains I hear from residents is that they simply cannot get an appointment to see their doctor. In recent months, I have visited several GP surgeries not only to thank the hardworking doctors, nurses and, crucially, receptionists for their incredible work during the pandemic, but to hear first hand about the challenges they are experiencing. Top of their list is that there is simply not enough capacity to deal with all the patients who need care.
Meadowcroft surgery is a good example of the pressures that population growth can have on towns like Aylesbury. The surgery opened in 1964 to serve what was then the new Quarrendon estate. It moved to a new site at Jackson Road in 1992, with 8,000 patients on the list. Today that list stands at more than 16,000, and will grow to more than 26,000 when the surgery moves to another new site in Paradise Orchard later this year, following a merger.
For more than a decade, residents in the south of Aylesbury in Stoke Mandeville and Weston Turville have been opposed to a new development on a greenfield site called Hampden Fields. The Hampden Fields Action Group is extremely concerned that the development will have inadequate healthcare provision. Their fears are completely understandable, given that another area—Kingsbrook—is yet to have a new surgery 10 years after its construction.
It is just plain common sense that new housing developments need to include healthcare provision. GP surgeries and all that they now include—such as paramedics, pharmacists and, of course, nurses—are absolutely critical to that provision. We must ensure that buildings for these facilities are core to the design and planning of large-scale new housing developments, and we must also remember that we do not just need the premises; we need the people as well. So we need to ensure that we have enough young people training to join the health service across the full range of its professions, with courses such as those at Buckinghamshire New University, Buckinghamshire College Group and Buckinghamshire University Technical College all providing that critical first step.
We must consider retention as well as recruitment, so that people living in those housing developments will still have excellent healthcare provision in 10, 20 and 30 years’ time. And we must not forget that primary healthcare can result in referral to secondary healthcare. GPs send some of their patients to hospital, and that route must not be neglected either, when we consider housing development on a scale such as we are seeing in Aylesbury.
It cannot be left to a random soup of acronyms— section 106, CIL and HIF—to make all of that necessary provision. What we need is a strategic, considered plan that can be delivered fairly and transparently. And within that plan, we probably need to consider novel ways of financing infrastructure, so that we get it at a much earlier stage—before all the houses are sold and when the developers are prepared to pay.
Today’s debate is an important and welcome opportunity to highlight how crucial healthcare is to the British people as we tackle the burgeoning demand for new homes. I hope that the Minister’s response will serve to reassure existing and future residents of Aylesbury that the Government understand the challenge and are set to meet it head-on.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd.
I genuinely think that this has been a valuable debate about an important issue. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing it and on the typically clear and powerful remarks he made in opening it. He has been raising concerns about this issue for a considerable period, and the fact that he felt compelled to secure this debate today only serves, I am afraid to say, to highlight the startling lack of progress on the part of the Government in addressing those concerns.
The concerns are not the hon. Gentleman’s alone; indeed, this issue is not confined to his corner of Bedfordshire. His concerns are widely shared across the House. As the attendance for today’s debate makes clear, they are keenly felt among Government Members in particular. I thank all the Members who have contributed this morning.
Having heard today’s contributions, we can only hope that the Minister will at least be convinced of the need to go away and revisit the fundamental aspects of a planning system that routinely fails to produce the necessary social infrastructure for new communities to thrive. We have heard lots of complaints and points of contention today, but it is within the Government’s gift to take action on many of the issues that have been raised. I hope that the Minister will go away with renewed vigour to address them.
The focus of this morning’s debate has been on the provision of primary care services for large-scale housing developments. I add my praise to the general expressions of support that have been conveyed today to GPs and GP practice staff. That we face significant challenges as a country when it comes to primary care capacity is not in dispute. The reasons for that shortage are complex, and when it comes to problems such as the recruitment and retention of enough GPs to accommodate rising patient demand or how local health services plan for population growth in service provision, those are obviously the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care. However, there is no question in my mind but that the planning system is exacerbating the crisis in primary care, particularly in areas experiencing significant development, by failing to deliver new facilities in places where the needs of large-scale new communities cannot be met simply by the expansion of existing sites.
The particular concern of the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire and others who have spoken this morning is general practice capacity, but the national failure to ensure that all new large-scale housing developments have adequate primary care provision is mirrored in other forms of infrastructure, whether that be school places or transport, as the hon. Members for Wantage (David Johnston), for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) and others have remarked upon. Having that infrastructure is absolutely key to gaining local consent, which is an essential part of the planning process.
I do not think that this issue is primarily one of housing supply. There is a housing crisis and we need to address it, but the crux of this issue is the need for up-front infrastructure investment before or at the point that a large-scale residential development completes and new residents move in. However, the planning system as it currently operates—and I think Conservative Members will accept this—is simply not geared up to facilitate that infrastructure-first approach on all major sites; all too often, no one has overall responsibility for place-making.
The importance of master developers was clearly identified in the Letwin review: they strategically assemble land, secure the necessary permissions, co-ordinate the delivery of the infrastructure and de-risk the development process as a matter of course. Without those developers, the system incentivises volume house builders to build often poor-quality housing in inappropriate and often entirely car-dependent locations, in a way that frequently leads to intractable disputes about how core infrastructure and services will be delivered and who will pay for them. Ultimately, the fact that the planning system lacks many of the features necessary to support effective large-scale housing growth stems from the failure of central Government to take a clear strategic role in the delivery of new large-scale communities.
The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire and others drew attention to the inadequacies of the housing infrastructure fund, and they were right to do so. The fund can and does support the delivery of infrastructure on sites where viability is an issue and address the need for up-front infrastructure and the problem of risk on a limited number of sites. However, because it distributes funding on a competitive, ad hoc basis, it is not a general solution for the infrastructure needs of all large-scale housing developments.
Homes England could play a far larger role in providing local authorities with support and assisting local partners directly with delivery, land acquisition and the master developer role. It has extensive legal powers that allow it to take on that role and obtain land by means of compulsory purchase. It could be the instrument the Government use to support large-scale growth with the necessary social and transport infrastructure. However, that would depend on the Government having a strategy; at present, I am afraid, they do not. Although there are exceptions, in general terms it is simply a fact that central Government in England do not play a clear strategic role in site identification or the delivery of new large-scale communities.
The national infrastructure strategy sets out a range of investment priorities, but it does not provide a framework that makes clear which areas are preferred for long-term priority housing growth and their relationship to infrastructure investment. National planning policy on delivering sustainable, large-scale housing developments is incredibly vague and provides little in the way of encouragement or guidance to local authorities contemplating meeting local housing need in key strategic locations.
The Conservative Administration of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) changed the law in 2018 to encourage locally led development corporations to act as master developers. However, to the best of my knowledge—the Minister may correct me—none has yet been designated.
In many ways, the root cause of the infrastructure challenges on sites such as those that have been mentioned today is the issue of land value capture. Aside from direct Government grant, development of those sites is reliant on developer contributions in the form of section 106 or the community infrastructure levy to meet essential infrastructure needs. However, those contributions are often not sufficient to provide all the infrastructure needed on those sites. I am surprised that this has not been mentioned today, but that is at least partly a direct consequence of the impact of viability rules set out in the 2012 national planning policy framework, which allow developers to game the system and drive down section 106 contributions. Although in some cases local authorities could be more robust with developers, the national planning policy framework ties their hands behind their backs in terms of what they can extract as public gains under section 106.
The Minister will no doubt point to the Government’s proposals, mentioned most recently in the levelling-up White Paper, to introduce a new infrastructure levy. However, at present, we have no idea how it would apply to large-scale development or deal with areas of low demand, how much it would yield or the date by which we can expect it to be implemented. There is an immediate deficit, as the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said in his opening remarks.
Given how heavily the Government appear to be leaning on the new levy as a means to secure affordable housing and the infrastructure communities need, perhaps the Minister might give us a sense of what the new levy will look like, what form it will take and when it will be brought before the House for consideration. Indeed, he might even go so far as to give Members a straight answer to the more fundamental question of whether the Government still intend to legislate for a reform of the planning system in this Parliament.
To conclude, this debate has highlighted a problem that is not confined to a handful of sites or to particular parts of England, but is the inevitable outcome of the current planning system, which does not provide the necessary social and transport infrastructure on major sites as a matter of course. Addressing that problem requires a fundamental change of approach on the part of the Government, not just tinkering around the edges with individual infrastructure funding streams.
Real benefits can be gained if the Department is willing to grapple seriously with the problem, not only in delivering a marked increase in housing supply but in terms of the quality and sustainability of the new communities that could be created. The alternative is that we continue to see more poor-quality housing in inappropriate locations without the necessary infrastructure that residents need to flourish. Members across the House do not want to see that outcome, and I suspect the Minister does not want to see it either, but do the Government have the political will to re-examine the flawed system that they are currently presiding over?
The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I cannot think of a better way to start my day than by spending it with my colleagues. I offer my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) my congratulations and thanks for securing this important debate. As the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) said, it has been useful and wide ranging. Hon. Members will understand that I may not be able to answer a number of questions about health here and now, but I will address some of the points that have been mentioned.
My hon. Friend has been a tireless campaigner for increasing access to GPs for his constituents. I know that he and everyone here wants our constituents to have timely appointments when they need them, and I am sure that everyone will agree that waiting weeks to see a GP is simply unacceptable.
When there is a growing population and a growing supply of new homes, it falls to Government to ensure that local services are not overburdened. Part of the problem is that in the past new development has not always been accompanied by real-world improvements in local infrastructure to serve the new community. When new homes are built, roads feel busier, schools appear to be over-subscribed and appointments for local surgeries and other healthcare provision are harder to book—I see that across my own constituency of Pudsey, Horsforth and Aireborough. It is an issue that often pits communities against new development because, too often, people feel that planning is something that happens to them, not something in which they are engaged. That needs to change and I say to all colleagues here that I get it.
We need to ensure that new homes automatically translate into new infrastructure, whether that be hospitals, GP practices, schools or parks and play areas, because they are all things that we rely on. I offer my praise to GPs who have worked incredibly hard in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) mentioned being kind to the staff at GP practices, which is an important message to relay.
It is important to say a few words about what should be happening, in order to reinforce the message to those who may be listening. Local plans are a way for areas to develop the communities they need. They are key to driving investment in the local area and securing the housing and jobs that our communities need. None the less, those plans should involve all the providers within those communities to ensure they are providing services to match the demands that new housing will bring.
Sir Gavin Williamson
My right hon. Friend is a thoughtful, considered and diligent Minister, and I hope he will be able to answer my question. If he does not have the answer, perhaps he can look for inspiration from his officials to his rear. Is he able to inform us how many planning applications have been turned down over the last year, two years or whatever timescale the records cover, as a result of lack of provision for health capacity and the needs of GPs? My guess is that the answer is probably zero, and that in itself sends a message to developers that they can get away with not having to bother with this.
Stuart Andrew
I thank my right hon. Friend for asking such a specific question. I do not have those figures to hand, but I will ensure that I get them to him. He makes a very valid point, and I will come on to some of the things that we are looking at to address exactly his points.
I was talking about local plans, which provide certainty for communities, businesses and developers. An effective and up-to-date plan is essential not only to meet an area’s housing requirements, but to create well-designed and attractive places to live, with the services that people need on their doorstep. We are already helping councils to put in place such robust and up-to-date plans. That includes encouraging visits from the Planning Inspectorate and specialist advice from the Planning Advisory Service to provide a range of specialist planning advice to councils throughout England.
Plans should be shaped by early, proportionate and effective engagement between plan makers and communities, local organisations, businesses, infrastructure providers and operators, and statutory consultees. They should seek to meet the development needs of their area, and that includes facilities that will be needed across health, schools and other areas. We recognise, however, that more work is needed. We want all infrastructure providers, including healthcare providers, to be much more engaged in the plan making right from the outset, because that is clearly not happening enough, as we have heard in the evidence of colleagues today. We will come forward on how we will do that as part of our reforms in due course.
Local plans are not the only means of improving services and building that vital infrastructure. There are clear regulatory frameworks for local authorities and developers to follow. The national planning policy framework, for example, states that local plans should aim for sustainable development, which means that new schools, hospitals and local services such as GP practices should be factored in from the outset. Proposed development should be shaped by effective engagement with the local community, so that planners and developers know what is really needed. In some areas, it might be new roads, bridges or bus depots, but in others it will be new nurseries or GP surgeries. That engagement should extend to relevant health bodies too, such as NHS trusts and the clinical commissioning groups, to ensure that any development helps rather than hinders local strategies to improve health and wellbeing.
Local healthwatch organisations have a role to play. They have a firm grasp on the concerns of people who use health and social care services. My Department strongly encourages planning authorities to consult them when new homes are being built, so that they can raise those all-important questions on the number of GPs needed. Equally, to some extent local plans should head some of that off before houses are actually built. I have, however, listened to what colleagues have said—I hear it loud and clear. Put simply, if a GP surgery is right in the centre of town and a new development is on the outskirts, it is obviously better to ensure that a new surgery is built closer to the homes it will serve.
We have touched on some of the funding. Hon. Members are aware that councils obtain contributions through a community infrastructure levy on new development and by negotiating section 106 planning obligations with a developer. That helps to create funding not just for housing, but to address local infrastructure needs. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, about £5.5m has been allocated to healthcare provision through such funding, and that should be spent on helping to provide GP practices.
I recognise, however, that there is an issue here about which we need to do more. We hope that part of the effective planning reforms that we are to introduce will answer some of that. Our ambition has always been to simplify the system and to ensure that development becomes synonymous with improved services, and healthier and happier neighbourhoods. That is why we are exploring the introduction of a new infrastructure levy to replace the existing system of developer contributions.
At the moment, we plan for that new levy to be payable on completion of development. That will replace the negotiation and renegotiation that we keep seeing happen. The new levy will not be negotiable and will maximise land value, so we get more for local communities. It will also bring much greater certainty on costs, on factoring expenditure into the price paid for land and, in turn, on delivering more vital infrastructure. Under our proposals, local authorities would be allowed to borrow against infrastructure levy revenues so that they could bring forward vital improvements to services, including expanding GP capacity, before the first spade of a new development even hits the ground.
That said, I recognise that we need to test the policy. Many issues have been raised. I cannot at this moment commit my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to a meeting, but I will raise with him the suggestions and comments made today, and I will meet my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to raise the points made, to ensure that we are prioritising, gearing up and keeping focus, so that we can see what more can be done, and so that we do not miss the opportunity provided by the new fund to get the necessary infrastructure.
Matthew Pennycook
The Minister may not be able to answer, but may I tempt him to name the legislative vehicle by which the new infrastructure levy will be introduced?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Member will not have to wait too long before hearing which vehicle will be used; I hope it will be in a couple of weeks.
I want to touch on the issue of transparency. We have introduced infrastructure funding statements, which give people the opportunity to see what councils have done, but we can and must do more to give confidence to residents. That brings me on to community engagement.
As hon. Members will know, changes to the levy system are by no means the only improvement we want to bring to our planning system. One of the reasons why new development has not always been matched with tangible improvements to schools, nurseries or GP practices is that it has not always been easy for local residents to scrutinise applications or to make their voices heard. We need a faster, more responsive planning system, fit for the modern age. That means embracing digital technology and encouraging more residents to voice their views on what is being built in their community, and where.
I know that some of our previous proposals generated significant debate, to say the least, and it is therefore right that we paused for thought and took stock of different voices from across the planning sector and beyond, but on this ambition we are determined to make headway because we believe that it will result in more real-world improvements to services, which hon. Members all want to see.
My ministerial colleagues and I hope to announce a way forward soon so that the planning system supports our wider mission to level up communities in Bedfordshire and right across the country. The key point is that, at its heart, communities must be involved. Communities and neighbourhoods should be shaping the places in which they live, so that we have beautiful places with the necessary infrastructure and a democratic system that also considers environmental improvements. Neighbourhoods should have a big say in all of it.
Colleagues raised a number of other points. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) never misses an opportunity to raise housing targets with me. She knows from our conversations and meetings that I understand the issue. If she will allow me, I will come back to her in due course. My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) has also been quick off the mark to come to see me to discuss the issues in his constituency. Again, I understand them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough talked, quite rightly, about wanting to support new housing but that we should be building places where people want to live, not just huge dormitory estates. There has to be a sense of community. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) asked me to double up with the Secretary of State after his report—I will make sure that I do that for him.
I will see my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) later today to discuss the issue of second homes and its impact on those working in the public sector. I hope we will have a constructive meeting. My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) talked about towns I know well. My mother-in-law lives in Addingham, so I will get an earful from her if I do not get this right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) talked rightly about the stark increase—from 16,000 to 26,000—in the number of patients at his surgery. That is absolutely an area we need to look at carefully. He also talked about all of the different funds that are available. I think that that is one of the most confusing issues, and it is something that I would like to address as we go forward.
The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich talked about the new levy. We are currently working with local authorities, providers and industry to ensure that the levy works for everybody.
In closing, I reiterate that I have heard loud and clear the concerns of hon. Members. The frustration of our constituents when large-scale new developments are green lit and local services become increasingly congested is palpable for us all. I hope I have clearly set out what we have already done to address that, through local plans, NPPF and section 106 agreements. I have also reiterated that we intend to go much further, by creating a more streamlined, smoother planning system, which levels up infrastructure and local services in every part of the country. I say to my hon. Friends that I am committed to working with all of them to ensure that we can make that vision a reality.
Andrew Selous
Let me start by offering my huge thanks to all colleagues who have taken the time and trouble to come here and be incredibly articulate on behalf of their communities, because this is clearly a common problem. We have heard from Members representing areas from Keighley to Cornwall and all points in between, and I know that colleagues from the north-west, Oxfordshire and many other places were not able to be here to tell the stories of their constituencies.
I have been reflecting on what the Minister has said. When he described the current system, I heard the word “should” a lot, but in moving to the new system of the infrastructure levy, that word must change to “must”. In far too many cases, “should” simply has not resulted in delivery. At the heart of it, I think we can do this according to the numbers. A GP and primary care team should be able to expect a safe limit based on the population in their area. A younger, healthier population could have a larger limit, but a smaller patient load may be required in an area with an older, more disadvantaged population.
If we agree that there is a safe number of patients for a primary care team of GPs and practice staff, we can simply do it on the numbers and raise up those affected. When many more houses are built, we must have the additional capacity to serve those extra residents coming to the area. I hope that the infrastructure levy will provide everything we need, but when the Minister has that conversation with the Department of Health and Social Care, could he please invite the Treasury to that meeting as well? Quite frankly, if the infrastructure levy does not do the full job, we will have to go back to the Treasury. We will pay for this eventually, but we need to do it in a timely manner.
My final point is incredibly important. What the Minister is about to bring in must not just be future-looking. We all now have massive estates that are under-provisioned. He cannot just look to the future; he must deal with the current problem, which the existing system has allowed to get into a terrible state.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered general practice capacity for large-scale housing developments.
Gambling-related Harm
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered gambling-related harm.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I am delighted to have secured this debate to talk about the urgent need for reform of the gambling laws. After two and half years of debates, reports and evidence sessions and, sadly, years of harm, addiction and ultimately loss of life, I was pleased to hear the Minister last week confirm that the publication of the long-awaited White Paper is not just imminent, but “very, very imminent”.
I urge the Minister to keep his word. He knows that the longer we wait to bring outdated and ineffective gambling laws into the digital age, the more people will fall victim to insidious online gambling products. For years, colleagues across the House and I have faced an onslaught of opposition from the gambling industry, for which the status quo is the perfect mix of outdated legislation, weak sanctions and limited scope. The reforms that we propose would fix that broken state of affairs.
Last week, GambleAware, a charity linked to the industry, reported that an estimated 1.4 million people suffer harms related to gambling, and that gambling has returned to pre-pandemic levels. According to the Gambling Commission, there are 55,000 problem gamblers aged 11 to 16. A Public Health England report found that 0.5% of people are problem gamblers, 3.8% are at risk and 7% are negatively affected by others’ gambling. The same report estimated that the cost of gambling-related harm is £1.27 billion annually.
Online gambling in particular must be addressed. The majority of online gambling revenue is derived from those classed either as problem gamblers or as at risk. The House of Lords Select Committee on the Gambling Industry found that 60% of gambling industry profits come from the 5% experiencing gambling harm. The University of Liverpool found that for online gambling that is even higher, with 86% of profits coming from that small cohort.
Rather than enter into a proper dialogue with those who are looking to reform and improve our gambling laws, the industry has come forward with very little in the way of remedies. It has resorted to playground name-calling, labelling those who are seeking improvements and reform as prohibitionists and, in my case, a Methodist. As a Welsh woman, I do not consider that an insult. That response is simply not good enough.
People having a bet on the Grand National, placing their Saturday accumulator, or enjoying a night at bingo or in the casino, are not—I repeat not—the focus of our reforms. We are fighting against people being seriously harmed, families being destroyed and lives being lost through gambling addiction and disorder. We cannot, in good conscience, stand by and see any more gambling-related suicides. Nor can we see people turn to substance abuse or crime as a way out of their addiction.
The playbook that the industry uses is very similar to the one it used during the debate on fixed odds betting terminals. We must not be fooled by that narrative. The industry says that the problem is historical, yet just a few weeks ago 888 was fined to the tune of £9.4 million for multiple failings. The industry says that reforms will harm the economy and result in job losses, which is exactly the same argument it used ahead of the reduction in the stake on fixed odds betting terminals. Despite warnings from the industry that 4,500 of the 9,000 betting shops would close as a result of reducing the stake to £2 a spin, 8,000 betting shops are still open today, and many are still clustered in some of our most deprived communities.
Last year, Peers for Gambling Reform commissioned a report, which was carried out by NERA Economic Consulting and concluded that
“industry profits are likely to exceed”
any financial costs associated with proposed reforms. The report stated that
“diverting expenditure by the public to other sectors which are more labour intensive than the gambling sector could create up to 30,000 new jobs, and employee earnings could increase by up to £400 million.”
Proposed reforms would see a
“net increase of £68-£87 million in tax revenues”,
rather than a net loss to the Exchequer. The industry argues that any reform at all will drive people to the black market, but the Gambling Commission has already said that the industry overestimates the existence of the black market, and it is not an argument to hold back reform.
What improvements are needed in the upcoming White Paper? Most importantly, the case for a centralised and independent affordability assessment is overwhelming. It cannot be right that online operators permit customers to deposit and lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, despite those customers having no regular source of income and often using money that is funded by crime. There has been a lot of debate about the level of a soft affordability cap, by which I mean the point at which an open banking check would kick in. Putting a limit of £100 a month on net deposits is a sensible, proportionate and, more importantly, evidence-based position, especially when we consider that the average level of disposable income in Britain is £450 a month, and that 73% of slot players and 85% of non-slot players lose £50 or less a month. A soft cap at £100 is therefore low enough to enable the vast majority of gamblers to continue without any checks whatever, as the vast majority of gambling activity occurs below this level. A £100 check would kick in only for those who gamble well above the average amount each month. Moreover, it does not preclude gamblers spending more than that. It just means that they would have to have an enhanced affordability check, which—surprise, surprise—many of the industry operators already carry out.
I also want to mention several banks that have been supporting their customers by providing gambling blocks. Monzo and Starling were among the first to do so, and I cannot understand why many banks do not offer the same support. It should be mandatory. There are now loopholes whereby gambling companies can accept non-card payments or the information available to the block is not accurate. I ask that Ministers work with the banking industry to ensure that all banks provide a comprehensive blocking facility.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
I wonder what the answer is. I fully understand what the hon. Lady is proposing, but look at the hard evidence from Norway. Norway has done exactly what the hon. Lady is proposing, but 66% of all gambling stakes in Norway are done on the black market or dark web. How does the hon. Lady propose that that does not happen in this case?
Carolyn Harris
Doing nothing is certainly not the answer. I know little about the Norway study, but just because Norway has not been successful, it does not mean to say that the UK Government would not be successful. We cannot afford to have any more of the issues that we have encountered for the last 17 years. Enough life has been lost, and doing nothing is not an answer.
I would like to pay tribute to Annie Ashton, who bravely started an e-petition when her husband Luke sadly took his own life after being lured back into gambling by relentless operators. I strongly back her calls to end the poisonous inducements that the industry uses to hook people on its addictive products. There is no such thing as a free bet.
It is not just inducements that are a massive problem. Gambling advertising has proliferated in recent years. We are now bombarded with gambling adverts on TV, online, at football matches and on billboards. I know that colleagues are particularly concerned about the impact that that has on children. If we look at recent published data, we can see the scale of the problem: 96% of people aged 11 to 24 have seen gambling marketing messages in the last month and are more likely to bet as a result; 45% of 11 to 17-year-olds and 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds see gambling advertising at least once a week on their social media, with one-third of young people reporting seeing it daily; 41,000 under 16-year-olds—children—are estimated to be followers of gambling-related accounts on social media; and 1,200 hours of gambling ads have been played on the radio during the school run hours over the last year.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady welcome the whistle-to-whistle ban on advertisements for gambling, which has seen a 97% reduction in the amount of adverts that children see? Would she support what Bet365, a company in Stoke-on-Trent, is supporting, which is that only branding should be advertised, mainly on the pitch side, not any actual odds or free bets that, I agree with her, can be too inducing and, therefore dangerous?
Carolyn Harris
The whistle-to-whistle ban is not worth the paper it was written on. As for supporting anything Bet365 has done, I am sorry, I could not possibly do that. My experience of it does not allow me to do that.
That is a fraction of the alarming statistics that come across my desk each day. We know from research by Ipsos MORI and the University of Stirling that regular exposure to gambling promotions can change perceptions and associations with gambling over time and impact the likelihood that young people will gamble in the future. That advertising is a catalyst to risk and problem gambling in secondary school-aged children as a result, according to the Journal of Gambling Studies.
How can we let gambling companies spend more than £1.5 billion a year on advertising to the extent that in one single televised football match over 700 gambling logos were visible throughout the game? That is insane.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady think that kind of answers the last intervention? If the gambling companies that are businesses did not think the advertising was successful in capturing more people, would they put £1.5 billion into it, or would they stop advertising now?
Carolyn Harris
The right hon. Gentleman will know my answer. I was surprised when I saw the comment from the industry that advertising did not affect people’s behaviour. I thought if that was the case spending £1 would be ridiculous, but to spend £1.5 billion beggars belief.
Carolyn Harris
I am going to make progress. Economic research has already proven that a ban on gambling advertising in sport would be unlikely to significantly harm sports leagues and teams. The non-gambling sponsors exist and are ready to fill any gap created. With our proposed carve-outs for sectors such as horse racing, we can ensure protection on all sides.
Next is the need for a statutory levy. Chronic underinvestment in the gambling treatment system has led to a scenario in which treatment is unregulated, unaccountable and fails to use the evidence base in the treatment strategies. Between 2% and 3% of people with gambling problems enter the treatment system and nearly all of them enter it through self-referral. A 1% smart levy on industry revenue would provide £130 million, which would be an increase of over £100 million on what we currently receive. That would significantly reduce the UK’s disparity with other nations that spend far more per gambler on treatment than the UK does, increasing funds for improved and—most importantly—industry-free education. That would put the UK at the forefront of research on an issue that affects millions of people across the world, would improve our understanding of how gambling is developing in this country and would inform future regulation.
There should be stake limits for online gambling, to give parity with land-based venues, including a maximum £2 stake on harmful slot content. Given the rapidly changing nature of both land-based gambling and online gambling, it is essential that limits on stakes and prizes, and potentially other factors, are renewed on a triannual basis.
A gambling ombudsman must be set up to ensure fair representation for those who experience problems with operators. Although the Gambling Commission receives complaints as the basis for possible enforcement action, it does not act on behalf of customers in pursuit of redress. That has allowed operators to withhold winnings unfairly and to use obscure terms and conditions to require customers to wager their deposit dozens of times before they are allowed to withdraw their money.
I know that the Gambling Commission has already introduced very welcome identity and age verification requirements, banned the use of credit cards, acted in relation to speed of play and length of time spent on a game, taken measures to require customers to have information on their winnings and their losses, and required all operators to sign up to GAMSTOP. However, there is far, far more to be done.
It is not just my colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm or the Peers for Gambling Reform group who support these measures. Recent polling commissioned by YouGov confirms that the British public are also on our side. Of those surveyed, 78% believe that gambling advertising should be completely banned on all platforms before the watershed and 67% also think that sports clubs should no longer have gambling sponsors on their kits or around their stadiums. In addition, 79% of those surveyed believe that under-18s should not be exposed to gambling advertisements in any form and 72% agree with me that affordability checks should be in place to help to prevent people from losing more money than they can afford to lose. Also, 69% of those surveyed think that online slots should have a maximum stake of £2. Finally, 76% of those surveyed think that the gambling industry should not get to choose where funding for treatment for gambling addiction and research goes. For me, that is a bit of a no-brainer, because doing otherwise is letting the gambling industry mark its own homework; the gambling industry gives the money, so it gets to say where it is spent. It is the people who are damaged the most who lose out; this industry only cares about its profits.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The hon. Member is making the most impassioned contribution. I hope that I will not interrupt the stream of useful statistics that support her argument, but I will just give an example of—I had better be careful in my description—a senior medical person in the highlands who was well-off and well-paid. They committed suicide and it was discovered afterwards that they were a gambling addict.
The point I am making, and I am sure the hon. Member will agree, is that it is a mistake to think that gambling is something that just affects one particular sector of society; it is a problem that can hit anyone. And the local community in the highlands has never quite got over that person’s death.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that it is worth remembering that gambling is all over the place; it is found at every level of society.
Carolyn Harris
I will not name names either. I will just say that there are people in this room at this very moment who have made the greatest sacrifice of all, having given their children to an addiction, with little done to support them.
It is clear that the British public, the evidence, and the momentum are all on the side of reform. All we are asking for is effective protections to be put in place for customers, and for an industry that is all too often shamelessly exploitative to be reined in and regulated effectively. If we tackle the question of affordability, ensure restrictions on advertising and introduce stake limits to help prevent harm, we can tackle gambling disorder and addiction at its very core. If we push to introduce a statutory levy on the industry to properly fund research, education and treatment, along with a gambling ombudsman, we can at least try to help those who are already stuck in the depths of exploitation.
This is a once-in-a-generation chance to update our laws and, most importantly, save lives. It is now in the hands of a few people who I pray to God are listening to this debate, because the time for talking is done; now is the time for action. The gambling industry has run amok for 17 years. It cannot be allowed to be so destructive any longer.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I intend to start the wind-ups at 3.27 pm, so if Back Benchers take a maximum of four minutes, we should get everyone in.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I will be reasonably brief, as the hon. Lady—in this case, my hon. Friend—the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) has laid out all the criteria. I want to emphasise a couple of points, and then appeal to my colleagues to think carefully about what their arguments really are.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this is a very cross-party affair. Across the political parties, we all campaigned for reform back in 2019. Recent polling shows that 70% of existing Conservative MPs agree that people should be protected from losing more than they can afford, so straightaway my own party is very strongly in favour of the changes that the Minister, who will be answering in due course, is looking to make; and I encourage him in doing so. Some 64% of Conservative MPs agreed that the industry needs greater regulation, and 68%—I know these figures have been given already—agreed with stake limits for online gambling. That is my political party, but this is very much a cross-party issue, and I know that Members who represent other parties will make similar points. This is not party political; it is about harm, and how we control that harm.
We have been told frequently by the gambling companies—I remember the debates on fixed odds betting terminals and so on—how they would all do self-regulation very carefully and responsibly. The industry simply did not take the big and early decisions that it should have taken; in a way, it has brought this on itself. I happen to think that many of these companies are very greedy. They have resisted regulation because they have been making such handsome profits out of the way that the industry works right now—excessive profits, in a way—which should be the giveaway. Failing to have self-regulated early means that it is simply not feasible to trust those companies to do what they should do.
As I understand it, the public agree that these changes need to happen and, as I say, parliamentarians are also in favour. If any colleagues have not done so, they should meet those who have suffered enormously as a result of gambling-related harm. Proportionately, a very high number of the British public—7%— are involved in serious gambling harms. That is to say that their families, family members, children, husbands, wives and partners also get sucked into their situation, because an individual or individuals have got themselves sucked into terrible debts, spending more than they can afford and becoming more in debt than their family can afford.
I want to draw attention to one element of the issue about which I have been particularly furious, which is the existence of VIP rooms. The gambling companies persisted with those rooms until they finally started explaining that they were somehow not going to do so anymore, but this has been going on for years. VIP rooms target the most vulnerable people—the people who, as the hon. Member for Swansea East said, the gambling companies make their money off—who are seriously caught up in gambling, often spending much more than they can afford. They are encouraged and incentivised to gamble more, getting special tickets to events, meeting celebrities, and being told what wonderful and clever people they are. All of this is a vortex of debt to them.
We know something about debt that is really important, and the Centre for Social Justice did a lot of work on this: debt is the single biggest cause of family breakdown. It is a dramatic and damaging process that destroys lives. It has led, as we know, to embarrassment, shame and eventual suicide—although in some cases people are caught before they get there. The truth is that debt is damaging, and for many people gambling is a real cause of serious and unregulated debt.
I do not believe in constantly regulating everything, but at time industries need to be regulated to shape the market. The gambling industry was deregulated far too much. At the time, I made a speech saying that I thought it would lead to serious problems, and that speech was right. It is not about the fact that the Labour party did it at the time; the reality was that it was wrong, whoever did it. Now we have to try to make that better. To improve the situation is not about being against gambling. It is about the gambling harms that come from an unregulated and unsupported process, and it is about not allowing people who do gamble to fall into the deep trough of debt.
My final point is about black markets. I have lost count of the number of times that I have been told, when any reform or change is planned, that there is going to somehow be a black market, and that people are going to go off and use it. A gambling black market is a pretty specialised area. If we are worried about that black market, we should simply seek to reform it; we do not stop doing something because we think it will somehow plunge people into debt. I appeal to colleagues, and those who may not be here today, to accept that the time is long overdue.
The hon. Member for Swansea East is quite right that we must move now and swiftly. I urge the Government to come forward and not to listen to the shrill voices that surround them at times, telling them, “This is going to destroy and damage an industry, and it is going to lead to huge hardships and problems.” Given the level of profits and the private money that is taken out of the industry, frankly, if it had common sense it would plough that money back in and then not need to suffer anything at all.
The time is overdue; the Government are now in the right place, although the Minister will no doubt explain that further. The Minister responsible for this issue—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp)—has already explained his intentions. It is time for the gambling industry to recognise that the time is up, change is coming—it has to come—and it is not too soon, given the lives that have been lost and the damage that has been done to families. I say to my colleagues, do not continue to defend bad practice.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate, and for the typically passionate way in which she set out the case for the Government to act faster on combatting gambling-related harm. I declare my interest as a member of the APPG on gambling related harm.
As we know, the Government’s review was completed a year ago this week, and it received 16,000 submissions. Gambling-related harm is an issue that I care passionately about. Why? It is not because of the statistics and the facts, although they are compelling and I congratulate colleagues on reminding us of them. The reason that I care is closer to home: I see the impact of gambling-related harm in my constituency on a regular basis, as do so many of us through our work with constituents. Faced with those stories, I cannot fail to see the case for reform. I share the view that problem gambling in the UK should be treated as a public health issue. Gambling harm is happening every day. It destroys lives, damages health and mental health and, at worse, can lead to the loss of loved ones. There is also the cost to society in lost tax receipts, benefit claims, welfare, and the cost to the NHS and the criminal justice system. Above all, the impact on the health of those affected and the families around them should concern us most, and should be the focus of the Government as they prepare to release the White Paper.
The publication of the gambling White Paper cannot come soon enough. I urge the Minister and his colleagues in Government to take the opportunity to deliver meaningful change where the industry has not. Others across Parliament, in the media and beyond will say that the industry has already introduced significant reforms. Although change is welcome, the stories that so many of us continue to hear demonstrate it is not enough. The time for action is now, and our message is that we do not need to wait; so much can be done before we reach for primary legislation. I hope that the Government will grasp the urgency of the situation and announce changes that can be delivered as soon as possible.
The case for reform is not only mounting; it is overwhelming. However, I and my colleagues across Parliament who have campaigned tirelessly to stop gambling harm face a common challenge. With alarming regularity, we are now told that reform will stop the average punter spending a few quid or that it will prevent people from enjoying themselves. That narrative has to stop. Reform is not about prohibition. It would not stop people doing something they have enjoyed without harm for many years. Reform is about preventing harm and stopping an out-of-control industry from taking advantage of people who are suffering. I have heard several times that gamblers will be driven to the unregulated black market. My response is simple: I do not believe it. The Gambling Commission has previously said that the risk is overstated.
Beyond that, we have to ask ourselves, if harm is already taking place on a vast scale through licensed operators today, why would we not want to regulate so they act more responsibly? There is no reason for us to be caught in a regulatory race to the bottom. As the publication of the White Paper comes ever closer, I hope that the Government have listened and acted on the many concerns raised in order to prevent gambling harm across the country.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East highlighted, it is estimated that in excess of 55,000 children in this country between the ages of 11 and 16 are gambling addicts. The gambling industry spends more than £1.5 billion a year on advertising, and 60% of its profits come from the 5% who are already problem gamblers or at risk of becoming so. On average, a problem gambler commits suicide every day. A recent report from Public Health England showed that the annual economic burden of gambling harm is estimated to be more than £1.2 billion, with the greatest risks occurring in the more deprived areas of the country. That is not levelling up, but levelling down.
There are many actions we need to take, but I add my name to the calls for four key reforms, several of which can happen now as we begin to deal with this terrible problem in our communities and societies. First, to underline what others have already said, we need to an online system that ensures that people cannot spend more than they can afford. Secondly, I cannot understand why online gambling is not subject to the same stake limits as fixed odds betting terminals and in-person gambling. That has to be changed. During lockdown, people were at home more and restricted in their movements, with access to mini casinos on their laptops or mobile phones. That easy access to online gambling is dangerous and puts vulnerable people at much greater risk. Thirdly, there should be a smart statutory levy on the gambling industry to pay for education, treatment and research. Finally, we should remove gambling advertising from sports and sports team, especially sports to which children are exposed.
The Gambling Act 2005 is outdated and has often been described as analogue legislation for a digital age. It was in place before the advent of mobile smartphones that provide access to the mini casino in our pockets and before the internet provided an even larger platform for gambling advertising. The asks that I and many others have outlined are a foundation to build on in creating a society where the risk from real harm and gambling is not acceptable. The evidence is there, the harm that is being caused is well documented, and the time for action is well overdue.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and it is also only right to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that before I came to this place, I was employed by Bet365 between 2006 and 2019. I have not come to this place to be a spokesperson for the gambling industry, but I hope that my experience can be used to inform the House in such debates. Bet365 is a major employer in Newcastle-under-Lyme—I see two colleagues from Stoke-on-Trent here as well—and contributes a huge amount to the local area and to skilled jobs there. I will come to that later.
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her tenacity and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and to everybody who has pushed the subject of gambling-related harm, which we all want to see reduced. I see the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) in his place. The Gambling Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), visited Bet365 last week, and I know that he shares that ambition. I want to share my experience and understanding of how the industry works to respond to some of the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Swansea East in her opening remarks, and to say that I do fear the impact on the black market. I will come to that in a minute.
The hon. Lady is right to have held the industry to account for so long. It has been too slow to adapt in the past, but has made some big changes in recent years, such as the whistle-to-whistle ban and the code on high-value customers, as referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. High-value customers are not just addicts; some are seriously wealthy, so have been treated as VIPs in the past. They are big customers that any capitalist firm would wish to have. However, I accept that VIPs have gone wrong in the past.
Points have already been made about advertising, but I am pleased that 20% of TV adverting by the industry now promotes safer gambling and that we are tackling problem gambling. Figures published by the regulator the Gambling Commission, covering the period to December 2021, showed that the problem gambling rate was down from 0.6% to 0.3%, and that the number of those at moderate risk has fallen from 1.2% to 0.8%. In countries such as Italy, Norway and France, those rates are much higher and there are more black markets, either because online gambling is illegal, there is a state monopoly or there are such high tax rates for the companies registered there. I accept that the black market is not a big problem in the UK at the moment, but that is because we have a well-regulated structure for gambling. We can regulate it better and I hope we do so through the review, but we must be mindful that that risk is out there.
I will now talk a little about Bet365 and what it is doing. The Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) and I visited Bet365 last week. The company has been at the forefront of the industry in trying to address the issue, and has gone above and beyond current regulatory guidance. As I have said, it is rooted in north Staffordshire and did not offshore its sports betting to Gibraltar when most other firms did in order to avoid tax. It has always paid its fair share of taxes, and Denise Coates has always paid her fair share of income tax and not sought to avoid that, despite the headlines that come with that every year.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
This is a caveat, but Denise Coates paid herself a billion pounds over the course of four years. If I earned a billion pounds, I would make sure I paid my tax as well.
Aaron Bell
I am glad to hear that. The fact that she has paid her tax and has not sought to keep that money in the company or do anything else with it is admirable.
Bet365 pays a huge amount of tax and is a British company with huge export success. A lot of its revenue comes from abroad, and any bet taken from abroad improves our balance of payments as an export success. Denise Coates has donated a nine-figure sum to the Denise Coates Foundation, which funds charities locally, nationally and internationally. Bet365 also owns Stoke City football club, so it is rooted in that community.
The hon. Member for Swansea East rightly raised a number of issues, but Bet365 has already gone above and beyond regulatory and industry guidance, by setting deposit limits, picking up on red flags, and having a huge team for responsible gambling proactively contacting people believed to be at risk. The hon. Lady said she wanted a net deposit limit of £100 a month, but I hope she will understand my genuine concern that the process of asking people for data, such as mortgage and bank statements or pay slips, is very intrusive.
In the experience of Bet365 and other firms that I have spoken to, people do not want to provide that information and at the point at which they are asked for it, they stop betting with that firm. We do not know where they then go. Do they go to another firm, elsewhere or stop gambling all together? We do not have enough information, but lessons from the industry tell us that asking people for pay slips and mortgage and bank statements stops them engaging with the firm that already knows their behaviour best. I am not against deposit limits, and neither is Bet365, but we have to get the level right and have lower levels for young people, and so on. Equally, Bet365 has set slot stake limits lower than previously and is prepared to look at feedback.
Change is necessary. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Swansea East for her campaign. I hope that in the course of the review the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport can learn from firms that are at the forefront of the sector, such as Bet365, which is a major local employer that is setting standards for responsible gambling within the sector that I believe we can learn from.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Can Members reduce the length of their comments to three and a half to four minutes? I call Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on her passion and her commitment. I fully support her. I like to think that I am equally passionate when it comes to this issue and I am very keen to see the changes that we all desire. On the whole, I believe people should be entitled to live and let live and make their own mistakes, but only in so far as that mistake does not harm others. Unfortunately, gambling does affect others and, as the hon. Lady said, it affects entire households, including people I know and will speak about, without mentioning any names.
In Northern Ireland, an online survey identified 2.3% of the population as having a gambling problem. Although that percentage is likely to underestimate the number of problem gamblers, it is still more than four times higher than that recorded in mainland Britain and almost three times higher than in the Republic of Ireland. Again, that illustrates my concerns. I can think of one lady in particular in my constituency, whose husband would often come home on a Friday night with no money to pay the bills. It put her and her children in a desperately difficult position. It almost drove the couple apart and ruined their marriage, lives, health and wellbeing. That is just one example.
Some 4% of suicides among 20 to 24-year-olds are gambling-related. There are 250 gambling-related suicides per year in the UK. A Swedish study found that the suicide rate for those with a gambling disorder was 15 times that of the general population. I give those figures because that is what we are looking at: lives that could be saved by a change in legislation. I understand that the gambling sector has done a lot, but it has not done enough. I ask the sector and the Minister to engage with gambling organisations and those who are trying to make lives better and save lives. It is clear that the damage to the community at large is not met with an equal amount of regulation. With that in mind, I ask the Minister to take every step to make the changes.
Gambling with Lives is a charity that was set up in Fermanagh in Northern Ireland by grieving parents who lost their son by suicide after a gambling addiction. They are putting their time, money and effort into raising awareness to ensure that no other parent will know the pain they feel from their loss. They began an initiative in schools because they know that is where it begins for many gamblers, and never more so than now when the world is at our fingertips through our smartphones. I take my hat off to their drive and determination to bring good from loss. Can we say in this House and in this debate today that we are approaching the matter with equal drive? With respect, are the Minister and the Government also involved in pushing hard on the issue?
I would like to see the introduction of regulations that would require operators to pay an annual levy to the Gambling Commission, to create a joint advisory levy board with oversight over the levy paid to the Gambling Commission, to reallocate the £60 million pledge to GambleAware for 2023 to the Gambling Commission under the oversight of the levy board, and to implement the targeted findings into the smart levy. That is why this debate is important. It is about changing lives and saving lives. Lives and families depend on this, and I believe the Government’s approach is not dependable. With that in mind, it must change, and I look to the Minister to assure me that it will change and for the better.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
Everybody here understands the damage caused by addiction, not just to the individual but to families, marriages and communities. Nobody doubts for a minute the challenges that the Government face in trying to regulate, in this case, the gambling industry to protect the most vulnerable, while at the same allowing the vast majority to enjoy their hobby or, in some cases, profession without it becoming an overburdened, bureaucratic straitjacket or without imposing a nanny-state solution on the majority. I say that because if the industry is restricted too harshly, the evidence shows that it just forces people on to the black market or the dark web, where there are absolutely no checks or balances in place to protect people. No, it is not difficult to access for someone who wants or needs to use it.
The reality is that problem gambling rates in the UK, at 0.3%, are low compared with our neighbours: in Italy, it is 2.4%; in Norway, 1.4%; and in France, 1.3%. Despite what the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) says, a big part of that success is down to what industry in the UK has embraced, with programmes like “BeGambleAware”. That is not just a saying or catchphrase, but something tangible in every regulated high street betting shop with human interaction, as well as their online presence. The large industry players in this country have pledged contributions of over £100 million for research, education and treatment in this area.
Carolyn Harris
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that for the money the industry has given, it says where it is spent? It has influence over how that money is spent and therefore it precludes people from accessing services because they feel there is industry interference.
Craig Whittaker
I was trying to highlight the fact that the hon. Lady said earlier that the industry was doing nothing, and the reality is that it is not doing nothing. It is actually part of why we have a much lower gambling problem in this country than our neighbours do. The industry is also spending a further £10 million on safer gambling education for all 11 to 19-year-olds throughout the country. As we have seen during the pandemic when we were all working from home, advertising on safer gambling is a much larger proportion of the money spent on gambling adverts.
That does not mean that we do nothing more. Of course there is more to do, and anyone who has experienced living with a problem gambler knows how potentially life-damaging it is for everyone around them. It is therefore right that any review of gambling has the most vulnerable at its heart.
Let us briefly look at what happens when we abandon a balanced, competitive, regulated market, which is the only way to deter the hugely increasing black market. I mentioned Norway earlier, which introduced restrictions on stakes, strict affordability checks, and curbs on advertising. Instead of protecting the most vulnerable, it drove them to the black market, where 66% of all gambling in Norway now takes place. There is no human interaction on that market, no checks on affordability, and no lifelines available, either. So Norway’s 1.4% problem gambling figure is much higher because it does not know where the problem gamblers are.
Aaron Bell
On the black market, my hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the lack of protection for problem gamblers, but there is also no protection for people to ensure they get paid if they have a winning bet. They do not have any of the security that we have here in the United Kingdom that ensures people will be treated fairly by the operator, nor all the problem gambling measures that we have.
Craig Whittaker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We get legal protection in the regulated market that we have here in the UK.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I draw the Chamber’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. There is a further point that has not been mentioned. I represent the Cheltenham racecourse, and 45% of horseracing’s income comes from bookmakers. It is extremely important that we tackle problem gambling. One problem gambler is one too many, but is not that statistic very important when the Government consider how to take a balanced approach? The entire sport of horseracing is very worried indeed about the potential loss of income in what is not a well-funded sport.
Craig Whittaker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we see that in snooker and darts as well, which rely on funding to ensure they remain popular.
I mentioned Norway and I will highlight a similar story in France, where online gambling is illegal and 57% of all gambling is done on the black market. In Bulgaria, it is 47%. In Italy, 23% of all money staked now goes to the black market. Here in the UK, although the figures are low in comparison, we have seen a large rise in online unregulated gambling, from 2.2% to 4.5% over the last 18 months. In unregulated, black market gambling—
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman wind up, please?
Craig Whittaker
Of course. The average stakes are much higher, with billions and billions of pounds involved.
Let us be careful what we ask for. Although the scourge of addiction is a problem that we need to address, we have to be very careful that an act of good intention does not make the problem far worse than it currently is. The evidence is there if the Government are keen to look. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Government need to work closely with the industry on solutions and not destroy good intentions by imposing on the industry rather than working with it.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I am sorry for the three speakers remaining. We have less than nine minutes left, so that is three minutes each.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who secured today’s debate. My biggest challenge is perhaps for the Minister, because we do not have a public health Minister sitting in his place and we are talking about a public health issue. I am pleased that in York, after much persuasion, we have now got somebody from our public health team appointed to look at the problem, but they are starting with a blank sheet of paper because we do not have the local data that they need to drive the health initiative.
As a country, we were shocked to hear that 55,000 children had a gambling addiction. Some 14% of young people aged 11 to 16 had spent their own pocket money to gamble in the week before the report was carried out, spending an average of £16 a week. The report also found that, over the year, 39% of children had gambled, with 6% using their parents’ online account to do so.
The next generation of gamblers are being drawn in by not only the gambling industry, but the gaming industry. That industry has not been mentioned today, but with 31% of gamers opening loot boxes, it is causing equal harm. One young constituent was thousands of pounds in debt from gaming—what a way to start their life. Young people are really at risk.
The behaviour of the gambling industry is to groom young people and put them in a place of harm. We see the lobbying that takes place in this place—the gambling industry just does not hold back. We see the intrusive behaviours online and the grooming techniques. We have heard so much today about the advertising, the free bets and those luxury days out that are offered to lure people into that space and draw them into debt. The industry has the data—it knows what it is doing. It is therefore a deliberate act. We have to approach that with an equal and opposite bold approach and not be fearful of the industry.
I am really grateful for the work that people are doing across the health sector to take this issue seriously. Matt Gaskell, who runs the northern hub of the NHS gambling service, is exceptional at the work that he does.
We have to break the links through which the gambling industry thinks it can control what health interventions are made. Yes, we should tax the industry up to the hilt, but we should use that general taxation to fund proper investment in the public health measures that are now being put in place.
The treatment provided by the service is 92% effective. However, only 8,500 people have accessed it, while only 6% have accessed the helpline provided. We know that it is not effective intervention. It expects very vulnerable people to be able to access those services.
We need to open up the conversation and the dialogue. It is really important that we start talking about this issue and open it up, so that people feel they have a safe space in which to talk about their debt problems, as opposed to feeling at risk.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Thank you for calling me, Ms Rees. Like all Members present, I recognise the real importance of addressing problem gambling. However, I think it important that we put this issue in context, especially given that the latest Gambling Commission figures show a drop in problem gambling from 0.6% to 0.3% in the 18 months up to December 2021. Those figures compare with far higher rates of problem gambling among many of our European neighbours.
The vast majority of people in the UK gamble responsibly and safely. EY has suggested that the sector supports 119,000 jobs and contributes £4.5 billion in tax and £7.7 billion in gross value added to the economy. In Stoke-on-Trent alone, the industry supports 4,500 jobs, predominantly at Bet365, many of which are highly skilled. We have very few of those high-skilled jobs in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, which is still on the journey towards the levelling up of opportunities.
It is also important to recognise the significant investment by the sector in sport and wider charitable causes, such as through the Denise Coates Foundation, which most recently gave more than £1 million to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. More than £40 million is provided annually to the English Football League alone—which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) mentioned, includes Stoke City Football Club, which is based in my constituency at the Bet365 Stadium. Most of the investment in the club and the Stoke City community foundation comes from Bet365. The community foundation, in particular, does fantastic work to engage young and vulnerable people in sports. Without the investment of the gambling sector in such causes, much of that work simply would not be possible.
Most recently, we have seen many in the sector lead the way by improving standards, including investing in improvements in safer gambling education and in efforts to address problem gambling. The action that industry has taken, including to introduce a whistle-to-whistle ban on sport advertising and almost entirely removing gambling ads seen by children, has resulted in a significant reduction in problem gambling. Those standards should be implemented across the sector. I have met Bet365 and I know it has led the way on much of the work, including significant measures for those who need that support and flagging concerns where they exist.
Jack Brereton
It is important that these actions are further rolled out throughout the sector, but there is a significant risk that if we do not get this right, we will just encourage a growing black market industry. The number of people accessing unlicensed betting websites doubled between 2019 and 2020. I urge the Government to be very cautious and to fully understand the implications, to ensure that we do not see unintended consequences that would only further gift those criminal black market operators. We want proper action focused on those who really need help and support.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Order. Thank you. Jonathan Gullis, you have two minutes. Go for it.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this debate. Ultimately, what she said is important. No one here is in denial of the fact that reform needs to happen or that we need to go further.
In Stoke-on-Trent we have Bet365, which is acting impressively to make sure that we see improvements in what they are doing, such as the age verification policy, a deposit limit, advice and the ability to set. If someone wants to change their deposit limit, it takes 24 hours and a cooling-off period before they can do so. Behaviour algorithms monitor that behaviour, which means that someone could be picked up by the early risk detection system, which leads to safer gambling messages. There are on-site messages signposting tools, sharing with the customer information on their behaviour, mandatory problem gambling self-assessment, phone calls with customers, affordability assessments being trialled at the moment, and tailored net deposit limits. Those things are in place. The gambling industry is working hard to improve and to find solutions. Although reform is needed, it must be done sensibly.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
I must say, I am pleased that people have come here to talk on behalf of the gambling industry. Too often, we talk in a silo and do not hear what other people have to say. I am glad they have come here, spoken out, expressed themselves so eloquently and read their Bet365 briefing so beautifully.
Ronnie Cowan
It absolutely is true. I was sat here beside you and watched you read it.
Jonathan Gullis
The hon. Gentleman refers to a briefing that I was reading. I was, indeed, reading a briefing that was presented to the Minister when he visited to explain what the industry was doing, which is forming part of the gambling review. I do not see why it is bad to get a briefing from companies sharing what they are doing. What the hon. Gentleman said is ludicrous.
Ronnie Cowan
As I said, a briefing from Bet365—that is exactly what it was.
Ronnie Cowan
It does not matter who it was written for; it is a briefing from Bet365.
Ronnie Cowan
We will cover that in a minute; we are wasting time.
It is simply not true that 66% of Norwegian gambling is on the black market. I am not trying to replicate Norway. In Norway, gambling is state monopolised, and because of that they use the internet a lot to gamble. In fact, the 66% relates to people using online gambling. It is not black market gambling as we understand it.
On whether the whistle-to-whistle ban works, Stirling University carried out a survey during five football matches with a whistle-to-whistle ban and recorded 2,000 gambling marketing references. It is clearly not working or protecting the people it is supposed to protect.
The all-party parliamentary group on gambling related harm has spoken to all the chief executives of the big gambling firms. We have listened to what they have to say. We have spoken to gamblers who gamble every day and do not have a problem with gambling—we are not trying to step on their toes. If they want to gamble and they are comfortable, they can gamble. We are not prohibitionists. We have spoken to people who control the provision and support for people with addiction. We have spoken to academics, to addicts and to people whose lives have been destroyed by the gambling industry. That is the rounded, responsible way to go about forming a view on this topic, not to sit here and read a briefing from a gambling firm. A number of figures have been chucked around, and they came straight from the PoliticsHome article by Michael Dugher, chief executive officer of the Betting and Gaming Council.
I am not accusing anybody in this room—absolutely no one—but I do know that among those who support the gambling industry, a number of elected MPs are well funded by the industry to do so, while among the people who are fighting to reform gambling and make it a safer environment for all our constituents, no money changes hands.
