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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
We have spent taxpayers’ money on building counter-fraud services, including the counter fraud function, counter fraud profession and a data analytics hub. Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Cabinet Office are going further, spending £24 million on a public sector fraud authority, which will bring increased scrutiny to counter-fraud performance and build a broader and deeper expert service for public bodies.
Alexander Stafford
The Labour party cost each individual hard-working taxpayer £500 a year through fraud and error when it was last in office. Can my right hon. Friend confirm what action he is taking to reverse Labour’s shocking legacy and oversee cost-cutting programmes across Government?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of the proper expenditure of taxpayers’ money, which we always remember it is; the Government have no funds of their own. We have announced significant efforts on the counter-fraud service, most recently with the announcement on the public sector fraud authority, which is part of a wider programme of £750 million. That spending is not a virtue in itself, but £1 spent fighting fraud brings a proper, bankable return to taxpayers by bringing wrongdoers to justice and getting money back, and that is what we will continue to do.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I could not agree more with the Minister. Let us have a bankable return for the taxpayer, because the Public Accounts Committee has found that £4.9 billion of money given in bounce back loans is fraudulent. What is he doing to get almost £5 billion back for the taxpayer?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am glad to say we have Corporal Hindsight on duty in the Chamber this morning. The socialists were calling for bounce back loans to be issued faster, and therefore, inevitably, with fewer checks at the time. The public sector fraud authority is being set up and the fraud departments within Government are working with the British Business Bank and with banks—I have seen a number of them personally—to get them to use their systems to claim the money back from people who have taken it fraudulently. The Government take it extremely seriously, but the socialists must remember what they were saying a couple of years ago.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
But what is my right hon. Friend doing about the internal fraud within the Government, caused by low productivity and bloated and dysfunctional public services?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is a great one for holding the Government and the bureaucracy to account, and he is right to do so. That is why we are looking to significant productivity increases by reducing the size of the civil service back to where it was in 2016, to ensure that services are provided to the public efficiently and effectively. As we reduce the number, so there will be significant taxpayer spending on better technology, because the use of technology speeds up actions for citizens and reduces costs for the taxpayer.
Mr Speaker
We now come to shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Angela Rayner.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
The Leader of the House talks about socialists, but let us talk about the Conservatives. He will be aware that a Conservative peer is under investigation by the National Crime Agency over fraud. PPE Medpro, a company linked to Baroness Mone, was handed hundreds of millions of pounds in Government contracts during the pandemic. It is now reported to have been raided by the police, as has her home. There are serious questions about the due diligence performed on that company, so can the Leader of the House let us know what evidence they hold and why they are refusing to put a single sheet of it out into the public domain? What do they have to hide?
Mr Speaker
I should just say that he is no longer the Leader of the House. I know we all assume he is, but there we are.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I was going to point out to the right hon. Lady that business questions will follow in due course and that that would be her opportunity to raise such things with the Leader of the House.
Angela Rayner
Well, that was a way of deflecting from the actual serious question that the Government are not willing to answer because they know there is suspicion about the way in which they handled those contracts.
On the topic of protecting the public purse, as we speak this Government are frittering away almost half a million pounds a day on storing personal protective equipment unfit for human use. That is after £10 billion has already been wasted, alone, on unusable, overpriced and underdelivered PPE. In fact, useless PPE storage is costing the taxpayer nearly half a million pounds a day. Will the Government’s procurement Bill close the loophole and prevent cronyism from corrupting our politics and wasting public money?
Mr Rees-Mogg
These charges made by the socialists are completely false. They have no bearing on reality and they completely ignore what was the requirement two years ago. We needed PPE. There was a global shortage. Everyone in the world was buying PPE, and British manufacturing managed to turn round and supply it in unprecedented quantities. If I remember rightly from when I was Leader of the House, domestically produced PPE went from about 1% to well over 70%, possibly even over 80%. This was an enormous effort, and it has to be said that everyone was calling for it at the time, because it was urgent to protect people in care homes, in hospitals and in offices as masks and PPE were demanded and this was delivered. The right hon. Lady would have sat on her hands and done nothing, expecting it to take months and months to procure a single pair of gloves.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
As the Minister responsible for the infected blood inquiry, I announced this week the publication of the study by Sir Robert Francis QC on a framework of compensation for people directly affected by infected blood. The Government are considering Sir Robert’s recommendations and I will update the House as this work progresses.
Duncan Baker
I was contacted by a constituent who has been affected by the infected blood scandal. As for so many across the country, this has been a very traumatic moment for everybody who has been impacted. As my right hon. and learned Friend says, on Tuesday we have the release of the very welcome study that has come forward. Can we now move at pace on compensation for those who have been impacted? Will he think about the recommendations for interim payments, and will that be able to help the victims quickly now?
Michael Ellis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for rightly raising the concerns of his constituents. I know that Members across the House will have constituents in similar positions. Sir Robert will give evidence to the inquiry on 11 and 12 July, so just a few weeks from now, and the Government will need to reflect very carefully on his evidence to the inquiry in considering his study. But the points my hon. Friend makes are very valid and have been noted. There are complex factors to take into consideration and we will be doing just that.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Steve Barclay)
The Government are working closely with the food industry to ensure that the UK’s food security is resilient to shocks. The resilience strategy will be published this summer and will reflect a range of global resilience issues.
Kerry McCarthy
This situation has become increasingly urgent because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has seriously disrupted global food supplies. Will the Minister comment on rumours that the Government are reportedly abandoning many of the recommendations in the national food strategy, on which their response is long overdue, including measures that would help us to improve our food security?
Steve Barclay
We are working in partnership with the food industry—indeed, only yesterday I chaired a roundtable with industry representatives—and also working in partnership across the United Kingdom. We had representatives from the devolved Administrations there yesterday for what is a common purpose. We all want to see resilience, given the pressure on food prices, and we are working in partnership with industry representatives to take that strategy forward.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend outline what steps his Department is taking to mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine on world supplies of food?
Steve Barclay
One specific area is working with international partners as to how we get the grain out of Ukraine. There is a pressing timescale on that—a four-week window—so the matter is urgent. Indeed, when I met the US ambassador who has newly arrived in her post, that was one of the issues we discussed, as we do with other international partners.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Bearing in mind the need to secure knowledgeable farmers—I am very fortunate in my constituency to have many—what discussions has the Minister had with counterparts in the area of skills and learning on fostering a supportive route to farming and diversification to secure our food supplies at home?
Steve Barclay
The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. I suggest that he looks first at the approach we took in the autumn, when our supply chains were under pressure. We showed considerable flexibility and worked with industry leaders such as Sir Dave Lewis on how to adapt our approach. Obviously, there are schemes such as the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, which has a review mechanism that potentially allows an extra 10,000 workers if required. There is also the opportunity to invest in areas such as agri-tech, and policy from the Chancellor such as the super deduction facilitates that investment.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
Our two Departments are working closely together on matters of procurement policy on a continuing basis, as demonstrated by the provisions being made in the Procurement Bill for defence contracts. I have had regular conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement during the drafting of the Bill.
Mr Robertson
I thank the Minister for that answer. Last year, it was announced that a competition would take place to replace the electronic countermeasures. Four companies made bids, including two from my constituency, one of which already supplies that equipment. Three were sifted out on the ground that their answers on the supply chain question were not sufficient, even though the three have very strong supply chain records and gave honest answers to the questions. I believe that that is an unfair and potentially dangerous decision. Will my right hon. Friend look into it, please?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I have had assurances from the Foreign Office that it carefully evaluated the bids in line with its procurement process, and that the answers and documentation supplied provided limited assurance that either supplier could deliver electronic countermeasure systems within the procurement timeframe required. However, I commend my hon. Friend for standing up for his constituents and seeking redress of grievance, which is what this House exists for, and I will question the Foreign Office further to give him further reassurance that the process was carried out fairly and his constituents were not disadvantaged.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I wish you a very happy birthday tomorrow?
The Procurement Bill is important business. The Opposition are concerned that the Government showed little understanding of spending taxpayers’ money efficiently and effectively by irresponsibly wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money during the pandemic. The Procurement Bill is a huge opportunity to ensure that every pound of taxpayers’ money spent takes account of social value—true value for money—to distribute growth, meet environmental targets and develop social wellbeing, but it does not mention social value once. Does the Minister agree that including in the Bill an explicit commitment to deliver social value will help to restore public trust in Government spending, after the failures of the pandemic?
Mr Rees-Mogg
How remiss of me not to wish you many happy returns for tomorrow, Mr Speaker. I expect that Chorley will be en fête over the weekend and that what it was doing last weekend was merely a warm-up for the main event.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) for bringing up the Procurement Bill, which has now started its passage in the other House. What is of fundamental and overwhelming importance—I think we agree on this—is value for money, and that is front and centre of the Bill. The other bits around procurement may be good to do, but if we do not achieve value for money, taxpayers’ money will not be well spent.
I go back to the procurement of PPE two years ago. Had we followed the normal procurement rules, it would have taken three to six months before we ordered a single extra glove. That cannot have been the right thing to do when there was an emergency. I am glad to say that the Bill provides better emergency procurement procedures.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
Digital transformation is central to improving the delivery of Government services. My Department is leading work to improve the efficiency of the top 75 Government services; to embed a build once, use many times approach to technology; and to build a new system that will enable citizens to prove their identity and access online Government services through a single account, one login. In the last financial year, technology platforms built by Cabinet Office digital generated £74 million of savings to Government—six times more than cost to run.
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for outlining the Government’s improvements in online applications, but may I ask what conversations she is having with the Home Office? Many Carshalton and Wallington residents have been in touch about delays in the Homes for Ukraine scheme and passport renewals, so what discussions has the Cabinet Office had with the Home Office on improving its online application systems?
Mrs Wheeler
Home Office colleagues are working harder than ever to deal with huge surges in demand for passports and visas as a result of the recovery from the pandemic and the UK’s response to the illegal war in Ukraine. The Home Office is currently prioritising Ukraine visa scheme applications in response to the illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Government are communicating directly with other visa customers to note that economic visas are taking longer to process at this time. Staff are being redeployed to those visa routes and further staff are being recruited and onboarded. More passport applications are being processed than ever before, with nearly 2 million applications completed between March and April. Despite that, the vast majority of passports are being processed within 10 weeks.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
The Minister’s warm words do not match the reality of the Government’s plans. Their all-male cuts committee, headed by the Chancellor, will not create efficiencies by cutting 91,000 civil servants; in fact it will gut the civil service’s capability to deliver the vital frontline services that our communities rely on. Will the Minister explain to the public how all Departments being asked to model 20%, 30% or 40% job cuts will better serve their needs when it comes to getting their passport on time, not having to wait in queues at the airport or accessing swift justice in our court system?
Mrs Wheeler
I am afraid the hon. Lady is out of step with reality. Many MPs have gone to the hub in Portcullis House and have got turnarounds for their constituents’ passports. Many people have got their passports within nine days. [Interruption.] She is asking about technology: improvements in artificial intelligence mean that if there is no issue with someone’s passport, it is returned within nine days flat.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
What an exciting time we are having this morning. The Government will provide a range of entry routes and a renewed focus on driving the movement of skills, experience and knowledge within the civil service, and between the civil service and other sectors, through loans, secondments and intergovernmental placements and fellowships. We have strengthened the external by default recruitment requirement for all senior civil servant roles, so all Departments will be able to recruit the people best placed to lead and work in Government.
Damien Moore
The civil service fast stream ensures that the best and brightest in our society, no matter their background, rise to the top. Does my hon. Friend agree that restoring the fast stream would ensure that the top ranks of the civil service continue to be world leading in their breadth and depth of knowledge?
Mrs Wheeler
Fast stream places for autumn 2022 will be honoured and our direct entry apprenticeship and internship schemes will continue to bring new and diverse talent to the civil service. While we pause the fast stream for the 2023 intake, we will take the opportunity to further improve the fast stream offer. That reform will ensure that when the scheme reopens, it is focused on driving up specialist skills in the civil service, as well as improving the regional representation of the fast stream.
I know that my hon. Friend works hard with Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officials on their international agenda in his capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Belgium, Luxembourg and Tunisia. I take the opportunity to update him that, as part of our global Britain agenda and the establishment of the new College for National Security, we are launching international strategy and security fellowships, which are secondments, and where possible—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but these are very long answers. We are certainly wandering away from where we started. Let us move on to the shadow Minister.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Increasing the diversity of the senior civil service is key to strengthening leadership and expanding expertise. Representation of ethnic minorities and disabled people in senior roles is still below the working population average. Given that the fast stream is a proven route to senior roles, it should be used as a tool to boost diversity, so the decision to freeze the scheme puts a reckless, ideological cuts agenda ahead of a sustained strategy to create a senior civil service that truly reflects our country. Can the Minister explain how cutting 91,000 jobs and freezing the fast stream will help to increase diversity in the senior civil service?
Mrs Wheeler
I am afraid the hon. Lady is missing the point completely. Respectfully, taxpayers should have value for money, and a civil service that has grown by 24% in only a few years is outrageous. The most important point about diversity is that we are moving jobs out of London, with regional jobs all over, and we are reflecting the public in those regional jobs.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I am very grateful for this question because it is an opportunity to remind the hon. Gentleman that the people of Wales, in their good sense, voted in a higher proportion to leave the European Union than did the people of England.
My officials and I undertake regular engagement with the devolved Administrations on the opportunities arising from leaving the European Union, including on the Brexit freedoms Bill and the reviews of retained EU law. I was pleased to have a meeting with the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution on 23 May to discuss the Brexit freedoms Bill, and I look forward to further such discussions to ensure we maximise the benefits of Brexit for the people of Wales, including the exciting development of a freeport.
Hywel Williams
Post-Brexit freight traffic through Holyhead is down by 34%—permanently so. This is not teething troubles and it is not post covid; it is a permanent failure. In January last year, the Secretary of State for Wales told me that he was in talks with the Welsh Government to make sure that Holyhead “flourishes”. Eighteen months later, does this Minister consider that Holyhead is flourishing?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think everyone is keen that Holyhead should flourish, but inevitably there are competitive routes for transport. It is inevitable in any free market system that people will choose the routes that they decide to use. But there are also issues with the Northern Ireland protocol and, if the hon. Gentleman continues to attend as regularly as he does, he will no doubt hear announcements in this House on the protocol.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
Her Majesty’s Government understand that many people are worried about the effect of rising prices. That is why we recently announced over £15 billion of additional support, targeted particularly at those in the greatest need. That brings Government support for the cost of living this year to over £37 billion.
We need to look at the wider context here. It is challenging to separate out the effects of Brexit on the UK economy. Indeed, it is worth noting, as Julian Jessop has been pointing out, the very high rate of food inflation in Germany, which I do not believe is an effect of Brexit. We have also seen an illegal war in Russia and supply chain problems following the pandemic. So we will move on with the Brexit freedoms Bill and the Procurement Bill, which will help us to get more opportunities for growth from leaving the European Union.
Chris Stephens
But Brexit-related trade barriers have driven up the cost of food in the UK by 6%, making life harder for everyone struggling with the cost of living crisis. So severe is the harm that 60% of leave voters accept that Brexit has driven up the cost of living. Does the Minister accept that, and what do the Government intend to do about the rising cost of food across these islands?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I do not know where these figures come from. The hon. Gentleman himself said it, but I am not sure there is any greater source for these figures, though perhaps he will make them available in the Library if there is some better evidence for them.
What we have done by not adding controls on 1 July is ensure we do not add costs to things coming into this country. We believe in free trade. We do not believe in non-tariff barriers. We believe in being as open as possible. That is why my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is negotiating dozens of free trade agreements, many of them already successfully adopted. That is what we will continue to do because a free and open market reduces prices, which we can do as we are no longer under the yoke—the onerous yoke—of the European Union.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
The Government and I are very committed to ensuring we maximise the opportunities of leaving the EU to support economic growth. My hon. Friend, with his invariable parliamentary perspicacity, follows from one question to another seamlessly, because what we need is the removal of overburdensome and bureaucratic regulation such as solvency II and the clinical trials directive to create new pro-growth regulatory frameworks in data and AI. Her Majesty’s Government are already delivering an ambitious programme of work to unleash innovation, propel start-up growth across all sectors of the economy and help to level up parts of the United Kingdom. The Procurement Bill alone will cut 350 separate pieces of EU law to one UK law. I have also been receiving excellent ideas from readers of The Sun and the Sunday Express.
Mr Bone
I apologise to the House, Mr Speaker: perhaps I should not have asked that question as it obviously required the giving of a long list of benefits.
In my constituency, Weatherbys, the global administrator for horse racing, has developed an e-passport to ease movements of thoroughbreds around the world and provide essential welfare data. If the Government were to link that e-passport to the Government system, that would be a massive Brexit dividend. May I ask the excellent Minister for administrative affairs whether he would put a rocket under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, make it be courageous and cut the red tape, cut the delay and get this done?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I have good news for my hon. Friend: DEFRA’s equine identification team has been in contact with Weatherbys during the development and launch of its e-passport, and the merits of its e-passport will be considered along with responses from a recent consultation, which closes on 28 June. So it is a case of, my hon. Friend asks and it shall be given. Seek and he shall find.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
In October 2019, the Brexit Opportunities Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and assured businesses that the “broad, sunlit uplands” of Brexit lay ahead. Yesterday, I spoke to Elizabeth, whose company, Gracefruit, has exported chemicals for cosmetics to the EU for almost two decades. She weathered the financial crash, but such was the impact of Brexit that she has told me she no longer has the
“mental or emotional energy to make a success of a once-thriving business.”
So would he like to tell Elizabeth, and all the others struggling with red tape, soaring costs and a loss of market, when they can expect those “broad, sunlit uplands” to arrive?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The sun is shining, metaphorically, regardless of the meteorological conditions outside. What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are in charge of how this economy works, but what we cannot do is make the EU dance to our tune. If it wishes to disadvantage its own consumers—if it wishes to put up prices for its consumers—that is a matter for the EU, but we are producing a dynamic, open, free market UK economy.
Brendan O'Hara
The idea that the Minister for Brexit Opportunities believes that the sun is shining for small and medium-sized companies in this country is absolutely unbelievable because, in the first year following Brexit, Elizabeth’s business fell by 65%. Because of red tape and new regulations, her product line had to be reduced from 350 products to one, and the company has had to lay off 50% of its workforce. So it is Brexit that has been an unmitigated disaster for Gracefruit and so many other long-standing successful businesses. Is it not time that this Government stopped playing games with people’s lives and livelihoods and admitted that their Brexit experiment is a lose-lose for everybody, bar a few double-breasted suit-wearing hedge fund managers and City spivs?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong and he actually explains why it was right to leave the EU. What he is talking about is not British red tape—it is EU red tape. We are freeing people in this country from red tape because we look at the United Kingdom playing a global role—trading with the globe, being as economically productive as anywhere in the world. He comes here and explains that the red tape of the EU strangles enterprise and innovation and destroys business. That is why the EU is a failing economic option and why we sing hallelujahs for having left it.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
May I join others in wishing you many happy returns, Mr Speaker? It must be great to be the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons in generations.
Under the Inquiries Act 2005, the process, procedure and timing of the inquiry are matters for its independent chair Baroness Heather Hallett. She has made it clear that she will be doing everything in her power to deliver recommendations as soon as possible.
Alex Norris
More than 170,000 people have lost their lives to covid-19. That is an awful lot of empty places at the dinner table and a lot of broken hearts. The families desire rightly to know what happened to help them grieve. I heard what the Minister said about the limits on his agency in the matter, but I did not hear him say that, in his opinion, it would be valuable to have those answers as quickly as possible, and that ought to be within the life of this Parliament.
Michael Ellis
The hon. Member is completely right to raise his point, which I know is one that the House will agree with. The inquiry’s draft terms of reference actually require it to
“produce its reports (including interim reports) and any recommendations in a timely manner.”
To be fair, Baroness Hallett has made it clear that she will do everything in her power to deliver recommendations as soon as possible. I agree with that—it is part of the terms of reference—and we will work to that, as I know she will.
Feryal Clark
Seven hundred and fifty-one: that is how many people died within 28 days of a covid-positive test in my borough of Enfield. Those people are not just numbers; they represent hundreds of families who are grieving the loss of loved ones and want answers. They should not have to fight and struggle to get those answers. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. I join my hon. Friend in asking the Minister to do the right thing by those families, including those in Enfield, and ensure that the inquiry reports back as soon as possible.
Michael Ellis
I am sympathetic to the hon. Member’s point, and I know everyone will be. The consultation on the terms of reference that Baroness Hallett engaged upon is now complete. She received more than 20,000 responses from members of the public. She had already held meetings with bereaved families and sector representatives across the UK and she has now published her recommendations for the inquiry’s final remit. The Prime Minister will be consulting with the devolved Administrations. Every effort will be made to go as fast as is reasonably possible while also getting proper inquiry results. I know that Baroness Hallett will work to that, too.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
We already have the most important lesson, which is to avoid lockdowns, isn’t it?
Michael Ellis
I think that my right hon. Friend will agree that the Prime Minister and the Government made every effort to avoid having lockdowns where that was possible. Unfortunately, occasionally, it was necessary so to do.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Steve Barclay)
The Government are dedicating significant resources to understanding and countering Russia’s cyber-threat, working with our allies. That has included joint advisories with our Five Eyes partners on how to mitigate that threat.
Giles Watling
With daily cyber-attacks against this place as well as institutions and companies across the country, what are we doing to stem the tide of aggression from Russia?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are spending £2.6 billion over the next three years to counter that threat. That is additional to the significant funding going into the National Cyber Force, which gives us offensive capability as well. Alongside that, we have a whole of society approach as set out in our national cyber strategy. I know that you, Mr Speaker, will take a great interest in particular in the north-west cyber-corridor, which is about leveraging that investment in the National Cyber Force and making it about skills across the north-west as a whole.
Damian Collins
Does my right hon. Friend agree that disinformation campaigns from hostile foreign states such as Russia also pose a cyber-security threat and that it is important that tech platforms work closely with the intelligence services and the Cabinet Office to identify proactively those threats and to address them?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend is right on that. I know that he has taken a close, long-term interest in the issue, so he will be aware both of the provisions in the National Security Bill on capturing foreign interference as an offence and of the measures in the Online Safety Bill that will force big tech platforms to take action on disinformation.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I wish you a very happy birthday for tomorrow, Mr Speaker.
The US has voiced concern about potential cyber-attacks on major infrastructure operators. What recent assessment has been made of the threat level to UK interests and what additional steps have the Government taken to address it?
Steve Barclay
The assessment is a sobering one. If I just take online scams as one example of cyber risk, there has been a fourfold increase from 2020, with the national cyber strategy seen as thwarting 2.7 million online scams. I am sure the hon. Member and the House will agree that this is a UK-wide threat. That is why we are working closely with the devolved Administrations and industry to look at our skills, taking both a whole of society approach and a whole of the United Kingdom approach to countering that risk.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
The Government attach great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence. Officials remain committed to providing the highest level of service. As part of our commitment to transparency, we have published data related to letters from MPs and peers answered by Government in 2021, which shows that Cabinet Office timeliness improved each quarter, with 89% of letters—89%—received from hon. Members in quarter four responded to within 20 days.
Rachael Maskell
To get a response: the Equalities Minister, four months; the Health Minister, often four months but can be six months; and the Defence Minister, seven months, with our staff chasing and chasing, while being on the phone for three hours, or up to five hours to UK Visas and Immigration. Behind every letter and every call our office makes is someone in need—often pressing need. We all know that this is due to capacity, so how can the Government state that they plan to cut 20% of civil servant jobs, 91,000 people, when they cannot even cope with undertaking the most basic of tasks?
Michael Ellis
I recognise the importance of the correspondence for those constituents who write in. It might be instructive to know that Departments have continued to receive a significantly higher volume of correspondence in 2021, mainly due to the pandemic, and that has had an impact on resource and timeliness of responses. During 2021, most Departments continued to receive a significantly higher volume of correspondence. The Department for Transport was able to answer 92% of 13,363 letters, the Ministry of Defence 88% of 3,773 letters, and the Department for International Trade 84% of 2,182 letters, within 20 days.
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I gently say that I and the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), have been struggling to ensure that Members’ letters, from all sides, are answered? We should not try to defend the indefensible. I will be honest: Members need letters on behalf of their constituents to be answered as quickly as possible and, unfortunately, I am getting all the complaints. So I just want to add that to the burden to take away.
I call James Grundy. Not here.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Steve Barclay)
Mr Speaker, I feel I should have started with a birthday tribute; I think the credit for that goes to the Opposition Front Bench.
After the wonderful platinum jubilee, which I know colleagues across the House enjoyed, I pay tribute to the work of civil servants across government, who played a key role in facilitating it. As part of the platinum jubilee celebrations, a civic honours competition was held for city status. The Government were pleased to announce that Her Majesty the Queen had commended city status to Bangor, Colchester, Doncaster, Douglas, Dunfermline, Milton Keynes, Stanley and Wrexham, and that lord mayoralty status was granted to Southampton. I know Members will take great interest in those awards.
Colleagues will have seen the work of our armed forces, as part of our work for the jubilee. One of our first actions on taking office was to create the Office for Veterans’ Affairs to co-ordinate support across government. As we approach Armed Forces Week later this month, the Cabinet Office remains focused on our goal to ensure that the UK is the best place in the world to be a veteran by 2028.
Alex Norris
Our constituents face ridiculous backlogs for passports, driving licences, decisions from the Home Office and much more across Government. I am afraid that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) did not get an answer to her question: we are told that this will get better, but we are also told that we can afford to cut 91,000 civil servants—how are those two things compatible?
Steve Barclay
Let me take that question on directly. First, the situation has got better, and the response has been addressed in Prime Minister’s questions and in other questions today. To be specific about how we are dealing with this, we are looking at business and the scope of machine learning and technology. At the moment, only a very small proportion of the passport application process is automated. If the photo is taken in a booth as opposed to at home, that significantly increases the level of automation that can be delivered and that, in turn, reduces the number of staff who are manually required. It is such a luddite approach from Opposition Members to suggest, when businesses such as Amazon are showing exactly what technology can deliver, that the Government who are there to serve the taxpayer and the public should not embrace the same technology that we see in our best companies.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
Since the pandemic began, civil servants have been delivering the Government’s priorities both from the workplace and occasionally from home. I have written to all Secretaries of State outlining their abilities to ensure that Departments return to pre-pandemic occupancy levels, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency has done so, too. We are willing to assist in any way we can. I add, by the way, that the vast majority of passport applications continue to be processed well within 10 weeks.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
May I say what a luddite approach it is not to see home working as something that can be efficient? We in the Opposition can see that.
Less than a year since his last outsource government review was published, Lord Maude has again been appointed to lead a review of the civil service, a role that he performed in Government for five long years. Will the Minister tell us what value for money and performance measurement has taken place since the conclusion of Lord Maude’s last review; what tender process has been conducted to award Francis Maude Associates that work; and what conflict-of-interest assessment has taken place? Or are Ministers lining the pockets of their mates with the public’s hard-earned money once again?
Steve Barclay
Usually, one would expect the House to value corporate memory and experience and the fact that the reforms initially put forward by Lord Maude were a cornerstone of the declaration of civil service reform, signed by the Cabinet Secretary and my predecessor as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). If one looks, for example, at the changes in Government relating to functions and the role of developing functional expertise—whether that is in the Government Property Agency or is about commercial contracts or digital and IT—one can see the value for money that is delivered by bringing in that expertise. This is about learning from the best in the private sector. That is why it is a luddite approach to see any change that brings in technology and new ways of working as a threat to the trade unions that support Opposition Members.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend will know, having been a senior business figure before coming to the House, that it is about linking resource to outcomes. We have increased resource in the Passport Office on a temporary basis; we have put in 650 staff since April last year to address the surge in applications as a result of the backlog from covid.
At the same time, there needs to be a change in how we deliver public services, and particularly in how we digitalise access to them. Too often, the same information has to be entered multiple times when addressing things from the Government. We will streamline that through the single sign-on process, and the Passport Office will be one of the beneficiaries of that programme.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Steve Barclay
The hon. Lady raises an extremely important point. In the work of the equalities unit in the Cabinet Office, a key focus is on variations in the data across social groups, place and economic background, so that we can learn the right lessons. I am sure that, as part of the inquiry review, Judge Hallett will be looking closely at the data, particularly where there are variations within it.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Michael Ellis
As I said earlier, Sir Robert will give evidence on 11 and 12 July. The Government will want to hear what he has to say. We will study it very carefully and will act as expeditiously as possible after that.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I was grateful for the recent meeting with the Minister for Brexit Opportunities about the Procurement Bill, along with other hon. Members sanctioned by China. Given the further revelations and documents about the extent of abuse, torture and human rights violations in Xinjiang and other parts of China, will the Government now commit to a full audit of all public service contracts with any Chinese firms that are in any way implicated in those abuses? Will the Government’s default position be to award no contracts to any companies in any way implicated in those forms of abuse?
Steve Barclay
I very much recognise the considerable interest in and concern about that issue across the House. A cornerstone of our procurement legislation is much greater transparency about the £300 billion of taxpayer spend consequent on that legislation each year. That transparency will better enable the House to have discussions about exactly the point that my hon. Friend raises.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
Steve Barclay
That is a very straightforward question to answer. It is the freedoms that we have from our exit from the European Union, on things like the £300 billion of procurement that we have just heard about, that allow us to put clauses in our legislation about social value, targeting procurement to better benefit small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly where that reduces food miles or allows social value around disability employment, an issue that was raised earlier. Those are the social value provisions in the procurement legislation that we are able to have as a consequence of our exit from the EU.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Brexit Minister tell us which Departments are co-operating with him wholeheartedly and which are dragging their feet? Does he plan to report, perhaps quarterly, on the progress that each Department has made?
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
My hon. Friend tempts me, but I remind him that the Government speak with one voice. What I will say is that yesterday there was a meeting between Ministers and the Secretary of State for Transport. His Department has, I think, 375 bits of retained EU law, and he is tackling those with great enthusiasm. We need to ensure that people know what the rules are, so that they can point to one and ask, “Is this really necessary?” and I am working with all Departments to do that.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Steve Barclay
One of the purposes of Cabinet Office questions is to enable Ministers to respond to issues as they arise. Obviously I have a range of external meetings that reflect the responsibilities that we have discussed in the House, not least my roundtable on food security and resilience, an issue that was raised earlier. As for the wider approach to illegal immigration, that is a policy matter for the Home Secretary, who leads external engagement on the issue, but of course the Cabinet Office plays a supporting role in relation to Home Office colleagues.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I just want to make it clear that the Government’s approach to the study conducted by Sir Robert Francis was to publish it at the same time as their own response. That is what we were told—although the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood and many campaign groups had asked the Government for openness and transparency, and for the report to be published when it was given to the Government. Given that two people are dying every week as a result of the contaminated blood scandal, may I press the Minister on this issue? Do the Government accept that there is a strong moral case for compensation to be paid, irrespective of any legal liability, and for interim payments of at least £100,000 per individual to start now?
Michael Ellis
Let me start by commending the right hon. Lady for her work in this area. I know how hard she has been working for some time. As she knows, the study was published this week and a statement was made in the House. The study makes recommendations for a framework for compensation and redress for the victims of infected blood, which can be ready for implementation on the conclusion of the inquiry that the Government initiated, should the inquiry’s findings and recommendations require it. I cannot second-guess what the outcome will be—that is the reason for the inquiry—but Sir Robert has rightly put the views and experiences of the infected and affected, who have suffered so much and for so long, at the heart of his study, and we will expedite this as far as we possibly can.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) about the contaminated blood scandal, I emphasise that the victims of the scandal need reassurance. We have not had much reassurance this morning. When will the interim payments be made, and do the Government support recommendation 14 of Sir Robert Francis’s report?
Michael Ellis
The Government have committed themselves to providing support for those who have been infected and affected, and ex gratia support has been given to those affected by this issue since 1988. As I have said, Sir Robert has made a number of recommendations about compensation, which need careful consideration. It would be remiss of the Government to rush that. It is most important that we are able to reflect on his evidence, which he is due to give in four or five weeks’ time, and we will do so after that.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
On, again, the subject of the contaminated blood report, may I reiterate the need to support the families who lost loved ones, such as the Smith family from Newport, who lost Colin, aged just seven, after he was infected by blood from an Arkansas prison? Will the Minister ensure that that aspect of Sir Robert Francis’s report is acted on? As others have said, this is long, long overdue.
Michael Ellis
The hon. Lady is right to raise that case, and there are many tragic and appalling cases that are similar to it. This is why the Government launched the inquiry, it is why they asked Sir Robert Francis to write his report, and it is why they are acting in a way in which previous Governments over the course of decades have not acted. We will process the matter just as soon as we reasonably, practicably can.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wish you a very happy birthday, Mr Speaker—the happiest of birthdays.
Why are the Government so bloated? In the UK, we have more Government Ministers than France, Germany and Italy put together, and more than India, Canada and Australia put together. When I arrived in this House in 2001, the Prime Minister made do with one Parliamentary Private Secretary. This Prime Minister has four PPSs; Mrs Thatcher had only one. Why is this Prime Minister so much less efficient than either Tony Blair or Mrs Thatcher? Is it not time, if we are going to have a cull of civil servants, that we had a cull of Ministers? At least one quarter of the Front Bench should go. Would somebody like to name one?
Steve Barclay
I used to think that the hon. Gentleman liked to have the opportunity to question Ministers, and it is good for him to have such a range to choose from. The key issue is how we are delivering for the public. That is what we as a Government are focused on and that is what the transformation programme will deliver.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s reply to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) a few moments ago about the need to join up Government information so that people do not have to put their data into Government systems all the time. Does that mean that the Minister will be moving forward with plans for automatic electoral registration?
Steve Barclay
The scope of the single sign-on programme has already been set in terms of the 75 services within the scope of how we make doing business easier. This is about looking at where data is entered—for example, for a passport or a driving licence—and how we then enable that to facilitate access to other services, such as access to benefits, so that we make the customer journey for our constituents as frictionless as possible. I think that that is of interest across the House.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Centrica’s veteran action pathway provides veterans with a secure role, training and support. It is a really positive opportunity for veterans looking to re-enter the civilian workforce. How are the Government supporting the private sector to develop initiatives like this that specifically focus on supporting veterans?
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
We are supporting the private sector by giving a national insurance contribution holiday to those such as Centrica that employ service leavers, and we commend them for doing so. We know that military service gives people fantastic skills for life.
Mr Speaker
We now come to the urgent question. I have allowed the sub judice waiver before, and that will continue.
Northern Ireland Protocol: First Treasury Counsel
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet office if he will make a statement on requests made to the First Treasury Counsel to assess Government proposals to override the Northern Ireland protocol.
The Minister for Europe and North America (James Cleverly)
As the Foreign Secretary set out to the House on 17 May, to respond to the serious situation in Northern Ireland the Government intend to bring forward legislation to fix the Northern Ireland protocol. As she also set out, the Government’s view is that such a course of action is lawful and in accordance with international law. In line with long-standing convention, we do not set out details of the internal deliberations regarding that view, but we will be setting out further details about the Government’s legal position in due course.
Mr Carmichael
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this urgent question. It was reported on Tuesday evening that Sir James Eadie QC, First Treasury Counsel, had not been consulted on the legality of the Government’s proposed legislation to override the Northern Ireland protocol. This was denied directly by the Prime Minister yesterday in a response to a question from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood). It would now appear that, at the very least, the answer given by the Prime Minister to the hon. Gentleman was incomplete.
We have learned in subsequent media reports that while Sir James was consulted on aspects of the proposals, he was in fact asked not to give an opinion on whether the plan would breach international law, and was told to assume that there was a respectable legal basis for the Government’s position. Can the Minister confirm to the House that this information in the public domain is correct? Was Sir James asked to give an opinion on the merits of the legal advice that the Government had been given or not? Can the Minister tell the House why the request to Sir James was framed in this way?
Sir James is understood to have volunteered that he found the argument of one particular lawyer advising the Government
“considerably easier to follow and more convincing”.
The lawyer in question had said that it would be “very difficult” for the UK to argue that it was not “breaching international law”.
It is a matter of fundamental import to this House that Members are being told by the Government that the content of a Bill is not in breach of international law when that assertion is based on information that is incomplete, and apparently intentionally so.
The Government have put First Treasury Counsel in an almost impossible situation. We are fortunate indeed that he has been willing to take his professional duties more seriously than those who sought his legal advice. We know the position about the publication of Government legal advice, but that relies on Governments acting in good faith and their legal advisers being free to give the best advice that their professional skills allow. That full advice must be published for the Bill.
James Cleverly
The Government are confident that our actions are lawful under international law, and in line with a long-standing convention we do not set out internal legal deliberations.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I make it clear to my right hon. Friend that I voted for the withdrawal agreement and the protocol against my better judgment, and so it has proved. If the Government bring forward a Bill that does not hold out the serious prospect of the restoration of power sharing in Northern Ireland and the restoration of the Good Friday agreement, I will vote against it. Will he undertake to make sure that his right hon. and hon. Friends understand that those voting for such a Bill would be voting to wreck the Good Friday agreement?
James Cleverly
My colleagues on the Treasury Bench will have heard the point that my hon. Friend made; obviously, the question is narrowly focused on legal advice. As I said, we are confident that our position is legal but we do not discuss the details of legal advice to Government.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. Britain at its best is a country that adheres to the rule of law, sticks to its word and is trusted around the world, but under this Government the rule of law is being treated with disdain—whether it is law-breaking parties in No. 10, or the treaties they signed up to just a couple of years ago.
The Prime Minister knew that the Brexit deal he negotiated would create trade barriers in the Irish sea, which have stoked political tensions in Northern Ireland and placed strain on the Good Friday agreement. Rather than seeking workable solutions, the Government are threatening to rip up the agreement, with no concern for international law or for what is best for the people of Northern Ireland or the rest of the UK.
We are calling on both sides to find a solution. Both the UK Government and the EU must get round the table and do everything possible to solve this. Solutions exist, and must be found. Media reports suggest that the Government have not only been careless, but that the First Treasury Counsel, the Government’s independent barrister on nationally important legal issues, was not asked to give his opinion on whether imminent plans to overhaul the Northern Ireland protocol would break international law.
It would be unprecedented for the First Treasury Counsel not to be consulted on an issue of this importance. This is the issue that runs to the heart of whether this Government can be trusted to follow the rule of law. Can the Minister confirm—yes or no—did the Government ask the First Treasury Council for a specific legal opinion on whether their plans around the protocol would breach international law? Yes or no?
James Cleverly
The Government are confident that our plans abide by international law. The Government will be setting out their legal position in due course, and in accordance with the long-standing convention we do not discuss legal advice given to Government.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I listened very carefully to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). He well knows, as a former Minister, that the Law Officers’ convention is very clear about the disclosure or non-disclosure of legal advice that might be tendered to the Government. I will say this to him in all respect: it is important that lawyers advising the Government do so in privileged circumstances. The real question here is, why on earth are leaks happening time and time again about important legal advice? I want to see the legal position published when the Bill is published.
James Cleverly
My right hon. and learned Friend makes an incredibly strong point. I am conscious that I may get a reputation for repetitiveness at the Dispatch Box, but he is right that the Government’s position is that our actions are legal in international law. It is a long-standing convention that we do not disclose the legal advice given to the Government.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
On 16 June 2020, the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told the House that the Government were “faithfully implementing” the withdrawal agreement, including the Northern Ireland protocol. We know there are no surprises in the withdrawal agreement because we spent long enough debating it in this place, so either it was signed in bad faith, knowing the inevitable outcome, or the Government really did not understand what they were doing. Either way, it is a very bad look for this Government.