The film “Erin Brokovich” tells the true story of a campaign against the practices of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which had illegally dumped hexavalent chromium—deadly toxic waste—and poisoned the residents in the area. For most people, it is inconceivable that directors sitting in the boardroom of a large and successful company would allow such damage or behaviour in the full knowledge of the harm that they are doing, but that case is not unique. Large corporations have a history of putting profit over people, be they the tobacco giants, which have a long history of denying the health risks of smoking, or the logging companies that ruthlessly exploit the Amazon rainforest for personal gain.
In that respect, industry and politics share the same dynamics. The power to make decisions that affect the lives of many are often made by a few people who sit at the heart of the process. Just like Prime Ministers and senior members of the Cabinet, chief executives and company directors make choices that can have huge impacts on people’s lives, for good and for bad. When they act in their own self-interests, they can heap misery on many others. The damage that they cause may not be apparent to them—they can confine themselves to their ivory towers—but plenty of people who witness that harm are prepared to testify if listened to. Throughout history, a catalogue of people have been willing to turn a blind eye to injustices in return for the opportunity to feather their own nests. When chief executive officers are driven solely by the pursuit of massive personal wealth and the privilege that it brings, the plight of others can easily be ignored or underestimated.
The gambling firms must be today’s equivalent of the tobacco firms. They have taken vast amounts of money, generated massive profits and paid their elite employees huge salaries, while ruthlessly pursuing punters and squeezing every penny out of them. The health and welfare of their customers is not a priority. Games are designed to be addictive. The exponential growth of online casinos has removed the human touch, and punters are reduced to being part of the machine.
Gambling online can be done 24/7—cooling-off periods no longer exist, and chasing losses goes unchallenged. People who have self-excluded are often approached and tempted back to gambling. Free bets in VIP rooms are lures to hook often vulnerable people and draw them back into the fold. People have turned to crime to feed their addictions, families have been left broken, and people have committed suicide. In attempts to divert criticism, the public relations departments of the gambling industry are quick to point out the charitable organisations that they support. In fact, if those who run the gambling industry paid themselves less and their employees more, that money would be spent in local communities, where the benefit would be felt—less charity, more fair distribution of wealth.
The gambling industry also funds research into addiction and support for sufferers, and picks up the tab for the Gambling Commission, which regulates the industry, but it is not right that those who cause the harm have financial control of the research, education, treatment and regulation. The link between industry money and those services must be broken, and funding must be channelled through the NHS in the form of a smart statutory levy. The UK gambling industry employs more than 45,000 people and directly contributes more than £4 billion to the Exchequer. Those are impressive numbers, but the money spent on gambling does not yield as much tax revenue as money spent in the retail or food sectors, and we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that some of those jobs and much of that profit are the result of gambling-related harm.
I am not a prohibitionist, but I recognise that the gambling industry has to change; it must take responsibility for its products and its punters, and it must recognise the damage of addiction and play a part in reducing it. The industry has run amok since 2005, but in this digital age it is now time to grow up and act responsibly.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
It is really good to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees. May I start by paying tribute to my hon Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing this debate and, more importantly, for her work over the years. She has been a brilliant campaigner on this issue and set out the problems very clearly in her speech, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who gave powerful speeches. I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, particularly the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). It is not often that I agree with every word he says, but I did today.
We have had a variety of contributions, but there is something that shines through—namely, the wide recognition and consensus that reform is needed. As we know, the Gambling Act 2005, which is the basis for regulation of gambling in the UK, has not been updated since it was passed. Today’s debate is a reminder of how unfit that legislation is in meeting the demands of the digital age. As we have heard today, the mental and physical health consequences of harmful gambling can be devastating in many ways. Many of us have met people who have been damaged, and whose families have been damaged, by gambling.
Aside from the cost to individuals, the Government’s own gambling-related harms evidence review showed that the cost to the Government is, at a minimum, at least £340 million each year. Despite that, it has now been two years since the Government committed to publishing a gambling White Paper. Meanwhile, someone with gambling-related problems dies by suicide every day. Government action is long overdue.
The experiences, the stories and the numbers speak for themselves, particularly when it comes to the rapid increase in online gambling practices. I want to particularly focus on that area, as many others have, given that it is the source of many of the harms that we have heard about today,
Among women in particular, online gambling is growing at an alarming rate. According to research by GambleAware, it almost tripled during the pandemic. We need only look at the data for 202-21 from GamCare’s national gambling helpline—it shows that 84% of calls made by individuals related to concerns about online gambling habits—to get a feel for the scale of the problem. It is a problem that we did not appreciate in 2005, but we must now address it and treat it as a public health issue. We need to do more to protect individuals against addictive and easily accessible games, and those protections must include safeguards and affordability checks, particularly for online slot and casino games, where the Government have been slow to act.
As I have said, change is long overdue. Only last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) led an Adjournment debate on the tragic death of his constituent Jack Ritchie, who was driven to take his own life after battling a severe gambling addiction. Jack saw his addiction begin at his local bookies at the age of 17 before moving onto online gambling. That kind of addiction can come very quickly and have devastating consequences.
Jack’s story is a familiar one. I met a group of former gambling addicts about a month ago and they were from a wide variety of backgrounds; as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central pointed out, gambling addiction can hit anybody. They had all followed that same pattern: starting to gamble and then getting into online gambling, and it destroyed their lives. Unbelievably, at the time, banks were prepared to give them loans to fund their gambling habit. It is a problem that we must get a grip on. The whole aim of gambling adverts, incentives and VIP schemes is to maintain or increase the spend of their so-called valuable clients. Those harmful schemes are addictive in nature and offer supposedly free stakes—as my hon. Friend said, there is no such thing as a free bet—to lure customers in. We need to do everything we can to make sure that people like Jack who are aware of their addiction have the tools and support available to help them through their problem.
Will the Minister give an indication of the Government’s thoughts on imposing a mandatory levy on all gambling operators? A levy would help to fund educational resources and treatment services for people suffering as a consequence of their gambling. Colleagues will, I think, be aware that there is already the legal power to impose a levy on the gambling industry; it is already there in legislation. The Government have always insisted that the industry should support harm-reduction work on a voluntary basis, but the current, voluntary system lacks consistency, transparency and accountability. The big five gambling companies have committed to paying 1% of their gross yields towards safer gambling initiatives by 2023, but the variation between online casinos and their donations is a concern. As the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said, many of us do not trust that all the gambling companies will act to do the right thing. Labour believes that operators can and must do more to support vulnerable people.
I hope that the Minister will also reflect on the huge increase in online gambling advertising, especially during live sporting events. That can lead to a normalisation of gambling among young people. I am keen to understand the Government’s thinking on how to tackle that—how they can create the evidence base to understand how that advertising affects gambling addiction and how that can inform future policy.
As the online space continues to develop—we are now looking at the issue of gambling in the metaverse, with the potential for virtual reality casino experiences and other experiences—we need to be looking ahead. I am keen to know what the Government are thinking in terms of plans to tighten up safeguards, with a view to the future and gambling in the metaverse. Obviously, we have the Online Safety Bill coming up. That is a matter for another day; we need the Minister to be clear and gambling-focused in his response today. There is currently a discrepancy between the regulation of physical gambling and the regulation of online gambling, with lower-harm games such as bingo being subject to tighter restrictions in some areas than addictive online betting. We need to know the specific steps that the Government are taking to ensure that there is parity. We have concerns that without action and a proper licensing process, the online space will continue to develop as a wild west when it comes to gambling products.
Most importantly given the extent of the issues and the problems that we have heard about, we need to know exactly when the gambling review is due to be published. With respect, we need a date. We have been waiting for a date for a long time now. What we need to see is a plan to tackle problem gambling that is fit for the modern age. There is clearly a political consensus on the importance of getting this right, on the need for reform, so the Minister can be assured of widespread support if the Government act effectively, listen and get the balance right.
Jonathan Gullis
On a point of order, Ms Rees. I am very grateful to you and to the Minister for agreeing to allow me to do this. I do apologise. Because my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) kept the clock ticking down on me, I was unable, and forgot, to draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the £540-worth of match tickets to Stoke City versus Fulham at the Bet365 stadium in January. I do apologise to Members for that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for correcting the record; that is absolutely appropriate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing this very important debate and all those who have contributed, in generally a very constructive manner.
I know how committed the hon. Member for Swansea East and many other Members—in fact, I think this applies to every single person who spoke today—are to gambling reform. I thank her and other parliamentarians for the many meetings that they have had with Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Ministers in recent months. Their perspectives and evidence on the issues that we are considering through the review of the Gambling Act 2005 are very valuable indeed. She and all other hon. Members who spoke today are quite right to make the case that reform is needed. It has been 17 years since the Gambling Act was passed, and it is clear that the risks of harm and the opportunities to prevent it are very different now from when legislation was introduced. We must act to recognise that in our regulatory framework.
In recent years, the Government and the Gambling Commission have introduced a wide variety of reforms to help to protect people from gambling harm. Those include the ban on credit card gambling, the FOBT stake limit reduction, and reform to VIP schemes. The review is an opportunity to build on those changes and to do more to ensure that we have the right protections for the digital age.
As the hon. Member for Swansea East will appreciate, I cannot pre-announce what will be published in the White Paper—much as she may wish to prompt me to do so—but we are in the process of finalising it. However, I absolutely recognise the severity of the harms that gambling disorder can cause and why we all have a duty to prevent people from being led down such a dark path.
The voice of people with personal experience of harm was thoroughly represented among the submissions to our call for evidence, and I, the gambling Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp)—and all our successors have met a number of people who have suffered because of their own addictions or those of people whom they love. They have all made clear how enormous and lasting the effects of gambling disorder can be, not only in the obvious financial losses but in relationship strain, family breakdown, mental health problems and, of course, suicide in extreme cases.
As my opposite number, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) mentioned, just last week the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) secured an Adjournment debate on the coroner’s finding that gambling contributed to the tragic death of Jack Ritchie. As my hon. Friend the gambling Minister said then, the findings are an important call to action for our Department, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education. We are considering the prevention of future deaths report carefully and will respond in due course on the actions being taken.
The causes of gambling-related harm are inherently complex to unpick and address. Individual circumstances play a role, but it is essential that we also look at the products, industry practices and wider factors that can contribute to or exacerbate them. Understanding the drivers and taking preventive action where it is needed is at the heart of our public health approach. Of course, understanding where it is needed is part of the challenge for the gambling review. About half of the population takes part in gambling each year, and the vast majority suffer no ill effects at all. The population “problem gambling” rate has been broadly stable since before the 2005 Act, with some recent signs of a decline. The White Paper’s measures will be based on the best available evidence to target risk proportionately. We want to prevent unaffordable losses and industry practices that exacerbate risk. We will also maintain the freedom for adults who choose to gamble to do so, and for a responsible and sustainable industry to service that demand.
Technology and data are central to developing effective and proportionate protections. As my hon. Friend the gambling Minister has said, there is huge potential in data-led tools, which can stop and prevent harmful gambling while letting the majority, who spend at low levels with no signs of risk, continue uninterrupted. There has been particular discussion in recent weeks—this was mentioned in the debate—about the role of so-called affordability checks, where a customer’s financial circumstances are considered as part of assessing whether their gambling is likely to be harming them. Such assessments are undoubtedly a key part of the toolkit for preventing the devastating losses that we have all heard about, but, to be workable and prevent harm, checks need to be proportionate and acceptable to customers. We are keen to explore the role of data such as that held by credit reference agencies or that already used by operators to facilitate frictionless checks.
Aaron Bell
I am pleased that the Minister mentioned credit reference agencies, because the current state of play is that bookmakers can get only the basic data—the credit score—and cannot use the credit reference agency to find out whether people can afford their proposed levels of stake-in. Would he and the gambling Minister be receptive to a change to the law to allow bookmakers to get more granular data about someone’s affordability—it would need to be done carefully—so that we do not have the intrusive checks that, as I mentioned, drive people away from licensed operators and potentially to the black market?
Nigel Huddleston
As I said, I will not pre-empt the review’s findings, but my hon. Friend makes a key point about the responsibility and role of the financial services sector in the review. The Government will continue to work closely with the Gambling Commission on this issue in the run-up to publishing the White Paper.
Another much discussed issue is data-led protection in the form of single customer views, where operators share data to protect people most at risk. That is increasingly necessary given that the average online gambler now has three accounts, and those with a gambling disorder typically have far more. I am pleased that the Betting and Gaming Council’s trial of a technical solution has been accepted into the Information Commissioner’s Office sandbox process, which will mean close scrutiny from both the information and gambling regulators to ensure that the trial proceeds with appropriate safeguards in place.
Let me turn now to a few other items raised by hon. Members. On the statutory levy proposals, we called for evidence on the best way to recoup the regulatory and societal costs of gambling. We have also been clear for a number of years that, should the existing system of taxation and voluntary contributions fail to deliver what was needed, we would look at a number of options for reform, including a statutory levy, and we will set out our conclusions in the White Paper.
The horse-racing industry was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson). The review is not looking directly at the horse-racing betting levy, but we are certainly aware of the close relationship between racing and betting. The main area of concern from the horse-racing industry is the affordability checks. As I said, these are important, but they must also be proportionate, and we are carefully considering the impact of all our proposals.
Many hon. Members mentioned advertising, and gambling advertising can help licensed gambling operators differentiate themselves from the black market. It also provides financial support for broadcasters and sport, but operators must advertise responsibly, and we are committed to tackling aggressive practices. We have called for evidence on advertising and sponsorship as part of the review.
Protections are already in place to limit children’s exposure to advertising—for example, the whistle-to-whistle ban mentioned by hon. Members. That led, for example, to about a halving in the number of adverts at the Euros last year compared with the 2018 World cup. Gambling adverts must not be targeted at children or appeal particularly to them. The Committee for Advertising Practice will soon publish more on its plans to tighten the rules in this area.
On the gambling black market, again mentioned by many hon. Members, we have called for evidence as part of our review, and we are looking at the Commission’s powers as part of that process. On customer redress, which the hon. Member for Swansea East mentioned, operators must be held accountable for their failings. The review will assess the current system of redress, and we will set out our conclusions in the forthcoming White Paper.
The hon. Member for Swansea East also mentioned the clustering of betting shops. She will be aware that local authorities already have a range of powers under the planning system and as licensing authorities under the Gambling Act to grant or reject applications for gambling premises in their areas, and we encourage them to use those powers as appropriate. We have also been reviewing the powers local authorities and other licensing authorities have in relation to gambling premises licences as part of the review.
On the issue of treatment, which was raised by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and others, the Government absolutely take a public health approach to gambling. Gambling is a regulated sector, and we have protections for the whole population, with rules to keep gambling fair, open and free from crime. We also have specific protections for vulnerable people. The DCMS works closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, which leads on treatment and health issues. She will be aware the Government are committed to strengthening treatment and support for gambling disorder. This will build on changes and reforms that have already taken place in recent years. The NHS has committed to opening up to 15 specialist problem gambling clinics by 2023-24. Five of these are already in operation and more will follow soon.
The hon. Member for York Central also mentioned loot boxes, and we are delivering on a manifesto commitment to tackle the issue in video games. We ran a call for evidence last year to understand the impact and received over 30,000 responses. We are reviewing this evidence and continue to engage with the industry to determine the most robust and proportionate solutions to the issues identified. We will also be publishing our response and next steps in the coming months. If she is patient, we will report on that soon.
In conclusion, I absolutely recognise that we have an important responsibility to get reform right. We will build on the many strong aspects of our regulatory system to make sure it is right for the digital age and the future. The White Paper is a priority for the Department and we will publish it in the coming weeks.
Carolyn Harris
I would like to congratulate Bet365: it has mobilised speakers well today, and I hope that its protection of vulnerable customers is as tenacious as its ability to get MPs to come and speak on its behalf in a Westminster Hall debate.
The word I would take from today is “protection”. Some of us have spoken about how we want to protect vulnerable people, but others may be more inclined to protect the profits of the industry. I know which side I am on: I want to protect the lives of vulnerable people who are, on a daily basis, being exploited by this industry.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered gambling-related harm.
Smoke-free England
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I will call Sir Charles Walker to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered progress towards a smoke-free England.
I will start by reading a couple of paragraphs from an excellent Government document published in July 2017, entitled “Towards a smoke-free generation”. I will not detain the Chair too long, but there are a few sentences that I want to read into the record. The document says:
“Over 200 deaths every day are still caused by smoking…Smoking rates have remained stubbornly higher amongst those in our society who already suffer from poorer health and other disadvantages. Smoking rates are almost three times higher amongst the lowest earners, compared to the highest earners…Smoking accounts for approximately half the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest in society. This injustice in the variation in smoking prevalence can be seen across England; from places where adult smoking is as low as 5% to others where smoking remains above 25%. The prevalence remains even higher in people with mental health conditions, where more than 40% of adults with a serious mental illness smoke. We want to address this. Our vision is nothing less than to create a smokefree generation…the government will provide leadership and guidance on the most effective interventions.”
There we have it: a bold statement of intent. So what does a smoke-free 2030 look like? First, it is not smoke-free. When we talk about a smoke-free 2030, we are actually talking about 5% or less of the adult population smoking—that is recognised by The Lancet. Currently, more than 14% of the adult population smoke, and it could actually be higher than 14%, because lockdown may have increased the prevalence of smoking as people turned to cigarettes as a way of releasing and relieving stress. Cancer Research UK is not optimistic about the 2030 date, which will not come as a surprise to anyone here. Its best guess is that 2037 is when we will achieve 5% or less, and I am afraid the general view is that 2037 now looks optimistic.
To put it in context, what is 200 deaths a day? That is 75,000 deaths a year and, on top of that, 500,000 admissions to hospital every year for smoking-related illnesses. Over 10 years, 750,000 people will die from smoking. That is approximately the population of Birmingham every 10 years, and 5 million people will be admitted to hospital.
The Government touch on the huge disparities in smoking between richer and less well-off areas. In some of the most deprived wards in seaside towns in the north-west, smoking rates are above 22%. In the leafy parts of Surrey, they are less than 5%—in essence, parts of Surrey have achieved smoke-free status. What does 22% versus 5% look like? That translates into about an eight-year differential in life expectancy. Of course, not all that eight-year differential will be linked to smoking but, as the Government identified in their report in 2017, about 50%—four years—of that differential will be linked to the fact that more people smoke in more deprived areas than wealthier ones.
Look, the Government have made great strides. I will not be churlish with the Minister—I would not be churlish with her, because she is a very nice woman and she is very committed to this cause, which is more important than being nice.
I understand that a pack of cigarettes now costs more than £10, although that is not something I have bought for 17 years. Some might be pushing £14, so this is becoming an expensive habit. Even at that price, 14% or more of the population are smoking. We are down to some really tough nuts to crack, if we want to reach that 5%. I remind the Government of the part of the report entitled, “Backing evidence-based innovation”:
“Despite the availability of effective medicines and treatments to support quit attempts, the majority of smokers choose to quit unassisted, by going ‘cold turkey’. This has proved to be the least effective method…The best thing a smoker can do for their health is to quit smoking. However, the evidence is increasingly clear that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful to health than smoking tobacco. The Government will seek to support consumers in stopping smoking and adopting the use of less harmful nicotine products.”
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member on this Adjournment debate. He may know that I have never smoked, but I am a strong advocate of vaping. Does he agree that, if the Government are serious about reducing smoking prevalence, they must ensure that medical professionals have access to the latest evidence on e-cigarettes and are encouraged to signpost patients to appropriate guidance about harm reduction, as well as information about how to switch successfully, if they cannot quit?
Sir Charles Walker
Of course, I agree with and endorse what the hon. Lady said—on this occasion, let me call her my hon. Friend—because what we are talking about today is harm reduction.
Let me read two more sentences, from page 15 of the report, which I am sure will be of interest to the hon. Lady:
“The Government will therefore continue to evaluate critically the evidence on nicotine-delivery products, providing clear communication about what is known and unknown about the short and long-term risks of using different products relative to smoking and the absolute risk to children, non-smokers and bystanders.”
Remember that that was written five years ago, so there has surely been time to do this.
What I do not understand is why the Government are so squeamish when it comes to looking at harm reduction. The hon. Member for North Tyneside talks about vaping, but there are nicotine pouches, “heat not burn” products and something called snus, which I understand is used in parts of the world. Before we cast these alternatives aside, let us remember that they reduce the harm caused to the user. There is nothing more harmful than smoking burnt, lit, combustible tobacco—nothing. Sweden has taken an enlightened approach. It has embraced science and looked at harm reduction. Smoking rates are now well below 10%, and some independent experts reckon they are nearer 7%. It looks like Sweden is going to be the first country in Europe to meet the magical 4.99% and be a smoke-free European country.
I am concerned that we are not going at this problem as hard as we should as a nation, but there is hope, which I am sure the Minister will refer to in her speech. There is the independent review of smoke-free 2030 policies, led by Mr Javed Khan OBE. The review offers reasons for optimism. In its objectives it states:
“The review will make a set of focused policy and regulatory recommendations in 2 areas, and will consider…the most impactful interventions to reduce the uptake of smoking, particularly among young people.”
It will also consider
“the top interventions to support smoking cessation, particularly in deprived areas of England where there are significant health disparities”.
That sounds like a call to arms. On outputs, the review says:
“The review will provide a far-reaching report focused on the key policy and regulatory recommendations that give the government the best chance of achieving the Smokefree 2030 ambition and addressing the health disparities associated with smoking.”
Can I make a plea to the Minister and her Department? This issue is harm reduction. It is about reducing the 75,000 deaths a year. It is about reducing the 500,000 people who go into hospital. It is not about banishing nicotine.
In a perfect world, nobody would even chew nicotine gum, but the fact is that they do. We do not live in a perfect world. People become addicted to nicotine, and it becomes part of their day. It is far better to consume it in a way that offers a much lesser chance of either shortening someone’s life or putting them in hospital. Let us use the regulatory and tax environments to differentiate harms, so that the highest harm is combustible tobacco and we can gradate the level of harm going down. We can use the tax system to signpost people to the least harmful nicotine product.
I would like to conclude by saying one thing. Levelling up has to mean reducing the disparities in people’s life expectancy. One of the greatest disparities is in those who suffer from a diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia. By the Government’s own reckoning, 40% of people with the diagnosis—possibly more—smoke. I know about this because I have been deeply involved in the issue of mental health since I entered Parliament 17 years ago. Smoking is often linked to the treatments used to help people with psychosis/schizophrenia—sadly often still called the chemical cosh. The treatments tend to enhance appetite, so people experience massive weight gain. They also tend to depress the person in receipt of the medications, which drives them to smoking. On average, if someone has a diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia, their life expectancy is reduced by 15 years—the Government say in their document that it is between 10 and 20 years. This is a real issue for so many people. This is not a “nice to have” harm reduction; it is an absolute necessity. I thank you, Ms Rees, and the Minister for allowing me to make the case for harm reduction today.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Rees. I am not sure I can be as passionate as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), but I am convinced that we in the UK are standing on the brink of a huge opportunity to get this right in the very near future. Some 3 million people vape today, which is wonderful compared with 3 million people smoking, and approximately 6 million, maybe 7 million, continue to smoke. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, that leads to 75,000 deaths a year, or 200 people every single day. The number of people who have died from vaping is zero. So when we look at the plain stats on this, we can ask, “Do we want 200 people per day to continue to die through smoking rates continuing as they are, or do we want to have zero people dying per day?” My answer to that is pretty clear.
There is some good news, which I will come to in a moment. I have great respect for the Minister; I know she has heard these arguments many times before, and she always takes them with such grace, but I will go through a couple of negatives before I come to the positives—I am equal to my hon. Friend in my optimism for the future.
I chair the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, a fantastic, impartial organisation that produces science briefings for parliamentarians and their research staff. We produced a POSTnote on electronic cigarettes,. In 2013, only one in 20 people thought that vaping was as harmful as smoking. That was really encouraging, but in 2016 we observed that about one in four people thought vaping was as harmful as, if not more harmful than, smoking. We have been going backward, and today about 53% of people think that vaping is as harmful as smoking. Something is very wrong when the information flow has reversed in such a short space of time for something that was only introduced to the UK about 15 years ago, so we really need to get a handle on that problem.
There is a simple test when it comes to smoking. Lots of people say, “Oh, I like smoking. I wish we had the freedom to smoke,” and I agree entirely: you can kill yourself with your own poison, and that is fine by me. However, when a smoker is asked, “Would you like your children to smoke?” the answer is always, “Oh gosh, no. I would want them to have them the freedom to do it, but I would really rather they didn’t.” I have tried this, and it says an awful lot. It says that smokers—I was one—do not want to smoke; they stumbled into it in their youth or at a time when they thought they would be able to escape from its clutches. The truth of the matter is that nobody really wants to smoke.
With vaping, snus, and non-combustible tobacco, which may be more harmful than vaping, but is nowhere near as harmful as smoking, we have a huge opportunity to embrace newer technologies and approaches, and I know the Minister is keen to do so however she can. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne that harm reduction is the key here. Why have 200 people dying per day when we could have zero dying per day? Why hold on to the idea that anything we can do to move people from smoking to vaping, snus or one of those other products should be slowed down in any way?
On balance, I am quite optimistic for the future. I am optimistic because the Minister is in her post, but also because the Javed Khan review appears to be going in the right direction. It appears to recognise that we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the very near perfect, which vaping appears to be at this stage. Also, whether we voted remain or leave, we are now outside the strictures of the European Union and its directives. We have full autonomy and full power to head in any direction we choose, and I ask for that direction to be informed by the evidence, the data, the science, Javed Khan’s review, and what is self-evident before our very eyes—that people do not die from vaping, full stop.
I am also optimistic because we have a couple of other opportunities. We have the opportunity as a Government—the UK Government—to direct a little bit of funding at research, because there are some unanswered questions about the long-term effects of vaping and these other products. We could direct or nudge a little bit of research funding in that direction. It would not cost a fortune. A small amount could be dedicated to a longitudinal study of the outcomes. I think that such a study would put the final few sceptical academics’ minds at rest—or not, as the case may be—when we got the results.
This morning I was at a meeting on this subject with Demos, which is producing a study of this issue and some recommendations for policy. One message that came through loud and clear from the healthcare professionals was, “Give us the opportunity to try this, at least in a limited way, maybe in a limited area or perhaps just with pregnant women, because it is very clear that vaping is far better than smoking during pregnancy. Give us an opportunity, maybe in a restricted location, a particular area or with a particular demographic, to try the approach of switching people to vaping, and let’s see if that works better than trying to get them to stop smoking during pregnancy or in any other circumstances that they are in.”
There is another wonderful opportunity here. This is bizarre—absolutely bizarre—but I love to say that, bizarrely, the tobacco industry in the west is behind switching to vaping. I say to the Minister that actually the industry is ready to put its hands in its pocket and pay for a lot of this work, which is absolutely extraordinary. I think the industry recognises that its business model will not continue to succeed in the west, including in the UK, and we should be mindful that it is prepared to put its hands in its pocket to help the transition—not for altruistic reasons, of course; it will be because the industry is switching its business model more towards non-combustible and vaping products. It may also be because some of the cigarette manufacturers would like to look in the longer term at these inhaling systems as a way to deliver medicine—not smoking or vaping, but delivering all sorts of other products. The tobacco industry has a profit motive, but this is the first time that I have known it to be potentially aligned with UK policy and we should certainly take advantage of that.
I could go on for ever, but I will not do so. What I would say in summary is this: do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It is a really good thing to do to push in this direction. There is very little pushback from anywhere. I plead with the Government to consider the information flow as part of the judgments that they will make in the near term, because if more people today than in 2016 think that vaping is more harmful than smoking, then clearly something is very seriously wrong with the information processes.
I have a last question, which basically is: how do we get to smokers? We might think, “Oh, we don’t want to advertise these things online and on television.” Well of course not; we have to keep children and advertising to children out of the mix when it comes to these products. There is a really simple way to get to smokers though: every single smoker has to open their box of cigarettes, so have something inside the box. It is really simple and it only targets those people who continue to smoke, so let us get on with it.
Minister, thank you very much for listening. Sir Charles, thanks for calling this debate, and thank you, Ms Rees, for calling me to speak.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)
First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) for calling this important debate. I am grateful to him for his contribution and I am grateful to other Members who share the Government’s ambition for Britain to be smoke-free by 2030. My hon. Friend is correct when he says that that means 5% of people smoking, but it would still be a great achievement to get from where we are now to just 5%. The UK is a world-leader on tobacco control and we now have one of the lowest smoking rates in the world. According to my records, only 13.5% of people in the UK smoke, but that percentage is still too high. As he stated so passionately, the Government know there is still so much more to do.
We know that there are still around 6 million smokers in England and that smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable mortality; two out of three long-term smokers will die from smoking. We also know that smoking is one of the largest drivers of health disparities and that the burden of tobacco harms is not shared equally. Smoking rates are far higher in poorer areas of the country, as my hon. Friend said, and among lower socioeconomic groups. We can see smoking rates of 23% in more deprived areas, compared with rates of 8% in wealthier ones. In addition, one in 10 pregnant women still smoke, increasing the risk of health problems for their babies. Smoking prevalence among people with long-term mental health conditions is also far too high, at over 25%.
My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) raised the issue of smoking during pregnancy. The decline there has not fallen in line with other groups, so we know that more needs to be done. We continue to explore options to support smoking cessation in pregnant women; those options will be set out in our tobacco control plan and they are also part of our NHS long-term plan. We know that it is not just the woman who needs support; it is her partner as well. We must continue to help those groups in all the ways we can.
What are we doing? In 2019 the Government set the bold ambition for England to be smoke-free by 2030. To support that, we have been building on the successes of our current tobacco control plan, and later this year we will publish a new plan with an even sharper focus on tackling health disparities. The new plan will set out a comprehensive package of new policy proposals and regulatory change. To help push those ambitions forward, the Government have commissioned an independent review of our tobacco control policies, led by Javed Khan, the former CEO of Barnado’s. The review will assess the most impactful interventions to help us achieve our goal of being smoke-free by 2030. I know that Javed Khan has some really ambitious ideas that I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne will welcome.
More needs to be done to prevent young people from taking up smoking and to protect our future generations from its devastating harms. More also needs to be done to support current smokers to quit, especially in deprived communities and among the priority groups. Smoking, and the grip it has on our society, must become a thing of the past. I am confident that the Khan review will give us the focus and political support to do so. I encourage all hon. Members to contribute to the review so that we can hear as wide a range of views as possible. We are open to bold new ideas about how to reach our smoke-free ambitions. Hon. Members have talked about the role of reduced-risk products. The Government are supportive of smokers using less harmful nicotine delivery systems to quit or switch away from the most harmful form—combustible tobacco.
Mary Glindon
This week is the beginning of VApril, which is a campaign run by the industry to support smokers who are looking to quit. Would the Minister support efforts to encourage adult smokers to quit by speaking with local authority stop smoking services, this month in particular, and highlight the role of e-cigarettes in reducing harm?
Maggie Throup
The hon. Lady—I will call her my hon. Friend—speaks passionately about vaping, and we have had those conversations before. We know and acknowledge that reduced-risk products are not risk-free, but vaping is a way to help people stop smoking and it has been proven to be effective. We must continue to ensure that the products do not appeal to young people and non-smokers—that is really important. However, we need to get the message out that vaping is an effective way to stop smoking. Balanced and proportionate regulation is required as we shift to different products. We have an innovative and varied nicotine market in the UK, as has been mentioned; vapes are by far the most popular alternative source of nicotine, but there are also patches, gums and, more recently, nicotine pouches.
We want to see more smokers using vapes to quit, which I know is in line with the wishes of the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon). She mentioned earlier the possibility of vaping and e-cigarettes being available on prescription, and the Secretary of State has spoken of his desire to see those products routinely prescribed by the NHS. That is something that we need to move forward with. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor raised the important issue of the perception of vaping and how it has changed. That is something I will take away and consider.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
The Minister talks about the range of alternative products, such as vapes, “heat not burn” and other things that already exist, and about the statistics on people’s perceptions of the health impacts of those products. We know that those products are less harmful, so does she agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) said about the importance of getting that information our to people—even if it is as simple as a slip of paper in a cigarette packet? I like to think that a Conservative Government, rather than seeking to ban things, could empower people to make that choice through information. We could certainly do more to get that information out there.
Maggie Throup
My hon. Friend is quite right. It is important that we communicate the other ways people can stop smoking and, as the hon. Member for North Tyneside said, do so in such a powerful way. As Members of Parliament, we all have a role in getting those messages out, and I am sure that everybody in this room will be doing their bit in VApril to get that message through to the public. It is about messaging and about people understanding the impact smoking has, not just on their lives but on other people’s lives as well.
I am also aware of the desire to bring snus to the UK market to give smokers further choice of less harmful alternatives. Considering the range of alternative nicotine products that can be accessed by smokers, the Government are not currently minded to introduce a new tobacco product to the UK market. Current alternative products such as nicotine pouches deliver nicotine in an identical way to snus but do not contain any tobacco. We will continue to consider the evidence around snus and we welcome additional non-tobacco reduced-risk products to the UK market.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne again for calling this important debate and for hon. Members’ interesting contributions to the discussion. We have packed a lot into 30 minutes. I hope to be able to tell the House more in the coming months about the specific policies that will deliver our ambitious agenda for a smoke-free England. The end is in sight through a sustained and multi-pronged approach. I hope we can look forward to a future for our children without the death and misery that is caused by smoking.
Question put and agreed to.
Great British Railways Headquarters: Crewe Bid
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Crewe’s bid for the headquarters of Great British Railways.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I am proud to be here today on behalf of the people and businesses of Crewe, and to have this opportunity to showcase and explain to the Minister all the reasons why Crewe should be the home of Great British Railways’ new headquarters.
Crewe is at the heart of rail, and rail is at the heart of Crewe. Today I will talk about how Crewe’s heritage, local rail industry and connectivity, combined with the value for money it can offer and the opportunities to level up for Crewe’s people, make it an unbeatable choice for the GBR HQ.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I strongly support my hon. Friend’s enthusiastic bid on behalf of Crewe. When considering a property, three matters are important: location, location and location. Does he therefore agree that Crewe’s geography makes it ideally suited to be the home of GBR? It is centrally located, with direct rail links not only to the south, the midlands and the north of England, but to Scotland and Wales.
Dr Mullan
I agree with my hon. Friend and thank her for coming to give her support today. It is about Crewe’s 360-degree connectivity, which is unrivalled when it comes to towns and other places seeking to become the home of the new GBR HQ.
Crewe was born from the railways. The decision by the Grand Junction Railway Company in 1837 to invest in a new station, which connected the Liverpool and Manchester railways and the London and Birmingham railways, transformed the village of Crewe into the railway town it is today, and the town’s growth has been linked to the railways ever since. The station was built alongside the Crewe Locomotive Works, which went on to become the largest locomotive works in the world. The first locomotive produced at Crewe Works was rolled out on 20 October 1843. The first locomotive produced at Crewe was given the number 32 and the name Tamerlane. The outline of the engines was very different from all previous designs and became known generally as the Crewe type, which lasted for many years. By the time locomotive production came to an end in the 1990s, more than 8,000 locomotives had been built in Crewe, with the site employing more than 20,000 people at its height. From speaking to constituents, I have met countless people whose families worked in the railway industry. Often multiple generations of the same local families have done so and continue to this day, with the Crewe Works site still active.
This rich heritage is to be seen all over the town. Opened in 1888, the beautiful Queen’s Park in the heart of Crewe was a gift to the town from the London and North Western Railway Company, to mark the joint occasion of the Queen’s jubilee and the 50th anniversary of the opening of the grand junction railway. The Crewe Heritage Centre was officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on 24 July 1987 to mark the 150th anniversary of the first train to arrive at Crewe railway station in 1837.
From steam trains to electrification and diesel programmes, Crewe’s rail connections, combined with its engineering workforce, has bound Crewe to the railway industry for generations, so it is no surprise that I can talk confidently and proudly about the amazing modern railway industry sector, built from this legacy, that now inhabits the town. Some 7% of the English railway workforce are based in Crewe, despite Crewe having just 0.1% of the population. The workforce is spread across an amazingly diverse range of businesses. Avanti, Arriva TrainCare, Train Bits and More, Jacobs, Freightliner, DB Cargo, Direct Rail Services, Alstom, Unipart Rail, Locomotive Services Ltd, Keltbray and more all operate in Crewe, and it is the headquarters for many. Alstom recently won the contract for the production of the bogies for HS2 at the original Crewe Works site. Freightliner has invested millions in a new maintenance facility for freight locomotives, while the Avanti West Coast partnership has established its nationwide talent academy in Crewe.
Crewe has retained and attracted many of the rail and rail supply chain businesses as they have innovated and evolved, meaning that it is well positioned and ready to be at the centre of rail reform and innovation throughout the 21st century and beyond. Looking to the future, the presence of the Crewe Engineering and Design UTC and the Institute of Technology at Cheshire College creates an opportunity for Crewe to be known as a centre of excellence for rail skills, capturing existing rail expertise and wider complementary skills to teach the next generation. All of this is placed at the most well-connected railway hub in the country. Crewe is a connector to major cities and towns across England and the Union, with six railway lines offering 360-degree connectivity. It is the only station on the main line that is connected to all the regional capitals, with direct connections to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and connections across Wales, allowing a GBR HQ based in Crewe to play its role in strengthening the Union.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent and compelling case for the GBR HQ to be based in Crewe. He will appreciate that I am also aware of the deep pride and passion that the people of Crewe have for their railway heritage, and they want a future for that important part of our transport infrastructure. Does he agree that one advantage of have the GBR HQ in Crewe is that officials and the great team that will be assembled there will become very familiar with the integrated rail system in and around Crewe, including between Crewe and Chester and other parts of Cheshire, and we could have something that is fit for the 21st century, not least a new station at Beeston Castle and Tarporley?
Dr Mullan
I do indeed agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank him for his support for the bid to have the GBR HQ in Crewe.
More than 3 million people live within a 45-minute commute by road and rail and there are 12 major universities within an hour’s commute of Crewe. Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham are all within an hour’s commute by rail, reducing to less than 30 minutes when HS2 arrives. There are up to 40 services between Crewe and London each day and journey times as fast as 90 minutes, reducing to 55 minutes when HS2 arrives.
Fiona Bruce
Of course, rail transport can take traffic off the motorways, notably the M6. I would be delighted to see the bid succeed because it would strengthen the case for reopening Middlewich railway station in my constituency of Congleton.
Dr Mullan
I fully support that ambition, because we all know how important local railway connections are, alongside the big intercity connections. I see on the roads in and around Crewe that challenge of freight and transport. The more we can get on to the railways, the better.
Crewe has connections to three international airports, making it the perfect place for engaging with the railway industry internationally. Importantly, that connectivity extends beyond passenger connections. As we have mentioned, Crewe is also a key strategic hub for the rail freight industry, with connections to ports servicing both the Irish sea and the Atlantic. Basing the GBR HQ at Crewe will send a clear message to the rail industry that the value and importance of rail freight is front and centre of the Government’s ambitions for our railways. There is no better place in the UK than Crewe to connect with all areas of the country, north to south and across the borders.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for making such a powerful case. Crewe is a railway town, as hon. Members have said. A successful bid will power up Cheshire, so we are here, cross-party, to speak on its behalf, which gives the bid even more credibility, but it goes beyond Cheshire and the north-west. Indeed, it powers up our great nation, so I commend the hon. Member on his campaign. I hope the Minister listens and makes the correct, informed decision. The bid has cross-party support from both councils in Cheshire East and Cheshire West, and from all the local MPs, regardless of our political persuasion.
Dr Mullan
I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for his support. As he says, the bid has cross-party support from councils and Members of Parliament. It would be a benefit not only to Crewe, but to the wider region.
I want to talk about what the GBR HQ coming to Crewe will do for the people of Crewe as well as for GBR. As I have mentioned, Crewe’s growth has often been tied to the railways. As locomotive manufacturing in the UK faded, although the community spirit and heritage remained, in some respects Crewe’s fortunes faded as well. Six out Crewe’s 13 wards are in the 10% of most deprived nationally, concentrated around the town centre. There is a £5,000 gap between household earnings in Crewe compared with the Cheshire East average, and 8.4% of 16 to 17-year-olds in central Crewe are not in education, employment or training, compared with a Cheshire East average of 2.3%.
We are already seeing benefits from the Government’s levelling-up agenda, which the awarding of GBR can build on and cement. We have a Crewe town deal, funding for an institute of technology, and of course the HS2 hub. Importantly, while all of those are positives, they would not replicate the investment that GBR represents. The area around the station has been allocated as the HS2 station hub strategic employment site, providing opportunities for new investment in high-grade office space, with a hotel and amenities unlike anything else currently available in Crewe. GBR has the opportunity to become the landmark occupier, helping to cement the scheme and shape the future regeneration of Crewe.
This journey of regeneration represents opportunities for GBR as well. As the Minister will see from the bid put forward by Cheshire East Council, there are several locations where the GBR headquarters could be placed in Crewe, all within a short walking distance of the station, other railway industry offices in Crew and, importantly, the HS2 development. There are many plots that are ready for staff to move into, involving little work and making the move very straightforward. Importantly, office rents in Crewe are 84% to 87% lower than in Birmingham or Manchester and would be much cheaper than many competing areas for the headquarters.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for his passionate campaign for Great British Railways. The GBR headquarters have sparked a tremendous amount of debate and interest from colleagues across the House. Naturally, I am supporting my campaign for Darlington, where it all began, to be the home of GBR. Does he agree that, given the level of interest and the opportunity to extol the virtues of all our respective constituencies, if the Government could find time for the Minister to respond to a debate on the Floor of the House, that would be a tremendous opportunity for all of us to tell our stories and showcase everything that the United Kingdom has to offer?
Dr Mullan
I agree with the hon. Member that it is not just in Crewe that this opportunity has galvanised communities. I am going to talk about how my community feels about it, but to give that full airing in a main debate in the Chamber would be a fantastic opportunity for so many Members to showcase the strength of feeling in their local areas.
Although there are other options, the value for money that Crewe offers will be difficult to beat. I know that the Minister will care deeply about the staff who are going to work there and want to know that they will have opportunities as well. Crewe is not only more affordable for office space; it is also more affordable when it comes to house prices, which are 39% cheaper than the UK average and 19% cheaper than the north-west average for a semi-detached house. That is not to take away from Crewe, however, as it has been ranked in the top three residential locations for the past three years by Property Week, and Cheshire East has been ranked as one of the top places to live in the north-west.
I can personally vouch for Crewe, as I live and work in the area myself. It is not short of cultural assets, such as the Crewe Lyceum theatre, Crewe Market Hall, Crewe Lifestyle Centre and Crewe Alex FC. It is also in close proximity to vibrant market towns such as Nantwich, Sandbach, Knutsford and Wilmslow. Additionally, Cheshire’s nearby Peak district encompasses nearly 100 square miles of beautiful scenery. GBR staff will be able to make a home in Crewe affordably and enjoy what Crewe and the whole region have to offer.
Taking all that into account, the Minister will understand why there is enormous support for the bid in my constituency. Crewe’s population is proud of the town’s railway heritage. From the day the competition was announced, I received emails and letters from constituents asking me to do everything possible to get the win for Crewe. The results of an online survey conducted by the Crewe Chronicle found that 97% of respondents were in favour of the arrival of GBR in Crewe. The Chronicle and Crewe Nub News are both giving their full support to the bid, alongside cross-party support from all the local party leaders and local councillors.
They are joined by cross-party support from 12 MPs from Stoke, Cheshire and Warrington. I thank every one of them for their support and those who have turned up to voice their support today. As well as Cheshire East Council and Crewe Town Council, we have the support of neighbouring Cheshire West Council in Chester and Warrington Council. The local football team and its supporters’ club, the RailwayMen, are geared up to get out the vote and, of course, Pete Waterman is continuing his long history of advocating for the railways in Crewe by being front and centre of our bid.
The Crewe town board and its chair, Doug Kinsman, have come to embody ambition for Crewe. They all support our bid alongside South Cheshire chamber of commerce and Cheshire College. We all look forward to the public vote and the opportunity to showcase that public support in full.
I hope that the Minister has enjoyed hearing about the strengths of our bid; about our rich rail heritage dating back to the 1800s; about our historical and modern railway industry locally; about our connectivity in the here and now, and in the future with HS2, connecting across our great nation and connecting for freight as well as passengers; about the opportunities to find a home for GBR that is affordable for the taxpayer and for the people who will work there, able to enjoy everything that Cheshire has to offer; and about the opportunities for GBR to help Crewe in return, as it continues to face challenges in the post-industrial era.
I finish by thanking the leaders of the political groups on Cheshire East Council and the staff and team at Cheshire East Council and the Cheshire and Warrington local enterprise partnership for their hard work on the bid, and all those in the community and industry locally who have helped to ensure that it is the best it can be. It is a bid that Crewe can be proud of, and one that I know all of Crewe is behind. On 4 July 2022, we will mark 185 years since the first train arrived in Crewe. It will be fitting for that anniversary to be marked by the announcement of Crewe becoming the home of Great British Railways.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I congratulate my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), on that excellent speech. In fact, so comprehensive and passionate was his statement that he has not left much for the rest of us to say. With the greatest respect to other hon. Members, I must say that this is an obvious choice, for the very reasons the hon. Gentleman spoke about: the absolute intertwining of our railway history with Crewe’s history. Crewe is the original railway town. With the greatest respect to those areas in the north-east that might claim the first railway, the first railway town was Crewe.
I want to supplement and complement my hon. Friend’s speech with some reflections of my own, having grown up in Cheshire, and having spent lots of time at Crewe station—perhaps a bit more at the moment, since Avanti dropped most of its services between Chester and London, but more of that later. As a Cheshire man born and bred, when I arrive at Crewe from the south, whether from the west midlands via Stafford, down the London line or even across the east midlands on the route that goes over towards Stoke and Derby, I always feel like I am coming home. When I was a youngster, Greenall Whitley, the local brewery at the time, said “You are now entering Greenall Whitley land. Please set your clocks to local time.” It was to the south of the station, just by Basford Hall sidings, for many years. When I saw that, I knew I was almost home.
As a child, I visited one of the open days at Crewe railway works, which was a huge, sprawling site in those days. I have a certain sadness that it has contracted as much as it has. It now spreads along the line to Chester and north Wales on the right-hand side going out, but it is not nearly as big as it used to be. The hon. Gentleman talked about the changes in the railway structure—I think part of it is now a Morrisons, and the Eagle bridge housing estate, which takes its name from the railway bridge that went over from the old railway works over to the old Crewe electric railway depot to the north-west of the station. The diesel depot was just to the south of the station on the way out to Basford Hall and on the railway line down towards Shrewsbury and mid-Cheshire.
Just by remembering that, I am emphasising the point that the hon. Gentleman made about this 360-degree view that Crewe has of our railway system. It is great connectivity. Obviously, I am particularly interested in the line to Chester and then off to north Wales. I was speaking to the Wales Minister, and hopefully I will speak to the Transport Minister at some point about improving the services on that after the pandemic.
As I say, Avanti has been dragging its feet and it is unacceptable. Constituents are moaning—as much as they love Crewe and want to support the bid, they do not want to have to spend too much time changing at the railway station. But if they have to spend it anywhere, they may as well spend it at Crewe. It is so well connected: up to Scotland, both Glasgow and Edinburgh; down to Birmingham; across to south Wales with direct services that go through Herefordshire and Worcestershire; across to the east midlands as far as Newark and further, with direct services including Nottingham, Derby and Stoke; obviously, straight down to London; through to Birmingham and to the south-west. Again, there are direct cross-country services. The idea of connectivity absolutely makes sense.
The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich talked about HS2. He has been involved in recent years and he knows that we had to battle at times to get the HS2 hub for Crewe, but we think we have secured it now and we will get the services that will allow the full economic benefits of HS2 to spread out not just across the northern midlands and Staffordshire, but across Cheshire, which is why there has been a joint campaign by all Members of Parliament and local councils and the local enterprise partnership. That joint work is reflected in the current campaign, in which the hon. Gentleman is playing a leading role. The Crewe hub has political support from across the county and across political parties, as well as business support.
There is another aspect, which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich did not touch upon. I support HS2 completely and think it is a great idea, but it cannot simply be a fast link between cities that allows those cities to grow. Without deviating from the subject of the debate, Crewe offers an opportunity to share the benefits of HS2 outside the cities. I make that point because I hope the Minister will reflect on the fact that there will be big cities that will bid for the headquarters of Great British Railways, but there will also be towns where perhaps benefits have not been shared fairly or which have not benefited from so much economic growth. Crewe is a perfect example of a town, as opposed to a city, where the headquarters would make a real difference and the benefits would spread out across the whole of my county, which is why we are so keen to have it. I would be grateful if the Minister could take fair notice of the idea of sharing the growth not just among the big cities, but among the towns.
Having the headquarters would be a mark of prestige for Cheshire, and this is a prestigious bid for us. However, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said, it would also be a good move for Great British Railways. It would find a welcoming county that has much to offer. Yes, Crewe is a railway town but it is also a great place to live and to do business. I have no doubt that in Crewe, as well as in the wider county, Great British Railways will find a warm welcome and a real home.
We have talked about house prices and amenities in Crewe. If the hon. Gentleman will let me say so, the employees of Great British Railways could also come and live in Chester, which is only about 20 minutes down the line, when we get a connecting train. As a Cestrian and a Cheshire man myself, I would encourage the employees of Great British Railways, when they come, to look at Cheshire as a really welcoming place.
I finish by giving my warm support and using the phrase with which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich began his speech—it had occurred to me, but he put it so well. Crewe is at the geographical heart of this nation’s railways, but this nation’s railways are absolutely at the heart of Crewe. It is a town and ours is an area that fundamentally understand and are grateful for the contribution that the railways have made. I fully support the campaign, headed by the hon. Gentleman and Cheshire East Council, and I hope the Minister will give fair consideration to this fantastic bid.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Rees.
I commend the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) for his staunch support for his constituency and the bid that has led to this important debate. I thank all Members for their important contributions and their obvious passion and support for Crewe and Nantwich.
I know that many Members across the House share the hon. Gentleman’s passion for ensuring Great British Railways is based in their own constituency, so while the hon. Gentleman might tempt me into backing his specific bid, it is important that due process is taken to ensure the most suitable location. Indeed, over 40 separate bids have been launched across the country to be the new home of Great British Railways, including a bid in my own region of South Yorkshire. I am sure the Minister will reassure me that all bids will be carefully considered on their merits and not on the political benefits of the Conservative party, as some believe they have seen in the past.
Crewe has put forward an excellent bid. As the leader of Cheshire East Council Councillor Corcoran notes, Crewe is
“a rail town through and through”
that has
“rail at the heart of the town.”
As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich has detailed, Crewe has proud and historic roots when it comes to our rail network. It is often described as the most historically significant railway station in the world. Crewe railway station was opened in 1837 and is a grade II listed building. The grand junction railway, built to connect Birmingham to a junction with Manchester and Liverpool, opened the same year with the station taking its name from the nearby Crewe Hall. Since then, the town has largely been built by and for the railway.
Today, Crewe is a proud town with a rich and influential history in rail. Even now, Crewe is a vital interchange for our railways and will form an integral part of the integrated rail plan. It is also the birthplace of the Crewe locomotive works, which went on to become one of the largest locomotive works in the world. More than 7,000 steam locomotives were produced there prior to the expansive diesel locomotive production. In fact, the work was so influential that engine design was known as the Crewe type for many years, making it one of our proud historic British manufacturing hubs.
Indeed, British manufacturing and procurement should be at the very heart of the formation of Great British Railways and the implementation of the integrated rail plan. For example, we must ensure that HS2 is procuring British-made steel and that the new HQ guarantees local jobs. The driving force for change on our railways should be centred on benefits it can bring to local people. That is why I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring that Great British Railways is based outside London, where communities have felt overlooked for far too long when it comes to funding, infrastructure and Government attention. I urge the Minister to ensure that this new HQ is not simply a token gesture but provides genuine investment and jobs in the chosen location. Can the Minister confirm today exactly how many jobs she expects there to be at the new Great British Railways HQ?
On the Opposition Benches, we want to see Great British Railways become a success for the industry and passengers. However, without the much-needed detail on this matter, I feel the Government may pull back on their promises and funding, as seen previously. The current plans as they stand are already not going far enough. As my colleagues have consistently outlined, Great British Railways will privatise the profit but nationalise the risk. The truth is that taxpayers’ money has been consistently misplaced when it comes to our railways. The Government prefer to pay extortionate consultancy fees and bleed profits into the pockets of operators, which go to subsidise the rail network of other nations at the expense of our own. We should be seeing the Government re-establishing 21,000 cut services, properly funding Transport for the North and halting the £1 billion cut from Network Rail. I urge the Minister to ensure that the promises she has made on Great British Railways are delivered in full.
The industry needs clarity on the detail of what Great British Railways will look like. Can the Minister ensure that is shared as swiftly as possible? The Government’s unwillingness to nail down the details and provide a definitive direction for the future of our railways has risked stakeholder confidence. That risks leaving a lack of leadership when it has come to vital areas of our network such as electrification, digital signalling and rolling stock, which requires decades of planning.
While it is encouraging to see such enthusiasm about the future of our railways, I wish Government funding would match those ambitions. Encouraging people back to affordable, reliable and flexible services should be the Government’s priority when establishing Great British Railways, wherever it finds its home. Crewe certainly offers an excellent prospect for the Department, but I hope its expectations of what this opportunity can offer are fulfilled by the Government. I wish Crewe the best of luck with the bid. No matter the outcome, the rich rail heritage is certainly something the people of Crewe can be very proud of, and the same can be said for the passionate support shown by all hon. Members taking part in the debate.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Wendy Morton)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Rees. Before I respond to the debate more broadly and to hon. Members, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) for securing this debate. Only a few weeks ago, I was here debating the merits of Carnforth as a potential location for the Great British Railways headquarters. This is the fourth debate on this subject, with previous bids being for Darlington, as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) will recall, and for York. It has been heartening to listen to these debates, and to hear hon. Members from up and down the country engaging in an important conversation and debate about the future of our railways, supporting bids from their towns and cities. We have heard examples of outstanding work, and I know there are many others.
As I said in the earlier debate, railways are close to my heart. Both of my paternal great-grandfathers worked on the railways, one on the Wensleydale railway and the other in County Durham. I found out recently, since becoming rail Minister, that my dad was born in a railway cottage. In my own way, I like to think that I have a bit of rail heritage in my blood. I understand the importance of the railway industry and the amazingly rich rail heritage of this country.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich set out, Crewe has a proud rail heritage. Indeed, the Grand Junction Railway Company chose Crewe as the site for its locomotive works, as we have heard, and a railway station. Crewe was a small village and the railways transformed it into the vibrant railway town that we know today. The opening of the famous Crewe Works in 1840 heralded an era of tremendous growth for the town. When the Grand Junction Railway Company became a part of London and North Western Railway, one of the largest companies in the world at the time, Crewe Works found itself at the centre of its locomotive construction and maintenance.
Since 1837, the historic Crewe railway station has helped transform the town, as we have heard today, connecting Crewe to the rest of the UK and the wider world. It remains an important transport hub today. From the earliest days of the railways through to the modern day, Crewe has and will continue to play an important part of the railways in this country. Of course, my mailbox is evidence that there are many other towns and cities across the country that have played an important part in our railway heritage, which hon. Members are equally proud to represent. The response to this competition has been positive. I am pleased to say that, by the time the competition had closed on 16 March, we had received 42 applications, which is phenomenal.