If it is true that the Government have not sought full legal advice on the legality of their protocol plan, and if they have given themselves the green light to go rogue, does the Minister agree that breaching international law in this way will only increase the UK’s reputation for being a bad-faith actor in the international community?
James Cleverly
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making those points. I cannot see how they relate to the urgent question, but I say again that the Government are confident that we are acting within international law. It is a long-standing convention of this House that we do not disclose the legal advice given to the Government.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Happy birthday, Mr Speaker.
In response to the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), the reality is that until the Bill is published—in other words, finalised—it is almost impossible for the Law Officers to give an absolute finding on whether or not it is in breach of international law. When the Bill is published, I have no doubt that the Attorney General, whose responsibility it is as an independent adviser to the Government, will say whether it complies with international law. Does the Minister agree that those who criticise the process should recognise the simple point that the Good Friday agreement is itself an international agreement and should function as a priority above all else?
James Cleverly
As so often, my right hon. Friend speaks with great authority and makes an important point. He is right that the Government take the Good Friday agreement and peace and security in Northern Ireland incredibly seriously.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Is it the Government’s intention to invoke article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol alongside the publication of the Bill?
James Cleverly
Obviously, article 16 exists for a reason. I will not pre-empt the work of my right hon. and hon. Friends, but the Northern Ireland protocol needs to be fixed and that is our intention.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the Act of Union is also an international agreement? Will he ensure that any legislation we pass strengthens rather than diminishes that Act?
James Cleverly
Preservation of the Union will always be a priority for a Conservative Government, and my hon. Friend is right that it is something we should all hold dear.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Is it not a disgrace that hon. Members cried for years that Northern Ireland should not be used as a pawn and that the Belfast agreement should be protected and applauded but, at their very first opportunity to Boris bash, they use Northern Ireland as a pawn to thinly veil their attacks on the Government? Northern Ireland needs support from every party in this House.
Is it not also the case that the UK’s proposals to remove trade friction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, are in keeping with international trade law, and it is the EU, under the terms of the 2014 trade facilitation agreement, that is in breach of its international obligations to reduce trade friction between co-signees, which include both the EU and the UK? The fact is that the protocol is the worst example of a European Government or Governments trying to use red tape to destroy commerce in the United Kingdom.
James Cleverly
Her Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring that north-south trade and east-west trade are free flowing and beneficial to all communities in the UK and Ireland. The hon. Gentleman speaks with great authority on the importance of protecting the Good Friday agreement.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
There is a lot of talk about integrity, but what could be more important than the integrity of the United Kingdom? Why has this Bill not yet been published? When will it be published? Can he prevent the Government from bickering in public on this issue and just get on with it?
James Cleverly
Happy birthday, Mr Speaker!
The integrity of the UK will always be an incredibly high priority for Conservative Governments, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we should work to protect it. I have been looking forward to using this phrase: the Bill will be published in due course.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Newspaper reports suggest that the First Treasury Counsel was asked to give only very selective advice. I am not asking the Minister to say what was in that advice, for the reasons set out by the former Lord Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland). However, given the concerns that have surfaced, can the Minister assure the House that the First Treasury Counsel was not constrained in any way from giving whatever advice he thought appropriate about the lawfulness of the plans that the Government have?
James Cleverly
The Government are confident that our actions are in accordance and consistent with international law. In accordance with a long-standing convention in this House, we do not discuss the content or nature of legal advice to Government.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Following on from the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), will the Minister confirm that any actions the Government take will maintain the supremacy of the Good Friday agreement? The maintenance of that international treaty is the central issue here; without that, we do not have peace, prosperity and a functioning withdrawal agreement. Will he express some disappointment about the fact, or agree with me, that people in this Chamber use the phrase “breach of international law” when they have no idea whether there has been a breach of international law? That is a decision that will come out when the Bill is published.
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. The Good Friday agreement is the foundation stone of peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland. We applaud the courageous peacemakers who were instrumental in bringing it into existence. We are coming towards its 25th anniversary, and this Government will absolutely ensure that it is protected.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Penblwydd hapus—happy birthday, Mr Speaker.
Did the Minister see the report in the Financial Times this week on the impact of the protocol? It showed that Northern Ireland, which remains in the EU single market because of the protocol agreement, is the only part of the UK other than London to have bounced back economically above pre-pandemic levels. The report says that Wales has “regained the ground” lost during the past two years, but all other regions are still producing “much less” than they did “before the health emergency”. So why are the Government trashing our international reputation for keeping our word? People on their side of the House used to say, “My word is my bond.” Why are we trashing our international reputation in order to unpick an agreement that is bringing clear and easily identifiable economic benefits to Northern Ireland?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the Northern Ireland Executive has not been reformed, and it is an important part of the institutions created under the Good Friday agreement. As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), this Government take the Good Friday agreement incredibly seriously. I can assure the hon. Gentleman, as I have assured right hon. and hon. Members from around the House, that the Government are confident that our actions are in accordance with international law. As I say, it is a long-standing convention of this House that we do not disclose the legal advice given to Government.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
Clearly, a negotiated solution to the problems of the protocol is preferable, in the interests of everyone on the island of Ireland. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one lesson from the last Parliament is that attempts by this House to circumscribe our negotiating position end up weakening it and we are not able to deliver for our citizens?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We enjoy a good working relationship with capitals around Europe and indeed with the institutions of the EU, and we do of course want a negotiated settlement. But we do have to fix the Northern Ireland protocol, and the legislation that we will bring forward is intended to do that.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman knows that this is an issue of vital, fundamental constitutional gravity. I believe that he is responsible, accountable and honourable, but there is something pretty dishonourable going on over this. The fact is that we have a Prime Minister who is a serial offender in getting his own way despite what the rules or international laws tell him to do. The Minister knows that is the truth, I know that is the truth, and the whole House knows that is the truth. When will he stand up and be counted?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman knows that I always listen carefully when he speaks, whether it is in this Chamber or elsewhere. The simple truth is that this Government are confident that our actions are in accordance with international law. We will be bringing forward legislation based on that in due course.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right not to break the conventions of this House on discussing legal advice. However, does he agree that those who still seek to use legal acrobatics to take the side of the EU rather than that of our country are forgetting section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which makes this House—this Parliament—sovereign to do whatever it takes to protect the Good Friday agreement and to protect the integrity of our whole United Kingdom?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. The priority of this Government is to ensure the ongoing success of the Good Friday agreement and the ongoing integrity of this Union—this United Kingdom—and our actions will always be guided by those two principles.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
When the Government put forward the withdrawal agreement, including the protocol, they went in with their eyes open, knowing that Northern Ireland was effectively a pawn. This Bill risks further antagonising the EU—the very body with which we need to negotiate to help resolve this. Will the Minister tell the House, hand on heart, whether he is genuinely a negotiator, or whether he really believes in this tactic of throwing up sand and being bombastic in international negotiations? When I had the privilege of performing such a role for three years in the Home Office, this was not the way that we operated, and I do not believe that this is the way that he wants to operate, so will he be straight with the House?
James Cleverly
Article 13(8) exists for a reason. Article 16 exists for a reason. This is why we have been negotiating with the European Union to ensure that the Northern Ireland protocol, which we regard as an incredibly important document that we want to succeed, is effective. Those articles exist for a reason, but, as I said in response to the question from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the Northern Ireland Executive is not currently up and running and the provisions of the Good Friday agreement are not being discharged fully in Northern Ireland. We want to see those institutions up and running and we want to see the protocol working. Our actions are in accordance with international law.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I congratulate both Ministers, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), on their efforts in trying to facilitate the restoration of Executive government in Northern Ireland and untangle the difficulties and disagreements over the Northern Ireland protocol. I know that my parliamentary neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, has been in the United States recently in an attempt to keep the US on board. Are there any changes to the Northern Ireland protocol that come with America’s blessing, as it is, after all, a guarantor to the Good Friday agreement?
James Cleverly
We are taking action in a way that keeps our good friends internationally informed of both what we are doing and why we are doing it. I have had conversations recently with Foreign Ministers and ambassadors in European capital cities, and yesterday I discussed these very issues with the newly appointed ambassador from the US to the Court of St James’s. We take our responsibilities as codified in the Good Friday agreement incredibly seriously, and our international friends and partners know that we do.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The thing is, this was all so predictable, was it not? In fact, it was predicted by many people in the House with different views about Brexit. I am sure the Minister will be absolutely furious when he discovers who actually signed the Northern Ireland protocol. Can he tell us whether the Bill will be published before the summer recess? Once it is published, if there is a legal contest, which tribunal or court will be adjudicating on whether it is within international law?
James Cleverly
It will be a British Bill, brought forward by Her Majesty’s Government. The Government’s position is that our course of action is lawful under international law.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I apologise for being a little late at the beginning of the statement, Mr Speaker.
Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is by no means unknown for independent advice to be taken from a range of senior counsel, particularly where novel or highly specialised areas of law are concerned, and that that is done without any prejudice to the position or independence of the senior Treasury counsel and does not of itself constrain them? Does he also accept that it is important to remember that partial leaks of illegal advice are all the more unhelpful in circumstances such as this, not only because of the breach of the convention, but because an assessment on the necessity test, which may be relevant in international law, can be made only on the totality of the legal advice and the totality of the evidence, which must be then weighed against that advice, and we are not in a position yet to do that?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes a strong and important point. He knows that, both professionally and personally, I listen carefully when he speaks, as do all those on the Treasury Bench. On issues such as this, leaks are incredibly unhelpful for exactly the reasons he gave. Important decisions need to be taken with the totality of evidence, not partial fragments of such, and he is right to highlight that.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
If there is a problem with the Northern Ireland protocol, that is down to the Prime Minister. He wrote it, he negotiated it; he should own it and he should honour it. The Minister is doing an excellent impersonation of Geoffrey Boycott at the crease, stonewalling all attack, but my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) is right. If the Minister says that it is the Government’s belief that they are acting in accordance with international law, is that not only because the questions they have asked their counsel are so narrow and specific that they get the answers they are looking for?
James Cleverly
The Northern Ireland protocol has articles in it that envisage the need for amendments. That is why article 13(8) and article 16 exist. We are confident that we are acting in accordance with international law in what we are doing and, as I have said to a number of right hon. and hon. colleagues across the House, it is a long-standing convention of Governments of all political persuasions that we do not discuss the content of legal advice given to Government.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his responses. In another example this week of the damage caused by the Northern Ireland protocol, a photo framing business in my constituency coming to my office on Tuesday past told me that its supplier will no longer sell to it, as the time spent on paperwork outweighs the profit margin. With local businesses in Northern Ireland unable to access the VAT breaks for the UK and tensions within communities in Northern Ireland at boiling point, I find the desire of some to delay further action being taken to be parliamentarily unsound and physically potentially dangerous. Will the Minister assure us today that the Government will hold to their word, present a workable solution, and stop asking people from every part of Northern Ireland to grin and bear it, swallow the cost and watch their business crumble to pacify remainers in this Chamber, who will not accept democracy and are prepared to sacrifice peace in Northern Ireland just to play their own dangerous game?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman, as always, speaks with clarity and passion. Voices from across the political divide in the United Kingdom and outside it have recognised that the Northern Ireland protocol is not working for all communities and businesses in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It needs to do that. That is why we are taking steps to fix the Northern Ireland protocol, and in doing so we absolutely intend to abide by international law. As I have said at a number of points, we maintain the long-standing convention of not disclosing the nature of legal advice given to Government.
Business of the House
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mark Spencer)
It will be a pleasure. The business for the week commencing 13 June will include:
Monday 13 June—Remaining stages of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill.
Tuesday 14 June—Opposition day (2nd allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.
Wednesday 15 June—Second Reading of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.
Thursday 16 June—General debate on the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, followed by general debate on abuse of short-term letting and the sharing economy. The subjects for these dates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 17 June—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 20 June will include:
Monday 20 June—Second Reading of a Bill.
Tuesday 21 June—Opposition day (3nd allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.
Right hon. and hon. Members may also wish to note that a motion for the House to agree this Session’s sitting Fridays has been tabled for the remaining Orders.
Thangam Debbonaire
It is good hear the hon. Member’s delight at the scheduling of private Members’ Bills.
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the forthcoming business, but I have to say: what has happened to the Government’s Queen’s Speech? Have they lost it down the back of a sofa? Where are all those Bills we were promised? While I am on it, can the Leader of the House tell me why the Public Advocate Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) was not even mentioned in the Queen’s Speech; and why, a year after the collapse of the criminal trials, there is still no Government response to the 2017 report on the lessons learned from the Hillsborough disaster?
Whether it is cancer waiting times, long waits for passports and driving licences or queues at airports, we are in backlog Britain, and the Leader of the House’s statement does nothing to deal with that either. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister seems to be once again embarking on yet another attempt to reset his premiership. But there are only so many times you can try turning something off and then on again, only to find it is still broken and you just need to get rid. Tory MPs have made their choice, though.
At the start of so-called health week, the Culture Secretary admitted what Labour has known all along—that underfunding and Tory mismanagement left the health service “wanting” and “inadequate” as we went into the pandemic. When asked about this yesterday, the Prime Minister did not deny it. With so many lives lost, Members must be given the chance to question the Secretary of State on the lessons learned. Will the Leader of the House ask the Health Secretary to make a statement clarifying this?
Yesterday, the report on health and social care leadership was published. In his statement to the House, the Health Secretary did not seem to have any idea of whether or when the Government would implement the report’s recommendations. Too often, this Government commission a review and then drag their feet when it comes to implementation. Could the Leader of the House give us a firm date for when the Government will publish their plan to sort this out?
On Tuesday, Labour’s Opposition day motion gave the Government the chance to start putting right months of Tory sleaze. Our motion backed the crucial reforms put forward by the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life. But not a single Tory MP bothered to turn up. The Government have clearly given up on listening to Parliament because Ministers do not like the outcome when they do. Picking and choosing which votes they will respect and which they will ignore is no way to run a Government, and it is disrespectful to this House and our constituents. After Labour’s success in winning that vote, will the Leader of the House confirm that the Government will now introduce these vital proposals on standards in public life?
Meanwhile, the recommendations of the Standards Committee, so ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), on strengthening the code of conduct for MPs are a very welcome step. The Leader of the House is nodding. So will he allow time, in Government time, for these recommendations to be debated as soon as possible? Labour has long called for transparency of Members’ interests and for a ban on paid consultancy work, but we would like the Government to go further. There is a clear need for stronger enforcement of the rules. Will the Leader of the House bring forward the time for that debate but also support Labour’s proposals for the establishment of an integrity and ethics commission?
Backlog Britain is evident even in the Government’s own Departments. I know that the Leader of the House is sympathetic to this: it is about the late, tardy or even no responses to ministerial letters and written parliamentary questions. Pressure from Labour means that new data has been published, and some response times are improving, but unfortunately some are not improving or getting worse. The Department of Health responded to only a third of correspondence on time. Even timely responses from the Government’s flagship Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Department have plummeted. We know from our staff, mine in Bristol West and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), the huge amount of time that is being wasted on hold—there are the phone bills as well—to Government hotlines, or standing, sitting or whatever in slow queues in Portcullis House, lasting for hours, for the Home Office hub. Please, does the Leader of the House have a plan for dealing with backlog Britain in Parliament?
The Government argue that we must move on from partygate and from 148 of their MPs voting against their own leader, but it is evident that this Conservative party cannot govern, has no answers to backlog Britain, and has no plan to deal with the Tory cost of living crisis, whereas Labour does have a plan to get money back in people’s pockets, to bring down bills, to deliver a new generation of well-paid jobs right across the country, and to get the economy firing on all cylinders. Frankly, it cannot come too soon.
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Lady for her series of questions. Of course, Mr Speaker, I should apologise for not announcing a significant political event taking place tomorrow: your birthday. I am sure the whole House will celebrate as you reach another significant milestone in your way through life. I trust you will have a good day.
The Queen’s Speech is rammed full of Bills, and they are coming forward. We have some time to deliver on them, so the hon. Lady should be patient. I am sure we will munch our way through that huge legislative agenda. We have already begun, with a number of Bills having started their journey through Parliament, and it is an ambitious programme, which we will deliver on behalf of the British people.
The Government recognise the challenges the health service is facing. That is why, coming out of the global pandemic, we introduced the health and social care levy to support the health service as it tries to deal with those challenges. That is a huge cash investment in our health service, and I am sorry that the hon. Lady found herself incapable of voting for and supporting it. If she compares how the health service is run in England and in Wales, she will see that there are significant advantages to being poorly in England. The health service here will diagnose people quicker, put them back on their feet quicker and get them back to their lives quicker.
Of course standards in public life are important. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the Privileges Committee for the work they have done. The Government are considering the Committee’s report. I think it is important that we reflect and take our time giving this big and important report our full consideration, and that we move forward on a cross-party basis.
Mark Spencer
We are looking at it. We will come back in due course on how we deliver and give the House the opportunity to debate and vote on it.
The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) knows I am sympathetic to the plight of Back Benchers when it comes to written questions, but to use health service and Department of Health and Social Care data from the period of covid—[Interruption.] We are not in the period of covid today, but the statistics she quoted were from that period. It is easy to comprehend that at that time the Department was busy and focused on dealing with covid rather than other things. Now that we are out of that period, I expect the next set of statistics to prove that the Department is responding more quickly, and I will do all I can to make sure that Departments respond as quickly as possible.
I admire the hon. Lady. We do not agree on everything, but every week she comes here and presents her case with enthusiasm and supports her constituents. I can only imagine her frustration that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Levelling-Up Secretary did not mention the unions that are about to cause misery to our constituents up and down the country. In fact, the shadow Levelling-Up Secretary, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), said that she is on the side of the unions. They are going to cause misery for commuters trying to get to work and students to their exams; they are risking empty shelves and chaos for the Great British public. We on this side of the House are on the side of commuters and hard-working people, not on the side of the big unions and their paymasters.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The 5p reduction in fuel duty was very welcome, but a coach operator in my constituency contacted me yesterday to say that it has seen a 10p a litre increase this week, which makes their weekly fuel bill £3,500 more than in January. Can we have an urgent debate to ensure that this House has fully explored the impact on business of the unacceptably high proportion of tax on a tank of fuel, and look at ways to alleviate it?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that the global fight against inflation is causing huge challenges for our constituents, which is why at the spring statement, the Government cut fuel duty by 5p for 12 months—the largest ever cash-terms cut of fuel duty rates. Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco have all committed to passing on that tax cut. All taxes, including fuel duty, remain under review and I expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to continue his enormous level of support for people as we battle global inflation.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
It has been an interesting week, and certainly bumpy at the start, not just for the Leader of the House. There was much to-ing and fro-ing, pushing and pulling—and that was just the tug of war on Tuesday night. I congratulate him on his expert coaching of the men’s MP team in their success over the lords at the annual Macmillan tug of war. I also congratulate the women’s MP team on their success over the baronesses. Such events are often a bit of fun, but they give us an opportunity to support and highlight the extremely important work that groups such as Macmillan Cancer Support do and to do our wee bit to help with that.
I echo the comments of the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire). After weeks of hold-ups and delays, we have constituents who are desperate to secure their passports but who are coming up against brick wall after brick wall. Members and their staff are doing everything they can to try to help and support them, including sitting in queues in Portcullis House for days on end to try to get answers. That is not good enough. We are quickly approaching the school holidays, which are only three weeks away in Scotland, and we expect demand for such things to be exceptionally high. Can we please have a further statement on what more can be done to address those delays? Folk have been waiting for years to get away and have a break. It is not too much to ask that they should be able to do that in a sensible way.
I agree with the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) about the urgent need for further action to address the cost of living crisis. Prices are going in only one direction. I recognise that the Government have taken some action, but a lot more clearly needs to be done.
Finally, will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Allyson Dobson of Dalkeith High School, who was named headteacher of the year 2022 this week at the Scottish Education Awards? That is brilliant recognition of her work. Teachers across the board play such an important role in all our lives, as we grow up and beyond, so it is brilliant to see such recognition and I congratulate Allyson on that achievement.
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support in the tug of war team; he is certainly a huge part of that team. [Interruption.] As am I, I hasten to add. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) says that he was sacked from the team, but other weighty individuals were available in his stead. As the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) said, it was important to support Macmillan Cancer Support. It was a cross-party event and it was great fun, as well as being for a very good cause.
The hon. Gentleman went on to talk about passports, which is another important issue. I understand that people are stressing about the summer holidays. They have a right to a summer holiday; we are coming out of covid and people want to get away. That is why we have employed 650 additional staff since April, with 550 more arriving by the summer. The good news is that the vast majority of passport applications—91.2%—are being processed within six weeks or less, but that does leave some people waiting. If he has individual cases that he needs me to highlight with the Home Office, of course I will do that.
The hon. Gentleman went on to mention that the Government have, I think he said, given some support to people with the cost of living challenge. I think £37 billion is some support, and I hope he would recognise that that is a huge package, brought forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to support people. We are in a global fight against inflation, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and we will continue to wrap our arms around and support people through the challenges we face.
Finally, of course I join the hon. Gentleman in supporting his headteacher, Allyson Dobson. I pay tribute not only to her, but to teachers up and down the country who are doing great work to educate the next generation.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Would my right hon. Friend make time for a debate to both celebrate and highlight the incredible work of community groups and the voluntary sector throughout the country? Individuals such as Gem, Sherridan and Liz of the Fishpool, Goshen, Redvales and Springs community hub are changing people’s lives every day. There is a debate to be had in this House about how the state can support individuals such as Gem, Sherridan and Liz, and many others in my constituency and throughout the country, to continue with their brilliant work.
Mark Spencer
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and of course I join him in celebrating all that those in the voluntary sector do and his constituents who are assisting. I think a series of Governments have worked well with the voluntary sector. It does enormous amounts of work, and we should always take the opportunity to praise it whenever we can.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
Can I thank the Leader of the House for the business statement and for announcing the Backbench Business debates for 16 June?
Mr Speaker, can I wish you a very happy birthday for tomorrow? As I can testify, being born in 1957 makes you no age whatsoever.
Mr Speaker, you may not have noticed, not coming from the north-east, but today is 9 June, which is a day of celebration for the Geordie nation, as Geordies across the world celebrate Blaydon Races Day. This year is the 160th anniversary of that event famed in tune:
“Aa went to Blaydon Races, ’twas on the ninth of Joon,
Eiteen hundred an’ sixty-two, on a summer’s efternoon;
Aa tyuk the ‘bus frae Balmbra’s, an’ she wis heavy laden,
Away we went ‘lang Collin’wood Street, that’s on the road to Blaydon.”
So happy Blaydon Races Day to the entire Geordie nation.
Mark Spencer
I think I understood most of that. I am the beneficiary of having a Geordie in the office, who keeps me informed of all matters that are pro-Geordie and anti-Mackem. We are grateful that the hon. Member’s Backbench Business Committee continues to do the work it is doing. He raises important topics every week. I know that colleagues across the House appreciate the efforts of his Committee and will continue to support him.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
A constituent of mine who is a park home owner has asked for clarification about the £400 that he is entitled to under the Government energy bills support scheme. As a park home owner, he pays the park site owner for the electricity and does not have a personal account with an electricity provider, the organisation tasked with making that available. The explainer from the Government says this area of policy is being developed, but to provide comfort to my constituent and the 180,000 other park home owners, many of whom are pensioners in need of this support, might we have a statement?
Mark Spencer
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and of course he is right to highlight that topic. I know that people will be concerned. That is why we are working to make the energy bills support scheme as robust as possible. The issue of households that do not receive electricity through a domestic electricity supply contract, such as residents of park homes, was covered in the Government’s technical consultation, which concluded on 23 May. The Government’s response to that consultation will be issued later this summer, but we are exploring options and other ways in which we can support households that might receive similar support.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
This week is Volunteers Week, and I would like to say a huge thank you to the many volunteers working across my Blaydon constituency who play such a huge part in supporting our community. But to continue a theme—“Ah me lads”—today is 9 June, the day of the famous Blaydon race. I will not be home in time to see them
“Gannin’ alang the Scotswood Road”,
but I would like to say a special thank you to all those volunteers who make the race possible. Can we have a debate in Government time on the involvement of volunteers in community sports, please?
Mark Spencer
That would make an excellent Backbench Business debate and I am sure the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee may be sympathetic to a debate on such a topic. I pay tribute to all the volunteers across the hon. Lady’s constituency and others who do all that work. As we continue to debate Geordie culture, I can feel a question or two coming from Sunderland at some point in the future.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
Can we have a debate on the positive impact that angling has on participants’ mental health and wellbeing and, during that debate, can we celebrate those enlightened wildlife trusts that promote angling and can we call out those such as the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, which states on its website that it has a long-standing policy of not allowing angling on any land for which it holds the angling rights? That recently brought it into conflict with the Nottinghamshire Anglers Association, which last week was banned from the Attenborough nature reserve. Anglers like me love our rivers and streams as much as football fans love their clubs. It is a visceral relationship and wildlife trusts should not get in between it.
Mark Spencer
I am disappointed to hear that Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust is taking that approach towards the angling community. Angling is one of the largest participation sports in the country and anglers have a self-interest in making sure our rivers and fish are healthy and plentiful. I hope that the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust will reflect on that. On my hon. Friend’s behalf, I will certainly pursue the matter directly with my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) and for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), whose constituencies border Attenborough nature reserve.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Some 85,000 households in England live in park homes. In Bath, residents in Quarry Rock Gardens are worried about soaring costs. These residents face minimum protections from sky-high pitch fees and rogue site owners because pitch fees are linked to the retail price index, rather than the lower consumer price index. The Government have committed to reforming pitch fees so they increase with that index, but after four years they have still done nothing. Can we have a statement from the relevant Department on when these changes will come forward?
Mark Spencer
I am wondering which Department that may fall to and whether it is the local government Department or the Treasury directly. I will make sure, however, that I discover which Department is responsible for that. I know it is an important issue up and down the country. I certainly have residents in park homes who share the concerns the hon. Member has raised. I will make sure the right Department responds in due course.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Could we have a debate on the Mayor of London’s plans to extend the ultra low emission zone to the Greater London boundary and introduce pay-per-mile driving charges, because I am deeply worried about the impact of these new charges on my constituents at a time of rising inflation?
Mark Spencer
It almost feels like the Mayor of London is launching a war against commuters. Extending ULEZ to the boundary and working with the union bosses to cause misery through tube strikes is going to cause commuters coming in and out of London huge challenges. He should be supporting people coming in and out of this great city to work, not making their lives more difficult.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Could we have an urgent statement from the Home Secretary regarding the general competence level of the Home Office, especially in relation to Homes for Ukraine? Youngsters are missing out on the education they could be receiving here through the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Families are desperate to accept these youngsters, but there is a problem around their travelling not with a parent but with a legal guardian, and there is enormous delay. Please will the Leader of the House urgently communicate that to the Home Office?
Mark Spencer
Home Office questions are on 20 June and I hope the hon. Lady will be in her place to challenge the Home Secretary directly, but I should say that we have already granted 120,000 visas through the two uncapped humanitarian routes, and 65,000 Ukrainians have already arrived. The UK is making huge efforts and is opening its arms to thousands of Ukrainians. I am sure we can improve that system and the Home Secretary is committed to doing so. I hope the hon. Lady will be in her place on 20 June to ask the Home Secretary about this directly.
Mr Bone
Parliament decides the laws. The court interprets them. I understand that the flights to Rwanda with economic migrants, which were passed as lawful by this House, are being challenged in the court. Can I ask the Leader of the House an actual business question? If the court decides that, somewhere, the legislation is wrong, will he immediately introduce new legislation to fix it, so that we can end the people smuggling across the English channel?
Mark Spencer
Of course, my hon. Friend is right that we have to wait until there is an interpretation by those courts that are looking at that. He will be reassured by the Home Secretary’s commitment to ensuring that we stop the exploitation of people being ferried across the channel. He will have the opportunity on 20 June at Home Office questions to ask her about that directly, and on 5 July at Justice questions to make sure he gets the reassurance he requires.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
One of my constituents should have been off on a cruise today, but he is missing his holiday because his new passport has not been issued. Another young constituent has already waited 13 weeks for her new passport. I am grateful to the Passport Office staff here in Parliament, but she and her parents now face an anxious week waiting for a promised phone call 24 to 48 hours before their holiday to tell them that they can make the 110-mile round trip to Peterborough to collect her passport. It is wholly unacceptable. Can the Leader of the House please clarify how many of the staff being belatedly recruited will be processing applications and not just trying to respond to anxious phone calls from my constituents and my staff?
Mark Spencer
As I said, another 550 staff are going to arrive before the summer, but we have already recruited another 650; they are now in place and have come in since April 2021. As I said, I understand that more than 90% of cases now are being processed within six weeks, but that leaves the 9% that are not. I understand that there are challenges there. But if the hon. Member wants to pass those specific cases to me, I will pursue the Home Secretary on her behalf.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
We subsidised the rail industry to the tune of £16 billion during the pandemic because people had stopped using the trains. I represent a commuter belt constituency and, while I am very angry that the upcoming train strikes will cause yet more misery to my commuters, I am particularly angry that this is not good for rail workers. Disrupting train services will reduce train revenues and ultimately lead to job losses and reduced pay for those rail workers. Can we have a debate on this important issue?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend is of course right to raise that. We will have Transport questions on 30 June and I am sure that she will be in her place to ask the Secretary of State for Transport about that. She is right that commuters and taxpayers have the right to know that their money is being invested and looked after properly, and the unions should reflect long and hard before they make commuters’ lives miserable and stop them getting to and from work.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Will the Leader of the House take the opportunity to congratulate Michael Dunlop on his 20th Isle of Man TT victory, putting him in the top three racers ever to perform on the Isle of Man?
I turn the Leader of the House’s attention to another island: the island of Rathlin in my constituency, which has a wonderful puffin sanctuary. On 20 June, it will be cutting a sod for 10 new housing units, showing that the population of that little island is expanding wonderfully. However, I notice five words that interest me in the business for 20 June: Second Reading of a Bill. Should I be in my place here on 20 June? Will that Bill be relevant to Northern Ireland, or should I visit Rathlin island that day?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member should be leading the TT with three questions. Come on.
Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman is always relevant to parliamentary debates, and he should most definitely be in his place to contribute on whatever Bill comes forward on that day. As I said, there are 38 Bills in the Queen’s Speech and we will decide and announce in the usual way from the Dispatch Box.
I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating Michael Dunlop. I took the trouble to watch some of the footage of the TT racers and the speed and professionalism of those motorcyclists is awe-inspiring.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be well aware of the Prime Minister’s leading and significant role in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, but this is an ever-evolving situation that changes daily and there is a need to constantly review and always do as much as we possibly can, with our western allies, to support Ukraine. Will he agree to a debate on Ukraine, in which we can also consider how to best access grain, because of the potential catastrophic consequences for global food supplies if we do not manage to get access?
Mark Spencer
There will be an opportunity at Defence questions next week to continue to ask the Secretary of State for Defence what support we are offering to the Ukraine Government. There has been a huge amount of opportunity to debate Ukraine in the Chamber. Already, we have had 11 oral statements, seven urgent questions, three Opposition debates, three general debates, a general debate on NATO, a Backbench Business debate on Russia and China, a debate on Russian sanctions, and departmental oral questions on top of that, so we have debated this issue a huge amount. With the support of colleagues, such as my right hon. Friend, we will continue to ensure the Government are doing all they can to support the Ukrainian people.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
My constituent Clare-Anna Mitchell has worked tirelessly to provide vital medicines to be sent to Ukraine through fundraising from my generous constituents in Gower and Swansea. The latest delivery she arranged arrived at the depot in Dnipro just 20 minutes after the compound was bombed. Ten people died in that attack and all the medical supplies in the stores were destroyed. Had the Welsh delivery drivers arrived any earlier, they too may have lost their lives. Will the Government put aside time to discuss this issue, and can the right hon. Gentleman give me and my constituent, Clare-Anna Mitchell, any advice on what Government resources are available so she can continue to provide this vital medical aid to Ukraine?
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s constituents and to people up and down the country who are putting in an enormous effort to support people in Ukraine. Defence questions are next week, so she should be in her place to ask the Secretary of State for Defence what we can do to support people who go to Ukraine. I will, of course, link up and make sure she gets the right information, so that her constituents can be supported and as safe as possible when putting themselves in harm’s way to support what is a desperate situation. Of course, the only person who can actually resolve this challenge is President Putin. He could withdraw his troops from Ukraine, stop bombing innocent people and return the borders of Ukraine to what was internationally agreed.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
May we have a debate please on local banking services? In the last two weeks alone, both NatWest and Barclays have announced that they are closing their doors in Leigh-on-Sea, causing great distress to businesses, charities and people, especially the elderly. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must champion and support the excellent post office community banking hub model across the country?
Mark Spencer
Such a debate would receive a lot of support across the House, so I encourage my hon. Friend to apply for a Westminster Hall debate or even a Backbench Business debate. This issue certainly affects rural constituencies a great deal. I also take the opportunity to celebrate all that is the post office. The post office is a great public service in which people can access cash. I encourage her and her constituents to make use of our post offices, so they remain buoyant for the future.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I, too, extend my birthday greetings to you, Mr Speaker. The recent support announced by the Chancellor to help with energy bills was welcome as far as it goes. However, I and my constituents are increasingly concerned that those who live in park homes, who are off grid and who rely on heating oil will not receive the same level of support provided to every other household. Will the Leader of the House make a statement setting out his commitment to do all he can to ensure that no one unfairly misses out on the support for their energy bills, no matter how or where they access their energy supply?
Mark Spencer
We have made the calculations on electricity prices so that those who are off-grid do not lose out. The hon. Lady makes passing reference to the support that the Government are offering. We unveiled another £15 billion of support recently, on top of the £37 billion that we are spending this year alone. That is a huge amount of taxpayer support for people. I hear what she says about those in park homes, and I referred to that issue in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey). The Government are looking at that and I will make sure that the relevant Minister responds to her directly.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I wish you a very happy birthday for tomorrow, Mr Speaker. As a number of us in this House reflect on having been elected on this day 39 years ago, will my right hon. Friend make time for a debate on how the role of Members of Parliament has changed in the intervening period? That would enable us to reflect on the fact that, in those days, we Members of Parliament did not spend all our time trying to chase incompetent government, because we had a competent Government with a smaller and more efficient civil service. That meant that we in this House could concentrate on issues of policy, rather than administration. I am disappointed that my right hon. Friend seems so complacent about the chaos that is affecting our constituents in relation to so many public services that are currently beyond inefficient. It is absolutely an outrage that people have to wait so long. My staff are having to wait ages on the phone or in the queue in Portcullis House, and so on. It is intolerable.
Mark Spencer
I celebrate the 39 years that my hon. Friend has been sitting there holding the Government to account. I and the Government recognise the huge challenges—as we come out of a global pandemic, post-covid—in the NHS and other Departments that we are catching up with. I hear what my hon. Friend says. That is why the Government are focused on getting rid of those backlogs, are up for the challenge and are delivering.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
My constituents, Mr Emmerson and Mr Kimber, receive oxygen deliveries through Dolby Vivisol, which has been given a contract with the NHS. Deliveries are not coming or they are coming late, or the order is short, or the cylinders simply do not work. I am sure that the Leader of the House will understand that being unable to breathe can be terrifying. Can we have an urgent debate about why the Government continually allow private profit to come before patient healthcare?
Mark Spencer
I do not accept the premise of what the hon. Lady suggests, but I am sympathetic to her constituents, who deserve a level of service from the Department of Health and Social Care. If they are not getting that, she will have the opportunity to question the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care at Health questions next week. However, if she writes to me directly about that case, I will personally raise it with him.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
However much the band in Speaker’s Court cost you this week, Mr Speaker—I do not know whether it related to your birthday—it was well worth it.
Traditionally, we always stand up and ask the Leader of the House for debates, and I am happy to have debates—I want a debate on clean air next week because it will be Clean Air Day, and I want an urgent debate on the Amazonian rainforest. However, our real job is accountability. The economy is in freefall, there is a war in Europe and we will go into recess. What will we do to make sure that we can hold Ministers to account week by week, day by day, when we go on the long recess?
Mark Spencer
The recess dates have been announced, but, of course, the Government do not stop functioning during those recesses while the hon. Member is working hard in Huddersfield. The Government continue to work very hard to deal with the challenges that we face. Requesting debates is an important way of holding Government to account and scrutinising what we do. That is how our democracy works. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured, however, that while he is working hard in Huddersfield for his constituents, the Government continue to drive the agenda very hard.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Because no one responsible for the 97 unlawful killings at Hillsborough has ever been held to account, the same slurs used by South Yorkshire police to deflect blame from their criminal incompetence in 1989 are now being adopted by the French Government and UEFA to deflect blame from their responsibility for the chaos in Paris at the champions league final. As the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), pointed out, we have still not had a Government response to Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report on the lessons to be learned from Hillsborough, despite the criminal cases collapsing almost a year ago. When will we get a response? Can we please have a debate about how the Government will ensure that blameless Liverpool fans are protected from being wrongly traduced by UEFA and French authorities? The authorities are seeking to deflect their own responsibility, but what they are actually doing is bringing back traumatic memories of Hillsborough for thousands of people in Liverpool and Liverpool fans.
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the work that the hon. Lady has done over a number of years to support victims of the Hillsborough disaster. At the other end of the ground were Nottingham Forest, a club that I am associated with. It was clearly a very traumatic event. I think UEFA has apologised this week for its miscalling, and the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has condemned the way in which Liverpool fans were treated. Home Office questions are on 20 June; I hope that the hon. Lady will take the opportunity to question the Home Secretary on when the Hillsborough report will come forward.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on the loss of the hundreds of skilled and dedicated British Council staff who face compulsory redundancy as a result of the programme of cuts, closures and outsourcing? With PCS members set to take a further three days of industrial action next week in opposition to those plans, will he urge the Foreign Secretary to urgently renegotiate the repayment terms on the loan that her Department made to the British Council so that skills and expertise vital to its success can be maintained into the future?
Mark Spencer
Foreign Office questions are on 21 June, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be in his place to question the Foreign Secretary. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who is not in his place today, has raised the same topic. It is important that the UK taxpayer is given a service overseas that is efficient and delivers for UK trade and UK interests; I know that the Foreign Secretary is committed to that, and I am sure that on 21 June she will be able to give the hon. Gentleman the answers that he requires.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Failures in the Passport Office are having a huge impact on my constituents and those of Members across the House. Many cannot get through on the phone or get cut off when they do. The office lost my constituent’s old passport and then told them that their application would be closed unless they submitted it. The link sent to another constituent to confirm their identity did not work; their application was closed due to inactivity. I listened to what the Leader of the House said to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), but it is simply unacceptable. Can we please have a statement from the Home Secretary on what the Government are doing to address the shambles in the Passport Office?