Hon. Members will be aware that the Williams-Shapps plan for rail, published in May 2021, set out the path towards a truly passenger-focused railway, underpinned by new contracts that prioritise punctual and reliable services; the rapid delivery of a ticketing revolution, with new flexible and convenient tickets; and long-term proposals to build a modern, greener and accessible network. Central to the Williams-Shapps plan for rail is the establishment of a new rail body, Great British Railways. That will provide a single, familiar brand and strong, unified leadership across the rail network. Great British Railways will be responsible for delivering better value and flexible fares, and the punctual, reliable services that passengers deserve.
The competition for the national headquarters was launched by the Secretary of State on 5 February 2022, and closed for applications on 16 March. The GBR Transition Team is now evaluating the 42 submissions we have received from towns and cities across Great Britain, against a set of six criteria. It is important to understand those criteria: alignment to levelling-up objectives, connected and easy to get to, opportunities for GBR, railway heritage and links to the network, value for money, and public support.
The GBR Transition Team will recommend a shortlist of the most suitable locations, which will go forward to a consultative public vote, and then Ministers will make a final decision on the location of the headquarters, based on all the information gathered.
Peter Gibson
On the issue of the public vote, some locations that are bidding have a significant population and some locations, such as mine and such as Crewe, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), have a considerably smaller population. Could the Minister outline for the House today what steps will be taken to ensure that proportionality is taken into account in weighing up those votes, so that small towns such as Darlington, which is bidding as where it all began, and Crewe, which is bidding as well, are taken into account and not swamped by those big places?
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. As I set out, in this competition, it is open to towns and cities to apply, and we have seen applications come forward from both towns and cities, as we have been hearing today and throughout the relevant debates. The important thing to remember is that there will be the consultative public vote but that is only one of a number of factors that we, as Ministers, will take into account. We will base our final decision on all the information that we receive. But I take on board the point that my hon. Friend has just made.
As I mentioned, I have been so pleased by the number of bids that we have received and by the quality of the bids. They have been of a really high quality. I am sure that, whichever location we choose, the future headquarters will go to somewhere that is truly deserving.
To go back to the points about GBR, it is important to recognise that Great British Railways will bring ownership of the infrastructure, fares, timetables and planning of the network all together under one roof. It will bring today’s very fragmented railways under a single point of operational accountability, ensuring that the focus is on delivering for passengers and freight customers. Great British Railways will be a new organisation with a commercial mindset and a strong customer focus. It will have a different culture from the current infrastructure owner, Network Rail, and very different incentives from the beginning.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) made the point about numbers, and what I can say is that the national headquarters will be of a modest size and we are not anticipating significant Network Rail relocations as a result of it, because the existing rail workforce will still have an important role to play. The new HQ will be based outside London. It will bring the railway closer to the people and communities that it serves, ensuring that skilled jobs and economic benefits are focused beyond the capital. That is very much in line with the Government’s commitment to levelling up.
I want to touch on a point about regional devolution. I have mentioned that alongside a new national headquarters, GBR will have regional divisions that are responsible and accountable for the railway in local areas, ensuring that decisions about the railway are brought closer to the passengers and communities that it serves. GBR regional divisions will be organised in line with the regions established in Network Rail’s “Putting passengers first” programme, which reflects how passengers and freight move across the network today. Cities and regions in England will have greater influence over local ticketing, services and stations through new partnerships between the regional divisions and local and regional government. Initial conversations are starting with local stakeholders on how those partnerships can best work together.
I would normally turn now to the various points and questions raised by hon. Members, but I sensed that there was a lot of consensus across the Chamber today, with each Member, whichever town they were supporting, making very passionate arguments in support of their town’s bid. I recognise that we have had contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) and the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson). I thank them all for those contributions.
To conclude, the reforms proposed under the Williams-Shapps plan for rail will transform the railways for the better, strengthening and securing them for the next generation. The reforms will make the sector more accountable to taxpayers and Government. They will provide a bold new offer to passengers and freight customers of punctual and reliable services, simpler tickets and a modern, green and innovative railway that meets the needs of the nation.
While transformation on this scale cannot happen overnight, the Government and the sector are committed to ensuring that benefits for passengers and freight customers are brought forward as quickly as possible. We have already sold 150,000 of our new national flexi-season tickets, offering commuters savings as they return to the railways. The transition from the emergency recovery measures agreements to new national rail contracts is under way, providing more flexible contracts that incentivise operators to deliver for passengers.
GBR will be an organisation that works alongside the local communities it serves. Integrated local teams within GBR’s regional divisions will push forward design and delivery with their partners, supported by new incentives that encourage innovation, partnership and collaboration. It will be designed and have the structure to become yet another example of this Government’s historic commitment to levelling up regions across the nation.
Both the Government and the GBR transition team welcome the interests and advocacy from all the respective cities and towns that have put forward bids, and I very much welcome the participation of hon. Members in the competition for GBR’s headquarters so that together we can deliver the change that is required. We look forward to building this new vision for Britain’s railways in collaboration with the sector and the communities, and the creation of GBR’s headquarters is one of many steps we are taking to achieve that.
Dr Mullan
I begin by thanking the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), for attending the debate today. If the Minister did not already have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the railway network, she certainly will do by the time this is all over.
I thank again the leaders of the groups of Cheshire East Council, the Cheshire and Warrington local enterprise partnership and their staff for the work they have done to produce our bid. I thank Pete Waterman, Cheshire Live, Crewe Nub News and Crewe Alexandra, as well as its supporters’ club, the Railwaymen. Again, I thank the 12 MPs who are supporting our bid, in particular the hon. Members for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) and my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for speaking today in support of the bid.
It would be remiss of me not to highlight the key strengths of our bid one last time. Crewe could not be a better connected part of our railway network; it is at the heart of the freight industry and will be at the heart of the next generation of our railway network in the form of HS2. There is a rich, local, modern railway industry that has grown from our heritage, which means that the key players will only ever be a short walk away—and if they are not, they will definitely be a short train journey away.
Crewe has its challenges, and bringing GBR to Crewe would help us on our journey to improvement in a fantastic way. That journey represents opportunities for GBR, too: it is a place where people can live and work affordably, in an office that would represent value for money for the taxpayers. I am ambitious for Crewe; the people of Crewe are ambitious for Crewe; and I hope the Minister can be ambitious for Crewe as well.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Crewe’s bid for the headquarters of Great British Railways.
Written Statements
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Business Update
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government have condemned the use of threats of dismissal and re-engagement on reduced terms, so-called “fire and rehire”, as a negotiation tactic when employers are seeking to renegotiate contracts.
Last year I asked the Advisory. Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to look at this issue, and welcomed the publication of their online guidance. In the guidance, ACAS states that an employer should only consider dismissing and offering to rehire someone on new terms as a last resort. Before doing so, an employer must have made all reasonable attempts to reach agreement through a full and thorough consultation. The guidance is available at: Considering employment contract changes: Making changes to employment contracts – employer responsibilities - Acas
The Government will go further. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will bring forward a statutory code of practice on dismissal and re-engagement, under section 203 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. We will bring this forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.
This statutory code of practice will be admissible in evidence before a court or employment tribunal in England, Scotland and Wales. Where relevant, statutory codes are referred to by employment tribunal judges when deciding the level of award an employee is entitled to. Subject to satisfying the statutory requirements the tribunal can award an uplift in compensation to the employee subject to a maximum of 25% of the overall award. This increases the size of the sanction for companies who abuse the process and do not treat their employees fairly, and should provide a further deterrent effect.
The Government will set out next steps after recess, and will be consulting on the draft code later this year as required by law.
[HCWS735]
Civil Contingencies Act: 2022 Post-Implementation Review
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
I am pleased to inform the House that a comprehensive report, the “2022 Post Implementation Review of the Civil Contingencies Act” has today been laid before Parliament. This will succeed the 2017 “Report of the Post Implementation Review of the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) (Contingency Planning) Regulations 2005” in fulfilling the Government’s statutory obligation to review the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) every five years, as stipulated in regulation 59 of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Contingency Planning) Regulations 2005.
The CCA sets out a framework for emergency preparedness in the UK, it defines what an emergency is, creates the conditions for effective multi-agency working at the local level and provides emergency powers which allow the Government to react quickly to make temporary special legislation in the most serious of emergencies. Emergency preparedness, supported by the CCA, is essential to protect the UK from hazards and threats that have the potential to cause harm. This post-implementation review (PIR) provides a technical assessment of the legislative framework to ensure that it remains appropriate and sufficient in order to maintain and improve the emergency preparedness landscape. This report will act as a building block for wider work to continue in the coming months and years to make the UK as resilient as possible.
To produce this report, the Government have conducted extensive consultation on the CCA with a range of stakeholders at the local and national level including local resilience forums (LRFs), responder organisations and the devolved Administrations, as well as providing opportunity for public comment on the Act via the resilience strategy call for evidence (summer 2021). Lessons from events since the last PIR were also considered.
The evidence gathered has demonstrated that fundamentally the CCA has served responders well since 2004 and that the principles of subsidiarity, co-operation and co-ordination it sets out remain key. The CCA, as a whole, is fit for purpose. However, the PIR does recommend a number of technical changes to improve the legislative framework under four key themes: role of LRFs and resilience structures; assurance and accountability; categorisation and duties on responder organisations; and part 2—emergency powers and regional nominated co-ordinator. A comprehensive description of these recommendations can be found in the full report.
Following the laying of the PIR, the Government will now turn their attention to how these recommendations may be implemented, beginning first with a process of impact assessments and further stakeholder engagement to ensure that enacting the recommendations will achieve their intended purposes. The Government will also continue to consider which future policy changes may be required to ensure local levels of preparedness meet future needs effectively.
[HCWS733]
Government Efficiency Savings 2020-21
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
As we set out in June 2021’s declaration on Government reform, HM Government are committed to strengthening the cross-Government functions to better support Departments’ delivery capability and maximise value for money for taxpayers.
In the financial year 2020-21, the Government continued their work to deliver savings to the UK taxpayer by improving operational efficiency and effectiveness. Functions, Departments and other central Government bodies have worked together to realise significant efficiencies in how services and outcomes are delivered. The figures set out here are those which meet the definition of cashable savings. Cashable savings are those which lead to a direct reduction (all other things being equal) in a Department’s budget.
During 2020-21, cashable savings totalled £3.4 billion. £1.9 billion of this was delivered through reducing losses from fraud and error, improving debt management and improving the effectiveness of grants. £1.4 billion of the savings were enabled by commercial teams driving improvements in the procurement of goods and services across Government. £142 million of the savings were delivered by digital teams supporting Departments to bring capability in-house and reducing the cost of running IT services. All of these savings have been assured for accuracy and robustness by the Government Internal Audit Agency.
Some improvements to efficiency and effectiveness, such as increases in quality or avoided expenditure, do not deliver cashable savings. As a result, we believe the figure of £3.4 billion understates the total savings and benefits delivered across central Government. Examples of these improvements include the work of functions to deliver expert advice, build professional capability, share good practice, and support continuous improvement. Further illustrations of this work can be found in the efficiency announcement which we have published on gov.uk.
We will provide regular, annual updates on how functional reform and the increasing professionalisation of government is delivering substantial savings and benefits for taxpayers and service users.
Copies of the 2020-21 efficiency announcement and accompanying technical note will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses in Parliament.
[HCWS734]
Financial Services Update
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
I can today inform the House of the disposal of approximately £1.2 billion worth of Government-owned NatWest Group plc—formerly Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS—shares, representing approximately 4.91% of the company, by way of a directed buyback transaction. Government stake in NWG pre-sale c.5,669 million shares Total shares sold to NWG c.550 million shares Share price at market close on 25/03/2022 220.5p Total proceeds from the sale c.£1.2 billion Government stake in NWG post-sale (as % of total voting rights) c.48.1 % Metric Impact Net sale proceeds c.£1.2bn Retention value range Within the valuation range Nil Public Sector Net Borrowing There may be future indirect impacts as a result of the sale. The sale proceeds reduce public sector debt. All else being equal, the sale will reduce future debt interest costs for Government. The reduction in Government’s shareholding means it will not receive future dividend income it may otherwise have been entitled to through these shares. Public Sector Net Debt c.£1.2bn Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities Nil Public Sector Net Liabilities Nil
Approximately £1.2 billion worth of shares were sold to NatWest in a single bilateral transaction on 28 March 2022.
The Government remaining shareholding represents approximately 48.1% of voting rights in the company, meaning that for the first time since the financial crisis NatWest is no longer under majority public ownership.
Rationale
It is Government policy that where a Government asset no longer serves a public policy purpose the Government may choose to sell that asset, subject to being able to achieve value for money. This frees up public resource which can be deployed to achieve other public policy objectives.
The Government are committed to returning NatWest to full private ownership, given that the original policy objective for the intervention in NatWest—to preserve financial and economic stability at a time of crisis—has long been achieved. The Government only conducts sales of NatWest shares when it represents value for money to do so and market conditions allow. This sale represents a landmark for Government in exiting the assets acquired as a result of the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis, as it takes the Government’s shareholding below 50%.
Format and timing
The Government, supported by advice from UK Government Investments, concluded that selling shares to NatWest, in a single bilateral transaction, represented value for money.
Share buybacks are a common practice undertaken by companies looking to efficiently deploy their excess capital. On 6 February 2019, NatWest obtained shareholder authority to purchase shares held by Government at market price. This authority was renewed at subsequent NatWest annual general meetings in April 2019, April 2020 and April 2021.
This is the fifth large block sale of NatWest shares undertaken by the Government, following previous disposals in August 2015, June 2018, March 2021 and May 2021. This is the second sale of shares via an off-market share sale directly to the company.
The sale concluded on 28 March 2022, with NatWest purchasing a limited number of its Government owned shares. A total of approximately 550 million shares, approximately 4.91% of the bank, were sold at the 25 March 2022 closing price of 220.5p per share. The reduction in the Government’s shareholding is less than the percentage sold following the cancellation of shares by NatWest. Following this transaction the Government shareholding stands at approximately 48.1%.
Details of the sale are summarised below:
Fiscal impacts
The net impacts of the sale on a selection of fiscal metrics are summarised as follows:
[HCWS732]
Contingency Liability for Ajax Lessons Learned Review
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
I wish to inform the House that I am today laying a Departmental Minute to advise of a new contingent liability associated with the Ajax Lessons Learned Review.
Clive Sheldon QC has agreed to lead the review. Negotiations are ongoing and the contingent liability will come into force on the formal appointment of the Chair.
The Departmental Minute describes the contingent liability that the MOD will hold, which will provide an indemnity for conducting and reporting the review. The maximum contingent liability held against the MOD is unquantifiable and will remain following publication of the report.
It is usual to allow a period of 14 sitting days prior to accepting a contingent liability, to provide Members of Parliament an opportunity to raise any objections.
Exposure is limited to the contingent liability of any legal action in the run-up to and following the publication of the Review’s report. It will not cover claims for liabilities:
Arising from any fraud, wilful misconduct, dishonesty, or gross negligence on the part of a member of the Review Team;
Arising from any wilful breach of any contract or agreement with the Ministry of Defence relating to the Review Team.
It is the view of the Department that the likelihood of any claim is remote.
[HCWS741]
UK Defence Contribution in High North
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)
Today I am publishing a new defence policy document for the high north, “The UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North.” I have placed a copy in the Library of the House. The purpose of this defence high north paper is to ensure that future defence policies, activities and capabilities relevant to the high north region are coherent and effectively integrated with HMG’s broader objectives for the region.
The UK’s defence contribution in the high north sits as part of the broader UK Government approach to the region defined most recently in the 2018 Arctic policy framework, “Beyond the Ice.” While its focus is on the Arctic and high north, it notes that the region is contiguous with the north Atlantic and cannot be isolated from UK interests in adjacent regions, including northern Europe and the Baltic sea region, and the rest of the world. The UK Government will be reviewing its broader approach to the Arctic and will publish a new, integrated Arctic policy framework later in 2022.
“The UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North” lays out how defence will support wider UK aims, as outlined in “Beyond the Ice.” The main commitments include:
Protecting our critical national infrastructure and our other national interests, and those of our allies and partners.
Ensuring our freedom to navigate and operate across the wider region.
Reinforcing the rules-based international system, particularly UNCLOS.
Contesting malign and destabilising behaviours.
The MOD recognises the growing importance of the high north to our defence and security, the opportunities it presents, and the potential for growing competition and tensions in the region. The MOD is determined to play its part in a Government-wide integrated approach, alongside allies and partners, to ensure that increasing access to the region and its resources is managed safely, sustainably and responsibly. This strategy sets out our commitment. It is intended to guide defence efforts over a 10-year period, including long-term capability decisions, but will be reviewed on a regular basis.
“The UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North” can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2022-03-29/HCWS738/.
[HCWS738]
Contingent Liability for Ajax Lessons Learned Review
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
I wish to provide a further update to Parliament on the Ajax equipment project being delivered as part of the Armoured Cavalry programme.
Ajax is designed to provide ground mounted reconnaissance, allowing the Army to understand the battlefield in all weathers, 24 hours a day. Part of our £41 billion investment in Army equipment and support over the next 10 years, this modernisation is critical to address future threats.
Health and safety
On 15 December, I announced the publication of the report from the MOD’s Director of Health, Safety and Environmental Protection into the health and safety concerns raised by noise and vibration on the Ajax vehicles.
The report made 20 recommendations. Implementation of the recommendations is now under way. Some have already been implemented in full, for example the Army has stood up its noise and vibration working groups (Recommendation 2.2); future trials of armoured vehicles will have real-time measurement of noise and vibration (Recommendations 3 & 11); and we were already taking action to ensure our SROs and project leads stay in post longer (Recommendation 13.1). The remainder are being progressed. We continue to consider the recommendation relating to the overlap of demonstration and manufacture stages (Recommendation 9) to ensure it is implemented in a way that does not hinder our efforts to create a more agile approach to defence acquisition, consistent with the defence and security industrial strategy, and which reflects the industrial processes in different sectors.
Update on personnel
Following the most recent assessment on 17 February 2022, of the 310 people identified as working with Ajax, 13 individuals have had long-term restrictions on noise exposure recommended, potentially requiring a limitation in their military duties. The majority of these had pre-existing hearing issues prior to working on Ajax; some did not. A further five individuals remain under specialist outpatient care for hearing and other ENT issues. In addition, it remains the case that four individuals who worked on Ajax have been discharged on health grounds, in some cases for reasons wholly unrelated to hearing loss.
It remains the case that no individuals have had long-term restrictions or been discharged as a result of vibration. However, assessments continue for both hand-transmitted and whole-body vibration.
Lessons learned review
The health and safety report highlighted shortcomings that need to be addressed. Although the report only addressed the health and safety aspects of Ajax, it pointed to some cultural and systemic issues that have the potential to go beyond health and safety. That is why the Defence Secretary and I have commissioned an independent follow-on lessons learned review and I am pleased to announce that Clive Sheldon QC has agreed to lead the review. I am sharing copies of the terms of reference with the Public Accounts and Defence Select Committees and placing a copy in the Library of the House.
Programmatic issues
Work continues to resolve the noise and vibration issues. Testing is now under way to verify the effectiveness of modifications proposed by General Dynamics to mitigate the noise and vibration issues to a safe and acceptable level. We will then need to analyse this data in order to understand the practicalities of allowing trials and training to resume.
It remains the case that we cannot yet set a date for the introduction of Ajax into service with the Army. Once a solution to the noise and vibration problems has been identified by GDUK and agreed by the Department, we will need to agree with General Dynamics a realistic schedule to initial operating capability and full operating capability.
In parallel with looking at noise on Ajax vehicles, the MOD has commissioned independent testing of the performance of all headsets used in the full range of in-service armoured fighting vehicles to ensure the specific headsets issued to service personnel offer the best balance between protection and functionality. We are also testing other commercially available headsets for use in our in-service fleet of vehicles. As a precaution, in December 2021, we placed temporary restrictions on the use of headsets across our in-service fleet of armoured vehicles, restrictions we were able to relax later that month as a result of the testing conducted. We continue to be able to fully meet all ongoing, planned and likely operational commitments.
Conclusion
The focus for the MOD and General Dynamics remains on developing and delivering long-term solutions for noise and vibration. We are working closely with General Dynamics and it is showing great commitment to resolving these issues. Until we know what those solutions are, it is not possible to determine a realistic timescale for the introduction of Ajax vehicles into operational service with the Army. We want it to succeed and to deliver what the British Army requires with the utmost urgency. We have a robust firm price contract for the delivery of 589 vehicles at a cost of £5.5 billion. We will not accept a vehicle that is not fit for purpose.
The terms of reference can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2022-03-29/HCWS739/
[HCWS739]
High Needs Provision Capital Allocations
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)
I am today announcing High Needs Provision Capital Allocations (HNPCA) amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding is to support local authorities to deliver new places for academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25 and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP).
This funding forms part of the £2.6 billion we are investing between 2022 and 2025, represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision and will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings. It will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.
Combined with the recommendations outlined in the SEND Green Paper released today, this capital investment will support efforts to ensure the high needs system is sustainable into the future.
This funding is on top of the £300 million invested in financial year 2021-22 and our ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools. There are currently 67 applications approved to open new special and AP free schools.
Full details of this announcement, including allocations broken down by local authority and the methodology used to distribute funding, have been published on the Department for Education section on the gov.uk website here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-needs-provision-capital-allocations.
[HCWS731]
Covid-19 Testing: Future Approach in England
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
On 21 February 2022, the Government published, “Covid-19 Response: Living with Covid-19” which set out the Government’s plan for living with covid-19. This included removing remaining legal domestic restrictions while continuing to protect people most at risk of serious illness from covid-19 and maintaining resilience.
The Government’s objective in the next phase of the covid-19 response is to enable the country to manage covid-19 like other respiratory illnesses, while minimising mortality and retaining the ability to respond if a new variant emerges with more dangerous properties than the omicron variant. As a result, the Government now assess that it is time to transition their response towards guidance and encouraging responsible behaviours, while targeting protection towards those individuals most at risk from the virus. I have today set out the future approach in England to testing beyond April.
The “Living with Covid-19” strategy is already being implemented. Individuals are no longer legally required to self-isolate, and instead are advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people if they test positive. This advice will be updated further as set out below. The Government have removed their advice for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to undertake routine twice weekly asymptomatic testing. The Government have started the process of reducing their testing and tracing infrastructure, in preparation for the end of free universal testing from 1 April. We are now reconfiguring our services to target Government testing provision to enable treatment and protect our most vulnerable settings.
Symptomatic Testing
The Government will continue to provide free symptomatic testing for:
Patients in hospital, for whom a test is required for clinical management or to support treatment pathways.
People who are eligible for covid-19 treatments, because they are at higher risk of getting seriously ill from covid-19. People in this group will be contacted directly and sent lateral flow tests to keep at home for use if they have symptoms as well as being told how to reorder tests.
Individuals who live or work in high-risk closed settings, for example in some NHS, social care and prison—and other places of detention—settings where infection needs to be identified quickly to minimise outbreaks.
NHS England will be writing to those eligible people to inform them of the new process.
DHSC will continue to fund some asymptomatic testing in NHS services, during periods of higher prevalence, including for staff and patients.
For ASC services and hospices, DHSC will also continue to fund some regular asymptomatic testing for staff in periods of high prevalence. Asymptomatic testing of care home and hospice residents will be provided on admission and during an outbreak, not routinely.
In addition, in some closed or semi-closed settings, for example: parts of the prison estate, places of detention, and some refuges and shelters, where individuals are at high risk of severe disease outcome and infection can spread rapidly, asymptomatic testing will continue to mitigate risk during higher prevalence periods.
Most visitors to adult social care settings, and visitors in the NHS, prisons or places of detention will no longer be required to take a test.
Contingency
UKHSA will maintain critical surveillance capabilities to provide insight into emerging threats and retain contingency capabilities to enable a rapid response . This includes genomic sequencing to identify a variant of concern and the ability to scale up a national response, should that be warranted. It will retain the ability to enable a rapid testing response should it be needed, such as because of a new variant of concern. UKHSA will also retain critical lab and contingency infrastructure, delivery channels, mobile testing units, and accompanying digital infrastructure. Altogether, this will ensure we retain critical resilience—giving rapid, reactive capability to respond to a future health threat, while a more comprehensive response can be scaled.
Guidance
Guidance will be published on 1 April that sets out the actions that those with symptoms of covid-19 or respiratory illness should take to reduce risk of infection to others.
Devolved Governments
UKHSA is committed to working with devolved Governments to take forward the testing programme in each nation in 2022-23.
Funding
The Government have provided significant additional funding, through additional borrowing, to respond to the pandemic, the cost of living with covid-19 will be met within existing funding streams, including the additional funding allocated at SR21. The Government will reallocate resources as necessary to pay for the maintenance of our pharmaceutical defences against covid-19 and preserve hard-won freedoms.
Free parking in hospital car parks for NHS staff introduced during the pandemic will also come to an end on 31 March. However, over 93% of NHS trusts that charge for car parking have implemented free parking for those in greatest need, including NHS staff working overnight.
Conclusion
Finally, on behalf of the Government, I would like to record my thanks to everyone who has worked tirelessly to keep people safe over the last two years and whose efforts have enabled us to move to the next stage of the covid-19 response.
The Government will continue to work together with our partners to keep all these measures under review.
[HCWS740]
Immigration Rule Changes
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary (Priti Patel) is today laying before the House a statement of Changes in Immigration Rules.
The changes reflect our commitments to Ukraine and the main changes are as follows:
We are now formally bringing the Ukraine Family Scheme, launched on 4 March 2022; the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme launched on 18 March 2022; and a new Ukraine Extension Scheme, which will launch on 3 May 2022 into the Immigration Rules.
These new routes show the UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and its citizens. The changes we have made to the visa process are making it quicker and simpler for Ukrainians to come here, as well as ensuring those already here can stay.
A Ukrainian national who is an immediate or extended family member of a person in the UK who is a British citizen, settled in the UK, or who has certain types of limited leave can come to the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme if they were resident in Ukraine immediately before 1 January 2022. They can also bring their immediate family members to the UK.
A person who meets these requirements who is already in the UK can also apply to stay, so long as they have permission to be in the UK—except as a visitor—or if their permission to stay has recently ended.
Immediate and extended family members include married, civil and durable partners, fiancé(e)s or proposed civil partners, parents—of a person both under and over 18 years old—grandparents, grandchildren, children—both under and over 18 years of age—siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and in-laws, as well as their immediate family members—partner, parents and children.
A Ukrainian national and their immediate family members can come to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme if they were resident in Ukraine immediately before 1 January 2022 and have an approved sponsor in the UK who has agreed to provide them with accommodation for at least six months.
A Ukrainian national and their partner and children who had permission to stay in the UK on 18 March 2022—or which has expired since 1 January 2022—can stay in the UK under the Ukraine Extension Scheme.
All the routes are free.
Applicants must also meet suitability requirements and under the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme the sponsor and anyone else living in the accommodation will be subject to security checks.
People applying for entry clearance who have a valid Ukrainian passport are able to start their application overseas, and, if they appear to be eligible, they will be permitted to travel to the UK and granted permission to enter for six months on arrival, and they can complete their application for three years’ permission to stay by providing biometrics in the UK.
Successful applicants will be granted permission to stay in the UK with full access to work, study and public funds.
Due to the importance of providing the certainty reflected in these rules, they will come into effect on 30 March 2022 for the Ukraine Family Scheme and the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme; and 3 May 2022 for the Ukraine Extension Scheme.
[HCWS10]
Social Housing Reform
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)
Everyone in this country deserves to live in a safe and decent home. It is unacceptable in a country like the UK that anyone should have thick black mould covering their walls and have to worry about their children breathing in spores; to be put at risk of slipping on a permanently wet floor; or to have water dripping through their ceiling on to electrical appliances, putting their safety at risk. Yet too many people in social housing do live in circumstances such as these. And too often, social housing residents have simply not been listened to or felt respected by their landlords when they have tried to raise complaints, or simply talk to their landlord about these issues.
The package of reforms I am announcing today helps address these issues and is just one of a number of reforms that the Government have delivered since the Grenfell Tower fire, including the Building Safety Bill and the Fire Safety Act, to help social housing tenants live in safe and decent homes. We have made progress. In 2010, 20% of social homes were classified as non-decent. In 2019, 13% of social homes were classified as non-decent. However, we must go further.
That is why the Government will bring forward legislation when parliamentary time allows which will ensure robust regulation of social housing landlords, a policy that has long been championed by bereaved families and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy. We published “The Charter for Social Housing Residents: Social Housing White Paper” after talking to thousands of residents across the country about their experiences. This set out a wide range of measures designed to drive up standards and fix a broken complaints system including by beefing up regulation of the sector, strengthening the Housing Ombudsman Service, and empowering residents to know and exercise their rights. We know we need to go even further than this to make sure that we are delivering for residents up and down the country, which is why one of our 12 missions set out in the Government’s “Levelling Up” White Paper is to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030.
Today I am announcing a package of measures which represent important steps forward. These measures are:
Social housing regulation legislation
A Resident Panel
Naming and Shaming
Tenant factsheet
Social Housing Regulation Legislation
Social housing tenants deserve to be better informed by their landlords, treated with courtesy and respect and to have their problems quickly resolved. Unfortunately, this has not always been the experience of residents in social housing.
The upcoming legislation will enable a new, proactive approach to the regulation of social housing landlords on consumer issues such as safety, transparency and tenant engagement, with new enforcement powers to tackle failing landlords. It will support a strong new regulatory regime which will drive a significant change in landlord behaviour, ensuring landlords focus on the needs of their tenants and are held to account for their performance.
The upcoming legislation has three core objectives:
To introduce a new, proactive consumer regulation regime so providers of social housing can be effectively held to account for the services they provide to tenants.
To refine the existing economic regulatory regime to make sure social housing providers are well governed and financially viable, to protect homes and investment in new supply.
To strengthen the enforcement powers of the Regulator for Social Housing (“the Regulator”), enabling it to take robust action where landlords are in breach of the standards.
Further information on the sample draft clauses which have been published today can be found here.
The Resident Panel
It is vital that the voices of tenants who live in social housing are heard directly by the Government. That’s why we are announcing the formation of a Resident Panel. The panel will consist of 250 social housing tenants, who will discuss the measures the Government are taking to ensure social landlords provide their residents with a high-quality service and invite residents to help us improve them.
The panel will meet once every four months for the foreseeable future, with residents having the opportunity to inform policy thinking, through sharing their experiences and suggesting ways that the Government can continue to influence landlords to drive change.
Naming and Shaming
While there are many providers of social housing who provide high-quality accommodation and services to tenants, there are too many who fail to meet the standards expected of them. The Government will take a stronger stance on naming and shaming social housing landlords who fail to meet the standards expected of them, by:
publicising on social media where landlords have breached the Regulator’s consumer standards or where the Housing Ombudsman has made its most serious findings of severe maladministration against them;
engaging directly with these landlords where they have not self-referred to the Regulator. If a landlord finds they have breached a regulatory standard, they should let the Regulator know; those who fail to do so will be contacted by Ministers.
Tenant factsheet
We know that too often tenants do not know who to turn to get help when they need it most.
That’s why we are publishing—and promoting—a factsheet to explain the role of the Housing Ombudsman Service and the Regulator. The factsheet reinforces the clear message in our communications campaign “Make Things Right”, which is encouraging residents to use their landlord’s complaints process and where necessary the Housing Ombudsman Service if they’re unhappy with the service from their social housing provider.
Both these organisations seek to improve the service delivered by social housing landlords, but there can be confusion about the respective roles of the two organisations, and where residents should go for support if needed.
The factsheet will outline the support on offer to residents, how landlords are held to account, and the changes that we are making to improve the services provided by the Housing Ombudsman Service and the Regulator of Social Housing.
[HCWS737]
Accessible Transport: Reference Wheelchair Report
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Wendy Morton)
The Government are committed to ensuring disabled passengers have the same access to transport as everyone else, with assistance if physical infrastructure remains a barrier. We want disabled people to be able to travel confidently, easily and without extra cost.
Today, the Government are taking an important step to help fulfil their commitment in the inclusive transport strategy to review its use of the Reference Wheelchair standard.
The ISO Reference Wheelchair standard is the reference point for a range of vehicle and infrastructure designs used across the transport sector and referred to directly and indirectly in accessibility standards for public transport vehicles and infrastructure.
In 2021, the Government commissioned an assessment of the prevalence, dimensions and uses of wheeled mobility-aids in the United Kingdom in relation to the use of the Reference Wheelchair standard on land-based transport modes.
The findings of this assessment estimate that the current Reference Wheelchair standard accommodates 60% of wheelchairs, and 54% of wheeled mobility-aids. However, this does not necessarily mean that the current standards are inadequate, and there will be trade-offs between making transport more inclusive for all passengers by setting more stringent standards that accommodate larger wheelchairs, and the practicalities for transport operators to accommodate larger and more diverse mobility-aids within conventionally sized public transport vehicles.
However, these findings will be used to help form the broader evidence base to determine the design of future vehicles and transport infrastructure to meet mobility-aid users’ needs. In particular, we intend to use these findings to inform the forthcoming review of the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000, which we expect to conclude by the end of 2023.
[HCWS730]
House of Lords
Building Safety Bill
Tuesday 29th March 2022
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Building Safety Act 2022 View all Building Safety Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 125-I(a) Amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (28 Mar 2022)
13:23 - Division on Amendment 8 - Ayes: 176 / Noes: 151 - Amendment 8 agreed.
Lord Foster of Bath
“(aa) furthering the protection of property, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the building safety regulator to exercise its functions with a view to furthering the protection of property, which is intended to promote longer term protections for occupant safety and reducing fire damage and cost.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, even if no lives are lost, fires in any type of building—home, school, office, factory or other—can often have serious social, economic and environmental consequences. Property and equipment are lost, rebuilding costs are enormous, jobs can be lost and so on. Of course saving lives is the most important consideration, but my Amendments 1 and 16 suggest that we should be going beyond the current arrangements whereby we consider that building legislation and regulations are deemed a success if all occupants are evacuated safely. The amendments propose means by which consideration of property protection can be proportionately applied to the fire safety building regulations, measures that I believe will allow for buildings to be safer, more resilient and more sustainable than now.
At earlier stages of the Bill, I illustrated the need for such measures with reference to a large number of fires that had completely destroyed buildings. Sadly, to that list we can now add the fire just a couple of weeks ago that destroyed a self-storage warehouse in Cheadle along with the possessions of more than 650 people. Conversely, we know the benefits of applying property protection approaches. That was evidenced last week, for example, when a sprinkler system saved a large distribution warehouse in Leicestershire from being destroyed by fire. Over the past two months alone, sprinklers have prevented large, costly and potentially dangerous fires in schools in Ayrshire, in a retirement home in Bedfordshire, in high-rise blocks in Chester, Newport and Irvine and in a furniture warehouse in Sheffield.
In Committee, the Minister avoided addressing the crux of the proposition that I am making. I find that odd, particularly given that the Government have already commissioned research into property protection measures. It is disappointing that we have reached this stage of the passage of the Bill without seeing the results of that research, which would have been enormously helpful to him. It may be that the Government want to use it to determine future considerations for fire safety building regulations, but surely the most appropriate time to be doing that is now, while we have this Bill before us. We know how difficult it is to find legislative time to bring in further measures. It is particularly strange when the Minister has said categorically that the Bill before us is intended to deliver the biggest improvement in building safety in nearly 40 years.
The Government may well also say that they have the opportunity at a later stage to amend guidance in these matters. We must of course accept that there have already been changes to guidance on fire safety over recent years; indeed, there have been changes in relation to high-rise buildings as a result of the Grenfell fire. However, the sad truth is that placing something in guidance does not necessarily ensure that the actions that we want will happen. That was the case back in 2007, some years ago now, when Building Bulletin 100: Design for Fire Safety in Schools was introduced, with the suggestion that sprinklers should be installed. In the first few years that is exactly what happened, but over subsequent years the incidence of the introduction of sprinklers in new school buildings reduced dramatically as developers found ways around the guidance.
I mention that because we should be looking at changes not to guidance but to the actual regulations. After all, that was what was thought important when we made changes to the regulations in respect of cladding. That was not a change to guidance; it was a change to regulation. That is why my Amendments 1 and 16 would introduce into regulation measures to provide improvements to property protection. I say to the Minister, who I know is interested in this issue, that that would not be a particularly strange thing to do. After all, many other countries have thought it important to do this; for instance, Germany, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Japan and a number of others have already introduced such measures. I hope that the Minister will give serious consideration to my proposals or, if he is not prepared to accept the amendments, give us an update on the research that is currently being done and what the Government’s plans are to make changes—in due course, sadly—to the regulations in this matter.
I have another amendment in this group, Amendment 8, which relates to the need for the regulator to
“within two years … carry out and publish an assessment of the benefits and costs of measures on improving the safety of people in or about buildings relating to … certification of electrical equipment and systems”—
that is the installations, not the equipment running off them. In Committee, I pointed out the inequality that exists whereby private landlords in high-rise buildings are required by law to have a valid electrical safety certificate, whereas social landlords are not. This is strange, as the Government want equality between the two. The social housing charter states unequivocally:
“Safety measures in the social sector should be in line with the legal protections afforded to private sector tenants. Responses to the social housing Green Paper showed overwhelming support for consistency in safety measures across social and private rented housing.”
The Minister said:
“The Bill is unapologetically ambitious, creating a world-class building safety regulatory regime that holds all”—
I emphasise “all”—
“to the same high standard.”—[Official Report, 2/2/22; col. 916.]
Yet elsewhere, the Minister appeared less committed, saying only that
“In the Social Housing White Paper we committed to consult on electrical safety requirements in the social sector”.
Commitment to consult is a far cry from a commitment to achieve the same regulatory standard. The Minister continued:
“We will consider whether the best way forward to protect social residents from harm is to mandate checks and bring parity with standards in the private rented sector.”—[Official Report, 2/3/22; col. GC 319.]
A commitment to consider mandatory checks is a far cry from the words in the social housing charter and the Minister’s own words at Second Reading.
Lord Crisp (CB)
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 2, I thank those noble Lords who have added their names to it. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has asked me to inform your Lordships that he cannot be in his place today as he has Covid. I am sure that we send him our best wishes. However, I am delighted that the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Stunell, are here and I thank them and others who will speak to this amendment. In passing, I also thank the TCPA and other organisations outside your Lordships’ House which very much support this amendment and have provided support and notes to a number of Members.
I emphasise that this is very much a cross-party amendment. I know that there is a lot of support for the principles involved. It is very simple and quite profound. It offers a simple definition of safety: the risk of harm to the health and well-being of an individual. It is a very simple, common-sense notion that applies to safe stairways, electrical wiring, dampness and cold as much as it does to fire.
In Committee, the Minister in effect argued in response that there did not need to be a definition and that definitions were satisfactorily covered in the current arrangements. There is no legal duty in the planning system that deals with human health. For that reason alone, it is important that we have a definition. More widely than that, I think that we need one for both negative and positive reasons. The negative reason is that, unless there is a definition, I believe that a Government of any party will always be in reactive mode. Amendment 8, which I am happy to support, is a perfect example; it lists four specifics related to human health and well-being and to safety and draws them to the House’s attention as of particular concern.
There will be others. One could produce a much longer list and there are things that we have not thought of yet. We could think about subsistence, air pollution and all kinds of areas that might be caught. The Government will need to continue to address all these issues as they come up—tactically, if you like, and on an ad hoc basis. I am quite sure that, as the Bill was being prepared, the Minister and his colleagues will have wanted to ensure that not too many things were added to it. The danger is that they may not be added to the Bill but will be added to parliamentary and government time afterwards.
There is an enormous advantage to being strategic—to setting out a definition that asks the regulator, and therefore everyone else in the system, to pay attention to health and safety, which embraces all these issues. That will help to bring about the cultural change in line with what I believe the Government want from the Bill. It will allow them to get ahead of the game and be ambitious, as the Long Title suggests that the Bill should be about
“safety … in or about buildings”.
There are positive reasons too; I have already talked about being ambitious. With their proposals around levelling up and elsewhere, the Government are undoubtedly seeking to improve the lives of citizens in the country. Housing and the built environment are absolutely at the heart of those ambitions. Covid has reminded us that our homes, if not being our castles, are certainly the foundations of much else in life: they are our sanctuary, a place for education and a place for stability and safety. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, will say more about the impact of Covid and the relationship between health and housing and buildings more generally. We have always known about that link and so have Governments in the past. For something like 50 years, the Secretary of State for Health was also the Secretary of State for Housing; the two were intimately linked. Partly as a result of that, no doubt, we saw the excellent standard of council housing built between the two wars, for example.
These are long and profound links. The way we design and build our homes and the whole built environment matters not only to people but to the Government’s policies around levelling up, around achieving net zero and around health inequality, to mention just three of the things that have been debated in this House in recent times. I would add the importance of preparation for the next pandemic and more generally for securing increased resilience in the country as a whole.
I have not decided whether to press for a vote and I will obviously listen carefully to what is said by the Minister. I will ask him what steps he will take to meet the concerns that the amendment raises and the need for a profound link between health and housing and whether he will meet me and colleagues to discuss these issues further. I believe that he is also the Minister for Levelling Up, so these issues will undoubtedly return in another guise and at another time. The quality of homes, communities and the built environment is fundamental to levelling up our society. I will also listen with great interest to noble Lords who represent the other political parties in the Chamber. I hope that they will support these principles and will similarly consider how, in the longer term, the links between health, housing and the built environment can be developed and taken forward.
My point here is a simple but big one. In wider society, people have made the connection between health and well-being and the built environment, just as they have made it between health and well-being and the natural environment. The issue will keep coming back to your Lordships’ House. It is far better to get ahead and be strategic and ambitious. This is an idea whose time is coming. The built environment, like the natural environment, is crucial to the health and well-being of the population and therefore to the future prosperity of the country.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 2. It is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Crisp; he put the arguments for the amendment incredibly well so I will keep my comments as brief as I can.
As Health Minister during the pandemic, I realised how unhealthy our country is. Time and again, one saw from the front line of Covid—through the ICUs and test and trace teams—reports of how connected the spread of the disease was to the housing conditions of the country and how the comorbidities of those arriving in our ICUs were often connected to the environment in which they lived. Housing and illness are inextricably linked; I came face to face with that during the pandemic.
The pandemic led to a huge amount of misery through loss of life and severe disease. It also hit the country’s economy extremely hard; there is no doubt that we had longer and harder lockdowns as a result of the fact that our country is so poorly. However, we cannot ask the NHS and our healthcare system on their own to be responsible for the improvement of our national health. There is a role to be played by education, sports, scientists, civic society—all the parts of our country, including and especially housing. That is why I support the healthy homes principle from the TCPA.
This issue is recognised in the levelling-up White Paper, to which the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, referred. However, it is not clearly recognised in the Bill. The priority that housing should support health and well-being should be fundamental to the underpinnings of this Bill. That is the purpose of this amendment, which is why I put my name to it. I ask the Minister to put on record a commitment that the department will look at ways to augment the Bill’s focus to bear on the health and well-being aspects of housing regulation, and to meet the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, myself and others to discuss how this might be done.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, having had the very last amendment debated in Committee, I now mount my retentions hobby-horse once again, but riding on a slightly different course and in the first group on Report. My Amendment 7 would give the building safety regulator a duty to keep possible safety risks arising from contractual arrangements, including payment conditions such as retentions, under review in fulfilling his or her role of improving building safety and standards.
Procurement and contractual arrangements are crucial in setting the tone for relationships between different-level contractors in a building or building maintenance project. They can determine whether those relationships are adversarial—seeking advantage for one side against the other and looking to minimise cost—or collaborative, mutually beneficial and focused on adding value and maximising safety.
Yesterday, I attended a webinar hosted by King’s College London to launch the Guidance on Collaborative Procurement for Design and Construction to Support Building Safety, produced by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities with the support of its procurement advisory group. To quote the invitation,
“preventing another Grenfell Tower disaster depends on a major overhaul of construction procurement practices, breaking away from the adversarial ‘race to the bottom’ through which low prices undermine safety and quality.”
The first speaker was none other than Dame Judith Hackitt, who gave her strong support to the guidance. She emphasised that culture change in construction has to start at the very beginning of projects, and that contractual arrangements are crucial in setting the tone for relationships between different-level contractors. She also restated her view that retention policies are totally inconsistent with collaborative procurement and do not encourage a focus on building safety. Contractors assume that they will not receive the funds withheld and look for other ways to reduce costs, through cutting investment in training and quality or using substandard materials. I only wish that Dame Judith could be speaking on my amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others. I had the privilege to be on the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which reported six years ago with Building Better Places. We had extensive evidence from Public Health England on the impacts of the built environment on health. That built on the work done by Michael Marmot on the social determinants of health and the evidence of the cost to the nation of poor housing. In our report, we recommended that those working in housing should take account of the health impacts of their decisions. The relevant paragraph of the government response to our report said:
“The Government recognises the importance of considering health as part of the planning process and believes health impacts should be considered as part of the wider policy environment.”
The plea that we heard from the noble Lords, Lord Crisp and Lord Bethell, to integrate these factors and consider them at every stage has been supported by the evidence for many years. I hope that the Government will listen to the evidence that they themselves took on board in responding to our report.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in Committee but was unable to speak to it, so I welcome the opportunity to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech that he made a few moments ago. I do so having been responsible for building control under the Thatcher and Major Administrations.
No one could object to the aspirations behind the amendment and the Healthy Homes Act campaign and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically. I understand that so far the Government have objected to the proposal on the grounds that this is a matter for planning rather than for building regulations. The boundary between the two is inevitably not clearly marked and many people think that, if they have planning consent, that is the end of their interface with the local authority.
I have just one suggestion to make. The Minister may take the view that some of the objectives in the TCPA brief fall on the planning side rather than the building regulations side. I quote from its manifesto, which says that homes should
“be built to design out crime and be secure … all new homes should … provide access to sustainable transport and walkable services, including green infrastructure and play space”
and should have a minimum liveable space. Those all seem to be entirely reasonable requests. If my noble friend takes that view and believes that they are not appropriate to this Bill, can he give an assurance that they will be incorporated into the next planning Bill so that we can get to the same destination, albeit via a different route?
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. In so doing, I declare that I am a trustee of the Nationwide Foundation, which supports the TCPA’s Healthy Homes Act campaign. I shall not detain the House for too long other than to reiterate the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who introduced the amendment admirably. This is a simple but profound amendment that should be taken note of. As we have heard, we already have a great deal of evidence about the impact of housing on both health and education—Covid highlighted all of that—and how that contributes to inequalities in health. For all those reasons, it is important that we take note of the amendment and make sure that it is incorporated, whether into this Bill or a planning Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said. One cannot fault the logic of what has been recommended, so I strongly support the amendment and look forward to the Minister’s response. I also urge him to agree to meet some of us to see how this issue can be taken forward.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I offer Green support for all these amendments, which have been so powerfully and comprehensively introduced. I am not going to go over any of the same ground but shall focus particularly on Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, with full cross-party backing, particularly the wording,
“‘safety’ means the risk of harm arising from the location … of buildings”.
In some ways that might be seen to deliver the aims of two amendments that I tabled in Committee but have not brought back on Report, Amendments 132A and 132B, which would have delivered what has been called Zane’s law, targeting the issue of contaminated land and the risks that such land may represent to residents and others in nearby buildings. For those who do not know, Zane’s law refers to the tragic child Zane Gbangbola, who died and whose father was disabled when flooding carried contaminants from nearby land into their home.
If we had a safe location for every building, that would seem to deal with the issue. However, looking at our debate in Committee, I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, kindly offered support for amendments in this direction. What she said then clearly sets out the problem:
“If we can identify the size and scale in every part of the country where contamination is, that would be a very logical starting point to prevent future risk to life and support local authorities in tackling the whole issue of contamination”.
In responding, the Minister suggested that the Building Safety Bill was not the right place to bring in Zane’s law because it would take the focus away from the environment and put it only on buildings. I think that she was right in that supposition, which is why I have not brought the amendments back now; the planning Bill, if indeed we see one, may well be the place to do that. However, where I disagree with the Minister—she was responding to my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who kindly introduced these amendments as I could not be present—is where she noted that Section 143 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990
“was repealed, but it was replaced by Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990”.—[Official Report, 2/3/22; cols. GC 333-34.]
However, that was a significant downgrading of the protection and the powers offered by local authorities. It is worth looking at what was known as, perhaps rather unfortunately, the Red Tape Challenge: Environment Theme Proposals from March 2012, which effectively downgraded three-quarters of environmental regulation. Those changes to the guidelines said that they were
“anticipated to save business £140 million a year by reducing uncertainty about when land needs to be remediated”.
“Reducing uncertainty” is a phrase that needs to be re-examined and reconsidered.
I commend all the amendments, particularly Amendment 2, which focuses on the issue of the safe location of buildings. A great deal of regulatory work would have to be done to deliver that, which would include Zane’s law. If this becomes part of the Bill, the Government would have to look at that, but it would be a big step forward if we focused adequately on ensuring that—in this age of the Anthropocene and the climate emergency, in which new risks are emerging that were not present before—no one has a home or building in a place that is dangerous.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and declare an interest as chair of Oxford University’s Commission on Creating Healthy Cities. I also declare my interest as a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association.
An obvious case of building safety impacting on health and well-being is surely the permitted development rights regime. Submissions to the Oxford Commission on Creating Healthy Cities have revealed widespread condemnation of the appalling building standards allowed via permitted development rights, which permit conversions of commercial and industrial buildings into accommodation without the need for normal planning consents. This has led to the creation of some ghastly, substandard new slums often on non-residential business parks full of safety hazards, with no facilities, no play areas for children and danger from traffic. Research at University College London reveals that a very large proportion of the well over 100,000 homes delivered through these permitted development rights have been substandard.
I am pleased that there has now been some regulatory change and requirements for at least some natural light and minimum space standards. However, this controversy has highlighted the importance of adequate space, sufficient daylight, protection from noise and a surrounding environment that is not hostile and unhealthy. That underlines the need for bringing together housing and health issues under the banner of minimum standards that recognise the broader definition of safety in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. This would engage the new regulator in the process and require attention to be paid to health and well-being as essential aspects of the homes that we build and the places that we make. I support Amendment 2.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate so far and I hope that I will not let the standard drop. Three excellent amendments have been proposed. I have added my name to Amendment 2 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, but I could equally well have done so to the others as well. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
In different ways, the amendments all look at the strategic vision for what building safety should be and how it should perform. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, made a strong argument for widening the purposes of building regulations from the simple protection of life to the protection of property.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has renewed his persistent and well-justified point that there is a terrible shortage of performance from the construction industry, driven by its dysfunctional character—in particular, as he highlighted, the use of retentions in building contracts, which makes a collaborative process difficult to achieve in the industry. He referenced the Construction Playbook and what BEIS is doing. If the Minister is just going to say kind words to the noble Lord, will he also undertake to get the Department for Education to follow the Construction Playbook and get rid of retentions in the contracts that it signs? All the questions that I have asked of the Department for Education have been answered in a rather injured tone. It says that it is doing its best for the public purse—not while it continues to insist on retentions, which undermine the collaborative way the construction industry has to go.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, briefly, I wish to support the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, in his amendment on retention. I am not sure whether this is the right Bill for it but there is a problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. My only experience of it—I think it was a form of retention—was many years ago, in the early 1990s, when I had a derelict farmhouse and barns done up in Cumbria. About half way through the job, I said to the electrician, “You must be making a pretty penny out of this.” “Some hope”, he said, “it’ll be next year before I get paid and I’m fourth down the line.” I asked what he meant by that. He said, “The contractor said I’ll get paid for your job only when I have bid for three others and done them. Once I finish the third one, then they’ll pay me for yours.” I was appalled but he said, “Oh, that’s standard practice in the trade, guv, nothing we can do about it.”
I do not know whether that is standard practice in the trade, or whether it actually is retention, but it is a racket that ought not to continue. I hope that, at some time in the future—in some other legislation if not in this Bill—my noble friend the Minister will be able to crack down on that sort of racket. I know that there are views on both sides of this issue but it is not right at all because there are safety implications. The electrician was to get paid for the job he did for me only if he went in at a rock-bottom price to win three other jobs. That is a safety issue.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, turning first to Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, we agree that longer-term protections for residents’ safety are absolutely critical. His amendment also raises the importance of how we manage longer-term protections relating to fire safety.
Look at the government cuts to the fire service. Between 2010 and 2016, the Government cut central funding to fire and rescue services by 28% in real terms. In 2020, that was followed by a further cut of 15%. If the Government are really serious about tackling fire safety—there is a lot of good stuff in this Bill—they need to look at reversing those cuts to our fire safety organisations to make sure that they have the proper support they need to do the job that needs to be done.
Turning to Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, I assure him that, in principle, we support what he is trying to achieve. The issues that he raises are important. Health and well-being need to be considered in a lot of our legislation and we too often overlook it. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, introduced his Amendment 7 very ably, as he always does, and we certainly support in principle what he is trying to achieve with it. We have every sympathy with many of his practical suggestions for what could be done to improve things in this area.
Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which he just clearly introduced, is particularly important given the areas that it includes and to which he referred. We had a long debate in Committee on the importance of the safety of staircases and making sure that the minimum standards are properly applied. We heard from many noble Lords about the RoSPA campaign and the number of people who die falling down staircases. This is an opportunity to do something about that.
We also had much debate in Committee on electrical certification and the importance of the safety of electricity systems. It is important that this also includes provision for disabilities. I am aware that the Government have introduced amendments on disabilities, but this is another opportunity to support that.
It is important that we have an amendment that looks at timely intervention—timely action—on safety issues. Grenfell was not the first time in recent years that a fire in a high-rise block of flats resulted in loss of life. In 2013, coroners wrote to Ministers about two separate fires: first, Lakanal House in Camberwell in 2009, in which six people died, and then Shirley Towers in Southampton in 2010, in which two firefighters died. The coroner’s letters included clear points of criticism and recommendations, which were not acted on. These also included retrofitting sprinklers into high-rise social housing blocks. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, includes the importance of sprinklers. The Lakanal House fire involved high-pressure laminate cladding, but that was not ordered to be removed from buildings until 2019—between 2009 and 2019 is 10 years.
It is important that when coroners, for example, or anyone who understands the safety of buildings writes to Ministers about genuine and serious concerns with actions that need to be taken, these are acted on in a timely way. That is why we strongly support Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell and, if he decides to divide the House on it, we will support him.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
My Lords, I thought that it would be helpful to reflect on why the Bill is before us today. It is entirely driven by the Grenfell fire tragedy, which took place on 14 June 2017 and resulted in the largest loss of life in a residential fire since the Second World War. It was also the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since Piper Alpha in 1988. As the Minister who has taken on responsibility for both building safety and fire, as Building Safety Minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Fire Minister in the Home Office, I have reflected on the factors that drove that outcome of such a loss of life. One of those was the corrosive construction industry culture that uses the sort of Spanish practices mentioned by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I have had similar experiences in construction—we all have, to a greater or lesser extent. Anyone who has undertaken any kind of construction project knows that the margins are squeezed and the people you value, the tradesmen who are on the job, are often simply not paid. It is shocking.
But there are also two other reasons why that tragedy happened. The first was a regulatory system that is essentially broken, which is why we have the Bill to establish the new building safety regulator, which will then take on responsibility for building regulations. Secondly, there was an inadequate response on the night by fire and rescue services. The Home Secretary will shortly launch, and I will support her, a White Paper on fundamental reform of fire and rescue services.
A considerable amount of money has been invested in fire and rescue services in the past three years while I have been Fire Minister, particularly on fire protection. There had been a loss of skills in those people who were very capable of assessing the built environment in fire and rescue services, so we introduced a £30 million uplift to try to repair that. It is not just about numbers and investment; it is about ensuring that we have the right skilled people in our fire and rescue services. We will continue with further investments on fire protection because we recognise that we have to prevent fires from happening in the first place, but we also have to ensure that we build in a way that is safe both from a fire perspective and in every other sense of the word.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, there is a wide range of amendments in this first group relating to the role and scope of the new building safety regulator, which will oversee the new safety regime not least for—but not exclusively for, as the amendments suggest—high-risk buildings. For instance, there is my amendment to further the protection of property through the introduction of measures such as sprinklers and compartmentation. There is also the important amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, to widen the definition of “safety” to include health and well-being because, as we have heard, a building can have a profound effect on a person’s physical and mental health. There is the important measure in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, related to addressing the safety risks that can—and do—arise from contractual arrangements. Then there is my noble friend Lord Stunell’s amendment, which aims to get the new regulator to look at and report on a range of issues of concern, from fire suppression systems to stairways, ramps, electrical equipment and measures to support people with disabilities.
The Minister’s response was to say that he welcomes these proposals and that they will be looked at over time but, of course, he does not want to burden the new regulator with additional responsibilities at this stage—notwithstanding the fact that he said that noble Lords were merely asking the regulator to do “a little bit more”. None the less, I am sure that those who have spoken to their own amendments will make a decision on what they wish to do at later stages of this Bill.
I was disturbed by the Minister suggesting that acceptance of my Amendments 1 and 16 would put the safety of the building on a par with the safety of its occupants. I must tell him that this absolutely misunderstands the importance of property protection measures. Often, the introduction of sprinklers and compartmentation, for example, gives the occupants of a building a longer period of time in which to escape and improves safety. Clearly the Minister has accepted that in terms of, for instance, reducing the height of tall buildings when it is expected, at least under guidance, that sprinklers will be introduced.
I acknowledge that the Minister has offered to have a further meeting with my noble friend and provide his not inconsiderable weight, as he described it, to move some measures forward. I hope that he will use his considerable weight to move the measures I have proposed forward in, as he suggested, the first statutory review of the work of the new regulator. Given that rather modest assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(1A) The assistance and encouragement that must be provided under subsection (1) includes, in particular, assistance and encouragement with a view to facilitating securing the safety of disabled people in or about higher-risk buildings in relation to building safety risks as regards those buildings.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the regulator must in particular provide assistance and encouragement to relevant persons with a view to facilitating their securing the safety of disabled people in or about higher-risk buildings.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I open this group by introducing a set of amendments that respond to many of the issues raised during previous debates on this Bill. I hope that these changes will be welcomed.
I start with a change that I trust will be welcomed across the House: the removal of the building safety manager. Following feedback from leaseholders and persuasive interventions from noble Lords during Committee, we are scrapping the legal requirement to appoint a building safety manager. I thank noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox of Buckley, Lady Pinnock and Lady Hayman of Ullock, the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for their thoughtful contributions on this important matter.
The Government are clear that accountable persons are responsible for ensuring that their buildings are safe and must not pass on unnecessary costs to leaseholders. We must restore common sense on building safety. There are more effective ways of discharging the responsibilities set out in the Bill than recruiting managers on high salaries for individual buildings.
Accountable persons should reflect on their current management arrangements. If they are confident that they deliver safe outcomes, there is no reason for change. We are committed to driving up standards of safety management and maintenance in high-rise buildings and the competence of those who deliver it. In the first instance, this should be done by supporting the development and upskilling of those already managing buildings. The Government will continue to work towards raising professionalism and standards among property agents and are considering the recommendations of the working group of the noble Lord, Lord Best, on regulating the market. We will continue to work with industry on improving best practice.
I turn now to our amendments to the building safety charge. I have listened to the feedback that we have received from stakeholders and in the other place and I thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for raising this matter during Committee on the Bill. I recognise the concerns raised—that the building safety charge as previously envisaged could have created additional bureaucracy for landlords and leaseholders alike—and I have listened to those concerns.
The amendment simplifies how the costs are managed by removing the building safety charge as a separate charging mechanism. We will do this by changing the modifications that we are making to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Building safety costs will now be accounted for as part of the service charge, as my noble friend recommended. The costs will be clearly identifiable and part of a system that is familiar to both landlords and leaseholders, thereby ensuring transparency of the costs. As the building safety charge will be incorporated into the service charge, the legislative protections against forfeiture will already be in place, so I am removing the amendments related to forfeiture that were laid in the other place.
I move on to how we can strengthen the voice of disabled residents. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for tabling amendments in Committee to highlight this important matter. The Government and the Health and Safety Executive are committed to providing residents with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences—including, in particular, disabled residents—with a strong voice in the new regulatory system. We have therefore brought forward amendments to ensure that the building safety regulator will have to pay particular attention to the safety of disabled people in high-rise residential buildings and engage with them.
Amendment 3 ensures that the building safety regulator must particularly focus on the safety of disabled persons when undertaking its broad Clause 4 functions around safety in higher-risk buildings. Amendments 5 and 6 are consequential amendments. Amendment 9 provides that the building safety regulator must take all reasonable steps to ensure that its residents panel contains representation from individual disabled residents of high-rise residential buildings or groups that represent or support disabled residents. Groups may be represented corporately or by an individual member expected to be sponsored by the organisation. Amendment 12 requires the building safety regulator to report publicly about its engagement with disabled residents of high-rise residential buildings in its wider annual statement on resident engagement. Amendment 14 defines “disabled”, using the widely used definition from the Equality Act 2010.
I thank those noble Lords who made important points about resident engagement in Committee, particularly the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. We have listened carefully to them and are making appropriate amendments to the Bill. The Bill puts residents at the heart of the building safety regime and gives them a clear voice in building safety matters. These amendments take this even further and oblige the principal accountable person to consult residents at prescribed times on the residents’ engagement strategy. This means that residents have the opportunity to comment on the form of the strategy and that those responsible for the safety of the building must listen to such comments.
To avoid any doubt, we have also made it clear that the principal accountable person will be obliged to act in accordance with the strategy. This means that residents and the building safety regulator will be able to hold principal accountable persons to account for their commitments made in the residents’ engagement strategy.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for raising the important matter of resident management companies assuming accountable person duties under the new regime. I have sought to address this issue through collaboration with the noble Lord and will accept his technical, non-government Amendment 86 to my Amendment 85. This will ensure that all resident management companies that are an accountable person have the option to appoint a professional director to support them with their Part 4 building safety duties.
These amendments give a power to the Secretary of State to set out in regulations the detail of provision that will be implied into articles of association of resident management companies to enable this. They imply terms into leases so that costs of the appointment can be recoverable as a service charge under the lease. The amendments apply retrospectively. Through secondary legislation, we will apply leaseholder consultation requirements to protect leaseholders from paying unnecessarily large sums as a result of appointing a professional director and ensure that, where professional directors are appointed, they can also be easily removed when required.
Amendment 263 provides that, where a paid professional director is appointed to support building safety, all unpaid directors of the resident management company will be relieved of their personal criminal liability under Part 4. Resident management companies will continue to be liable for any contraventions that may occur, maintaining the principles embodied throughout the Bill of clear responsibilities and accountability. All the elements of this amendment enable resident management companies to remain in control and responsible for their buildings, while enabling them to obtain the professional support that they may need to meet the duties of our new building safety regime.
I am grateful to noble Lords and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for their careful scrutiny of the delegated power in Clause 12. Noble Lords will be aware that we have responded to the committee’s report in detail. The provision in Clause 12 to repeal statutory committees was included in the Bill on the expert advice of the Health and Safety Executive that this power is needed to enable the committee structure to adapt and improve over time. I understand that the House has concerns that this power might be used by Ministers for other reasons.
I am grateful to the chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in another place for suggesting a potential safeguard, which the Government propose to accept, through Amendments 10 and 11. These amendments ensure that the power to repeal provision for a statutory committee may be used only following a proposal by the building safety regulator. A statutory committee could not be repealed merely on the initiative of Ministers. Proposals for regulations would come to Ministers only after the regulator had consulted on them and regulations under this clause would continue to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
I hope that the House will welcome these changes and additional safeguards and that it will support these amendments.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite her to speak.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety and Rescue and as a disabled person. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is unable to be in her place this morning as she is attending the memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh in her role as chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.
In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I both spoke of our experience of the use of personal emergency evacuation plans, or PEEPs—good practice, and less good practice. I will not repeat that today but one thing is clear: the responsibility for getting safely out of a building should not be on the shoulders of a disabled resident alone. That is why I have laid Amendments 13, 20 and 35, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Hayman of Ullock, for signing them. The amendments set out a clear link between the duties under the Equality Act 2010 for those providing services for disabled people—in this case, housing and safety in buildings.
Amendment 13 would put into law that a statement must have been laid by the regulator that they have engaged with their residents in relation to the accountable person’s duty to avoid disability discrimination. Amendment 20 would amend Section 31 of the Equality Act by adding a specific reference to a person exercising functions in relation to public housing. Amendment 35 would create a duty on the accountable person to include developing PEEPs for people with a disability in order to avoid disability discrimination.
I believe that the amendments are necessary because I want to see clarification that Part 3 of the Equality Act 2010 applies to social landlords and that, as a result of Part 3, there is an anticipatory duty on social landlords to prepare PEEPs for disabled residents. There is a limited time for the relevant government body to prepare statutory guidance and a code of practice in relation to this.
I thank the Minister for his amendments, starting with Amendment 3, which talks about the “assistance and encouragement” that must be provided. Unfortunately, that is a long way from the current requirement for the responsible people in offices and other public buildings, including hotels, to make formal arrangements that ensure that a disabled person can leave a building that is dangerous whether due to suspected fire, chemical escape—such as at the Olympic Park swimming pool last week—or anything else that puts people at risk. The other amendments tabled by the Minister, and indeed his letter to signatories of my amendments that arrived at 10 am this morning, for which I thank him, talk about the government consultation, but the Government have been consulting on this specific matter since the early days of the Grenfell inquiry.
Why do we believe that there needs to be stronger reference to the Equality Act and to PEEPs? Week 68 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry took substantial evidence from witnesses in relation to the provision of communication and engagement with disabled residents and how they were—or were not—able to leave Grenfell Tower safely. They were not. Over 40% of disabled residents died in the fire, a far higher percentage than any other category of resident. There were no PEEPs. Not only was there no guidance but, as I will refer to, any arrangements for disabled people were actively discouraged by the government adviser and government officials.
Inside Housing has reported on week 68 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry last week, saying:
“Government-endorsed guidance in use at the time said the provision of such plans was ‘usually unrealistic’, and staff at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation … which managed the tower, previously cited this guidance in explaining why they did not provide any.”
As I said in Committee, Colin Todd of CS Todd & Associates, the consultants who wrote the guidance document for the Government, said:
“The consensus opinion of the project group was that it should be acknowledged in the guide that PEEPs were impracticable.”
However, the inquiry heard that Louise Upton, the former head of the fire safety policy team at DCLG, thought it was not a
“deliberate decision to exclude representatives”
of the disabled community.
The inquiry notes that the failure to provide escape plans resulted from that guidance being used by the KCTMO, but the Chief Fire Officers Association had raised concerns and warned that to
“ignore and eliminate advice on disabled access and evacuation is a fundamental error of the document”
and it
“is recommended that it must be included”.
Elspeth Grant, a fire safety consultant with TripleAconsult, wrote to Sir Merrick Cockell, then chair of the LGA and leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, when the guidance was published to say that it was unlawful and discriminated against disabled people, calling for it to be withdrawn
“before this guidance leads to an unnecessary tragedy because plans were not in force”.
Just yesterday at the inquiry, Brian Martin, another official, said that the Government ignored the warnings about PEEPs for disabled people as they were “too expensive” to put into practice. The first phase of the inquiry recommended the provision of PEEPs for residents of high-rise blocks, but that is not what we are seeing now. Instead, the Government are still consulting.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I rise to comment on the disabled amendments that the Government have laid, including the one that was just moved. I will also comment briefly on Amendments 46 and 47, which have not yet been spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and speak to Amendments 39 and 40 on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, since he is unable to be with us at this time of the morning.
I commend the Government for listening to my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson in Committee and on all the amendments that they have brought forward today. Having been bored on the train when I was heading up north last week, I counted on the Order Paper more than 220 government amendments and 50 proposed new clauses. That is an extraordinary achievement and shows the extent to which my noble friend the Minister has been listening, as well as what he has been able to drive forward—principally because the Secretary of State, my right honourable friend Michael Gove, gets it and understands what needs to be done. So, although my noble friends and I may move a few amendments today, and perhaps force them to a vote, I do not want the Minister to think that we are being churlish. We appreciate the huge distance that the Government have travelled; we just think that there may be one or two more gaps that we need to fill.
I would be grateful if the Minister could reassure me as to why the disabled amendments that we have just heard noble Lords speak to may not be necessary or why there may still be an essential gap there. I thought that the government amendments were adequate but I am keen to hear his explanation.
I will speak briefly to Amendments 46 and 47 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. In Committee, I tried to make the point that the burdens on leaseholders are much heavier than those on building safety managers and others, who seem to have unlimited rights to impose fines and penalties and invade homes to check on things without good reason. I am keen to hear what the noble Baroness has to say about her amendments, which state that such persons should be able to access leasehold flats only when it is essential to do so.
My main purpose this morning is to speak to Amendments 39 and 40 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, which I was pleased to sign up to as second fiddle. The good news is that I shall not need to make my own speech and bore the House. The bad news is that my speaking on behalf of a right reverend Prelate may do irreparable damage to the Church of England, so I hope that does not occur. He says:
“First off, I would like to express gratitude to the Minister for tabling his Amendment 38 and the overall listening approach he has taken to the concerns of the House throughout the passage of this Bill. I hope that this is at least some indication on the Government’s part that they are still working through the imperfections of this Bill, and that they might respond with amendments at Third Reading in response to problems noble Lords and Baronesses”
have raised and will raise today. He continues:
“I will be frank and say that although I am pleased the Government did respond to the concerns I raised at Committee stage by tabling Amendment 38, the content of it is admittedly limited. The reality is that the principal accountable person could take representations from or hold consultations with the relevant tenants or leaseholders on matters”
relating to building safety
“without necessarily integrating their concerns into the Residents Engagement Strategy. It appears entirely discretionary on the accountable person as to what enters into this strategy. In fact, because Amendment 38 also requires the accountable person to act in accordance with the strategy”
that, from conversations he has had with others,
“would seem to imply that a failure to act in accordance with the strategy could be flagged up to the Building Safety Regulator. The question then is simple: why would an accountable person commit to include something in an engagement strategy that could later be used against them?”
However, the right reverend Prelate says:
“I do not want to hastily dismiss what the Government are trying to do here as the foundations contained”
within the amendment require only
“an ever so slight tweaking to better ensure that the accountable person acts in accordance with a strategy that actually reflects the views of residents, rather than the current vague requirement to just ‘take any representations … on the consultation into account when next reviewing the strategy’”.
Personally, I think that he has made a very good point there. He continues:
“Amendment 39 would mildly alter Amendment 38 to ensure that the accountable person takes any representations made on the consultation into account”
and then changes
“‘the strategy to reflect the balance of representations made’. This remains imperfect but it does at least in part remove the discretionary basis for deciding the content of the strategy by adding a protection to ensure that the strategy reflects”
that balance. He then says:
“Even with this change, the accountable person will hold immense discretionary power since it is … incumbent on them to interpret the balance of representations made”
so that the accountable person still has the whip hand.
“However, it would alter the relationship when formulating the strategy from the accountable person as its absolute sovereign to the accountable person as the interpreter of the general will. The accountable person will ultimately be the individual who determines the content that enters into the residents engagement strategy. Amendment 39 provides just an inch of breathing room to better guarantee that it does reflect the views of tenants and residents”.
Amendment 40, says the right reverend Prelate,
“admittedly is far more wide ranging and acts as a direct extension”
of his previous amendment in Committee,
“which would have mandated recognised residents associations for the purpose of consultations on building safety issues. I did recognise the Government’s discomfort at the prospect of mandating anything, particularly where there exists an amicable relationship between the freeholder and the leaseholders or tenants. For this reason, I have tried to create a conditional avenue by which a freeholder must set up a residents association. The condition being that as part of consultations on the residents engagement strategy, the accountable person must consult with residents on whether to create a recognised tenants association, and create one, for the purpose of consultations on building safety decisions, where it turns out there is a simple majority demand from residents”
to so have one. He continues:
“I believe a conditional requirement for recognised residents’ associations would help mitigate some of the abuses that do exist within the system. In Committee, I referenced the case of a freeholder who charged residents a 100% markup on window repairs and also spent £74,000 in a court battle to prevent residents from forming a recognised tenants’ association. I cannot speculate on how many other leaseholders have suffered similar abuses at the hands of their freeholder. However, I know the Minister is as appalled by these abuses as I am.”
I share that point of view. He continues:
“The Government do recognise the need to reform the leasehold system”—
something we all look forward to in, we hope, the next Queen’s Speech on 10 May.
“For this reason, I do not want to press the Government on Amendment 40 other than to ask the Minister to look seriously at how recognised tenants’ associations can be more widely promoted and more easily set up, as well as perhaps to expand their remit to encompass matters relating to building safety issues so that there is actual accountability and scrutiny when it comes to the charges they incur.
However, I would still impress to the Government the need to strengthen Amendment 38 so that there are greater safeguards to guarantee that residents’ engagement strategies better reflect the views of residents. I believe Amendment 39 presents a sensible compromise to solve this problem. The authority to decide on what is contained within the residents’ engagement strategy remains with the accountable person but in a manner that is more conducive to capturing the balance of residents’ views.
Finally, I would just like to note a few other amendments in this group. I welcome the sentiment of Amendment 36 within this group and the duty it places on the accountable person to achieve best value. I welcome the Government’s decision to remove the building safety manager”—
I think we all welcome that—
“and I would congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on making the strong case for its removal in Committee. Of course, some of the costs previously contained within the building safety manager will naturally be rebadged and passed on, it is inevitable. Nevertheless, since it is now discretionary on the accountable person to decide how to meet their obligations under this Act, and since any costs incurred for meeting this obligation will be met by the tenants or leaseholders, there is no incentive for the accountable person not to reimpose the costly building safety manager. Therefore, I do believe that some duty to achieve best value would represent a sort of financial safeguard for leaseholders and possibly encourage freeholders to take a more considered approach to meeting their obligations rather than taking the path of least resistance in hiring a building safety manager.
I would also quickly offer my support to Amendments 13, 20, and 35, and the protections they afford to those living with disabilities, which I welcome.”
It has been a privilege to deliver this speech on behalf of the right reverend Prelate. I say to my noble friend that this was not Blencathra talking; I was speaking from a much higher authority today and expect him to pay particular attention to Amendment 39.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I will intervene very briefly to welcome the Government’s amendments, particularly Amendment 100, which removes Schedule 8 and abolishes the building safety charges as separate charges. As my noble friend the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks, I spoke to an amendment in Committee which did exactly that, pointing out the extra costs and potential confusion that two separate charges could result in. I recommended that the building safety charge be incorporated into the service charge but shown separately. I welcome this simplification, as will leaseholders. I am grateful to my noble friend for listening and responding.
I will very briefly support Amendments 39 and 40 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, and so ably spoken to by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who may find himself invited to deputise at pulpits in and around St Albans as a result of his performance. If there is no provision in the Bill to ensure that residents have a collective voice, the accountable person—normally the landlord—will have a huge interest in ensuring that residents are not organised and enabled to resist any costs that the landlord wishes to impose on them. The current government proposal just says that the accountable person should design an engagement strategy, whereas the amendments rightly go further, requiring a tenants’ association to be set up where that is what the majority want.
The amendment goes entirely with the grain of successive Governments’ policy to even up the terms of trade between leaseholders and tenants on the one hand and landlords on the other. I hope that the Minister can look benevolently on these proposals and perhaps at a later stage consider strengthening them further in the direction proposed by my noble friend.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 36 and 46. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, be so kind about my previous comments, but then I remembered that it was not him speaking. I thank whoever said something nice about the points that I was making.
I feel slightly awkward because, in some ways, I should be saying that I had a win in Committee, but here I am again. Amendment 36 seeks to insert a clause that would mean that
“an accountable person must take … steps to achieve best financial value”
for leaseholders. It would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance to ensure that this duty is taken seriously. This is to focus the mind on the danger that we have seen throughout this Bill where, in the name of safety in a Bill taking on the grave injustice suffered by leaseholders of having to pay for building safety remediations, sometimes the solution inadvertently creates even more layers of disproportionate, overly cautious and risk-averse regulation and bureaucracy, which result in spiralling and never-ending sets of additional costs for leaseholders.
After Committee, when announcing the changes that the Government were making to the Bill, the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, said that they had listened to leaseholders’ concerns and were
“removing the requirement for a separate building safety charge and scrapping compulsory building safety managers, to help avoid unnecessary costs.”
Brilliant, I thought. When the Minister then told me that there would now be no building safety managers, I must confess that I was delighted. My amendment to abolish the building safety manager role was the first amendment that I had ever tabled and I had had a win. However, before I got the bunting out and allowed myself to indulge in any backslapping, I was brought to a pause by leaseholders, who noted:
“Small gains towards fairness, decency & common sense do not equal an overall ‘win’, the battle is v much ongoing!”
It is important that the Government have listened. A little like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I should say that any caveats that I raise now are not intended to be churlish. However, it is precisely because I accept the assurances of the Minister and Michael Gove that they want to ensure that there are no unintended outcomes from the Bill in terms of avoidable unnecessary costs that I have tabled this amendment, which gives guidance a chance to push home the point that value for money for leaseholders is a very important thing.
This is not just about my fears around what might happen or leaseholders being paranoid. At a sector conference—Leasehold London 2022—Shaun Lundy, a chartered health and safety practitioner and a supporter of building safety managers, reflected on what removing that role would mean. He said that what worries him a bit is that some of the onerous duties are still there so, even if you get rid of the role, it still leaves a void over who will do the work. He worried out loud about the danger of creating “a disproportionate industry” and “another layer of bureaucracy”, especially in relation to the new duty to create safety case reports. He noted that, although some reports he had seen were sensible, others were completely over the top; he gave the example of a 50-page report costing £50,000 but with no tangible benefit. The building safety manager may therefore be dead but, for some, it is “Long live the building safety manager and their duties”. Dame Judith Hackitt’s call soon after Grenfell that it was not good enough to wait for a change in the law and that freeholders had to act has led to something of a panic reaction and has often been taken literally.
Just to give you an example, I will tell you the story of Aviva leaseholder Sarah from the Quadrant in Salford. With no law passed, her managing agent, Contour Property Services, has charged her and her fellow leaseholders for a building safety manager. What is more, it has appointed an additional building safety co-ordinator. In correspondence with the lease-holders, Contour writes of balancing “value for money” against taking
“appropriate measures to meet new safety requirements”.
Then the killer line tells them, almost casually as an afterthought:
“As a result of these appointments, there will be an increase in your service charges.”
There they are, in the small print, for the forthcoming year from April 2022 to March 2023. If you look at the small print in the bill, as I have, the building safety manager is there at £21,249.50. The cost of the part-time safety co-ordinator is £11,702.56 and this is charged to the leaseholders.
This might be blatant but, even if there is no direct mention of the building safety manager, it seems that they are lurking in the shadows, rebadged or slightly in disguise, but ever present none the less. The heavily administrative substance of the duties that they were meant to take part in remains in the Bill. Many of these duties are based on the precautionary principle, sadly interpreted through the prism of zero risk and often disproportionately focused on myriad possible risks rather than clearly defined dangers. In Sarah’s case, one of the listed duties is writing and maintaining the building safety case for the building, which shows that all the potential risks have been considered and mitigated. Never mind the cost of the building safety case itself, who will pay to resolve all the potential risks?
The question is whether the removal of the legal requirement to appoint building safety managers is strong enough to, in effect, stop them being imposed. This amendment asks the Government to note that the genie is out of the bottle, but the Secretary of State has the opportunity to ensure, in guidance, that the sector should not just rush to risk-averse costly solutions because they have once been suggested, but should instead focus on whether costs are proportionate to real risks and ensure that value for money is a barrier to costs just being dumped on leaseholders via service charges or other nefarious routes.
Of course, it is not all about money. We have to consider human costs, too. There is no point in knowing the cost of everything but ignoring the non-monetary value of homes for people, discussed so eloquently in the group beginning with Amendment 1.
Amendment 46 focuses on tightening the ability of freeholders, landlords and managing agents to force entry into leaseholders’ homes. When I raised this in Committee, there was understandable concern. People wanted to say, “What if there is an emergency? You need to be able to enter.” We can all think of such instances. I know that that happened with a burst pipe in a flat above mine, with water pouring into the flat below. You need to be able to get in to turn the water off, but this should be a last resort. This modest amendment simply aims to reinforce that point and to give leaseholders some power in that decision.
At present, despite limited rights for leaseholders, which have become increasingly clear since building safety issues came into the public realm, landlords have been under an implied obligation—as the ideal—to give the tenant or leaseholder “quiet enjoyment” of the property and they should not interfere with that. If you read the literature around building safety, you will discover an increasing clamour to challenge the idea that leaseholders have any rights to stop entry into their homes, presenting leaseholders as obstacles to safety.
For example, in the Safer People, Safer Homes: Building Safety Management report of a couple of years ago, there are complaints of
“Leasehold … units … purchased by their owners, who are not culturally accustomed to the notion that the owner … has any jurisdiction over their home.”
The landlords complain that access for owners and their agents is just too difficult. Extraordinarily and insultingly, the assumption is that, behind leaseholders’ front doors, they all behaving as fire hazards, irresponsibly ignorant of risks. Leaseholders are painted as ill-informed problems:
“Most will have no comprehension as to fire (or other safety) principles and their place in the matter.”
The report demands:
“Timely intervention on a statutory basis is needed to enable prompt access”
in order to
“monitor or assess risk and condition.”
My concern is that all these checks, monitoring and assessment will mean demands for entry beyond any reasonable bounds of common sense. Leaseholders themselves are anxious that the Government press home that this is not encouraged, and that the Government ask key questions of landlords.
Amendments 46 and 47 would restrict the power to enter people’s homes unless it was essential and would make it clear that the court must be satisfied that it was necessary to grant entry only in extreme circumstances, not just because an accountable person had sent a notice demanding entry for building safety purposes so vaguely defined that they could include anything from the overuse of scented candles to fridge inspections. I am just waiting for smoking in one’s home to become a listed fire risk, although I do not want to give that idea to the Government.
I make a final plea that leaseholders’ property rights are not just to be shooed away and a final reminder—one that I will return to later—that we should avoid pushing a narrative that assumes that all blocks of flats are inherently dangerous and at high risk of fires, creating a climate of fear that then justifies the surveillance and monitoring of leaseholders in their homes and the reorganisation of everyone’s lives around hypersafety and zero risk at great cost, both financially and in the human sense of civil liberties and privacy rights, to those homeowners who are unfortunate enough to be leaseholders as well.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I shall say a few words on behalf of my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson in respect of Amendments 13, 20 and 35, to which her name is attached. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, explained, my noble friend sends her apologies; she is attending the thanksgiving service for His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh in her capacity as chair of the wonderful Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. I think we all agree that that event should take priority.
She wanted her thanks to the Minister and his officials to be recorded for the new amendment, which will require the regulator to report regularly on engagement with residents who are disabled. She has greatly welcomed constructive talks outside the Chamber and is keen to keep working with the Minister on personal emergency evacuation plans to meet the needs of people with disabilities so that they have correct and useful information and can feel safe where they live.
Amendment 86 in this group is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I will also comment on government Amendments 73, 85 and 263. In Committee, I raised the issue of leaseholders managing their own blocks of flats who would be given onerous new responsibilities for safety issues by this Bill. These new duties and liabilities could deter many from acting as the voluntary unpaid directors of their resident management companies and right-to-manage companies. These self-managed blocks depend on their volunteer directors to give up their time—and, indeed, risk falling out with their neighbours since not all their decisions will be popular with everyone—but who wants to risk a criminal prosecution and a criminal record for failing to carry out all the correct safety actions required of an accountable person by the Bill? Recruiting and retaining volunteers to be directors of resident-run companies is already difficult yet there is widespread agreement that more, not less, leaseholder control should be strongly encouraged.
The Minister has recognised the issue and brought forward government Amendment 73 to enable lease-holder-controlled companies to take on board a paid expert building safety director to provide this service to the company if, and only if, the leaseholders wish to delegate the job. Amendment 85 means that the cost of engaging that professional as the person responsible for building safety can be included in the service charges for all residents. These government amendments are very welcome; I thank the Minister very much for listening to the arguments and acting accordingly.
However, the Institute of Residential Property Management and the Association of Residential Managing Agents—they are now becoming a single entity, to be known as the Property Institute—noticed one obstacle to the Government’s otherwise excellent solution: quite a few resident-controlled companies prohibit the appointment of any director who is not themselves a leaseholder in the block. My amendment would address that point and enable an external expert safety director to be appointed in such circumstances, with necessary protections on costs and the ability to get rid of the building safety director if the arrangement does not work out.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, first, we very much welcome the way the Government have moved on this. We appreciate that the Minister has aimed to build consensus for the changes and amendments that he has now brought forward. Several points have been made by noble Lords, in particular my noble friend Lady Brinton, about gaps that remain and uncertainties about implementation. We look forward to hearing how the Government feel they can respond to those, if not by accepting specific amendments then at least by setting out a clear way of engaging with those who have legitimate concerns to find out how they can be best resolved.
On my own behalf, I thank the Government for government Amendments 10 and 11, which safeguard the building safety regulator’s committees from interference by the Secretary of State unless a request is made by the regulator to change the internal structures of the body. That is a necessary and very welcome change. Our overall view is that these government amendments earn our support—we certainly support their rapid implementation—but the loose ends that have been discussed by noble Lords and drawn to the Minister’s attention need attention. We very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to them.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for his introduction to a large number of government amendments. Like other noble Lords, I think it is really important that the Government listened to a lot of our debate in Committee and have brought forward these amendments, as well as others that we will discuss later, in response. It is good that we are making such excellent progress in some areas. I also thank the officials in the department, who have been incredibly supportive and helpful in spending time with me to help me understand the huge number of amendments we had to consider at quite short notice; I very much appreciate that work.
However, as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said, there are still a few areas where people feel there is a bit more to be done; they are addressed by the amendments we have been looking at. I start with the three amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I was pleased to add my name to them, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. There was a lot of discussion in Committee about the need for disabled people to be more supported. I am pleased that the Government brought in amendments to strengthen the voice of disabled residents; that is extremely important.
Starting with Amendment 13, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned that 41% of the disabled people at Grenfell Tower were killed in the disaster, which is an appalling figure. Anything that can be done to ensure that something like that does not happen again in a fire is terribly important.
The noble Baroness also talked about the Equality Act on her Amendment 20. It is really important that we consider how building safety can affect different groups listed with protected characteristics under that Act. This could also include pregnant people, who may need more support in getting out of a building. As a protected characteristic, it is important that that is taken into account, as someone who is very elderly and vulnerable should be.
I am pleased that the Minister has offered the noble Baroness a meeting on her Amendment 35, on personal emergency evacuation plans, because this is really important. I was quite concerned that none of the Grenfell Tower residents had been offered a personal emergency evacuation plan. Again, we need to ensure that in future these things are better managed, so I thank the noble Lord for his time on that.
I turn to the amendments in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for introducing these amendments and look forward to his first sermon in the not-too-distant future, we hope. Again, these two important amendments draw attention to areas that need to be looked at further. Government Amendments 37, 38 and 41 to 45 look specifically at tenants’ associations and principal accountable persons. This was also much discussed in Committee, where it needed further work. I would like to talk a bit about the resident tenants’ associations because, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said, they need to be more widely promoted. This is a really important part of managing safety going forward.
Recognised tenants’ associations give owners of leasehold flats important rights. To become recognised, an association must have agreement from more than 50% of qualifying leaseholders. They then have the right to request information from the freeholder of their block, such as about the service charge account, which again was discussed a great deal in Committee. It is really important that resident tenants’ associations are properly recognised and more widely promoted. Again, when looking at consultation, they are a vital part of understanding better what residents’ needs and concerns are.
I turn briefly to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Her Amendment 36 raises the important issue that leaseholders need value for money. On her other amendments regarding entering buildings, it is important that tenants are properly protected in this way. Only when something essential is happening safety-wise can flats be entered, and it is really important to say that. I also welcome the fact that the government amendments remove the building safety manager. As the noble Baroness said, it was important that the Government listened to her clearly laid out concerns in Committee.
Along with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, we very much welcome the amendments to the building safety charge, and the fact that the Government have accepted the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, which will make a very sensible and practical change going forward, as he said. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I start with Amendments 13, 20 and 35, which relate to disability discrimination. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for tabling these amendments, but I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept them. However, we were all struck by the statistic that more than 40% of the disabled residents of Grenfell Tower died in that tragedy, and the Government are committed to supporting the fire safety of the vulnerable. We are particularly aware of the need to improve the safety of those with mobility concerns. As the noble Baroness mentioned, I have committed to meet with her and I have met with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on a number of occasions.
As noble Lords are aware, we ran a consultation on personal emergency evacuation plans last year. This highlighted the substantial difficulties in mandating PEEPs in high-rise residential buildings, especially around practicality, proportionality and safety. I shared some of our thinking, admittedly quite late before this debate, with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, because it is important to recognise that this thorny policy issue requires a considerable amount of work and collaboration with the fire and rescue service.
We will publish the Government’s response as soon as possible and explain these concerns in more detail. Our response will include a commitment to undertake a new consultation on this proposal for emergency evacuation and information-sharing—an EEIS. One of the things we learned about from the Grenfell Tower tragedy is the ability to locate people who are vulnerable and have mobility concerns, so that we can provide them with the support they need to safely evacuate those buildings where the “stay put” policy has been suspended. It is clear that information is critical. As are visits from the fire and rescue service to help advise them on how to make their properties that much safer. This is fundamental to ensure that we can provide the support that disabled residents require, so this EEIS proposal will give the fire and rescue service the information it needs on where people are located within higher-risk buildings that have a simultaneous evacuation strategy in place.
I completely agree—there is absolute unanimity on this—that accountable people must take all the appropriate steps to ensure that they comply with the law, not least in respect to protected characteristics. However, it is not clear what this amendment will achieve beyond the requirements that already appear in the Equality Act, which I will describe shortly.
Furthermore, an accountable person’s duty to manage building safety risks under the Bill extends to limiting their impact, should an incident involving the relevant building safety risks occur. This means accountable persons are already required by the Bill to consider how people might evacuate safely, if relevant to the building safety risk in question.
Amendment 13 would require the building safety regulator, in its statements of its engagement with residents, to outline the extent to which accountable persons have engaged with residents in relation to a duty to avoid disability discrimination by virtue of Amendment 35.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that disabled residents must be listened to and have their needs met. That is why we have tabled Amendments 3, 9 and 12, which require the building safety regulator to pay particular attention to the safety of disabled people in high-rise residential buildings. This includes seeking out disabled representation on its residents’ panel and publicly reporting on its engagement with the disabled residents of high-rise residential buildings. In relation to principal accountable persons’ proper engagement with disabled residents, it is clear that their responsibility to measure and review the effectiveness of their residents’ engagement strategy will apply to all residents, including those with disabilities.
On Amendment 20, activities relating to the exercise of a public function in the provision or management of public housing in relation to building safety will, depending on their nature and context, already be covered by specific parts of the Equality Act 2010. They may be within Part 3, “Services and public functions”, or Part 4, “Premises”. In other words, protection from discrimination, harassment and victimisation already exists for the users and residents of premises, irrespective of whether they are in public or private sectors, and subject to certain exceptions. A reasonable adjustments duty also arises in this field of activity.
Which part of the 2010 Act provides this protection will be case specific. The preliminary text of Part 3 provides that, if an act of discrimination, harassment or victimisation is made unlawful by other parts of the Act, including Part 4, which relates to premises, those provisions rather than those covering services and public functions apply. The depth or reach of protection between these two parts is broadly equivalent. Therefore, our conclusion is that Amendment 20 is unnecessary.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
That amendment has been degrouped; we are coming to it later, where I have a similar amendment. The Minister might want to wait until then.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I am addressing my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s amendment; we will come specifically to group 6 from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in due course.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
It is just that it has been degrouped to be with my amendment on the review. I was just explaining.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I am referring to Amendment 264A tabled by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, not the amendment of the noble Baroness. If it has been degrouped, I apologise; my speaking notes have not kept pace with the regroupings of particular amendments, which have been prolific and frequent until the very last minute. In any case, we are not accepting my noble friend’s amendment; we may turn to it once again, in which case I will not repeat myself.
I turn to Amendment 36 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which would require the accountable person to take all reasonable steps to achieve best financial value. We believe these protections are already in place. The Bill requires all accountable persons to take reasonable steps to manage building safety risks.
As part of this duty, accountable persons will be required to act in accordance with principles that will be prescribed in regulations. We have published these in draft to provide an indication of our intent. They include a requirement that, where reasonable to do so, accountable persons consider the impacts on residents within the higher-risk building and carry out engagement with them. There will be a full consultation on these regulations in due course.
Accountable persons need to be clear about the charges they pass on. This Government believe very strongly that service charges should show this. The law is already clear that service charges must be reasonable. Under the residents’ engagement strategy, residents will be able to participate in building safety decisions and can raise cost as an issue.
I turn to Amendments 46 and 47 on powers of entry, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The Government recognise the importance of safeguarding against the misuse of requests for access to residents’ premises by accountable persons. I reassure her that those intentions have already been met in the Bill.
Amendment 46 aims explicitly to require that a request for access must be essential to achieve a building safety purpose. I assure the noble Baroness that Clause 101 already does this. To be an enforceable access request under the existing drafting, it must be made for the purpose of fulfilling the accountable person’s building safety duties or establishing whether a resident has breached their building safety duties. Therefore, by its nature, the request will be essential to achieving a building safety purpose.
It is not clear how Amendment 46 would change the current requirement that an access request must be necessary for one of the purposes I just mentioned. It is important that we do not set the bar so high as to make access requests difficult to implement where necessary; accountable persons have important building safety responsibilities and must have the appropriate tools available to ensure the safety of all residents.
Amendment 47 would require that, when making an order to allow access to a resident’s premises, the county court must be satisfied that access is essential to achieve the requested purpose. I reassure the noble Baroness that the county court is already required to be satisfied that the granting of an order must be necessary, under Clause 101(4), and will consider what is appropriate when considering a request. Therefore, the intended effect of the amendment has already been met.
I turn to Amendments 39 and 40 tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, but so ably delivered by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, on residents’ engagement. I thank my noble friend for addressing these amendments, but unfortunately the Government cannot accept them. Amendment 39 would oblige principal accountable persons to change the residents’ engagement strategy to reflect representations made by residents. The amendment is too restrictive, as there will be a number of factors that principal accountable persons must consider when updating the strategy.
The views of residents must also be weighed against other factors, such as the principal accountable person’s ability to deliver what residents want and the cost of doing so, which would of course be passed on to residents. It is right that we allow principal accountable persons the flexibility to determine how best to ensure the views of residents are represented and balanced alongside other building safety considerations.
In any case, government Amendment 38 already requires meaningful consultation with residents. If the principal accountable person fails to take residents’ representations into account when updating the strategy, residents will be able to raise a complaint, and escalate if needed to the building safety regulator.
Amendment 40 would oblige principal accountable persons to establish a tenants’ association where a majority of residents participating in the strategy consultation are in favour of one being established. The Government agree that tenants’ associations can be and are powerful tools for resident representation. However, they work best when established by residents rather than when mandated by landlords or managing agents. Residents already have the right to establish a tenants’ association under existing legislation and any proposed change to the arrangements for establishment of tenants’ associations is not a building safety matter.
I will touch finally on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I thank him for his constructive engagement with me over the last week, and confirm, as I said in my opening speech to this group, that I am happy to accept his amendment.
I think that we have covered most matters raised during the debate. I am really sorry to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that my speaking notes did not keep up with the groupings. She is the Oliver Twist of the House—I have noticed that she wins, and then asks for more. I thank all noble Lords who participated in the debate. I hope that, with the explanations and reassurances that I have given, they will be content not to press their amendments and to support the government amendments.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the first amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
““disabled”: see section 29;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the first amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Lord Stunell
“(2) The regulator must within two years of this section coming into force carry out and publish an assessment of the benefits and costs of measures on improving the safety of people in or about buildings relating to—(a) fire suppression systems;(b) safety of stairways and ramps;(c) certification of electrical equipment and systems;(d) provision for people with disabilities.(3) The regulator’s assessment may—(a) make proposals in accordance with section 7(2) for regulations in respect of any of these matters, and(b) identify and give notice of such other matters relating to safety of people in or about buildings that they determine require further examination.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that major issues of public concern about safety in buildings are addressed in a timely way.
Lord Stunell (LD)
I heard what the Minister had to say; it does not answer the concerns raised, so we wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(2A) The regulator must take all reasonable steps to ensure that the committee includes—(a) one or more residents of a higher-risk building who are disabled,(b) a body that represents, supports or promotes the interests of any description of disabled people that includes residents of higher-risk buildings, or(c) a member of a body within paragraph (b).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the regulator must take all reasonable steps to ensure that a residents’ panel includes one or more disabled residents or a body that represents, supports or promotes the interests of disabled residents of higher-risk buildings.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(1A) But regulations repealing section 9, 10 or 11 may be made only if the regulator has made a proposal to the Secretary of State for the making of such regulations (as to which see section 7(2)).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the power to repeal a Clause about committees may be exercised only pursuant to a proposal by the regulator.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the other amendment of this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(1A) A statement under subsection (1) must, in particular, include information about the regulator’s engagement with residents of higher-risk buildings who are disabled.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a statement of the regulator’s engagement with residents etc must include information about the regulator’s engagement with disabled residents.
Lord Greenhalgh
““disabled”: a person is disabled if the person has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “disabled” for the purposes of Part 2.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
“Building safety and local authorities
The Secretary of State may amend the Building Act 1984 so that the duties imposed on the regulator by virtue of section 31 in respect of higher-risk buildings are imposed on local authorities that exercise building control functions in the area in which the building is located, in respect of buildings which are—(a) under 18 metres in height, and(b) comprise more than one dwelling.”
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 15 is about building regulations and safety measures. It would insert a new clause that states:
“The Secretary of State may amend the Building Act 1984 so that the duties imposed on the regulator by virtue of section 31 in respect of higher-risk buildings are imposed on local authorities that exercise building control functions in the area in which the building is located, in respect of buildings which are …under 18 metres in height, and … comprise more than one dwelling.”
I will give an overview of the amendment; we discussed this issue in detail in Committee so I will be fairly brief.
These two points will ensure that the more stringent building safety framework applies not just to buildings over 18 metres but to buildings under 18 metres where they are multi-occupancy dwellings. We believe that the Bill, in its original draft and as amended in Committee, fails to confirm robustly whether the gateway system will apply to buildings under 18 metres where they are multi-occupancy dwellings. The purpose of this amendment is to get that covered. If it is already covered, I would appreciate clarification from the Minister because we do not want to see a two-tier system where buildings under 18 metres have less rigorous safety regulations than those over 18 metres.
If the Government accepted this amendment then, to avoid issues with capacity that could arise for the building safety regulator—the Minister has discussed his concerns about this in previous debates—it would make the local authority the building control authority, not the building safety regulator. Local authority building control would then cover the operation of the gateway system at all heights below 18 metres.
The amendment also, importantly, removes developers’ ability to pick their own regulator for multi-occupancy buildings under 18 metres, because the local authority building control will then be the sole regulator, again preventing a two-tier system developing. It would also remove concerns raised by local authorities and others that the Government may fail, or take a long time, to expand the high-risk regime to include more buildings.
To sum up, the Hackitt report identified the ability of duty-holders to choose their building control body as a major weakness of the current regulatory regime. The Bill restricts the building control duties to the regulator for buildings within scope. The Local Government Association supports this amendment, which would address these issues. Prohibiting duty-holders of any residential building choosing their building control body would help to ensure a consistent standard, right across the board, and prevent conflicts of interest and a two-tier system. I urge the Minister seriously to consider the proposals in this amendment. I beg to move.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely, I invite her to speak.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 254, laid by my noble friend Lord Foster, but shall do so very briefly to say that there needs to be consistency in preventing the sale of faulty electrical goods online, or those that do not meet the appropriate safety standards and may therefore be defective. My noble friend’s amendment would by regulation ensure that operators of online marketplaces take the appropriate steps to remove items that do not comply with safety legislation.
I remember some years ago discussing with an independent retailer of baby goods, including electrical goods, how vigilant he had to be when goods arrived that they met the safety standards needed. He and his staff knew what to look for: sometimes a fake EU safety logo had printing faults, but there were other warning signs too. He felt he had a particular responsibility to ensure that his customers always bought safe and regulated items.
The difficulty is that online marketplace operators do not feel that responsibility to check that items meet safety regulations. Many of the fires in high-rise blocks that have been referred to during the passage of the Bill and other debates in Parliament over the years were started by faulty or defective electrical goods. There is a particular worry with an ever-increasing percentage of electrical goods now being bought online. My noble friend’s amendment attempts to level the playing field to make sure that customers and consumers can rely on the safety of their products when they buy them.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Brinton for summarising Amendment 254, which is in my name and supported by her. I shall speak to that and to Amendment 261. As my noble friend just said, there is a real concern about fires, particularly in high-rise buildings. Sadly, the statistics show that the number of fires in such buildings is rising year on year, with more than 350 having taken place in the last year for which figures are available.
We also know more generally that more than 50% of fires in such buildings and others are caused by electricity. In some cases, it is as a result of faulty electrical installations—which is why, earlier this morning, I moved an amendment to ensure that all such installations should have a safety check every five years—but sometimes they are caused by faulty electrical appliances. The Grenfell Tower fire, the great tragedy which led so much to the Bill before us, was caused by a faulty fridge-freezer; the Shepherds Court fire was caused by a faulty tumble-dryer and the Lakanal House fire by a faulty TV. It is vital that when customers purchase an electrical appliance, they know that it is safe.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as the president of RoSPA. I will speak to Amendment 262.
In Committee, I felt that the Minister understood the issue; I thank him for his co-operation and his time yesterday afternoon. He had received correspondence from the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, which confirmed that the appropriate route to achieve safe staircases in all new-build homes was through building regulations and associated statutory guidance rather than primary regulation.
Part K of the building regulations covers protection from falling, collision and impact. Requirement K1 specifically addresses the usability of stairs, ladders and ramps, including handrails. That last part is important because there is a need to have properly built stairs, but a considerable number of accidents are prevented by having handrails. British Standard 5395-1 was fully updated in 2010, is reviewed every five years and remains current.
Staircase injuries are an underestimated threat to the health and safety of people in this country, with 43,000 people admitted to hospital every year following an accident on the stairs. Many of these people will lose their mobility and, with that, their independence; tragically, about 700 people lose their lives every single year. The risk is so common that it gets taken for granted but it does not need to be this way.
The most up-to-date British Standard for stair design, BS 5395-1, is associated with a 60% reduction in falls on stairs. I am grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, agreed to bring forward a meeting of the Building Regulations Advisory Committee to discuss enshrining this standard in building regulations. I understand that it was a positive meeting, on which I feel sure he can give an update—I hope that he comes back soon.
Throughout the Safer Stairs campaign, we have prioritised the importance of making this proposal a reality as soon as possible. I want to ask the Minister for his assurances that any consultation on enshrining BS 5395-1 is completed promptly, at least within a year. The longer we delay, and the more time we spend getting this change through building regulations, the more homes will be built across the country with stairs that are simply not safe enough. The quicker we get this done, the larger the cumulative benefit to future generations will be.
In Committee, several others joined me in telling the House the facts. Enshrining stair safety into law is genuinely low-hanging fruit. It is cost effective and proven to save lives. I call on the Minister to give us his assurance that the process to make BS 5395-1 legally mandatory via building regulations will progress as quickly as possible and that, within 12 months at the very latest, it will be enshrined into law.
Given that the Government’s preferred route of directly updating the building regulations’ Approved Document K to enshrine British Standard 5395-1 achieves the same aim as our amendment to the Building Safety Bill, we should be in a position to withdraw our amendment. However, we can do so only if the Minister confirms on the Floor of the House that the consultation to enshrine BS 5395-1 in Approved Document K is under way and will be completed within a year.
The Government’s commitment to a 12-month period would provide reassurance that our issue will not be left at the bottom of the new building regulator’s priority list. I trust that the Minister will be able to reassure us. We will be watching and waiting.
Lord Jordan (Lab)
My Lords, in supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on Amendment 262, I have to tell the House that when RoSPA campaigned for the introduction of car seat belts, it said that would save lives—and it did, spectacularly. Now we are campaigning for safer stairs in new-build houses and saying again that it will save lives, which it will. More than that, it will significantly reduce the appalling number of serious, life-damaging injuries that result in needless pain and suffering. It will in turn lift some of the colossal burden on the NHS, a burden that absorbs so much of its money and resources in doctors’, technicians’ and nurses’ time.
The Minister has shown in his dialogue with RoSPA’s chief executive, and in the things he said in this Chamber, that he truly understands the enormous benefit that enshrining BS 5395-1 in building regulations will bring. I hope he is equally convinced of the urgency of this vital reform and that, today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said, he assures your Lordships that he will not let it be bogged down in the labyrinthine legislative process and that he gives us a timescale and a plan by which this reform will become a reality.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, I too support Amendment 262 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, to which I have put my name. I will not go through all the reasons why it makes common sense but we have had the British Standard for well over 10 years and it is more observed in the omission than the commission. We really must make progress at this stage.
The Minister gave valuable assurances in Committee; the reason that we need to press him today is to get some clarity about the timetable for this. I feel that, if we cannot get a guarantee that it will be not only consulted upon but implemented within a 12-month period, we will have to regard that as unsatisfactory and press this amendment. Can he tell us whether he can meet that 12-month deadline for consultation and implementation and, if not, what the problem is and what the timetable will be? The standard has been around for a decade and it seems that this is a “just get the finger out” moment. I am sure that he is a “just get the finger out” sort of Minister.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, yesterday, and for sharing the correspondence that he had had over the Building Regulations Advisory Committee. He explained why it would be easier to update a statutory approved document than primary legislation, and the need for such statutory regulation to be reviewed rapidly and changed as things go on.
I endorse what has been said by others who have spoken, in that there is an urgency to this. Around many parts of the UK at the moment, we see what is almost an explosion of housebuilding and of other building sites. It would be really tragic if the Bill went through but those buildings do not have staircases in them which are fit for the population who are going to use them, and if we do not see a real drop in accidents in these new buildings. The old housing stock is obviously really difficult and much of it has inappropriate staircases, but we are talking here about new build. Because of that, there is an urgency and I hope that, when the Minister responds, he gives us a really good and tight timetable.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, as a former retailer, I have a good deal of sympathy with Amendment 254 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster. I agree with him that there is a gap here with online material posing a risk to safety, which is not the case with normal retail sales. In summing up, can my noble friend the Minister give us a bit more confidence as to when that gap will be filled? The Government are often too slow.
In that vein, I very much welcome the progress made by my noble friend the Minister on staircases, which are the subject of Amendment 262. I agree that the approach outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, seems to make sense and allow us the opportunity to get on with this consumer issue as well.
I share the concerns underlying Amendment 264 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. There is a real problem of shortages in the built environment workforce, as highlighted in the Built Environment Committee’s report on demand for housing—a committee on which several Members of this House sit and which I have the honour to chair. However, to be honest, the amendment is overcomplicated. The direction of travel is right but I am doubtful that we should accept an amendment in this form.
On Amendment 261, of course we need improved homes; cold homes are very bad for health, as has been shown by many studies. However, this is an uncosted proposal. It will have huge compliance costs for homeowners—admittedly, over a reasonably long period—and I really do not think that we are in a position to add it to this Bill today.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 264 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, which would require a report on the built environment industry workforce that takes into account various factors. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that this is very much a probing amendment; we certainly do not intend to press it today.
However, we need to give this issue an airing. The whole pyramid on which this Bill is constructed depends on that bottom level: the workforce who will deliver it. We know that there is a grievous shortage of fire risk assessors, not least because the fire risk assessor who assessed Grenfell Tower was an unqualified, off-duty firefighter who made up the qualification letters that he put after his name when he applied for the job with the tenant management organisation. That evidence was given in phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry.
We know that the Government have made strenuous efforts to get fire assessment training going but there is every indication that there is not enough and that, when this regime comes into force—we all want to see this as soon as possible—there will be a shortage of fire risk assessors. Earlier today, wearing his fire responsibilities hat via the Home Office, the Minister made the point that one of the jobs in the fire and rescue service is to upskill staff to gain the competences they need to fulfil their functions of realistically assessing risks and remedies in the duties they undertake. We think that there needs to be a clear plan for developing training for and upskilling the people taking on the new roles in this Bill. There is a whole series of new posts, including accountable persons and responsible persons—not to mention the safety regulator staffing itself—and we need some assurance that the Government are clear on all of them and have a laser-like focus on producing the answers that are needed. This is against the background of an industry that employs 2 million people, has 90,000 sole traders operating on the ground and in many ways, as we have discussed, has a dysfunctional contracting model. It certainly has low productivity and very poor standards of delivery of outcome.
The amendment may or may not be over-elaborate. I hope that it would be a work plan that someone is working on, even if it should not be in the Bill. I really want to hear the Minister give an account of how a work plan such as this is in fact going forward. If not, we will certainly be snapping at his heels over the coming months. Much more seriously than that, he will find that there will be the gravest difficulty in implementing the Bill, which is what we all want to see, on the shortest possible timescale.
I am the resident pointing at the hole in the road and saying to the contractor, “Please come and fill in this hole”. That is what this amendment is about.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I want briefly, having just had a signal on those lines, to offer Green support for all the amendments. I will speak only to Amendment 261 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. I commend him on his long work in this area.
I am perhaps a little less charitable to the Government than him about where things are now. Just this afternoon, while we were debating the second group of amendments, the Green Alliance put out a new report, Cutting the Cost of Living with a Green Economy. It has some figures that are interesting and helpful for this debate. It points out that the cuts to energy efficiency subsidies and the scrapping of the zero-carbon homes policy over the past decade saw the installation rate of home insulation and energy measures go from 2.3 million in 2012 to 230,000 in 2013—a rate that has continued since.
This addresses the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just asked about what we can do and whether it is possible to step up again. We have done this in the past; we can do this in future. The noble Baroness expressed concern about a lack of costing for that. The Green Alliance report points out that, if we followed Amendment 261, through insulating 15.3 million homes, it would save them all £511 a year after the April price cap rise. For the country, that is £7.8 billion a year, mostly in fossil fuel.
Looking again at the costing, the Great Homes Upgrade plan, put together by the New Economics Foundation along with 28 organisations, shows that spending £11.7 billion over this Parliament could raise 7 million homes up to this standard by 2025. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, this is very much a health and safety issue. We have set the standard of zero carbon by 2050. That is a target for the environment; this is a target for people’s health. Surely we can have both health and environment targets that so crucially fit together.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, taking the time into consideration, I beg to move that we adjourn the debate on this amendment and that consideration on Report be adjourned until after the Urgent Question.
NHS: Pre-pandemic Facility Levels
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect the full range of NHS facilities, such as hospital visiting and booking GP appointments, to return to pre-pandemic levels.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)
My Lords, NHS services are open to patients and numbers of general practice appointments have returned, or are returning, to pre-pandemic levels. As before the pandemic, hospital visiting is currently at the discretion of NHS trusts. Hospitals are expected to accommodate at least one hour of visiting per day, and preferably more. The department is working closely with the NHS to tackle the Covid-19 backlog and restore pre-pandemic activity and performance as soon as possible.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for that Answer, but in our local hospital there are very big signs saying that visiting is still not permitted, while it seems to be quite in order for staff who are unvaccinated to go in and out of the hospital at will. What steps are being taken to test unvaccinated staff to ensure that they are not carrying Covid, and can the Minister remind me whether we have repealed the bit of legislation that restricted the number of people who can be in a GP’s surgery?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank my noble friend for those questions and will try to answer as many of them as I can. We are aware that this idea of returning to normal is patchy in different parts of the country. Some people have told me that visiting their GP or a hospital is fine, while others have had real trouble. Therefore, when these issues come up, I hope that noble Lords and others make us aware, so that we can ask the NHS what is happening. It is clearly an issue of capacity, but also, some people are trying to get face-to-face appointments with their GPs, while some practices are trying to move towards a technology-based service offering. I am aware of that. GP appointments are up to 60% of what they were pre-pandemic, but we understand that there is progress to be made in other areas.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister realises that he could make himself hugely popular in the country if he could persuade GP practice reception facilities to be more user-friendly and welcoming to the clients.