Mark Spencer
The Home Secretary will be at the Dispatch Box on 20 June, but the hon. Lady can rest assured that in 91% of cases there is now a rapid and improved response. [Hon. Members: “Really?”] Those are publicly available statistics. However, I recognise, and the Home Office recognises, that that means that 9% of people are not getting the level of service that they should expect. There are routes through Portcullis House for hon. Members to raise individual cases, and I encourage them to do so, but if the hon. Lady writes to me with the specific case that she raises, I will write directly to the Home Secretary on her behalf.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Dom Phillips, a British journalist, has been missing in the Amazon for more than three days with his Brazilian colleague Bruno Pereira. Will the Leader of the House raise the matter with Foreign Office Ministers? Will he urge them to contact the Bolsonaro Government and urge them to act very fast to help to track him down and put every effort into finding him? Will he get them to write to all Members of the House to explain what actions they have taken to support finding Dom Phillips?
Mark Spencer
I know that the Brazilian authorities are currently trying to find the gentleman to whom the hon. Lady has referred, but I will of course raise the issue directly with the Foreign Secretary as a matter of urgency. The sooner we can find that gentleman, the better.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Even as we speak, agents of foreign Governments are seeking to influence Parliament in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In some instances that is perfectly legitimate, transparent and open, but in many cases it is being done on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia, and it is sometimes done in very invidious, insidious and untransparent ways. The Parliamentary Security Director is already very concerned about it and about the way in which it works through all-party parliamentary groups—as are you, Mr Speaker, and the Lord Speaker.
I hope that the Government will be able to address some of this under the foreign agent registration scheme that they want to introduce, but they have said that because the scheme is not yet ready they are going to dump the measure in the National Security Bill during its Committee stage. However, I think that it should be dealt with on the Floor of the House. Many Members on both sides of the House want to make sure that we get this right, so that we protect democracy in this country and foreign agents and espionage are dealt with properly. Will the Leader of the House undertake to ensure that that part of the Bill will be dealt with on the Floor of the House? It is a constitutional matter.
Mark Spencer
If people are indeed trying to influence our democracy, we should all take that very seriously. The Home Secretary and security services will certainly take it seriously, and you, Mr Speaker, have taken action on it directly.
As for the Bill that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, there will in any case be an opportunity to debate these matters on Report, but I hear what he says and I shall pass his comments directly to the Minister in charge of the Bill.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Almost every Member will have a constituent who has been affected by the contaminated blood scandal. It is several years since we have had an opportunity to debate the issue or to question Ministers about the Government’s approach, and Members who entered the House in 2019 have had no opportunity at all. On Tuesday a written ministerial statement was laid, so again there was no opportunity to question the Government on the work of Sir Robert Francis, whose compensation study will inform the Government’s approach to the findings of the infected blood inquiry, due next year.
Might the Leader of the House find time for a statement in the House so that we can question a Minister on what is actually happening and on the Government’s approach, especially given that two people affected by the contaminated blood scandal are dying every week? We need this to be debated on the Floor of the House, quickly.
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Lady has done on this matter for a number of years; her pursuit on behalf of victims of the scandal can only be admired. Sir Robert will present his evidence to the public inquiry in, I believe, mid-July. The Government have published their response to his framework, which has just been announced. I think that once he has presented his evidence directly to the inquiry, the Government will be in a position to comment.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
May we have a statement from the Health Secretary on when the go-ahead will be given for the construction of the new Leeds children’s hospital and adult hospital buildings? The Government have repeatedly expressed support for the project, the site will be cleared by the end of the month, and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is raring to go with a project that will bring not only world-class health facilities to my constituents, but wider economic benefits in the form of jobs for the city.
Mark Spencer
I celebrate the right hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for the Government’s investment in the health service. I am sure that the Health Secretary will be able to respond directly to his question about the timetable during Health questions next week, but the Government are committed to building 40 new hospitals, and I am sure that Leeds is a huge part of that investment programme.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Happy birthday for tomorrow, Mr Speaker. I hope that you and the Leader of the House, and indeed the whole House, will join me in offering huge congratulations to Bradford on becoming the UK City of Culture 2025. Bradford’s win offers a transformational opportunity to unlock the huge cultural and economic potential in our young and ambitious city, to begin a new chapter in our story, and to celebrate all that Bradford has to offer.
Will the Leader of the House join me in celebrating Bradford and thanking all those who worked so hard to put the City of Culture bid together? May we have a debate in Government time on the importance of culture?
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to the city of Bradford and all the Bradford MPs who supported the bid, and I commiserate with those who were not as successful as Bradford this time. This will be a huge opportunity to celebrate all that is great about that part of West Yorkshire and I encourage people up and down the country to come and join in the celebrations that Bradford will undoubtedly lay on.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Can we have a debate on consumer rights? I have been written to by one of my constituents who you, Mr Speaker, and other Members will know well. Her name is Ann Clwyd and she used to sit right next to me here on these Back Benches. She purchased a vehicle from the Ford motor company, a Ford Kuga, and there has been a huge fault with it in terms of leaks. She has discovered that this is a general problem and that lots of other consumers are suffering from it too. In a letter to me, she says:
“I have written to Ford on three occasions. Each time I have received a brush off and a refusal to acknowledge this is a problem with the model.”
If the Ford motor company thinks that that is the end of the matter, they obviously know nothing about Ann Clwyd. What can the Government do to give more opportunities for consumers to exercise their rights, and to stop companies such as Ford from treating customers in this way?
Mark Spencer
I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the former Member—[Interruption.] I hear cries of “Great woman” from Members on this side as well, and I sympathise with the Ford motor company over the tornado that is about to hit it. I think it would be wise to settle with the former Member as quickly as possible, but I will raise the matter with the Secretary of State for Transport on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf and make sure that he raises the matter when he meets the Ford motor company.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Covid restrictions were lifted on 24 February and many of us have gone back to near-normal living, but although living with covid is a reality for most of us, for a small number of people—the clinically vulnerable, the clinically extremely vulnerable and the immunocompromised—covid is still deadly and they are still effectively locked down.
I know that there will be Health questions next week, but can we also have a statement from the Secretary of State for Health so that all Members can challenge this Government on why they have not yet rolled out Evusheld —a drug that would be transformational for this group of people and allow them to live with covid too?
Mark Spencer
I praise the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of the Order Paper in recognising that he will have an opportunity to ask that question directly at Health questions next week. I know that Evusheld is being looked at closely by the authorities to try to get it to licence as soon as possible. We recognise the challenge that those people who are immunosuppressed face during covid and we have not forgotten their plight.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I would like to draw the Leader of the House’s attention to early-day motion 143.
[That this House congratulates Dunoon Grammar School on being the only Scottish school shortlisted in the Community Collaboration category for the World’s Best Schools Prizes 2022; commends this remarkable achievement and recognises it as just reward for a school which has, under the leadership of Head Teacher David Mitchell, the tremendous work of the teaching staff and the dedication of its pupils, become a cornerstone of the wider Cowal community; applauds the commitment Dunoon Grammar School has shown to working with and for the benefit of their local community and for striving so hard to produce active, responsible, caring and engaged young citizens; and wishes Dunoon Grammar School the very best of luck with the next round of the World’s Best School Prizes and thanks them sincerely for their dedication to exceptional learning and to building a better community.]
The motion was published this morning to congratulate Dunoon Grammar School in my constituency, which has just been shortlisted in the community collaboration category in the 2022 World’s Best Schools prizes. Would the Leader of the House like to join me and others in sending congratulations to the headteacher, David Mitchell, his remarkable staff and the fantastic pupils of Dunoon Grammar School on this magnificent achievement?
Mark Spencer
I should confess that I have not had the opportunity to read early-day motion 143 yet, but I will make sure I do after this session. Of course I join the hon. Gentleman in praising David Mitchell and all the teachers at the school, as well as the teachers up and down the country who work tirelessly to make sure that the next generation of people are engaged and stimulated by our education service.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Last week I visited Meet and 2 Veg in Cambuslang, which was started by my constituent Jane Bainbridge, supported by Jan Ritchie. The project reduces food waste by giving away food nearing its expiry date collected from supermarkets and other food outlets. It started in Jane’s kitchen after she was horrified at the amount of food going to landfill. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Jane and Jan on their efforts and schedule a debate in Government time on food waste?
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Of course I join her in congratulating her constituents. Food waste should be avoided if at all possible, but when it does arise it should be recycled as efficiently as possible and energy recovered from it if at all possible. The hard work of her constituents and others throughout the country is highlighting that challenge, and I am sure she will continue to work with her constituents to improve food waste efficiency.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Mr Speaker, may I, on behalf of myself and my party, offer you many happy returns for tomorrow? We are of a similar vintage. We do not count the years, but instead we make the years count, which is an important thing to do, you know? [Hon. Members: “Wise words!”]
Following her visit to China, United Nations high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet, disappointingly, failed to condemn human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese authorities against the Uyghurs. In light of that disappointing news, and the Chinese authorities’ continued targeting of Buddhist, Catholic, Falun Gong, Muslim, Protestant and other communities, will the Leader of the House provide time for a ministerial statement or debate on China’s human rights violations, which are legion?
Mark Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for the work that he does in this area. It is Foreign Office questions on 21 June and I am sure he will be in his place to raise the matter again. The Government take very seriously the fact that so many people around the world are persecuted for their religion, and I know that there is no greater champion than the hon. Gentleman for people in such a plight.
Points of Order
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I believe the Leader of the House simply misspoke when he said that the Government had published their response to Sir Robert Francis’s study. The Government had said that they would publish the study and their response but have not done so, and my understanding is that that is because of a leak to The Sunday Times, which resulted in their then having to publish just Sir Robert Francis’s study. I wonder whether it is possible to correct the record.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mark Spencer)
I would be more than happy; apologies to the right hon. Lady. I was trying to say that Sir Robert Francis QC delivered his compensation framework study on 14 March, and that has been published and will be considered by the inquiry on 11 and 12 July. I apologise if I misled her. I know that the Government are very keen to support people affected by infected blood. She is undoubtedly a champion of this cause. The Government are committed to working with her to resolve this matter.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. While we have the Leader of the House on the move, may I add to what I said earlier about the National Security Bill? Having a debate only on Report on 30 or 40 new clauses introduced in the middle of a Committee stage is not the same: normally in Committee stage, the Opposition have an opportunity to probe. Could you urge him to move a little bit further on this, Mr Speaker, so that we can have a proper debate on the Floor of the House? This is about the security of Parliament.
Mr Speaker
I am obviously not going to extend questions, which the hon. Gentleman did very well then, but I am sure everybody has heard what he has had to say.
Social Housing and Building Safety
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations (Michael Gove)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered social housing and building safety.
The events of the night of 14 June 2017 were unimaginably horrific. The fate of those living in Grenfell Tower is something that none of us can ever forget. I am sure I speak for Members across the House of Commons when I say that the 72 innocent people who lost their lives—18 of them children—will forever be in our memory. Today we are approaching the fifth anniversary of that tragic night and we all, particularly those of us in government, have a chance as a House to reflect on the tragedy and the important questions that it posed. We have to be clear: what happened that night should never have occurred. Each of us has a right to be safe in our home. The situation in which the residents of Grenfell Tower were placed was unforgivable. The fact that those in the tower were not safe exposed failures that had been overlooked for too long—failures in building control and safety that it is vital we address.
As we reflect on this tragedy, we should bear in mind that there had been warnings before that night. Residents of the tower and others had warned about how the voices of those in social housing were not heeded. In reflecting on what happened, we should reflect not only on the failures in regulation and building safety but on the way in which social housing tenants had not had their rights respected or their voices heard as they should have been. We all have to do better to ensure that issues of life and death are never overlooked again, and that everyone in this country can live their life in safety and dignity, in a home that is warm, decent and safe.
I am glad that we are joined in the Public Gallery by some of those directly affected, including bereaved families, friends and survivors who, for almost five years now, have been living with the ongoing consequences of this tragedy in north Kensington. Since I was given this responsibility as Secretary of State last September, I have been genuinely humbled to hear the personal stories of those affected by the tragedy. I thank them for the vigour, energy, sincerity and determination of their campaign. It cannot have been easy—by God it cannot have been easy—to live with the memories of what happened five years ago, but the people joining us here today, and their friends, relatives and neighbours, have campaigned with dignity and resolution over the last five years to ensure that appropriate lessons are learned.
I can think of few better representatives of community spirit, few better activists for a better world, than those from Grenfell United and the other organisations representing the next of kin, bereaved relatives and survivors. It is important the Government recognise that those voices and that activism should result in action. Again, I apologise to the bereaved, the relatives and the survivors for the fact that, over the last five years, the Government have sometimes been too slow to act and have sometimes behaved insensitively. It is important that we now translate the actions they are demanding into real and lasting change. As I hope I have done, and as I will always seek to do, that involves acknowledging what we got wrong as a Government and what went wrong more widely in our building safety system.
It is clear from the wonderful documentary work on the experience of those in Grenfell Tower that their representatives had warned before the refurbishment about some of the dangers, some of the high-handedness and some of the lack of consideration for which the tenant management organisation and others charged with tenants’ welfare were responsible. Lessons need to be learned about that.
It is also the case that, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, many of the institutions upon which people in North Kensington should have been able to rely failed them. We have to be honest about that, too. There is nothing I can say from the Dispatch Box today that can make up for those failures. All we can do is seek to learn from those mistakes and make sure we work with the community to ensure that nothing like this tragedy ever happens again.
My Department has a dedicated team of civil servants who are working to make sure those lessons are learned and the community’s voices are heard, and I thank all the officials who have worked with the community over the past five years, and who in many cases have become close friends of those affected, for their work. I also thank other professionals in the public sector who have worked with the community and families. I particularly want to thank those in the NHS. The health and wellbeing of many survivors of the tragedy has been impaired in a terrible way, and the commitment of NHS professionals to working with those who have been affected is admirable and worthy of our support and, certainly on my part, gratitude.
I also wish to thank two colleagues, Nick Hurd, a former Member of this House, and Baroness Sanderson, who have been advising the Prime Minister on how we can support the Grenfell families. Both of them were, of course, appointed by the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and I would like to thank her as well for the continuing close personal interest she takes in the issues that the Grenfell tragedy has brought to the forefront of all our minds.
I also want to thank the independent Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission, and I stress that it is independent; it includes elected community representatives, and it has been working hard to ensure that we can have a permanent and appropriate memorial to honour those who lost their lives in the tragedy. I recommend to all Members of the House the commission’s recent report. It makes for powerful reading and gives us all an opportunity to reflect on what the right way is to ensure that there is a fitting memorial for those who have lost their lives. The scene of that fire is both, of course, a crime scene and a sacred place, because for all those who perished that night we want to make sure that their memory is never forgotten. That is why my Department wants to work with the commission to ensure that its report is brought to fruition.
I also want to thank those who have been working with the public inquiry, under Sir Martin Moore-Bick. I know that when the inquiry was set up many representatives of the community were concerned that its work might not meet the needs of the hour, but I think that Sir Martin and his team, particularly the counsels to the inquiry—the lawyers who have been working diligently to get at the truth—have done us all a service. They have laid bare a series of mistakes that were made by those of us in government and by others, and they have exposed what I believe is wrongdoing on the part of a number of organisations. I do not want to pre-empt the conclusions of the inquiry and the steps that will necessarily need to be taken to ensure that justice is done. Sir Martin’s inquiry’s first report made a series of recommendations and it made uncomfortable reading for some, but it also ensured that the decision by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead to set up the inquiry has been vindicated. We now need to ensure that we take seriously all the forthcoming recommendations when the inquiry concludes.
Of course, we in government have not waited for the inquiry to conclude in order to take action. Not all of the steps that should have been taken have been taken, but in recent months we have been seeking to ensure that in respect of the direction of travel set out by the inquiry, and by others who have looked closely at the problems that underlay our regime of building safety, appropriate steps have been taken.
It should not have taken a tragedy such as the Grenfell Tower fire for us to realise that there were problems in our building safety regime and in our regulatory regime. But now that we have had an opportunity to reflect, study and look at the multiple and manifold failings, we know that a significant amount of work, which we are undertaking, requires to be completed as quickly as possible. We know that shortcuts were taken when it came to safety. We know that unforgiveable decisions were made, in the interests of financial engineering, that put lives at risk. We also know that in my Department individuals sought to speak up and to raise concerns but those voices were not heeded. That must rest on my conscience and those of Government colleagues. Many of those involved in construction, from those in the construction products industry to those directly involved in the refurbishment and remediation of buildings, just behaved in a way that was beyond reckless. That is why it is so important that the collective fight for justice that the Grenfell community have asked for results in those responsible being brought to book. In the meantime, we have been seeking to ensure that we put in place a regulatory regime that repairs some of the damage of the past and that money is made available to repair buildings in which people still find themselves in unsafe conditions.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is being eloquent and honest in his apology for what happened—the collective failure. However, on the point that he has just addressed, he will be aware that there are cases where professional fire safety advisers have told leaseholders that the cladding on their building is not safe and does not comply with the new rules, but when those leaseholders have made applications to the building safety fund they have been turned down. Some of them are now having to contemplate spending £70,000 to £80,000 and waiting another eight months to put the panels in combination on a rig and then set fire to them. If those tests, the BS 8414 tests, go ahead and they show that the cladding does burn and causes a risk, will he undertake that the building safety fund will look again at the applications for funding, so that those buildings get the money, enabling work to begin, and people can feel safe in their homes?
Michael Gove
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. He has been, if I may say so, a consistently clear and authoritative voice on behalf of those who have found themselves in an incredibly difficult situation. The leaseholders he has described should not be in that position. There have been problems with the building safety fund—there absolutely have. Let me promise him that I will look at the specific case that he raises and, indeed, the wider issues and see what we can do to make sure that the building safety fund, which has not been discharging funds at the rate, at the pace and in the way that it should, does better.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The thoughts of myself and my party are with the families. It is hard to believe that it has been five years. Even these days, we still pray for the families who have suffered such pain and heartache.
It is quite clear that the Secretary of State is totally committed to making the changes that are necessary to ensure that this never happens again. May I ask him about sharing those changes and regulations with the other regions—the Northern Ireland Assembly, for instance? In particular, we have similar buildings in Belfast and Londonderry, and perhaps in Antrim as well, which are regulated or owned by our housing associations and councils. Is it his intention to share the recommendations with the other regions to ensure that we can all benefit from better safety?
Michael Gove
Yes, absolutely. The hon. Gentleman’s question gives me the opportunity to say thank you to Ministers and officials in all the devolved Administrations who have been working with my Department to learn some of the lessons about building safety. We have also been discussing how some of the progress that we have made at a UK Government level in getting money from developers in order to contribute to remediation can also apply in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. In particular, I thank Jayne Brady from the Northern Ireland civil service for the work that she has been doing with officials from my Department in this area. I know that the hon. Gentleman’s own party and others are committed to learning appropriate lessons.
I mentioned the importance of making sure that we had a fit-for-purpose new regime and that we took the appropriate steps necessary. One other person I would like to thank is Dame Judith Hackitt. The work that she did has ensured that we could pass the Building Safety Bill into law in order to make the Building Safety Act 2022 an effective framework for regulation. We have a new building safety regulator, led by a new chief inspector of buildings, which operates within the Health and Safety Executive. We will have a new national regulator for construction products and a new homes ombudsman to improve oversight and standards. We have new statutory duties placed on those carrying out design or building work to make sure that they have the relative competence for their roles, which means that building control will be a properly regulated profession and that all construction products marketed in the UK will be properly regulated in future. To follow on from the very good point made by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), if products are unsafe, they can be withdrawn from the market. There are also strengthened provisions in the legislation to hold industry to account.
As well as the Building Safety Act, the Fire Safety Act came into force this year, and it implements in principle the first nine of the inquiry’s 15 phase 1 recommendations. Changes to regulations include the requirement that the owner and manager of every residential building, whether or not it is high rise, should be required by law to provide fire safety instructions, including instructions for evacuation. We have taken steps, as I mentioned earlier, to say to all developers that they must contribute to both remediating the buildings for which they were responsible and contributing to a fund to ensure that neither taxpayers nor leaseholders are held liable for problems that they did not create and for which they should not pay.
I should stress that, as well as introducing effective regulation, we have made it clear that many of the materials that are unsafe have been banned. It is the case that combustible materials on the external wall of any new residential building more than 18 metres high are banned, and there is a provision for sprinkler systems in all new blocks of flats that are higher than 11 metres.
We are making sure that we have the right regulatory system in place, that we get developers to pay and that the most dangerous materials are banned. All those steps are necessary, but they are not sufficient. We also need to make sure that those companies that have operated in a way that genuinely brings the system into disrepute know that we are coming after them. That is why, when it came to the particular case of Rydon Homes, one of the companies that was part of the group that was responsible for what happened in Grenfell Tower, I have been clear that they are suspended from any participation in the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. I have also been clear that Kingspan, one of the organisations responsible for the material that contributed to the fire, was a wholly inappropriate partner for Mercedes-Benz when it was suggested that it should somehow seek to launder its reputation by sponsoring Mercedes-Benz’s Formula 1 team. It is also the case that I will be taking steps to ensure that freeholders who at the moment are evading their responsibility to pay for and to contribute to remediation can be pursued. More will be announced by the Government in the days to come to make sure that we take all the steps necessary to deal with everyone who has responsibility in this matter.
I should also say that, as well as making sure that Government do everything they can to bring people to justice, when the inquiry concludes, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, quite properly independent organisations, will be making their own decisions about whether criminal prosecution will be necessary. I know that that is an issue of profound concern to the community. I can assure them, having talked to both the police and the CPS, respecting, of course, their operational independence, that both have worked hard to ensure that the evidence is there for any action that they consider to be appropriate to be taken in due course.
As well as making sure that we learn the right lessons on building safety and get the new regime that tenants deserve, we also must ensure that the wider voice of social tenants everywhere is heard loud and clear. I thank the inspirational young campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa, who I know is in the House today, who has done so much working with ITV and others to draw attention to the continuing plight of social housing tenants. Kwajo’s work, and the work of so many other campaigners, has underlined and redrawn to our attention the fact that there are people who are living in our capital city today—five years after Grenfell—in circumstances that are beyond squalid and inadequate. It has been the case that some housing associations and some local authorities have been heedless and neglectful of their obligations, and the steps that we need to take are clear. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), is bringing forward new legislation to give effect to the changes in social housing that are required.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I appreciate what the Secretary of State has said because, obviously, there is a job of work that needs to be done, particularly for young people, with regards to housing. I therefore encourage him to take up the offer by Órla Constant from Centrepoint to visit the work it is doing and to share the lessons learned, and the opportunities available, from those projects for young people to get them into housing and to encourage them to start a better life for themselves and their families.
Michael Gove
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I know he is passionate about helping young people, particularly those at risk of homelessness and those who need decent homes. It is thanks to him that I have had the opportunity to meet people from Centrepoint, an amazing charity that has done such good work for so long. I look forward to the opportunity to see more of the work it is doing, which he has championed, to help those who are most in need of support to have a safe and decent roof over their heads.
I mentioned the legislation we are bringing in, which of course follows on from the publication of a new vision for social housing by my late colleague James Brokenshire. I think we would all want, as we reflect on James’s life and legacy, to recognise that one of the issues about which he was most passionate was making sure that the vulnerable and the voiceless had a champion in Government. It was his determination to set us on a path to stronger rights and better protections for tenants in social housing that has resulted in the legislation that my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North is bringing forward.
Under that legislation, we will ensure that tenants know that they will be safe in their home, that they will be able to hold their landlord to account and that complaints will have to be dealt with promptly. They will know that they need to be treated with respect and that those who work in housing, to whom I am enormously grateful, will have the support and the extra professional training that they need to ensure that they work effectively with tenants. We also want to ensure that, in those circumstances—I hope they become progressively rarer—where there are real and genuine problems and an urgent need for action, there are new powers for rapid inspection and for unlimited fines, to ensure that appropriate steps are taken.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the Bills he is bringing forward. He talks about bringing in legislation to improve safety for social rent tenants, which is good—but is that in parallel with the safety that leaseholders and private sector tenants in similar kinds of blocks also expect? Will everybody who lives in or owns a flat that is safety compromised be as safe as his legislation seeks to make social rent tenants?
Michael Gove
Yes, that is our intention. The hon. Lady’s question gives me an opportunity to restate and underline one or two things, to make them perhaps a little more clear than I had hitherto. To my mind, and this is very much the theme of this debate, there are two big issues that the Grenfell tragedy threw into the starkest relief, which we should have addressed beforehand and which the tragedy makes it imperative that we do not forget.
The first issue is building safety. We have a compromised and weak regime that needs to change. We need to improve regulation, ensure that those buildings that are unsafe are made safe, and ensure that the people in those buildings do not pay for it, but that it is those who were contributors either to the system overall or to the state of those buildings who pay. That is one important set of issues.
There is another parallel and related set of issues. We know, because we can hear on tape the voices of those who were in that tower saying beforehand that they were not being listened to, at a time when changes were being made to their own home, that they were not paid attention to. That symbolises a wider problem of too many people in social housing not having their voices heard or their interests and lives protected. Of course, the two come together.
The tragedy raises other issues, on which I, my Department and others have reflected, and which I hope this House will return to as well. As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) rightly says, people in the private rented sector need their rights protected. We have some legislation that we will be debating in this House in due course that is intended to better protect the rights of those in the private rented sector by, for example, getting rid of section 21 evictions. I know the very close interest she takes in housing, so I hope we will have an opportunity to look at that Bill; if she has thoughts about how we can ensure that we do an even better job for those in the private rented sector, I look forward to working with her.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s response to the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). Not today, but will he and his colleagues turn their minds to how to provide greater security and fairness to the quarter of a million park home residents and the 6 million private leaseholders who are affected both by fire safety and by other unfairnesses, where the Government have proposals from the Law Commission to enact?
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the Father of the House. I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of letters and postcards highlighting the plight of park home residents and referencing the work that he has led. There is much more that can be done there; I will not say more from the Dispatch Box today, but I look forward to working with him on that.
On the question of enfranchising leaseholders, the Father of the House is right, and so is the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), my shadow, that we need to legislate to enfranchise them. We are going to do so in the next parliamentary Session—within this year, as it were. It is important that we do. That is a commitment we must uphold. There are urgent measures, which we debated yesterday, about housing supply, but it is absolutely right that we end the absurd, feudal system of leasehold, which restricts people’s rights in a way that is indefensible in the 21st century.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I apologise to the House for being late to the debate; I have been chairing a meeting of the House of Commons Members’ Fund, which I gave prior notice of. The Secretary of State rightly talks about help for leaseholders and others living in blocks that have been affected by Grenfell-style cladding, other cladding and other building safety defects. That is an important issue, but coming back to social housing, he is aware that there is still a problem: apart from ACM cladding, there is no automatic right to funds for social housing landlords. Ministers have said before that that is still under consideration. If it is not provided, there will be a massive black hole, particularly in housing association funding, which means they will build fewer houses than we want them to.
Michael Gove
The Chairman of the Select Committee is right to draw attention to that issue. One of the important questions is making sure that, even as we crack down on those social landlords who may not be fulfilling their responsibilities, we also understand that the overwhelming majority of people who work for and in housing associations are striving every day to provide a quality service and to ensure that more people can have a safe roof over their head. We must make sure that they have the resources required, including the resources necessary to meet their building safety obligations. I look forward to working with the National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing to see what more we can do to help them in that area, and in others.
I know we only have three hours or so for this debate and there are a number of other hon. Members who want to speak, so I will conclude by saying thank you, again, to the bereaved, the relatives and the survivors of this tragedy for the immense forbearance, dignity and courage they have shown. I hope we will have an opportunity at least every year to report back to this House on the progress we are making on the issues for which they have fought. I am sure I speak for everyone across the House when I say that on the 14th all of us will pause, reflect and honour everything through which they have been. Our commitment to ensure that a tragedy like that never happens again is universal across this House.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
On 14 June 2017, every single person in this country watched in horror as a blaze in London became, within hours, one of the worst disasters of modern times. Some 72 people lost their lives that day and dozens more were injured. Among them, as the Secretary of State has said, were young children, GCSE students, retired couples and entire families. As the family of 78-year-old Ligaya Moore poignantly put it, it was a tragedy that turned “laughter into silence”.
I join the Secretary of State in welcoming some of those families to the Chamber today. It always feels uncomfortable, at moments such as this when we stand here and speak, that their voices are not heard and ours are, but I have heard from many of the families affected by this appalling tragedy over the past few years that what they want most is to hear from us the action we will take to honour those lives and build a fitting legacy. I am determined that we will work with the Secretary of State and with all political parties across this House in order to turn that commitment that we have all respectively made into reality.
There has rightly been much soul-searching about how such a tragedy was possible in modern Britain. The public inquiry is still under way and must be allowed to do its work without political interference. However, that must never be allowed to become an excuse for delay or for justice denied, because this was not the first fire in a block with similar cladding. The Government were aware of problems as early as 1986, well before a block of flats in Merseyside caught alight in 1991. That fire, at Knowsley Heights, was followed by similar fires spanning three decades, from Irvine in Scotland to Southwark in south London, where six people lost their lives. In those intervening decades, the alarm was raised many times. One parliamentary inquiry led by the former Member for Southend West, David Amess, who is much missed in all parts of this House, warned that it should not
“take a serious fire in which many people are killed before all reasonable steps are taken towards minimising the risks.”
This series of failures spanned all political parties and successive Governments over many decades. We should have heard that and we should have acted. I therefore join the Secretary of State in saying, on behalf of my party, that we are sorry that we did not hear it and sorry that we did not act sooner.
But how did those warnings go unheeded by so many for so long? The Government’s lawyer told the official Grenfell inquiry that
“within the construction industry there was a race to the bottom, with profits being prioritised over safety.”
It makes me angry to hear that that can be admitted with such candour now but nothing was done before. I share the Secretary of State’s passion to go after those who recklessly disregarded people’s lives and put their profits and their own interests before safety. If they broke the law, acted recklessly or acted immorally, then I will join him in going to the ends of the earth to make sure that they pay a heavy price for doing so.
We have to ask ourselves, too, standing here in the centre of power: who permitted that to happen? Over 30 years and five different Governments—Labour, coalition and Conservative—how did it come to pass that profits were allowed to matter more than people. How could the concerns and lives of people in the centre of one of the wealthiest boroughs in the wealthiest city in one of the wealthiest countries in the world be ignored—effectively rendered invisible by decision makers only a few short miles away? The appalling tragedy suffered by the people of Grenfell is undeniable evidence of the unequal society that we live in, where lives are allowed to be weighed against profit on a balance sheet and come out the worst, and where those who lack money also lack power. When I talk to social housing tenants up and down the country, this what I hear so often—that they are not seen or heard by decision makers, and that when they raise their concerns and bang on the doors of the corridors of power, those concerns still go unheeded. One social housing tenant said to me: “We simply do not count.” This has to be the day when we stand up together and say, “This ends now.”
There are 4 million families in rented social housing in England. Every single one of them deserves a decent, safe home, and, more than that, the power to drive and shape the decisions that affect their own lives. We should be scandalised that so many homes are not up to a fit standard, not just on fire safety but in being cold, damp and in a state of disrepair that shames us all in modern Britain: homes with black mould and water running down the walls; homes that are unsafe; homes that are damp and overcrowded. I recently heard from a teacher about a child who was coming to school covered in rat bites. The school is using its pupil premium to send people round to make sure that these children are clothed, fed and protected from rats. What have we come to in Britain in the 21st century? It is an absolute disgrace.
The Secretary of State is right that we should take a zero tolerance approach to social landlords who do not live up their obligations—who do not do everything within their power to make sure that those issues are dealt with. But I also gently say to him, in a constructive tone, given the gravity of what we are dealing with today, that the Government have to do their bit as well. That means reversing some of the cuts that have been made to councils and housing associations in recent years which mean that repair budgets are virtually non-existent in many parts of the country, and that good people have been lost and expertise has gone.
We welcome the decision to publish a social housing reform Bill to try to tackle some of these issues, although we are concerned that it has not materialised in advance of this debate. We were led to believe that we would have that Bill before we stood up to speak today. If there are problems within Government—if there are wranglings taking place behind closed doors—my offer to the Secretary of State is this: we will work with him and support him in whatever battles he has to make sure that this Bill sees the light of day, and quickly. That also goes for the renters reform Bill, which must, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) said, deal with the appalling standards in many private rented homes up and down this country. Some of that, I have to say to the Secretary of State, has been caused by Government policies such as the bedroom tax, which forced many people out of the secure social home that they had lived in for many years, close to friends, family and children’s schools, and into private, rented, often overcrowded and substandard accommodation that, absurdly, cost the public more than it did to house them in their own home.
We welcome some of the measures that the Secretary of State has proposed, particularly the promise to beef up the role of the regulator. This is a welcome step forward giving it the power to inspect, to order emergency repairs, to issue limitless fines, and to intervene in badly managed organisations. But we have to do more to tilt the balance of power back towards tenants to give them not just a voice but real power to shape and drive the decisions that affect their lives, their homes, their families and their communities. The measures on tenant satisfaction and a residents’ panel that meets Ministers three times a year are welcome, but well short of a dedicated tenants’ organisation that is put on a statutory footing and exists to be a voice to champion their interests. Such a body existed under the last Labour Government but was scrapped by the Secretary of State’s Government in 2010. I ask him please not to close his mind to perhaps revisiting previous methods that worked. Let us work together with tenants to get this right once and for all.
Mr Betts
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the body—the Tenant Services Authority—that used to exist and was in place to do that. Let me return to the point that I made to the Secretary of State in an intervention: this is about resources. Councils and housing associations are short of resources. They cannot bring their homes up to a proper standard—the new decent homes standard—build new homes, and do all the necessary building safety and other works with the money they have. Will my hon. Friend join me in pressing the Secretary of State—hopefully he is listening, as he said he was—to make sure that social housing landlords have the same access to funds to deal with safety works that are now, quite rightly, available to the private sector?
Lisa Nandy
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would add to the many challenges currently facing councils and housing associations the challenge of decarbonisation and the goal of net zero. These things are keeping well-meaning, good people who work in our councils and housing associations awake at night trying to work out how they are going to square the circle, and they deserve more support from their Government.
Nor is it acceptable that the measures are silent on how many new social housing properties will be built. We have a chronic shortage of affordable rented homes, with some of the challenges that my hon. Friend outlined. It is really concerning that today the Prime Minister said that the big idea to solve this is to allow people to use benefits to get a mortgage—not because we disagree with the principle of extending home ownership much more widely to those who want to grasp it, but because he seems to have forgotten to talk to the lenders. The Secretary of State will know that this has been the problem with previous announcements that have aimed in similar ways to help people to get mortgages. If mortgage lenders are not on board, they simply will not do it. The Prime Minister may not have reached out to mortgage lenders, but I am sure the Secretary of State will. When he does, will he talk to them about the very real difficulties of people on universal credit—all of whom, by definition, have savings of less than £16,000, with most having very little in savings, if anything at all—and about how they get a mortgage without any kind of deposit, and whether that is indeed viable? The Prime Minister appears to have forgotten to talk to mortgage lenders; I think it is possible that he also forgot to talk to the Secretary of State before he made the announcement. I do not envy the Secretary of State the task of trying to sort this out, but I am sure that he will go at it with his characteristic tenacity, and I wish him well in the endeavour.
I also wish the right hon. Gentleman well in realising the ambition he set out today: that when the Government extend the right to buy on a voluntary basis to housing association tenants, they will ensure that the homes are replaced, like for like and one for one. I was pleased to hear him say that he had secured that commitment, because Government figures suggest that while just over 2,500 council homes were built in 2010, over 11,000 were sold off under the right to buy; and, as he knows, in the Government pilots of the extended scheme, only half of the homes were replaced and the replacements were more expensive and inferior in standard to the ones that were sold. So how is the Secretary of State able to give this commitment today? What is the estimate of the cost of doing that, and where will the money be found? He knows better than anyone how squeezed his existing budget is. Given that full replacement of right-to-buy homes has never been achieved, how does he intend to pull that off this time? Surely, with 1 million people stuck on social housing waiting lists and a shortage of 1.5 million homes, he is not going to pursue measures that make the situation worse for most families?
Mr Betts
There are two important questions here. First, will participation by housing associations be voluntary? They are independent organisations, not part of the public sector. Secondly, replacing one for one, like for like, a family home for a family home, is not just about the Treasury making up the discount. Talk to housing associations: the cost of building a replacement is often greater than the market value of the home sold. There is another gap, which the Government have to fill.
Lisa Nandy
I think my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee, is making the Secretary of State’s day. We can add that to the very long list of problems. I think his question was more for the Secretary of State than for me, and I am sure he will ensure that it is addressed in the winding-up speeches, but I add my voice to his in saying that one of the reasons we were very concerned about the scheme is that it reaches only a very small number at a very high price.
We have a housing crisis in Britain and, as the Secretary of State knows, it manifests in a multitude of ways—in people who have been mis-sold leasehold properties, people who face soaring rents and are crippled by housing costs and the cost of living, and people in totally unsuitable exempt accommodation. Those loopholes have still not been closed while people continue to milk the system and claim housing benefit while allowing communities to fall into rack and ruin.
As the Secretary of State acknowledged, five full years after the Grenfell tragedy thousands of people remain stranded in homes covered in similar cladding, facing ruinous costs because of a scandal that was not of their making. The right hon. Gentleman is right that developers, not leaseholders, should pay. He has pushed that further than any of his predecessors and he has my full support in doing so. As long as he continues down that road, we will support him in the fight. However, I understand that so far 45 homebuilders have paid £2 billion to fix fire-related safety defects, which is roughly half of what he told the House would be needed. Where will the other £2 billion come from? What assurances and guarantees does he have that the developers who have agreed to pay cannot backtrack on any of the agreements?
The Government’s plans are missing several elements that need to be addressed and added to existing measures in the Building Safety Act 2022. The Secretary of State will be aware of those. There is still far too little support for the significant number of leaseholders who face huge bills to fix non-cladding defects.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On the point she just addressed, there are leaseholders living in buildings who have looked to what the Secretary of State says about wanting to make those responsible pay but who still do not know who was involved. Often there is a network of companies; some may have disappeared or taken new names but still have the same directors and so on. Would it not be helpful if the Government were to write to the leaseholders in all those buildings setting out what information they currently have about the willingness of those involved in the construction of the building to cough up for the unsafe flats they constructed?
Lisa Nandy
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good suggestion, which I hope the Government will take up. It is not just the huge costs that are causing such damage to people; it is the uncertainty and anxiety that they have to live with every single day. Anything the Government can do to alleviate that anxiety—to send a signal to the leaseholders who are now trapped in their homes that they are not on their own—would be extremely welcome.
Will the Secretary of State look specifically at those who are seeking to sell or remortgage their properties? For such people, this wait is agonising and unbearable; their lives are on hold and they simply cannot move on. I have to say to him that it is quite wrong of the Government to rule out retrospective help for those who have already paid. Many people felt pressured or bullied into paying these enormous bills, yet no help is coming for them. That is not justice. Nor is there help for the countless leaseholders who are mired in mortgage chaos. Government funding so far is available for buildings over 11 metres, but shorter buildings may contain more vulnerable residents, be coated in more cladding and have more serious fire safety issues. What more does the Secretary of State plan to do to ensure that priority funding is allocated according to risk?
At the current pace, it will take until 2026 to remove cladding on all social housing blocks, and until 2024 for private blocks. When does the Secretary of State expect remediation of all dangerous buildings to have been completed? Can he give us some reassurance on that?
It would be wrong of me to stand here and say that the problems facing leaseholders began and end with Grenfell. A group of local residents who have been caught up in this scandal came to see me and told me a familiar story. They have been hit with huge charges, but when they challenged the charges with their management company, they did not even get a response. They have written again and again and have been completely and utterly ignored. It is totally unacceptable, and it is not new.