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point, and I can see a lot of agreement, judging by noble Lords’ body language. However, we must always be careful about this issue because patients have had different experiences. I have been speaking to noble Lords about this. Some have told me that it is really good and has gone back to normal; others are having real trouble getting access to a GP or even getting someone to answer a phone in the first place. We must be careful, because if I say, “GPs should be doing more,” I will be criticised for being tough on GPs, but if I say that we must understand that GP practices are under a lot of pressure, I will then be criticised for not pushing hard enough to solve the problem. The pandemic accelerated pre-existing trends. We were already moving more towards the use of technology. Some people were quite happy to contact their GP by phone or online, and we will see some of that. We will never go back to 100% face-to-face, but certainly, patients should be able to have face-to-face appointments unless there are good clinical reasons why they cannot.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it not about time that the Government reformed GP services? Should we not have GP and diagnostic centres replacing traditional GP services? At the moment, many GPs are making thousands of pounds out of buildings that have been paid for by the NHS. When will the Government be getting value for money for taxpayers?
Lord Kamall (Con)
One of the advances we have seen with technology is the community diagnostic centre; these will no longer necessarily be at health centres or GP surgeries. We are looking at rolling them out in the community, in shopping centres and sports stadiums. About 80% of the people on the waiting lists are waiting for diagnostics, so we hope that will be a great way of tackling the waiting list.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, we have a virtual contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, surveys of parent carers during the pandemic by the Disabled Children’s Partnership reveal that more than 70% of disabled children were unable to access their pre-pandemic levels of therapies and health services, and many of their conditions regressed during the pandemic. How do the Government plan to use wider NHS recovery funding to meet the acute health needs of disabled children and young people?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for making me aware of this issue. We are aware of a number of front-line services where there is a backlog as a result of the pandemic and not being able to have face-to-face appointments. However, I will have to write to her on the specific case that she raised.
Lord Geddes (Con)
My Lords, on the other side of the question from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, I have it on very good second-hand authority that receptionists are getting an extraordinary amount of abuse from the public. That is one of the problems.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My noble friend raises an important point. No matter how frustrating we might find trying to get an appointment with a GP, there is no room for abuse of our NHS staff—whether GPs, doctors, nurses or other health and care workers. I completely support the point he made.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, for many patients, the service before the pandemic was not nearly good enough, so our ambition ought to be much higher in the future. Why can we not reform the system by empowering patients with choice and competition? With modern IT services, why can GPs not be paid by appointment and why can patients who choose to not be able to ring round to find a GP who can treat them when and where they want, instead of being restricted to one practice?
Lord Kamall (Con)
The noble Lord makes some really good suggestions. On technology, one of the things we are looking at is why, in this day and age, when you can book appointments online for most other meetings, you cannot for GP practices. We want to make sure that people can book online, by telephone, and in advance—rather than having to phone at 8 am —and also let them choose between different places. We have to look at all these options, but, at the same time, technology is not enough: we also have to change the work processes to match the changes in technology.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, a problem that I have encountered in Lincolnshire is that when one tries to get a telephone appointment with the GP, one is offered a point in a spectrum of a number of hours. One simply cannot sit at one’s desk waiting for a call back within a spectrum of a number of hours.
Lord Kamall (Con)
That is exactly why, as technology has improved, you should be able to book a specific time. In fact, in some practices, it has gone backwards since the 1970s. When I was a child, my mother was able to phone up and ask, “Can my son have an appointment on Tuesday next week?” These days, you have to phone at 8 am hoping to get in the queue to book an appointment. Technology should improve that, and we hope that once we are able to recover, we will be able to use technology to book in advance.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, the BMA’s Rebuild General Practice campaign has warned that GPs’ lack of time with patients, workforce shortages, heavy workloads and administrative burdens mean that patients’ safety is being put at risk when they attend a surgery. Data shows that GPs are conducting nearly 50% more appointments, but staff vacancies continue to soar and GP numbers to decline. In the light of this, can the Minister explain to the House how the Government expect to achieve their target of an extra 6,000 GPs by 2024—just two years away?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for reminding us of the target. We have been quite clear that it is important that we have as many healthcare professionals as possible and fill the vacancies as soon as possible. We made £520 million available to improve access to GPs and expand general capacity during the pandemic. That is in addition to the £1.5 billion announced in 2020 to create an extra 50 million general practice appointments by 2024, by increasing and diversifying the workforce.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My noble friend is entirely right that the technology offers benefits, but the health infrastructure plan, promised some time ago, has not yet been published. That will outline the framework for investment in the technology he mentions. When will the update be published?
Lord Kamall (Con)
My noble friend will be aware from when he was a Minister that there were other priorities in tackling Covid, trying to get a vaccine and procuring much-needed equipment. This was therefore all delayed, but we are now working with stakeholders to ensure that the updated capital strategy sets a clear direction for the system, taking into account significant events since the first publication. The multiyear settlement confirmed for 2021 allows us to take the next step forward. We expect the paper to be published at some time in 2022.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, did not the noble Lord, Lord Austin, hit the nail on the head when he said, regarding GPs, to give the patients choice? Back in the days when we reduced the waiting list from 1.1 million to just under 400,000, we reduced waiting times in hospitals from over three years down to 18 weeks. We did that primarily by giving the patients the choice to go to another hospital if they were not getting the service they needed and making the money follow the patient’s choice. Is that not the way to solve the GP problem?
Foreign Languages: Economic Value
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the research by Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett and others The economic value to the UK of speaking other languages, published on 22 February; and in particular, the finding that the removal of language barriers with Arabic-, Chinese-, French- and Spanish-speaking countries could increase annual exports from the United Kingdom by around £19 billion.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interests as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government believe in the importance of languages and welcome the report’s findings on removing language barriers to benefit the economy. We support language teaching through the recent modern foreign languages GCSE review, the MFL hub programme and the Mandarin Excellence Programme, among other initiatives. We are considering the report alongside other available research and exploring other ways in which we can expand the pipeline of fluent speakers to meet the country’s future needs.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, the Mandarin Excellence Programme has shown that high standards can be achieved in state schools without impinging on other priority subjects, so will the Government launch an equivalent programme in one or more of the other three languages which could result in economic benefits? Secondly, given the finding that in specific sectors such as energy, services and mining other languages matter at least as much as English in reducing trade barriers, will the Minister undertake to speak with colleagues in the Department for International Trade and the Treasury to identify how language skills can be improved and funded in these sectors?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government welcome the results of the report, which do indeed highlight the notable achievements of the programme to date. We continue to explore how we can provide greater support for the study of other languages. Regarding the Department for International Trade, the noble Baroness will be aware that we recently announced a refreshed export strategy, Made in the UK, Sold to the World, giving UK exporters support services to seize the opportunities secured through our trade agreements. This is focused on market barriers such as language. I am happy to talk to colleagues there and at the Treasury, as the noble Baroness suggests.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
Has my noble friend seen the evidence given just a few days ago by a former British ambassador to Moscow to a Lords committee, in which he lamented the decline of foreign language skills in the Foreign Office, especially Russian? Does she agree that it is quite important that diplomats who represent the United Kingdom in and promote exports to foreign countries should be able to understand and speak a foreign language? Can she therefore tell the House what progress has been made to improve foreign language skills in the Foreign Office?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I absolutely agree with my noble friend. The FCDO has some 800 specially trained linguists qualified in 46 languages, operating in 111 posts around the world. This figure includes almost 80 heads of mission.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, speaking other languages is very good for warding off Alzheimer’s, as well as playing a significant part in international trade, which is the point of this Question, so it is a win-win. Are the Government still serious about ensuring that the UK can compete on a global stage post Brexit? If so, how will they measure the success of the measures they are taking to ensure that the woeful decline in modern language learning stops and is turned around?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not have time to answer the noble Baroness’s question in full, but I remind her that the uptake of French GSCE is slightly up between 2017 and 2021, Spanish is up very substantially from 85,000 students to 109,000, and 41,000 participants in the Turing scheme, 48% from disadvantaged backgrounds, have been allocated funding this year.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a diplomat or business person trying to negotiate in a foreign language which they have not mastered can be dangerous, but nevertheless a basic knowledge of the language can ease the path to good negotiation?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I absolutely agree with the noble Lord. Indeed, returning to diplomats, more than 70% of FCDO staff in speaker slots, which require language skills, now have a valid exam pass in their target language compared to 39% in 2015.
Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)
My Lords, Willy Brandt put it best when he said “If I am selling to you, I will speak your language, but if you are selling to me dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.” Clearly, German manufacturers got the point because this century Germany has been one of the two most successful manufacturing exporting countries in the world. Why is this fundamental truth so elusive to British exporters?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think it is not elusive to British exporters. There are a number of mechanisms for improving our competitiveness on the world stage; language is one of them. However, English is a global language in the way that Deutsch ist nicht.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, developing the point just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, in the European Union two-thirds of adults of working age can speak more than one language, yet two-thirds of Britons cannot hold a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue, so I am sure the Minister will be as concerned as I was to see the latest figures on A-levels in modern languages decline by a further 5% between 2017 and 2021. Yesterday, the schools White Paper pledged a network, I think it was called, of modern language hubs with CPD for teachers of those languages, yet the numbers of those teachers are falling. Will the cuts made last year by the Government in bursaries for language students, from £26,000 to £10,000, be reversed to support the development of those modern language hubs?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We were very pleased to announce in the schools White Paper the network of modern foreign language hubs. We are also increasing the languages bursary to £15,000 for 2023 to incentivise candidates. In 2020-21, the number of postgraduate modern foreign language trainees increased by 300 to 16,087.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My noble friend’s reference to native languages stirs me to point out that, while I of course totally agree with the Question and with the Minister’s replies, there is far more to modern languages than simply improving the terms of trade. There is the question of deep cultural enrichment and, in these islands, understanding the culture of these islands more deeply. As someone who was brought up bilingually in Britain, I think that is important.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I absolute agree with the noble Lord and that is why I referred to the Turing scheme, which we hope will be part of creating that richer picture of the world we live in.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, the Minister cited a statistic for the success with French and Spanish, but they are languages of the EU, with whom our trade has fallen, according to the Dutch Government, by 14% in the three months to January compared with two years previously. I wonder whether the Minister can say something about our success in teaching the languages of those new markets in which we are going to succeed.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred to the Mandarin Excellence Programme, but I point out that, as the noble Baroness understands, French and Spanish are very widely spoken outside the EU.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, the Erasmus programme was reciprocal, so tuition fees were not paid. In my noble friend’s experience, how many European universities have waived tuition fees under the Turing programme to enable UK students to apply without paying tuition fees?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not have that data to hand and I am not sure whether it is yet available, given the newness of the Turing scheme, but I will write to my noble friend to clarify that.
Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the teaching of creative subjects in schools since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government remain committed to ensuring that all pupils receive a high-quality cultural education as part of a broad curriculum. This starts during the early years and continues in school, with art and design, design and technology and music all forming part of the national curriculum from age five to 14. The percentage of young people entering at least one arts GCSE between 2010 and 2021 has remained broadly stable.
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister will be aware that since the introduction of the EBacc in schools, there has been and is a creativity crisis—for example, in music there has been a 16.83% fall in A-levels—and there has been a 31.47% fall in students taking those subjects. Obviously, that has a pipeline into universities and only one university now has an English professor. I want to ask the Minister a direct question—no ands, ifs or buts. If it is not the English baccalaureate that is causing the crisis in creative subjects, what is the reason?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We simply do not accept that there is a crisis in creative subjects. The noble Lord rightly quoted some data, but I point out that the percentage of students taking art and design at GCSE is up from 26.5% to 30.4%. He is right that there have been declines in some other subjects, but he will also be aware that the numbers taking vocational and technical qualifications have gone up very substantially, particularly in media: since 2018 the figures for media have risen from 4,500 to 55,000 students.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, despite what the Minister says, the message clearly being sent out via EBacc to teachers, parents and children is that creative subjects are of lesser worth, a message independent schools are ignoring. Is the Minister aware that there is five times greater spend on music in independent schools than in state schools, including academies? Does the Minister agree that this is bad for levelling up, bad for education and bad for our future economy, a key aspect of which will be the creative industries, as independent schools know full well?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The department does not track the expenditure on these subjects in independent schools. What the department is committed to, and restated in the schools White Paper yesterday, is that every child should have a rich cultural education, and we will be publishing a new cultural education plan jointly with DCMS next year.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s credentials regarding personal commitment to these issues are impeccable, both in this role and the role she held previously at the DCMS; however, the evidence is against her. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has just said, there is an impact not only on students in schools but on the workforce both within education and in the creative industries more widely, as there is a decline in the numbers of people prepared to take forward qualifications in music, drama and other creative subjects, Does she worry at all that the much-vaunted creative industries, of which she and her colleagues frequently speak with pride, will be suffering over the coming years as a result of these policies?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question and her kind remarks but I just cannot accept what she suggests. As she points out, we have thriving cultural and creative industries in this country. We have enough teachers entering initial teacher training for art and design and drama, well above our recruitment targets. We are committing more funding in T-levels, in media, broadcast and production, and in craft and design, so I think we are building the platform for our creative industries and our children to thrive.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, are the Government not deeply concerned that their own official data shows that the number of hours of music taught in years 7 to 13 has fallen sharply in the last 12 years? In view of this and of comments of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and others, is it not all the more important that independent schools work closely with their maintained sector colleagues to increase still further the 655 music partnership schemes from which students in both sectors benefit so greatly?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We very much welcome the partnerships from the independent sector in music and many other areas, and my noble friend is right to highlight them. However, we also have a responsibility and an ambition to make sure that our children have a strong music education, which is why we will be publishing our updated national plan shortly.
Lord Bird (CB)
Does the Minister agree that, if we are to create a world of resilient workers in the next generation, we need to look at how we create these people through a resilient education system? We are in a bigger crisis than we believe. We need to reinvent a holistic form of education, because that is how the world’s businesses are going.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord raises a large, broad and important issue. Of course we need a resilient education system and resilient children, and in the announcements in our schools White Paper and the special educational needs and disability Green Paper published this morning, we have set out exactly how we plan to do that.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, I taught creative subjects for over 30 years and, as principal examiner for A-level theatre studies for much of that time, I saw a wealth of talent studying this subject across the UK. It is essential that we promote the creative arts in our schools. They nurture well-rounded students and bring a breadth and depth to their learning. In hard cash terms, according to DCMS analysis, the creative industries contribute almost £116 billion a year to the UK. If, for example, the current decline in A-level music that many noble Lords have mentioned continues, this subject could have zero entrants in 10 years’ time. What, if anything, are the Government doing to reverse this appalling decline?
Baroness Barran (Con)
At the risk of repeating myself, we have announced that we will publish a cultural education plan together with DCMS, working jointly across government, which is the right way to approach it. We will shortly announce our national plan for music education. We are doing a lot of work and continue to invest around £115 million per year in cultural education.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has told us on numerous occasions that the Government like to listen to employers. When Netflix representatives came to speak to my group, I asked them what they wanted in trainees and whether they wanted people with more English and maths. They looked blankly at me and said, “No, that’s not what we are looking for. We want more rounded people.” Will the Government follow their own mantra and make sure they talk to the big employers, who do not seem to want what the Government are offering?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government work extremely closely with employers. Our T-level programme was developed with over 250 employers. I would ask the noble Lord why we are seeing such huge international investment in our film and creative industries if we are not providing the talented people they need.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend care to reflect on the importance of citizenship education in levelling up and creating a country at ease with itself? Will she join me in regretting that yesterday’s White Paper said nothing about citizenship education at all?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Citizenship education is absolutely a core part of what we deliver. In defence of the White Paper, we were setting out the major new elements of our plan for the next several years, but citizenship remains a core part of it.
Lord Cashman (Lab)
My Lords, first-hand experience of the arts can be life enhancing and life changing. Therefore, will the Minister encourage her department to do all it can to ensure that background and income levels are not a barrier to physically accessing the arts?
Baroness Barran (Con)
To the extent that it is within my gift, I will do my best.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, last week, the Incorporated Society of Musicians published a report entitled Music: A Subject in Peril?, based on a survey of more than 500 music teachers. Some 93% of respondents said that the EBacc and/or Progress 8 had caused huge damage to music in schools, resulting in courses not running and music departments shrinking. What reassurance can the Minister give that the refreshed national plan for music education will address these issues and that teachers will be consulted on it before it is published?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The national plan has been developed with an expert panel, of which the noble Lord is aware, and that panel consulted extensively during its work—through forums, surveys and other mechanisms—with teachers, students, parents and other experts. We very much look forward to its publication.
Offshore Companies: Property
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they made towards ensuring the transparency of beneficial ownership of offshore companies holding properties in the United Kingdom in the recent discussions between the Minister for Asia and the Middle East at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the government of the British Virgin Islands.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the 2022 economic crime Act creates a register of overseas entities that own properties in the UK. This will apply to legal entities from any overseas jurisdiction that own UK property, including those registered in the British Virgin Islands. The overseas territories already share confidential information on company beneficial ownership with UK law enforcement bodies, an arrangement that has enabled the UK’s first unexplained wealth order.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, it is four years since the passage of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act required the overseas territories to open up their company registers. My understanding is that the British Virgin Islands, which has one of the largest sets of companies owning property in the UK—more than 20,000 properties—has been reluctant to open up its registers fully. One has to ask individually and know what one is looking for. Can the Minister explain what the relationship between the sovereign United Kingdom and these overseas territories is in this respect? Do we require them to accept our instructions, or do we ask them if they would mind?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, we have a very constructive relationship with our British Overseas Territories. We regard them very much as part of the British family, and we have a co-operative partnership with the British OTs. That is the way it should be. In terms of recent engagement, my right honourable friend the Minister for the Overseas Territories, Amanda Milling MP, discussed the BVI’s newly announced consultation on a publicly accessible register, to which it is, along with all the other overseas territories, totally committed, ensuring that there will be working registers by the end of 2023.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
Can we really wait that long? It was 2018 when we legislated on this, and we are now facing a crisis in which this country is seeking out illicit funds. Surely it is time to go back to places like the British Virgin Islands and say, “Open your register to us, the Government, so that we can have a clear view of what is going on.” The Government should not wait until 2023, when things are going on in Ukraine.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, on the issue of Ukraine, as the noble Lord is aware, all the overseas territories are absolutely committed. With each sanction that is passed, it becomes incorporated into their jurisdictions. There are two where Orders in Council are required, and they have also initiated those processes. These sanctions apply immediately. In terms of the overseas territories themselves, we have discussed this before. The noble Lord will be aware that, with the OTs that have these registrations, the register is open to both tax authorities and law agencies. As I explained in my response to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, the first unexplained wealth order was in conjunction and in partnership with the BVI.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will recall the briefings that he and I received when we both worked in the Foreign Office about the excellent information and intelligence gathering between ourselves, the NCA, other authorities and the different authorities in the overseas territories. Does the Minister share my concern that, while it is incredibly important to keep this information flowing on an ad-hoc, confidential basis, if these registers become completely open, the companies will simply move to places such as Panama and Delaware?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I believe the overseas territories have been very constructive on their engagement when it comes to registers, but I also recognise the point the noble Lord, Lord Collins, made, about the need for accessibility of registers. We believe we are working constructively and in partnership with the overseas territories in a responsible way, including those within the financial services sector who recognise the importance of consultation. That is exactly what the OTs are doing.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, last Monday I met a delegation from the British Virgin Islands, including the speaker, deputy speaker and leader of the opposition. I asked them direct questions about beneficial ownership. They refused to answer any questions, saying it was not the responsibility of Parliament. Does that not sound very suspicious to the Minister? Could he take it up and raise with the British Virgin Islands Government parliamentary accountability and the concern that a territory which has 45% of all offshore companies registered on it really ought to come clean?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord let the speaker of the BVI leave without giving a straight answer to his question. Perhaps he should have been slightly more persuasive in his normal way. That said, I agree with the noble Lord that it is important. Of course, it is the responsibility of Parliaments and Governments to ensure that appropriate access is given. I have already indicated that there is a working, constructive relationship, particularly with those OTs which have financial services at their core. Equally, the commitment that the overseas territories have given, both in terms of response to the sanctions and their commitment to public registers, is something we welcome. We continue to work very practically and pragmatically with them.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, the scale of this challenge is enormous. Transparency International UK has found £250 billion worth of funds diverted by rigged procurement, bribery, embezzlement and unlawful acquisition of state assets from across 79 different countries sheltering in companies registered in the UK’s overseas territories. Why is there a reluctance to deal with this problem? Why has it taken so long—since 2018—to have the Order in Council enacted for this register? Is it because, for example, the British Virgin Islands, with a GDP of $1.027 billion is responsible for $24.3 billion of inward investment into the United Kingdom? Is that the real reason?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
No, my Lords, the real reasons are that there is a practical working relationship with the overseas territories, and that the SAML Act which was brought forward, approved and became not just something we debated but an Act, guaranteed that the overseas territories would respond with public registers. As I have already explained, that is happening. There are existing arrangements in place. There is no reluctance, but it is right that we work constructively with the sectors, and of course there are issues, as the noble Lord points out, about corruption and criminality. It is right that we act, and act accordingly.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, if, as the Minister claims, the overseas territories are totally committed, surely speedier progress would have been made since 2018. What is the problem? Are, for example, the BVI asking for compensation for loss of revenue? If so, what is the government response?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, what was agreed with the overseas territories was that they would have public registers by the end of 2023. That is the timetable they are working with. However, in terms of immediate needs as, again, has been discussed regarding sanctions in response to Russia, we worked hand in glove with them to ensure that every sanction passed by your Lordships’ House and the other place—by Parliament—is immediately incorporated into our overseas territories.
There is no delay or dither on this; we are working practically and pragmatically with our overseas territories. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, we are working both in partnership and overseeing as part of our offering of global Britain. It is an important partnership, and we respect their rights to legislate locally on key issues, but at the same time they need to be held to account where there are issues of corruption and criminality.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, if the partnership is so productive, why is it taking five years to implement the responsibility contained in the statute of 2018? What does the Minister think the miscreants have been doing during the five years?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, at the risk of repeating myself, they are working to a timetable. For example, Tristan de Cunha, the main export of which is lobsters, is still required under legislation to have a public register; in that particular instance, and for a range of other overseas territories, we are providing direct technical support, working through both the FCDO and the Treasury, and where assistance is needed we are providing it. The bigger territories, as I have said, are actively consulting with industry to ensure that they get their partnerships right and the registers are established in line with the timetable that I have already indicated.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, the UK has legal and moral responsibility for good governance of OTs and Crown dependencies. With that in mind, can the Minister assure the House that the register of beneficial ownership of companies in the BVI and in other territories will at least match the transparency standards applicable in the UK, and that they will all be publicly available?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
That is exactly the standard we are working to with the overseas territories. We are also working to ensure that these are verifiable registers. As we see further legislation coming on increasing the robustness of the UK register, we will also apply the key principles. I agree with the noble Lord: we have a moral responsibility for good governance in the overseas territories and to ensure strong partnerships with our overseas territories’ Governments.
P&O Ferries
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Rosser (Lab)
A week ago, I asked the Government what had happened to the two commitments given on 25 June 2020 to
“consider other options in regard to these operations”—
that is, low-cost employment models on some ferry routes—and to
“consider whether further changes are required when the Equality Act regulations are reviewed towards the end of this year”,—[Official Report, 25/6/20; col. 431.]
that is, the end of 2020, in relation to nationality-based differential pay in the maritime sector, the only sector where this operates. Last week the Government conceded that the review had not been completed. In other words, the Government have known about the issues over differential pay levels, which are at the heart of this dispute, and have done nothing about them over the past year and three-quarters. As a result, we now have this unacceptable crisis situation with P&O Ferries and DP World: 800 people are losing their jobs and P&O Ferries is taking unacceptable profit-maximising or loss-reduction action that was wholly predictable, as the Government have known for at least one and three-quarter years. Why have the Government failed to act over that period?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, the Government share the outrage expressed by the noble Lord at the behaviour of DP World and P&O Ferries. When they are developed and ready, which I expect to be shortly, we will update the House on a package of measures to ensure that P&O Ferries cannot see through its plans. We will address the immediate challenges faced by those affected and include measures to strengthen legal protections, including coverage of the national minimum wage.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, in 2020, when the Government announced that UK seafarers would be entitled to the minimum wage, they made the exception of ships exercising innocent passage and transit passage through UK waters. P&O Ferries is not the only company doing that. Can the Minister explain why the exception was made? Can she tell us whether the Government are aware of any other ferry companies operating in that way which are seeking to exploit this loophole on pay? Can the Government confirm that they will not repeat the PR disaster that P&O Ferries has made by continuing to work with the company on its freeport programme or any other government-based project?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I can reassure the noble Baroness that we are looking at all relationships that the Government have with DP World and with P&O Ferries. We will develop our thinking on that as more information comes forward. We are in conversation with the unions and other operators as part of an ongoing, constructive dialogue about the package of measures which will be announced shortly. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are able to provide greater employment rights to seafarers operating in UK waters than to those operating on international services, where the rights are different and come under different law.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that, although the Government seemed to be a bit slow off the mark, the measures now taken are appreciated by the many trade unionists who have lost their jobs? I encourage the Government to maintain this pressure on P&O and to look at other ways in which this company can be made to realise that its behaviour is unacceptable and will have consequences.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I can reassure my noble friend that we are maintaining the pressure on P&O Ferries. The Secretary of State wrote to the chief executive of P&O Ferries yesterday, explicitly asking him to reconsider the actions that it is taking, to take the opportunity to do right by its workforce, and then to return to the table to have discussions with seafarers to ensure that we can find a way forward.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, now that Mr Hebblethwaite has apparently rejected the Government’s proposals which they made to him in writing yesterday, where they explained that they wanted him to re-engage the workforce, how will the Government ensure that he does it?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I too noticed that a letter from Mr Hebblethwaite had been published on Twitter earlier today. Unfortunately, I do not have an update following that letter. Obviously, we are considering his response and will have an update in due course, while of course working speedily on a package of measures. We note the response from Mr Hebblethwaite; we have views on that.
Lord Cormack (Con)
What are we going to do to put Mr Hebblethwaite on the spot and make sure that the 800 people who have been shamefully and appallingly treated get some recompense? What about the remark that he made about compensation? Has he explained what he means by that?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
We are aware that Mr Hebblethwaite has made a number of remarks recently. We are trying to get to the bottom of them. We are also trying to get to the bottom of the explanations by P&O Ferries for some of the actions that it has taken recently. We are looking at them to establish whether they are legal. We are also aware of some suggestions that there have been breaches of the national minimum wage. Therefore, the Business Secretary has asked the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate to investigate that. Of course, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is inspecting every single ship that is due to sail on these routes. To date, two have failed their inspections and therefore further work is required.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
The noble Baroness is to be congratulated that a package of measures is to be introduced, late thought it may be, but will that package include the preservation of the right to collective bargaining and consultation, which this company so clearly flouted?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
When it comes to collective bargaining and negotiations with the unions, we need to get to the bottom of whether the existing law was disregarded in this case. Mr Hebblethwaite seemed to suggest that it might have been, which was unwise.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
Does the inspection by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency extend to the competence of the agency workers who have been recruited or is it simply as to the quality of the ship itself?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I can reassure my noble friend that the port state control inspections being undertaken on all affected vessels include a normal PSC inspection. They also look at crew employment contracts, crew qualifications, crew familiarisation and emergency preparedness.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, 40 years ago next month, a task force went to the south Atlantic. It had 73 merchant ships. The bulk of the people on board those were of course British merchant seamen, because when we fight a war with our merchant ships, we need British merchant seamen there. Part of the problem with all the complexity in this area is that it has driven British merchant seamen out of the business. Do the Government have any plans to ensure that we have sufficient merchant seamen for any strategic needs we might have in the future?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Yes, the Government are well aware of that issue. We started the work back in 2019 when we published Maritime 2050. We want to ensure that we have British people with the right skills to work on British ships in British-based operations.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, surely letters from Ministers will not be sufficient to solve this problem. The deadline for workers to accept the terms put forward by P&O is fast approaching. Legislation will be urgently needed to resolve the situation for workers who have been so cruelly abused by P&O.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
All I can say to the noble Lord is to reiterate what I have already said: we are working at pace on a package of measures which we hope to announce very shortly.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not just P&O, appalling though its conduct has been? Will she answer the question from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and tell us how many other shipping companies which ply British waters are not meeting the British minimum wage?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I do not have that information to hand. However, following our discussions with the operators, I will certainly write to the noble Lord about the package of measures and how they may operate in the future.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, a statement made in the other place said that the Government are continuing to review the contracts which P&O Ferries has with them. Does that include reviewing the contracts with DP World, the owner of P&O Ferries and, specifically, the freeports contracts?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that we are reviewing all of our relationships and contracts with both P&O Ferries and DP World.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, following on from the questions from my noble friend Lord Snape and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, can the Minister explain the difference in employment rights and arrangements between the various ships operating in UK waters? What are UK waters? Do they include Dover to Calais, Northern Ireland to Scotland or England, and—I think probably not—Dublin to Holyhead? How do these arrangements vary or differ from the contracts for ships which may be registered in the UK but are longer distance and still international, carrying containers or oil? There seems to be a lot of confusion, which I suspect P&O directors are trying to take advantage of by various devious means.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Lord has highlighted the complexity of employment law in the maritime sector. The International Labour Organization has the Maritime Labour Convention, which sets out the minimum standards for some key employment and working conditions policy areas. However, it does not go nearly as far as we are able to go from a UK perspective for seafarers who are UK residents, work on a UK-registered vessel and are ordinarily working in the UK. We are able to offer them the same levels of protections as they would get if they were working onshore.
Building Safety Bill
Tuesday 29th March 2022
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Building Safety Act 2022 View all Building Safety Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 125-I(a) Amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (28 Mar 2022)
19:27 - Division on Amendment 115 - Ayes: 156 / Noes: 123 - Amendment 115 agreed.
19:41 - Division on Amendment 117 - Ayes: 146 / Noes: 114 - Amendment 117 agreed.
19:57 - Division on Amendment 155 - Ayes: 137 / Noes: 123 - Amendment 155 agreed.
20:23 - Division on Amendment 221 - Ayes: 59 / Noes: 124 - Amendment 221 disagreed.
20:37 - Division on Amendment 234 - Ayes: 94 / Noes: 117 - Amendment 234 disagreed.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, again, I thank those who have participated in this interesting debate.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Oh, I thought we had finished.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
No, we stopped before the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and I had had a chance to speak. That is what comes of stopping mid-flight, but here we go—if anybody can remember what we were doing an hour ago. Before I go on, I remind the House of my relevant interests, as a member of Kirklees Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
First, I speak to Amendment 15, which is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and to which I put my name. I raised a number of concerns at Second Reading and in Committee about the consequences of the part-privatisation of building control inspectors some 20-odd years ago, whereby developers can and do appoint their own building control inspectors. As noble Lords will know who have been here throughout all these stages, I have referred before to my favourite: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who will call these folk to account? At the moment, nobody does, and the result is what we are trying to deal with today.
If we had a band of building control inspectors who were like terriers in pursuit of bad practice and cutting corners, we would not be here today trying to put things right. So this is absolutely key to what we are doing—and, of course, I support the creation of the building safety regulator, and all the other parts of the Bill that the Government have introduced, but I recognise that it affects only buildings of 18 metres and above. Dame Judith Hackitt brought to our attention in her report her grave concern about developers who can choose their own inspector. Two things need to be dealt with: they should no longer be able to do so, and we should not create a two-tier inspection system. This amendment tries to put those two things right, and I am sure that the Government will accept it. It is, dare I say it, common sense. Why would you have such a stringent regulatory system for 18 metres and above, which I totally support, and then say, “Oh well, for the others it’ll be okay.” It will not be okay, and it has not been, so let us put it right.
The amendment proposes that local authority building inspectors take on that role. I support that idea not because they are local authority, but because they are based in an area and are therefore attached to the council and know who the builders are in that area. They know the particular problems of building in the Pennines, for example, where there is not much ground before you hit solid stone, or of building in London clay, where the problems are different. If we have building control inspectors who recognise the different problems across the country, we are more likely to get regulations that are adhered to. This is an important amendment, and I hope that the Government will treat it in that light.
My noble friend has already introduced Amendment 264, which is also in my name. It is also fundamental to building safety, because unless you have a workforce imbued with the knowledge and experience of building in a safe way, we will have the current corrosive construction industry culture that we and the Minister have spoken about. This is one way, one route, one of the tools in the toolbox—another phrase he loves—to try and put that right. Both those amendments are key. I think the Minister will say: “Yeah, that was really good. Why did we not think of it?” But I am an optimist.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I must again thank those noble Lords who have participated in this interesting debate. It is a shame it has become a group of two halves, but I will address the points raised in turn.
Turning first to Amendment 15, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock, for raising this important matter, but as they have surmised, I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, will know that local authorities are already the statutory provider of building control services to the public under the Building Act 1984. This includes the duty to enforce the Act in their jurisdiction and they retain ultimate responsibility with regard to enforcement action, except where the building safety regulator is the building control authority.
In response to the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I can say we are introducing a system of oversight, registration and regulation, driving up standards across both public and private sector building control. The Bill introduces a new professional framework for which individual registration will be based on competence, subject to a code of conduct and sanctions where standards fall short. Registered building control approvers and building control authorities will need to obtain and consider the advice of a registered building inspector before carrying out certain building control functions and use a registered building inspector to undertake certain activities. This greater scrutiny and accountability will provide greater incentive to ensure all buildings, including non-higher-risk buildings, are safe. Our approach is proportionate to risk.
The new regulatory regime set out in the Bill and draft secondary legislation is proportionate to the level of risk potentially found in high-rise residential and other in-scope buildings. The Government have chosen to set the scope of the new more stringent regime at 18 metres or seven storeys, as we are committed to following this risk-based approach. Evidence from Dame Judith Hackitt has shown that, in general, the risk from fire increases with height. Through the Bill, the Fire Safety Act and further fire reform, we are working to protect all residents in buildings, regardless of height. Given these points, I hope your Lordships will agree that this amendment is not required.
Turning to Amendment 254, on sale of goods online, I reassure noble Lords that the Government fully recognise the importance of ensuring product safety, not only in relation to fire risk but also for the wider prevention of harm. As I set out in Grand Committee, existing product safety legislation applies to all products, whether sold online or offline. However, the Government also recognise that the rapid growth of e-commerce, particularly of third-party sales via online marketplaces, presents a significant challenge.
While I sympathise with the intention of the amendment, it represents only a partial response to the wider issue of unsafe products sold online. This illustrates that the Bill is not the best means of addressing the issue. The ongoing product safety review, which is examining the full range of consumer products and the role of online sales, is the more appropriate vehicle for meeting the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Foster. He mentioned the letter I wrote after Committee to electrical safety firms. As I said, we are planning a consultation on proposals for reform, which will be published not later this year, as previously stated, but later this spring. Once it is published, I will be happy to update the noble Lord and this House to ensure that concerns raised in this debate are fully reflected. I hope I have reassured the noble Lord.
Turning to Amendment 261, again I thank the noble Lord for raising this important matter and recognise his concerns about poor-quality homes. However, I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept this amendment, as it pre-empts and duplicates work already being undertaken across government. As the noble Lord reminded the House, in 2017, the Government committed in The Clean Growth Strategy to improve as many homes as possible to EPC band C by 2035. Where practical, affordable and cost-effective, we are seeking to bring as many private rental homes as possible in line with EPC band C by 2030. The Government have now consulted on raising the energy performance standard in the domestic private rented sector to EPC band C and will be publishing our response in due course. I hope the noble Lord will take some comfort from this.
In the energy White Paper, we announced our intention to seek primary powers to create a long-term regulatory framework to improve the energy performance of homes, alongside a package of incentives. We have consulted with a wide range of stakeholders and will undertake further consultation on specific policy design before making secondary legislation. In the social housing White Paper, we pledged to review the statutory decent homes standard by 2024, to consider how it can better support decarbonisation and improve the energy efficiency of social homes.
We shall publish a White Paper in the spring to reform the private rented sector. Some £800 million was committed through the 2021 spending review for a social housing decarbonisation fund and, as further evidence of our intent, we also committed in the levelling up White Paper to explore proposals for new minimum standards in the social and private rented sectors. In the Net Zero Strategy, we reiterated our commitment to consulting on phasing in higher minimum performance standards to ensure all homes meet EPC band C by 2035 where practical, cost-effective and affordable. I can assure the noble Lord that the Government will deliver on all our commitments in this space, but I ask that he does not press this amendment.
Turning to Amendment 262, on staircase regulations, I thank the noble Baronesses for raising this important matter and other noble Lords for contributing to this debate, but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept this amendment.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, mentioned, my noble friend the Minister convened a meeting of the Building Regulations Advisory Committee on 16 March to seek its advice on this matter. I have the response from its chairman here. The Building Regulations Advisory Committee has advised that the Government should carry out a review of the statutory guidance, approved document K, focusing on section K1, which covers staircases. It also advised that it was more appropriate to deal with this issue through the building regulations and associated statutory guidance than in primary legislation. In his letter, Hywel Davies says that BRAC agrees that it is more appropriate to seek to address this problem through building regulations and associated statutory guidance than in primary legislation and recommends a focused review of ADK section 1. Further detail on the potential scope of the review of ADK is set out in annexe 1 of the letter.
The Government have accepted the advice of the Building Regulations Advisory Committee and will now put in motion a review of approved document K, focusing primarily on section K1. This review will run in parallel with the review already under way of approved document M, which looks at accessibility. This review will consult on raising the safety of staircases to that achieved by meeting the British Standard on staircases, BS 5395-1. I reassure noble Lords that this will be done as expeditiously as possible and certainly within the year. I assure the noble Baroness that this review will fully address her intention to consult on improving standards of staircase safety in England. I thank her for raising this important matter and assure her that it is being addressed by government.
Turning to Amendment 264, laid by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, I thank noble Lords for raising this important matter. As I assured them in Grand Committee, their intentions have been met in the Bill. Clause 10 requires the building safety regulator to establish the industry competence committee, which will oversee and monitor industry’s development of competence frameworks and training, undertake analysis to understand areas for improvement, and work with industry to drive gap-filling. The committee will provide reports of its work to the regulator periodically. The Health and Safety Executive has established an interim industry competence committee, which is developing its plan for supporting industry’s work, including understanding the current competence landscape. Training and certification of competent individuals is not a function of government or the regulator under this Bill. The industry needs to lead the work to improve competence, identify skills and capacity gaps, and provide appropriate training for its members, and has already started this work. The Government continue to monitor industry’s progress and will provide support where necessary.
Clause 152 legislates for the appointment, at least once every five years, of an independent person to carry out a review of the system of regulation for building safety and standards and the system of regulation for construction products. Importantly, the reviewer is not limited and may choose to review connected matters, which could include the built environment industry workforce. When defining “independent”, we have excluded those with a clear conflict of interest, without overreaching and excluding everyone with relevant experience. Given this explanation, I trust that noble Lords will agree that Amendment 264 duplicates many of the existing provisions in the Bill. With those reassurances, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed response. I was very pleased to hear her response to the amendment on staircase safety from the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. It is good that the Government are going to review this. I am sure noble Lords will keep the pressure on to make sure that that is done expeditiously.
Coming to my Amendment 15, again, I thank the Minister for her response. I am still concerned about the potential for a two-tier system and potential conflicts of interest, so I ask the Minister whether she could encourage the Government to monitor these issues once this becomes law to ensure that we do not end up with a system that does not work for all people. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
“Inspection of local authorities and registered building control approvers 58Z7A Inspections(1) The regulatory authority may carry out an inspection of a local authority, or a registered building control approver, in relation to their exercise of building control functions.(2) The purposes for which an inspection may be carried out include—(a) ascertaining the efficiency and effectiveness of the local authority or registered building control approver in exercising their building control functions;(b) verifying any information provided by the local authority or registered building control approver to the regulatory authority, in connection with their building control functions.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confers a power on the regulatory authority to inspect local authorities and registered building control approvers, in relation to their building control functions.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I open this group by introducing a number of technical amendments tabled to strengthen the Bill. Included within this group are amendments that simply update the drafting of the Bill. These include Amendments 72, 75, 79 and 274.
I will speak to government Amendments 17 to 19, which make changes to Clauses 41 and 47 and introduce a new clause relating to approved inspectors. Amendments 18 and 19 relate specifically to approved inspectors’ insurance, while Amendment 17 introduces a power for the regulatory authority to inspect local authorities and registered building control approvers. The Building Act 1984 currently requires approved inspectors to hold insurance through a government-approved scheme. These amendments remove this requirement. Instead, approved inspectors will need to identify adequate cover themselves, encouraging competition between insurance providers.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I have a couple of points that would perhaps have been better taken in Committee, but we did not have the amendments then, so I apologise for these rather Committee-related points. I refer to the government Amendments 18 and 19 about insurance requirements, which I am afraid are not very self-explanatory and, in the absence of explanatory text, rather impenetrable.
Amendment 18 rather boldly says, “Leave out Clause 47”. Clause 47 is one that requires there to be an insurance scheme for certain officials, as the Minister has just set out. That is in a context where, in Amendment 243, the Government have found the need to step in to provide a warranty scheme and make sure it really happens. In the building industry, many of those looking for professional indemnity insurance have found that in the first year after Grenfell their premiums went up by a factor of two, and in the most recent year their premiums have gone up by a factor of four.
Insurers are fleeing the market of providing professional indemnity insurance for anybody who has anything to do with the construction industry. So I wondered whether there was any evidence available, to the Minister or the department, that there was a functioning market in insurance products for those for whom this requirement is being changed. It was, as the Minister has just said, up to professionals in this new profession to seek out insurance, just as it was for professionals such as architects, surveyors or whoever it might be. In a situation where that insurance market is shrinking, and where the Government have found it necessary to talk about imposing a requirement in relation to housing warranties, how happy are they that such a market really exists, and that the abolition of Clause 47’s requirements actually make sense?
I am not proposing an amendment. I am simply seeking to establish that the Government do know exactly what they are doing, and also asking them to explain to this House and noble Lords what exactly they are intending to do.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome these technical amendments, tabled by the Minister. While I will not unnecessarily detain the House by discussing each amendment, I would appreciate clarification on a small number of issues.
First, Amendment 17 provides the building safety regulator with a power to conduct inspections of building control bodies, thereby giving further oversight of building control bodies provision. Can the Minister explain what guidance will be given on the conduct of such inspections?
Secondly, Amendments 243, 244 and 265 will together mandate a warranty of 15 years minimum as a standard, while enabling the making of regulations for warranties to set a minimum period of liability for developers, minimum standards for the warranty, and a penalty regime for any developers failing to comply. On the warranty, can the Minister explain the rationale for 15 years? Can she elaborate on the Government’s plans for the penalty regime?
As I stated earlier, I welcome these technical amendments and look forward to clarification from the Minister.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this short debate on these amendments. I am very pleased that most of them, if not all of them, have been welcomed, because I think they will make a difference to the housing market.
The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, brought up the issue of why the amendments have come so late. It is because we listened; the Minister listened, in Committee, to this issue, and therefore the Government have brought forward these amendments. I think the important thing about insurance requirements, as I said, is that the Government are expecting this to reinvigorate the insurance market. At the moment, that is not the case because it is all done through specific Government-procured insurance. This should reinvigorate the market that, as he quite rightly says, is not as vigorous as it should be at the moment. So that is one thing.
The insurance of approved inspectors was mentioned. It will be for the building safety regulator to decide how to set up insurance requirements for approved inspectors. This can be done by the regulator through its professional conduct rules.
The noble Lord, Lord Khan, asked who has oversight of this. It will be the building safety regulator. That is their job, and it is through their rules and regulations that they will make sure that these things are delivered.
Lastly, I am afraid I do not know how the 15 years came about, but I will find an answer for the noble Lord. It is in line with the prospective limitation period for action under the Defective Premises Act 1972—but I will find out how that came about in 1972 for the noble Lord.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes provision about insurance cover relating to work to which an initial notice relates.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
“Insurance: removal of requirements
(1) The Building Act 1984 is amended as follows.(2) In section 47 (giving and acceptance of initial notice)—(a) in subsection (1) omit paragraph (c) (but not the “and” at the end of it);(b) omit subsections (6) and (7).(3) In section 51A(2) (variation of work to which initial notice relates) omit paragraph (c) (but not the “and” at the end of it).(4) In section 56 (recording and furnishing of information) omit subsection (2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause removes requirements in Part 2 of the Building Act 1984 relating to insurance.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(3A) The different provision that may be made by the regulations by virtue of section 120A(2)(b) includes in particular different provision in relation to—(a) persons who are eligible to be members of a building industry scheme and are not members of that scheme, and(b) other persons.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that regulations under this Clause may make different provision in relation to persons who are eligible, but not members, of a scheme established under Clause 128 and other persons.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak to a group of amendments that will strengthen our solution in law to ensure that the industry pays to remediate all unsafe high-rise and medium-rise buildings for which it is responsible, and contributes to fund the remediation of all cladding on 11-metre to 18-metre buildings. As discussed during our debate in Committee, we need to take action against those unwilling to make these commitments and impose a solution in law to make sure that developers and manufacturers take responsibility for rectifying building safety defects—the polluter must pay.
Amendments 133 to 136 set out a number of changes to the definition of associated persons within the leaseholder protections provisions. Amendment 137 sets out that partnerships are captured within the definition of an associated company and Amendment 139 defines joint ventures. This will ensure that well-resourced companies cannot make use of complex corporate structures to evade their responsibilities. These amendments pierce the corporate veil.
Amendment 179 confers a power to make regulations to require landlords to provide information to a relevant tenant or other prescribed person
I will now speak to amendments we are making to Clauses 128 and 129, which I moved in Committee. As noble Lords may remember, these clauses give the Government the power to establish building industry schemes. We want to use this power to enable us to establish a scheme to distinguish between building industry actors who have committed to act responsibly and make buildings safe, and irresponsible actors who have failed to do so. The amendments tabled on 22 March add detail to those powers, to reflect more clearly the Government’s intentions and to provide Parliament and the public with more information on the purpose of any building industry scheme or schemes we set up, together with indicative examples of the kinds of membership conditions that eligible industry actors may need to meet to be part of a scheme.
We have made it clear that we expect the industry to act now to take responsibility for fixing building safety defects, and our principal objective in establishing a scheme under this power would be to make sure that we can hold industry to account against this and other obligations. Examples of the kinds of membership conditions that may apply to members of a scheme in connection with these purposes include: the remedying of defects in buildings to which an industry actor has a connection; and making financial contributions towards remediation of defects in buildings, including by way of contribution to a general industry fund to pay for remediation.
We may also require scheme members not to use certain construction products made by prescribed manufacturers—for example, cladding and insulation products made by manufacturers who have failed to step up and commit to an industry solution by making a financial contribution to remediating unsafe buildings.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the amendments tabled by the Government. As my noble friend has explained, they extend the scope of liability, making it more likely that builders will be remediated. The amendments also block some loopholes, and I welcome that.
I begin with a general point about amending this part of the Bill. I understand the caution that many in your Lordships’ House have about amending a Bill at this stage of a Parliament if it has been fully scrutinised by the Commons. However, there should be no such inhibitions about amending this part of the Bill, because although the Bill started in another place, the remediation clauses were added in your Lordships’ House, and the other place has never considered them. So, as part of our role we should feel free to amend the Bill if we feel that that is the right thing to do, not least because the Government have themselves tabled several hundred amendments.
I make it clear that I welcome the amendments on remediation, and I commend my noble friend and Michael Gove on the substantial progress that they have made in beginning to address the crisis facing thousands of leaseholders trapped in unsaleable flats, facing unaffordable remediation bills and repossession as well as, in many cases, high insurance premiums and the costs of waking watches, while continuing to live in a building which is a fire risk.
My noble friend has moved the dial, and is to be commended for that, but, as today’s debate will show, the Bill as it stands falls well short of assurances that Ministers have given to leaseholders, who are the only innocent party in a scandal that has involved developers, contractors, local authorities and, indeed, as is emerging from the Grenfell inquiry, the Government, who knew about the cladding problems 15 years before Grenfell—and did nothing.
In this section of the Bill we are building on the Government’s proposals and we do so after extensive discussions with Ministers and officials, for which we are really grateful. We hope that it may still be possible, even at this late stage, to find common ground.
In particular, we seek to amend the Bill to be consistent with commitments that Ministers have made on the record. I remind my noble friend the Minister of what he told noble Lords in his letter dated 20 January, entitled “Introduction of the Building Safety Bill”. He said:
“The Secretary of State recently announced that leaseholders living in their homes should be protected from the costs of remediating historic building safety defects.”
That letter built on the Statement made by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, on 10 January in another place. He said:
“First, we will make sure that we provide leaseholders with statutory protection … and we will work with colleagues across the House to ensure that that statutory protection extends to all the work”—
all the work—
“required to make buildings safe.”
The Statement said:
“We will take action to end the scandal and protect leaseholders.”
It continued:
“We will make industry pay to fix all of the remaining problems and help to cover the range of costs facing leaseholders.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; cols. 285-291.]
I think we would all agree with that.
However, since then these commitments have been watered down. Not all leaseholders are covered by the Bill, not all buildings are covered by the Bill, and defects have been sub-divided into those that are fully protected by qualifying leaseholders, and other defects that are not. I see no guiding principle behind these distinctions, but the consequence is protecting the contractor/taxpayer and putting more costs on to the only innocent party: the leaseholder.
Turning to Amendment 233, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, I appreciate that there are other proposals that have the same objective as ours, namely Amendments 221 and 234. I am in no way prescriptive about how the problem is tackled. The best way forward may be for my noble friend the Minister to say that he recognises the problem and will come up with the same solution at a later stage, so let me describe the problem.
The Government’s so-called waterfall proposal creates a pyramid of contributions, with developers at the top and leaseholders at the bottom. This is a welcome inversion of the situation under the current law, where the leaseholders are in the firing line, and the Government should be commended for it, but the waterfall does not live up to Michael Gove’s Statement, in which he said that
“leaseholders are shouldering a desperately unfair burden. They are blameless, and it is morally wrong that they should be the ones asked to pay the price. I am clear about who should pay the price for remedying failures. It should be the industries that profited, as they caused the problem, and those who have continued to profit, as they make it worse.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; cols. 283-84.]
We have been told at meetings with officials and Ministers that good progress has been made in persuading the industry to accept its responsibility and remediate the buildings for which it is responsible, doubtless incentivised by some of the provisions in the Bill. I commend Ministers for the progress they have made. However, we are left with the issue of what happens to buildings where remediation does not happen—the so-called orphaned buildings. The freeholder has no resources, there is no developer or contractor to sue, and so we reach the end of the waterfall: the leaseholders. What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to pay for all the non-cladding costs, which they cannot afford? In many cases these are higher than the cladding costs. Should they continue to live in a dangerous building, with properties that they cannot sell and with high insurance premiums?
Let me illustrate this with an example, Northpoint in Bromley. The developer, Taylor Wimpey, a company listed on the FTSE 100, refuses to pay, I am told. The building is already in the building safety fund for cladding, so taxpayers are picking up the bill. Under the waterfall, we come to the resident management company, which is run by the leaseholders. It collects the service charge and therefore has a liability in step 2 of the Government’s waterfall, but it has no assets and does not have an interest worth £2 million, so we reach the end of the waterfall: the leaseholders. Most flats in Northpoint are worth less than £325,000, so there will be zero commitment to be collected from most leaseholders for non-cladding costs, thanks to the Government’s low-value exemption. A handful of the flats in that building are worth more than £325,000, so those few leaseholders are in the invidious position of having to pay £15,000—but they do not have to pay, because waking watches have eaten up their £15,000 caps already, so they pay nothing.
At Northpoint, the non-cladding works are not covered by the building safety fund, so who will pay? The only option for the moment is to ask the leaseholders to pay, wearing their hats as shareholders in the resident management company, but that defeats the point of the caps the Government have proposed for leaseholders. There are many other examples of no liability on someone with assets to pay—the so-called orphaned buildings. It is unacceptable that dangerous buildings, part of this country’s housing stock, should remain in this condition either indefinitely or until prolonged litigation has been completed.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, as it is my first contribution in this part of the Bill, I must necessarily declare my interests as a practising chartered surveyor, a member of the RICS and a patron of the Charted Association of Building Engineers. I am also a member of the Built Environment Select Committee, chaired by the doughty noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who keeps us all in order. I think she is splendid and I do not say that for want of any favours. I also own residential rented property: no flats, no high-rise, thank goodness.
I pay tribute to the Minister for the meetings he has arranged, the dialogue in which he has been willing to engage and his untiring efforts and those of his Bill team. It is fair to say that we have come an enormous way in this Bill and that is in large part, if not solely, because of the drive the Minister has put into this. I am pleased that he has clarified the limited partnerships and provided the other clarifications in the amendments he has introduced. I also pay tribute to all noble Lords around the House who have stuck with the principle that the innocent should not be made to pay for the mistakes of the developers and constructors.
I will just deal, if I may, with Amendments 201 and 202, which are in my name and on which I will not be seeking the opinion of the House. They relate to a matter I referred to in Committee, which is insolvent landlords and their interests being escheated to the Crown. That means that potentially, there is no landlord as such to organise remediation work, leaving remediation in limbo and responsibility for costs uncertain. That follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, set out with, I may say, a degree of piercing clarity which I found unchallengeable. I will outline the differences between my further amendments and his, but not on these ones.
The sole purpose of my Amendment 201 is to clarify the Crown responsibility. Amendment 202 covers where a superior leaseholder defaults and as a result the liability potentially passes to others. This amendment would serve to prevent a lease being disclaimed, thereby creating another loophole and another piece of loose liability floating around the system.
Amendment 229 in my name is another probing amendment; I hope it is self-explanatory. It attempts to deal with a perceived problem of delay by landlords and agents in accepting first funding agreements for remediation. The matter was highlighted in a recent edition of Inside Housing. Reference was made to the logjam created because managing agents were reluctant to sign off on remediation contracts without knowing who would be paying for the work or, indeed, when. That effectively stalled the first funding offer acceptance.
It was thought that the matter had been resolved; according to the Inside Housing article, the Minister confirmed in December that the logjam had been cleared. Notwithstanding this, the article said, the problems persist. It reported cases in St Albans, London and Manchester; in other words, all over the country. It is known that there are few enough contractors ready and willing to take on the—quite demanding in some cases—work of remediation, which this Bill addresses. Delay will simply cause contractors to go elsewhere and opportunities to be lost. This prejudices both leaseholder and, ultimately, I suspect, freeholder. It makes no sense. There may be many reasons for this—usually, I suspect, surrounding the landlord’s own tactical and financial advantage—but none can justify the excessive delay that this amendment seeks to avoid.
There seems to be a bit of a blame game going on between the department on the one hand and block management interests on the other. I am reluctant to take sides on that. This amendment intends to treat the symptoms by setting a time limit on acceptance of the offer so that things cannot be spun out. I hope that it will have the effect of concentrating minds and will be conducive to good order for that reason.
I now turn to Amendments 234 to 237 in my name. I make it clear that, subject to what I may hear from the Minister, I may need to test the opinion of the House on these amendments. They would have a similar effect to Amendment 233 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young; namely, to relieve leaseholders and freeholders of what many of us feel is an unjust imposition. Much of what we have been discussing arises because the Government believe, as I do, that, given the 30 years during which certain bad practices have taken root in construction quality, not every defect will have an identifiable perpetrator or associate currently in existence, solvent and with sufficient assets to make a claim a practical possibility. The Government seek to ensure that, if a construction defect exists which does not fall within their scheme of financial support for remediation and there is no perpetrator to be found, the public interest that buildings are made safe will persist. In their view, the only other possible sources of remediation funding are the freeholders and leaseholders.
I think it is fair to say that the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Blencathra, and I have been in a sort of huddle since Grand Committee. We all believe that the fallback should be the perpetrator of the situation. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, proposes falling back on the local authority or the Secretary of State—AKA the taxpayer. I am aware that the Treasury has said, in fairly blunt terms, “We have made an allocation of £5.1 billion and that is it.” That means no more money unless it comes out of the departmental budget, impinging on other important work that the department might wish to take place. I take it that this is one reason, among many, why the Secretary of State has taken the initiative to protect the departmental budget by seeking voluntary contributions from the construction industry for a further £4 billion for other defects—good on the Secretary of State for doing that.
The first question I have for the Minister is: can he update us on how things are progressing on that voluntary scheme? Certainly, the industry’s initial response was not very fulsome, and the Secretary of State made what one might describe as a somewhat sterner demand— and very rightly too. The Minister’s answer is pivotal to how likely it is that property owners will have to fork out for these defects and thus require the protections he seeks to build into this Bill.
If the perpetrator, as defined, cannot be found, then it becomes a test of what is “just and equitable”—to use the words in the Bill—in apportioning the orphaned responsibility and cost between two groups of property owners, who, in the main, are likely to be completely innocent of the construction-related defects and for whom arguably it is neither just nor equitable that they should bear that responsibility and cost at all. Of course, that circumvents what I understand to be meant by the perpetrator pays principle, and results in the passing back of both responsibility and cost—the two are not exactly the same—to the innocent.
Given the Government’s insistence on this approach, I conclude that the deficit between what can be claimed from extant, solvent and legally liable developers on the one hand, and the true remediation cost on the other, is likely to be significant; otherwise, why would we be here? Meanwhile, I sense the industry is telling us, in the blunt cant of the trade, that we can whistle for it.
The Government’s remediation model of liabilities, exemptions, cost controls, means testing, tiered contributions by property value, appeals to courts and much chasing of tails withal is certainly not straight-forward. Any one of the procedural steps is contestable to some degree and contested they will undoubtedly be. So, while the many leaseholder protections are welcome, such as cladding on buildings over 11 metres, building safety levy backstops on cladding costs, exemptions for sub-£175,000—or £325,000 in London—properties, and non-cladding remediation where the landlord is or was connected to developer.
These are very welcome, but the model is incomplete and there remain significant exclusions. Properties under 11 metres are certainly one of them, but we will have to wait until we get to Amendment 115 in a later group to discuss that. There is also the question of buy-to-let landlords with more than three properties, but we will have to wait until we get to Amendment 123 to consider that. There is no backstop for non-cladding remediation costs. Leaseholders in enfranchised or commonhold blocks, as discussed in Amendment 117, may get some support for cladding remediation from the building safety fund, but I question whether they will get everything they are due under a true perpetrator pays principle.
Some issues have not necessarily been eliminated, despite what the Government claim. The noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to the waterfall, so I can skip my explanation as he has explained it much better than I would. Establishing cost liability does not of itself generate funds for remediation if those liable to pay are broke. It is a very important principle, because if the guys made responsible have no assets or cannot get at their assets because they are mortgaged up to the hilt and there is no equity, then what is the purpose of placing this onus on them in the first place?
The Government are taking a substantial risk in leaving it to the courts to decide whether it would be “just and equitable” as regards their various proposed orders. That seems to be tantamount to an invitation for further litigation, delay, uncertainty, risks, and so on. There will be applications for remediation orders, remediation cost orders, building liability orders, and litigation under the Defective Premises Act—my mind freezes over when I see that list.
There is no bridging funding facility in any of this, so unless the Secretary of State steps in or some other funding is levered in, remediation cannot take place. People cannot simply buy in on spec some large amount of a contractor’s time and substance; it is just not going to happen. Some of those who might, I suppose, be in line to be contributors to this just and equitable approach to splitting it between innocent parties—and I am sorry to go on about that—are not going to be there. Some buy-to-let investors will be denied any protections, and some landlords will fail the cost contribution test; I tried to make that clear when we were dealing with this in Committee. If you multiply the number of properties that they hold by £2 million per property, you will very often find that the total figure is greater than their capitalised worth—ergo, they drop out of responsibility.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, there are 70 amendments in this group, but, on a positive note, they are all seeking to protect leaseholders. We have been very fortunate in having such a clear exposition of the issues which remain from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who has demonstrated that there is still a gap in what the Government have set out. Who pays when there is literally no one left to pay? This relates to the orphan buildings, as the noble Lord has described them. That must be resolved. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has just shared his expertise on the matter. I admit that I have not quite understood every part of what he said, except that I know that it is based on knowledge and experience. I am very grateful to him for sharing it with the rest of the House and trying to find solutions to the problems which remain.
I have my name on four amendments. I will speak particularly to two of these which are, in a rather more straightforward way, seeking to achieve the same ends. Amendment 200, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stunell, presents another way by which leaseholders will be protected from any payment which results from the approach which the Government are taking—and which we will discuss in group 7—regarding who pays and how much leaseholders should be expected to pay. It also helps to solve the problem outlined particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about what happens to these orphan buildings when the waterfall runs out of people to fall on. I have suggested in Amendment 200 that we establish a leaseholder protection fund. I do so because, as noble Lords across the House know, there is an absolute determination on the part of all noble Lords who have spoken so far that, whatever else happens, the leaseholders will not, and should not, be the ones who pick up the bill for the errors of others—errors which are sometimes deliberate.
Amendment 200 takes a slice of the building safety fund which the developers are providing, and it establishes a fund for leaseholders who are left carrying the can, either through the orphan building situation—as described by the two previous speakers—or if the cap which we will discuss in group 7 remains. In both cases, it achieves the same end: there is a fund to which leaseholders can apply for funding to offset the bills they are presented with for work for which they have no responsibility and should never be asked to pay. This is the aim of Amendment 200, and I hope that one of the other amendments deals with this because, as far as I am concerned, this is a backstop. I assume that one of the other amendments will get the majority support of your Lordships’ House, and I will therefore not press this particular amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I particularly like her slogan, “Get the work done.” Somehow it reminds me of a similar slogan we heard rather successfully a couple of years ago: Get Brexit done. I am glad that the Liberal Democrats are picking up some Conservative slogans.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I support Amendment 233, so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham in his usual erudite way; he had the detail but was still succinct. Because he set it out so well, I can be commendably brief, for a change.
I start from the position of my right honourable friend Michael Gove, and I totally support what he has said and done. I usually support what he says and does, except when he was Conservative Chief Whip and was a bit cuddly, caring and too kind. But apart from that, I liked it when he said that
“leaseholders are shouldering a desperately unfair burden. They are blameless, and it is morally wrong that they should be the ones asked to pay the price. I am clear about who should pay the price for remedying failures. It should be the industries that profited, as they caused the "problem, and those who have continued to profit, as they make it worse.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; col. 284.]
You cannot say better than that. So I am rather sympathetic to any amendments, including the one moved by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, trying to make sure that developers or perpetrators pay every penny. It should not be leaseholders and, ideally, it should not be the taxpayer.
However, this amendment creates a remediator of last resort and allows the Secretary of State to step in and undertake the works. In either case, it would allow the Secretary of State or the local authority to pursue the responsible developer with debt claims to recover the money laid out on remedial works. As my noble friend so ably said, that ensures that there is a failsafe mechanism in the law. The Government’s legislative proposals do not tell us what will happen if remedial works are simply not started or cannot be completed as a result of the effect of the caps imposed in the Bill and the restrictions on buy-to-let landlords.
The duty in this amendment would fill the gap. The Government’s proposals would require some sort of remediator of last resort. Because they are imposing caps on what can be collected toward non-cladding costs, the Government are creating a gap in funding, which will have to be plugged somehow. Ultimately, someone is going to have to pay; otherwise, as my noble friend said, buildings will never be fixed. This amendment allows building work to be started and buildings to be fixed, with the taxpayer providing a form of bridging finance—but they must get that money back from the building safety fund; this is not carte blanche to make the taxpayer pay for these things.
As I said, I am sympathetic to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I just worry that if we adopted these four or five new clauses, we might be tearing the guts out of the Bill and would have to rewrite a lot of it. But I think his heart is in the right place in where he is aiming to go. I understand that my noble friend might be worried about the legal position under the ECHR. This is another area where the noble Earl’s amendments might technically fall foul of the ECHR. Some of us have seen legal advice circulated from Daniel Greenberg, who is well known to everyone in this House. He says:
“On the basis of this analysis, l am satisfied that the draft clauses are compatible with the Convention rights and that Ministers will be able to comply with Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (Acts of public authorities: duty not to act incompatibly with ECHR) when they come to perform the functions conferred by the draft clauses”—
referring to draft Clauses 234 to 237.
I am not capable of suggesting whether Daniel Greenberg QC is correct or not, but I would love to hear what the Minister has to say about that. If the amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, are not right, it would be helpful to hear from my noble friend how far they can go towards what the noble Earl is trying to achieve. If he is going to reject them, I would love to hear how far he can push to get as close as possible to the noble Earl’s position. With those words, I am content to support my noble friend’s Amendment 233, and I would love to hear explanations on the noble Earl’s amendments.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for a brief Committee-style intervention, given the novel nature of the group of amendments we are looking at. I have two points.
First, I am very grateful for the agreement earlier to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best. I thank my noble friend for that but, as he knows, I am concerned about the position of leaseholders who are also involved in the hard task of managing even a small development as an enfranchised leaseholder. I have a family member with an interest in that area. What happens if a cladding or other building safety issue arises? I know that such leaseholders may face big bills and responsibilities. Amendments 186 to 193 appear to make enfranchised leaseholders of this kind liable even if they have ceased to act or sold out and become previous landlords. Have I understood this correctly? If I have, then it undermines the case for enfranchisement that has been encouraged by successive Governments to get rid of excess service charges.
Secondly, a strong case has been made for the non-government amendments in this group. I too have received many worrying letters from leaseholders. Do we have a feel for the cost, especially the net cost, of these Back-Bench amendments we are debating? I feel this is a matter that will be of concern in the other place, given current fiscal pressures, and might therefore determine what is eventually agreed in this important and urgent Bill.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate so far. In the interests of time, I will just speak to the two amendments I have in this group, and then I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response to the broader debate and issues that have been raised, that were clearly also debated in Committee.
Amendment 231 is about a registered social landlord not being able to
“use the income from rents or service charges to rectify defects relating to external wall systems or compartmentations where those defects result from the construction of the property or the installation of the external wall systems.”
The amendment would prevent local authorities using rental income or service charges to pay to remediate dangerous cladding or other fire safety defects. The aim is to give social housing tenants the same protection as leaseholders. While we support the Government’s efforts to protect leaseholders from the cost of remediation, the arrangements currently being considered by Ministers will mean that the cost of remediating social housing blocks falls on housing associations and council housing revenue accounts.
In the case of council housing, the main sources of income within the HRA are from tenants, in the form of rent and service charges. If the cost of fixing council housing falls on the HRA, then either rents, service charges, or potentially both, will need to increase, or maintenance improvement of social housing as well as new social housing delivery will need to be cut back. That is our concern. We clearly support the protection of leaseholders, but the protection of home owners who will eventually make a profit from the sale of their property, cannot and must not come at the expense of social housing tenants. Our proposal would prevent that outcome and instead require the Government to protect tenants such as leaseholders by requiring the industry to pay, with the taxpayer as a fallback provider of funds in recognition of any failings that created this crisis in the first place.
We discussed my Amendment 22 in Committee. It states:
“The regulations must exempt any relevant application made by or on behalf of a registered social landlord for the provision of social housing as defined under section 68 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.”
The purpose behind this is to make social housing providers exempt from the additional financial burden of the Government’s proposed levy in order to prevent council tenants effectively subsidising the failures of private developers. Clause 57 of the Building Safety Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to impose a new building safety levy in England. This will contribute to government costs for remediating historical building safety defects and will apply to developers making application to the building safety regulator for building control approval. This is the new gateway 2 system, which will be introduced in building regulations.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this long—a little over an hour on one group—but important debate on ensuring that the polluter pays. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock, for Amendment 22, on the levy on social housing. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, raised the issues of exemptions from the building safety levy for social housing providers and who the details of the buildings levy will apply to in secondary legislation.
I am pleased to inform the noble Baroness that we are considering an exemption from the levy for affordable housing as a whole, including social housing, housing for rent or sale at least 20% below market rent or sales rates, and shared ownership. The Government recognise that applying a levy to affordable housing would increase the cost of developing affordable housing and would therefore be likely to disincentivise supply, as the noble Baroness said. We consulted on this exemption for affordable housing in our consultation on the levy, which ran from July to October last year.
I hope the noble Baroness understands that her suggestion is under careful consideration and will be addressed in secondary legislation. I will probably have to roughly translate: she should be reassured that the building safety levy will not apply to public housing. That probably makes it a little easier for her to decide what she wants to do.
I turn now to Amendment 200, on the leaseholder protection fund, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which would require the Government to use funds raised by the levy to refund leaseholders who have already paid for safety works. While a noble thing to do, the Government’s primary aim is and should be to protect leaseholders from building safety risks and enable work to be undertaken to ensure this. For this reason, we will not be able to accept the amendment.
On Amendment 221, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for this amendment. We share her determination to make sure that the industry acts now to take responsibility for fixing building safety defects and that the burden should not fall on leaseholders or taxpayers. The whole tone of the amendment is to get on with remediation and I have great sympathy for that. The principal objective of Clauses 128 and 129 is to make sure that responsible parties pay and to enable us to hold the industry to account. The further amendment I spoke to earlier will make it clear that we can link the scheme to the planning system.
Together, these powers will allow us to monitor compliance of members of the responsible actors scheme and make sure that members take responsibility and act promptly to make buildings safe. We do not believe a 5-year deadline needs to be inserted into the Bill. Our intention is for the measure to achieve its objectives much more quickly. Those that do not meet the scheme conditions may lose scheme membership and may immediately be subject to the planning prohibition, as our amendments make clear. A focus on pace is already built into the Government’s approach. I hope this reassures the noble Baroness that her intention has been more than met by the Government through this Bill, just in another way.
I turn now to Amendment 231 on social landlords and defects, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock. The Bill already makes provision to protect leaseholders from unreasonable costs and allow guilty parties to be pursued. It contains a requirement on landlords to take reasonable steps to pursue other cost recovery avenues before seeking to recover the costs of remediation works from leaseholders. They need to provide evidence to the leaseholders of the steps taken. Social landlords will have to undertake these measures, including pursuing construction companies or installers where applicable.
To help all landlords, including social landlords, the Government are bringing forward an ambitious toolkit of other measures to allow those responsible to be pursued. This includes extending the limitation period under Section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 to apply retrospectively for 30 years. We are also allowing the High Courts to extend the reach of civil liability to associated companies and creating a new cause of action. This will allow manufacturers, distributors and sellers of construction products to be pursued where defective or mis-sold products have been used in the construction of a dwelling, or where further works are carried out to that dwelling, rendering it unfit for habitation. These amendments make it easier for those affected to force those responsible for defective buildings—developers and construction products manufacturers—to pay.
While we are making it easier to pursue third parties, in parallel, we continue to protect leaseholders, so they are not paying for unreasonable remediation costs. The Bill introduces new statutory provisions which provide that cladding remediation costs cannot be passed on to qualifying leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres. The law is already clear that service charges and any increase in cost must be reasonable. Finally, the Government set a rent policy for social housing which determines the maximum amount of rent that social tenants may be charged and the maximum amount by which rents may increase each year. The rent standard prevents unforeseen hikes to tenants’ rents and is enforced by the Regulator of Social Housing.
Turning now to Amendment 232 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, the service charge is the means by which fire safety costs would be recovered and the leaseholder protections measures already prevent costs being passed to leaseholders above the permitted maximum.
I now turn to Amendment 233, tabled by my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Blencathra, which seeks to impose a duty on local authorities to pursue responsible developers. It imposes requirements on local authorities to remediate buildings with defects and to recover funds from responsible parties. If no funds can be recovered, the Secretary of State would be required to reimburse the local authority.
We have been clear that industry is responsible for remediating defective buildings. We expect developers to remediate buildings they had a role in developing or refurbishing. Where this does not happen, building owners and landlords will have new powers to pursue those responsible. Local authorities will also have powers under our new remediation orders and remediation contribution orders, as will other regulatory bodies. However, to impose a duty on local authorities to fix buildings or pursue responsible parties is not the right approach. This would absolve industry of its duty to resolve the crisis and building owners and landlords of their responsibilities to make buildings safe. It would also place an unacceptable burden on the taxpayer.
The amendment seeks to create a taxpayer backstop by requiring the Secretary of State to reimburse local authorities for costs they cannot recover. We have been very clear that it is wrong to look to the taxpayer for further funding to fix defective buildings. For these reasons, we will not be able to accept the amendment. I want to deal with the specific issue of the remediator of last resort. I understand where my noble friend Lord Young is coming from. We have asked the industry to provide a fully funded solution for both the cladding and non-cladding costs, including fixing their own buildings and contributing to a fund for the very orphan buildings he has highlighted of between 11 and 18 metres that need cladding remediation. The focus of the industry is on fixing its own buildings, and therefore we can begin to be more focused on where we apply taxpayer funds.
Finally, I address Amendments 201, 202, 229, 234, 235, 236 and 237 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. Amendments 201 and 202 would hold the Crown liable where properties escheat—that is probably not the right pronunciation—and would prevent liquidators and trustees in bankruptcy renouncing the leases of buildings with fire safety defects. The Bill already prevents freeholders evading liability by simply escheating their properties where they do not want to pay. It also makes provisions in relation to insolvency and bankruptcy. Freeholders will still be liable where they were, or were connected to, the developer, or had a net worth over £2 million per in-scope building on 14 February. As I have said before, taxpayers should not be held liable. For this reason, I will not be able to accept these amendments. Amendment 229 is unnecessary as landlords are already prevented from passing on costs unless they have explored all other routes of funding.
I turn to the important Amendments 234 to 237. These cover building safety cost orders, providing powers to make regulations, stipulating liability and establishing a building safety cost fund. Liability for remediation costs is already set out in the Bill, as are provisions for building owners and landlords to go after associated developers, companies and manufacturers of defective products. For this reason, I will not be able to accept these amendments.
My noble friends Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lord Young of Cookham raised the position of enfranchised leaseholders and asked whether we have made life harder for them via Amendments 186 to 193. I want to be absolutely clear that nothing in the amendments increases liabilities for enfranchised leaseholders. No leaseholder will be worse off; all are measures to make the polluter pays principle apply to enfranchised leaseholders.
I hope that I have gone some way to provide assurances on the Government’s approach.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
Before my noble friend sits down, I am really grateful to him for the explanation he has set out but can he tell the House what happens where there is a building and no one has any money— the leaseholders cannot afford it, there is no freeholder and there is no developer or contractor to pursue? Who then puts that building right?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, in practical terms, we have a £5.1 billion fund, of which we have committed the first stage of £1 billion. We have an additional £4.1 billion for buildings over 18 metres and an additional £4 billion for cladding remediation, yet we are asking industry to fix its own buildings. That gives us the ability to focus on the few buildings my noble friend is talking about, because we have got the developers that built these buildings to go on and fix them in a proportionate way and we do not have to use the core of money that we already have. Noble Lords can test the opinion of the House, but that is a practical way of dealing with the problems—focusing the current funds on those few buildings where that scenario applies.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, I thank him very much for his response to my Amendment 22. Could he just clarify something, so that I am completely clear on it? Was he saying that the Government will exempt social housing from the levy and that an SI will be brought in? If I am correct in my understanding, I would be grateful for a meeting to discuss the detail of what he proposes will happen.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for the opportunity to clarify what I meant. In simple terms, the exemption applies to social housing. With regard to how that is implemented and the means by which we do that, I will be happy to meet the noble Baroness to set out formally how we intend to bring that forward. I have already made that comment in meetings before Report, so it has been made in public. I am happy to make that commitment on the Floor of the House and to work on how we implement that and set it out, either in writing or in a further meeting.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
“(4A) The regulations must exempt any relevant application made by or on behalf of a registered social landlord for the provision of social housing as defined under section 68 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.”
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am very happy to accept the Minister’s assurance on this if we can have a meeting to follow up.
Lord Greenhalgh
““building industry scheme” means a scheme established under section 128 of the Building Safety Act 2022;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the previous amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to leave out Schedule 8.
Baroness Fox of Buckley
“Review of provisions relating to accountable persons
(1) By the end of the period of two years beginning with the day on which section 71 comes into force, the Secretary of State must undertake a review of the financial impact of accountable persons on leaseholders in higher-risk buildings.(2) The review under subsection (1) may consider any matter appearing to the Secretary of State to be relevant, but must identify and quantify—(a) all costs passed on to leaseholders in relation to any function of any accountable person under Part 4 of this Act; and(b) any other costs passed on to leaseholders by any accountable persons.(3) A Minister of the Crown must, as soon as practicable on completion of the review, lay a statement on its findings before Parliament.(4) This section comes into force on the day this Act is passed.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the government to identify and quantify all costs passed on to leaseholders under the accountable person regime, for example to check if Building Safety Manager costs have been rebadged and passed on.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Your Lordships need to calm yourselves.
On Saturday, I went to visit my home in Wood Green. It looks like a bomb site: there is no roof and there are huge amounts of scaffolding and barbed-wire fences surrounding the block of 25 two-floor maisonettes. When you arrive, you see a huge multicoloured fluorescent sign with the words “Zero tolerance” and then a list of prohibited activities, all relating to safety: “Safety helmets must be worn”; “Safety footwear must be worn”; “No smoking”; “Danger: tripping hazards”; “Danger: men working ahead”; “Danger: no children on the site”. We are told that “Safety signs and procedures must be observed.” I therefore know, having visited my home in Wood Green, that Haringey Council is definitely keen on promoting safety.
Let us consider this. My home is in this state because, two years ago, there was a fridge fire in one maisonette. The roof of the block caught fire and the other flats, including mine, were drenched by the fire brigade in putting out the fire. It was not too bad and, to be honest, we were so glad that no one was hurt and we were relieved to get out safely. But that was two years ago this month—two years in which 25 families have been effectively homeless. As a leaseholder, the council, which is my freeholder, took my front door key off me—it is not a glamorous house, by the way, but it is mine, or so I thought—and basically said that I would get it back when the block had been made safe. It is now two years later and I am still not back, and I have no idea when I can go home.
I have mentioned this story before. My retelling it is not therapy but to show how what starts as an unremarkable but unpleasant event—a fire, albeit in lockdown—can escalate and turn into a nightmarish, never-ending misery for so many people. At every turn, as leaseholders and tenants, we have been faced with layers of bureaucracy getting in our way, more and more people to deal with, more and more issues being raised to explain why we are not returning home, and dwindling effectiveness in getting our homes back to us. We leaseholders and council tenants have been shown a certain indifference to our plight. If I am honest, all that has been much worse than the original fire, but it is okay because Haringey Council has put up lots of safety signs. Safety trumps all, and is used to say to us, “Shut up and put up.”
I arrived at this place during the time of my eviction from the house and was inspired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, whom I heard speak on what was happening to leaseholders. I thought, “I’m going to join that debate.” I was inspired by their dedication and what they said, and that is how I ended up here.
The moral of this tale is that I want to make sure that the Bill, which is well-intentioned on safety, does not in the name of safety end up with the unintended escalation of a whole new set of problems for leaseholders, which was the point of the analogy with my flat fire. The amendment—I actually prefer a similar but better amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who is trying to do the same thing—would require the Government to commit to review the impact of the legislation in a couple of years. It says to the Government, “Can you just check in all instances that the legislation doesn’t cause more problems and is actually doing what you want it to do, or what we in the House have been told you want it to do?”
We are rather rushing through the Bill. Whole swathes of new amendments have emerged. These have been put in not necessarily by noble Lords but by the Government. I was happy to hear the Minister explain that there are so many amendments because he, the Secretary of State and the department are listening. But whatever way you look at it, we, as people scrutinising the Bill, are being presented with hundreds of amendments that have been quite hard to get one’s head round in the time. In many ways, the Bill is not being fully scrutinised line by line. As the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, put it, it really is a legislative quagmire to wade through and it is very difficult.
It has been almost impossible to read the amendments, assess what their nuances mean and look for what the consequences might be. I appreciate that that is for me and that I am a lay person on technicalities, but luckily, as has been mentioned, leaseholders have a few important voluntary heroes who have helped the rest of us through. I know that the lawyer and leaseholder Liam Spender has already been name checked for his multicoloured sheet, which has already been shown, but if noble Lord have not seen it is well worth studying because it really does explain things. There are also all sorts of reporters for the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and intrepid leaseholders doing their own work, trying to get to grips with what all these new amendments and the Bill mean.
I mention that because it would be irresponsible if we passed this Bill and then let it sail off into the distance without any idea that it will be looked at again. I worry that the Government think that all will be solved once the Bill has passed. I do not want hostages to fortune. We have had lots of reassurances today, we have been told not to worry and have had great rhetoric from the Government on proportionality and common sense, but we therefore need to be able to check that that rhetoric will be fulfilled.
Finally, this is not all about leaseholders. My hunch is that the Bill has a range of problems because it has gone along uncritically with the picture painted by Dame Judith Hackitt that somehow every aspect of living in a flat should be seen as a potential hazard and a dangerous fire risk. For the last few years—understandably because of Grenfell—there has been a sort of hyperactive “something must be done” mentality that has led to the EWS1 crisis and caused many of the issues that informed the discussion on the previous group of amendments on innocent victims paying for excessive remediation.
All I ask is that this review checks that an overzealousness does not emerge from the legislation that skews priorities and means the Government’s valiant efforts at common sense and proportionality somehow end up in a proliferation of chunky formalised procedures.
I will also reflect on the other people we should bear in mind. I have emphasised leaseholders throughout this contribution, but in my Second Reading speech I also talked about the construction industry. I want to make sure we do not end up stymying the house-building programme through overregulation. There is a danger that, as we have heard in some of the contributions, we describe the construction business as though they are all cowboy builders, which is a rather insulting caricature. With another hat on, at another time, I would be saying the big crisis in this country is a lack of housing and we need to “Build, build, build”, so I get worried when the Home Builders Federation says that it is concerned that there will be difficulties with housing delivery if too much of a burden is put on housebuilders. You might say, “I am not going to feel sorry for them,” but we do not want to get ourselves into a situation where the extraction of funds from the construction industry means that the UK home building industry—which is important to many parts of levelling up, social equality and so on—is stymied.
One way or another, I can think of nothing more sensible for a common-sense Minister than to say, “In a couple of years, we’ll review all this and check that your hunches are wrong, Lady Fox.” That will be fine. The Minister referred to me earlier as Oliver Twist—always wanting more. This is only a little bit more, but you cannot change the world unless you want more, and I intend to demand a lot more, but only a little more in this Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 264A in this group. I thank my noble friend the Minister, as others have done, for all he has done to make this Bill a reality.
The object of the Bill, as I see it, is to get defects remediated to a proportionate extent as quickly as possibly—mainly cladding, sometimes installed, ironically, to improve insulation in the interests of carbon reduction, but also other unsafe matters. There have turned out to be more defects than anticipated and we have witnessed an unfortunate record by builders and others of not doing enough to put matters right. The Bill seeks to get things remedied quickly. However, it is costing an eye-watering amount to home owners, leaseholders and the Exchequer, and the Bill therefore also seeks to establish an equitable share-out of the costs including appropriate contributions by the supply chain.
It is a long saga and some of us in this House have been seeking solutions for a very long time and welcome the principle of legislation. However, unusually, the Bill has been changed completely by government amendments tabled since it left the House of Commons, yet we have not had an updated impact assessment to help us assess the costs and benefits of the revised proposals. This is poor, given the financial and other burdens on different stakeholders, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has just explained. However, as the chair of the Built Environment Committee I welcome today’s concession from the Minister on social housing, which I hope will be less costly, as it will give welcome clarity.
I have a great deal of respect for the Health and Safety Executive, as I have said before, and for the Minister who has fought so hard to present credible, effective and sensible proposals. However, it has been a rush, and I believe we must have a review clause in the Bill beyond the five-year independent review in Clause 152, and with more teeth. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has constructively proposed one option; I hope my version may recommend itself to colleagues across the House and to my noble friend. I believe that agreeing to this could help to narrow current, very real, differences on the Bill particularly in the next group of amendments.
I will explain why. I am proposing a review within two years. It would look at the impact of the provisions of the Act. If the review found that there were serious problems for leaseholders, for home owners who could not buy or sell property, or for any other group, it would make recommendations.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I rise with pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I agree with almost everything she said and very strongly back her amendment. The political spread we have just achieved across the House in that regard is interesting.
I sat through the previous group, and I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for counting the 70 amendments in it. I listened to the detailed and informative contributions, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I learned a great deal about waterfalls. I am still not entirely convinced that there is a solution to the “if no one’s left to pay who’s going to pay?” problem. None the less, it is very clear that this is an unusual Bill and that we have very broad agreement on what we are trying to achieve; that is, that the perpetrator pays to ensure that innocent leaseholders and home owners who through no fault of their own have found themselves trapped in awful, incredibly stressful, dangerous circumstances are not the ones who ultimately suffer and that the people who create the problem pay for it.
However, given the complexity of everything we have just done, we cannot be sure that the Bill will deliver and that there will not be unexpected hitches and problems along the way. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that five years is just too long. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, spoke about the personal experience of being stuck out of a home, and some people are stuck in homes in awful situations. Two years is the right time to look at this in the round.
This may be where I slightly part company with two earlier speakers. I think there is broad agreement that we have a huge cultural problem in the building industry. I should perhaps declare a historic interest as the daughter of a builder. I knew quite a bit about the Australian building industry and lots of the problems that I saw in that situation have been magnified and intensified by economic developments over the past few decades. We have mass housebuilders that are far better at being cash cows than at producing homes. We are trying to change this situation and the whole culture of the industry. We are trying to get homes that are produced so that people have a secure, stable, affordable place to live. It is such an enormous change that we cannot wait five years to review this, so I commend the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
I, too, commend the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on this amendment. Given the circumstances of the Bill, the number of variations in it and the sheer number of moving parts involved, a review is essential for precisely the reasons she said, and I support the amendment.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for this insightful debate.
Amendment 26 from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, would require a review of the financial impact of the new regime. I reassure the noble Baroness that a review is already required by Clause 152, which provides that:
“The Secretary of State must appoint an independent person to carry out a review of”
the system of regulation of building safety and standards and the system of regulation for construction products. Importantly, the reviewer is not limited and may choose to review connected matters, including the matters mentioned in the noble Baronesses’ amendments.
Similarly, Amendment 246A in the name my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe would require a review of the impact of the Act. I apologise for the mix-up that resulted in my addressing this amendment in an earlier group. I will repeat for the record that we believe that this further replicates Clause 152 in the Bill and therefore we believe this is unnecessary.
What I do say to my noble friend is that the Secretary of State has to appoint someone to carry out the review within five years, so that is a long-stop date. I am very happy to meet my noble friend to ensure that we get going with this review at the very earliest opportunity to make sure that that long-stop date is comfortably met. We also need to make sure that this review is substantive and learns the lessons of a new regime in the broadest possible sense and addresses the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, as well those raised by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who has had tremendous Front-Bench experience as well as experience as a distinguished civil servant.
With those explanations, I kindly ask the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, to withdraw her amendment and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe not to press her amendment.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I will withdraw but I will come back to the Minister. I think it is important to come back to the Minister and say if it is within five years, I would like it to be brought forward sooner. I do not know why he does not just accept the two years but let us have the meeting to discuss it. At this point, I will not press the amendment and beg leave to withdraw.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 and 85.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 and 85.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments leaving out Clauses 83 to 86 in the name of the Minister remove provision about building safety managers.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments leaving out Clauses 82 and 84 to 86 in the name of the Minister remove provision about building safety managers.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments leaving out Clauses 82 and 83 and 85 and 86 in the name of the Minister remove provision about building safety managers.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments leaving out Clauses 82 to 84 and 86 in the name of the Minister remove provision about building safety managers.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments leaving out Clauses 82 to 85 in the name of the Minister remove provision about building safety managers.
Baroness Brinton
“Duty to avoid disability discrimination
(1) The steps taken by the accountable person pursuant to section 88 must include specific steps to ensure that no prohibited conduct relating to the protected characteristic of disability occurs that is unlawful contrary to Part 3 of the Equality Act 2010.(2) Those steps must include the development of personal emergency evacuation plans for persons with disabilities.(3) The Secretary of State must publish guidance in relation to the content of a personal emergency evacuation plan within 6 months of the commencement of this section.(4) In any proceedings concerning the steps taken by the accountable person pursuant to this Part of this Act, or Part 3 of the Equality Act 2010, this guidance is admissible as evidence and must be taken into account.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause puts a duty on the accountable person to avoid disability discrimination, which includes the development of personal emergency evacuation plans for persons with disabilities.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, this amendment was debated earlier. I just want to repeat the point I made then that I thank the Minister for the offer of the meeting tomorrow. If we have not made some progress on the issue of PEEPs and safety for disabled people, I will bring back an amendment at Third Reading but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the strategy to be reviewed at times prescribed by regulations.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I am very pleased to move a group of amendments that are focused on ensuring that leaseholders are protected from costs related to historical building safety defects. The package of leaseholder protections eradicates the idea that leaseholders should be the first port of call to pay to fix historical building safety defects. In fact, in drafting these clauses we started with the presumption that leaseholders should not have to pay anything, a sentiment that I know is shared with noble Lords from all sides of this House.
It is only right that building owners and landlords share in the costs of fixing dangerous buildings and we have carefully engineered—
Lord Cormack (Con)
I was under the impression that this was grouped with a whole group of amendments that had been debated and therefore there was no need for a further debate. If I am wrong, of course I apologise.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I will take the blame for that. I should have said moved formally and that would have encouraged the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, to say “moved formally”. I will accept the admonition on that point. The noble Lord has saved the House some considerable time because I can see the page of that speech now fluttering in the wind.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(c) in prescribed circumstances, consult relevant persons and prescribed persons on the strategy and take any representations made on the consultation into account when next reviewing the strategy;(d) act in accordance with the strategy.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the principal accountable person to consult on the residents’ engagement strategy, and to act in accordance with the strategy.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(c) any prescribed person.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires an accountable person to give a copy of the strategy to a person prescribed by regulations.
“(aa) make provision about the preparation, review or revision of a residents’ engagement strategy, in cases where there is more than one accountable person for the building;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables regulations to make provision about the making, review or revision of a strategy, in cases where there is more than one accountable person.
“(c) make provision about consultations under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables regulations to make provision about consultations on a strategy.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister leaving out Clause 82.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister leaving out Clause 82.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that only “relevant” rights and liabilities of an accountable person for the building become the rights and liabilities of the special measures manager under paragraph 7 of the Schedule.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 204, line 35.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s first amendment at page 204, line 6.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 204, line 35.
“(c) one or more rights or liabilities of that person under the contract are relevant rights or liabilities,”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s first amendment at page 204, line 6.
“(3A) A right or liability of an accountable person for the building under a relevant contract is a “relevant right or liability” if it relates to a function of that person under, or under regulations made under, this Part in relation to the building.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines relevant right or liability for the purposes of paragraph 7 of the Schedule.
“(3B) The notice under sub-paragraph (3)(e) must state which rights or liabilities under the contract are relevant rights or liabilities.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s first amendment at page 204, line 6.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 204, line 35.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 204, line 35.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 204, line 35.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 211, line 11.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 211, line 11.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 and 85.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Lord Greenhalgh
“Building safety directors of resident management companies
(1) This section applies in relation to a resident management company that is an accountable person for a higher-risk building.(2) The articles of association of the resident management company have effect as if they included such provision as may be prescribed relating to—(a) eligibility for appointment as a director of the company, for a building safety purpose;(b) the appointment of a director for such a purpose;(c) the entitlement to remuneration of a director appointed for such a purpose;(d) the removal of a director so appointed.(3) Subsection (2) has effect—(a) whether or not the provision is adopted by the company;(b) whether the company was formed before or after the coming into force of this section;(c) notwithstanding anything in the company’s articles of association.(4) In this section—“building safety purpose” means the purpose of supporting the resident management company in complying with its duties under this Part or under regulations made under this Part;“resident management company” has the meaning given by regulations made by the Secretary of State.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause makes provision about directors of a resident management company that is an accountable person.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on a subsequent amendment to this clause in the Minister's name which removes the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the building safety charge as a separate charge.
“(5A) The relevant lease has effect—(a) as if the matters for which the service charge is payable under the lease included the taking of building safety measures by or on behalf of a relevant person (insofar as this would not otherwise be the case), and(b) where the lease contains different methods for apportioning different relevant costs (within the meaning of section 18), as if it provided for any costs for which the tenant is liable by virtue only of paragraph (a) to be apportioned in the same way as costs incurred in connection with insuring the building.(5B) “Building safety measure” means any of the following—(a) applying for registration of a higher-risk building in accordance with section 77 of the Building Safety Act 2022;(b) applying for a building assessment certificate in accordance with section 78 of that Act;(c) displaying a building assessment certificate in accordance with section 81 of that Act;(d) assessing building safety risks in accordance with section 87 of that Act;(e) taking reasonable steps in accordance with section 88 of that Act (management of building safety risks), other than steps involving the carrying out of works as referred to in section 88(2);(f) preparing and revising a safety case report in accordance with section 89 of that Act;(g) notifying the regulator of a safety case report, and giving a copy of a safety case report to the regulator, in accordance with section 90 of that Act;(h) establishing and operating a mandatory occurrence reporting system, and giving information to the regulator, in accordance with section 91 of that Act;(i) keeping information and documents in accordance with section 92 of that Act;(j) giving information and documents to any person in accordance with section 93, 94 or 96 of that Act;(k) complying with any duty under section 95 of that Act (residents’ engagement strategy);(l) establishing and operating a system for the investigation of complaints in accordance with section 97 of that Act;(m) giving a contravention notice to a resident, and making an application to the county court, in accordance with section 100 of that Act;(n) making a request to enter premises, or making an application to the county court, in accordance with section 101 of that Act (access to premises).(5C) For the purposes of this section any of the following incurred in connection with the taking of a building safety measure are to be regarded as incurred in taking the measure—(a) legal and other professional fees;(b) fees payable to the regulator;(c) management costs.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the service charge provisions under the lease have effect as if they covered costs incurred or to be incurred in connection with the taking of building safety measures.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
““relevant person” means—(a) if the landlord is an accountable person for the building, the landlord or a special measures manager for the building;(b) otherwise, any superior landlord who is an accountable person for the building or a special measures manager for the building;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, which creates a definition of “relevant person”, is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
“(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument amend subsection (5B) so as to add, remove or modify a building safety measure.(8) The regulations may make incidental, transitional or saving provision.(9) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (7) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confers a power to amend the definition of “building safety measure”.
Lord Greenhalgh
“30DA Liability for remuneration of building safety director of resident management company etc(1) This section applies to a lease of premises which consist of or include a dwelling in a higher-risk building if—(a) the landlord is an accountable person for the building,(b) the landlord is—(i) a resident management company within the meaning of section (Building safety directors of resident management companies) of the Building Safety Act 2022, or(ii) an RTM company within the meaning of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 (right to manage), and(c) the tenant is liable to pay a service charge.(2) The lease has effect—(a) as if the matters for which the service charge is payable under the lease included remunerating any director of the landlord appointed for a building safety purpose (insofar as this would not otherwise be the case), and (b) where the lease contains different methods for apportioning different relevant costs (within the meaning of section 18), as if it provided that any costs for which the tenant is liable by virtue only of paragraph (a) to be apportioned in the same way as costs incurred in connection with insuring the building.(3) In this section—“building safety purpose” means the purpose of supporting the landlord in complying with its duties under Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 or under regulations made under that Part;“landlord” includes any person who has a right under the lease to enforce payment of a service charge;“service charge” has the meaning given by section 18;“tenant” includes any person who has an obligation under the lease to pay a service charge.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes provision for the recovery from tenants of costs incurred by a residents’ company in remunerating a director of the company, appointed in connection with its building safety duties.
“(za) as if it contained provision authorising the appointment of a person (whether or not a leaseholder or a resident of the building) as a director of the landlord for a building safety purpose,”Member’s explanatory statement
The new clause “Building safety directors of resident management companies” which stands in the name of the Minister ensures that any restrictions in the Articles of Association of a residents management company are disapplied insofar as they conflict with the new power to appoint a professional director to discharge building safety duties. This amendment supplements that amendment by ensuring that any similar restriction imposed by a lease is also disapplied.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the second amendment in the name of the Minister at page 119, line 36.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
“(2) A covenant or agreement, whether contained in a lease to which section 30D or 30DA applies or in an agreement collateral to such a lease, is void insofar as it purports to modify the effect of section 30D(5A) or 30DA(2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
“(3) After section 20E (inserted by section 134) insert—“20F Limitation of service charges: excluded costs for higher-risk buildings(1) This section applies in relation to a lease to which section 30D (higher-risk buildings: building safety costs) applies.(2) Excluded costs are not to be regarded as relevant costs to be taken into account in determining the amount of service charge payable by a tenant under the lease.(3) In this section “excluded costs” means any of the following incurred in connection with Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 or regulations made under that Part—(a) costs incurred or to be incurred by or on behalf of a relevant person solely as a result of any penalty imposed or enforcement action taken by the regulator;(b) legal costs incurred or to be incurred by or on behalf of a relevant person in connection with special measures order proceedings;(c) costs incurred or to be incurred by or on behalf of a relevant person by reason of any negligence, breach of contract or unlawful act on the part of that relevant person or a person acting on their behalf;(d) costs of a description prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State that are incurred or to be incurred by or on behalf of an accountable person or special measures manager for the building in connection with the taking of building safety measures.(4) In this section—“building safety measures” has the meaning given by section 30D;“enforcement action” means action taken with a view to, or in connection with—(a) securing compliance with Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 or regulations made under that Part, or(b) the imposition of a sanction in respect of a contravention of that Part or those regulations; “the regulator” has the meaning given by section 118 of the Building Safety Act 2022;“relevant person” means—(a) where the landlord under the lease is an accountable person for the higher-risk building, the landlord or a special measures manager for the higher-risk building;(b) where the landlord is not such an accountable person, any superior landlord who is an accountable person for the higher-risk building or a special measures manager for the higher-risk building;“special measures order proceedings” means any proceedings relating to the making, variation or discharge of, or the giving of directions in relation to, a special measures order under Schedule 7 to the Building Safety Act 2022 (including any appeals in relation to such proceedings).(5) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.(6) A power to make regulations includes power to make—(a) incidental, transitional or saving provision;(b) different provision for different purposes.(7) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”(4) In section 21 (service charge information) after subsection (6) insert—“(6A) In particular, regulations which make provision about higher-risk buildings (within the meaning of Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022) need not contain provision of a kind mentioned in subsection (2) or (3).”(4A) In section 30 (meaning of “landlord” and “tenant”)—(a) after the definition of “landlord” insert—““services” includes, in relation to a dwelling in a higher-risk building (as defined by section 30H), building safety measures within the meaning of section 30D;”;(b) in the heading for ““flat”, “landlord” and “tenant”” substitute ““landlord”, “tenant” etc”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment applies the existing provisions on service charges to costs incurred in respect of building safety measures, provides that certain costs may not be taken into account in calculating service charges, makes provision about service charge information, and makes provision consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
section 30DA (liability for remuneration of building safety director of resident management company etc).””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
(a) for “30B” substitute “30H”;” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on other amendments to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
(b) a special measures order (within the meaning of Schedule 7 to the Building Safety Act 2022) is in force.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that subsection (2) of inserted section 47A does not apply if a special measures order is in force.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
(b) a special measures order (within the meaning of Schedule 7 to the Building Safety Act 2022) is in force.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that subsection (2) of inserted section 49A does not apply if a special measures order is in force.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 115 removing the building safety charge as a separate charge.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments in the name of the Minister leaving out Clauses 82 to 86 (which remove provision about building safety managers).
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister leaving out Clause 82.
The Earl of Lytton
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment extends the cost protections in the Bill to leaseholders in buildings of all heights containing two more residential dwellings.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, this amendment is leading the charge here. I refer noble Lords to Grand Committee, when the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in particular, questioned why only buildings of a certain height benefited from the cost protections in this Bill. This is a matter on which I feel very strongly—and, indeed, both my cosignatories feel strongly—and I give notice that I may well press the amendment to a Division.
I reminded the Grand Committee at the time that building safety is not governed by building height alone or, possibly, at all. I refer to the fire at Worcester Park in September 2019. The Minister went on to give us a graphic description of the circumstances. However, despite that the Minister stuck to his text in suggesting that lower rise buildings do not have the same risk profile. I have probably paraphrased him, and that may not be the precise form of words that he used, but that is the drift of what he was saying. If, as he recounted in the circumstances of the Worcester Park fire, it was so well alight after nine minutes that the fire and rescue services concluded that the building could not be saved, that represents to me an existential risk to occupiers who may be asleep, confused of mind, infirm, pregnant, disabled or otherwise particularly vulnerable, especially as regards the speed with which an inferno can evidently develop.
A block of flats without adequate separating walls to me is just as dangerous above ground-floor level as a high-rise block without decent fire doors. I do not make a distinction in terms of risk; they are both equally perilous, as far as I can see. Be that as it may, I have received emails from occupiers of identical buildings in the same development in the Worcester Park building, telling me that the developer was remarkably reluctant to address basic issues and shortcomings, many of which may have accelerated the fire in the building that was actually destroyed. Furthermore, they said that they could not sell their flats and that insurance had gone through the roof, and interim measures were costing a fortune—exactly the same problems and privations as with taller buildings.
I will just say—other noble Lords will be able to elaborate—that the Government have not made the case for excluding these, other than giving the impression that this is driven, dare I say it, by a degree of Treasury parsimony and a departmental inclination to go no further than it absolutely has to. There seems no good reason for height exclusion on any moral, economic, safety or practical ground. I beg to move.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, as noble Lords may know, I am not in the habit of making long speeches, but this group of amendments covers a huge range of issues and is arguably the most important group today. I am proposing seven amendments and I have added my name to four others. I will be as brief as I can, and the good news is that I do not propose to intervene in this debate again.
I will go through the amendments in the order in which they appear, starting with Amendment 115, moved by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, to which I have added my name. It seeks to expand the service charge protection of Schedule 9 to buildings of all heights. At the moment, as we heard, buildings under 11 metres get no help at all from the proposed waterfall. Unless developers agree to fix those buildings voluntarily, or leaseholders are willing to engage in litigation, there is no meaningful help on offer.
As mentioned in earlier debates, buildings under 11 metres can be just as dangerous as buildings over 11 metres. The fire at Richmond House, the 9-metre building that burned to the ground in less than 11 minutes in September 2019, shows the dangers. Buildings under 11 metres are excluded, even though they have exactly the same defects, for which leaseholders bear no responsibility at all. They suffer exactly the same consequences as those in taller buildings: unaffordable service charges, repossession and bankruptcy. I see no equity or principle behind this decision, which is there solely to save money.
When we asked about this in meetings on the Bill, we were told there was no systemic problem with cladding in these buildings—a statement that brings no consolation to leaseholders, such as this one, one of many who have written to me. The letter says:
“I am a leaseholder in a building well under 11 metres. We are three storeys high with 10 flats. We are therefore excluded from any support from the Government, yet our freeholder/managing agent is taking us to court on Friday to ask them to agree to us having to pay for the cost of remediation—a £26,000 service charge in 2022 per leaseholder. We are told the freeholder does not have the means or obligation to pay for these works that we need to reduce the annual insurance premium. We are told that the only way to pay for these works is via the leaseholder and that we will be legally responsible to fund the money and pay it upfront so that the management agent has the means to pay for works.”
The letter continues:
“I hope the Minister will see fit to bring our needs in line with leaseholders in larger properties and protect us from at least some of the costs that we currently face.”
Last week’s Sunday Times had an article showing that, despite what the Government say, buildings under 11 metres remain unsaleable and unmortgageable, as quotes from the major lenders in the article underlined.
We were also told that there were not many such buildings. That is good news, but it follows from that that the extra cost of putting this inequity right is so small that I hope the Minister can accept it.
I should have said at the beginning that I am grateful to Martin Boyd, Liam Spender and Sue Bright, who in their personal capacity have helped me with some briefing.
I turn now to Amendment 117 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. It seeks to expand the service charge protections to enfranchised buildings and buildings where the right to manage has been exercised. This would ensure that all leaseholders are treated equally.
It has been the policy of successive Administrations to encourage leaseholders to enfranchise and buy their freeholds, and to move away from a feudal system of tenure. That process began in the 1960s, when leaseholders could buy their houses, and was extended to flats in the 1990s. Since then, there have been other measures to encourage leaseholders to buy their freeholds, with the security of the independence that goes with it, and measures to promote and enhance right to manage. We are promised legislation in the next Session to take this policy forward.
Against that background, it would be perverse if the legislation before us today put enfranchised leaseholders in a worse position than leaseholders who are not enfranchised, but that is what Clause 120 does. The Government cannot hope to succeed in encouraging more resident-owned and resident-run buildings unless they treat all buildings affected by fire safety issues equally. As I understand the legislation, once your building is “not relevant”, it in effect becomes a second-class building in perpetuity.
I have looked at the government amendments tabled since Committee stage but they seem to make the position worse by confirming that these buildings are excluded. That means that people living in these buildings are being left to fend for themselves, either by undertaking litigation or by recovering what they can from the building safety fund. An excellent article in the recent edition of Inside Housing shows the problem with the fund:
“If the rate of remediation through the fund continues at this pace, it will be decades before all blocks receive funds—never mind see work completed.”
I hope that my noble friend will be able to confirm what he said in Committee, which appears to contradict what is in the Bill. He said:
“My noble friend Lord Young asked the very important question of whether enfranchised properties will have to pay all the costs for remediation. I want to be absolutely clear—read my lips—no, they are not. This will not apply to buildings which have exercised a right to collective enfranchisement, or to commonhold land, which in this case, admittedly, is very few buildings. New subsection (3) in government Amendment 63 is very clear on that point. I am happy to speak to my noble friend afterwards, but I am very clear that they are not expected to shoulder the burden. They are effectively leaseholders that have enfranchised as opposed to freeholders. I hope that helps.”—[Official Report, 28/2/22; col. GC 262.]
However, under Clause 20, these buildings are left to fend for themselves if the developer does not pay or if they do not have the wherewithal to engage in litigation against a well-resourced developer. They miss out on the guarantee in paragraph 8 of Schedule 9 that no leaseholder will have to pay for cladding costs, because they do not live in a relevant building. They are not treated as leaseholders but as freeholders.
My amendment does no more than achieve the ambition set out by the Secretary of State in another place on 10 January, when he said that
“we will protect leaseholders today and fix the system for the future.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; col. 286.]
Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can confirm that, if you have not enfranchised, you are protected by the caps on what you can pay but, if you have enfranchised, there is no such protection. I hope that my noble friend will look at that again.
I turn to Amendment 123 in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lady Neville-Rolfe. This would change the definition of qualifying leases so that buy-to-let landlords with interests in up to five properties, including their main home, benefit from the leaseholder cost protections in Schedule 9. While we welcome the Government’s movement on this, we would like to go a little bit further.
As I mentioned in Committee on 24 February, there are many buildings where flats are owned by buy-to-let landlords. If those landlords cannot pay their share of the bill, it will mean that not all of the money is available to do the works to the whole building and so remediation will not commence, to the disadvantage of all the residents in the block, who will continue to live in unsafe premises. Many landlords hold their buy-to-let properties as part, or in some cases all, of their pension provision. According to data that the Government provided in July 2021 in response to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, of the 2.2 million buy-to-let landlords paying income tax, 1.5 million—68%—fell within the basic income tax band.
This point is reinforced by the recent report on the remediation and financing of building safety work by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee in another place. It said:
“Buy-to-let landlords are no more to blame than other leaseholders for historic building safety defects, and landing them with potentially unaffordable bills will only slow down or prevent works to make buildings safe.”
It wanted total exemption, but we do not go quite so far. The committee rightly pointed to the kinds of landlord who will be affected:
“We heard from landlords who find themselves outside of the scope of the protections, who invested in properties to support their children, to provide income after being made redundant, to help pay for the costs of caring for relatives, or to provide for their retirement, now facing bills they cannot afford. One contributor told us they had invested in flats using compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority ‘after the murder of my husband in the 7/7 atrocity’ and now faces ‘vast bills’”.
Our amendment would align the provisions of the Bill more closely with the Bank of England’s definition of a portfolio landlord as being one with four or more mortgaged buy-to-let properties across all lenders in aggregate. It would also ensure that most private landlords who are leaseholders would be covered by the Bill. The Government’s most recent English private landlords survey shows that 83% of private landlords rent out between one and four properties.
I understand that the Minister has indicated to the National Residential Landlords Association that he might be open to considering a formula which would enable landlords to access support under the government scheme where their portfolio of properties is valued at a certain amount, instead of simply counting how many there are. There are huge variations in the value of property for a multitude of reasons. For example, someone who has 10 other properties may have significantly less means than someone who only owns one property. Yet the government approach will penalise the individual with less means purely because of the number of properties their own. Some buy-to-let owners may have significant equity in their properties while others may be mortgaged to the hilt or in negative equity. The current approach is very crude and does not differentiate between the wealth of those affected, so I wonder whether the Government are considering that option.
I move to Amendment 126, which is a technical amendment. At the moment it is not quite clear whether the protections being given to leaseholders can be sold on to future buyers. It is important that that should be possible, in order to get the market moving again. Clause 121 defines a “qualifying lease” as one held by “a relevant tenant”. A relevant tenant must on 14 February this year meet the occupation and property ownership provisions set out in Clause 121. The Government say that this clause allows protection to be passed from someone who qualifies on 14 February to a future buyer, but I am not sure that that is the case because the restrictions the Government are imposing on who can benefit from help, such as those owning more than four buy-to-let properties, depend on the same definition of relevant tenant.
If the Government’s view of Clause 121 is correct and the existing wording allows leases with protection to be sold on, the Government may have made a drafting error. If the lease can be sold and the protections passed to a buyer, the characteristics of the buyer are irrelevant. If so, it means someone with 10 flats—six more than the four allowed—could come in, buy up a lease and still get protection. I do not think that is what the Government intend. It is important that we get the market moving, but also that we do not give opportunistic cash buyers the chance to buy up these leases and benefit from protections that other buy-to-let landlords will not get.
Amendment 153, which amends government Amendment 152, is technical. Given the passage of time and the fact my notes are in very small print, I think I will pass over that.
I turn now to Amendments 157 to 160 and 163, which are really important. They deal with the amount leaseholders have to pay for non-cladding costs. On this, my preference is for Amendments 155 and 156, which mean zero liability; the leaseholder pays nothing. The Government say these caps are necessary because of legal advice. The claim is that to impose measures on developers and landlords, it is necessary for leaseholders to contribute in some cases.
As with all legal matters, there appears to be a diversity of opinion among professional lawyers on the Government's judgment that Article 1, Protocol 1 requires leaseholders to contribute anything. But if my noble friend the Minister advises your Lordships that those two amendments—the ones with zero cost—mean that he can no longer assert that the legislation is compatible with the ECHR, then Amendments 157 to 160 come into play and limit the liability. My noble friend Lord Blencathra will speak to Amendment 158.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 260 and 126. I apologise for not being here this morning. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for speaking to our amendments.