The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) is not in his place right now, but he has fought this battle for years, as I well remember. Many years ago, in 2001, I worked for the then Member of Parliament for Walthamstow as the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill—later the 2002 Act—was going through this place. These debates were happening here in this place at that time, a full decade before I was elected to Parliament. They were happening when I was working for Centrepoint, the fantastic organisation to which Members have paid tribute today. Parliament was debating how too many people were being ignored and overlooked, and these arcane and archaic, feudal models of tenure were still being defended by some, even though they had clearly and completely outlived their usefulness.
Almost every country in the world apart from Britain has either reformed or abolished this archaic, feudal model. I believe there is now cross-party consensus on the need to do something about it. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State acknowledge that we are right to say that we must have legislation to deal with this, but I say gently to him: where is it? He says legislation will be forthcoming in this parliamentary Session, but it was not in the Queen’s Speech. There are five Bills from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in the Queen’s Speech; surely time can be found to ensure that we deal with this problem once and for all.
We need new legislation to end the sale of new private leasehold houses, effective immediately after Royal Assent is given; new legislation to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold; and new powers for residents over the management of their own homes, with rights for flat owners to form residents’ associations and simplification of the right to manage. Why do the Government not hand leaseholders the right to extend the lease to 990 years with zero ground rent at any time or to cap ground rents when extending a lease to 0.1% of the freehold value up to a maximum of £250 a year? The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) chairs, has done incredible work on that. The proposals are there and ready to go.
Where are the Law Commission’s proposals to reform the process of enfranchisement valuation for leaseholders, including on marriage value and prescribing rates for the calculations of the premium? Surely, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, it is a no-brainer to crack down on unfair fees and contract terms by publishing a reference list of reasonable charges, by requiring transparency on service charges, and by giving leaseholders the right to challenge rip-off fees and conditions or poor performance from service companies.
I started by saying that a group of people were rendered invisible to decision makers only a few miles away, which is completely unacceptable in modern Britain. How can we accept that these rip-off companies, on behalf of owners who we often do not know and do not have the right to find out about, are allowed to tell people whether they can change the doorbell on their own home or make minor changes that would make a big difference to their lives? How on earth is it right that we are siding with those rip-off management companies and opaque owners over people who live in their own homes, have a stake in this country and their communities, and deserve the right to something better?
If the Secretary of State can secure time for the second part of the leasehold reform Bill that was promised, we could end these arcane rules and give power and a voice back to people in their own homes and communities. Was levelling up not intended to answer that clamour for more control and agency, and give people who have a stake in the outcome a greater ability to make decisions about their own lives? That is the legacy that we should seek to build in honour of those who lost their lives in Grenfell: everybody everywhere in the UK, regardless of the type of tenure that they happen to end up with, has the right to a decent, secure, safe home—full stop. We will make sure that that is delivered.
The Grenfell community has steadfastly campaigned not just for justice but for change, and it is humbling to welcome some of the relatives to the Gallery. I share the Secretary of State’s view that that has come too slowly and that their long fight for justice has for too long been paved with broken promises. Those lives mattered, and if we believe and mean what we say when we honour them, we must build a better system in the wake of that appalling tragedy. His Department has five Bills in the Queen’s Speech, which is five chances for us to get it right. We will move heaven and earth to help him do that, but let us not waste them.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Tuesday is the five-year anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy and I start by paying tribute to my constituents—the 72 men, women and children who lost their lives in such appalling circumstances. I also pay tribute to the bereaved, the survivors, the residents and the broader community in north Kensington and Kensington, who have borne so much with so much dignity. I welcome the families and residents to the Gallery; it is an honour to have them here.
We need a lasting legacy to come out of the Grenfell fire tragedy, which must be that everyone has a right to be safe in their homes, that all residents’ and tenants’ voices need to be heard, and that communities need to be involved in decision making when it comes to their communities. In the two and a half years since I was elected, I have said in this Chamber on a number of occasions that I have been frustrated by the length of time it has taken for some of the changes to building, fire safety and cladding remediation to be implemented. I say again that it is incumbent on all of us to have a sense of urgency when we go about this task.
I am glad to say that we have made substantial progress in the last few months. In April, we enacted the Building Safety Act 2022, which is a landmark piece of legislation. As part of that Act, we extended to intermediate buildings the statutory protection for leaseholders such that they will not have to pay for cladding remediation, which I welcome. I also welcome the establishment of a regulator for construction products. I have been shocked and horrified by some of the revelations that have come out of the Grenfell inquiry about the building products sector, so I am glad that that regulator has been put in place.
I thank the Secretary of State for his efforts with building developers and owners. It is good that 45 of the largest building developers have signed up to the new regime to provide at least £2 billion of funding for buildings in whose development they were involved. It is also positive that we now have the building safety levy, which will raise £3 billion-plus for buildings that have been orphaned. That is all good progress.
My constituents and I were pleased to see the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill in the Queen’s Speech, for which activists in my constituency have been calling for a long time. It is very important that social housing tenants’ voices are heard and respected, and that the regulator is given tougher enforcement powers. I am glad that there can be unlimited fines and that, for the big social housing providers, there will be regular inspections along the lines of Ofsted inspections.
We are making progress, but there is more to be done. In my constituency, there are buildings where the remediation is still in progress. We need a sense of urgency in addressing every single building in the country that has fire safety defects. Every building needs to be properly assessed. It is important that we are proportionate in that fire risk assessment—it needs to be accurate and to reflect the real risks—but once we have it, we need to get on with the job of remediating the defects. I understand that, in London, approximately 1,100 buildings would require simultaneous evacuation, and we need to get on with the job of remediating them.
It is also important to address the broader picture—not only the remediation, but the other attendant issues. I talked to a constituent this morning who lives in a building that does not require remediation, but the insurance companies believe there is sufficient risk for them to have put up the insurance premiums multiple times. That broader context needs to be looked at. We need to ensure that the recommendations of the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry are implemented. I understand that 21 of the 46 have been, but we need to ensure that the rest are implemented urgently.
We have made substantial progress, particularly in the last few months, but there is a lot more to be done. This needs to be a collective endeavour on both sides of the House, because we owe it to the Grenfell families and the Grenfell community that such a tragedy never be allowed to happen again. We as the legislators need to ensure that.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I join all Members in this House in sending our condolences to the people from Grenfell Tower in the Gallery and to all the family and friends of those they have lost.
My day today began well: I got a phone call from Merton Council housing department to tell me that Miss S’s case would go into band A on the housing register and she would be the highest medical priority. Miss S lives in a one-bedroom flat that is rodent infested and covered in condensation, which she shares with her three children, two of whom have autism. They are now in band A—great! Only it is not so great, because I calculate that she will be 37th in the three-bedroom category in band A on Merton’s housing register, and I know the other 36 because I fought to get them there. Last year, Merton Council had 32 three-bedroom properties to offer to the entire housing register. At that rate, I calculate that Miss S probably has another six or seven years before she will ever successfully bid for a property. That is the reality we face.
The word “crisis” is overused in this Chamber, but when it comes to housing it could not possibly be more justified. Every Friday at my weekly advice surgery, I meet family after family on Merton’s 10,000-strong housing waiting list to whom I struggle to offer any hope that they will ever get a place to call home. I reflect on how I deal with their cases: do I tell them the truth and explain the system, or do I try to leave them with some hope to make them feel better? I would welcome anybody’s advice, because I have become the citizens advice or housing advice authority giving the news to people that they do not want to hear, but I believe it is my obligation to give that advice in the best way I can.
When I bring those cases to Parliament, I cannot help but question the priority the Government give this issue, given that the average tenure for a Housing Minister over the last 12 years has been slightly less than a year. Maybe I am dreaming, but finally it sounds as though it is time for some housing policy—who knew Sue Gray’s partygate report would have such far-reaching consequences? —but, as ever, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding costs money.
Let us start on a positive note. I am delighted finally to see progress for social housing tenants living in properties in disrepair and battling endless hurdles in their fight for a safe, habitable place to live. This would simply not have happened without the determination of my constituent—I am proud to say that—Kwajo Tweneboa, who is here today, and Daniel Hewitt of ITV News in shining a light on the appalling conditions in which Kwajo, his neighbours and thousands of social housing tenants are living. Disrepair is the biggest issue in my inbox, thanks in part to a complaints process so rigorous and so tilted in favour of the landlord that my office now holds a weekly meeting with Clarion Housing Association to go through cases one by one.
I say to the Minister that, if I had rain pouring through my roof, I really do not think my patience would withstand a call centre with nobody responsible for my complaint, a two-stage written process, an eight-week wait to begin a complaint to the ombudsman, who looks only at whether correct processes have been followed, and a regulator who signposts me back to the ombudsman. So a truly strengthened regulator would be unreservedly welcome, finally giving a voice to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. But we must be under no illusion: this would not build a single new home. There were just 5,955 new social rented homes last year—one of the lowest numbers on record—and at that rate, it would take 192 years to house everyone on the waiting list.
As I have always said, it is people’s real-life examples that bring this stuff home, and I would like to give two more examples. The first is Mr and Mrs B and their three children. Their eldest son has muscular dystrophy. He cannot walk or use a bathroom independently, but he lives in a house in which his bathroom and toilet are downstairs and his bedroom is upstairs. Each day, his tiny, diminutive mum puts him on her back and climbs the stairs to his bedroom. At night, she carries him downstairs on her back for him to be able to use the bathroom. She is in band A—the ubiquitous band A —on the register. Because I was so distressed at explaining the situation to her, I visited her home with the head of the Merton housing department, Mr Brunton, and together we tried to explain why she could not be helped. That is not something I would want to do too often. She is at the top of the list, but she will go no further.
There is Miss T, who lives with her three children in a combined living room-kitchen while her former partner, who is the tenant of the flat and has multiple sclerosis, is in the bedroom. Of those three children, one is severely autistic. Miss T herself has a neurological brain disorder. She is in band A on the housing register, but there are 32 families in front of her. Her wait has to be put into perspective: last year, Merton had 32 three-bedroom properties to offer to all the bands. Even though Miss T is at the top of the list, it will take until her children are teenagers before she is likely to be successful, so she and her three children will be sleeping in the living room until then.
How does the Minister intend to increase supply? One ambition appears to be reopening up current supply, with the Secretary of State vowing this morning to end the “scourge” of unoccupied second homes. If only rhetoric matched reality I would be dancing on the rooftops. Earlier this week, the Chancellor confirmed that he is handing out multiple energy bill discounts to those who own multiple homes. Aside from costing hundreds of millions to the taxpayer, does the Minister really think that this will discourage second home ownership?
Another suggestion is to give housing association tenants the right to buy, a proposal that categorically requires Government funding. However, the findings of the Government’s trial run in the midlands were indisputable: the number of replacement homes did not match the number of sales housing associations said they would likely need to be able to put their own resources into a part-funded replacement scheme, and the replacement homes were smaller and more expensive. Don’t get me wrong: I am a fan of home ownership. I am one of few on the Opposition Benches who regularly speak in favour of the right to buy. I know how liberating it is for people to own their home, and I know how it gives them independence and choice. As the daughter of a woman whose proudest achievement was not getting one daughter into the House of Commons or her younger daughter into the House of Lords, but owning her own home, I will never be a person who objects to home ownership. However, what we really need is the absolute copper-bottomed guarantee that there will be like-for-like replacement of every single property that is sold.
Finally, the Secretary of State heralded an ambition to return to a Macmillan era of housing—an era when 300,000 new homes were built a year. That is the very same target that the very same Secretary of State scrapped last month. Is it not about time that we stopped playing the hokey-cokey with the most fundamental human right—a secure place to live and bring up your children?
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I, too, pay tribute to the families and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy, and I think all of us who served in Government at any time before that tragedy would join both Front Benches in the apology that is offered to them; there was a systemic failure that let them and many others down.
As the shadow Secretary of State generously said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has shown real energy in seeking to address these matters now, and I pay tribute to him for that. We have therefore seen marked progress, which I welcome, but I also want to put on record some areas in which I know the Minister currently on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), will be keen to press for yet further progress.
The first of them relates to cladding. We have come a long way, and my constituents are very grateful for that. We have had campaigns, which I have raised in this House, for the residents of Northpoint in my constituency, and others are affected in other buildings, too: Iconia House and Azzura House in Homesdale Road; and William House and Henry House in Ringers Road. They happen all to be in the centre of Bromley, so this is not purely an inner-London issue; it affects town centres and suburban centres across the country. It is therefore all the more important that we get it right.
Eventually, after a very long campaign, the remediation work is starting at Northpoint, but it will take perhaps a year or so to complete. The landlord of the occupiers of Northpoint was a property company that was an offshoot of the Tchenguiz family trust, not an organisation noted for its generosity towards its tenants. It stood upon its legal rights and insisted upon the flat owners—the lease- holders—covering the costs, for example of a waking watch.
It is certainly to be welcomed that future costs of waking watches and remediation will be picked up, but these leaseholders are out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds for the waking watch that they installed because the London Fire Brigade, in exercise of its duty, issued a notice saying that without it the property would not be habitable. They were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: what else were they to do but acquire that waking watch? Otherwise their homes would have been unsafe, which would have been unfair on them. The mental and health pressures on some of these people was immense. Their landlord was remote and frankly not possible to go after. It was not signed up to the scheme that the Secretary of State has worked so hard on and responsible developers have joined. The occupiers of Northpoint therefore had to dip into their own pockets when most of them already had mortgages, especially as many of them were first-time buyers, and when the flats were unmortgageable—they could not increase the mortgage on them because nobody would lend on them—and until this work was done they were effectively uninsurable too.
So these people had been left in a hopeless situation, and while it is right that the Government seek to recover every penny they can from developers and builders who fail to come up to the standards, where there has ultimately been a failure of governance in the broadest sense over a period of many years it is legitimate for the state to stand behind those who have lost out. Where there is such a corporate failure, the state must pick up the ultimate responsibility. So I hope the Minister will look again at means of coming to the aid of such people for retrospective costs where it is clearly not realistic to pursue the builder or developer. There will be a number of such cases. In this instance the freehold had been sold on many times. There will also be cases where developers who may be at fault will no longer be in business; they may have wound up or amalgamated. In those circumstances, the moral and corporate responsibility must fall on the state.
There are also areas where there has been progress but there is more to do. Members have referred to building insurance. There has been a marked increase in premiums across the board. People have had major—threefold or fourfold—increases in their premiums. Again, these people are often in flats that are unmortgageable and unsellable, and now, on top of their service cost charges to pay for steps such as a waking watch, they are facing massive increases in their insurance premiums. The question has to be raised—many of my constituents have done so—whether the market is operating effectively. How genuinely competitive is the market in these areas? There is a real concern that at the very least there is an excessive risk-averseness now: having gone from having too lax an approach in the past perhaps, now the insurers’ approach is too risk-averse, resulting in unrealistically and unfairly high premiums for many flat owners. That, too, is an area where it is legitimate for the Government and regulators to step in.
Sir Robert Neill
Of course; I happily give way to the Chairman of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.
Mr Betts
We raised the issue of insurers at the Select Committee. Premiums have gone up by ridiculous amounts, often for buildings that are now safer than before the premium increases. The Association of British Insurers could not tell us how much more the insurance companies have paid out in the last three or four years on high-rise blocks, so we have no idea how much has been paid out, but we do know there have been massive premiums increases. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should encourage Ministers to take further action with the ABI and others to start sorting out these unreasonable premiums increases?
Sir Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I hope Ministers will do that. Again, the Secretary of State—who I am delighted to see back in his place—and his colleagues have shown real energy on this, but we need to keep the pressure on; that is key.
I am grateful to Lord Greenhalgh, who has been in correspondence with me a good deal on these matters. He pointed out that back in January the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority had been called upon
“to conduct a review of the buildings insurance market for medium and high-rise blocks of flats to get to the bottom”
of this concern. That is good of course, and the wider issue was recognised by Lord Greenhalgh, who wrote:
“Where the risk has demonstrably decreased, so should the premium.”
But that is not happening at the moment. While we want that review to be thorough, it must also be implemented in a timely fashion. I was advised by Lord Greenhalgh that the Department expects the FCA and the CMA
“to provide advice and recommendations within the next six months.”
He wrote that in a letter sent last month. I hope we can keep the pressure on so that it happens well within six months, rather than at the far end of that period. The risk, of course, is that some of the stakeholders in the industry will not have the greatest of incentives to move swiftly on this matter, so the duty therefore falls on the Government to do that. I know the Secretary of State has been more than willing to flex muscle with the sector when necessary to get movement, and I hope he will do so on this. I also hope that the Minister will confirm in winding up the debate that once the advice and recommendations from the CMA and FCA have been received, there will be prompt and urgent action to implement them in whatever form is necessary to address this genuine problem.
There is a related matter on the operation of EWS1 forms. In my constituency there is a firm called the Frankham Group. Steve Frankham MBE, a constituent of mine, has done a great deal of work in this field and has been recognised for his service in the industry and charitable works around these matters. His firm is anxious to do the right thing but it, and many others in the sector who have contacted me, are concerned about the real difficulty they are finding, as responsible contractors employed by the registered social landlord sector or the private sector to carry out the EWS1 surveys, in getting both accreditation and professional indemnity insurance.
At the beginning of the year, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors set up accreditation for technicians and surveyors who will be carrying out the scheme. Despite firms such as Frankham having participated in meetings and sent in assessment forms as required, nothing as yet has been forthcoming from RICS to set the scheme properly in place. At the same time, insurance premiums have increased exponentially, which is, in some cases, making large contracts less viable than would otherwise be the case.
The last thing we want is for rogue operators to come into the market and undercut the responsible contractors who carry out this essential work, so we need both a realistic and fair insurance market operating in the sphere and, in parallel, a proper accreditation scheme in place. Otherwise, the temptation for the cowboys to undercut responsible people will be the greater. We need urgent action on that. I will happily share with the Minister and the Secretary of State the correspondence that I have had from my constituents, with the technical detail that they set out on what they have been doing to try to get the scheme working. I had a look at an EWS1 form myself, and it is quite complicated. We could not expect a group of residents to deal with it—they need professional advice to do it properly—but we must ensure that the professionals are accredited and insured properly to be able to undertake the work. I hope that we can flag that up, because I am not sure that enough attention has been given to it.
The other matter that relates to specific building safety issues is the position of small landlords, who are sometimes referred to as portfolio landlords. I appreciate that there has been movement to improve the number of landlords included in the Government’s support schemes for remediation, but the current definition for those who can come into the scheme is those who have their own property but own only one other property, which they do not live in. Constituents have contacted me about that.
Let us say that a retired couple have bought four small flats, as many people may have done, all in their joint names. In retrospect, I suppose they could have put them in their sole names and had two each, but, perfectly straightforwardly, they chose to put them in joint names. Had they bought two larger flats, they might well have fallen within the scheme. As it is, because they happened to invest in that type of property, they fall outside the scheme’s scope. I wonder whether the Secretary of State could think again about the definition of a portfolio landlord. Most of us might think they are someone with 20, 30 or 40 flats for whom that is their principal business and think, “Well, they will have to take the commercial risk on that.” They are not the large-scale landlord chains that we see, either. They are generally small investors, often moving into semi-retirement, who are not in anything like the same position to bear the costs. The principle behind the scheme is admirable, and it would be a shame if the ship was spoiled for a ha’porth of tar, meaning that entirely straightforward people who were caught out are left bearing a cost when someone with a slightly different configuration of their retirement investment would be able to benefit.
Finally, I turn to a broad point that echoes one made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). As well as dealing with the building safety situation, we need to look at the maintenance of much of our social housing estate. Constituents have been in touch with me repeatedly about the difficulty they have in particular with some of the large RSLs. They have also been in touch with the Secretary of State’s Department in relation to the largest RSL in my area, Clarion. I deal with Clarion, and I see that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), has come across it as well. We have also recently seen it in the press. It is one of the largest social landlords in the country, but, I am sorry to say that, despite sometimes having had constructive dealings with it, many of my constituents who are its tenants do not find it constructive to deal with. There is a continual issue of poor maintenance, with contractors who simply do not do the job properly and have to revisit time and again. In one estate in Mottingham in my constituency, we have had problems getting things done, which have been running for about four years—they are only partially done, then revisited and more is done. Clarion is quick to send removal notices for pot plants and garden sheds that may have been put in place without permission. It is sharp in doing that. It is also quite quick to serve statutory notices for the costs of significant capital works such as renewing roofs and other matters, but I am sorry to say that it is remarkably slow to sort out basic repairs, never mind some of the more serious issues such as when damp gets in.
That makes me wonder whether some of our RSLs have not in fact become too big to be accountable. The stock in Bromley was originally transferred by Bromley Council to an RSL called Broomleigh. Actually, it was one of the first RSLs, and that was one of the first stock transfers to take place. The whole point of Broomleigh was that it was locally based, with local directors and local offices. What we have seen over a period of time is a series of RSL mergers, so they have become much larger.
Siobhain McDonagh
Does the hon. Member agree that the drive for merger is directly due to housing associations’ funding, their lack of capital funding, their greater reliance on the equity in their own stock and their ability to borrow? We have the housing associations that our legislation and funding deserve.
Sir Robert Neill
I think that we must look at the funding model for RSLs. There is no doubt that the ability to leverage more capital is a significant driver in mergers, and we must be aware of that. The hon. Lady is quite right that it is a bit odd that organisations that started off as charities now operate, in effect, in the same way as large-scale commercial developers, but actually without some of the shareholder and other comeback that those in the commercial sector might have. We do need to look at that. The concept of RSLs can be excellent and they can do much good work, so the reverse can also be true. I have some very good, local, small RSLs in my constituency, much closer to the original intention, who do brilliant work. I therefore agree that it is time to look across the piece at the RSL market.
This is an important debate, and I am grateful to have taken part in it. The Secretary of State is an effective Minister and has shown real energy and determination throughout all of this, and my constituents have reason to be grateful to him for interventions in our area in the past. I am sure that he will take those points on board, because we have done a lot, but a few extra bits and an extra push could do so much more. We also need that bigger-picture look at our social housing market.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I welcome the reflections made by the Secretary of State in his opening remarks on the Grenfell tragedy and, along with Members across the House, I welcome the bereaved family members who are here to witness the debate. It is a reflection of the horror we all felt five years ago in seeing those pictures on our television screens that we are here, five years later, still debating in a thoughtful and cross-party way what more can be done. I welcome the progress already made and value the commitments made by all parties, including the Liberal Democrats, to further change. I hope that that will be the legacy of that awful day. It is a reflection of how profoundly it affected us all that we are working together thoughtfully, much against the prevailing wind of political debate in the Chamber. We are all committed to fixing some of the problems revealed.
We welcome the progress made, but I want to mention the amendment tabled to the Building Safety Bill by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) that would have made social landlords exempt from the financial burden of the building safety levy. That levy, which is being charged to fund the cladding remediation work, is burdening social landlords and having the direct impact of disincentivising new house building. Some providers are reducing their development pipelines by between 20% and 40%. My hon. Friend tabled an amendment to exempt social landlords, which I believe was welcomed by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and the Local Government Association. The Secretary of State and the Department have said they will consult on providing an exemption. I therefore press him to give us an update on progress. It is very important that, while we attempt to fix the problems with cladding that we have identified, we do not create new problems. We know there is a housing supply crisis. That was articulated in a heartfelt speech by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and I think we all identify with that—as a fellow south-west London MP, I very much identify with some of the problems she raised—but we must not allow an attempt to solve the remediation problem to create problems in the building pipeline.
I was struck by the weight the Secretary of State put, in his opening remarks, on the need to listen to residents and on how key that is to avoiding a repeat of Grenfell. When I reflect on the housing issues I experience as a constituency MP, they fall into two camps. I will confine my remarks to social housing and my social housing tenants, but I just want to take a moment to reflect on what the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), said about private leasehold. That is a huge issue—a huge issue—in my constituency, too. I welcome any moves to try to address those issues and I very much look forward to hearing more about that.
For my social housing tenants, the biggest issue—it was referred to by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—relates to conditions and maintenance. We have talked a lot about the huge tragedy of Grenfell, but for many of my social housing tenants it is the everyday misery of living with mould, drafts and leaks and living in conditions that, frankly, they should not have to endure. I am glad the Secretary of State highlighted the work of ITV News and Kwajo Tweneboa. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden also mentioned their work. I have seen some of their content on Twitter. It is very, very disturbing. I would not wish for anyone to have to look at it, but I am very glad to hear that the Secretary of State is paying attention to it. It really does highlight this issue, which as I say is, above all else, the issue for my constituents in social housing. We also have issues with asbestos.
As a constituency MP, I talk to my colleagues on Richmond Council. They experience the same issue when talking to our residents and constituents about their housing issues: how hard it is to speak to housing associations, how hard it is to get them to act and how difficult it can be just to even get basic communication going. It really bothers me that, as their elected representatives, we cannot make housing associations more accountable to us. I welcome attempts to strengthen residents’ groups, but I am slightly resentful on behalf of my residents that it is up to them to organise, pressurise and push for change for something that they ought to be able to expect as a right. They should just be able to pick up the phone and get somebody to come and fix their issue. For me, it is that lack of accountability that is the issue.
I want more local authority involvement in housing associations. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned the housing association in his area. We have something similar in Richmond, where we have the Richmond Housing Partnership. There is a good relationship between councillors and the housing association, but so much depends on that good relationship. There are no levers. There is no formal process by which councillors can make representations. There is no way for us to put pressure on housing associations or require them to deal with even the worst examples of mould, damp and asbestos. We have no lever by which we can require a housing association to take action, so I would like much more to be done on that.
In days gone by, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned, we had councillors sitting on the boards of housing associations. However, now we have huge housing associations. PA Housing also provides housing in Richmond. It provides housing across 19 local authorities, so it is simply not feasible for individual councillors from all those local authorities to be able to provide leverage. There needs to be some way social housing tenants can—either through themselves, their properly convened and officially supported residents’ groups, or their local representatives—put effective pressure on housing associations to fix the issue of maintenance.
I want to briefly mention energy efficiency. Net zero targets, and how they are another pressure on housing, were touched on very briefly. When I talk about maintenance, I want a lot more investment in energy efficiency, particularly in our social housing and particularly for those on low incomes. It could make all the difference in the world right now as we see ever-rising fuel bills. A real commitment to improving the energy efficiency of our social housing stock is something the Government could invest in to achieve real results and really deliver for some of our most vulnerable and low-income families.
On fuel bills, I want to highlight a number of socially rented homes in my constituency in Kingston Borough which are directly owned by the council. Back in 1991, the properties were valued for council tax purposes. They are in a relatively wealthy area. Despite the fact that they do not have a market value because they are socially owned, they were assigned the market value of the privately sold homes around them. As a result, they now have a council tax band, in 2022, that is too high to qualify for the Chancellor’s council tax rebate for fuel bills. The houses have some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in my constituency, yet they are missing out on this crucial fuel rebate. I have written to the Department on this issue and I would like the Government to look at it again. It is a massive issue in constituencies like mine that generally have very high housing values, but also low-income households.
In conclusion, I welcome the progress made on building safety in response to Grenfell, the continuing energy from everyone across the House to ensure we get these issues right, and the work of the Grenfell inquiry to ensure that all decision making is well informed. The Liberal Democrats look forward to playing their part.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
As others have reminded us, next week will mark five years since the Grenfell fire which claimed 72 lives. I want to add to the tributes to the residents and campaigners for the work they have been doing to keep the issue alive and call all of us involved to account.
Despite progress to some extent since the Secretary of State has been in post, we should not be under any illusion that the building safety crisis has somehow been fixed. Years before the Grenfell fire, the coroner’s recommendations relating to the Lakanal fire were not acted on by the Government, regulators or the building industry. The Lakanal inquiry report was one of many, many warnings that went unheeded. The building safety crisis triggered by the Grenfell fire has had a huge impact, not least on so many of my constituents living in buildings that would be safe and secure had those warnings been acted on. Instead, they are living in fear.
The worst incident in my constituency relating to the building safety crisis is that experienced by the shared owner leaseholders and students of the Paragon building in Brentford. They had to be evacuated, with a week’s notice, in October 2020. The cladding had already been removed but the inspections revealed fundamental flaws in the system-built housing blocks. Hard-working leaseholders and students just starting university were cast out. As shared owners, the hard-working leaseholders struggled to get back on the housing ladder, as the Notting Hill housing partnership could not afford to give them the current value for something they would be buying now. They were given only the deemed value of their property at the time, and it was too low to buy another property as a shared owner in west London. Their salaries had not increased significantly, but the values of alternative properties had. Meanwhile, all the costs of the compensation, the legal and organisational costs, had to be covered by Notting Hill housing partnership from its building and maintenance budget.
That was the most severe example, but I have had hundreds of emails in the past five years from other constituents. Leaseholders have had to pay for replacement cladding and waking watch and they may not get recompensed, depending on the situation. Residents were told that they needed a completed EWS1 form to sell their home, yet only about 300 trained professionals across the country could do those checks, so constituents had to put their lives on hold while they waited for a survey. Once the surveys took place, many residents in blocks across my constituency—in Hounslow, Isleworth, Brentford and Chiswick, and indeed, across the country—found that other major problems were apparent in their flats, such as inadequate fire breaks, incorrect insulation and more. In Richmond House in south London, a fire ripped through a small four-storey block of 32 flats. There was no flammable cladding but it was built wholly inadequately. Luckily, no lives were lost. That fire took hold in 11 minutes.
The consequences of all that mean that my constituents face life-changing bills, which can ruin them, and the uncertainty of having to put their lives on hold. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), refused to act. At least this Secretary of State acknowledges that the Government have some responsibility and that the response of Government since Grenfell has—I think his words were—“occasionally been insensitive”. I thank him for being honest enough to acknowledge that at the Dispatch Box today.
After months, we finally saw the Government taking action, but it is still too little, too late; and, as Members have said, what support there is applies only to certain defects and not to many others, including structural defects, fire breaks and non-fire defects. We have seen only the tip of the iceberg in regard to defects, thanks to systematic failures across the construction and regulatory sector. Meanwhile, my constituents still face bills for non-cladding defects. There is no help for those mired in the mortgage crisis and unable to sell their homes, and building insurance charges are skyrocketing. One of my constituents saw a 500% increase this year.
Furthermore, social rent landlords were not recompensed for the cost of the building safety crisis imposed on them in places where they house social rent tenants. They have had to dip into their capital budgets, further undoing any growth in the number of social rent homes that we need and adding to the irrelevance of the Prime Minister’s announcement today.
To me, the announcement that personal emergency evacuation plans will not be mandatory in buildings at risk was particularly shocking. The plans are crucial for residents with disabilities and their families to ensure that they can escape buildings during a fire. That was a recommendation from the first report of the Grenfell inquiry. I recently spoke to a constituent whose husband needs a PEEP. In this case, he needs a special chair to ensure that they can get him out of their flat and down the stairs. My constituent rightly said that the Government’s position is “woeful and discriminatory”. It is outrageous that the Government refuse to ensure that residents with disabilities are given the support that they need to escape during a fire. As we know from the past decade, if this is left to the invisible hand of the market and private companies in the sector are relied on to do the right thing, they will not do so.
I will finish by touching on social housing, particularly after the Prime Minister’s announcement. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her graphic and emotional descriptions of the plight of her constituents in housing need in band A. I have many similar stories—I wish they were just stories, but they are lives.
After 12 years of Conservative Government failure to fix the housing market, Ministers are recycling and reheating old pilot programmes, with no new funding and no real plan. The Government know what they need to do: support councils such as Hounslow that are building more council homes and homes for social rent. The Government need to do far more. Hounslow is doing what it can with the resources that it has available. In the past three or four years, it has built more than 1,000 new council homes. It has also bought 500 homes, brought them into council ownership and allocated 20 of those to local care leavers. That was done with the help of the Mayor of London. Labour-led councils and Mayor Sadiq Khan are doing the right thing. If only we had a Government with the same commitment, they could do so much more.
With those 1,500 new homes, Hounslow Council is finally, after 10 years, achieving only level pegging on social rent and council housing numbers. Since the Conservative Government reinstated the 70% price discount for right to buy more than 10 years ago, Hounslow has steadily lost far more social rent homes than have been delivered. Nationally, as the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), said, only 2,500 new social rent homes were built and 11,000 were sold. The gap is massive and growing. Most of the homes that have been sold through right to buy are now owned by private landlords, who are charging tenants three times the rent paid by the council tenant living next door. With many of those tenants on housing benefit to meet the gap between their salary and rent levels, that is a massive bonanza for private landlords, at a cost to the taxpayer.
Although I welcome proposals to give more of a voice and more rights to social rent tenants, in my view that only covers one set of people. Council tenants often feel frustrated. They are not always happy, but at least they have elected councillors who can support them with management and maintenance issues. Also, management, maintenance and investment decisions are taken by the council in public, but that is not true for housing association tenants. Many of my constituents are tenants of the larger registered social landlords. They are distant and opaque and often do not even respond to me and my caseworkers, let alone to their tenants. Legislating is therefore the right thing to do, but it has to be done properly. And what about private tenants? Too often, they are bullied and even evicted by rogue landlords, rather than listened to and supported. There is very little to actually improve the voice of leaseholders in private blocks. And there is, of course, the other subset: shared owners.
After 12 long years in power, it is clear that the Government still have no real plan to fix the housing crisis, no plan to end the injustice facing leaseholders and no plan to ensure that we build the good, high-quality, truly affordable homes that families in my constituency want and need.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I begin by joining others in expressing my condolences to the families who are here—and others who are not—whose loved ones died in the Grenfell fire. Their pain is never, ever going to go away. The very least we can do, and the essential first step, is to apologise for the failures. We heard that from the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who spoke for the Opposition.
Looking back, it is incredible that combinations of materials were allowed on the outside of buildings as cladding and were declared safe when no one had ever set fire to them to see what would happen. It is extraordinary that that transpired, and it is incredible that so many buildings were not constructed in accordance with the building regulations in force at the time. As the Secretary of State will know, as cladding has been inspected, people have peeled stuff off, peered inside and said, “Uh-oh—where are the fire breaks?” It is also shameful that the people responsible for this generation of jerry-built blocks thought that they could get away with it. That is what we are confronting.
There is no doubt at all—I join hon. Members on both sides of the House in saying this—that the Secretary of State has applied great determination and energy to the task that confronted him when he came into the post. However, he will be acutely conscious that thousands of leaseholders still do not know what will happen to their block. With each passing day, they remain trapped: trapped in their life, trapped in their building, which they are told is a fire risk, and paying additional costs. They do not know when it will all be brought to an end.
I have raised with the Secretary of State the particular case of the Gateway building in the centre of Leeds. Three types of cladding were submitted to the building safety fund. The fund said that it would pay for the render, but that the two types of zinc cladding—zinc is applied to battens with various other materials—were not eligible for funding, even though the specialist fire safety adviser to the managing agents and the freeholder has said that in their professional opinion such cladding does not comply. The leaseholders are currently debating whether to spend £70,000 or £80,000 and another eight months on it. There is a great waiting list—after a generation or two of failure to set fire to materials to see whether they were safe, there is now a long queue for the small number of institutions that can make up a particular combination made up at height and set fire to it to see what happens.
I raise the case because one of the considerations that my constituents and the managing agents are weighing up is that if the material is not found to burn in a way that breaches the regulations, a fire safety adviser will be able to issue an EWS1 certificate in respect of the building. But what if the material does burn in a dangerous way? Is it all worth doing unless they are sure that if they provide incontrovertible evidence, the building safety fund will say, “Okay, we will now cough up for a replacement”? That is a very important question. It may relate to a relatively small number of blocks, but they deserve reassurance that if they provide the evidence, they will get a change in the building safety fund’s decision.
The problem is immensely complex, as the Secretary of State and his officials, who have been working so hard, know better than anybody. Also complex is the liability waterfall that he has created to deal with it, but leaseholders are still not sure how the waterfall will work. To extend the analogy, I suppose they hope and pray that the water will never fall on them because others higher up the chain will have taken on the work and the liability.
I have great sympathy for the managing agents, some of which are quite small. They have dealt with lift contracts and ground maintenance. They never thought that the task of being a managing agent would mean being asked to manage a multimillion-pound contract to, in effect, pick off the outside of a building and rebuild it to be safe. They are sitting with leaseholders and trying to work out where the funding will come from, out of multiple sources. It is a very difficult process.
The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) raised a point about buy-to-let landlords. Apart from the unfairness of saying to people who have bought flats in good faith that somehow they are not entitled to the same protection as leaseholders, there is a practical problem. I can think of blocks in my constituency in which a goodly proportion of the flats are owned by buy-to-let landlords. If they cannot come up with the money to contribute to fixing the problem, that will affect all the leaseholders living in flats that they have bought in the same block, because the work will never get done. There is a pragmatic reason for ensuring that that does not come to pass.
This debate has not touched on the alternative approach of having a building works agency, rather like what has happened in Australia, where a central body has taken on this complex task but then gone after the people who should pay. With hindsight, that would have been a better approach. Of course, costs are rising all the time.
Before I come on to social housing, I want to make one other point to the Secretary of State. I do not know whether he has taken this up—I apologise if he has—but I wrote to one of his predecessors to propose convening a standing roundtable, if that is not a contradiction in terms, made up of representatives of leaseholders, managing agents, fire services, fire surveyors, insurance companies and mortgage lenders. The Minister and his team and officials may be having conversations with each of those bodies individually, but such a roundtable would be a place where individual problems that may be happening elsewhere could be worked through in aid of a speedier outcome.
The real test, as with the debt of obligation that we owe to the Grenfell families who are here today, will be how soon the day will arrive when all my constituents and every other hon. Member’s constituents can finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that the problem has been sorted, and can get on with the rest of their lives.
I have a brief point to make about the social housing crisis. I listened with great interest to what my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said. In the 1980s, Leeds City Council had about 94,000 council properties; today, it has 54,000. The big fall in the numbers of new council houses being built across the country, along with the sale of council houses, means that the stock available to let to people in need is falling at a rate of about 600 a year. Many other councils around the country will see the same picture. What is more, turnover is falling because people are thinking, “I think I’ll hang on to the council property I’ve got at the moment,” and demand is ever rising. In Leeds, 26,500 people are on the housing register, 6,500 of whom are in band A.
The maths is really terribly simple. There is growing demand, with people living in overcrowded accommodation —increasing numbers of people are coming to me and telling me, as their Member of Parliament, about the difficulties that they are experiencing in overcrowded, unsuitable accommodation with medical and other needs. They are chasing a diminishing number of properties. In one case, when new council houses were advertised—Leeds is doing its best to build them and has a choice-based lettings system—more than 1,000 people applied for one new council property. Anyone who is not absolutely at the top of the priority banding does not have a hope in hell of getting a property.
I listened with interest to the recent announcement about the right to buy. In all honesty, I have to say to the Secretary of State that we have heard about one-for-one replacement time and again, but it has never happened. That is why Leeds City Council’s housing stock has gone from more than 90,000 to just over 50,000. We have ended up in the absurd position that in an effort to increase the number of council houses for rent, councils including Leeds are buying back council houses that they originally built but which were sold. So they are paying twice over for one property, and that does not make sense.