Amendment 260 enfranchises leaseholders and brings them closer to the decision-making processes of their building. It ensures that residents of the building are made aware, within the earliest reasonable timeframe, by the responsible person, when they are served any notice given by the fire and rescue service. It also ensures that, when in complying with the notice the responsible person passes costs on to residents, the residents will have 21 days after being informed to appeal this notice to the court.
The essence of this amendment touches upon the freeholder’s incentives, as there is no incentive for the freeholder to challenge a notice from the fire service requiring remedial work, since ultimately it is the tenants or the leaseholders who will shoulder these costs. The reality is that freeholders often do not have skin in the game and are more than happy to comply with a served notice, with the full knowledge that they will not be the ones incurring costs for complying with the notice. This amendment is not handing leaseholders the power to indefinitely hold up works necessary for the safety of the building. It is simply providing them, as the ones with real skin in the game, with the right of appeal.
I recognise that allowing any individual tenant the right of appeal is messy and may lead to a flurry of unnecessary appeals, which in turn could create unnecessary work when it is least needed. Nevertheless, in principle, leaseholders deserve enfranchisement and mechanisms to challenge decisions that are simply imposed on them. Appeals being done through a representative body—a recognised tenants association, for example—would represent a more sensible position, as that would prevent rogue leaseholders going against the majority to appeal decisions, while at the same time allowing appeals to occur through a body that is both representative and accountable to the leaseholder, and which retains regular communication with the responsible person.
I now turn to Amendment 124, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The definition of a qualifying lease and its implications are concerning, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, has pointed out. I am pleased that the Government have extended this definition to three dwellings in total, but it is still problematic. The protections under the waterfall system in Schedule 9 are only available for qualifying leases. Technically, an individual who owns three flats valued at £900,000 per dwelling would meet the cap of £15,000 for remedial costs, whereas an individual with five investment properties in the north of England valued at £200,000 per dwelling would be offered no protection and be liable for the entire remedial costs for each dwelling.
Is this not the sort of regionalism that the Government want to avoid in their levelling-up policy? Under the Government’s scheme, the individual, up in the north, for example, whose total property holdings are valued at £1 million, is required to pay for all their remedial costs, whereas their equivalent in London, with total property holdings of £2.7 million, would have their costs capped at £15,000. This example is to make the point that simplistically saying a number, whether it be one, two, four, whatever, for the number of leases allowed under the definition of a qualifying lease, says very little about the value of those apartments. It is evidently unfair that an individual with a much lower portfolio in value might incur much higher costs.
I accept the reality that, under any scheme, there will be winners and losers. However, I wonder whether the Government need to go back to the drawing board on how they determine whether a private landlord qualifies under the definition of a qualifying lease, as it is almost entirely void of context. It would be much wiser to determine the definition of a qualifying lease for private landlords based on the value of their entire property portfolio, rather than simply on the number of leases that they own.
This point about context brings us to the crux of what Amendment 124 would do, which is to provide some level of security to those receiving a state pension. Young landlords who may fail to qualify under the definition at least have the ability and the time to incorporate this setback into their retirement plans. It does not make it any less painful, but it would at least be a more manageable state of affairs for which they might be able to plan accordingly over many years if they have that time ahead in which to work. Furthermore, it would be assumed that many private landlords would be in receipt of an active income, probably a reasonable income, if they were able to afford multiple leases and not be classed as a qualifying lease. Regardless of whether this means that their exclusion is fair, at the very minimum they have the possibility of greater future earnings. The hope is that those individuals may at least be able to weather these costs in the long run and secure for themselves the financial future they want in retirement.
However, pensioners do not have this luxury. Beyond their state and work pensions, savings and any income they get from renting out properties or other dividends, there is almost a negligible prospect of them finding additional ways to raise money. The whole point of planning for your pension is the knowledge that whatever you have in your possession at the point of retirement is what you will be required to live on for the rest of your life. What concerns me is the notion that, as a result of this definition of a qualifying lease, some pensioners who have worked their entire lives and saved and invested diligently so they can enjoy their retirement without financial worry will be suddenly forced to raise enormous amounts of capital to fund remedial works. How does one expect a pensioner to raise such funds? I hope that my concerns are not well founded, but I fear that unless the definition of a qualifying lease makes reference to those on pensions, retirees may find their entire financial life’s work in tatters.
I am not a fan of the simplistic way in which the Government are deciding which private landlords do or do not qualify under the definition. However, if I am forced to work within this framework, I think that the provisions contained within Amendment 124, in ensuring that pensioners who own up to six leases in total also fall under the definition of a qualifying lease, are fair ones that protect those who will find it exceedingly difficult to adjust financially to the bills that may come their way.
In this vein, I also support the provisions contained in Amendment 123, extending that number of leases up to five. However, I believe even this is a sticking plaster, for the reasons that I have just outlined, as it says nothing about the value of an individual’s property portfolio.
I really hope that the Government will be able to do something more on this and, at a minimum, offer some assurances to those pensioners affected that they will not see their life’s financial planning reduced to ruin. More comprehensively, I hope that between now and Third Reading the Government will look at this definition of a qualifying lease for private landlords and how in reality it is to the benefit of private landlords with a few but highly expensive leasehold properties.
I am pleased to see Amendments 165 and 165A and their attempt to address the question of how a flat will be valued under the definition of a qualifying lease. However, I express a degree of concern about Amendment 165, as there are leaseholders I have met, not necessarily very wealthy, who purchased a leasehold flat for marginally over £1 million in London only to find that, as a result of requirements to undertake remedial works, the value has dramatically dropped and is now far less than the purchase price. Valuing their flats at the purchase price would likely mean that many leasehold flats which have lost significant value were brought into a cap which no longer reflected their current value. For this reason, I welcome Amendment 165A, as it would force the Government to consider issues surrounding negative equity when drawing up their mechanism to value these leases. I know that the Minister gave some reassuring comments during a meeting we had and hope that he might expand on them today so that leaseholders can be reassured that their leases will be fairly valued.
Finally, I support all those amendments in this group seeking to reduce the costs that can be passed on to leaseholders, along with Amendment 115, which would extend the cost protection to leaseholders in buildings of all heights. Taken together, these amendments could provide a package of measures that would deliver justice to those unfairly caught up in this scandal.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I was a little slow in rising to introduce the government amendments. I was, perhaps, a little punch drunk after the length of the debate today.
It is only right, and I am sure we all agree, that building owners and landlords should share in the cost of fixing dangerous buildings. We have carefully engineered this Bill to ensure that those responsible, and otherwise those with the broadest shoulders, will be the first who are required to pay. Where there is no party that clearly should pay in full, and only in this scenario, our approach spreads the costs fairly and equitably and, above all, ensures that the most vulnerable leaseholders are protected. These measures are a robust and unprecedented legislative intervention, reversing the existing legal presumption that leaseholders must bear the costs of historical building safety defects.
The Government have listened to the comments raised by noble Lords, and we have tabled amendments which go even further in protecting leaseholders. Before I set out the detail of these further protections, I would like to be clear that the protections we are putting in place are extensive and, as noble Lords will be well aware, that these must remain in balance with the demands placed on landlords and building owners in ensuring that building safety defects are fixed and paid for where no wrongdoing on their part has taken place. There is an element of fairness here that we need to deliver. The Bill changes the private contract between the landlord and the leaseholder by stating that leaseholders will not pay any costs except in certain circumstances. Government can do this if it is in the general interest to do so, provided there is a fair balance between all the parties. Therefore, we need to make sure that the Bill is both proportionate and fair to all parties.
As I have said, leaseholders need to be protected, and we have brought in the most wide-ranging and expansive set of protections ever seen, allowing the courts to look through to associated companies to find both who is responsible and who has funds to remediate properties as there is no point in having money while properties remain unsafe. However, we are also aware that not all landlords were involved with the developer or have deep pockets, and we need to make sure that we consider the issue of building safety from all sides. We have therefore legislated on the side of the landlords by providing numerous robust routes for recovery of funds from those truly responsible: developers and the manufacturers of defective construction products.
To be clear, and bearing in mind my noble friends’ proposed amendments, let me put their minds at rest. The Bill makes it very clear that leaseholders will not pay anything in the majority of cases. These are where the landlord is the developer or is linked to the developer, where the landlord is wealthy and, finally, where the leaseholder’s property is valued at less than £325,000 inside London and £175,000 outside.
Where these absolute protections do not apply, the leaseholder’s contributions will be heavily capped. On leaseholder contribution caps, it is important to bear in mind that these caps are a maximum that leaseholders can be charged, not a target, and that, as above, they apply only where the landlord is not linked to the developer and cannot afford to pay in full. In addition, costs paid out in the past five years, including for interim costs such as waking watches, will count against the caps. Overall, we consider that in most cases leaseholders will not have to pay the full capped amount and many will pay nothing at all. Nevertheless, the Government agree it is critical that those leaseholders who are least likely to be able to afford to contribute towards historical remediation costs receive the greatest protection. That is why we have tabled amendments to provide that any qualifying lease with a value below £175,000, or £325,000 in Greater London, will be protected from all costs relating to non-cladding defects and interim measures. This is in addition to the protections for cladding remediation costs, which apply to all qualifying leases, and to all leases in buildings owned by or connected to developers.
Amendment 164 sets out that the value of a qualifying lease at the qualifying time is to be determined by the most recent sale price on the open market, prior to 14 February this year, uprated in accordance with the UK House Price Index published by the Office for National Statistics. Uprating values for this purpose will be set out in legislation.
Amendments 118 and 119 expand the definition of “enfranchised buildings” to ensure that all types of enfranchised buildings are covered.
We have listened very carefully to concerns about leaseholder affordability in the small number of cases where leaseholders are paying up to the caps. That is why we have tabled Amendment 166, to double the repayment period from five to 10 years. For leaseholders whose property is not below the threshold and whose building owner or landlord is not liable for the full remediation costs, Amendment 166 will mean that with regard to the capped costs the monthly repayments will be halved.
We have also listened carefully to those who were worried about buy-to-let investors who may be holding leasehold properties instead of a pension. As a result, we have amended Clause 121 to provide that people owning up to three UK properties qualify for the protections. As before, the principal home will always qualify, irrespective of how many additional properties are owned.
As well as going further to protect leaseholders, we have tabled a number of amendments which add key detail to the measures. We are clear that developers must fix the buildings they developed. That is why we have tabled Amendments 141 to 143 to Schedule 9, which clearly state that, where the landlord is or is linked to the developer, they will not be able to pass costs on to any leaseholder. This includes non-qualifying leaseholders such as commercial leaseholders and those with more than three UK properties. We have also tabled Amendment 145, which extends the definition of a developer to include persons who were in a joint venture with the developer. If you commissioned the work, you will also count as the developer.
We have also tabled Amendment 152, which will amend Schedule 9 to provide that where the landlord meets the contribution condition—defined as having a total net worth of more than £2 million per in-scope building as of 14 February 2022—they will not be able to pass any costs on to qualifying leaseholders. The calculation for net worth will be set out in regulations and will take into account parent and associated companies. This will ensure that those who have used complex corporate structures, such as special purpose vehicles, cannot evade liability where they can afford to meet the costs of remediation.
We are also amending Clauses 120 and 122 on the definitions for relevant buildings, landlords and works. These amendments will extend provisions to include work undertaken to remedy a defect and will clarify that buildings that are leaseholder-owned are out of scope because, in such buildings, the leaseholders are effectively the freeholders as well. With Amendment 121, we set out how the height of an in-scope building and its number of storeys will be calculated.
Amendments to Clauses 122 and 136 cover further definitions, including clarifying that associated partnerships are included, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, raised in Committee. Amendment 169 to Schedule 9 inserts a new definition of cladding remediation, which now means the removal or replacement of any part of a cladding system that forms the outer wall of an external wall system and is unsafe.
Amendments 170 and 171 provide that the landlord cannot pass on costs to a qualifying leaseholder relating to professional services, in addition to legal costs. Amendment 177 provides that certain leases are taken to be qualifying leases without the tenant providing a certificate, unless steps are taken. It also provides that landlords are taken to have met the contribution condition unless they provide a certificate proving otherwise. This means that the legal burden will be on the landlord to prove that they are entitled to pass on capped remediation costs.
The amendments also make minor technical and consequential amendments to clauses to ensure the provisions work as intended, remove extraneous powers and commence the provisions two months after Royal Assent.
It is right that leaseholders be protected from extortionate costs of remediating historical building safety defects, in a manner that balances the demands placed on landlords and building owners, where no wrongdoing on their part has taken place. I ask your Lordships to welcome and support this significant and important set of amendments, which go further to protect leaseholders and provide that fair balance.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, this is probably the most important group of amendments we are considering today, because it is absolutely at the heart of the building safety scandal that started nearly five years ago with the loss of 72 people in the Grenfell fire. I always think it is worth remembering that: 72 people died and the lives of many families were changed for ever, and that happened because of systemic and long-term failures in the construction industry.
It is also worth remembering that leaseholders since that time have found themselves under the enormous pressure of anxiety when they receive invoices, maybe for £100,000 or more. Some of them have not been able to cope with that level of anxiety, thinking that nothing would change, and have chosen bankruptcy as a consequence and therefore lost everything they had saved and worked for. For some whom I have heard about, sadly, this pressure may have contributed to something even worse: in the face of the bills and a long dark tunnel with no solution, they ended their lives. That is the backdrop. That is the tragic impact this has had on individuals across the country, and which has brought us to this place. This set of amendments is at the heart of those concerns.
I first raised my worries about leaseholders being liable for all the costs of cladding, removal and remediation of all the fire safety defects when the Fire Safety Bill was first debated in 2020. Unfortunately, I did not succeed in amending it at that stage, but what has happened since has been remarkable—the number of people on all sides of the House who have taken up the cudgels to argue the case, rightly, for justice for leaseholders. I give enormous credit to the cladding campaigners from all groups and different cities around the country who have got together and done the investigation, found the facts and put the case to the Government, who, to their credit, have listened and made the changes we have seen today. I think there are over 200 government amendments to the Bill today.
The question of justice for leaseholders is still at the heart of the Bill, and I contend that the Government still have not gone far enough in fulfilling what the Secretary of State and the Minister have said: that they should not pay a penny. They have done everything right and nothing wrong. They should not pay anything towards this remediation, because the flammable cladding, sometimes knowingly, was put on buildings, as was exposed in the Grenfell inquiry. Shoddy construction, sometimes deliberate, to cut corners and save costs, has also been exposed during the Grenfell inquiry.
I want to speak to Amendment 156 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stunell, but also to Amendment 155 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and to Amendments 158 and 159 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Blencathra, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to which I have added my name. They focus on trying to solve the problem of justice for leaseholders, who should not pay a penny.
Unfortunately, the Minister has said today that “the majority” will not pay. Well, if the majority will not pay, the minority will—and the minority should not, because none of this is of their making. My Amendment 156 seeks to establish that what the leaseholder should pay is a peppercorn—a grand, historical way of saying zero, zilch. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for his support for Amendment 155 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which uses the word “zero”. I use “peppercorn”, but they get to the same place, and he has acknowledged the justice of this case.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure, especially after that introduction, to follow my noble friend Lady Pinnock. I should say that I have not spoken before on this Bill, and I apologise for coming in only at this stage. I want to contribute on just one aspect of the amendments in this group: the legal advice that the Government have apparently found persuasive, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and by my noble friend Lady Pinnock.
Noble Lords have heard that Amendments 155 and 156—and, to a lesser extent, 158 and 159—would significantly limit the permitted maximum payable by leaseholders under paragraphs 5 and 6 of Schedule 9 below the caps contended for by the Government, so that leaseholders would pay nothing, or only a small amount, towards remediation costs. The Government have asserted that, if those amendments were passed, the legislation would probably breach a freeholder’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of their property under Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR. I also understand that the Government are therefore concerned that that would mean the Minister could not make a statement of compatibility in conformity with Section 19 of the Human Rights Act.
I do not accept that analysis, and I will say briefly why—and I hope I will be forgiven for quoting the relevant part. It is right that the article provides, in paragraph 1:
“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.”
But paragraph 2 goes on to say:
“The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”
I am relatively confident that this is not a straightforward deprivation case in the first paragraph, because there is no expropriation of the freeholder’s property, in fact or in law. My understanding is that the Government agree with this, although they say that the Strasbourg case law is not clear on the point. On that, I disagree. My reading of the cases on this issue is that they are indeed relatively clear, and that any argument that this is a full deprivation case is unsustainable. But much more difficult is the question of whether this is a case of the Government controlling the freeholder’s use of their property, in such a way as to amount to a breach of the article by imposing effectively the entire remediation costs on those freeholders.
On the initial point as to whether or not this would be a control of use, I think the Government’s advice would be right, but that is not the end of the story. Once control of use is established, then the test is whether the conditions for its lawfulness in paragraph 2 of the article are met by the state. The test for a court, domestically or in Strasbourg, would be threefold. First, does the control of use serve the public interest? Secondly, does it comply with the conditions prescribed by law? Thirdly, does it pass what is sometimes called the fair balance test—that is, does is strike a fair balance between competing interests, and/or is it a proportionate response?
Generally, the European Court of Human Rights will interfere only if the state’s control of use has been arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable. In my view, freeholders would face a difficult uphill battle to persuade a court that a requirement that they meet full remediation costs, pursuant to primary legislation for a clearly public-interest aim—that the fire safety of buildings should be paid for by the freeholder, not my blameless leaseholders—conflicted with the principle of lawfulness or failed to meet the legitimate aim requirement.
Significantly in this context, the protection of the environment—which is, I suggest, analogous to the safety of residential property—has been clearly marked out in cases as a legitimate public interest, as have housing regulations involving rent control and protected tenancies.
The freeholders would have to rely on what is essentially a backstop argument: that these provisions, as amended—if they are—fail to strike a fair balance between their interests in their enjoyment of their property and the interests of the state in achieving a legitimate public policy aim. To rebut such an argument the state would have to show only that the law, as enacted, avoids arbitrariness, that it is foreseeable in its application, and that it strikes a balance between the public interest in protecting blameless leaseholders from heavy charges and the private right of commercial freeholders to enjoy their property. It would be difficult to argue that this legislation, even with any of the proposed amendments, failed to meet the fair balance test.
Nor is it, in my view, central to this argument that there should be a contribution of a particular amount or of a capped amount. For my part, I doubt that the European Court of Human Rights would find that the argument turned on the amount of any contribution by leaseholders. In this I disagree with the Government’s assessment. Indeed, it could be argued that the Government would be more, rather than less, vulnerable to an accusation of arbitrariness if they picked on a particular figure as a defensible cap, rather than legislated for nil contributions from leaseholders.
I am greatly fortified in my overall view by the fact that the margin of appreciation, as it is known, for states in the application of the fair balance test is very wide. I will omit the references that it makes to a number of decided cases, but the European Court of Human Right’s guide on this article, at paragraph 134, I think, says that
“the margin of appreciation available to the legislature in implementing social and economic policies will be a wide one and the Court will respect the legislature’s judgment as to what is ‘in the public interest’ unless that judgment be manifestly without reasonable foundation … Furthermore, the notion of ‘public interest’ is necessarily extensive … The Court normally shows deference to the Contracting States’ arguments that interference under its examination was in the public interest and the intensity of its review”
—the court’s review—
“in this regard is low.”
It follows that I do not believe that a Minister could not properly and conscientiously make a statement under Section 19 of the Human Rights Act that, to use the words of Section 19,
“in his view the provisions of the Bill are compatible with the Convention rights”.
The Minister does not have to be certain; a 51% chance of success in resisting a challenge is sufficient. In my view, that standard is met.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I have not spoken in these debates either. I hope, like the noble Lord, Lord Marks, I might be forgiven for intervening very briefly.
I took the opportunity of looking at Article 1 of Protocol 1 shortly before coming into the Chamber today, and at some of the background authorities to which the noble Lord has referred. I agree entirely with his carefully worded speech in every respect. There is, of course, a question of balance and a question of the margin of appreciation and the other technical phrases that he has used, with which I am very familiar, but I think his assessment of all these points is absolutely right. The prospects of a successful challenge really are very remote, and the Government would succeed. I agree with his assessment, and I hope this might be of some comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, in her amendment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to speak after hearing from two such knowledgeable noble Lords. I am tempted to say: let us cut to the chase and go straight to the vote on Amendment 115 and get it over with.
In the meantime, I would like to speak on Amendment 115, which I strongly support, and Amendment 123. I would like to comment on Amendments 155, 156 and 157, and to my Amendments 158, 159 and 163. Before doing that, although I will not speak to them, I was privileged to support Amendment 117 on enfranchising leaseholders, Amendment 124, moved by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, on pensioners, and Amendment 153, moved by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham.
On Amendment 115, concerned with buildings under 11 metres, I strongly support what is proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I hope he presses it to a vote unless my noble friend is willing to accept it. I have heard my noble friend the Minister say repeatedly—and he is largely right—that a building of under 11 metres may be less dangerous than a building of 20 or 30 storeys. I accept that even I could get out of a building of three storeys a bit faster than I could get out of one of 13 or 30 storeys. The risk is lower, but there is still a risk—that is one of the main points: there is still a risk. When we saw Richmond House burn down in nine or 10 minutes, it was horrifying. I hope that, if I was in there and woke up in time, I would have got out, but there might be some disabled people who could not have done so.
There is also an issue of principle. If someone has built a building, whether it is 1 metre high or 11 metres high, and used flammable materials or the wrong materials, they should be made to fix it, no matter how wealthy they are—if it is Abramovich or anyone else. If the building has flawed materials, it should be repaired, irrespective of the height. I appreciate that my noble friend has gone a long way on this and that he has been very kind in telling us at countless meetings that there is a lower risk in those buildings, but there is still a risk. Of course, he also said that the numbers were very small: in that case, if the numbers are very small, it is a small problem to fix.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Let us do it—that is a slogan for the next election for the noble Baroness. If the numbers are small, it is a small thing to fix.
Moving on to Amendment 123, again I support my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham in changing the definition of “qualifying lease” so that buy-to-let landlords with an interest in up to five properties, including their main home, benefit from the leaseholder cost protections in Schedule 9. As my noble friend said, this is important because there are many buildings where there are a lot of little flats owned by buy-to-let landlords. If those landlords cannot pay their share of the bill, it will mean that not all the money is available to do the work for the whole building. Similar issues may arise when landlords own flats in multiple different affected buildings that have received help from the building safety fund.
I appreciate that many of those landlords hold their buy-to-let properties as part of or, in some cases, all their pension provision. We have all had many emails from people in the past few days setting out some rather sad examples. I know my noble friend has increased the protection from two by-to-lets to four, but I do not think that goes far enough and we suggest that the overall figure should be five, but even then it omits many small landlords. I know it is not good law to quote hard cases, but I have an example of just one of dozens one has received in the past few weeks.
This person says, “I am 57 and have worked as an electrical contractor most of my life. I now have nine small rental apartments in Salford, valued at £80,000 to £100,000 each, a total of approximately £800,000 before they were valued at £0 since the cladding crisis. These properties were purchased in 2007-08 with years of savings and dropped 40% in value due to the financial crash of 2009 caused by the banks, which were bailed out, so my properties are still in negative equity. My nine apartments in the same building are all subject to safety issues, and my total service charges for 2022 are approximately £250,000 for the external wall system only, and this quote is from last year. The managing agents are in the process of getting updated quotes, which will be much higher. This does not include firebreaks, compartmentalisation, fire doors, et cetera, so my total costs are likely to be over £300,000 on property valued at £800,000. Having nine rental apartments seems to deem me to be a large-scale landlord not worthy of protecting from these costs, whereas someone with one or two rental properties in London worth a similar value to my nine little flats will be protected under the latest proposals.” He concludes, “The developer of the building has not replied to any letters from our managing agent or us leaseholders and has been trying to close the company for months, which we have objected to. The company has not traded for six years and there are zero funds in the accounts.”
That is a good example of why these amendments are necessary. It is not just the numbers, as the right reverend Prelate said, it has to be the overall value, and that is why I support my noble friend Lord Young’s amendment on having a percentage figure. If we cannot have zero or peppercorn, then 1% seems a fairer way of going about it.
On my Amendments 158, 159 and 163, the Government’s proposals require leaseholders in properties worth more than £175,000 and up to £1 million outside London to pay £10,000 towards non-cladding remedial works if money cannot be found from developers or landlords. In London leaseholders in properties worth more than £325,000 and up to £1 million may have to pay up to £15,000. Again, that is if money cannot be found from developers or landlords. Higher caps of £50,000 and £100,000 apply inside and outside London for properties worth more than £1 million or £2 million. The Government say that these caps are necessary, again because of legal advice which we have just heard rebutted and on which I shall comment in a moment. The claim is that in order to impose measures on developers and landlords it is necessary for leaseholders to contribute in some cases or we fall foul of the ECHR.
Amendment 158 in my name, also supported by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock, simply says
“leave out ‘£15,000’ and insert ‘£7,500’”,
halving the figure. For buildings in London, the amendment halves the contribution of leaseholders to non-cladding costs. Similarly, Amendment 159, for buildings outside London, reduces it from £10,000 to £5,000, halving the contribution of leaseholders on non-cladding costs; again, supported by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock. Finally, Amendment 163, again supported by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, says,
“leave out ‘£50,000’ and insert ‘£15,000’”.
That applies to the properties inside and outside London worth between £1 million and £2 million. The amendment would reduce the leaseholder contribution to non-cladding costs from £50,000 to £15,000.
All told, as we come to the end of this debate, the Government have been given four options by the various amendments. There is the zero option, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock; the peppercorn option, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock; the 1% option proposed by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham; or they can lower the cap, as in the amendments that I have just described. We have done all those amendments on lowering the cap in the hope that we could get around the Government’s view that the ECHR would put a block on this and that they would have to say that the Bill, or Act, was not compliant with the ECHR. But we have just heard from two eminent and learned noble Lords and an ex-Supreme Court judge that none of these amendments would be in breach of the ECHR. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, pointed out, even if we do not accept of these amendments and stick with the government ones, there will be some freeholders, landlords and developers who will still go to the ECHR and complain about anything to slow it down. So sticking with the Government’s level does not get us out of litigation in the European court.
I look forward to what my noble friend has to say on this. The legal arguments produced by the noble and learned Lords are very telling. I commend my amendments to the House, and also commend those from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. In relation to Amendment 115, the noble Lord discussed the 11-metre question. The emphasis is often on whether there is less risk in safety terms under or over 11 metres. For me, that slightly misses the point—which is that, regardless of whether you have resolved that, the problem is that freeholders are still charging and doing remediation work on buildings under 11 metres. Therefore, there are costs that those people who live in buildings under 11 metres have to pick up. The lecture that it is less risky over 11 metres really needs to be given to the freeholders not, necessarily, to the leaseholders—but that does not really help us, I think.
More generally, this is such an important group of amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, passionately reminded us of the context. It is true that being a leaseholder today is no longer just a description—it has almost become a full-time job in terms of fending off more and more financial demands and getting on top of the law. If you go and meet a group of leaseholders, they are having the kind of discussion about the ECHR that we have just heard from noble Lords, because they are trying to get on top of all these details and technicalities. It has become an overriding source of worry and anxiety, and genuinely—rather than just being about the status of home ownership—it has become a hellish state of affairs. So they need anything that can resolve that, and that is why this Bill is so important and this group of amendments matters.
My amendment in this group is a tiny, modest amendment that relates to evaluations. Amendment 165A in my name asks that any evaluations used to decide on caps for those still being charged for remediation should be looked at in a slightly different way. I do not want anything to be paid—I would go with peppercorn or nil—but if there are caps deployed and evaluations used, I remind noble Lords that we need to rectify a different kind of injustice.
The amendment asks that those valuations take into account that the leaseholder’s ability to pay will have been affected by the fact that their main wealth may be in the form of their asset—their home—and that their asset’s value may well be devalued hugely due to fire safety and building safety policies. The amendment notes that the properties may well be in negative equity as a consequence of government measures.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, there are many amendments in this group, and I have concerns about the open-ended financial implications while it remains unclear who is responsible for a perpetrator who cannot be found, or who is beyond the reach of the law—thus the importance of the review that the Minister has, I believe, agreed to bring forward much sooner than five years’ hence, although, without my amendment, he would need another Bill if we have to make changes, which seems inevitable.
There have been many powerful speeches, not least from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I will not repeat what has been said. I have, however, given my support to Amendment 123, and I would like to take the opportunity to commend my noble friend Lord Naseby who in Committee highlighted the unfairness of excluding buy-to-let premises from the safeguards in the Bill for reasons we have heard. The Government have acknowledged that he was right.
However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham that it is difficult to limit this arbitrarily to the ownership of two extra UK properties. I would prefer his formula of four properties, or some other, fairer system. He and others have worked so hard to get the various provisions of the Bill right. For example, he said that we may not have capped the liability of enfranchised leaseholders—which he and I have worked on together—as we had been led to believe in Committee.
I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s reply on the rationale and an answer to all the good points that have been raised, particularly on enfranchised leaseholders and how we do buy-to-let fairly.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an extremely important debate in which we have covered some of the critical issues still outstanding in the Bill. I thank the Minister for the introduction to the amendments. Many of them are good, but we believe there are still problems that need to be sorted out.
I will be brief. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his introduction to Amendment 115. If he decides to divide the House, he will have our support on that amendment.
I turn to my Amendment 155. It is really important that we take account of the principle that has been referred to by other noble Lords: there should be no cost to people who have done nothing wrong. It is not the fault of leaseholders that they have been left with these huge costs. We believe it is desperately unfair to force them to pay a penny, which is why my amendment has the word “zero” in it. As mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, we must not forget the strain on the mental health of leaseholders. They need clear and proper support, and they are relying on your Lordships to do the right thing by them. To me, this is a moral question. Should leaseholders pay costs that, for many, will still be huge despite the caps proposed by the Government? They are blameless; they should pay nothing.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for clearly laying out the legal position. It has been important for me to hear that from them, and the detail that they have provided, having had discussions with the Government on their concerns about the ECHR. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Blencathra, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their support.
I confirm that I intend to divide the House on Amendment 155. If it fails to pass, I will be happy to support the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Young, on Amendment 158.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I spoke to the government amendments as I hoped it would assist the House to have the Government’s views. With the permission of the House, I will now speak again in reply to the points raised by noble Lords on the non-government amendments that they have tabled.
Amendments 155 to 160 and Amendments 162 to 163 deal with leaseholder contribution caps. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and constructive approach, but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept these amendments. It is important to bear in mind that leaseholder contributions apply only in certain circumstances, and even then, only when a series of other steps have been exhausted. The caps do not apply at all in relation to cladding defects, nor do they apply where the value of the flat is less than £175,000 outside Greater London and £325,000 inside.
The caps only apply where the building owner or landlord is not linked to the developer and cannot afford to pay in full, where the developer cannot be made to fix their own building, and where the building owners have exhausted all reasonable steps to recover costs from third parties. Leaseholder contributions will only apply where there is no clear developer or wealthy landlord to meet the costs in full, and the party responsible for defective work cannot be identified. The Government consider that this will occur only in a minority of circumstances.
Where there is no party that clearly should pay in full—and only then—our approach spreads the costs fairly and equitably across those with an interest in the building and ensures above all that the most vulnerable leaseholders are protected. The Government’s latest amendments go even further in protecting leaseholders. Where the freeholder or landlord is not at fault and cannot pay to meet the costs, we need to ensure a proportionate approach that takes into account the interests of all parties. That is why our approach spreads the costs equitably among all relevant parties with an interest in the building.
The amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock, and—
Lord Cormack (Con)
Can my noble friend quantify how many people he expects will be paying? What is the maximum amount they will pay?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I cannot quantify the exact amount people will pay, but it is fair to say that we have set out a fundamental system of protection that admittedly does not go as far as the zero or peppercorn proposed in opposition amendments, but it does go a considerable way to ensuring that leaseholders are the last in line to pay, as opposed to the first.
As I said, the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, seek to reduce leaseholder contributions to zero or a peppercorn. Where there is no clear party that must pay, it would not achieve a fair balance between relevant parties to transfer the costs in full to the freeholder or landlord. I appreciate that that opinion seems to vary from that of noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, but that is the government position.
Amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra propose to reduce the leaseholder contribution caps, and another amendment proposes alternatively that the contribution is 1% of the lease value. The Government have already taken significant and far-reaching steps to protect leaseholders, protecting those in lower value properties and doubling the repayment period to 10 years. On that basis, I ask the noble Lords not to move their amendments.
Government Amendment 164 provides for the value of a lease to be determined without the need for a valuation. It allows for the value of the lease to be determined by uprating the most recent sale price prior to 14 February 2022. The uprating, which will be set out in regulations, will ensure all properties are compared on a level playing field. The uprating will be based on a metric called the house price index which tracks house prices. This will allow properties to be assigned a nominal present-day value.
Amendment 165, tabled by my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra, proposes that the value of the lease would be based solely on its most recent sale price. I am afraid the Government will not be able to accept this amendment as it would put leaseholders who have purchased their properties more recently at a significant disadvantage. The Government consider it important that properties are compared like for like, irrespective of when they were last sold. On that basis, I ask my noble friends not to move to their amendments.
I will turn now to Amendments 123 and 124, which deal with the definition of a qualifying lease. The Government have already tabled amendments which will see people with a total of up to three UK properties eligible for the protections. Amendment 123, tabled by my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Blencathra, proposes to increase this to a total of up to five UK properties. Amendment 124, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, proposes to increase the total to six for individuals in receipt of a state pension. I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept these amendments.
As I have previously discussed, it is important that the Government take a proportionate approach and ensure that our measures are fair to all parties. This includes considering where certain groups of leaseholders are likely, on average, to be able to afford to contribute to the costs of remediation. The Government need to focus their protections on those who need it most, primarily leaseholders living in their own homes and those who have moved out and are subletting. We also recognise concerns about people with small numbers of additional properties, and that is why we are ensuring those with up to three UK properties will be protected.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I will test the opinion of the House on Amendment 115 in a minute. However, before I do so, I will say how much I appreciate the contributions from all noble Lords. It has been an absolutely fascinating debate. As others have said, we are really getting into the core philosophy of what sits behind this Bill. I feel slightly like the skinny fly-half who, having got hold of the rugby ball and made a dash for the opposing side’s try line, finds himself up against a veritable wall of the opposition. It is only seconds later that he finds that a substantial number of heavyweights from his own side have propelled him over the line and applied him and the rugby ball into the mud to score a try. We have not scored a try yet. That, of course, depends on noble Lords—the referees.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his summary of this and the other amendments—I found him to be wholly convincing. I will not go into a great deal of detail, given the well-rounded debate we have had, but Amendment 117 seems to address an issue which actually borders on discrimination on the grounds of tenure, and it is a really perverse outcome for commonholders as a tenure. It is a tenure to which the Government should be giving support—we all know that. Excluding them cannot be right.
Various noble Lords have spoken about extending the number of buy-to-let properties. That would rely on their accepting the basic premise of a charge to the leasehold and freehold properties as a default mode—I shall come back to that in a minute.
Amendment 126 is necessary because, unless the benefits under the Bill inure to the benefit of the buyer as a signee, the Bill would simply act to the prejudice of the seller, which would remain and lead to unfair loss, cost, worry, delay and disadvantage—and we cannot have that. A reduction to zero charge would be beneficial and I would support it, but, again, I go back to the question whether I would start from this point.
I welcome a lot of these amendments and would welcome some of those from the Government if I was not troubled by their basic premise of deciding that orphan cost liabilities must be spread between two categories of the innocent. It is a matter of policy; it is not a matter of human rights. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said on that, and I found it absolutely fascinating. The fact remains that freeholders as we know them very often have a minority interest by value, so the questions remain: where do you find that real, available hard cash to fund the remediation, and after what degree of litigation, delay and cost?
Despite what the Minister said, and I admire his tenacity, I remain unconvinced by the arguments. On sub-11 metres, I do not see that the argument has been made for the quantifiable difference under the Bill that the Government are trying to achieve, bearing in mind that the Worcester Park building was a four-storey building. I wish to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 115.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, I cannot call Amendment 116, as it was pre-empted by Amendment 115, which has already been agreed by your Lordships.
Amendment 117
Lord Young of Cookham
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures leaseholders in enfranchised buildings are not excluded from the protection in the Bill.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, as Amendment 117 has now been agreed, I cannot call Amendments 118 and 119.
Amendment 120
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the power to make supplementary provision, in consequence of the proposed new Clause after Clause 120 in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
“Section 120: height of buildings and number of storeys
(1) This section applies for the purpose of section 120.(2) The height of a building is to be measured from ground level to the finished surface of the floor of the top storey of the building (ignoring any storey which is a roof-top machinery or plant area or consists exclusively of machinery or plant rooms).(3) When determining the number of storeys in a building—(a) any storey below ground level is to be disregarded;(b) any mezzanine floor is to be regarded as a storey if its internal floor area is at least half of the internal floor area of the largest storey in the building which is not below ground level.(4) In subsection (2) “ground level”, in relation to a building, means—(a) the level of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to the building, or(b) where the level of the surface of the ground on which the building is situated is not uniform, the level of the lowest part of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to it.(5) For the purposes of subsection (3) a storey is “below ground level” if any part of the finished surface of the ceiling of the storey is below the level of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to that part of the building.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause sets out how the height of a building, and the number of storeys, is to be calculated.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a lease may be a qualifying lease if a relevant tenant owns no more than two dwellings (excluding their interest under the lease).
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that subsection (4)(b) does not apply to Scotland (as the word “ownership” suffices for property in Scotland).
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
(a) works relating to the construction or conversion of the building, if the construction or conversion was completed in the relevant period;(b) works undertaken or commissioned by or on behalf of a relevant landlord or management company, if the works were completed in the relevant period;(c) works undertaken after the end of the relevant period to remedy a relevant defect (including a defect that is a relevant defect by virtue of this paragraph).“The relevant period” here means the period of 30 years ending with the time this section comes into force.(3A) In subsection (2) the reference to anything done (or not done) in connection with relevant works includes anything done (or not done) in the provision of professional services in connection with such works.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes drafting changes, provides that “relevant works” includes works undertaken to remedy a relevant defect (which means that a defect resulting from those works is capable of being a “relevant defect”), and ensures that professional services are covered (so a defect resulting from such services is capable of being a “relevant defect”).
““conversion” means the conversion of the building for use (wholly or partly) for residential purposes;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “conversion” for the purposes of this Clause.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the next amendment in the name of the Minister change the defined term to “relevant landlord or management company”, bringing in persons who are responsible under a lease for carrying out works.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement relating to the previous amendment in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(2) A partnership is associated with any person who was a partner in the partnership, other than a limited partner, at any time in the period of 5 years ending at the qualifying time (“the relevant period”).(2A) A body corporate is associated with any person who was a director of the body corporate at any time in the relevant period.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines who a partnership is associated with, and that a body corporate is associated with a person who was a director in the relevant period.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(9) In this section “partnership” means—(a) a partnership within the meaning of the Partnership Act 1890, or(b) a limited partnership registered under the Limited Partnerships Act 1907,or a firm or entity of a similar character formed under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom (and the reference to “limited partner” is to be read accordingly).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “partnership” for the purposes of this Clause.
“(10) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that, in relation to a prescribed reference in a provision mentioned in subsection (1) to anyone associated with another person, subsections (2) to (3) have effect with prescribed modifications.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that subsections (2) to (3) may be modified in their application to a reference, in a provision mentioned in subsection (1), to an associate.
Lord Greenhalgh
““joint venture” includes a partnership (as defined by section 123);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “joint venture” for the purposes of the Schedule.
““prescribed” means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “prescribed” for the purposes of the Schedule.
“(2) The definition of “service charge” applies in relation to a lease of premises that do not include a dwelling as it applies in relation to a lease of a dwelling.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that the definition of “service charge” works for leases of premises that do not include a dwelling (as to which, see the next amendment in the name of the Minister).
“(A1) This paragraph applies in relation to a lease of any premises in a relevant building.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment extends the leases to which this paragraph applies.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the preceding amendment in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment extends the persons responsible for a defect to persons who were in a joint venture with the developer.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the persons responsible for a defect include a person who undertook or commissioned the works in question.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the persons responsible for a defect include a person who undertook or commissioned the works in question.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on amendments to Clause 122 in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
Lord Greenhalgh
“No service charge payable if landlord meets contribution condition
3A_(1) No service charge is payable under a qualifying lease in respect of a relevant measure relating to any relevant defect if the landlord under the lease at the qualifying time (“the relevant landlord”) met the contribution condition.(2) The contribution condition is that the landlord group’s net worth at the qualifying time was more than N x £2,000,000,where N is the number of relevant buildings within sub-paragraph (3).(3) A relevant building is within this sub-paragraph if a member of the landlord group was, at the qualifying time, a landlord under a lease of the relevant building or any part of it.(4) For the purposes of this paragraph—(a) “the landlord group” means the relevant landlord and any person associated with the relevant landlord;(b) the net worth of the landlord group at the qualifying time is to be determined in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State.(5) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend the amount for the time being specified in sub-paragraph (2).(6) This paragraph does not apply if, at the qualifying time, the relevant landlord was—(a) a private registered provider of social housing (as to which see section 80 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008),(b) a local authority (as defined by section 29), or(c) a prescribed person.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that no service charge is payable under a qualifying lease in respect of a relevant measure relating to any relevant defect if the landlord met the condition mentioned in the paragraph (relating to net worth).
Lord Greenhalgh
(a) £325,000, if the premises demised by the qualifying lease are in Greater London;(b) £175,000, in any other case.(2) For the purposes of this paragraph the value of a qualifying lease at the qualifying time is its value determined in accordance with paragraph 6 and regulations made under it.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that no service charge is payable under a qualifying lease in respect of a relevant measure relating to any relevant defect if the value of the lease at the qualifying time is less than the amount mentioned in the amendment.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would reduce the maximum amount leaseholders could be liable to pay for fire remediation work to zero.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
I cannot call Amendments 158 and 159 for reasons of pre-emption.
Lord Greenhalgh
(a) the value of the qualifying lease at that time is to be determined as if the tenant’s total share at that time was 100%;(b) ”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that where the qualifying lease is a shared ownership lease the value of it at the qualifying time is to be determined as if the tenant's share at that time was 100%.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(6A) The regulations may in particular provide that, except in prescribed cases, the value of a qualifying lease at the qualifying time is to be determined by—(a) ascertaining the consideration given on the latest disposal of the qualifying lease on the open market to have been made before that time, and(b) if that disposal occurred before 2022, uprating the consideration in accordance with the regulations.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment mentions the kind of provision that may be made by regulations under paragraph 6(6).
Lord Greenhalgh
“(1) A relevant service charge which would otherwise be payable under a qualifying lease is payable only if (and so far as) the sum of—(a) the amount of the service charge, and(b) the total amount of relevant service charges which fell due in the period of 12 months ending with the day on which the service charge fell due,does not exceed one tenth of the permitted maximum.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the existing power to make regulations, and provides that a service charge in respect of a relevant measure is payable only so far as the total of such service charges in any 12 month period does not exceed one tenth of the permitted maximum.
““relevant service charge” means a service charge under a qualifying lease in respect of a relevant measure relating to any relevant defect.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the preceding amendment in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the condition that a tenant under the qualifying lease was resident at the qualifying time.
(a) forms the outer wall of an external wall system, and(b) is unsafe.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts a definition of “cladding remediation” (and removes the power to define that expression).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that this paragraph applies to legal or other professional services relating to liability or potential liability of a person in respect of a relevant defect.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the previous amendment in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the paragraphs of this Schedule to which the provisions in this paragraph apply.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
“(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations modify the application of this paragraph as it applies in relation to a lease of premises that do not include a dwelling.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 26.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 10 inserting a definition of “prescribed”.
“Presumption: qualifying lease
12A (1) This paragraph applies in relation to a lease that meets the conditions in paragraphs (a) to (c) of section 121(2).(2) The lease is to be treated for the purposes of this Schedule as a qualifying lease unless—(a) the landlord under the lease has taken all reasonable steps (and any prescribed steps) to obtain a qualifying lease certificate from a tenant under the lease, and(b) no such certificate has been provided to the landlord.(3) In this paragraph “qualifying lease certificate” means a certificate, complying with any prescribed requirements, that the condition in section 121(2)(d) was met in relation to the lease at the qualifying time.(4) The requirements that may be prescribed include requirements as to—(a) the information to be provided in the certificate,(b) the form of the certificate, and(c) the execution of the certificate.Presumptions relating to landlord under qualifying lease
12B_(1) The person who was the landlord under a qualifying lease at the qualifying time (“the relevant landlord”) is to be treated for the purposes of this Schedule as having met the contribution condition (as defined by paragraph 3A) unless the landlord under the lease provides to the tenant under the lease a certificate, complying with any prescribed requirements, that the relevant landlord did not meet that condition. (2) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that (in some or all cases) the condition in paragraph 2(1) is to be treated for the purposes of this Schedule as met in relation to a lease to which paragraph 2 applies unless the landlord under the lease provides to the tenant under the lease a certificate that complies with any prescribed requirements.(3) The requirements that may be prescribed include requirements as to—(a) the information to be provided in the certificate,(b) the form of the certificate, and(c) the execution of the certificate.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that certain leases are taken to be qualifying leases unless steps are taken without the tenant providing a certificate, and landlords are taken to have met the contribution condition, or the condition in paragraph 2, unless they provide a certificate.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the name of the Minister at page 225, line 10 inserting a definition of “prescribed”.
“Information from landlords
13A_(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision requiring a relevant landlord to give prescribed information or documents to a relevant tenant or other prescribed person.(2) Information or documents may be prescribed if they relate to any matter with which this Schedule is concerned.(3) The regulations may require the information or documents to be given in a prescribed way.(4) The regulations may provide that where a relevant landlord fails to comply with the regulations, prescribed costs—(a) are not to be regarded as relevant costs to be taken into account in determining the amount of a service charge payable under a relevant lease, and(b) must not be met from a relevant reserve fund.(5) The regulations may make provision for and in connection with an application to the First-tier Tribunal for an order—(a) determining whether a relevant landlord has failed to comply with the regulations, and(b) if so, requiring the relevant landlord to provide specified information or documents to a specified person by a specified time.“Specified” here means specified in the order.(6) Nothing in sub-paragraph (5) limits the effect of regulations made by virtue of sub-paragraph (4).(7) Information or documents may be specified in an order under sub- paragraph (5) only if the regulations require them to be provided to the specified person.(8) In this paragraph—“relevant costs” has the meaning given by section 18 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (and this applies in relation to a lease of premises that does not include a dwelling as it applies in relation to a lease of a dwelling);“relevant landlord” means a landlord under a relevant lease;“relevant lease” means a lease of premises in a relevant building;“relevant reserve fund” has the meaning given by paragraph 10; “relevant tenant” means a tenant under a relevant lease.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confers a power to make regulations, requiring landlords to provide certain information and documents, and also enabling an application to be made to the First-tier Tribunal about the provision of information and documents.
“13B_ In section 21 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (service charge information), in subsection (6A) (inserted by section 115), after “2022)” insert “or relevant buildings (as defined by section 120 of that Act)”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations under section 21 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (service charge information) need not make the provision mentioned in subsection (2) or (3) of that section in relation to relevant buildings.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(3A) In subsection (3) the reference to a landlord under a lease includes any person who is party to the lease otherwise than as landlord or tenant.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that where repairing obligations under a lease are placed on a person other than the landlord (or tenant), the person falls within the definition of “relevant landlord”, and accordingly a remediation order may be made against them.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(ca) a person with a legal or equitable interest in the relevant building or any part of it;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a person with a legal or equitable interest in the building may apply for a remediation order.
“(6) A decision of the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal made under or in connection with this section (other than one ordering the payment of a sum) is enforceable with the permission of the county court in the same way as an order of that court.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the enforcement of orders made under this Clause.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that an order may be made in respect of a partnership.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the first amendment of this clause in the name of the Minister.
(a) a landlord under a lease of the relevant building or any part of it,(b) a person who was such a landlord at the qualifying time,(c) a developer in relation to the relevant building, or(d) a person associated with a person within any of paragraphs (a) to (c).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment expands the persons in respect of whom an order may be made.
““developer”, in relation to a relevant building, means a person who undertook or commissioned the construction or conversion of the building (or part of the building) with a view to granting or disposing of interests in the building or parts of it;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “developer” for the purposes of the Clause.
“(za) the Secretary of State,”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that “interested person” (who may apply for a remediation contribution order) includes the Secretary of State.
“(e) any other person prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that “interested person” includes a person prescribed by regulations.
““partnership” has the meaning given by section 123;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “partnership” for the purposes of the Clause.
“(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that this section applies, with or without modifications, in relation to a building that would, but for section 120(3), be a relevant building.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations may apply the Clause (with or without modifications) in relation to buildings that are not relevant buildings because of Clause 120(3) (enfranchised buildings etc).
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a person acting as an insolvency practitioner in relation to the company may apply for an order under this Clause.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that an order under this Clause may be made against a partnership associated with the company that is being wound up.
(b) to make such payments to a specified person as the court considers to be just and equitable for the purpose of meeting costs incurred or to be incurred in remedying relevant defects mentioned in subsection (1)(b).Section 126(4) applies for the purposes of this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables an order under this Clause to require the making of payments to a person specified in the order.
““act as an insolvency practitioner” has the meaning given by section 388 of the Insolvency Act 1986;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the first amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
““partnership” has the meaning given by section 123;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to this Clause at page 132, line 19 in the name of the Minister.
““specified” means specified in the order.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to this Clause at page 132, line 20 in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(1A) A scheme may be established for any purpose connected with—(a) securing the safety of people in or about buildings in relation to risks arising from buildings, or(b) improving the standard of buildings,including securing that safety, or improving that standard, by securing that persons in the building industry remedy defects in buildings or contribute to costs associated with remedying defects in buildings.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment sets out the purposes for which a scheme may be established.
(b) the conditions that an eligible person must meet in order to become, and remain, a member of the scheme (“membership conditions”),and may provide for different categories of membership.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that scheme membership conditions are to be contained in regulations.
“(3) The membership conditions that may be prescribed include in particular conditions relating to—(a) the remedying of defects in buildings with which an eligible person has a connection of a prescribed kind;(b) the making of financial contributions towards meeting costs associated with remedying defects in buildings (including buildings with which an eligible person has no connection);(c) the use (or use in prescribed cases) of construction products (or construction products of a prescribed description) of prescribed persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products;(d) the provision of information to the Secretary of State or any other person;(e) the competence or conduct of any individual connected with an eligible person (for example, any director or senior manager of an eligible person) or any person with whom an eligible person contracts;(f) whether persons with whom an eligible person contracts are members of a scheme.In paragraph (e) “conduct” includes conduct occurring before the coming into force of this section.(4)The descriptions of persons prescribed by virtue of subsection (3)(c) may in particular be prescribed by reference to—(a) being eligible to be members of a scheme and not being members of that scheme;(b) their conduct in relation to remedying defects in buildings or contributing to costs associated with remedying defects in buildings.(4A) The membership conditions that may be prescribed by virtue of subsection (3)(c) include in particular a condition requiring an eligible person to ensure that no prescribed product of prescribed persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products is used in prescribed cases.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment sets out various matters that may, in particular, be the subject of membership conditions for a scheme established under this Clause.
“(6) Regulations may make provision about the keeping and publication of other lists.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations may make provision about the keeping and publication of other lists.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
“(2A) Regulations may make provision about—(a) applications for membership of a scheme;(b) renewal of membership at prescribed intervals;(c) termination of a person’s membership;(d) the suspension of a person from membership.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the next amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister provide that provision about procedure relating to a scheme is to be set out in regulations rather than in a document published by the Secretary of State.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement relating to the previous amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to Clause 128 at page 132, line 35.
“(5A) Regulations may make provision about the determination of disputes.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations under Clause 128 may make provision about the determination of disputes.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to Clause 128 at page 132, line 35.
“(6A) Regulations may make provision about the termination of a scheme.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations under Clause 128 may make provision about the termination of a scheme established under that Clause.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the reference to Schedule 12 in the definition of “persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products” with a view to a definition being inserted into the Clause.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we now come to the final debate on Report of this Bill, and I will speak to a number of government amendments on construction products. Noble Lords will be familiar with a number of these amendments already as they were debated and withdrawn during Committee.
I will begin by speaking to Amendments 245 to 249. This set of new clauses will introduce a new cause of action against construction product manufacturers and sellers of construction products. There are currently limited routes which might allow leaseholders, building owners and homeowners to hold to account construction product manufacturers or sellers for their role in the creation of building safety defects.
The cause of action will enable claims to be brought against construction product manufacturers and sellers for their role in causing problems associated with building safety. It will apply where a construction product has been mis-sold or is found to be inherently defective, or if there has been a breach of the construction products regulations applicable at the time and it has been used in the construction of a dwelling or works on that dwelling. If this contributes to a dwelling being unfit for habitation or causes it to be so, a civil claim will be able to be brought through the courts under this cause of action. This cause of action will be subject to a 30-year limitation period retrospectively in relation to cladding products only. The new cause of action will also apply retrospectively to all construction products and be subject to a 15-year limitation period. These limitation periods mirror the changes we are making to the Defective Premises Act. This cause of action will help to ensure that construction products manufacturers, distributors and others are held responsible for the cost of rectifying their mistakes, where a dwelling is unfit for habitation as a result of those mistakes. Amendments 255 and 271 are consequential to these amendments.
I now move on to Amendments 250, 251, 252 and 253, which will create a power to make regulations to require construction products manufacturers, their authorised representatives, importers and distributors to contribute towards the cost of remediation works where they have caused dwellings to be unfit for habitation or contributed to dwellings being unfit for habitation. This will enable the Secretary of State to serve a costs contribution order on a company that has been successfully prosecuted under the construction products regulations. Amendment 253 will allow the Secretary of State to appoint an independent person to inspect buildings where the relevant product has been used. They will assess whether the conditions for serving an order are met, the remediation works required and the cost of those works. Amendment 251 will also create a power to make regulations to take an alternative route through the courts. This will enable the Secretary of State to apply to a court for a costs contribution order to be made against a company. The grounds for making an application would be the same. Amendment 253 will enable the Secretary of State to require a company to contribute towards the cost of building assessments carried out as part of this process.
Amendment 256 makes a technical correction to secure that the maximum fine that can be imposed under the construction products regulations for an offence in Scotland is the statutory maximum in Scotland.
Setting out this scheme in secondary legislation will enable the detailed design of these powers to interact with the construction products regulations, including those that will be made using the Bill’s powers. Amendments 269, 270 and 273 are consequential to these amendments.
Amendment 257 will require that the affirmative procedure is used to make any regulations that would remove construction products from the list of safety-critical products set out in the construction products regulations.
I have considered carefully the important points raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report on the Bill regarding the parliamentary procedure that should be used to make regulations under this power. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Stunell and Lord Khan, for their contributions on this matter in Grand Committee. It is of course right that regulations receive the proper level of parliamentary scrutiny. That is why Amendment 257 will supplement the existing safeguards in Schedule 12, which prevents products being added to the list unnecessarily or removed without good reason. I hope the noble Lords are reassured that this strikes the right balance between the need for parliamentary debate to scrutinise regulations and the proper use of the limited and valuable time of parliamentarians.
Finally, Amendments 216 and 217 make a minor drafting change in relation to the definition of
“persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products”
in Clause 129. I beg to move.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, briefly, we welcome the changes that the Minister has reported, particularly Amendments 257, 258 and 259, which will bring back to the affirmative procedure some of those matters which we raised in Committee. We appreciate that and we are very happy to support the Government’s amendments in that respect.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this final group of amendments relating to construction products. The Government are absolutely right to take steps to increase the recourse available to residents and responsible persons where construction or cladding products have led to residences becoming uninhabitable. Government
Amendment 246 is particularly welcome, as it provides for a new right of action where breach of regulations relating to construction projects leads to a building or dwelling becoming unfit for habitation. Every person and family deserves the right to live in a safe and habitable home. On this issue, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act already provides for similar guarantees.