I do not know whether the Government would ever consider this, but one approach would be to say, “I support the right to buy, but if the person who has bought the house then wants to sell it on to someone else, shouldn’t the council have the right of first refusal to take the property back?” We know what has happened: as has already been pointed out, many of those houses, as they have been sold down the chain, have ended up in the hands of private landlords charging—as we heard a moment ago from my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury)—rents that are way in excess of those that applied when they were council houses. It is an absurd system, at a time when we know that there is such basic housing need.
It is not as if new homes had not been built; loads of new homes have been built in the centre of Leeds. However, they are mainly one or two-bedroom flats—some of them in the blocks that are currently affected by the cladding crisis—whereas, in Leeds as in many other places, as families grow the need is for three and four-bedroom housing. There has been a terrible mismatch. It is not as if there were no space in which to build, and it is not as if there had been no resources with which to build. The problem is that the wrong types of properties are being built, and the people in the greatest need are unable to get their hands on the properties that would enable them and their families to look forward to a better future.
The time has come for this acute housing crisis, which is causing great suffering to people, to be addressed by the Government.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I did apologise for being late for the beginning of the debate, for reasons that I explained.
Let me first welcome the Grenfell residents who are with us today. We must never forget those who died, those who were injured, and those who were bereaved by that tragedy. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has done a great deal of work and produced a great many reports about building safety since Grenfell, and indeed we carried out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill, now the 2022 Act. That, I think, shows the strength of Parliament working together, with the Government presenting legislation and Select Committees scrutinising and trying to improve it. However, Grenfell did not just highlight problems relating to building safety; it highlighted fundamental attitudes towards social housing.
Essentially, social housing was believed, by some in positions of authority, to be poor housing for poor people, and that was an attitude that stuck. I remind the Secretary of State that there was a time when the Government’s approach was to sell off high-value council housing, because if it was high-value the presumption was that it was too good for council tenants to live in. I hope that we have moved on since then, but there are lessons to be learned. As the Grenfell residents have told us time and again, when they approached their landlords with problems and concerns, they were ignored—because they were just council tenants, and they would not know what they were talking about, would they? Unfortunately, that attitude is still present to some extent among social housing landlords, whether they be councils or housing associations: it is a case of “We will do things to you, as tenants; we will not do things for you and with you.” That attitude needs to change fundamentally.
We have made some progress. Hopefully some of the moves towards ensuring that tenants’ voices are heard, both locally and nationally, will bear fruit. This is not a new development. When I was chair of housing in Sheffield in the 1980s, there were a number of widespread tenants associations and a tenants federation. Sheffield still has the unique system whereby tenants pay a levy on their rents, voluntarily, towards the funding of their tenants associations. They are not reliant on the council’s benevolence: they are entitled to that money to run their own associations, and I think that that is a good approach that might be looked at more widely.
We have clearly made progress on making buildings safer throughout, and the Secretary of State has made further changes. However, when the Select Committee looks at the numbers, we will see gaps in the legislation whereby some properties are not covered by it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) pointed out, lower-level properties are still not covered. There is also the question of the speed of our progress. Are we really achieving the speed that is necessary to make people safe in their homes? They have been under such pressure over the last few months. This is not just about the buildings; it is about the people who live in those buildings and the mental stress and strain that they are experiencing, not knowing whether their home is safe and whether they can afford to make it safe. Those matters ought to be of fundamental concern to us all.
Let me return to the point that I made earlier about social housing and the need to find the necessary resources. If we really believe that social housing tenants are as entitled to good homes as anyone else, we must recognise that they are entitled as anyone in the private sector to receive Government help, and help from those who were responsible for the problems in the first place, to make their homes safe; or else the landlords should pay for the work by diverting money from other sources. The tenants should not have to pay for it out of their rents.
If we want to ensure that social housing tenants have safe homes, we must also ensure that they have good-quality homes. We heard some appalling stories from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) about her problems with housing associations in her constituency, and the Select Committee has heard from Dan Hewitt from ITV News and from tenants about the conditions in which people are having to live, which are completely unacceptable. We need to make buildings safe and more energy-efficient; we need housing associations and councils to ensure that they are fit in live in; and we will need to address the decent homes standard when it is introduced; but the money simply is not there to do enable all those things to be done, and it is certainly not there to pay for building safety work on top of that.
The Committee heard from Placeshapers, a group of middle-ranking housing associations that are more locally based in their communities, but none of them can afford to make their buildings into zero-carbon homes by 2050. They do not have the budgets; the money simply is not there. We have to listen and learn from that. We have heard from the National Housing Federation that it will cost at least £10 billion to deal with fire safety building work. That money will have to come from somewhere in the budgets unless the Government find it. All those challenges, which social housing providers will have to meet, will not be met by the current budgets. Once again, social housing tenants are being treated as second-class, second-rate citizens, which is simply not acceptable.
Then there is the issue of new housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden described the devastating position in which so many of her constituents find themselves, but we are all seeing those circumstances. People who are in desperate need of housing cannot get a home to live in from their councils or housing associations. It was interesting to hear the council house figures from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central. We are seeing exactly the same in Sheffield. When I was housing chair in the 1980s we had more than 90,000 council houses, but the number is now down to 45,000. By and large, it is the nice family homes in the suburbs that have been sold under the right to buy; not many inner-city flats have been sold. When I was housing chair, we would not let a flat to a family with children and ask parents to lug prams up the stairs to a second or third-floor flat or maisonette; they would be given a family home. That is not possible now. People come to me and say, “Mr Betts, we have a family and we need a house with a garden”, and the answer is “There are not any to let.”
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made this point. In the London borough of Barnet and other London boroughs, there are no three-bedroom houses. So many people come to me, and to other Members of Parliament, seeking such houses, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, only flats are available. Sometimes councils, including the previous Conservative council in Barnet, were accused of social cleansing, but the reality is that people were encouraged to go to other parts of the country because there was no stock available in Barnet.
Mr Betts
It is a problem that is replicated nowadays. At one stage it was just a London problem, but it is now a problem in many other places as well.
Although Sheffield Council has an ambitious programme to build 3,000 council homes, which was pioneered, eventually, by my good friend and colleague Councillor Paul Wood, the cabinet member for housing, that will not address the problem quickly. More money needs to be provided, and more needs to be done.
We did another report in the Select Committee in which we said we needed to build at least 90,000 social houses a year in this country, but that to do that, the Government would need to put in funding of £10 billion a year, which is much more than they are currently putting in. That is the reality. Unless we build those 90,000 homes a year in the social sector, we are not going to hit the 300,000 target nationally, because the private sector is not going to build anything like 300,000; historically, it has not done so. So there is a challenge on these issues as well.
I want to say one or two words about the right to buy. I have mentioned the consequences of the right to buy in the past. If the Government want to go ahead, and if they genuinely feel that it provides the best value for the Government’s money to subsidise discounts for housing association tenants to buy their homes, I would like to see the impact statement that goes with that. I would like to see where that Government money is going to come from. Will it be diverted from existing housing budgets? If so, instead of the extra money for social housing that I am arguing for, are we going to get less money in those budgets? Will the Government provide a replacement for the discounts given to housing tenants when they buy their homes, and will they also make the money available for the full cost of replacing each home sold? Talking to many housing associations, I understand that the cost of replacing is greater than the market value of the homes when they are sold. That point is often lost. I am not sure where those assurances will come from, but hopefully we will get them.
Are housing associations going to be allowed to say no to this? They are private organisations—some of them are charities—and they have to meet particular requirements. In the past, there was a voluntary agreement with the National Housing Federation when the pilot scheme was introduced. Is it going to be a voluntary agreement again? I am not aware that NHF has been consulted about this scheme or its details. I assume that those conversations are going to happen, but it will be interesting to see what the approach actually is.
I would like to make one completely separate, important point. It goes back to Dame Judith Hackitt’s report on the Grenfell disaster. One of the things she said was absolutely fundamental: she talked about the golden thread running through all housing developments and construction and said that there had to be absolute transparency. The Select Committee has had a disagreement with the Government about building control. We believe that building control inspectors should be independently appointed and not appointed by the developer. The Government have conceded that point—or, I think, proposed it—in relation to the highest-rise, most vulnerable buildings, for which the new building safety regulator will be responsible for appointing building control officers, but not for the rest of the sites.
I have a problem in my constituency at a development called Owlthorpe Fields, about which I have challenged the Housing Minister before in relation to non-compliance with planning conditions. Some residents were concerned about the way the foundations were going in, so I asked the National House Building Council, the appointed building control organisation, whether it could give me some information about the number of visits it had made, the number of inspections it had carried out and the history of its work on the site. The answer I got from the NHBC stated:
“I am sorry to inform you that NHBC is not able to provide this information. The information we hold in respect of Owlthorpe Fields is not a matter of public record and cannot be released without prior approval from Avant Homes.”
Avant Homes is the developer. In other words, everything is secret unless the developer decides to make it transparent.
That is not acceptable. If we are in favour of transparency, as I believe the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister are, this issue needs addressing. If something goes wrong in the future, everyone will ask why, and the answer will be that no one was allowed to see what was happening in the process. I am just raising that as an issue. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker.
This has been a very thoughtful debate. I come back to the point that we need to start treating social housing and social housing tenants as a priority for investment in order to build more of the decent homes that they ought to be able to live in.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a privilege to be able to wind up this important debate on behalf of the Opposition, and I commend the Government for their willingness to facilitate it. I also commend the tone that Members have adopted throughout; I agree that it has been a good debate. Before I respond to some of the issues that have been raised, I want to echo what others have said in welcoming those in the Gallery and in putting on record once again our admiration for the survivors and the bereaved of the Grenfell Tower fire and for the wider Grenfell community.
As I have said before from this Dispatch Box, the horror of that dreadful June night nearly five years ago was the product not only of pernicious industry practice but of state failure: the failure of successive Governments in presiding over a regulatory regime that was deficient and in ignoring repeated warnings about the potential legal implications of that fact. Having suffered the awful consequences and having to live with the trauma forever, the fact that those who survived, those who were bereaved and those residents of the wider community continue not only to seek justice for their families and neighbours but to campaign for wider change commands enormous respect. I know that that sentiment will be shared across the House.
Week in, week out, the Grenfell Tower inquiry continues to expose a catalogue of malpractice and negligence in relation to building safety regulations, but, as others have said, it has also shone a light on attitudes to social housing more generally, and on how tenants with a social landlord are treated. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh)—who is currently not in her place, having had to leave the debate for personal reasons—made it clear in her incredibly powerful contribution that far too many people still live in cold, damp, leaky and fundamentally unsafe homes, that they wait months, if not years, for repairs to take place, if they do at all, and that their concerns are routinely ignored or dismissed by their landlords. Those landlords frequently write them off, as Simon Lawrence, the individual who led the work on Grenfell Tower for the contractor Rydon, did, as “rebel residents” who want to make unfounded complaints at the drop of a hat. I pay tribute to the many individuals and organisations who have sought to draw attention to the plight of social tenants across the country over many years, and I would like to highlight the contribution of the campaigners Kwajo Tweneboa and ITV’s Daniel Hewitt, who have done so much to that end recently.
As this debate has highlighted, there are genuine points of disagreement between those of us on the Opposition Benches and the Government when it comes to social homes. As several of my hon. Friends have pointed out, we believe that successive Conservative-led Governments have not only singularly failed to build the social homes we need over the past 12 years but have overseen their loss on an unprecedented scale. A staggering 134,483 social homes for rent were either sold or demolished without direct replacement between 2010 and 2021. That is an average net loss of over 12,000 desperately needed, genuinely affordable homes a year. That is a trend that the measures announced this morning on extending the right to buy would almost certainly exacerbate, in the unlikely case that they are ever implemented, because we know that only 5% of all social homes that have been sold under the right to buy have been replaced. We also know that, while there are many social landlords who routinely fall well short when it comes to repairs and maintenance and could do better, social landlords do not operate in a vacuum. Years of swingeing funding cuts to local authority budgets, as well as the four years during which a Conservative Government imposed a 1% social rent cut on them, have inevitably taken their toll, and covid has hit housing revenue accounts hard too.
However, the debate has highlighted that we are in broad agreement on the objective of driving up standards in what social housing stock remains, and on ensuring that tenants’ concerns are heard and acted upon. That is why we welcome the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which I understand has been published while this debate has been taking place. It is good to see that Ministers are on their toes in responding to these concerns in such short order. However, we regret that what is essentially a narrow and largely uncontroversial piece of legislation took so long to materialise. We will support the measures in the Bill, but given the scale of the problem that we know exists, we will press the Government to go further in key respects, so that standards in social housing markedly and rapidly improve and tenants are able to seek redress effectively in practice.
For example, it is almost certainly the case that the social housing regulator will be unable to act on the volume of individual tenant complaints it will receive, and that it will be inadequately resourced to perform its new inspections role. So why not allow it to retain the proceeds of any fines levied to help fund its work? Why not look to give it more teeth than presently proposed, for example by giving it the power to order compensation to tenants? Why not do more to enable tenants to enforce repairs themselves, so that the regulator is not the sole effective means of redress? And why not allow the resident panel, the establishment of which the Government have finally conceded, to be put on a firmer footing, with its agenda and its terms worked up with a direct input from tenants, rather than just by Ministers? We will be pressing the Government to answer those and other vital questions over the coming months as the Bill makes its way through the House, because tenants deserve the most robust piece of legislation that this House can possibility deliver.
I turn now to the other subject under consideration today, namely building safety. The House will know that the Opposition welcomed the Secretary of State’s decision in January 2022 to abandon the failed approach of his predecessors and to ensure that industry pays its fair share to resolve the crisis. Hon. Members will also know that while we tried our utmost to amend it to ensure that all leaseholders were fully protected from the costs of remediation, irrespective of circumstance, we supported the passage of the Building Safety Act. Yet despite the change of approach and the fact that the legislation comes into force imminently, as others have said the nightmare that so many affected leaseholders have endured over recent years appears far from over.
It is true that significant numbers of large developers have now pledged to remediate “life critical fire safety works” in buildings over 11 metres that they played a role in developing or refurbishing. Yet I have to tell Ministers that there are a growing number of examples of developers seeking to reassess affected buildings as less dangerous than previously reported, or to evade the commitment they made altogether to avoid paying.
That is not the only outstanding problem. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) both made the point about leaseholders living in buildings where there is no developer or freeholder who can pay, and the fact that leaseholders in those buildings still have really no idea how their non-cladding remediation works will be funded. The Act presumes that litigation will play a role but redress by that means, even if it comes, would entail significant costs and take many years.
Similarly, those leaseholders who own the freehold of their building still have no idea what, if any, support they will receive from Government. They have no protections whatsoever under the Act, as Ministers acknowledged during its passage; and the promised consultation on enfranchised buildings clearly will not now occur before it comes into force, so they have been left in an extremely difficult position.
Then, as the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, there is the issue of the overall pace of remediation, which is still agonisingly slow. There remain serious problems in relation to the time it is taking to process building safety fund applications; and the Department’s own data, released in April, makes it clear that there still exist, nearly five years on from the Grenfell tragedy, 58 residential buildings with Grenfell-style ACM cladding on them, 16 of which have not even begun to remove or replace it. Leaseholders across the country are still receiving invoices to fix historic cladding and non-cladding defects and they are still being hit with exorbitant secondary costs.
To take just one example, which has featured prominently in the debate: soaring buildings insurance premiums continue to push countless blameless leaseholders toward financial ruin. Hon. Members from across the House have pleaded ad nauseum with Ministers, over many years, to address this issue and still nothing has been done. We are told repeatedly by Ministers that they are talking to both insurers and mortgage lenders with a view to finding a solution, but it feels as far away as ever. In short, when it comes to many of these issues, there is what feels like a shocking lack of urgency, and these are issues that must be addressed at pace because they are blighting the lives of those caught up in this scandal.
Finally, there remain a range of wider fire safety issues that are entirely unresolved. And far from making progress toward doing so, the Government appear content to leave them as such. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) mentioned the Government’s shameful decision to reject the Grenfell inquiry phase 1 recommendation that it be a requirement to produce personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled people in high-rise buildings. I think that is shameful.
The fire at Grenfell Tower was an unspeakable horror and one that rightly exposed systemic failings in our country’s building safety regime and how we treat social housing tenants. The Government have a duty to comprehensively address those failings and it is right that we continue to debate progress towards that goal. All of us acknowledge the need for deep-seated change, but despite the steps that have been taken we still have a very long way to go, and we need to get there much, much faster.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)
We have heard many powerful, heartfelt and emotional contributions from hon. Members in today’s debate. There is an understanding that Governments of all persuasions have been at fault over the years, and that we should now work together, and I greatly welcome the comments to that end by Opposition Members and those on the Opposition Front Bench. The contributions reflect the seriousness and significance of this five-year anniversary—not least for the bereaved and the survivors whose courage and dignity continues to inspire us all. From my meetings with them and the wider Grenfell community, I have been humbled by their tireless patience and dedication in the pursuit of justice and truth. They have bravely given testimony at the Grenfell Tower inquiry and they have diligently listened to the testimony given by others—forced to relive their harrowing experiences each time. They have engaged with Government every day to challenge us and make sure that we reform the system that so badly failed them and the 72 people who sadly died in the tragedy.
We in this House can only hope that, as individuals, we would have acted with the same compassion and dignity as the Grenfell community has over the previous five years. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that much of the progress we have made on building safety, on fire safety and on strengthening tenants’ rights in the social housing sector is owed to their heroic efforts. We are forever in their debt.
Let there be no doubt: industry must pay to fix the building safety problems that they themselves create, and signatories to our building safety pledge have undertaken to give us, within a month of signing, their proposals for contacting the owners and leaseholders of buildings with a clear plan on next steps Where building owners are failing to make acceptable progress, we will not hesitate to take further action, including naming and shaming developers who are dragging their feet, along with tougher enforcement action by both councils and fire and rescue services.
Hon. Members may also be aware that we have also established a joint inspection team to help councils clamp down on building owners who hold up vital remedial works.
Dr Offord
On that point, I have many constituents in a newly constructed property at Mar House in Colindale who have not only paid for a very costly fire alarm system, but are now being subjected to demands for a waking watch because it is alleged by the managing agents that it is a requirement of the fire service. It is not appropriate for a Minister to intervene in what the fire service decides or not, but it appears to be a random request, and it is imposing a disproportionate charge on my constituents to address an issue that they did not create. Would the Government fund that waking watch for my constituents in Mar House?
Eddie Hughes
The Government have committed to £62 million of funding for the installation of fire alarms with regard to waking watch. I think it would be best if we exchange correspondence; would my hon. Friend be good enough to write to me? I fully accept that it is not the Government’s job to intervene, but it is certainly our job to consider and assist.
I can also reassure hon. Members and ministerial colleagues that we have not shied away from calling in developers, alongside local authorities, to discuss individual cases and ensure that remediation works begin without delay.
I just wanted to consider some of the points that have been raised today. The hon. member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) suggested that the voices of tenants had not been heard. This is one of the things that emerged most starkly out of the Grenfell inquiry for me—that a number of problems were raised time and again and yet seemed to be ignored. We have heard contributions from Members across the Chamber who have reflected similar circumstances. The expression I have been using is that we are turning up the volume on the tenants’ voice. We are making sure that they will be heard in a number of ways.
I fully appreciate the comments that have been made with regard to our putting our resident panel on a statutory footing. We can talk about that and see ways collectively, across the House, to improve the Government’s legislation in the future, but we have advertised that panel and over 1,000 people have applied. We are currently assessing them to make sure that the 250 people we identify give a broad demographic and geographical representation to make sure that they have a direct line to speak to Ministers. We have a commitment to reduce the number of non-decent properties by 50% by 2030, and we are working on that commitment across both the social and private rented sectors. Our private rented sector Bill will address that.
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Wigan welcomes the powers we are giving to the regulator to make sure it has the teeth to act. I commend the work of the housing ombudsman, whose paper on damp and mould is so important in ensuring that social housing providers do not start from the premise that problems with damp are caused by how the property is occupied. That is a dreadful position to take, and providers should consider each case on its merits.
Lisa Nandy
May I press the Minister on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) about the regulator potentially keeping the proceeds of any fines so that it can continue funding the work and to ensure that the service is not too limited for the scale of the need?
Eddie Hughes
The best commitment I can make is that the regulator will be properly funded to discharge its duties. We can discuss what mechanism will be used to arrive at that position, but we are determined to make sure it has the staff and resources to deal with the problems it faces.
There has been considerable discussion of the voluntary right to buy. I insert the word “voluntary” because I understand that is how it would have to operate given that the Government do not own or control the housing associations. I fully appreciate some of the points that have been raised, but the pilot was in the west midlands and I have spoken to a number of my constituents who took the opportunity to buy their property. Home ownership is a significant aspiration for people across the country, and we should not shy away from the idea of considering any and all mechanisms to make it work.
Eddie Hughes
I see that the Chair of the Select Committee is desperate to discuss this further.
Eddie Hughes
Far be it from me to heap praise on my boss, the Secretary of State, but given that he has years of experience of sitting at the Cabinet table and is well known for making things happen where others before him could not, I think the Chair of the Select Committee should have faith and wait to see how the scheme develops. I am sure he and I, perhaps in the Tea Room or at the Select Committee, will discuss this further as we develop the proposal.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) has been a tremendous support to me as I have increased my engagement with the Grenfell community, and I have nothing but admiration for the great work she has done since her election. I look forward to continuing to work with her. She spoke about tenants’ voices being heard. Again, she is an active campaigner on behalf of those tenants, and she is determined to make sure they have the opportunity to have their voices heard in their own right.
I have tremendous respect for the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). I am a housing enthusiast so, before I became a Minister, I crossed paths with many of the Members who have contributed to this debate because of our shared concerns. I respect and admire the hon. Lady’s work, and I have already met her all-party parliamentary group on temporary accommodation. I will continue to work with her.
The Secretary of State has signalled his intention to consider how we can build not just more social housing but more housing for social rent, which I particularly welcome as the Minister with responsibility for rough sleeping. I look forward to working with him on that.
It is good to hear that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden supports the right to buy, although I fully accept some of her reservations. Hopefully we will get to a point where she feels we are delivering an appropriate scheme with the expected level of replacement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) is delighted that remediation has already started. We need to see more remediation work, and we need it to continue at pace. On waking watch, as I have mentioned previously, the Government are providing £62 million to install fire alarms in all buildings with a waking watch, regardless of their height. We are trying to remove the need for waking watches wherever possible.
On the EWS1 form, we are setting up a professional indemnity scheme, and I understand the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is running an EWS1 training course. We need to make sure that as many people as possible are competent to operate that scheme.
Sir Robert Neill
Is my hon. Friend prepared to meet me and representatives of the industry to discuss some of the practical issues in operating and bringing forward the EWS1 form?
Eddie Hughes
I am delighted to make that commitment. My hon. Friend mentioned the complexity of the EWS1 form and, as a civil engineer and a member of the Chartered Institute of Building, I am a keen enthusiast for such technical detail. I look forward to that discussion.
It was good to hear the valuable observation from the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) that Members in all parts of the House are committed to tackling these problems together. She is right that we often do not have consensus, so it is welcome that we have it here. I will continue to consult on and consider remediation costs, and I will make sure we have discussions with social housing providers to come to an appropriate conclusion on how those costs can be covered.
The hon. Lady referred to the work of Kwajo Tweneboa and ITV. To a degree it is sad that we need people outside the House to highlight these points to us, but I am grateful to them for doing so. A number of housing providers are ahead of our legislation and are already upping their game. Many housing providers provide excellent service and high-level accommodation in safe and secure properties for their tenants, but just one case such as we have seen highlighted by Kwajo Tweneboa or ITV is one too many. We need to address that so nobody feels it is appropriate to provide poor-quality accommodation.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) mentioned PEEPs. The Government have now committed to undertake a new consultation. This will include a proposal called “emergency evacuation information sharing,” which would require persons responsible for high-risk buildings to assess the needs of their most vulnerable residents and to consider what might reasonably be done to mitigate any fire safety risks.
The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) mentioned problems experienced by residents in the Gateway building, which I understand has made a successful application to the building safety fund.
Hilary Benn
As I tried to explain, there were applications for three different cladding systems. The building has been funded for one and rejected for two. That is the issue.
Eddie Hughes
Rather than attempting to discuss that across the Chamber, it would be good to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss the specifics of his case in more detail.
The Secretary of State is keen to see more social housing supply generally. I fully appreciate that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) says the direction of travel has not been positive, and we need collectively to turn that around.
I will finish on a positive note. The hon. Gentleman welcomes the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, but he says he will push us further and faster. It will be good to work with Members from all parties to discuss how we can enhance that Bill and where there are opportunities for us to go further. We need to take this opportunity to make sure we get it right and to make long-lasting changes.
As a Parliament and as a nation, we must never forget what happened on 14 June 2017. To that end, I echo the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in thanking the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission for its tireless work on determining a fitting and lasting memorial at the Grenfell Tower site. But we must also continue to honour and respect the memory of those who were lost by ensuring that this country has one of the most rigorous and robust building safety regimes in the world.
Working with colleagues from across this House and with campaigners throughout the country, we have already come a long way together. Our Building Safety Act 2022 created a tough new regulator and an even tougher regulatory regime to match, with an “accountable person” held responsible for a building’s safety and the residents who live in it. The Fire Safety Act 2021 has strengthened assessments and improved safety standards across the board. And our charter for social housing residents, developed in close consultation with the Grenfell community, has empowered social housing tenants everywhere, ensuring that they are listened to and treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.
We know that we still have a long way to go, but, as my right hon. Friend stated in his opening remarks, we are now doubling down on our efforts to finish the job we started, by forcing the industry to take collective responsibility for the safety defects it created, and through a new Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which places tenants’ concerns at the heart of everything that landlords do. We will be judged not by our words, but by our actions to fix this broken system for good and to make sure that everyone in our society lives somewhere that is safe and secure, and that they are truly proud to call home. Let that be Grenfell’s enduring legacy.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered social housing and building safety.
Backbench Business
Ofwat: Strategic Priorities
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before we start the next Backbench business, may I remind everybody that anybody who wishes to take part in this debate, and indeed in any debate, should be here for the opening speeches, for a substantial part of the debate itself and for the entirety of the wind-ups? If you cannot do that, please come to see me in the Chair to have your name taken off the list, and then just intervene.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government’s strategic priorities for Ofwat.
I wish to begin my remarks by placing on the record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this opportunity to hold an important debate and in particular for its tolerance. The interventions of the Easter recess, the Prorogation and the recent Whitsun and jubilee mean that it is some two months since my fellow signatories, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), and I first submitted our application for this debate. I am pleased to see them both in their places today, and I hope that they will have an opportunity to contribute.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
I thought the Environmental Audit Committee’s report was a model of its kind. I noted in particular that it created this context of identifying a “chemical cocktail” of sewage, slurry and plastic. Does my right hon. Friend feel that the Government’s response adequately addressed that issue—both on the sewage side and on the wider phosphates issue?
Philip Dunne
My right hon. Friend tempts me to rewrite my speech from scratch. First, I thank him for his comments about our report, which was a significant body of work and the first such report of consequence for a number of years. The Government response to our 55 recommendations was one of the most positive responses to any of the reports that our Committee has prepared in the time I have served on it. We made 55 recommendations and I believe only five were rejected by the Government; the others were either accepted in whole or in part. So I think the Government have moved quite a long way in addressing these concerns, but my right hon. Friend will recognise that solving this problem is going to take decades, not days. I know that the Minister will address that in her remarks.
I was just going to thank my colleagues on the EAC for embracing and sharing my passion for the issue of improving water quality as we conducted our inquiry. We published the report in January and it made specific recommendations for the strategic policy statement on Ofwat, which provides the context for today’s debate. I will discuss that shortly.
Having been tempted by my right hon. Friend to praise the Government, or potentially not to do so, I would like to take this moment, while I am in a generous mood, to thank the Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). I am pleased to see her in her place, responding to this debate, and I thank her for her personal commitment to this vital issue of improving water quality over the past two years. In particular, I thank her for driving her officials to work with me to amend the Environment Act 2021 and put into law many of the core elements of my private Member’s Bill, which the pandemic prevented from being debated. I am very grateful to her and I would like the House to be aware, from me, that she has moved the Government a very considerable distance on this issue.
There is no doubt that over the past two years there has been a massive awakening of public interest in the state of our rivers. The introduction under this and the previous Conservative Government of event duration monitors at water treatment plants and storm overflows and the annual publication of their findings since March 2020, has brought to public attention the appalling degree of sewage routinely spilled into our waterways by all water companies involved in the treatment side of the business.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend for his extraordinary campaigning on this issue, which has changed the entire debate. Although I recognise that the Government are spending £3 billion on schemes to prevent sewage overspills, does he know that in my constituency, in the River Wey, we have had nine overspills in one village and 12 in Godalming, that in Bramley we have had overspills and that we have had 76 in Chiddingfold? Does he agree that this is totally unacceptable and that much more needs to be done?
Philip Dunne
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for introducing the next comment in my speech, which was to highlight precisely the volume of spillages that these monitors have revealed—not just in his local river, but right across the country, in all catchments. All water treatment plants are obliged now to have event duration monitors. They are obliged to have them but not all have installed them—or at least not on all the storm overflows. I believe there are about 22,000 overflows and about 20,000 have the monitors on them, so this number will continue to increase until they are all being monitored; I will come on to discuss that in a moment.
My right hon. Friend has described the particular challenge in his river system, but he will be aware that the aggregate number showed that there were 372,533 spill events, lasting 2,667,452 hours, during 2021. Every Member of this House will have access to those figures and can look them up. I commend to them The Rivers Trust website, as it has made this information very accessible. It is very easy to find where a facility is being monitored and what spillage events have occurred in the previous year.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Not many in the House will have been able to attend the reception for World Oceans Day, where I congratulated Surfers Against Sewage on their 32 years of work trying to make sure that our seas are safe as well. Our seas and rivers are intimately connected.
Philip Dunne
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am rather concerned that my speech has been leaked to other Members of the House, because the Father of the House has just pre-empted my next sentence. He is absolutely right: it is appropriate that we are having this debate on the day after World Oceans Day. Of course, the devastating effect of the spillages impacts the receiving waterway, and gradually impacts the oceans as the rivers flow into the seas around us. This has a differing effect depending on the severity of the spillage, but the effect is routine, not exceptional.
Water companies were allowed to spill discharges so that they did not back up through the drainage system into people’s houses and on to our streets. The whole purpose of the licences was to allow such an opportunity in exceptional circumstances. What is so apparent from all this information is that it is routine spillages that are causing so much damage to our rivers and our oceans.
Jesse Norman
Sewage discharges, at least in the River Wye, on which my right hon. Friend’s report brilliantly focused, are only 25% of the problem. Phosphate leaching from fields is more like 65%. Does he feel that the Government have set an adequately ambitious target in saying that 80% of this phosphate should be reduced by 2037? I wonder whether we should go faster than that.
Philip Dunne
My right hon. Friend is right to refer to other polluters. If we take a look across the country as a whole, we will see that it is roughly evenly balanced between pollution from water treatment plants and storm overflows and pollution from agriculture. In the Wye, pollution is particularly prone to come from agriculture. As he knows, I am one of his parliamentary neighbours and our waterways along the whole of the Wye and the Lugg catchment are very affected by intensive poultry farming and the phosphates that it generates through spreading litter on the fields.
The Government need to join up their support mechanisms for agriculture. Now that we have left the EU, we have the opportunity through the environmental land management scheme to redirect support in a way that meets not only the objectives to ensure viable agriculture in this country, but other objectives of the same Department—the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
I would like to see a more joined-up approach, so that we can use the mechanisms that exist, such as the sustainable farming incentive, the environmental land management scheme system and the farming rules for water to ensure that we are not only helping farmers to generate and maintain a viable business—I should declare an interest as a farmer and a recipient of the basic payment scheme at the moment—but improving our waterways. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right to raise that issue.
Sewage discharges at the scale that I have mentioned must stop. Campaigning groups up and down the country, with which I have been working, have recognised that for some time—from national organisations such as the Rivers Trust, which I have mentioned, the Angling Trust and Surfers Against Sewage, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), to individual catchment campaign groups such as Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, which gave powerful evidence to our Committee. All have been focused on raising awareness and urging the Government to take action to compel change in the behaviour and performance of water companies, and they are right to do so.
This is why the strategic policy statement for Ofwat is so critical: it is the primary mechanism through which the Government, via the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, are able to influence the economic regulator, Ofwat, to refocus the prioritisation of capital expenditure for the next five-year pricing period—from 2025 to 2029—of the water companies in England, which are responsible for the treatment of sewage and other waste water.
The latest strategic priority statement for Ofwat was published on 28 March, when we had originally sought to hold this debate, having previously been laid before the House in draft for the statutory 40 days. This document is therefore the critical point of influence and the device through which we in this place can persuade the Government to reprioritise Ofwat to compel water companies to act to reduce pollution of our waterways for which they are responsible.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I agree with my right hon. Friend’s point about Ofwat, but there is also another issue here relating to the planning system. We find that some of the water companies are not statutory consultees for large-scale new residential developments, and those residential developments can have a vast impact on the amount of surface water run-off at times of heavy rainfall. Moreover, new developments can impact on existing sewerage networks, which, historically, can often be very inadequate. How important would he consider that to be as a part of tackling this issue of sewage discharge into rivers?
Philip Dunne
Again, my hon. Friend has made a point that I was intending to make in my speech. In fact, it is my final point. I have something specifically to address that in a request to the Minister when we get there. He is absolutely right: development puts pressure on the water treatment works without requiring developers to contribute to improving that infrastructure.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Mr Dunne, could you please face the front of the House, so that your wonderful voice can be picked up by the microphone and your words everlastingly put into Hansard?
Philip Dunne
I do apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will address you, as I should do.
I was just saying how heartened I have been to be involved in a campaign over the past two years with so many people from across society and the political spectrum who are engaged in trying to restore our rivers to a healthy and natural state. Some people have called for the issue to be solved overnight; of course, in an ideal world we would all like that to be the case, but it is simply not deliverable.
We need to introduce a degree of realism into the debate, because otherwise we find people out there in the wider community believing some of the very unfortunate propaganda that has been used for party political reasons on this debate—not today, but during the course of these discussions—to try to make out that, for example, Conservatives are voting in favour of sewage pollution. That is completely inappropriate and a disgraceful slur, given the work that has been done by Conservatives, with others.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is not my intention to go into a party debate, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real need to ensure that Ofwat accounts for its actions? Does he agree with the suggestion that some have made that there should be annual reports against the priorities for Ofwat to his Committee?
Philip Dunne
I would like to say to the hon. Lady that my remarks about people misinterpreting what is being done do not apply to her. She has been a doughty champion on this issue; she has led debates in this House and we have had good cross-party discussions. She makes an interesting point: there are already five-yearly reviews, but whether that should be done more frequently is an interesting question, and maybe the Minister might like to respond to it in her winding-up speech.
Moving on, the pressures on the drainage systems have been developing over six decades, as investment in water treatment infrastructure and drainage systems underground has not kept pace with development above ground, as my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) has pointed out. It is also exacerbated by pollution caused by others—both farming practices, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire described, and run-off from highways and other hard standing—so I accept that it is not exclusively the responsibility of water companies.
As the Secretary of State himself acknowledged before our Select Committee, the solution ultimately may require separation of surface and foul water drainage systems, and I believe the Department is currently trying to get a harder estimate of the cost of such a massive exercise. It will take enormous capital expenditure to correct the problem for good, and the work will take decades to complete, but a start needs to be made now. The SPS provides that opportunity.
I will focus my remarks now on what Ofwat should consider in its negotiations with water companies to encourage them to identify and quantify solutions. It inevitably takes time to progress solutions through the planning process before the required infrastructure construction can begin, whether through nature-based solutions or traditional mechanical and chemical systems. Much of that involves installing monitoring equipment to increase public awareness of the quality of receiving waters in real time. That was a key transparency recommendation of my private Member’s Bill and our Committee report, and it is now required to be introduced under the Environment Act. However, it merely establishes the baseline; the real spend will be incurred in the corrective measures required.
In my own constituency, Severn Trent Water has announced plans to invest £4.5 million to achieve bathing water quality status along some 15 miles of the River Teme between Knighton and Ludlow as part of their “Get River Positive” investment plan. That is obviously very welcome. The Thames Tideway tunnel will make a remarkable difference to water quality here in London. It illustrates well both the high cost and the length of time involved in delivering a transformational project to improve water quality, namely £4.9 billion and 11 years from securing planning to becoming operational respectively.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s mention of the Tideway tunnel. It is an enormously expensive project and collects a lot of the sewage from London, but not from any sewage treatment works above Hammersmith—by which I mean specifically Mogden sewage treatment works. Every time it rains more than a drizzle, Mogden and Thames Water discharge dilute sewage into the River Thames, and the Thames Tideway tunnel can do nothing about that.
Philip Dunne
I bow to the hon. Lady’s knowledge of her constituency and the area around it. I am informed that the tideway tunnel will take 37 million tonnes of the 39 million tonnes of sewage currently discharged annually into the Thames out of the river, so it may not affect every single treatment plant, and it is primarily coping with the north of the Thames rather than the south of the Thames, as I understand it. I will touch on how it is being paid for in a moment.
Given Ofwat’s unique opportunity to approve capital investment, it needs to focus not only on the economic impact of household bills but on the environmental impact that water companies have. With the rising cost of living, none of us wishes to see bills rising sharply, but equally, if water rates are set so low as to preclude necessary capital investment in water quality, we will simply kick the can down the road for another five years and the problem will be harder to solve and more expensive to fix.
Given that the current cost of capital is still at historically low interest rates, over a multi-decade investment cycle water companies remain well placed to fund significant capital investment. For example, the tideway tunnel, the biggest current project, is due to add only £19 per annum to household bills in London. I believe that a balance can be found as regards Ofwat’s new priority for water companies to improve treatment in addition to the necessity to secure adequate drinking supply and have low bills.
Liz Twist
I recently hosted a meeting with the Consumer Council for Water, which is looking at the introduction of a social tariff. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that an important part of this equation for people is that everyone should be able to afford their bills but that we have to get the work done that we need?
Philip Dunne
Indeed. The Consumer Council for Water is a statutory consultee with Ofwat, so it will be able to make that case as part of the determination process once Ofwat is following its instructions under the SPS.
It was clear from our inquiry that there had been a lack of political will from successive previous Administrations to empower regulators to tackle pollution and improve water quality. This had not been included as a priority in previous strategic policy statements. Evidence suggested that Ofwat’s price review process had hitherto focused on the twin primary objectives of securing clean water supply and keeping bills down. There was virtually no emphasis on facilitating the investment necessary to ensure that the sewerage system is fit for the 21st century. Anglian Water, for example, told the Committee that in 2017 the Government’s last strategic policy statement, which sets the objectives for Ofwat, “ducked the hard choices”.
So in October last year we wrote to the Secretary of State to contribute to the consultation on the draft SPS. We were concerned that the draft that had been published for consultation by the Government was imprecise in its expectations, with no indication of what specific outcomes were expected and by when. We called for the next SPS to make it unambiguously clear to Ofwat that a step change in regulatory action and water company investment is urgently required to upgrade the sewerage network, improve the parlous state of water quality in English rivers, and restore freshwater biodiversity.
In February, we were pleased when the Government published the final SPS, which had been significantly strengthened following our recommendations. We had made five specific recommendations that the Government accepted and have now been incorporated in the SPS guidance. They are, first and foremost, the very welcome prioritisation of investment over lowering bills to ensure that the sewerage system is fit for the future; secondly, challenging water companies to meet a target of zero serious pollution incidents by 2030; thirdly, amending the previous wording on the use of storm overflows from being used in “exceptional” circumstances to
“only in cases of unusually heavy rainfall”;
fourthly, prioritising overflows that do the most harm to sensitive environments; and finally, requiring that water companies should significantly increase their use of nature-based and catchment-based solutions. That is all new, and our Committee can justly take some credit for it.
What has become clear is that water companies now know that they need to act and they must start to do so immediately. Some are already acting ahead of the measures set out in the Environment Act to produce drainage and sewage management plans. I have been sent plans from four companies—Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent Water, Thames Water and Wessex Water—and I am quite sure that others have also prepared plans setting out what they are committing to do under the current and the next water industry national environment programme as part of their plans for capital investment.
I have a couple of frank questions for the Minister about whether our water company regulators are fit for purpose. With the work that I and my Committee have done, there is no doubt that both the Environment Agency, through poor monitoring, and Ofwat, through poor enforcement, have not met the standard we expect of our regulators to protect the environment of our waterways. Self-monitoring by water companies, permitted by the Environment Agency since 2010, has allowed them to discharge sewage more or less at will. The proof is that it took water companies revealing during the course of our inquiry that they might be in breach of their permits for the Environment Agency and Ofwat to announce major investigations into potentially widespread non-compliance by water and sewerage companies at sewage treatment works. Those investigations continue, so I cannot discuss them.
Where the Environment Agency has prosecuted companies for persistent breaches, judges have started to impose more meaningful fines, but even though these fines might start to capture the attention of water company boards rather than being seen as an inconvenient cost of doing business, as previously low fines appear to have been, fines paid by water companies for breaching environmental standards go directly to the general Treasury account; they do not contribute to solving the problem. I urge the Minister, therefore, to work with Treasury colleagues to enable water company fines to be ringfenced for water quality improvement. There could be a stand-alone fund managed by DEFRA or an arm’s length body with an independent chair, or it could be left to water companies to administer based on the environmental priorities of the river or coastal system they have been found to have polluted. Instead of allowing water companies to hand back a tiny rebate to individual ratepayers, potentially hundreds of millions of pounds could be put back into environmental protection. Although we all hope that no such fines will be necessary, we must deal with the world as we find it, and we think that would be a practical step toward solving the problem.
I have another suggestion for the Government. We know that more houses must be built to meet the UK population’s needs. When development consents are granted, developers are obliged to contribute to the additional infrastructure required—roads, schools, medical facilities, or other basic infrastructure—but, as we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, water companies are not statutory consultees and local authorities have no power to require developers to contribute to any necessary water infrastructure. Indeed, the infamous right to connect explicitly removes such costs from developers. I urge the Minister to work with me on using the opportunity presented by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which had its Second Reading last night, to put this right and to empower local authorities to require developers to contribute to meeting the cost of the infrastructure required for water and waste water connectivity of new developments, which are contributing to the pressure.
I commend the motion to the House.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I congratulate and thank the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for all his campaigning on this issue. I am pleased to have supported a number of his initiatives in this place. That said, it is extraordinary that we are still having to debate this subject—that we are having to talk about measures to prevent and reduce the discharge of raw untreated sewage into our rivers, our lakes and our chalkstreams and on to our beaches. This is just so obviously wrong and it is extraordinary that we are still having to talk about it.
Let me start with a stark contrast. England’s water company bosses have awarded themselves almost £27 million in bonuses over the past two years, despite those companies pumping out raw sewage into waterways 1,000 times a day. That, too, is obviously wrong. Liberal Democrats have demanded a sewage bonus ban to ban future bonuses until sewage dumps stop. We want to stop water company executives being paid a penny in bonuses until waterways are protected from these outrageous sewage dumps, and those bosses should be made to hand back the millions of pounds that they have already received in bonuses until they clean up the mess.
What is the scale of the problem that we are dealing with? In 2020, water companies discharged raw sewage into waterways 400,000 times, which amounts to more than 3 million hours of discharge. The longest discharges lasted for more than 8,000 hours. Just 14% of the UK’s waterways are in a good ecological condition and more than half of England’s rivers failed to pass the cleanliness tests. We have a duty to protect our natural environment, but water companies, Ofwat and, I am afraid, the Government have failed to hold water companies accountable for dumping sewage into waterways.
New analysis of Environment Agency data has revealed some shocking statistics. In the south-west, South West Water dumped sewage into local rivers for a staggering 19,095 hours last year. Across the region, it released sewage into rivers and on to beach fronts 43,484 times and for more than 350,000 hours. The data reveals that that includes raw sewage being discharged for more than 3,700 hours into the River Otter, more than 1,800 hours into the River Exe, and more than 1,400 hours into the River Axe.
The situation is not much better in the east of England in Hertfordshire. My constituency of St Albans is home to the River Ver, which is a rare and precious chalk stream. It should run clear, but last year, the volunteers of the Ver Valley Society and the river wardens took photographs at the source of the river that showed sewage, sewage fungus and plastic tampon applicators—all at the source of our beautiful river.
Shocking data revealed by the Rivers Trust shows that the sewer storm overflow at Markyate waste water treatment works, operated by Thames Water, discharged untreated raw sewage into the River Ver as many as 139 times for a total of 2,642 hours during 2021. Another wastewater treatment works at Harpenden, just up the road from St Albans, also run by Thames Water, recorded 13 spills for a total of 120 hours into the River Lea.
Where on earth is Ofwat? I think it has now been called “Ofwhere” by some environmental charities. It is sitting on its hands and simply missing in action. It has fallen to an environmental group called Wild Justice to take it to court to try to encourage it to use the powers that it already has to regulate sewage discharge.
I am disappointed that the Government have not taken on more of Opposition Members’ ideas. For example, during the passage of the Environment Act, Liberal Democrats supported an amendment to make it harder for sewage dumps to happen and to ensure that DEFRA produced a storm overflow discharge reduction plan. It is disappointing that the Government whipped against that amendment. During the passage of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, Liberal Democrats tabled an amendment to name and shame the water companies found to dump sewage in rivers, which leads to animals being killed. Again, it is disappointing that the Government actively whipped against that amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) has introduced a Sewage Discharges Bill to end the sewage scandal in rivers and protect animals, and I urge the Government to support it.
As I said at the beginning, it is deeply disappointing that we even have to have this debate. Our lakes, beaches, chalk streams and rivers are utterly vital to our British ecosystems, and all of us must do everything to protect them. Despite discharges of untreated waste only being permitted in so-called exceptional circumstances—for example, after extreme rainfall—these releases from water treatment companies are becoming routine.
Water companies must work to minimise sewage discharges into our rivers and lakes, so I call on the Minister to consider a number of things. I would like the Government to set meaningful targets and deadlines for water companies to end sewage discharge. I would like the Government to introduce a sewage tax on water company profits to fund the clean-up of our waterways. I would like the Government to reduce the number of licences given to water companies permitting them to discharge sewage into our rivers.
Jesse Norman
Does the hon. Lady share my view that one of the things the Government should closely consider is the idea of a national rivers recovery fund so that fines that have been paid can be used to remedy all of the pollution that has created them? At the moment, small fines go back into redress for pollution, but large ones go to the Treasury. My former colleagues will not thank me for it, but there is a case for a wider national recovery fund for rivers.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, and I think that is an exceptionally good idea. I am certainly open to any idea that effectively makes these water companies cough up to clean up the mess they have made. I would happily have a conversation with him to see how we can advance such a suggestion.
In addition, I would like the Government to add members of local environmental groups to water company boards. Some of our river volunteers, certainly in St Albans, are themselves experts—they know these rivers inside out—and they should have a voice and a role on water company boards.
I would like to see Ofwat using its existing powers to tackle the discharge of raw sewage, but I also want Ofwat’s powers to be strengthened, and I will give two or three quick examples. I do think that the Government could give Ofwat the power to force water companies to make repairs and investments to reduce sewage discharge. Ofwat could have the power to ban companies from giving bonuses to their executives until this mess has been cleaned up, and Ofwat should have the power to force companies to publish the number of sewage discharges more regularly than just once a year.
Philip Dunne
The hon. Member may not be as familiar with the Environment Act as I am, but it is made very clear in the Act that the monitoring devices that water companies are going to be obliged to install will make information on water quality available within 15 minutes or in near real time.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I was not aware of that, and I am grateful to him for informing me. On the River Ver in St Albans, a number of our river wardens have taken part in a citizen science project in which they are regularly involved in testing the quality of the water, so I am sure many of them would be keen to take part and observe that particular set of data.
Finally, I am pleased that we have had this debate today, but I am shocked that we are still having to have it.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for everything he has done. I say that as one of his parliamentary colleagues, but also as a passionate angler for the past 51 years of my 54-year life; and the other three were wasted. I am chairman of the all-party group on angling and I am chairman-elect of the Angling Trust, a position I will take over in September this year.
I agree with my right hon. Friend: I am sick and tired of water companies, and the slurry spreaders and egg farmers, pumping sewage into our rivers and watercourses. I am familiar with the Wye valley, and I share the sense of outrage of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) at what has happened to that river and what continues to happen to that river. Ofwat needs to get with the programme. Yes, consumers want to have water priced at a level they can afford, but consumers now also want to protect the environment that they enjoy.
There was an article in Monday’s Times which said that 98% of the swimming locations in Austria—about 50 places—are of an excellent standard and meet the highest levels of quality. We would be lucky to find one place in England where it is safe to swim; in fact, there is only one place.
Jesse Norman
My hon. Friend is so familiar with Herefordshire and the angling there that he needs no encouragement from me, but may I remind him that part of the problem with the Wye is that it crosses the border so there is an impunity in that Wales can avoid having regulatory involvement and leave the muck to come down to Herefordshire? Does my hon. Friend agree that an all-river strategy with some commissioners, as there have been since the 18th century on the Tweed, might be a solution to the problem?
Sir Charles Walker
My right hon. Friend demonstrates huge knowledge because the Tweed does indeed have commissioners and that works. The Tweed has its own problems but they are not on the same scale as those of the Wye and our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is currently talking to the Angling Trust and will be working with the Welsh Government to try to find a way forward.
You might not know this, Mr Deputy Speaker, but anglers are the canaries in the coalmine; they are the first to raise the alarm when there is a pollution incident. In 1948 the Anglers’ Cooperative Association was established, by a visionary called John Eastwood, to take legal action against polluters. In 2009 it became Fish Legal, and it has some fantastic lawyers who go after the polluters, and that is what we need, because I am fed up as an angler. I am going to say something that might be out of order, and you might demand that I retract it, Mr Deputy Speaker: if any high net-worth individuals want to make a contribution to cleaning up our rivers and streams, they should visit the Fish Legal website and see how they can make a donation to fund its legal work, because it does go after the polluters and it does win judgments, and those judgments go back to the angling clubs and watercourses that have been polluted.
Of course we should have a rivers restoration fund; that is what we need. It is outrageous that when a water company is fined £120 million an almost meaningless reduction is made to people’s bills—one that they would not notice—with the balance of the money invariably going back to the Treasury, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire pointed out. We should use that money to clean up the rivers and watercourses that have been damaged by the pollution.
I have little more to add to this debate. I just want to say that the patience of colleagues here and of the constituents we represent has been stretched to breaking point. The Government have made progress but something needs to happen. We must go after the polluters, be they farmers or water companies; Ofwat has to get with the programme and we have to persuade them, by law through the courts through fines, to change their practices.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow so many people who are passionate when it comes to talking about water. As someone who worked for South West Water a very long time ago, I say that we need more people who are passionate about water, but we need more people who are passionate not just about sewage but the other aspects of water today. Many of those present have heard me rant about sewage for quite some time from both the Front Bench and Back Benches, and I will come on to that, but first, as we correctly focus on sewage, I want to talk about some of the other issues in the Ofwat strategic policy statement that I do not want this debate to neglect.
Water matters: every drop matters, but every drop is carbon-intensive, and we must not forget that every drop we use—every drop we waste—has been pumped and purified and treated at enormous cost, not just financial but also environmental. Water companies are tightly regulated, and what goes in their business plans is what they will be doing in the next price review period. It is therefore important that the SPS guidance is not only strict, clear and ambitious but accountable so that we can see where progress has been made and put pressure on Ofwat and the water companies to up their game if they are missing those targets.
The SPS that the Minister has released has many of the right words. I have a lot of time for the Minister not only because she is a fellow south-west MP—that automatically gets her some bonus points in my mind—but because she has fought hard on it. I must say that good progress has been made. I just want to ensure that the words in the SPS have teeth and that Ofwat has the powers to ensure that they are not just good words in a document and that we will see the transformative change that we need.
I want to talk about four areas. First, there is the absence of a strategy in the SPS to decarbonise our water industry. I would like us to have a clearer sense of what that looks like. Secondly, we need to strengthen the nature restoration part of the proposals in the SPS. I have seen in previous price review negotiations how many innovative nature-based solutions—the upstream thinking—have been squeezed out in those negotiations, especially for those companies who did not get their price review approved the first time round. We need to ensure that nature-based schemes are protected, encouraged and grown rather than squeezed out.
Thirdly, I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), that we need a new approach to water sector regulation. I have some proposals to pitch to the Minister. Finally, I will echo concerns from across the House on sewage. It is simply unacceptable in 2022 that water companies routinely discharge tonnes and tonnes of sewage into our water courses, our rivers and our seas. It is not just about human effluent; we must equally be concerned about plastic pollution and the chemicals contained in that.
As a south-west MP, and I think the only MP in the Chamber whose water company is South West Water, I have a specific question for the Minister. We are in a cost of living crisis, but South West Water has had the highest water bills in the country since privatisation because that part of the water industry was privatised with 3% of the population and 30% of England’s coastline. That meant that 3% of the population were paying for the coastal clean-up of nearly a third of our country. The dowry given to South West Water did not pay for it, so south-west bill payers have been paying through the nose for a long time to have a cleaner environment—which we do value. The high water bills in the west country have been recognised by the Government, and that is why they provide a £50 contribution to bills in two £25 payments. However, I understand from proposals published at the last general election that the £50 payment will end during this Parliament. Will the Minister confirm whether that is still the plan? As we face a huge cost of living crisis, can we focus not only on energy bills—gas and electricity—important as they may be, but recognise how high water bills, especially in a region that has the highest water bills in the country and some of the lowest wages, are a significant accelerator of that?
Liz Twist
Has my hon. Friend considered the proposals for a social tariff to address some of those problems?
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising social tariffs. We need the proper legislative framework and nationwide approach for which I think she has been arguing for some time. We must look at how social tariff versions vary between water companies, which affects people who move between different water companies. We must also ensure that water poverty is properly understood as a key part of the cost of living crisis. Far too frequently, I find that this type of poverty, which belongs to DEFRA, is separated in Government thinking and leadership from those types that belong to the Department for Work and Pensions or the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We need to ensure that the Government look at this area holistically across all Departments and do not allow a silo-based approach. There is merit in what she suggests, and I would like to see further action on it.
One of those points which, joined up, could make a big difference is on housing retrofit. The Government’s record on housing retrofit is appalling—I think on both sides of the House we need Ministers to consistently go further—but when BEIS proposed measures to insulate homes, they related only to energy and gas reduction, not reducing water usage. Every single drop of water is expensive environmentally and financially, so that is very important. I would like the next iteration of housing retrofit policy proposed by Government to include water with the gas and electricity measures.
On decarbonisation, the SPS misses a trick. It could have gone further by insisting that water is genuinely decarbonised, rather than relying on an incredibly large amount of offset to hit the 2030 net zero target. I would like the 2030 target to be more commonly adopted, but simply buying offset and loading the cost on to bill payers does not actually deliver the carbon reduction we need. I want every water company to be an energy company, using its land to install solar, onshore wind and other types of energy to reduce the energy intensity and carbon intensity of its own operations. That should have been in the SPS and it should be in business plans, but it seems to have fallen between those. Indeed, the language on pushing or challenging water companies to, as the SPS suggests, invest more in decarbonising the sector could be a bit tighter. I would like to see in the proposals what it actually means in practice.
The proposal to halve leakage by 2050 is welcome, but the problem is that 2050 is a very long time away. I would like to see how much leakage reduction will be in the next price review period and how it can be accountable to others. The target of 110 litres a day is not enough. I would like to see us aim at 100 litres a day. Water companies around the country are achieving that, but we do not have enough water to go slow and we need to achieve that.
Nature restoration needs to go further. I want the policies in the SPS to integrate with the policies proposed for environmental land management and farm management. At the moment, they do not seem to have joined up in the way we need them to. If we are to have the bolder change we need, we need a greater level of joined-up thinking on that issue.
The Environment Agency has been raised by colleagues on the Government Benches. I am not a fan of the Environment Agency. I would like to see it go further. In the middle of an environmental crisis as we are, all too frequently it is too passive, too pastel shade. I would like to see it being a bit more “Grrr”—good luck, Hansard, in writing that one down.
Daisy Cooper
I have had huge frustrations with the Environment Agency in my constituency of St Albans, but I was very alarmed to receive an email from it not too long ago explaining that cuts to its budget meant that it would not be responding to a number of urgent reports from residents about various environmental issues. Is the hon. Gentleman concerned about that as well?
Luke Pollard
I am indeed, and I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. We need to ensure that powers go with responsibilities and that funding, which is not there, follows. I am very mindful of the time limit you suggested, Mr Deputy Speaker.
On sewage, we need stronger, bolder measures. What customers can expect in the next price review period needs to be clearer. I would like that commitment on the bills that are sent to consumers. What is the priority? What is the transparency, so people can look into that? Without a clear timetable and a priority list for closures, I am afraid that we are not going to see the urgency we really need.
Finally, as a keen wild swimmer—I wear my wetsuit with pride when I go swimming in Plymouth Sound—we need more action on bathing water quality. Devil’s Point and Firestone Bay is a brilliant area of swim water in Plymouth, but it is not currently recognised as an official bathing water. At this very moment, there are beach volunteers on Devil’s Point and Firestone Bay recording how many swimmers, kayakers, paddle boarders and dog walkers we have on the beach and in the sea. That is a part of our campaign to have the water designated as official bathing water, meaning that there is water testing throughout the year, but especially in the key summer period, with the results published. That will give us a sense of what is in the water. I suspect we will have excellent bathing water, but when we have high levels of rain and raw sewage comes down the River Plym and the River Tamar, we will be able to understand what is in it. Is it human or is it agricultural? Then we can target raw sewage outlets for closure. That is the type of proactive measure I would like to see right around the country. That is why I want the SPS to go a little bit further. It is a good start, but I think there is more in there.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Flooding is one of the most significant issues in my central London constituency. I want Ofwat to take a much more proactive and forceful role in holding the water companies to account to prevent flooding. We will never be able to completely get rid of the risk of flooding, but we need to do a lot more to minimise the risk.
Let me put the situation into context: on 12 July last year, my Kensington constituency suffered catastrophic flooding. The London Fire Brigade received 3,000 calls to its central control centre—the most that it had ever received in one day. The consequences were devastating. Multiple families are still out of their homes. My constituency has lots of basement properties, many of which were flooded all the way up to the ceiling. Had that happened in the middle of the night, there could have been even more appalling consequences and potentially even fatalities. Many of those properties are housing association properties where people lost everything that they owned, and many did not have insurance.
That was not a one-off event. Two weeks later, London suffered flooding again. My constituency flooded in 2018, 2016, 2007 and earlier in the 2000s. In 2007, after devastating flooding—I have a personal interest in that, because my house flooded badly—Thames Water said that it would put in a 5 km relief sewer at a cost of £300 million. That was approved by Ofwat in the 2015-20 cycle, but Thames Water never went ahead with the relief sewer. It was fined as a result, but Thames Water being fined does nothing to help my constituents, who were then flooded again in July last year. I have constituents who are terrified to go on a summer holiday this year in case their house or flat floods in July, August or September, when flash flooding is at its most prevalent. My constituents simply cannot live with the threat of flooding hanging over their heads, with the threat that they could be wiped out. People are selling their properties in my area because of the risk of flooding.
I want Ofwat to stand up for, defend and protect my constituents and insist that work is done, because the reality is that the drainage and sewerage system in London is simply no longer fit for purpose. It was built for Victorian times. We are all aware of the fact that climate change is likely to make flooding even worse. Population growth will make the consequences of flooding worse, as will urban densification. We need solutions, and we simply cannot sit back and wait for the next flooding event. I am sorry, but Ofwat needs to show more leadership on this, as does the Environment Agency.
It strikes me that so many different entities are involved in remediating flooding risk. We need much more co-ordination. Whether we are talking about the Environment Agency, Ofwat, the water companies or local authorities, they need to be working on a combined basis.
Let me give the House a few examples of anomalies. I understand, from the independent review of the flooding that happened in London last year, that the Thames Barrier was not closed. Closing it could have prevented a lot of the flooding, but I understand that that requires 36 hours’ notice even though it takes only an hour and half. Clearly we need to address that. I also understand that the Tideway tunnel, which is incredibly welcome, will be used not as a flood alleviation measure, but simply to remedy storm overflows and water quality. We need way more joined-up thinking about alleviating flood risk.
I also want Ofwat to hold water companies to account so that they regularly assess their assets and their ability to cope with flooding. There is too much sitting back and dealing with the consequences, rather than proactively asking whether systems will cope and what to do if not.
Finally, I want Ofwat to really challenge the water companies on their customer service. As Thames Water will admit, its customer service completely failed on the night of the flooding. It could not cope with the number of inquiries, so others such as Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council and Westminster City Council had to step in and help. Ofwat is the body that holds the water companies to account, and it needs to do a better job of it.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), for his report and for his speech. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), who gave a very clear description of the flooding issues in central London, many of which my constituents have also experienced in the past couple of years, particularly in Chiswick. In previous years, flooding affected much of my constituency. Thames Water is still in the process of replacing the Victorian freshwater pipes, and when they burst because they are so old, we still get flooding; it is not as bad as it used to be, but we are not out of the woods. I thank her for raising those issues.
For many years as a councillor and for the last seven as a local MP, I have been dealing with Thames Water, particularly in relation to its management of the Mogden sewage works in Isleworth, Britain’s third largest sewage treatment works. From the many emails and messages that I have received from constituents, I know that people are rightly frustrated with Thames Water and with Ofwat, which is supposed to regulate our water companies.
The worst local impact of Mogden was the flooding of the Duke of Northumberland’s river with raw undiluted sewage in January 2021. The flood occurred after a break in a brick wall separating the river, which is a freshwater stream, from the Mogden works’ main incoming sewage pipe. The inlet sieve into the works was blocked with silt, and the incoming sewage pipe, which is over two metres wide, filled to the top. When the incoming foul water had nowhere else to go, a weakness in the roof of the intake burst and poured into the Duke of Northumberland’s river running alongside it. That small river was subsumed by sewage that flooded into homes, gardens and two parks in Isleworth. It would have been far worse if an affected resident had not coincidentally known the holder of a key to the sluice gate into the Thames. Opening it relieved the pressure on the Duke of Northumberland’s river before the fire service could get there, and long before Thames Water worked out what had happened.
The flood had a devasting impact, especially on local residents who had sewage water flowing into their back gardens and in some cases their homes. A number of people also wrote to me to rightly express their worry about the impact on the wildlife in and around the precious Duke of Northumberland’s river. I was very concerned to discover that two months after the flood, there were still debris and sewage waste in and around the river and the river banks.
A small group of great volunteers work to keep the river tidy, but it is not fair or right to expect them to have to clean up afterwards. Local councillors, such as Councillor Salman Shaheen, have been persistent in pushing Thames Water to clean up the mess.
More than a year after this disaster, Thames Water has not yet started the inquiry that it promised us, although it has admitted that it still does not know the reason for the silt build-up that blocked the main inlet to the works, and I did manage to get it to admit that such a situation had not featured in its risk register; it certainly will now.
However, this is not the only recent disaster originating from Mogden. We now know, thanks to the Select Committee, that in October 2020 Thames Water pumped 2 billion litres—2 billion, not 2 million—of untreated sewage into the Thames in just two days. That is shocking, but it is part of a growing trend. In 2020, 3.5 billion litres of untreated sewage entered the Thames from Mogden—seven times as much as was dumped in 2016, just four years earlier.
As I have already pointed out, the Tideway tunnel starts downstream of Mogden, so it will not take these discharges. Not only are the discharges a gross environmental crime; they affect many people’s leisure activities. In our part of west London, the Thames plays a huge part in many water sports, such as rowing, kayaking and paddleboarding. Residents walk their dogs along the Thames. Should they really be expected to do so while it is full of sewage?
I wish I could say that these were the only negative experiences that my constituents have had with Thames Water, but there are ongoing and long-running issues involving Mogden sewage treatment works. For years, residents of, in particular, Isleworth and parts of Hounslow have all too often experienced the foul pong of poo wafting around locally, and have also had to put up with the mosquitoes that breed in the stagnant water there and then come out and bite.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Lady agree that rather than new technology, new data and new mindsets, what is needed to reduce the difficulties involving waterworks is a rehaul of the system to include communities and secure their buy-in? Does she agree that that would require a financial contribution from the water companies as well?
Ruth Cadbury
The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. I shall say more about resident engagement shortly.
To be fair to Thames Water, it has made efforts to deal with the smell and the mosquitoes. It is currently working through a programme of upgrading parts of the works, which should reduce some of the smells, and it has contracted specialists to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Neither nuisance is as bad as it has been during the time I have represented those residents. Nevertheless, councillors, residents’ representatives and I feel that we have to keep up the pressure through the Mogden residents liaison group that Thames Water convenes.
Other issues, apart from Mogden, have affected my constituents. There has been localised flooding: dirty water has shot out of toilets or out of inspection covers in their gardens. In some cases Thames Water have acted quickly and responsibly, but that has not always been the case. Residents have been passed from pillar to post when trying to obtain help and support, and an acknowledgement from Thames Water.
This takes us back to the wider issue of the culture of these privatised water companies. Billions of pounds are being paid out in dividends, but I wonder whether we are seeing the investment in crucial infrastructure that is so badly needed. Between the 1990s and the 2020s, Thames Water has seen a £6 million decrease in annual investment in waste water. That underinvestment is simply not fair to our constituents, who face the impact of it at first hand.
It is not just Thames Water, however. Analysis has found that the investment in waste water management has been slashed by £520 million. Like the DEFRA Committee, I was concerned to see a proposal that Ofwat should incentivise water companies to improve their environmental performance. Surely it should be doing that anyway, because it is the right thing to do.
There is a wider issue, beyond the environmental protection of our rivers. What role will Ofwat play in ensuring that new developments have the water infra- structure they need? Additionally, the Rivers Trust has raised the importance of ensuring that Ofwat plays a role in relation to climate change and net zero, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) also helpfully explained.
My increasing fear is that as an MP I am seeing more and more examples of various regulatory bodies—whether it is Ofwat, Ofgem or the Financial Conduct Authority—that just do not seem to be acting with the urgency needed not only to protect consumers but to tackle the big issues facing our country over the next few decades. I sometimes wonder whether it is a deliberate policy of this Government to downplay the importance of regulators. Does this stem from their libertarian wing? All of us, particularly our children, feel that the planet and ourselves and our future generations lose out when the role of regulation is downplayed.
Sir Charles Walker
I hear what the hon. Lady is saying. I have a lot of respect for the Environment Agency, but I also listened closely to what her colleague the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) said. I feel that the Environment Agency does sometimes shy away from taking on the polluters and holding them to account. I hope that it will hear this debate and that when organisations or businesses are found to be polluting our rivers, they will be held to account and pay a penalty.
Ruth Cadbury
The hon. Member is right, and I should have included the Environment Agency in the list of regulators in my speech. As I was saying, the role of regulation is too often downplayed by this Government. Ofwat cannot and should not be a silent partner when it comes to the adequate management of sewage treatment works, the cleaning up of our rivers and waterways and the protection of residents from the after-effects of floods.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
I start by welcoming the Government’s strategic policy statement for Ofwat. This is clearly an important step in the right direction. Water companies in this country desperately need to change. The current safeguards on water companies are simply not good enough. The aspect that I would like to focus on today is the real need for water companies to improve their day-to-day environmental performance and enhance water quality.
In Southend, we have seven miles of award-winning beaches. Westcliff and Chalkwell already boast blue flag, five star status and attract more than 7 million visitors every year, so having clean water off our beaches is vital for our new city to thrive and prosper. Of course, it is not just in the summer months that the water is used. It is now used all year round and we have famous groups of female swimmers such as the Bluetits Chill Swimmers.
Sadly, Anglian Water is simply not doing enough. It continues to make use of Victorian sewer systems and uses storm overflows to dump raw sewage into the estuary far too often. Last year in Southend, raw sewage was pumped into the sea 48 times for more than 251 hours. That is the equivalent of more than 10 days. That does not include the sewage dumped further upstream, which also impacts on Southend.
One storm overflow in Canvey spilled 121 times for a total of 23 days, and one in Dagenham spilled for the equivalent of an outrageous 72 days. It is shocking that 39 million tonnes of sewage are dumped into the Thames every year. That is the equivalent of 3 million London buses. This dumping of raw sewage is having a disastrous effect on our environment, with 98% of water sampled by Thames River Watch last year found to contain traces of coliform bacteria caused by the presence of faeces in the water.
For 1,000 years, Southend West has been home to a thriving fishing industry. Pumping sewage into the water could lead to E. coli in our shellfish, which would be absolutely devastating for the Southend cockle industry. I welcome the fact that the Government have placed a clear duty on water companies to progressively reduce the use and impact of storm overflows; have now asked water companies to clearly demonstrate how they are going about that; and are calling for water companies to be far more transparent in reporting when discharges do occur.
In particular, I greatly welcome the fact that, under the Environment Act, water companies will now be required to monitor the water quality both upstream and downstream of storm overflows in real time, all the time—instead of just between May and September as they do at the moment. There should, obviously, be real punishments for companies that consistently fail to monitor water quality levels or meet targets.
We must completely end the use of storm overflows in this country. The Government have set a target of zero serious pollution incidents by 2030. Any use of storm overflows leading to sewage discharge should count as a serious pollution incident. There can be no excuse for pumping raw sewage into our waterways, and any company guilty of using them in that way must face real and heavy punishments.
However, we must also tackle the root causes of sewage discharges. A good place to start would be to ban non-flushable wet wipes. These block pipes, and seriously contribute to the use of storm overflows. The Conservative Environment Network is calling for all manufacturers to be obliged to follow Water UK’s “Fine to Flush” standard for wipes, which means that they do not contain plastic and they break down quickly in our sewers.
Finally, punishments on water companies should not increase the cost to the consumer; they must fall instead on the company bosses. A good place to start would be to ban bonuses for company directors whose water companies do not meet their targets. It is not acceptable that last year, the chief executive officer of Anglian Water received an extraordinary £2,074,647 in pay and bonuses—up 62% on the previous year, despite the company’s profits falling by 2% and the outrageous levels of sewage being pumped into our waterways.
Sir Charles Walker
That is fine; I will intervene now. What my hon. Friend is suggesting, I think rightly, is that those environmental targets placed on water companies should trump financial targets. If that is what she is suggesting, I think she would have the support of the House this evening.
Anna Firth
Absolutely correct. I thank my hon. Friend, but I will still conclude.
In conclusion, I welcome the steps that the Government are taking to improve our waterways. It must now be the absolute priority of the water companies to put those into practice, stop pumping sewage into our rivers and permanently improve the quality of our water.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for securing this debate, and for all the work that he does to champion the cause of English rivers. I do not think that anyone in our country, except possibly the Minister, has done more to preserve, enhance and defend the health of our rivers—not even the Duke of Wellington deserves our thanks in the way that my right hon. Friend does. I am pleased to have helped sponsor the debate.
I echo every point that has been made about the critical state of our rivers and the absolute imperative that we have to act, and to go further. My constituency of Devizes in Wiltshire has a number of rivers that are suffering. In particular, the Hampshire Avon site of scientific interest is suffering increasing phosphate loads every year, which is a complete disaster for the river’s health and biodiversity and for the soil, but it is also a disaster for people whose health is affected and for the wider economy because it stops development.
A brake on inappropriate development in our rural areas is a good thing in many ways, and Wiltshire Council has rightly paused development permissions periodically because it has to mitigate the phosphate pouring into our rivers, but it is harmful to getting the housing we need in our area, so we have to do something. The simple fact is that the offsetting by developers is inadequate, as they cannot possibly offset enough to cope with the phosphate loads going into the rivers.
Many hon. Members have said that investment, particularly in sewage treatment works, is essential. We have to build infrastructure that can cope. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow made the point very delicately that, historically, the overriding focus of the mandate under which Ofwat operates is to bear down on the rates that people pay for their water. That focus on price is ultimately unsustainable. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) is correct that this is not the moment to be anticipating or calling for price rises in people’s water bills. However, in the long term, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow is right. I welcome the strategic policy statement that allows for investment in infrastructure that ultimately feeds through into prices. That is the only way to finance this work.
I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) in saying that, when companies are fined for sewage discharges, the money should not just go to the Treasury or to meaningless little reductions in bills. It needs to go into restoring the landscape, because the best sort of sewage treatment, as I have seen in Wiltshire, uses nature-based solutions not big concreate infrastructure. We need green and grey kit.
I have seen a project sponsored by Wessex Water, to its credit, on land owned by the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. It is a reed bed that processes foul water, and it is very inoffensive. I would hardly call it infrastructure, because it is a field with a lot of reeds growing in it—it is a swamp. It does not smell, and it looks perfectly nice. A person walking past would hardly notice it, but the water flowing out of the reed bed and into the river on the other side is cleaner than the water flowing down the river itself. It enhances our environment when we have good nature-based infrastructure.
I end with a tribute to some people in Wiltshire who have inspired me to take up the mission of cleaning up our rivers. Anglers such as Tom Putnam, a constituent who got in touch with me, and David Bromhead are concerned about the state of the Hampshire Avon. I thank Charlotte Hitchmough, who leads Action for the River Kennet, which is an outstanding charity—I have been out planting trees and supporting its work. And I thank Gary Mantle of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.
This might seem a little totemic, but we have amazing volunteers on all our rivers, which is great, and we have lots of water companies, businesses, developers, councils and others. What we really need is river-based co-ordination. Rather than great national, regional or catchment-based policies, why do we not appoint some kind of river god or warden for each river? It should be a volunteer who does not work for the Government and does not necessarily have any power but who has the authority to co-ordinate the voluntary efforts along each river. People think in terms of rivers rather than counties or even water company areas. We could authorise individuals—I have some people I would nominate for the Kennet or for the two Avons—who would take that responsibility to champion the cause of the river and intermediate between power and all the other volunteers who work there locally.
I wish to end on a point I have made in speeches about rivers before. I feel a special responsibility to rivers because I represent Morgan’s Hill, a beautiful spot just north of Devizes. A drop of rain that falls on Morgan’s Hill could end up flowing out west along the Bristol Avon and into the Atlantic, south along the Hampshire Avon and into the English channel or east along the Kennet, into the Thames and out into the North sea. Morgan’s Hill is a hydrological dividing point that waters the whole of southern England, and I feel a particular responsibility to the rivers that flow out of this district of Wiltshire.
Sir Charles Walker
May I say how lucky that drop of water is if it flows through the Hampshire Avon, one of the finest rivers in this country? It is a blessed drop of water.
Danny Kruger
It would be very lucky, except that it would get loaded with phosphate on the way, and that is the challenge we have to mitigate. Equally, the Kennet and Bristol Avon are glorious rivers, and we have a responsibility to try to clean them.
I really do pay tribute to the Minister for the work she does, as she is an indefatigable champion of water health and our rivers. I am also very pleased with the spirit of this debate. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, who could have laid into the Government, as he used to do on the Front Bench, but instead paid tribute to the Minister for her commitment on this cause. So I think we are all in the right place.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). I want to speak in support of the strategic priorities that Ofwat has been given, as I think they are right, from protecting and enhancing our environment to using markets to better deliver for customers.
It frustrates me as a point of principle that I cannot change my water supplier. I can change my gas, electricity, broadband and mobile phone suppliers, but I cannot change my water supplier. That is a problem, because whenever we have a monopoly, the chances are that the quality of what it does not will not be as good as when there is genuine competition. That makes regulation especially important. Regulation is important in all areas, but in a scenario in which there is only one choice for regions of the country, it is especially important, as we have heard this afternoon, that that job is not being done effectively enough. So I support what the Government have said to Ofwat: it should push water companies to be more ambitious in what they do to protect the environment; it should push them to do a better job on customer service and how they handle complaints; and it should be better promoting competition. I agree with all those things.
Thanks to the Government’s Environment Act 2021, we will have annual reports on storm overflow data; we will have these companies pushed to reduce the harm of this; and by 2030 they will have to show how they are going to achieve zero serious pollution incidents. All of that is very important at the macro level of what is going on in the country as a whole.
However, like a lot of us, I will look at what is happening locally. There are three areas in which I will look at the role of Ofwat, as well as at that of the Environment Agency and others. Some of them have been touched on, because this is going on in other people’s constituencies. The first is this issue of releases of sewage into the water, and Members would expect me to start there. In 2021, Thames Water released sewage into the waterways around Oxford for more than 68,000 hours. I do not represent Oxford—I am an Oxfordshire MP—but those waterways are flowing through my constituency as they are through the constituencies of every other Oxfordshire MP and plenty of other constituencies beyond that. What Thames Water did is completely unacceptable and totally against what it should be doing according to its licence. This should be a rare occurrence with very heavy rainfall, but it is anything but that.
The second, related issue is to do with housing. We have had huge numbers of houses built in my constituency. The largest towns have grown by huge percentages population-wise—the biggest one by 42% in 10 years, and the second by 59%—but the infrastructure has not improved. We want Grove station reopened, improvements on the A420 and A34, more GP appointments and so on. But as other Members have mentioned, we also have the issue of the water and waste connections that go to these new developments, some of which are huge. Thousands of people are moving in there. There are two estates in Didcot, one built and one being built, and 18,000 more people. These are big-scale developments, and, too often, what happens is that these systems are not built strongly enough in the first place, and they are easily overwhelmed. Those costs are then very often passed on by management companies to the people who have bought those homes, which is a subject for a separate debate. Again, this should not be happening, and we must get a lot better at tackling it.
My third issue is a much more local thing. I do not think that any other Member who has spoken in this debate is facing it in the same way. For 30 years, Thames Water has been proposing to build a massive reservoir in my constituency. Despite the fact that that proposal has existed for 30 years, Thames Water is still unable to show why it is needed, why it is better than the alternatives, what the environmental impact will be, and what the cost is likely to be. We know, thanks to GARD—the Group Against Reservoir Development, the dedicated local campaign group—that some of the assumptions that Thames Water used when it tried to make the case about water demand and so on are wrong. We know from Thames Water’s own website that 24% of the water that it supplies leaks, which leads to many of my constituents saying, “Well, actually, perhaps we wouldn’t need this reservoir if you fixed your leakage problem.”