I also particularly welcome Amendments 247 and 248, which intend to provide a right of action for a 30-year limitation period where historic defaults relating to cladding either cause or are a factor in a building or dwelling becoming unfit for habitation. I am sure that the whole House will agree that the passage of the Bill should represent a turning point for building safety in the UK, and I hope that these amendments will contribute to that.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their support for these important amendments —I will write to the noble Lord on his question; I do not have it in my pack. This shows that, throughout the Bill, we have listened to noble Lords across the House and have done what we can. I thank noble Lords for their engagement and for their continued support for most of the Bill. It is important because it will ensure that in this country everyone’s home is a place of safety.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
““construction product” has the meaning given by regulations;“persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products” include (without limitation)—(a) a manufacturer of construction products,(b) a person who markets or supplies construction products to others, and(c) a person who imports construction products into the United Kingdom for use, marketing or supply;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment defines “construction product” and “persons carrying out activities in relation to construction products” for the purposes of Clause 128.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
“(1A) The descriptions of persons which may be prescribed include in particular persons who—(a) are eligible to be members of a scheme established under section 128, and(b) are not members of that scheme.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the descriptions of persons whom regulations may prohibit from carrying out development under this Clause include, in particular, persons who are eligible to be members of a scheme established under Clause 128 but are not members of that scheme.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the previous amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
“including securing that safety, or improving that standard, by securing that persons in the building industry remedy defects in buildings or contribute to costs associated with remedying defects in buildings.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the purposes for which a prohibition may be imposed.
Baroness Pinnock
“(3A) Within the period of five years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, the Secretary of State must by regulations prohibit any developer who has not completed all previously identified works in relation the remediation of fire safety risks from carrying out development of land in England.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to prevent developers who have not completed previously identified fire safety work within 5 years from carrying out any further development.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I wish to move Amendment 221 formally and divide the House on it. We have already decided that leaseholders will not pay towards the cost of remediation, and now we have the chance to decide that it is done in a timely way. That is just as important, so I beg leave to seek the opinion of the House.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment has the effect of allowing regulations to require notifications to be given about development other than notifications relating only to the proposed beginning of development.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the previous amendment to this Clause in the name of the Minister.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(1A) The descriptions of persons which may be prescribed include in particular persons who—(a) are eligible to be members of a scheme established under section 128, and(b) are not members of that scheme.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the descriptions of persons in relation to whom regulations may impose a building control prohibition under this Clause include, in particular, persons who are eligible to be members of a scheme established under Clause 128 but are not members of that scheme.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the previous amendment to this clause in the name of the Minister.
“including securing that safety, or improving that standard, by securing that persons in the building industry remedy defects in buildings or contribute to costs associated with remedying defects in buildings.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the purposes for which a prohibition may be imposed.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment has the effect of applying this clause to Wales.
Lord Greenhalgh
“Order for information in connection with building liability order
(1) A person of a prescribed description may apply to the High Court for an information order.(2) An “information order” is an order requiring a specified body corporate to give, by a specified time, specified information or documents relating to persons who are or have at any time in a specified period been, associates of the body corporate.(3) An information order may be made only if it appears to the court—(a) that the body corporate is subject to a relevant liability (within the meaning of section 132), and(b) that it is appropriate to require the information or documents to be provided for the purpose of enabling the applicant (or the applicant and others) to make, or consider whether to make, an application for a building liability order.(4) In this section—“associate” has the meaning given by section 133; “building liability order”: see section 132;“prescribed” means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State;“specified” means specified in the information order.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause provides that a person prescribed by regulations may make an application to the High Court for an order requiring a body corporate to give information relating to persons who are associates of the body corporate and sets out when the High Court may make the order.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
The Earl of Lytton
“Building safety cost orders
(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision for the Building Safety Cost Panel to make building safety cost orders on the application of an interested person.(2) A “building safety cost order” under this section is an order requiring a specified body corporate to make payments to a specified person, for the purpose of meeting costs incurred or to be incurred in remedying relevant defects (or specified relevant defects) relating to a relevant building.(3) An order may—(a) require the making of payments of a specified amount, or payments of a reasonable amount in respect of the remediation of specified relevant defects (or in respect of specified things done or to be done for the purpose of remedying relevant defects);(b) require a payment to be made at a specified time, or to be made on demand following the occurrence of a specified event;(c) provide for payment in services or money’s worth.(4) The regulations must make provision for the Building Safety Cost Panel to issue a warning notice to a person before determining whether to make a building safety cost order under this section against that person.(5) The regulations must make provision requiring that a building safety cost order under this section—(a) be made in a prescribed form; (b) contain prescribed information.(6) The regulations may make provision about service of a building safety cost order under this section including—(a) how an order is to be served;(b) when an order is to be taken as having been served;(c) the persons on whom an order must be served.(7) The regulations must make provision in relation to—(a) enforcement of a building safety cost order made under this section (including enforcement by the Secretary of State or the tribunal);(b) powers of the Secretary of State to order a person served with a building safety cost order to pay any costs incurred by the Secretary of State under section (Building safety cost order: determinations) in respect of a building safety cost order under this section.(8) The regulations may make provision for persons to apply to the Secretary of State for a review of a building safety cost order under this section.(9) The regulations must make provision for appeals to the tribunal in relation to—(a) a decision of the Building Safety Cost Panel to make or not make a building safety cost order under this section;(b) a refusal by the Building Safety Cost Panel to review a building safety cost order under this section;(c) the outcome of a review by the Building Safety Cost Panel of a building safety cost order under this section.(10) The regulations may in particular include provision suspending a requirement to pay an amount due under a building safety cost order under this section pending the determination of a review.(11) The Secretary of State must make regulations under this section within a period of three months beginning with the day this section comes into force.(12) In this section—“associated”: see section 123;“interested person”, in relation to a relevant building, means—(a) the regulator (as defined by section 2),(b) a local authority (as defined by section 29) for the area in which the relevant building is situated,(c) a fire and rescue authority (as defined by section 29) for the area in which the relevant building is situated, or(d) a person with a legal or equitable interest in the relevant building or any part of it;“prescribed” means prescribed by regulations under this section;“relevant building” means a building consisting of or containing one or more dwellings;“relevant defect”: see section 122;“specified” means specified in the order.(13) This section comes into force on the day this Act is passed.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause confers a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State to provide for making of building safety cost orders by the Building Safety Cost Panel.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that a home created by, for example, extending an existing building will be a “new build home” for the purposes of the new homes ombudsman scheme.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to page 144, line 5 that appears in the Minister’s name.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that “developer” for the purposes of the new homes ombudsman scheme will include a person who, for example, creates a home by extending an existing building.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that “developer” for the purposes of the new homes ombudsman scheme will include a person who, for example, extends an existing building so as to change the number of homes in it.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to page 144, line 31 that appears in the Minister’s name.
Lord Greenhalgh
“New build home warranties
(1) This section applies where a person (“the developer”) carries out a development in England that results in the creation of one or more dwellings (“new build homes”).(2) The developer must, at the time of or before granting or disposing of a relevant interest in a new build home—(a) provide to the purchaser a new build home warranty for the new build home, and(b) provide to a prescribed person a new build home warranty for any common parts.(3) A “new build home warranty” for a thing is an arrangement, satisfying any requirements under subsection (4), under which—(a) the developer agrees, in specified circumstances, to remedy any specified defect (or any defect) in the thing occurring in a specified period, and(b) a prescribed person obtains the benefit of a policy of insurance relating to specified defects (or any defects) in the thing.“Specified” here means specified in the arrangement.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations impose requirements about new build home warranties, including in particular requirements as to—(a) the kinds of defect which the developer must agree to remedy;(b) the circumstances in which the developer must agree to remedy a defect (including the minimum duration of the period mentioned in subsection (3)(a));(c) the developer agreeing to meet prescribed costs incurred by a person occupying a new build home, where works to remedy a defect are carried out;(d) the policy of insurance (including risks that must be covered, the minimum amount of cover, the minimum duration of the period of cover, and the maximum amount of any excess);(e) the solvency of the insurer or underwriter;(f) the standard of service provided by or on behalf of the insurer in relation to the policy;(g) the ability of a person who has the benefit of the warranty to transfer that benefit to another person. (5) The regulations must provide that the period of cover under the policy of insurance must be at least 15 years beginning with the day on which the relevant interest is granted or disposed of.(6) In this section—“carries out a development”: the reference to a person carrying out a development is to undertaking or commissioning—(a) the construction of a building, or(b) the conversion of, or carrying out of any other works to, a building,with a view to granting, or disposing of, relevant interests in one or more dwellings created as a result of the construction, conversion or carrying out of works;“common parts”, in relation to a new build home, means any part of a building, where—(a) that part is provided for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the residents of the new build home and the residents of other dwellings (whether alone or with other persons), and(b) the right to use that part is conferred in connection with the grant or disposal of the relevant interest in the new build home;“defect”: any reference to a defect includes, in relation to land, contamination;“prescribed” means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State;“purchaser” means the person to whom the relevant interest is granted or disposed of;“relevant interest” means a legal estate which is—(a) an estate in fee simple absolute in possession, or(b) a term of years absolute granted for a term of more than 21 years from the date of the grant.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause imposes, on a developer of new build homes, a requirement to provide a “new build home warranty” complying with the requirements imposed under the clause.
“New build home warranties: financial penalties
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for and in connection with the imposition of a financial penalty in cases where the Secretary of State, or a person designated by the Secretary of State, is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that a person has, without reasonable excuse, failed to comply with section (New build home warranties)(2).(2) The regulations may include provision—(a) about the procedure to be followed in imposing penalties;(b) about the amount of penalties;(c) for the imposition of interest or additional penalties for late payment;(d) conferring rights of appeal against penalties.(3) The regulations must provide that the amount of a financial penalty (excluding interest or any additional penalty) may not exceed the greater of—(a) 10% of the value of the relevant interest at the time the person granted or disposed of the relevant interest, and(b) £10,000.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause confers power to impose a financial penalty for breach of the duty to provide a “new build home warranty”.
Lord Greenhalgh
“Liability relating to construction productsLiability relating to construction products: general definitions
In this section, section (Liability relating to construction products) and (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products)—“the 1991 Regulations” means the Construction Products Regulations 1991 (S.I. 1991/1620);“the 2011 Regulation” means Regulation (EU) No. 305/2011 (regulation laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products);“the 2019 Regulations” means the Construction Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019/465);“construction products regulations” means regulations under paragraph 1 of Schedule 12;“construction product requirement” means a requirement under—(a) construction products regulations,(b) the 2011 Regulation, or(c) the 2019 Regulations;“relevant building” means—(a) a building which consists of a dwelling, or(b) a building which contains two or more dwellings;“relevant interest”, in relation to a building in England and Wales, means—(a) in a case where the building consists of a dwelling, a legal or equitable interest in the building, and(b) in a case where the building contains one or more dwellings, a legal or equitable interest in—(i) the building, or(ii) any dwelling contained in the building;“relevant interest”, in relation to a building in Scotland, means—(a) in a case where the building consists of a dwelling, any right or interest (including a servitude or heritable security) in or over the building, and(b) in a case where the building contains one or more dwellings, any right or interest (including a servitude or heritable security) in or over—(i) the building, or(ii) any dwelling contained in the building;“requirement” includes a prohibition or restriction.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause contains definitions relevant to the next two new Clauses tabled by the Minister.
“Liability relating to construction products
(1) This section applies where Conditions A to D are met.(2) Condition A is that, at any time after the coming into force of this section—(a) a person fails to comply with a construction product requirement in relation to a construction product,(b) a person who markets or supplies a construction product makes a misleading statement in relation to it, or(c) a person manufactures a construction product that is inherently defective. (3) Condition B is that, after Condition A is met, the construction product referred to in subsection (2)(a), (b) or (c) is installed in, or applied or attached to, a relevant building in the course of works carried out in the construction of, or otherwise in relation to, the building.(4) Condition C is that, when those works are completed—(a) in a case where the relevant building consists of a dwelling, the building is unfit for habitation, or(b) in a case where the relevant building contains one or more dwellings, a dwelling contained in the building is unfit for habitation.(5) Condition D is that the facts referred to in subsection (2)(a), (b) or (c) were the cause, or one of the causes, of the building or dwelling being unfit for habitation.(6) The person referred to in subsection (2)(a), (b) or (c) is liable to pay damages to a person with a relevant interest in relation to the relevant building for personal injury, damage to property or economic loss suffered by that person as a result of the facts referred to in subsection (4)(a) or (b).(7) A term of an agreement which purports to exclude or restrict, or has the effect of excluding or restricting, any liability arising under this section is void.(8) For the purposes of section 10B(1) of the Limitation Act 1980 and section 18ZD(1) of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, the right of action that a person has by virtue of this section is to be regarded as having accrued—(a) in a case where the works referred to in subsection (3) are carried out in the construction of the relevant building, when the construction is completed, and(b) in any other case, when the works are completed.(9) In subsection (2)(a), “construction product”—(a) in relation to a construction product requirement under construction products regulations, has the meaning specified in those regulations;(b) in relation to a construction product requirement under the 2011 Regulation, has the meaning specified in the 2011 Regulation;(c) in relation to a construction product requirement under the 2019 Regulations, has the meaning specified in the 2011 Regulation as it had effect immediately before IP completion day.(10) In subsection (2)(b) and (c) “construction product” has the meaning specified in the 2011 Regulation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause makes provision for a new right of action where breach of regulations relating to construction products causes, or is a factor in, a building or dwelling becoming unfit for habitation.
“Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products
(1) This section applies where Conditions A to D are met.(2) Condition A is that, at any time before the coming into force of this section—(a) a person fails to comply with a cladding product requirement in relation to a cladding product,(b) a person who markets or supplies a cladding product makes a misleading statement in relation to it, or(c) a person manufactures a cladding product that is inherently defective.(3) Condition B is that, after Condition A has been met, the cladding product is attached to, or included in, the external wall of a relevant building in the course of works carried out in the construction of, or otherwise in relation to, the building. (4) Condition C is that, when those works are completed—(a) in a case where the relevant building consists of a dwelling, the building is unfit for habitation, or(b) in a case where the relevant building contains one or more dwellings, a dwelling contained in the building is unfit for habitation.(5) Condition D is that the facts referred to in subsection (2)(a), (b) or (c) were the cause, or one of the causes, of the building or dwelling being unfit for habitation.(6) The person referred to in subsection (2)(a), (b) or (c) is liable to pay damages to a person with a relevant interest in relation to the relevant building for personal injury, damage to property or economic loss suffered by that person as a result of the facts referred to in subsection (4)(a) or (b).(7) A term of an agreement which purports to exclude or restrict, or has the effect of excluding or restricting, any liability arising under this section is void.(8) For the purposes of section 10B(2) of the Limitation Act 1980 and section 18ZD(2) of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, the right of action that a person has by virtue of this section is to be regarded as having accrued—(a) in a case where the works referred to in subsection (3) are carried out in the construction of the relevant building, when the construction is completed, and(b) in any other case, when the works are completed.(9) Where an action is brought under this section in England and Wales that, but for section 10B(2) of the Limitation Act 1980, would have been barred by that Act, a court hearing the action must dismiss it in relation to any defendant if satisfied that it is necessary to do so to avoid a breach of that defendant’s Convention rights.(10) Where an action is brought under this section in Scotland that, but for section 18ZD(2) of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, would have been barred by that Act, a court hearing the action must dismiss it in relation to any defender if satisfied that it is necessary to do so to avoid a breach of that defender’s Convention rights.(11) In this section “cladding product requirement” means—(a) in relation to a time before IP completion day, a requirement relating to a cladding product under—(i) the 1991 Regulations, or(ii) the 2011 Regulation as it had effect in EU law at that time, and(b) in relation to a time after IP completion day, a requirement relating to a cladding product under—(i) the 2011 Regulation, or(ii) the 2019 Regulations.(12) In this section—“cladding product” means a cladding system or any component of a cladding system;“Convention rights” has the same meaning as in the Human Rights Act 1998;“external wall”, in relation to a building, includes any part of a roof pitched at an angle of more than 70 degrees to the horizontal if that part of the roof adjoins a space within the building to which persons have access otherwise than for the purpose of carrying out repairs or maintenance.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause provides for a right of action where historic defaults relating to cladding cause, or are a factor in, a building or dwelling becoming unfit for habitation.
“Liability relating to construction products: limitation in England and Wales
In the Limitation Act 1980, after section 10A insert—“10B Special time limit for actions relating to construction products(1) An action under section (Liability relating to construction products)of the Building Safety Act 2022 shall not be brought after the expiration of 15 years from the date on which the right of action accrued.(2) An action under section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 shall not be brought after—(a) if the right of action accrued before the commencement date, the expiration of the period of 30 years from the date on which it accrued, and(b) if the right of action accrued on or after the commencement date, the expiration of the period of 15 years beginning with the date on which it accrued.(3) In a case where—(a) a right of action under section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 accrued before the commencement date, and(b) the expiration of the period of 30 years beginning with the date on which the right of action accrued falls in the year beginning with the commencement date,subsection (2)(a) has effect as if it referred to the expiration of that year.(4) In subsections (2) and (3) “the commencement date” is the day on which section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 came into force.(5) No other period of limitation prescribed by Part 1 of this Act applies in relation to an action referred to in subsections (1) and (2).(6) Sections 28, 32 and 35 of this Act apply in relation to an action referred to subsections (1) and (2), but otherwise Parts 2 and 3 of this Act (except sections 37 and 38) do not apply for the purposes of this section.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the limitation periods in England and Wales for the rights of action created by the previous two new clauses tabled by the Minister.
“Liability relating to construction products: limitation in Scotland
(1) The Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 is amended as follows.(2) After section 18ZC insert—“18ZD Actions relating to construction products(1) An action under section (Liability relating to construction products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 may not be brought after the expiration of 15 years from the date on which the right of action accrued (see subsection (8) of that section).(2) An action under section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 may not be brought after—(a) if the right of action accrued before the commencement date, the expiration of the period of 30 years from the date on which it accrued (see subsection (8) of that section), and (b) if the right of action accrued on or after the commencement date, the expiration of the period of 15 years beginning with the date on which it accrued.(3) In a case where—(a) a right of action under section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 accrued before the commencement date, and(b) the expiration of the period of 30 years beginning with the date on which the right of action accrued falls in the year beginning with the commencement date,subsection (2)(a) has effect as if it referred to the expiration of that year.(4) In subsections (2) and (3) “the commencement date” is the day on which section (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 came into force.(5) No other period of limitation specified by this Part of this Act applies in relation to an action referred to in subsection (1) or (2).(6) In the computation of a period of time specified in subsection (1) or (2), there is to be disregarded any time during which the person seeking to bring the action (P)—(a) was under a legal disability by reason of nonage or unsoundness of mind, or(b) failed to bring the action by reason of—(i) fraud on the part of the person against whom the action is to be brought (D) or the part of any person acting on D’s behalf, or(ii) error induced by words or conduct of D or any person acting on D’s behalf,(but not including, for the purposes of paragraph (b), any time occurring after P could with reasonable diligence have discovered the fraud or error mentioned in that paragraph).(7) For the purposes of subsection (6)(b), it does not matter whether D, or the person acting on D’s behalf, intended the fraud or the words or conduct to cause P to fail to bring the action.”(3) In section 7(2) (extinction of obligations by prescriptive periods of twenty years), at the end insert “or any obligation to pay damages arising from liability under section (Liability relating to construction products) or (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022 (see section 18ZD of this Act).”(4) In section 19CA(1) (interruption of limitation period: arbitration), after “18ZC(2)” insert “, 18ZD(1) or (2)”.(5) In Schedule 1, in paragraph 2 (exceptions from the 5 year prescriptive period under section 6), after paragraph (ga) insert—“(gb) to any obligation to pay damages arising from liability under section (Liability relating to construction products) or (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products) of the Building Safety Act 2022;”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the limitation periods in Scotland for the proposed new rights of action relating to construction products.
“Construction products: costs contribution ordersCosts contribution orders: general definitions
In this section and sections (Costs contribution orders made by courts) to (Costs contribution orders: assessments)—
“the 2011 Regulation” means Regulation (EU) No. 305/2011 (regulation laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products);“the 2019 Regulations” means the Construction Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019/465);“the 2020 Regulations” means the Construction Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020/1359);“construction product”—(a) in relation to a construction product requirement under construction products regulations, has the meaning specified in those regulations;(b) in relation to a construction product requirement under the 2011 Regulation, has the meaning specified in the 2011 Regulation (or, in Northern Ireland, in the 2011 Regulation as having effect in EU law from time to time);(c) in relation to a construction product requirement under the 2019 Regulations, has the meaning specified in the 2011 Regulation as it had effect immediately before IP completion day;(d) in relation to a construction product requirement under the 2020 Regulations, has the meaning given by regulation 2 of those Regulations;“construction products regulations” means regulations under paragraph 1 of Schedule 12;“construction product requirement”, in England and Wales or Scotland, means a requirement under—(a) construction products regulations,(b) the 2011 Regulation, or(c) the 2019 Regulations;“construction product requirement”, in Northern Ireland, means a requirement under—(a) construction product regulations,(b) the 2011 Regulation as having effect from time to time in EU law,(c) the 2019 Regulations, or(d) the 2020 Regulations;references to an “interest” in a building or dwelling include—(a) in England and Wales, any legal or equitable interest in the building or dwelling;(b) in Scotland, any right or interest (including a servitude or heritable security) in or over the building or dwelling;(c) in Northern Ireland, any estate within the meaning given by section 45(2) of the Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954 in the building or dwelling;“relevant building” means—(a) a building which consists of a dwelling, or(b) a building which contains two or more dwellings;“requirement” includes a prohibition or restriction.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause contains definitions relevant to the new Clauses tabled by the Minister in relation to costs contribution orders in respect of construction products.
“Costs contribution orders made by courts
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for courts to make costs contribution orders on the application of the Secretary of State.(2) The regulations may only make provision for the making of costs contribution orders under this section in cases where— (a) Conditions A to D are met, and(b) any prescribed conditions are met.(3) Condition A is that a person (“the defaulter”) is convicted of an offence consisting of a failure to comply with a construction product requirement in relation to a construction product.(4) Condition B is that, after the failure to comply referred to in subsection (3), the construction product is installed in, or applied or attached to, a relevant building in the course of works carried out in the construction of, or otherwise in relation to, the building.(5) Condition C is that, when those works are completed—(a) in a case where the relevant building consists of a dwelling, the building is unfit for habitation, or(b) in a case where the relevant building contains one or more dwellings, a dwelling contained in the building is unfit for habitation.(6) Condition D is that the failure to comply referred to in subsection (3) was the cause, or one of the causes, of the building or dwelling being unfit for habitation.(7) A “costs contribution order” under this section is an order requiring the defaulter to pay an amount to a person with a prescribed interest in the building or any dwelling contained in the building.(8) Regulations under this section must provide for the amount to be paid to a person under a costs contribution order under this section to be such amount as the court making the order considers just and equitable in respect of the costs that the person has reasonably incurred, or in the view of the court is likely to reasonably incur, in respect of works to make the building or dwelling fit for habitation.(9) The regulations may make provision as to the matters which may or must be taken into account by a court in determining—(a) whether, against whom and in favour of whom to make a costs contribution order under this section;(b) the amount required to be paid by a person under a costs contribution order under this section.(10) The regulations may make provision in relation to—(a) enforcement of a costs contribution order under this section;(b) court powers to order the defaulter to pay—(i) any costs incurred by the Secretary of State under regulations under section (Costs contribution orders: assessments)(assessments) in respect of the application, and(ii) any costs incurred by the Secretary of State in making the application.(11) The regulations may make provision about how a costs contribution order under this section relates to other remedies, including in particular—(a) provision to secure that, taking a costs contribution order under this section together with other remedies—(i) a person does not incur liability more than once in respect of the same costs;(ii) a person is not entitled to be reimbursed more than once for the same costs;(b) provision preventing a person to whom any amount is payable under a costs contribution order under this section from pursuing any other legal remedy for the recovery of such an amount.(12) In this section “prescribed” means prescribed by regulations under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause confers a regulation-making power for the courts to make costs contribution orders.
“Costs contribution orders made by the Secretary of State
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the Secretary of State to make costs contribution orders.(2) The regulations may only make provision for the making of costs contribution orders in cases where—(a) Conditions A to D are met, and(b) any prescribed conditions are met.(3) Condition A is that a person (“the defaulter”) is convicted of an offence consisting of a failure to comply with a construction product requirement in relation to a construction product.(4) Condition B is that, after the failure to comply referred to in subsection (3), the construction product is installed in, or applied or attached to, a relevant building in the course of works carried out in the construction of, or otherwise in relation to, the building.(5) Condition C is that, when those works are completed—(a) in a case where the relevant building consists of a dwelling, the building is unfit for habitation, or(b) in a case where the relevant building contains one or more dwellings, a dwelling contained in the building is unfit for habitation.(6) Condition D is that the failure to comply referred to in subsection (3) was the cause, or one of the causes, of the building or dwelling being unfit for habitation.(7) A “costs contribution order” under this section is an order requiring the defaulter to make a payment to a person with a prescribed interest in the building or any dwelling contained in the building.(8) Regulations under this section must provide for the amount to be paid to a person under a costs contribution order under this section to be such amount as the Secretary of State considers just and equitable in respect of the costs that the person has reasonably incurred, or in the view of the Secretary of State is likely to reasonably incur, in respect of works to make the building or dwelling fit for habitation.(9) The regulations may make provision as to the matters which may or must be taken into account by the Secretary of State in determining—(a) whether, against whom, and in favour of whom, to make a costs contribution order under this section;(b) the amount required to be paid by a person under a costs contribution order under this section.(10) The regulations may make provision for the Secretary of State to issue a warning notice to a person before determining whether to make a costs contribution order under this section against that person.(11) The regulations may make provision requiring that a costs contribution order under this section—(a) be made in a prescribed form;(b) contain prescribed information.(12) The regulations may make provision about service of a costs contribution order under this section including—(a) how an order is to be served;(b) when an order is to be taken as having been served;(c) the persons on whom an order must be served.(13) The regulations may make provision in relation to—(a) enforcement of a costs contribution order made under this section (including enforcement by the Secretary of State); (b) powers of the Secretary of State to order the defaulter to pay any costs incurred by the Secretary of State under section (Costs contribution orders: assessments) in respect of a costs contribution order under this section.(14) The regulations may make provision about how a costs contribution order under this section relates to other remedies, including in particular—(a) provision to secure that, taking a costs contribution order under this section together with other remedies—(i) a person does not incur liability more than once in respect of the same costs;(ii) a person is not entitled to be reimbursed more than once for the same costs;(b) provision preventing a person to whom any amount is payable under a costs contribution order under this section from pursuing any other legal remedy for the recovery of such an amount.(15) The regulations may make provision for persons to apply to the Secretary of State for a review of a costs contribution order under this section.(16) The regulations may make provision for appeals to a court or tribunal in relation to—(a) a decision of the Secretary of State to make or not make a costs contribution order under this section;(b) a refusal by the Secretary of State to review a costs contribution order under this section;(c) the outcome of a review by the Secretary of State of a costs contribution order under this section.(17) The regulations may in particular include provision suspending a requirement to pay an amount due under a costs contribution order under this section pending the determination or withdrawal of an appeal or the determination of a review.(18) In this section “prescribed” means prescribed by regulations under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause confers a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State to make costs contribution orders.
“Costs contribution orders: assessments
(1) For the purposes of sections (Costs contribution orders made by courts) and (Costs contribution orders made by Secretary of State), the Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the Secretary of State to appoint persons to assess—(a) whether the conditions for the imposition of a costs contribution order under either of those sections are met;(b) the works required to make a building or dwelling fit for habitation;(c) what interest a person has in a building or dwelling;(d) the costs that a person has reasonably incurred or is likely to reasonably incur in respect of works referred to in paragraph (b);(e) the amount that a person should be required to pay under a costs contribution order.(2) The regulations may include provision about the criteria to be met by a person before they may be appointed as an assessor.(3) The regulations may make provision about assessments, including provision—(a) conferring power on an assessor to require that persons provide such information as the assessor may reasonably require for the purposes of an assessment; (b) for the provision of information by an assessor to the Secretary of State (including any information provided under paragraph (a)).(4) Regulations under subsection (3)(a) may include provision for criminal offences relating to a failure to provide information, or to the provision of false or misleading information.(5) Regulations under subsection (3)(a) creating a criminal offence must have the effect that—(a) the offence is—(i) triable summarily only, or(ii) triable summarily or on indictment,(b) the offence is punishable only—(i) with a fine, or(ii) with a term of imprisonment or a fine (or both),(c) where the offence is triable summarily only, any fine with which the offence is punishable in Scotland or Northern Ireland does not exceed level 5 on the standard scale,(d) where the offence is triable summarily or on indictment, any fine with which the offence is punishable on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland does not exceed the statutory maximum, and(e) any term of imprisonment with which the offence is punishable on summary conviction does not exceed—(i) in England and Wales, the relevant period,(ii) in Scotland, 12 months, and(iii) in Northern Ireland, 6 months.(6) In subsection (5)(e)(i), “the relevant period” means—(a) in relation to an offence that is triable summarily only—(i) where the offence is committed before the coming into force of section 281 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, 6 months, and(ii) where the offence is committed after that time, 51 weeks;(b) in relation to an offence that is triable summarily or on indictment—(i) where the offence is committed before the coming into force of paragraph 24(2) of Schedule 22 to the Sentencing Act 2020, 6 months, and(ii) where the offence is committed after that time, 12 months.(7) Regulations under subsection (3)(b) may make provision for the purpose of securing that there is (taking into account any power or duty to provide information under the regulations) no contravention of the data protection legislation.(8) In subsection (7), “data protection legislation” has the same meaning as in the Data Protection Act 2018 (see section 3 of that Act).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause confers a regulation-making power relating to assessments for the purposes of costs contribution orders.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(2) Construction products regulations may under paragraph 20(1)(c) make consequential provision amending section (Liability relating to construction products), which may in particular include the omission or amendment of subsection (2)(b) and (c) of that section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to enable construction product regulations to make consequential amendments to the Clause relating to liability in respect of construction products.
“(c) where the offence is triable summarily only, any fine with which the offence is punishable in Scotland or Northern Ireland does not exceed level 5 on the standard scale,(ca) where the offence is triable summarily or on indictment, any fine with which the offence is punishable on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland does not exceed the statutory maximum, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes a technical correction to secure that the maximum fine that can be imposed under the regulations for an offence in Scotland or Northern Ireland is the statutory maximum.
“(aa) provision omitting a construction product from the list of safety-critical products under paragraph 10(1);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes regulations omitting a product from the list of safety-critical products subject to draft affirmative procedure.
“(d) provision under paragraph 21(2) (consequential provision relating to liability for construction products).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes regulations that are made under the proposed power to make consequential provision subject to the draft affirmative procedure.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment secures that a statutory instrument may contain both construction products regulations and regulations relating to cost contribution orders provided that the instrument is made subject to the draft affirmative procedure.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(4) Where—(a) a relevant company is an accountable person for a higher-risk building (within the meaning of Part 4), and (b) one or more (but not all) directors of the relevant company have been appointed for a building safety purpose and are entitled to remuneration from the company,this section, so far as relating to Part 4, does not apply in relation to a director who is not entitled to remuneration from the relevant company.(5) In subsection (4)—“building safety purpose” means the purpose of supporting the relevant company in complying with its duties under Part 4 or under regulations made under that Part;“relevant company” means—(a) a resident management company within the meaning of section (Building safety directors of resident management companies),(b) an RTM company within the meaning of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 (right to manage), or(c) a company that is a commonhold association within the meaning of Part 1 of that Act (see section 34).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that, in relation to certain residents’ companies, this Clause - so far as relating to Part 4 - does not apply to unpaid directors if there are paid directors, appointed for a building safety purpose.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(da) sections (New build home warranties) and (New build home warranties: financial penalties) (new build home warranties);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the new Clauses on new build home warranties to bind the Crown.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of the power to make regulations under Clause 120(2)(c).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for regulations made under Clauses 128, 130 and 131 to be subject to the draft affirmative procedure.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations under the power conferred by new paragraph 3A(5) of Schedule 9 are subject to the draft affirmative procedure.
“(ea) regulations under sections (Costs contribution orders made by courts) to (Costs contribution orders: assessments),”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes provision for regulations under the new Clauses relating to costs contribution orders to be subject to the draft affirmative procedure.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(da) sections (Costs contribution orders: general definitions) to (Costs contribution orders: assessments) (costs contribution orders);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment secures that the new Clauses relating to costs contribution orders extend to the whole of the United Kingdom.
“(5) Sections (Liability relating to construction products: general definitions) to (Liability for past defaults relating to cladding products)(liability relating to construction products) extend to England and Wales and Scotland.(6) Section (Liability relating to construction products: limitation in Scotland) (liability relating to construction products: limitation in Scotland) extends to Scotland only.(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations—(a) provide for the provisions mentioned in subsection (5) to extend also to Northern Ireland, and(b) make provision (including provision amending this Act or any other enactment) in relation to the application of the provisions mentioned in subsection (5) in Northern Ireland.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment secures that the new clauses relating to civil liability in respect of construction products extend in the first place to England and Wales and Scotland, with power to extend them to Northern Ireland and to make provision as to their application in Northern Ireland.
Lord Greenhalgh
“(za) sections 119 to 127 and Schedule 9;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the provisions on the remediation of certain defects to come into force two months after Royal Assent.
“(ca) sections (Liability relating to construction products: general definitions) to (Costs contribution notices: assessments);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the new clauses relating to construction products to come into force two months after Royal Assent.
Lord Greenhalgh
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is a drafting change.
Schools White Paper
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the briefing that she and her officials provided for the Labour education team yesterday.
This White Paper is a thin document that we believe represents a missed opportunity in many ways. Paragraph 123 says:
“The system that has evolved over the past decade is messy and often confusing … Unclear expectations of academies and local authorities permit grey areas which have sometimes allowed vulnerable children to fall through the gaps. Government has not been able to intervene adequately in the small number of trusts that have fallen short in the expectations of parents”.
So what have the last 12 years been all about?
Other than an attainment increase at key stage 2 and GCSE, for which there is minimal detail, this White Paper betrays a real lack of ambition by the Government. When the headline soundbite is some schools staying open for 10 or 15 minutes longer, there is something seriously lacking.
The Secretary of State would have done well to have studied the speech given by his shadow, Bridget Phillipson, at the ASCL conference earlier this month, where she spoke about the broader aims of education and the importance of soft skills, creativity and balance in the curriculum. The White Paper never really gets beyond a fixation with maths and English.
There is no recognition of why many employers are seriously critical of the current school system and curriculum. There is seemingly no understanding that England is becoming an outlier internationally in its narrowness and fixation on academic subjects and end-of-course exams. There is no attempt to set out a vision of what education is for and of the kind of world that we are preparing children for.
There are no funding commitments of any seriousness, and inflation will surely erode much of what has already been agreed. This needs to be seen in the context of the new funding formula, which has been introduced at the expense of the most disadvantaged areas and is quite contrary to the Government’s levelling up ambition.
One proposal that I welcome is the introduction of a register for children not in school, which is long overdue, not least in terms of safeguarding issues.
On structures, some potentially interesting changes are proposed, but without the detail it is hard to assess them. It could imply the effective replacement of individual funding agreements by a statutory framework. It could imply the end of the free school programme except where there is a demographic need for new schools. In recent weeks, the education media have been fed stories of all schools being forced to become academies. The White Paper does not state that explicitly. Can the Minister clarify the Government’s intent? I read paragraph 146 as enabling forced academisation where the local authority wants it, irrespective of what individual schools want, as has been the case in places such as Hull, Leicestershire and Thurrock.
The Government admit that contracting with academy trusts is at an end and will be replaced with “academy trust standards”. No further information is given. Is this a return to direct grant schools, which Labour abolished in the late 1970s, with academies remaining independent schools? Is the intention to set up a new type of school which is “Secretary of State maintained” rather than local authority maintained, similar to the grant-maintained schools? We just do not know, and there is scant evidence that the Government do either.
The premise that trusts are the best way of organising schools is asserted but not proved. Occasionally, data is cherry picked. I ask the Minister how many trusts do not contain 7,500 pupils, which is said to be the benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness. How does the DfE propose to deal with the many trusts that are not that size? Talk of a family of schools quickly comes up against a basic problem: that of geography. How can you have a family of schools scattered the length of the country?
Chapter 3 focuses on targeted support. There is no definition of students falling behind, but the White Paper says that you must not label children as “behind”. Can the Minister clarify where the funding for this support will come from? Of course, the elephant in the room on the whole question of education recovery is the Chancellor. Sir Kevan Collins knew exactly how much was required to deliver meaningful programmes, but the Chancellor callously put his red pen through it and hundreds of thousands of children throughout the country are living with the consequences of his parsimony. Yesterday’s DfE-commissioned report on pupil learning loss from the pandemic bears that out.
There is no recognition of the huge issues in teacher recruitment at present but quite a lot about the current attempts to change initial teacher training, with the imposition of a political ideology on all stages of teacher development. The proposals around the Oak academy turning into a provider of resources and lesson plans could be a worrying step towards enforcing a national model of pedagogy and curriculum content.
After two years of pandemic chaos and six years since the Government’s last schools strategy, this plan will leave parents, teachers and pupils wondering where the ambition for children’s futures is. Clearly, it is not with this Government.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I apologise for being a few minutes late; I hope that I shall not be sent to the back of the class.
I thank the Minister for the Statement. I like the tone of it; I like the fact that we are celebrating schools and the hard work that teachers do. I detect a real change in the way that we look at our education system.
All the research shows that parents are not interested in structures. We go on about academies, academy chains and LEA schools, but parents want good teachers, good leadership of a school and a curriculum which excites, motivates and enthuses pupils. I am afraid that we get hung up far too often on structures. I think I detect the glimmer of hope that we will again move away from the notion that structures are the way forward—they are not; it has to be about the quality of the education provision and of the teacher.
Turning to academy trusts—we have long debated this in the past—I have a number of observations resulting from the Statement. First, we hear that the voice of the parent should be heard. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that those academy trusts—few, thank goodness—which have done away with governing bodies for each school will be a thing of the past. Schools, even in multi-academy trusts, need to have a governing body, particularly so the parent voice can be heard.
My second observation, which I raised time and again with the Minister in the Lords before this Minister, is about chief executives of academy trusts and how their salaries have got completely out of control—some are getting up to £300,000. Over the last two or three years the number of chief executives of even small academy trusts earning more than £100,000 has grown. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, assuring us that he was going to tackle this issue, but his tackling of the issue has seen the problem escalate rather than get better.
As was mentioned in Oral Questions, academies can choose the curriculum they want. There are certain things which are crucial for all children. Again, when we discuss the White Paper, we need to look at giving all schools the same freedoms and opportunities, but with those freedoms come responsibilities. There are areas of the education curriculum where we should ensure that every school, whether a local authority academy—there is a new thing—a free school, or, if they still exist, any local authority schools not in academy trusts, must teach.
One thing that slightly jarred with me in the Statement was that only one school was mentioned. It was not that anything this school—Oak National Academy—had done was wrong, just that only one was picked out. A teacher would not pick out one clever pupil in the class, they would celebrate the whole class. There are lots of examples of schools which have done just as much, if not more, innovative things than the Oak National Academy. That jarred slightly.
This afternoon we talked about creative subjects and the EBacc. I challenged the Minister to give a direct reply, which she was not able to do, and I understand why. The White Paper will give us all an opportunity to explore the effect the EBacc has had on certain subjects in the curriculum. It might well be—it is not my particular wish, but I got this sense from the Minister’s reply—that she sees T-levels as providing the less academic, more vocational route, hence they would not be part of the EBacc. That would be a grave mistake and the EBacc should encourage creative subjects as well.
I am pleased the Government have listened to the issue of a national school register, but there are a number of other matters, as the Minister well knows, such as unregistered schools. One of the reasons we are not able to take action against unregistered schools, as Ofsted will tell you, is that they can morph into very small units. Unless we are prepared to see home education treated in a different way, it will be very difficult to deal with unregistered schools. That is an area where we need to focus.
We are told that Ofsted will inspect all schools. That is right, but let us remember that schools have been through a terrible time just keeping the doors open and keeping children educated. I would hope that Ofsted would be more about an opportunity to work with schools and would offer a supportive inspection. Rather than waving a big stick where perhaps the wheels have wobbled during the pandemic or things have gone wrong, I hope that Ofsted might proverbially put its arm around the school and say, “Look, these are the issues that need sorting out.”
I have a few questions. First, we know that children from deprived communities have suffered the most for all the reasons that we have debated and discussed in the past. I was a bit disappointed that that issue was not particularly addressed in the comments. Secondly, children have missed out on extra-curricular social and academic experiences—opportunities to develop the skills that they will need for the future. Why have the Government not used the first White Paper in six years to change and expand the range of opportunities that are given to children? Where is the ambition?
The White Paper has so far had quite surprisingly mixed reviews. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that, although the paper outlined promising measures, it lacked ambition or “big ideas”. The Education Policy Institute think tank said that pushing all schools to become academies was “no silver bullet”, and that, although the White Paper contained “some bold aims”, it seemed
“unlikely that many of these bold pledges will … be met.”
My party looks forward to the opportunity that this White Paper gives to address not just the questions that I have raised or those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but issues such as children being permanently excluded from school, how they are treated, and how we need to make sure that we give them a much better opportunity and a much better education. I look forward to working with the Government on the White Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran)
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks. I will do my best to respond to them now, but I look forward to further opportunities to discuss the White Paper in more detail.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked where all this comes from and criticised the thinness of the document. The White Paper stems from a very clear ambition for our children at every stage of their schooling and beyond. We have approached this by trying to understand what is already working well in our school system and scaling that up. The gap between what the best schools and trusts achieve for our children at key stage 2 and key stage 4, and what that means for their future prospects, is very sizeable, particularly for disadvantaged children. Our focus is on scaling up what works and has been shown to work over the last 12 years.
The big idea is to make that work on a national scale. I understand why the noble Lord questions where the sparkly new policies are. There are, of course, new elements within the White Paper but the big, difficult idea and the hardest thing to do will be to scale up that quality. Our ambition is crystal clear: it is about quality for all our children. We have approached it in a spirit of looking at the evidence and being very transparent about that evidence. I hope that the noble Lord will have a moment to look at the data annexe that sits with the White Paper; it is not in the hard copy but is available online. I hope he will feel that it is anything but cherry picked. We have made every effort to be as transparent as possible, including both data that supports our arguments and data that does not, so that we can show how we have reached our conclusions. Most importantly, we have approached this in a spirit of fairness—it should feel fair to all of the actors in the system as we move forward.
The noble Lord asks why we have a fixation on academic standards, particularly in English and maths. Of children who did not reach the expected standard at key stage 2, just 21% achieved grade 4 or above in English language at GCSE and only 14% achieved that at key stage 4 in 2019. Of those with five or more GSCEs, 55% completed a degree, compared to 6% of those with fewer; post GCSE, they are 16 percentage points more likely to be employed, and they earn on average £9,000 more a year. I could go on. The impact on the economy is massive—these are huge and important markers at the start of a child’s life which translate to their future prospects, their future social mobility and the future health and wealth of them, their families and our nation.
I did not follow the noble Lord’s argument on the funding formula. It is clearly not at the expense of disadvantaged areas—quite the reverse. We currently have an outdated mechanism for funding our schools. We now have a national funding formula, and we will be working progressively and incrementally to make sure that funding goes to schools directly in response to the need and nature of the cohort that they serve.
The noble Lord also asked about compulsion and requiring schools to become academies. We are keen and have worked very hard in this White Paper to try to make sure everyone involved in the schools system feels they are part of this journey. We are considering all options, and we will engage with the sector to deliver a fully trust-led system.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about the importance of local governing bodies. In preparing the White Paper, we—and I personally—spent a great deal of time with local authority-maintained school heads, particularly primary school heads. One of the things they talked about that was almost universal was a sense of being local and part of their local community. Therefore, in the governance plank of the five planks of our “strong trusts” framework, we are clear that schools need to feel local, have a sense of local identity and have a role in their local community.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about families of schools and families being strung out across the country. I will not take the analogy too far, but we will be working hard on commissioning to make sure we have geographically coherent trusts, so they can benefit from all that that offers.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about CEO salaries. We take that seriously and are continuing to follow on from the good work of my noble friend Lord Agnew. The Oak National Academy is not an individual school; it was the platform that was created during the pandemic that delivered all the digital lessons for children across the country. I apologise if the name was confusing.
To finish, the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, said we would need a number of measures to turn things around for our children. That is what is in this White Paper—it is about great teachers, a great curriculum, good attendance, good behaviour, a pledge to parents if their children fall behind, and creating a system that delivers the strongest, fairest and most ambitious school system for our children.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I do not doubt the commitment of the Minister to equality for all children. However, in responding to the White Paper, the National Children’s Bureau comments that too many children still live in poverty. That must be addressed for education success to follow. The White Paper has left many in education underwhelmed and, as my noble friend Lord Watson said, it has left our schools underfunded.
In all the years that academisation has been an option, only 44% of schools have taken it, some voluntarily, often with inducements, and some not. No solid evidence can be adduced that academy status per se equates to better outcomes for young people. School leaders have declared that total forced academisation would be a distraction, so why does the Minister think that politicians know better than school leaders?
With one in six children reporting mental health difficulties, an opportunity to reassess assessment and the curriculum should have been taken. The potential for centralisation of pedagogy through Oak Academy is a problem. It looks like deskilling our teachers, with talk of “delivering” lessons. While the White Paper is about England, will the Government take the opportunity to learn from the very good practice in evidence in Scotland and Wales, including on school governance, curriculum and assessment?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her remarks. On academisation, she will be aware that the picture is very different in secondary and primary education. About 78% of secondary schools are now academies compared to about 38% of primaries. She questions their performance. Our emphasis has been very clear. We are talking about creating strong trusts and we are building on the experience of the existing strong trusts. If all children did as well as pupils in the top-performing 10% of trusts at key stage 2, our results nationally would be 14 percentage points higher, going from 65% to 79%, and would be 19 percentage points higher for disadvantaged pupils. I know the noble Baroness shares my passion and the passion of my colleagues in the department for supporting particularly those disadvantaged children.
On Oak Academy, far from deskilling teachers, we are going to make the most enormous investment in teachers in terms of teacher training opportunities and continuing professional development at all stages of a teacher’s career. We are aware that, particularly in primary, individual teachers are writing lesson plans from scratch. Oak Academy is by teachers, for teachers and of teachers. It is there as an option for teachers. Again, I know the noble Baroness shares our concerns about teacher workload. One way we can support teachers is by providing them with the best-quality curriculum to draw from.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in his thanks for the White Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as president of the Woodard Corporation. In expressing gratitude, I appreciate in particular how the White Paper recognises the vital role the Churches have played in the educational landscape of this country for more than 200 years and that it sets out how the role needs to continue to be enabled in the future development of the school system. I will focus on two questions regarding the move towards the fully academised educational landscape set out in the White Paper and invite the Minister to agree that it requires two key things.
First, it requires significant investment of resource to make that transition possible. The Church of England is the largest provider of academies, with over 1,500 of our schools having already converted, but that still leaves two-thirds of our schools waiting to become academies. This will require time and resource for the conversion process, as well as strong, new trusts to be formed to enable that transition. Recognition that MATs must grow to a sustainable level of about 7,500 pupils means thinking carefully and strategically about small rural schools and how a funding model can work for them, to enable their vital education to remain at the heart of communities, particularly rural communities, across our land.
Secondly, I hope the noble Baroness can give assurance that legislation will be introduced to ensure that the statutory basis on which the dual system of Church and state as partners in education, which has been in operation since 1944, securely translates into the contractual context in which academies are based, so that the sites on which schools are situated can continue to be used for the charitable purposes for which they were given. So, in expressing thanks, I ask the noble Baroness to assure us that these things will be addressed and secured in order to ensure that Church schools can approach this new future with confidence.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his questions. I also extend my thanks to Church schools but also to all schools that have been working in the most difficult circumstances, particularly in the second half of this term, with the pressures that Covid has placed, once again, on their staff. I can, I hope, reassure the right reverend Prelate that we will be protecting the faith designation of diocesan schools on a statutory basis as we move forward with our plans. We are providing funding to support academisation and to make sure that schools, particularly schools in the most entrenched areas of educational underperformance, are funded to join strong trusts.
On small rural schools—to go back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about feeling local—perhaps there are no schools more local than small rural primaries, which often play a really important part in their community. We will be putting a great deal of thought into this and look forward to working with the right reverend Prelate’s colleagues at the diocesan education board in thinking through how we can deliver this in a way that supports small rural primaries.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, the Secretary of State deserves the warmest congratulations, with the ministerial team and all those officials and others who have been involved in Opportunity for All: Strong Schools with Great Teachers for your Child. I suggest that anyone who thinks there is excessive focus on English and maths should consult parents. Parents want their children to read and write; parents know the world is difficult; they know that numeracy and now digital skills are critical. They know that a good education is the passport for the future, and the most disadvantaged parents know that quite as much as the most affluent. I really like this White Paper for its coherence, its ambition, its relative simplicity and its evidence base. How many times have we all heard head teachers saying, “I’ve had so many documents come through that I have to read—I’ve got to teach my school and do everything else”? Somebody once said to me, “I’ve given the documents to my husband to read because I just don’t have time to read it all.” This is accessible and approachable.
Children spend around 15,000 hours at school; the same amount of time as they spend at home. Professor Sir Michael Rutter, the architect of child psychiatry, wrote a book, Fifteen Thousand Hours, with the team at the Maudsley, comparing the output of 12 secondary schools in Southwark. They found that the brightest children at some schools were doing worse than the least able children at another school. This is about teachers, about expectations and about rigour. For those of us who want to see what can be achieved, we can only celebrate again the extraordinary results at the Brampton Manor Academy. This year, 89 young people got Oxbridge offers—ethnic minorities, school meals, first generation university.
I have so much to say, I had better be quick. I have two questions I want to ask. Will the Minister say a little more about the Education Endowment Foundation; and will she say just a bit more about excluded pupils? They are a really vexed problem. They can be disruptive in a class aiming for high standards, but we do not want them to fall out of the system, so I very much hope she will address that.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will pass on my noble friend’s very warm words to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I am glad that she appreciates the White Paper. I agree with her wholeheartedly about what parents want. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a group of parents yesterday while visiting a school in Newham, where 94% of the children have English as an additional language. The mothers and fathers to whom I spoke were all crystal clear about how important it was for their children to achieve.
In relation to my noble friend’s specific questions, the Education Endowment Foundation, which we fully endowed through, and announced in, the White Paper, provides us with the academic rigour in terms of evaluating different interventions across the education system, so that teachers, school leaders and MAT leaders can feel confident in the interventions that they use. All that we have suggested in the White Paper has been supported and recommended by the EEF. In relation to excluded children, if my noble friend will bear with me for another day, we are taking the Statement about the special educational needs and alternative provision Green Paper in this House tomorrow, when I will be delighted to talk about that in more detail.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, there is a great deal in this White Paper on special educational needs and teacher training. Indeed, teacher training is the main thrust of it. Then we talk about 90% literacy. Some 15%—or 10% if you are being conservative—of the population are dyslexic. Another 5% are dyscalculic. If you put the other “disses” in there, you have a great pot of people who are going to struggle in the classroom. How, unless you have a major investment in special educational needs, are you going to hit that target? Or are we going to do something very sensible such as saying that if somebody communicates through a computer coherently—every computer that you buy now has a built-in voice-operated section and read-back facility—we will count that as being literate? If we are, we can achieve it. If not, we are basically going to break the back of people achieving an unrealistic target if it is still with a pen and paper. If the Minister can give me an answer now, it will help the rest of the debate today, and the debate on the Statement tomorrow.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I hope I can give the noble Lord a fuller answer tomorrow, when we talk about the SEND Green Paper. But in terms of this document talking a lot about children with special educational needs and disabilities, that is intentional. We are absolutely clear that the best place for the majority of children with special educational needs is in mainstream education close to their home and their friends. We need to make sure that mainstream schools are a safe, welcoming, supportive and effective environment for those children. We have looked at and tried to model the interventions that are set out in the White Paper to see how we can reach the targets that we have set out. As the noble Lord knows, however, currently only 22% of children with special educational needs reach the expected standard, compared with an average at key stage 2 of 65%—so it is well below what we need to get to.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, one of the themes that the White Paper majors on is listening to the voices of parents and making sure that they are heard. However, More Than a Score and Parentkind today put out a survey from YouGov, showing that 80% of parents think that SATs do not provide useful information about a child’s progress; 95% say SATs have a negative impact on their child’s well-being; and 85% do not consider SATs results when choosing a school. Only 1% of the members of the National Association of Head Teachers thought that key stage 1 SATs should go ahead this year; 3% thought that key stage 2 should go ahead. The White Paper is on the bigger, longer-term issues, but are we not seeing, both in terms of the Government’s determination to push ahead with SATs and in terms of the focus on academic targets and testing in this White Paper, a push to schools to more and more teach to the test in a narrow range of subjects? Are we yet again not listening to parents and not listening to pupils? I take the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, about pupils spending 15,000 hours in school. We have the unhappiest children in Europe. We are failing our children, and focusing just on tests in a narrow range of subjects is a big part of that. Will the Government think about the happiness of our children?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government think a lot about the happiness of our children. We worry a lot about the children who are in underperforming schools, and where their life chances are being held back because of the nature of the education they receive. This is why we are focusing our education investment on areas of really entrenched under-performance. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but 54% of children in secondary schools in Knowsley today are in schools which have been judged more than twice as requiring more improvement. That is what will turn around our children’s life chances, and that is where we are focusing.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the answers she has given. I welcome the ambition of the Government’s policies as set out in the White Paper. I will look at the statistics they have provided with some care. Are such statistics in a White Paper run past the UK Statistics Authority—not just the figures, but the conclusions drawn from them? It would be useful if we could be told.
I hope I will be forgiven if I suggest, for those with long enough memories, that the support expressed in the White Paper for well-managed families of schools delivering high-quality and inclusive education, coupled with the encouragement in the White Paper for LEAs to establish their own strong trusts, might be taken as an attempt to recreate the achievements of the Inner London Education Authority after many years. Of course, the fear of many people is that academies—particularly when we have multi-academy trusts—lead, in effect, to the privatisation of the education service. The distinction between an MAT and a commercial organisation is often hard to discern.
My first question for the Minister is, what are the Government going to do to ensure that all academies, whether SAT or MAT, operate with a social purpose? My second question, given the emphasis on what parents want from education in the previous question, is, what role do the Government want for parents in the governance of academies? There is a reference in the White Paper to a review of the governance of the system, but it is notable that in the document, The Case for a Fully Trust-Led System, there is only one reference to parents, and then only as passive observers. Should the Government not do more to enable the participation of parents in school governance?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am really puzzled by the image the noble Lord paints of multi-academy trusts representing privatisation. They receive exactly the same funding as any other state-maintained school, and they are inspected in exactly the same way. The majority of them are charities. I am not sure quite where privatisation comes in. What we see in the best trusts—and perhaps this is behind the noble Lord’s question—is that they use the resources from the taxpayer intelligently, in the interests of the child. I will give an example from the north-east of England. I recently visited a trust which, through better procurement, was able to reinvest those savings in dedicated tutoring for all their students. I do not know where the noble Lord’s concern comes from, but I genuinely think it is misplaced.
I turn to the noble Lord’s second point, about trust standards. We will be working with this sector. There is not a lot of detail in the White Paper because we want to co-create those standards together with the sector, and we look forward to reporting back more on that in the future. This would, of course, include the role of parents.