When I think about Ofwat and its big strategic priorities, I am specifically looking at this proposal. As a stand-alone regulator, it should be holding Thames Water to account and getting it to answer the big questions that we are posing about the proposal. It should also do so through RAPID—the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development, which is the alliance with the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, and about which we have not heard much this afternoon—to make sure that Thames Water cannot behave, as many people feel that it is behaving, as though this is an inevitability. It seems that, whether or not Thames Water can answer our questions, it will just build the thing, but there is, understandably, very strong resistance to the proposal. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. These are the right priorities for the Government to have set, but, as we have heard this afternoon, Ofwat will have to do a lot better to persuade all of us and our constituents that it is doing them to the highest standard possible.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I sincerely thank the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for all the work that he has done on this issue. He has done so as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I, too, served, spending much of my early years here with him on the Committee—in fact, today marks the fifth anniversary since I was elected—through his private Member’s Bill and through his significant campaigning on issues of sewage. He opened the debate in his typically stylish way.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate—a Committee on which I also served as a Back Bencher. I know the vital role that it plays in allowing important subjects to be aired in the House. I also thank all the Members who have taken part in this last piece of parliamentary business this week.
We have had a broad range of excellent contributions. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) is a doughty defender of anglers and the need for clean water for angling. He will be pleased to hear that I have met the Angling Trust. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), whom I was with in Plymouth just last week, called for greater accountability on the SPS and the need for more powers at Ofwat, and his points were well made. He is right about the lack of a clear plan for decarbonisation and nature restoration, and I commend him on his ambitious campaign to get Devil’s Point designated an official bathing water spot. Maybe one day I will be able to bathe in it with him. [Interruption.] In wetsuits—I hope people will not read too much into that.
The hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) made an important contribution on flooding, which, due to climate change, will be ever more frequent unless more action is taken, especially on upland catchments. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) gave an account of Mogden sewage treatment works discharging into the Duke of Northumberland’s river—one of too many such horrific events.
The hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) made a good point about the need to ban wet wipes. We already had a Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) attempted to get through the House, and hopefully we will see it come back to this place again. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) made a good point about nature-based solutions; I saw a similar project to the one he described on a reed bed in Norfolk by Anglian Water and Norfolk Rivers Trust, and we need to see many more of them. The hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) made a good point about new housing creating huge strain on the infrastructure dealing with sewage.
The fact is that our rivers are dirty. They have been dirty for too long, and they have got dirtier. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we need them cleaned up. The Victorian sewage system was implemented because the Thames had become so toxic that the Prime Minister of the time, Benjamin Disraeli, could no longer stand to be in the Chamber during the “Great Stink” of 1858. He said the Thames had become,
“a Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors”.
Outside Parliament now, the heirs of Bazalgette are creating the super sewer, which will reduce sewage overflow into the Thames in central and east London—although not in west London past Hammersmith, a point my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth made. However, it is the only such project in the UK. When the House passed a motion declaring an environment and climate emergency three years ago, that should have challenged the water industry and the Government to undertake radical change. We can no longer accept being the dirty man of Europe.
It is fair to say that the Government have started to move on this, although they have been brought to it reluctantly, and in no small part due to campaigning of the right hon. Member for Ludlow and the screeching public outrage when Conservative MPs were whipped to vote against an amendment calling for the end of raw sewage discharges. We need more power in the hands of consumers so that they can understand what is happening in their communities.
Let us recap the water industry numbers so that we can see where there is space in the system for solutions. The water companies in England collectively invested £1 billion less in real terms last year than they did in 1991. In the past 11 years they have added £19 billion in dividends to shareholders. That is the financial leakage.
Then there is the water leakage, with 229,000 litres in 2021 and, as we know, hundreds of thousands of sewage dumping events. In 2020, there were just shy of 400,000. In the same year, the average household in England saw £62 of their bills go as dividend. The hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) made a good point about water company bosses receiving bonuses while those dumping events take place.
Philip Dunne
The hon. Gentleman is making an impressive speech and I am grateful for his kind comments about our serving on the Committee together. On the matter of dividend payments, is he aware that many of the water companies’ capital structures mean that payments made as interest on the significant loans they take out to invest in their businesses are structured by way of dividend payments to inter-company subsidiaries and accounts? Therefore, the gross amount of dividends does not actually reflect dividend payments to equity shareholders, but includes interest payments.
Alex Sobel
I think the figure I quoted was just dividends to shareholders, but I will check on that. I understand the point the right hon. Gentleman makes. We need to de-duplicate that data.
The Rivers Trust has a brilliant website with an interactive map that allows people to zoom in on where they live and see where raw sewage is being discharged. It is disturbing to see how close to many of our communities this discharge is taking place—even directly on to children’s playing fields. We need a plan for raw sewage discharges that considers not only storm overflows, but a creaking sewage system. There is routine discharge of raw sewage into rivers and seas, not in the event of extreme weather from combined sewer overflows but as a result of daily discharges. The fines levied against companies include the £90 million fine for Southern Water, but we are still seeing discharges by Southern Water—for instance, in Whitstable, affecting the fishing and tourism industries. This just shows that the system is not working. I agree with comments by Members on both sides of the House about delays in prosecution. Ministers need to make sure that the Environment Agency puts real emphasis on bringing further prosecutions. The level of fines is not yet producing a change in behaviour in water companies and stopping raw sewage being routinely discharged. The word “routinely” really matters, because it means that it happens every single day. While we have been debating, the water companies have been routinely discharging raw sewage, not because of extreme weather in the past hour but because of a sewerage system that cannot cope with the level of demand being placed on it and the lack of investment in it. I will resist the temptation to slip into a speech on sustainable urban drainage, which we can pick up on another time.
The Environment Act 2021 sets out changes to the way that raw sewage will be reported on and the need for plans. It did not set out a timetable for when the scandal of raw sewage discharge would be brought to an end, nor did it set out any interim targets. The Ofwat strategic priorities also fail to give that clear direction. We need to delve into the workings of the water industry. That will influence the changes for water companies in the next pricing period, but what changes are happening right now? They know that they do not have to invest in the same way until the next pricing period, because Ofwat sets the pricing controls and the investment strategies. Although many water companies fell foul of the business plans in this period, I doubt that we will see a huge surge in action to close raw sewage outfalls and investment in the treatment period until the next price period. The challenge is what we do about it now, and that really matters. What we discharge into our rivers is not always easily seen. We need a clear plan to understand how much will be stopped, how much will be properly treated, and how much will be carefully looked after in future. Water companies discharged raw sewage into England’s rivers 372,533 times last year—a slight reduction on the previous year. Taking the past three years together, raw sewage was discharged over 1 million times for a duration of over 8 million hours.
The Government’s storm overflows discharge plan has been rightly criticised for its lack of urgency. Mark Lloyd, the chief executive officer of the Rivers Trust, said:
“I’m disappointed that this plan lacks the urgency we so desperately need. This plan is going to need strong input from civil society and NGOs like The Rivers Trust if it is going to outpace the twinned climate and nature crises we’re currently facing. We want to have rivers where people and wildlife can thrive, but the target timelines in the plan are far too slow—I want to see this in my lifetime!”
I do not know how old the CEO is, but that is probably a considerable length of time.
Data released by the EA show that the 10 water companies covering England were releasing raw sewage into waterways for hundreds of thousands of hours in 2021. The 372,533 spills were recorded only on those overflows where event duration monitors were in place—just 89%, so the actual figure is considerably higher. More than 60 discharges a year from an overflow is considered too high and should trigger an investigation. On average, 14% of discharges from the 10 water companies passed that limit. In one event last year, 8.7 million gallons of raw sewage discharged into the River Calder above Wakefield, and the fine was just £7,000. Water companies in England are under investigation by the regulator—Ofwat—and the EA after they admitted that they may have illegally released untreated sewage into rivers and waterways. The investigation will involve more than 2,200 sewage treatment works, but any company found breaching its legal permit is liable to enforcement action, including fines or prosecutions. Fines can now be up to up to 10% annual turnover in civil cases or unlimited in criminal proceedings, and I welcome that.
The SPS states that Ofwat should
“enhance the quality of the water environment”.
However, last autumn, beaches around the Tees estuary and along the coast in North Yorkshire saw a huge rise in dead and dying crabs and lobsters. Dogs were also found to be falling ill after being walked on the beaches. In January, the Government launched what they called an “investigation”. In February, they put out a press release announcing that the mass death of sea creatures and the dog illnesses were caused by an algal bloom. The Minister and I have an association going right back to when I first got elected, and one thing I learned from her is that it is always good to be appropriately dressed for debates, which is why I have worn this tie today. I notice that she is dressed in a very algal-bloom green, so I am not sure whether she is going to refer to this issue in her closing remarks. The Government claimed that there had been a rapid increase in the population of algae that can release toxins into the water and affect other wildlife, but no data or evidence was published.
An algal bloom occurring in October or in February ranges from unlikely to impossible, as blooms require high temperatures and clear water, and the sea off Northumbria and the Tees is cold and turgid. Also, no bloom was noticed by the local fishing community, so they and anglers commissioned an independent investigation by a marine pollution consultant, Tim Deere-Jones. Using freedom of information requests, he found that the Government had based their judgment that it was algal bloom on only satellite data. More astonishing, he also found that levels of pyridine, a toxic pollutant, in crabs caught in the north-east and tested by the Government was 74 times higher than in crabs caught in Cornwall. Will the Minister now bring together agencies including Ofwat and the Environment Agency, as well her own Department, to get to the truth of the matter?
The strategic policy statement is not just about protecting the environment and the stability of the industry; it is also about protecting consumers. The Government claim that their No. 1 priority is the cost of living crisis, but social tariffs are a postcode lottery, with no consistency between companies in the financial support offered to consumers and no legal minimum. The Government have not even imposed a statutory duty on water companies to provide that support or on Ofwat to require it. The Government have set the weakest possible framework. Average water bills rose by 1.7 % to £419 in April 2022, but there is significant regional variation, with the average bill rising by 10.8% in one water company area. People are struggling, and for many households a water bill can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
I stand here not in my algal bloom dress but in what I think of as my biodiverse dress. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) on securing the debate and thank him very much for all the work that the Environmental Audit Committee did during its inquiry into river quality. It is a very popular Committee of which both the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), and I are former members. When the Committee comes out with a report such as this, it makes one sit up and take notice.
Philip Dunne
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for taking such an early intervention, but as she has mentioned the Committee’s popularity, it would be remiss of me not to point out to the House that, as a result of the election of our right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, there is a vacancy.
Rebecca Pow
I thank my right hon. Friend for pointing out the opportunity to do a little canvassing.
The report from the Environmental Audit Committee is extremely comprehensive. As my right hon. Friend said, we took careful note of it and took on board a great many of the recommendations made, which shows what a role a Select Committee can play when it is working constructively and well, and we are singing from the same hymn sheet of wanting to improve the quality of our water. We are taking extremely strong action on that agenda and this Government will not stand still. I expect to see change and to see it happen very quickly, and judging by the consensus on both sides of the House today, I believe we all share that view. This Government will not hesitate to take action if the measures we put in place do not happen.
I made water quality a priority when I became an Environment Minister. As the Environment Bill went through, we really strengthened it, with lots of input from Members on both sides of the House. We now have some really strong measures to tackle the unacceptable situation that has come to light. I make absolutely no bones about that. It is this Government who have, for the first time, set out in the strategic policy statement to Ofwat, the regulator, that water quality is a priority and the regulator must hold water companies to account for delivering affordable, secure and resilient water services. This Government have also made it crystal clear that water companies must significantly reduce the frequency and volume of discharges from storm sewage overflows, to the point where the Environment Act 2022, which is an exceedingly weighty tome, now has six pages on tackling storm sewage overflows alone. If hon. Members and hon. Friends have not looked at it, they should do. We have set out a plan that will revolutionise how water companies tackle the number of discharges of untreated sewage.
Ruth Cadbury
I thank the Minister for referring to the Act, but for the purposes of Hansard and the debate, can she say exactly where the stormwater will go if it does not go into the sewage works because the sewage works are overflowing into the river courses? What are the proposals for the excess flows into sewage works, because that is why they are discharging dilute sewage into water courses?
Rebecca Pow
That would be a very long answer—I could write to the hon. Lady with all the detail in the Environment Act, because the whole system is geared up to reduce the sewage going into the pipes in the first place. The clean treated water from sewage works does get released back into the water course, which is why it is important to set targets on a whole range of aspects to do with water; we are not just talking about sewage and how that gets treated. Ultimately, that water goes back into our water courses and channels, which is why it is critical to look at every angle of it and every source of pollution, not just sewage, to stop that going into the water in the first place. All the measures that we have put in place will tackle that from all sides, but I am happy to send her more info on that if she would like.
What we are doing with the storm overflows plan is a game changer that will overhaul our whole sewerage system to tackle those overflows. We heard some great criticism, if I might say so, from the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, but they voted against the amendments in the Environment Act that will improve water quality. Those amendments require the water companies to invest more in improving the infrastructure to prevent all that sewage pollution occurring, so it is a pity that they did not support them.
The hon. Lady mentioned a lot about monitoring, but she seems unaware of all the monitoring procedures and reporting procedures that are being put in place, such as the event duration monitoring, which was picked up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. I urge the hon. Lady to look at what is being put in place, much of which is already starting. Indeed, all event duration monitoring will be in place by next year—it is happening now and it will happen increasingly. We are working on that and all the measures to make sure that it occurs. Water companies will also face strict limits on when they can use overflows, because they must eliminate the harm that any sewage discharge causes to the environment.
Daisy Cooper
The Minister will be aware that our concern is that we should be banning those companies from allowing raw sewage into our rivers, not just asking them to reduce the amount. Where we have 2,300 hours of raw sewage discharge, reducing it by one hour does not achieve a huge amount. She has talked about the measures that she has been trying to take to encourage companies to invest, so does she agree that a sewage tax is precisely the kind of measure that her Government should consider?
Rebecca Pow
Of course, we are hoping not that sewage discharges will be reduced by one hour, but that they will be reduced pretty much all the time, unless there is an absolute emergency. That is what the storm sewage overflows are there for and that is why they were put in in Victorian times, but they are simply not fit for purpose. That has come to light particularly through the investigation that the EA instigated, which is how we discovered lots of water companies putting up their hands and saying, “Actually, ooh, we’re not adhering to our permits.” We are now on their case, as are the EA and Ofwat the regulator, as a result of that detailed investigation. Certainly, there is a whole raft of measures that will tackle that.
Water companies also need to play their part in reducing nutrient pollution in rivers, which was mentioned by a few colleagues. Through our landmark Environment Act, we propose to set a legally binding target to reduce phosphorous loadings from waste water by 80% by 2030 against the 2020 baseline. That target will provide a legal driver to require water companies to further reduce phosphorous in the water environment, which will protect rivers and our precious habitats. We are also supporting farmers to reduce the nutrient pollution from agriculture.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow mentioned that all of our policies in DEFRA and, I would say, even more widely across Government—for example, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities forms part of this through its housing policies—need to link up. However, I believe they do, because there are measures in our environmental land management scheme and our flooding policy statement that all link to the water landscape, as they need to do.
We have almost doubled our funding for the catchment-sensitive farming programme, which provides farmers with advice on how to reduce pollution. We have increased that budget to £30 million from £16.6 million, and that will cover 100% of England’s farmland, up from 40% of its current coverage, with more catchment-sensitive farming officers.
We must recognise that the water environment faces many other pressures. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) widened the debate, which is so important. Yes, we have worked very closely together, and I acknowledge that he, with an understanding of the whole landscape, has been supportive of many of these measures. Climate change and a growing population, especially in dryer parts of the country, are increasing constraints on our water supply. The Government have been clear in our statement to Ofwat that water companies and Ofwat must take a long-term and strategic view of the challenges ahead. Meeting our future needs must not come at the expense of the natural environment, and that includes reducing unsustainable water extraction from chalk streams and aquifers.
We will need a twin-track approach to secure resilient water resources. On the one hand, water companies will need to invest in new supply infrastructure where it is needed, and on the other, we will need to reduce demand for water, use water more efficiently and reduce leaks. We will actually need to secure an additional 4 billion litres of water a day by 2050, and half of that will need to come from reducing demand, as the hon. Member mentioned. By 2050, we expect to see leakage halved, because that is a big part of this, and to see average daily consumption at 110 litres per person, which is actually 30 litres less on average than we are each currently using.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) mentioned a potential reservoir. I will not comment on that particular reservoir, but we will need—and we are putting in place—a whole raft of such measures. We will need new infrastructure, including new reservoirs to reduce leaks, and to use less water overall. Through the Environment Act, we propose to set a legally binding target on the Government to reduce use of the public water supply in England per head of population by 20% by 2037. This will be supported by mandatory water efficiency labelling and building regulations, and water companies must play their part in helping us to achieve that target.
Delivering on these ambitions does not come without costs, and my hon. Friends will be rightly concerned. A number of Members, particularly the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), have raised the effect on the cost of living and how critical this is—and she is going to intervene on me.
Liz Twist
I thank the Minister for giving way, and she has quite rightly picked up that I have referred to the single social tariff on a number of occasions. In February, she kindly wrote to me, as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on water. Can she tell us where we are on the proposal to develop a single social tariff?
Rebecca Pow
I thank the hon. Member, and I did write to her; that is right. Obviously, the Chancellor has already announced a whole package of measures to help households with the cost of living, and we do expect the water companies to play their part. All water companies actually have social tariffs in place, as she will know, to support customers who struggle to pay their bills, and close to 1 million customers currently receive that help. My Department is exploring other measures that we may look at to improve this whole sector. I cannot give more detail now, but we are very aware of it.
I want to refer to some of the other excellent contributions to the debate. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) mentioned wet wipes. Shockingly, wet wipes make up 93% of the material that causes sewerage blockages. That is partly why storm sewage overflows are used so often: they are blocked up by wet wipes which have been chucked down the loo. [Interruption.] Yes, and there are horrified looks; I am sure Madam Deputy Speaker does not do that. The cost of dealing with that to the water industry is £100 million a year. We are considering options and we have consulted on what action we might take. It is also important to remember that wet wipes contain plastics.
Ruth Cadbury
The Minister is right about the scourge of wet wipes: they are plastic and they cause damage to ecosystems in our rivers and seas. Thames Water tells me that one of the costs to water companies is caused by the wet wipes in many of the sewers in our cities and towns combining with the fat illegally discharged into the sewerage system to create fatbergs. What is the Minister doing to stop the discharge of oil into our sewerage systems, such as incentivising caterers?
Rebecca Pow
That is a horrible, graphic description, and we also need to make people aware that they should not pour fat down the drain; that causes huge disruption and cost. We have consulted on wet wipes: we put out a call for evidence and are now looking at what further action might be taken. Also, water companies are indeed raising the issue of illegally discharged fat.
It was great that my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) talked about how wetlands and nature-based solutions are critical to cleaning up our water. We are increasingly using those solutions; the Government are encouraging that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) was as ever the angler extraordinaire—the canary in the coalmine as he calls himself—and I always listen when he speaks. Along with many others, he mentioned supporting a river recovery fund. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who has left his seat, also mentioned that, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, who raised as well the idea of pollution fines going to solving problems relating to water. We are working on a holistic plan for water; it is an interesting concept, and I hear what he says on that. He also talked about development consents and local authorities having no power to include infrastructure relating to water. Again I hear those comments; that is another valid point which I am happy to discuss further with him. In short, he has raised some important points in addition to the inquiry’s recommendations and, as ever, the door is open for us to consider them.
I thank all Members who have participated in the debate. I honestly believe this is a turning point for water. We have all had enough, and water companies must put the environment first—that is what the policy statement to Ofwat says. The message has been clearly sent that Ofwat must reduce the harm from storm sewage overflows. We will no longer stand poor performance from the water companies.
Almost everybody raised the issue of the enormous salaries and the dividends taken. It has been made very clear to Ofwat that that is no longer acceptable, and it has already started measures which came through in 2019 to make information on salaries and what they are based on more transparent. I think many colleagues commented that, actually, it is great to take a dividend or a big salary, but something must be shown for it. Our water is a precious thing and, without a shadow of a doubt, we should not be abusing it. We should be cleaning it up, and that is what the Government intend to do. I thank all colleagues for taking part in this extremely constructive debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
A brief conclusion from Philip Dunne.
Philip Dunne
Very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for calling me and for chairing our debate. In essence, every contribution from across the House has been in agreement: we have broad consensus that now is the time to fix the water quality of our rivers, and Ofwat is the mechanism by which the process can begin. I am extremely grateful to the Minister in particular for her response to comments made from across the House. I hope that her officials will read the transcript and the commitments that she made. Hon. Members, and certainly I, as Chair of the Committee, will be happy to engage with her on some of the additional points on which she responded so positively. I also thank the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who approached the debate in characteristically constructive style.
I would gently say to the sole representative of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), in a slightly discordant way, that calling for a sewage tax and to ban sewage discharges as a legal, overnight measure reflects the lack of credibility or realism in proposals that the Liberal Democrats often make on this matter. I must say that their intervention on the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which was to make it an offence for mammals to die from sewage exposure, was a typical example of a completely ludicrous proposal. There was no evidence that that was a problem; the Committee received no evidence on the subject whatsoever. It was political posturing ahead of local elections, and I am afraid that that needs to be called out.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Government’s strategic priorities for Ofwat.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if I can take your advice on how I can raise an urgent matter with the Foreign Secretary and her colleagues. Earlier today, a constituent of mine in Newark, Aiden Aslin, along with another British citizen, Shaun Pinner, was sentenced to death in a show trial held at the auspices of Vladimir Putin and his Russian regime.
Both Aiden and Shaun are British citizens who happened to be fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces and were captured by the Russian army around Mariupol. Both are prisoners of war who deserve to be treated appropriately and in accordance with the Geneva convention. Instead, the Russian army put them through a Soviet-era show trial and, earlier today, sentenced them to death. That is completely unacceptable and the most egregious breach of international law. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will summon the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Office at her earliest convenience to convey a clear message that British citizens cannot be treated in that manner, and that both Aiden and Shaun should be freed and returned to their family and friends, either in Ukraine or home here to the United Kingdom, as soon as practicable.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which is disturbing to say the least. Indeed, it is horrific news for the House to receive about the treatment of British citizens at the hands of the Russian regime. He is right to bring the news to the House at the earliest possible point. I am pleased to advise him that there are various ways in which he can raise the matter formally here in the Chamber and with Ministers, the most obvious of which is to submit an urgent question, which I am quite sure will be considered carefully. At the same time, I am also certain that the Treasury Bench will take the opportunity to convey the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns, and indeed those of the whole House, to the relevant Ministers, in whom I have every confidence that they will act appropriately.
Barclays Muswell Hill Branch
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
On the point made by the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), may I say how much support we, as Labour Members, will give with respect to the extremely concerning news about his constituents and their families?
I turn to my petition. Many of my constituents in Muswell Hill are extremely concerned about the proposal to close this Barclays branch. Bank closures have a disproportionate impact on older people and on those struggling in the current economy to run small businesses.
We request that the House of Commons urges the Government to consider the concerns of the petitioners and takes immediate action to ensure that the branch is not closed down. We are aware of other closures by Barclays bank, in Wood Green and other parts of north London, that affect my constituents disproportionately. They enjoy using the counter to carry out their business, particularly if they are in a small business and carry large amounts of cash. It is not particularly safe to travel with that cash and hand it over at a different branch. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will lay the petition before the House, and I look forward to the response.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the Barclays Muswell Hill branch must not be closed; further that petitioners are extremely disappointed that Barclays has announced the closure of their Muswell Hill branch in June 2022; further that millions of people still rely on cash and petitioners believe that the relentless programme of bank closures only widens inequality by accelerating the move towards a cashless society; and further that Barclays should reconsider and consider the social impact of their proposed closure.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to consider the concerns of the petitioners and take immediate action to ensure that the Barclays Muswell Hill branch is not closed down.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002735]
Hospital of St Cross: Accident and Emergency
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see the Minister in his place. It is a particular pleasure to have been granted this debate on health provision in Rugby—one of the most important issues for my constituents, because my predecessor and father, Jim Pawsey, held such a debate concerning the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby 25 years ago. Much has changed in the intervening period, but the hospital remains as dear to Rugby residents’ hearts now as it was then. In particular, I want to talk about the provision of accident and emergency care at the Hospital of St Cross. In the course of my speech, I will first set out the current facilities available to Rugby residents, and then go on to make the case for improved and increased provision.
The urgency of today’s debate arises because of the increasing number of cases of concern being brought to my attention by my constituents. They are currently directed to the University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire site at Walsgrave in Coventry, 12 miles away. One constituent told me that when he needed to visit A&E, it took 22 hours for his condition to be fully assessed due to the very high number of patients waiting for treatment. He suggested, as I will today, that to help to alleviate pressure in Coventry, the Hospital of St Cross should be used more widely.
Another constituent told me that they were taken to University Hospital by ambulance one evening after suffering heart palpitations. Although the ambulance arrived at their home within 45 minutes, once they arrived at the hospital it took an hour to be taken into the care of the hospital because of the queue of ambulances waiting to discharge their patients. My constituent told me that the care they went on to receive at the hospital was good. That is a recurring theme throughout all the cases that have been brought to me: the care, once it is received, is excellent, but it is taking far too long to access it.
According to the history of the hospital written by the Rugby local history group, the importance of timely emergency care was the catalyst for the foundation of the Hospital of St Cross. In 1882, an engineer on the railway running through Rugby had a serious accident and his leg had to be swiftly amputated. At that time, victims of such accidents were normally taken by rail to either Birmingham or Northampton, but on this occasion, there was not time. The engineer’s leg was amputated on a bed in a small hospital on Castle Street in Rugby because there was not an operating table. Sadly, the amputation was not enough to save the young man’s life. When Mrs Elizabeth Wood heard of the engineer’s fate, she presented the hospital with an operating table, and subsequently, the land for the new hospital. The Hospital of St Cross remains 140 years later. The hospital today offers a number of high-quality specialist services, including orthopaedic and ophthalmic procedures and the recently added haematology service.
In respect of emergency care, there is a minor injury and minor illness unit, which is a nurse-led service for patients over the age of five. Rugby residents can attend for small wounds, animal stings, some sports injuries, minor injuries or suspected broken bones. X-rays, blood tests and a pharmacy are available, but, significantly, for anything complex or for a serious injury, residents must travel to Coventry.
Rugby residents were bitterly disappointed in 1997 when the A&E service at St Cross was downgraded as part of a wider move away from the district general hospital model and towards a higher concentration of specialists at a smaller number of sites. At the time, serious concerns had surfaced about the quality of some of the clinical services, which resulted in the board of the Rugby NHS trust agreeing to merge with Walsgrave Hospitals NHS trust in February 1997.
The royal colleges were invited to make reports on the services. The Royal College of Surgeons noted that Rugby’s catchment area was not at that time—that is the significant bit: it was not then—large enough to provide sufficient opportunities for clinicians to maintain their skills and deliver a safe service. A further justification was that, as medical science advanced, the days of the general surgeon had ended while the required number of support staff and the cost of complex equipment had increased.
Since that 1997 decision, the population served by the Hospital of St Cross has changed substantially. The local authority in Rugby has always been pro-growth. I have been very keen to see the many housing developments in Rugby in recent years, simply because we need to meet the challenge of enabling the next generation to own their own home and because we welcome the additional footfall for our town centre at a time when high streets face stiff competition from online retailers.
Between 2001 and 2011, the population of the Rugby borough grew from 85,000 to 100,000. I expect the 2021 census data to indicate similar or greater growth than that. Rugby is one of the fastest growing places in the UK and has an ambitious local plan that expects an additional 12,500 new homes by 2031. Accordingly, we can expect a population rise of about 30,000 people.
As part of the new developments, we have seen new roads and new schools. The people of Rugby also rightly expect to see a commensurate increase in the health services provided. There are plans for increased primary care provision. Whitehall medical practice has recently expanded and there will be additional provision in Houlton—a new housing area of Rugby—and the south-west development area, which should relieve the pressure on existing GP practices.
However, over recent years it has become clear from constituency cases brought to me and from discussions on the doorstep that Rugby residents are increasingly concerned about the provision of accident and emergency care and the impact of population increases on services. Most treatment is provided at Coventry, which is about 20 minutes’ drive from Rugby on a good day, and realistically at least half an hour’s drive for most Rugby residents. I understand from information provided by the Library that 83% of my constituents live more than 15 minutes’ drive from a major accident and emergency department.
Mark Pawsey
That figure is higher than in 84% of constituencies across England. The travel time is compounded by residents’ uncertainty and lack of clarity about what constitutes a minor injury or illness and whether their need can be met in Rugby or requires travel to Coventry. I frequently hear accounts of residents attending St Cross only to be immediately directed to University Hospital in Coventry. On occasion, I hear about residents who have travelled to Coventry for a very simple matter that could have been dealt with at St Cross.
In response to broader concerns about health provision in Rugby, last autumn I carried out a survey on my website asking about accident and emergency care in Rugby. I very much thank the people of Rugby for their outstanding response: nearly 3,000 residents took the time to have their say. That is an outstanding number for such a survey, and it sends a very clear message to local health decision makers about what Rugby residents want. The key points are that 98.5% of respondents believe that Rugby should have its own accident and emergency department, and 93% believe that Rugby does not currently have adequate accident and emergency care provision.
My survey builds on the work that the Coventry and Warwickshire clinical commissioning group carried out over the summer of 2021, covering all of Warwickshire. That survey had 922 respondents, which is rather fewer than the 3,000 who responded to my survey, but about 600 of those 922 people were Rugby residents. My constituents’ hugely disproportionate participation shows their strength of feeling.
Given the large number of responses, I am pretty confident that the results of my survey were representative of the views of Rugby people more broadly. It is clear that my constituents believe that our town, particularly given its growth, is currently underserved with A&E provision. After conducting my survey, I met Professor Andrew Hardy, the chief executive of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. He agreed about the high volume and the unanimous response, which I hope the Minister will acknowledge in his remarks.
One issue for the accident and emergency department at UHCW is that it is very large. It has to be, because according to the Library, most accident and emergency departments serve a population of at least 200,000—the average is 320,000—but the accident and emergency department of University Hospital in Coventry serves a population of about 600,000, nearly double the national average.
It is my contention that if we improve the offer at the Hospital of St Cross, pressure on the University Hospital site in Coventry could be alleviated and waiting times could reduce. Of those residents who completed my survey, 52.7% said they had waited more than four hours for treatment on their most recent visit to Coventry.
Regrettably, since my survey was conducted last autumn, the pressures on accident and emergency departments have only increased; I am sure the Minister will acknowledge that. The minutes of the University Hospitals NHS Trust February board meeting noted that the hospital’s occupancy had been over 97% since August 2021, with full hospital protocol occurring in September and early November. However, I was pleased to note that there is an ongoing focus within the trust on using some of the capacity that exists in Rugby to assist the flow in Coventry. It is my contention, and that of my constituents, that the Hospital of St Cross could be used rather more to relieve the pressure.
The concerns of Rugby residents have been compounded by the closure of Rugby community ambulance station in October of last year, along with a number of other ambulance stations across the west midlands. That was a unilateral decision by West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust, which has been opposed by me and by other west midlands MPs. There was no consultation with residents. I was not notified, nor were my parliamentary colleagues: we read about the decision in the press.
It is a simple and regrettable fact that the closure of the community ambulance service in Rugby makes it less likely that there will be an ambulance in Rugby. I believe that if we had ambulances coming to Rugby with patients seeking accident and emergency care, there would be a greater likelihood of an ambulance in the vicinity, and ambulance response times would improve for Rugby residents because ambulances would have a reason to be in Rugby. West Midlands ambulance service says that its service is delivered by people, not buildings, and that the single biggest factor that it faces is handover delays at hospitals. This is a national problem, as the Minister will acknowledge, but, as I have said, if ambulances could come to the Hospital of St Cross rather than going straight to Coventry, there would be a greater likelihood of an ambulance in Rugby able to deal with calls from local residents.
In my survey, I asked Rugby residents this question: if they could change one thing about the NHS locally, what would it be? The vast majority said that they would like to see better accident and emergency provision in Rugby. Others noted difficulties arising from their circumstances. The key theme was the challenge posed by the journey to University Hospital in Coventry. Many residents noted that it was particularly difficult without a car, and that those without cars, who might have had to wait a long time at A&E—until late evening—often ended up returning home in a taxi and paying a large fare that they could ill afford.
I have heard from many constituents about the lack of accident and emergency provision for children under five. One parent wrote:
“My son who is 3 has had 3 fits in the last year and each time we have had to travel to University Hospital”.
Another wrote:
“I have two small children and it terrifies me that I will have to travel so far if they needed emergency care”.
Among the responses from my constituents were a number of heartbreaking accounts, but none was more heartbreaking than an account of an issue that arose in January this year, when my constituent Jamie Rees died of a sudden cardiac arrest. The ambulance that attended the scene had to travel from University Hospital, and given that time lag it had no realistic chance of meeting the category 1 response time, which would have saved Jamie’s life. Jamie’s family have organised an extraordinarily powerful campaign, known as “Our Jay”, to raise more than £10,000 for externally mounted defibrillators. What was so frustrating for the family was the fact that a nearby defibrillator that could have saved Jamie’s life was locked inside a nearby school, which was very sad. There was no externally mounted defibrillator. One reason for people’s unwillingness to provide them is that from time to time they are subject to vandalism and theft.
Jamie’s family have also rightly asked questions of the emergency services, particularly about the impact of the closure of the community ambulance station in Rugby in October. Quite reasonably, they were really bothered about the length of time it took for an ambulance to attend. Jamie’s parents were full of praise for the amazing staff who cared for Jamie, but they rightly point to the importance of that care being accessible at the time it is needed. We know that people in Rugby want to see improved local accident and emergency provision, and I very much hope to have the opportunity to demonstrate this need for an extension to the A&E provision in Rugby when the Secretary of State comes to visit Rugby and St Cross in the near future, which he has kindly committed to do.
Our role as Members of Parliament is to represent the concerns of our constituents here in this place and to seek redress when it is needed. In Rugby, for my constituents, there is no greater issue right now than health provision, and I would not be doing my job as their representative if I was not doing all I could to make sure that that need is met. The Government have quite reasonably asked that towns such as Rugby do their bit to provide the housing that the people of this country need, and Rugby is proudly meeting that challenge. All we ask is that the Government and local health commissioners also do their bit to provide the healthcare that the people of Rugby need and are asking for.
The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on securing this important debate. He is right to highlight that it is the responsibility of Members of Parliament to highlight and champion their constituents’ concerns, and he is doing exactly that today, just as his illustrious predecessor and father did over a combined total of about 18 years in this House, representing that area with distinction just as he does. My hon. Friend has been a regular campaigner for the NHS in his constituency. Indeed, as I recall from oral questions some time ago, I think I am right in saying that he volunteered at the Locke House vaccination centre during the pandemic to assist his local NHS. Not only does he talk the talk; he walks the walk in supporting his local NHS, and his constituents in Rugby are incredibly lucky to have such a passionate local champion for their cause in this House.
My hon. Friend’s engagement with his constituents, and his being in tune with their concerns, is reflected by the survey he mentioned. He said he had received around 3,000 responses, which is a phenomenal response rate for such a survey. I think I read that it was reported on the excellent CoventryLive site, which highlighted exactly what he had done. He asked me to acknowledge, and of course I do, the virtual uniformity of the concerns raised in his constituents’ responses. That is a powerful message that his constituents are sending to us.
I understand that the Hospital of St Cross has operated an urgent care centre since the closure of the full A&E in 2011, transitioning to become an urgent treatment centre in line with national changes in 2019. That service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, allowing patients to access the urgent care services that it is able to provide at any time. Trained nursing staff are on hand and patients can have X-rays and blood tests and access a pharmacy. As my hon. Friend said, patients with more complex medical conditions requiring advanced tests or investigations will be referred or taken by ambulance to be cared for by specialists at the University Hospital in Coventry. This, to a degree, reflects the staffing availability and specialist staff required for different services, and which services are available in a particular setting.
My hon. Friend highlighted an important point, which applies not only to his local hospital but more broadly across the country. There is more we can do to help our constituents, and those who may need services, to understand what services each different NHS destination —be it an A&E or a UTC—can provide, and hopefully reduce the number of people who see the H sign on the motorway and think, “I’ll go there because I need assistance,” only to end up being transferred to another hospital to receive the services they need for their condition. There is more we can do to make that clear.
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s call for a restored full A&E service in Rugby, on the basis of demographic change since the decision was taken in 2010 and implemented in 2011. He is right to highlight the pace of change, including in population. I know his patch a little; it is a relatively short hop down the M69 and back across the M6 from my patch to his. He is right to highlight all that Rugby and the area is doing to help support the objectives of providing affordable housing for people who need it; but that of course comes with additional pressures on local public services and local infrastructure, as he rightly emphasised.
As my hon. Friend knows, the original decision to alter local service provision was made following a full public consultation to address concerns raised at the time that the unit was not able to sustain full A&E services, with serious cases, even then, being sent to Coventry for treatment. I can assure my hon. Friend that this decision will rightly be taken by the local clinical commissioning group, as it was in 2010—although it was possibly a primary care trust at the time. Shortly, it will be a decision for the local integrated care boards, which are due to come into force very soon, following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2022. It would not be right for the inception of such decisions to come from Ministers in Whitehall. I would note, however, that for any future changes we will see slightly altered powers for Ministers, with the power of direction and intervention introduced in that legislation.
I can assure my hon. Friend that the funding available to his local health system has risen in line with demographic change since 2010—as determined by the formula set by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation—and that ensuring that resources are allocated to deliver the best care for patients is a key duty of both the CCG and, subsequently, the ICB. The local health system is best placed to consider sustainability, location, and demand for services across its area. Any such assessment of whether to reduce services, move services or open new services should include consideration of the mix of accident and emergency services, UTCs and other treatment services, such as GP access.
Without wishing to pre-empt any particular course of action that my hon. Friend’s local system might be persuaded by his forceful advocacy to consider, I would also comment that it is for the ICBs and trusts to plan for reconfigurations of NHS services. Judging by what my hon. Friend said, he is already lobbying them pretty firmly. Where services are reconfigured, we are clear that these are subject to four stringent Government tests, which are strong public and patient engagement, consistency with current and prospective need for patient choice; a clear clinical evidence base, and support for proposals from clinical commissioners.
Decisions on any reconfiguration are rarely easy or straightforward; they are effectively about balancing different needs and benefits, including patient transport and inequalities, and it is important to hear from as many local people as possible about the practical impacts and concerns. As I alluded to, I encourage my hon. Friend to continue his conversations with his local NHS system.
Before turning to pressures on A&Es more broadly and the ambulance service locally, I should say that there is already significant investment to improve services in Rugby. The University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust remains committed to expanding services at the Hospital of St Cross, and in recent times that has included the opening of a £1 million purpose-built haematology and oncology unit, and new modular theatres to help treat more patients on elective waiting lists. It is probably fair to say that a degree of credit goes to my hon. Friend for fighting the corner for his local hospital, as he always does.
I shall now mention pressures on emergency departments. The emergency department at the University Hospital in Coventry has also been granted £15 million by the Government to increase its capacity and further enhance patient care. This investment will expand the department, including with a new minor illness and injuries unit. The funding will also be used to install additional treatment cubicles, to expand the waiting room in the children’s ED, to increase the level of same-day emergency care and to support diagnostic capacity with an additional CT scanner.
It is right that we take a whole-system approach to these challenges, and all this work is designed to complement existing services provided at both the Rugby and Coventry urgent treatment centres. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the pressures we are seeing in EDs across the country, which is often manifested in ambulance delays and ambulance queues. That is a symptom of the patient flow challenge in hospitals. Space is needed to offload patients safely into EDs, for which EDs have to be able to discharge patients safely or admit them into the hospital. To do that, hospitals have to be able to discharge patients to free up the bed space to enable that patient flow. In recent months we have seen sustained pressure in hospitals across the country in that respect, and he rightly highlights his local hospital.
My hon. Friend talked about the ambulance service and highlighted the tragic case of Jamie Rees, which has been reported on extensively by CoventryLive. Jamie sadly passed away on new year’s day following a cardiac arrest. Through my hon. Friend, I extend my sympathies and condolences to Jamie’s family and friends.
I understand the West Midlands ambulance service believes that, sadly, an ambulance station, had there been one in Rugby, would not have altered the outcome in Jamie’s case. In the 90 minutes before it received the first 999 call, I understand there had been five other emergency calls in the Rugby area. That means any ambulances based in the town would have already been dispatched to deal with those emergency cases, so the ambulances would not have been available wherever the station were based. I fear that reflects the pressures at the time. None of that will be any consolation to Jamie’s family, but I wanted to highlight the context.
My hon. Friend also rightly highlighted the “Our Jay” campaign and the number of externally mounted defibrillators, which is a hugely important topic. It is sad that there is sometimes an unwillingness to fund externally mounted defibrillators due to the despicable behaviour of utterly heartless individuals who, for some reason, think they have the right to vandalise or steal this life-saving kit. It is a sad reflection on them, and I sincerely hope they never find themselves in a situation where they need such kit to be available. I pay tribute to the “Our Jay” campaign.
More broadly, we have put a number of measures in place to try to ease the pressure on A&E and ambulance services. The discharge taskforce is helping to free up patient beds by ensuring that patients who are fit to be discharged are discharged more rapidly. In recent years, £450 million has been spent on expanding A&E departments, and there has been a £55 million investment in strengthening ambulance trusts and keeping an extra 156 ambulances in service and on the road to bolster capacity and resilience during the winter period.
I hear the passionate case my hon. Friend makes. There is significant support in place, both locally and nationally, to help ensure constituents in Rugby can access the care they need when they need it, but I also wish to make a number of points. First, I am happy to meet him to discuss this matter. I was going to offer to make the short hop down the M69 and the M6, but from what he has says I have been pipped to the post by my boss arranging to do that visit; he has perhaps upgraded the offer, with the Secretary of State rather than a mere Minister of State. I hope my hon. Friend will feel free to share the detail of his survey and the responses with me. I am also conscious that I have some outstanding correspondence from him—I checked that this morning—and I will ensure that I respond to it in the next few days. I will pull it out of the system and ensure that he gets answers to the specific points he raised.
I thank my hon. Friend, once again, for rightly raising this important issue, securing an important debate on the Floor of the House today and doing what he does so well: championing his constituents’ best interests, and making sure that Ministers have no opportunity to forget them and to forget the people of Rugby. Indeed, he ensures that they are impressed upon our minds. I look forward to meeting him to discuss this further, and I hope that will happen shortly.
Question put and agreed.
Online Safety Bill (Seventh sitting)
Thursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 9 June 2022 - (9 Jun 2022)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and proceedings are being broadcast. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. I have no objections to Members taking their jackets off—it is very warm in this room.
Clause 17
Duty about content reporting
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
Good morning, Ms Rees. It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship. I wondered whether the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd, wanted to speak first—I am always happy to follow her, if she would prefer that.
Chris Philp
I do my best.
Clauses 17 and 27 have similar effects, the former applying to user-to-user services and the latter to search services. They set out an obligation on the companies to put in place effective and accessible content reporting mechanisms, so that users can report issues. The clauses will ensure that service providers are made aware of illegal and harmful content on their sites. In relation to priority illegal content, the companies must proactively prevent it in the first place, but in the other areas, they may respond reactively as well.
The clause will ensure that anyone who wants to report illegal or harmful content can do so in a quick and reasonable way. We are ensuring that everyone who needs to do that will be able to do so, so the facility will be open to those who are affected by the content but who are not themselves users of the site. For example, that might be non-users who are the subject of the content, such as a victim of revenge pornography, or non-users who are members of a specific group with certain characteristics targeted by the content, such as a member of the Jewish community reporting antisemitic content. There is also facility for parents and other adults with caring responsibility for children, and adults caring for another adult, to report content. Clause 27 sets out similar duties in relation to search. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I will talk about this later, when we come to a subsequent clause to which I have tabled some amendments—I should have tabled some to this clause, but unfortunately missed the chance to do so.
I appreciate the Minister laying out why he has designated the people covered by this clause; my concern is that “affected” is not wide enough. My logic is that, on the strength of these provisions, I might not be able to report racist content that I come across on Twitter if I am not the subject of that content—if I am not a member of a group that is the subject of the content or if I am not caring for someone who is the subject of it.
I appreciate what the Minister is trying to do, and I get the logic behind it, but I think the clause unintentionally excludes some people who would have a reasonable right to expect to be able to make reports in this instance. That is why I tabled amendments 78 and 79 to clause 28, about search functions, but those proposals would have worked reasonably for this clause as well. I do not expect a positive answer from the Minister today, but perhaps he could give consideration to my concern. My later amendments would change “affected person” to “any other person”. That would allow anyone to make a report, because if something is illegal content, it is illegal content. It does not matter who makes the report, and it should not matter that I am not a member of the group of people targeted by the content.
I report things all the time, particularly on Twitter, and a significant amount of it is nothing to do with me. It is not stuff aimed at me; it is aimed at others. I expect that a number of the platforms will continue to allow reporting for people who are outwith the affected group, but I do not want to be less able to report than I am currently, and that would be the case for many people who see concerning content on the internet.
Alex Davies-Jones
The hon. Lady is making a really important point. One stark example that comes to my mind is when English footballers suffered horrific racist abuse following the penalty shootout at the Euros last summer. Hundreds of thousands of people reported the abuse that they were suffering to the social media platforms on their behalf, in an outcry of solidarity and support, and it would be a shame if people were prevented from doing that.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree. I certainly do not think I am suggesting that the bigger platforms such as Twitter and Facebook will reduce their reporting mechanisms as a result of how the Bill is written. However, it is possible that newer or smaller platforms, or anything that starts after this legislation comes, could limit the ability to report on the basis of these clauses.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Good morning, Ms Rees.
It is important that users of online services are empowered to report harmful content, so that it can be removed. It is also important for users to have access to complaints procedures when wrong moderation decisions have been made. Reporting and complaint mechanisms are integral to ensuring that users are safe and that free speech is upheld, and we support these provisions in the Bill.
Clauses 17 and 18, and clauses 27 and 28, are two parts of the same process: content reporting by individual users, and the handling of content reported as a complaint. However, it is vital that these clauses create a system that works. That is the key point that Labour Members are trying to make, because the wild west system that we have at the moment does not work.
It is welcome that the Government have proposed a system that goes beyond the users of the platform and introduces a duty on companies. However, companies have previously failed to invest enough money in their complaints systems for the scale at which they are operating in the UK. The duties in the Bill are an important reminder to companies that they are part of a wider society that goes beyond their narrow shareholder interest.
One example of why this change is so necessary, and why Labour Members are broadly supportive of the additional duties, is the awful practice of image abuse. With no access to sites on which their intimate photographs are being circulated, victims of image abuse have very few if any routes to having the images removed. Again, the practice of image abuse has increased during the pandemic, including through revenge porn, which the Minister referred to. The revenge porn helpline reported that its case load more than doubled between 2019 and 2020.
These clauses should mean that people can easily report content that they consider to be either illegal, or harmful to children, if it is hosted on a site likely to be accessed by children, or, if it is hosted on a category 1 platform, harmful to adults. However, the Minister needs to clarify how these service complaints systems will be judged and what the performance metrics will be. For instance, how will Ofcom enforce against a complaint?
In many sectors of the economy, even with long-standing systems of regulation, companies can have tens of millions of customers reporting content, but that does not mean that any meaningful action can take place. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North has just told us how often she reports on various platforms, but what action has taken place? Many advocacy groups of people affected by crimes such as revenge porn will want to hear, in clear terms, what will happen to material that has been complained about. I hope the Minister can offer that clarity today.
Transparency in reporting will be vital to analysing trends and emerging types of harm. It is welcome that in schedule 8, which we will come to later, transparency reporting duties apply to the complaints process. It is important that as much information as possible is made public about what is going on in companies’ complaints and reporting systems. As well as the raw number of complaints, reporting should include what is being reported or complained about, as the Joint Committee on the draft Bill recommended last year. Again, what happens to the reported material will be an important metric on which to judge companies.
Finally, I will mention the lack of arrangements for children. We have tabled new clause 3, which has been grouped for discussion with other new clauses at the end of proceedings, but it is relevant to mention it now briefly. The Children’s Commissioner highlighted in her oral evidence to the Committee how children had lost faith in complaints systems. That needs to be changed. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has also warned that complaints mechanisms are not always appropriate for children and that a very low proportion of children have ever reported content. A child specific user advocacy body could represent the interests of child users and support Ofcom’s regulatory decisions. That would represent an important strengthening of protections for users, and I hope the Government will support it when the time comes.
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
I rise briefly to talk about content reporting. I share the frustrations of the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. The way I read the Bill was that it would allow users and affected persons, rather than “or” affected persons, to report content. I hope the Minister can clarify that that means affected persons who might not be users of a platform. That is really important.
Will the Minister also clarify the use of human judgment in these decisions? Many algorithms are not taking down some content at the moment, so I would be grateful if he clarified that there is a need for platforms to provide a genuine human judgment on whether content is harmful.
Kirsty Blackman
I want to raise an additional point about content reporting and complaints procedures. I met with representatives of Mencap yesterday, who raised the issue of the accessibility of the procedures that are in place. I appreciate that the Bill talks about procedures being accessible, but will the Minister give us some comfort about Ofcom looking at the reporting procedures that are in place, to ensure that adults with learning disabilities in particular can access those content reporting and complaints procedures, understand them and easily find them on sites?
That is a specific concern that Mencap raised on behalf of its members. A number of its members will be users of sites such as Facebook, but may find it more difficult than others to access and understand the procedures that are in place. I appreciate that, through the Bill, the Minister is making an attempt to ensure that those procedures are accessible, but I want to make sure they are accessible not just for the general public but for children, who may need jargon-free access to content reporting and complaints procedures, and for people with learning disabilities, who may similarly need jargon-free, easy-to-understand and easy-to-find access to those procedures.
Chris Philp
Let me try to address some of the questions that have been raised in this short debate, starting with the question that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North quite rightly asked at the beginning. She posed the question, “What if somebody who is not an affected person encountered some content and wanted to report it?” For example, she might encounter some racist content on Twitter or elsewhere and would want to be able to report it, even though she is not herself the target of it or necessarily a member of the group affected. I can also offer the reassurance that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East asked for.
The answer is to be found in clause 17(2), which refers to
“A duty to operate a service using systems and processes that allow users and”—
I stress “and”—“affected persons”. As such, the duty to offer content reporting is to users and affected persons, so if the hon. Member for Aberdeen North was a user of Twitter but was not herself an affected person, she would still be able to report content in her capacity as a user. I hope that provides clarification.
Kirsty Blackman
I appreciate that. That is key, and I am glad that this is wider than just users of the site. However, taking Reddit as an example, I am not signed up to that site, but I could easily stumble across content on it that was racist in nature. This clause would mean that I could not report that content unless I signed up to Reddit, because I would not be an affected person or a user of that site.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Lady for her clarificatory question. I can confirm that in order to be a user of a service, she would not necessarily have to sign up to it. The simple act of browsing that service, of looking at Reddit—not, I confess, an activity that I participate in regularly—regardless of whether or not the hon. Lady has an account with it, makes her a user of that service, and in that capacity she would be able to make a content report under clause 17(2) even if she were not an affected person. I hope that clears up the question in a definitive manner.
The hon. Lady asked in her second speech about the accessibility of the complaints procedure for children. That is strictly a matter for clause 18, which is the next clause, but I will quickly answer her question. Clause 18 contains provisions that explicitly require the complaints process to be accessible. Subsection (2)(c) states that the complaints procedure has to be
“easy to access, easy to use (including by children) and transparent”,
so the statutory obligation that she requested is there in clause 18.
Kirsty Blackman
Can the Minister explain the logic in having that phrasing for the complaints procedure but not for the content-reporting procedure? Surely it would also make sense for the content reporting procedure to use the phrasing
“easy to access, easy to use (including by children) and transparent.”
Chris Philp
There is in clause 17(2)
“a duty to operate a service that allows users and affected persons to easily report content which they consider to be content of a…kind specified below”,
which, of course, includes services likely to be accessed by children, under subsection (4). The words “easily report” are present in clause 17(2).
I will move on to the question of children reporting more generally, which the shadow Minister raised as well. Clearly, a parent or anyone with responsibility for a child has the ability to make a report, but it is also worth mentioning the power in clauses 140 to 142 to make super-complaints, which the NSPCC strongly welcomed its evidence. An organisation that represents a particular group—an obvious example is the NSPCC representing children, but it would apply to loads of other groups—has the ability to make super-complaints to Ofcom on behalf of those users, if it feels they are not being well treated by a platform. A combination of the parent or carer being able to make individual complaints, and the super-complaint facility, means that the points raised by Members are catered for. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 18
Duties about complaints procedures
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 78, in clause 28, page 28, line 28, leave out “affected” and replace with “any other”
This amendment allows those who do not fit the definition of “affected person” to make a complaint about search content which they consider to be illegal.
Amendment 79, in clause 28, page 28, line 30, leave out “affected” and replace with “any other”
This amendment allows those who do not fit the definition of “affected person” to make a complaint about search content which they consider not to comply with sections 24, 27 or 29.
Clause 28 stand part.
New clause 1—Report on redress for individual complaints—
“(1) The Secretary of State must publish a report assessing options for dealing with appeals about complaints made under—
(a) section 18; and
(b) section 28
(2) The report must—
(a) provide a general update on the fulfilment of duties about complaints procedures which apply in relation to all regulated user-to-user services and regulated search services;
(b) assess which body should be responsible for a system to deal with appeals in cases where a complainant considers that a complaint has not been satisfactorily dealt with; and
(c) provide options for how the system should be funded, including consideration of whether an annual surcharge could be imposed on user-to-user services and search services.
(3) The report must be laid before Parliament within six months of the commencement of this Act.”
Barbara Keeley
I will speak to new clause 1. Although duties about complaints procedures are welcome, it has been pointed out that service providers’ user complaints processes are often obscure and difficult to navigate—that is the world we are in at the moment. The lack of any external complaints option for individuals who seek redress is worrying.
The Minister has just talked about the super-complaints mechanism—which we will come to later in proceedings—to allow eligible entities to make complaints to Ofcom about a single regulated service if that complaint is of particular importance or affects a particularly large number of service users or members of the public. Those conditions are constraints on the super-complaints process, however.
An individual who felt that they had been failed by a service’s complaints system would have no source of redress. Without redress for individual complaints once internal mechanisms have been exhausted, victims of online abuse could be left with no further options, consumer protections could be compromised, and freedom of expression could be impinged upon for people who felt that their content had been unfairly removed.
Various solutions have been proposed. The Joint Committee recommended the introduction of an online safety ombudsman to consider complaints for which recourse to internal routes of redress had not resulted in resolution and the failure to address risk had led to significant and demonstrable harm. Such a mechanism would give people an additional body through which to appeal decisions after they had come to the end of a service provider’s internal process. Of course, we as hon. Members are all familiar with the ombudsman services that we already have.
Concerns have been raised about the level of complaints such an ombudsman could receive. However, as the Joint Committee noted, complaints would be received only once the service’s internal complaints procedure had been exhausted, as is the case for complaints to Ofcom about the BBC. The new clause seeks to ensure that we find the best possible solution to the problem. There needs to be a last resort for users who have suffered serious harm on services. It is only through the introduction of an external redress mechanism that service providers can truly be held to account for their decisions as they impact on individuals.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I rise to contribute to the stand part debate on clauses 18 and 28. It was interesting, though, to hear the debate on clause 17, because it is right to ask how the complaints services will be judged. Will they work in practice? When we start to look at how to ensure that the legislation works in all eventualities, we need to ensure that we have some backstops for when the system does not work as it should.
It is welcome that there will be clear duties on providers to have operational complaints procedures—complaints procedures that work in practice. As we all know, many of them do not at the moment. As a result, we have a loss of faith in the system, and that is not going to be changed overnight by a piece of legislation. For years, people have been reporting things—in some cases, very serious criminal activity—that have not been acted on. Consumers—people who use these platforms—are not going to change their mind overnight and suddenly start trusting these organisations to take their complaints seriously. With that in mind, I hope that the Minister listened to the points I made on Second Reading about how to give extra support to victims of crimes or people who have experienced things that should not have happened online, and will look at putting in place the right level of support.
The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South talked about the idea of an ombudsman; it may well be that one should be in place to deal with situations where complaints are not dealt with through the normal processes. I am also quite taken by some of the evidence we received about third-party complaints processes by other organisations. We heard a bit about the revenge porn helpline, which was set up a few years ago when we first recognised in law that revenge pornography was a crime. The Bill creates a lot more victims of crime and recognises them as victims, but we are not yet hearing clearly how the support systems will adequately help that massively increased number of victims to get the help they need.
I will probably talk in more detail about this issue when we reach clause 70, which provides an opportunity to look at the—unfortunately—probably vast fines that Ofcom will be imposing on organisations and how we might earmark some of that money specifically for victim support, whether by funding an ombudsman or helping amazing organisations such as the revenge porn helpline to expand their services.
We must address this issue now, in this Bill. If we do not, all those fines will go immediately into the coffers of the Treasury without passing “Go”, and we will not be able to take some of that money to help those victims directly. I am sure the Government absolutely intend to use some of the money to help victims, but that decision would be at the mercy of the Treasury. Perhaps we do not want that; perhaps we want to make it cleaner and easier and have the money put straight into a fund that can be used directly for people who have been victims of crime or injustice or things that fall foul of the Bill.
I hope that the Minister will listen to that and use this opportunity, as we do in other areas, to directly passport fines for specific victim support. He will know that there are other examples of that that he can look at.
Kirsty Blackman
As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke has mentioned the revenge porn helpline, I will mention the NSPCC’s Report Remove tool for children. It does exactly the same thing, but for younger people—the revenge porn helpline is specifically only for adults. Both those tools together cover the whole gamut, which is massively helpful.
The right hon. Lady’s suggestion about the hypothecation of fines is a very good one. I was speaking to the NSPCC yesterday, and one of the issues that we were discussing was super-complaints. Although super-complaints are great and I am very glad that they are included in the Bill, the reality is that some of the third-sector organisations that are likely to be undertaking super-complaints are charitable organisations that are not particularly well funded. Given how few people work for some of those organisations and the amazing amount of work they do, if some of the money from fines could support not just victims but the initial procedure for those organisations to make super-complaints, it would be very helpful. That is, of course, if the Minister does not agree with the suggestion of creating a user advocacy panel, which would fulfil some of that role and make that support for the charitable organisations less necessary—although I am never going to argue against support for charities: if the Minister wants to hypothecate it in that way, that would be fantastic.
I tabled amendments 78 and 79, but the statement the Minister made about the definition of users gives me a significant level of comfort about the way that people will be able to access a complaints procedure. I am terribly disappointed that the Minister is not a regular Reddit user. I am not, either, but I am well aware of what Reddit entails. I have no desire to sign up to Reddit, but knowing that even browsing the site I would be considered a user and therefore able to report any illegal content I saw, is massively helpful. On that basis, I am comfortable not moving amendments 78 and 79.
On the suggestion of an ombudsman—I am looking at new clause 1—it feels like there is a significant gap here. There are ombudsman services in place for many other areas, where people can put in a complaint and then go to an ombudsman should they feel that it has not been appropriately addressed. As a parliamentarian, I find that a significant number of my constituents come to me seeking support to go to the ombudsman for whatever area it is in which they feel their complaint has not been appropriately dealt with. We see a significant number of issues caused by social media companies, in particular, not taking complaints seriously, not dealing with complaints and, in some cases, leaving illegal content up. Particularly in the initial stages of implementation—in the first few years, before companies catch up and are able to follow the rules put in place by the Bill and Ofcom—a second-tier complaints system that is removed from the social media companies would make things so much better than they are now. It would provide an additional layer of support to people who are looking to make complaints.
Dame Maria Miller
I am sure the hon. Lady will agree with me that it is not either/or—it is probably both. Ultimately, she is right that an ombudsman would be there to help deal with what I think will be a lag in implementation, but if someone is a victim of online intimate image abuse, in particular, they want the material taken down immediately, so we need to have organisations such as those that we have both mentioned there to help on the spot. It has to be both, has it not?
Kirsty Blackman
I completely agree. Both those helplines do very good work, and they are absolutely necessary. I would strongly support their continuation in addition to an ombudsman-type service. Although I am saying that the need for an ombudsman would likely be higher in the initial bedding-in years, it will not go away—we will still need one. With NHS complaints, the system has been in place for a long time, and it works pretty well in the majority of cases, but there are still cases it gets wrong. Even if the social media companies behave in a good way and have proper complaints procedures, there will still be instances of them getting it wrong. There will still be a need for a higher level. I therefore urge the Minister to consider including new clause 1 in the Bill.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees, and to make my first contribution in Committee—it will be a brief one. It is great to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, and I listened intently to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, from whom I have learned so much having sat with her in numerous Committees over the past two years.
I will speak to clause 18 stand part, in particular on the requirements of the technical specifications that the companies will need to use to ensure that they fulfil the duties under the clause. The point, which has been articulated well by numerous Members, is that we can place such a duty on service providers, but we must also ensure that the technical specifications in their systems allow them to follow through and deliver on it.
I sat in horror during the previous sitting as I listened to the hon. Member for Pontypridd talking about the horrendous abuse that she has to experience on Twitter. What that goes to show is that, if the intention of this clause and the Bill are to be fulfilled, we must ensure that the companies enable themselves to have the specifications in their systems on the ground to deliver the requirements of the Bill. That might mean that the secondary legislation is slightly more prescriptive about what those systems look like.
It is all well and good us passing primary legislation in this place to try to control matters, but my fear is that if those companies do not have systems such that they can follow through, there is a real risk that what we want will not materialise. As we proceed through the Bill, there will be mechanisms to ensure that that risk is mitigated, but the point that I am trying to make to my hon. Friend the Minister is that we should ensure that we are on top of this, and that companies have the technical specifications in their complaints procedures to meet the requirements under clause 18.
We must ensure that we do not allow the excuse, “Oh, well, we’re a bit behind the times on this.” I know that later clauses seek to deal with that, but it is important that we do not simply fall back on excuses. We must embed a culture that allows the provisions of the clause to be realised. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that we deal with that and embed a culture that looks at striding forward to deal with complaints procedures, and that these companies have the technical capabilities on the ground so that they can deal with these things swiftly and in the right way. Ultimately, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said, it is all well and good us making these laws, but it is vital that we ensure that they can be applied.
Chris Philp
Let me address some of the issues raised in the debate. First, everyone in the House recognises the enormous problem at the moment with large social media firms receiving reports about harmful and even illegal content that they just flagrantly ignore. The purpose of the clause, and indeed of the whole Bill and its enforcement architecture, is to ensure that those large social media firms no longer ignore illegal and harmful content when they are notified about it. We agree unanimously on the importance of doing that.
The requirement for those firms to take the proper steps is set out in clause 18(2)(b), at the very top of page 18 —it is rather depressing that we are on only the 18th of a couple of hundred pages. That paragraph creates a statutory duty for a social media platform to take “appropriate action”—those are the key words. If the platform is notified of a piece of illegal content, or content that is harmful to children, or of content that it should take down under its own terms and conditions if harmful to adults, then it must do so. If it fails to do so, Ofcom will have the enforcement powers available to it to compel—ultimately, escalating to a fine of up to 10% of global revenue or even service disconnection.
Chris Philp
Let me develop the point before I give way. Our first line of defence is Ofcom enforcing the clause, but we have a couple of layers of additional defence. One of those is the super-complaints mechanism, which I have mentioned before. If a particular group of people, represented by a body such as the NSPCC, feel that their legitimate complaints are being infringed systemically by the social media platform, and that Ofcom is failing to take the appropriate action, they can raise that as a super-complaint to ensure that the matter is dealt with.
Chris Philp
I should give way to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North first, and then I will come to the shadow Minister.
Kirsty Blackman
I wanted to ask specifically about the resourcing of Ofcom, given the abilities that it will have under this clause. Will Ofcom have enough resource to be able to be that secondary line of defence?
Chris Philp
A later clause gives Ofcom the ability to levy the fees and charges it sees as necessary and appropriate to ensure that it can deliver the duties. Ofcom will have the power to set those fees at a level to enable it to do its job properly, as Parliament would wish it to do.
Barbara Keeley
This is the point about individual redress again: by talking about super-complaints, the Minister seems to be agreeing that it is not there. As I said earlier, for super-complaints to be made to Ofcom, the issue has to be of particular importance or to impact a particularly large number of users, but that does not help the individual. We know how much individuals are damaged; there must be a system of external redress. The point about internal complaints systems is that we know that they are not very good, and we require a big culture change to change them, but unless there is some mechanism thereafter, I cannot see how we are giving the individual any redress—it is certainly not through the super-complaints procedure.
Chris Philp
As I said explicitly a few moments ago, the hon. Lady is right to point out the fact that the super-complaints process is to address systemic issues. She is right to say that, and I think I made it clear a moment or two ago.
Whether there should be an external ombudsman to enforce individual complaints, rather than just Ofcom enforcing against systemic complaints, is a question worth addressing. In some parts of our economy, we have ombudsmen who deal with individual complaints, financial services being an obvious example. The Committee has asked the question, why no ombudsman here? The answer, in essence, is a matter of scale and of how we can best fix the issue. The volume of individual complaints generated about social media platforms is just vast. Facebook in the UK alone has tens of millions of users—I might get this number wrong, but I think it is 30 million or 40 million users.
Chris Philp
I will in a moment. The volume of complaints that gets generated is vast. The way that we will fix this is not by having an external policeman to enforce on individual complaints, but by ensuring that the systems and processes are set up correctly to deal with problems at this large scale. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd, laughs, but it is a question of practicality. The way we will make the internet safe is to make sure that the systems and processes are in place and effective. Ofcom will ensure that that happens. That will protect everyone, not just those who raise individual complaints with an ombudsman.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Philp
I can see that there is substantial demand to comment, so I shall start by giving way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke.
Dame Maria Miller
The Minister is doing an excellent job explaining the complex nature of the Bill. Ultimately, however, as he and I know, it is not a good argument to say that this is such an enormous problem that we cannot have a process in place to deal with it. If my hon. Friend looks back at his comments, he will see that that is exactly the point he was making. Although it is possibly not necessary with this clause, I think he needs to give some assurances that later in the Bill he will look at hypothecating some of the money to be generated from fines to address the issues of individual constituents, who on a daily basis are suffering at the hands of the social media companies. I apologise for the length of my intervention.
Chris Philp
It is categorically not the Government’s position that this problem is too big to fix. In fact, the whole purpose of this piece of groundbreaking and world-leading legislation is to fix a problem of such magnitude. The point my right hon. Friend was making about the hypothecation of fines to support user advocacy is a somewhat different one, which we will come to in due course, but there is nothing in the Bill to prevent individual groups from assisting individuals with making specific complaints to individual companies, as they are now entitled to do in law under clauses 17 and 18.
The point about an ombudsman is a slightly different one—if an individual complaint is made to a company and the individual complainant is dissatisfied with the outcome of their individual, particular and personal complaint, what should happen? In the case of financial services, if, for example, someone has been mis-sold a mortgage and they have suffered a huge loss, they can go to an ombudsman who will bindingly adjudicate that individual, single, personal case. The point that I am making is that having hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of cases being bindingly adjudicated on a case-by- case basis is not the right way to tackle a problem of this scale. The right way to tackle the problem is to force the social media companies, by law, to systemically deal with all of the problem, not just individual problems that may end up on an ombudsman’s desk.
That is the power in the Bill. It deals at a systems and processes level, it deals on an industry-wide level, and it gives Ofcom incredibly strong enforcement powers to make sure this actually happens. The hon. Member for Pontypridd has repeatedly called for a systems and processes approach. This is the embodiment of such an approach and the only way to fix a problem of such magnitude.
Kim Leadbeater
I associate myself with the comments of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke. Surely, if we are saying that this is such a huge problem, that is an argument for greater stringency and having an ombudsman. We cannot say that this is just about systems. Of course it is about systems, but online harms—we have heard some powerful examples of this—are about individuals, and we have to provide redress and support for the damage that online harms do to them. We have to look at systemic issues, as the Minister is rightly doing, but we also have to look at individual cases. The idea of an ombudsman and greater support for charities and those who can support victims of online crime, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, is really important.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Lady for her thoughtful intervention. There are two separate questions here. One is about user advocacy groups helping individuals to make complaints to the companies. That is a fair point, and no doubt we will debate it later. The ombudsman question is different; it is about whether to have a right of appeal against decisions by social media companies. Our answer is that, rather than having a third-party body—an ombudsman—effectively acting as a court of appeal against individual decisions by the social media firms, because of the scale of the matter, the solution is to compel the firms, using the force of law, to get this right on a systemic and comprehensive basis.
Chris Philp
I give way first to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North—I think she was first on her feet—and then I will come to the hon. Member for Pontypridd.
Kirsty Blackman
Does the Minister not think this is going to work? He is creating this systems and processes approach, which he suggests will reduce the thousands of complaints—complaints will be made and complaints procedures will be followed. Surely, if it is going to work, in 10 years’ time we are going to need an ombudsman to adjudicate on the individual complaints that go wrong. If this works in the way he suggests, we will not have tens of millions of complaints, as we do now, but an ombudsman would provide individual redress. I get what he is arguing, but I do not know why he is not arguing for both things, because having both would provide the very best level of support.
Chris Philp
I will address the review clause now, since it is relevant. If, in due course, as I hope and expect, the Bill has the desired effect, perhaps that would be the moment to consider the case for an ombudsman. The critical step is to take a systemic approach, which the Bill is doing. That engages the question of new clause 1, which would create a mechanism, probably for the reason the hon. Lady just set out, to review how things are going and to see if, in due course, there is a case for an ombudsman, once we see how the Bill unfolds in practice.
Chris Philp
Let me finish the point. It is not a bad idea to review it and see how it is working in practice. Clause 149 already requires a review to take place between two and four years after Royal Assent. For the reasons that have been set out, it is pretty clear from this debate that we would expect the review to include precisely that question. If we had an ombudsman on day one, before the systems and processes had had a chance to have their effect, I fear that the ombudsman would be overwhelmed with millions of individual issues. The solution lies in fixing the problem systemically.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Philp
I think the shadow Minister wanted to intervene, unless I have answered her point already.
Alex Davies-Jones
I wanted to reiterate the point that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North made, which the Minister has not answered. If he has such faith that the systems and processes will be changed and controlled by Ofcom as a result of the Bill, why is he so reluctant to put in an ombudsman? It will not be overwhelmed with complaints if the systems and processes work, and therefore protect victims. We have already waited far too long for the Bill, and now he says that we need to wait two to four years for a review, and even longer to implement an ombudsman to protect victims. Why will he not just put this in the Bill now to keep them safe?
Chris Philp
Because we need to give the new systems and processes time to take effect. If the hon. Lady felt so strongly that an ombudsman was required, she was entirely at liberty to table an amendment to introduce one, but she has not done so.
Jane Stevenson
I wonder whether Members would be reassured if companies were required to have a mechanism by which users could register their dissatisfaction, to enable an ombudsman, or perhaps Ofcom, to gauge the volume of dissatisfaction and bring some kind of group claim against the company. Is that a possibility?
Chris Philp
Yes. My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. If there is a systemic problem and a platform fails to act appropriately not just in one case, but in a number of them, we have, as she has just described, the super-complaints process in clauses 140 to 142. Even under the Bill as drafted, without any changes, if a platform turns out to be systemically ignoring reasonable complaints made by the public and particular groups of users, the super-complainants will be able to do exactly as she describes. There is a mechanism to catch this—it operates not at individual level, but at the level of groups of users, via the super-complaint mechanism—so I honestly feel that the issue has been addressed.
When the numbers are so large, I think that the super-complaint mechanism is the right way to push Ofcom if it does not notice. Obviously, the first line of defence is that companies comply with the Bill. The second line of defence is that if they fail to do so, Ofcom will jump on them. The third line of defence is that if Ofcom somehow does not notice, a super-complaint group—such as the NSPCC, acting for children—will make a super-complaint to Ofcom. We have three lines of defence, and I submit to the Committee that they are entirely appropriate.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister said that the Opposition had not tabled an amendment to bring in an ombudsman.
Barbara Keeley
On this clause. What we have done, however—we are debating it now—is to table a new clause to require a report on redress for individual complaints. The Minister talks about clause 149 and a process that will kick in between two and five years away, but we have a horrendous problem at the moment. I and various others have described the situation as the wild west, and very many people—thousands, if not millions, of individuals—are being failed very badly. I do not see why he is resisting our proposal for a report within six months of the commencement of the Act, which would enable us to start to see at that stage, not two to five years down the road, how these systems—he is putting a lot of faith in them—were turning out. I think that is a very sound idea, and it would help us to move forward.
Chris Philp
The third line of defence—the super-complaint process—is available immediately, as I set out a moment ago. In relation to new clause 1, which the hon. Lady mentioned a moment ago, I think six months is very soon for a Bill of this magnitude. The two-to-five-year timetable under the existing review mechanism in clause 149 is appropriate.
Although we are not debating clause 149, I hope, Ms Rees, that you will forgive me for speaking about it for a moment. If Members turn to pages 125 and 126 and look at the matters covered by the review, they will see that they are extraordinarily comprehensive. In effect, the review covers the implementation of all aspects of the Bill, including the need to minimise the harms to individuals and the enforcement and information-gathering powers. It covers everything that Committee members would want to be reviewed. No doubt as we go through the Bill we will have, as we often do in Bill Committee proceedings, a number of occasions on which somebody tables an amendment to require a review of x, y or z. This is the second such occasion so far, I think, and there may be others. It is much better to have a comprehensive review, as the Bill does via the provisions in clause 149.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Duties about freedom of expression and privacy
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
Clause 19, on user-to-user services, and its associated clause 29, which relates to search services, specify a number of duties in relation to freedom of expression and privacy. In carrying out their safety duties, in-scope companies will be required by clause 19(2) to have regard to the importance of protecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy.
Let me pause for a moment on this issue. There has been some external commentary about the Bill’s impact on freedom of expression. We have already seen, via our discussion of a previous clause, that there is nothing in the Bill that compels the censorship of speech that is legal and not harmful to children. I put on the record again the fact that nothing in the Bill requires the censorship of legal speech that poses no harm to children.
We are going even further than that. As far as I am aware, for the first time ever there will be a duty on social media companies, via clause 19(2), to have regard to freedom of speech. There is currently no legal duty at all on platforms to have regard to freedom of speech. The clause establishes, for the first time, an obligation to have regard to freedom of speech. It is critical that not only Committee members but others more widely who consider the Bill should bear that carefully in mind. Besides that, the clause speaks to the right to privacy. Existing laws already speak to that, but the clause puts it in this Bill as well. Both duties are extremely important.
In addition, category 1 service providers—the really big ones—will need proactively to assess the impact of their policies on freedom of expression and privacy. I hope all Committee members will strongly welcome the important provisions I have outlined.
Barbara Keeley
As the Minister says, clauses 19 and 29 are designed to provide a set of balancing provisions that will require companies to have regard to freedom of expression and privacy when they implement their safety duties. However, it is important that companies cannot use privacy and free expression as a basis to argue that they can comply with regulation in less substantive ways. That is a fear here.
Category 1 providers will need to undertake an impact assessment to determine the impact of their product and safety decisions on freedom of expression, but it is unclear whether that applies only in respect of content that is harmful to adults. Unlike with the risk assessments for the illegal content and child safety duties set out in part 3, chapter 2, these clauses do not set expectations about whether risk assessments are of a suitable and sufficient quality. It is also not clear what powers Ofcom has at its disposal to challenge any assessments that it considers insufficient or that reach an inappropriate or unreasonable assessment of how to balance fundamental rights. I would appreciate it if the Minister could touch on that when he responds.
The assumption underlying these clauses is that privacy and free expression may need to act as a constraint on safety measures, but I believe that that is seen quite broadly as simplistic and potentially problematic. To give one example, a company could argue that end-to-end encryption is important for free expression, and privacy could justify any adverse impact on users’ safety. The subjects of child abuse images, which could more easily be shared because of such a decision, would see their safety and privacy rights weakened. Such an argument fails to take account of the broader nuance of the issues at stake. Impacts on privacy and freedom of expression should therefore be considered across a range of groups rather than assuming an overarching right that applies equally to all users.
Similarly, it will be important that Ofcom understands and delivers its functions in relation to these clauses in a way that reflects the complexity and nuance of the interplay of fundamental rights. It is important to recognise that positive and negative implications for privacy and freedom of expression may be associated with any compliance decision. I think the Minister implied that freedom of speech was a constant positive, but it can also have negative connotations.
Kirsty Blackman
I am pleased that the clause is in the Bill, and I think it is a good one to include. Can the Minister reaffirm what he said on Tuesday about child sexual abuse, and the fact that the right to privacy does not trump the ability—particularly with artificial intelligence—to search for child sexual abuse images?
Chris Philp
I confirm what the hon. Lady has just said. In response to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, it is important to say that the duty in clause 19 is “to have regard”, which simply means that a balancing exercise must be performed. It is not determinative; it is not as if the rights in the clause trump everything else. They simply have to be taken into account when making decisions.
To repeat what we discussed on Tuesday, I can explicitly and absolutely confirm to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North that in my view and the Government’s, concerns about freedom of expression or privacy should not trump platforms’ ability to scan for child sexual exploitation and abuse images or protect children. It is our view that there is nothing more important than protecting children from exploitation and sexual abuse.
We may discuss this further when we come to clause 103, which develops the theme a little. It is also worth saying that Ofcom will be able to look at the risk assessments and, if it feels that they are not of an adequate standard, take that up with the companies concerned. We should recognise that the duty to have regard to freedom of expression is not something that currently exists. It is a significant step forward, in my view, and I commend clauses 19 and 29 to the Committee.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
I have been contacted by a number of people about this clause, and they have serious concerns about the “have regard” statement. The Christian Institute said that it was
“promised ‘considerably stronger protections for free speech’, but the Bill does not deliver. Internet companies will be under ‘a duty to have regard to the importance of’ protecting free speech,”
but a “have regard” duty
“has no weight behind it. It is perfectly possible to…have regard to something…and then ignore it in practice.”
The “have regard” duty is not strong enough, and it is a real concern for a lot of people out there. Protecting children is absolutely imperative, but there are serious concerns when it comes to freedom of speech. Can the Minister address them for me?
Chris Philp
As I have said, at the moment there is nothing at all. Platforms such as Facebook can and do arbitrarily censor content with little if any regard for freedom of speech. Some platforms have effectively cancelled Donald Trump while allowing the Russian state to propagate shocking disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so there is real inconsistency and a lack of respect for freedom of speech. This at least establishes something where currently there is nothing. We can debate whether “have regard to” is strong enough. We have heard the other point of view from the other side of the House, which expressed concern that it might be used to allow otherwise harmful content, so there are clearly arguments on both sides of the debate. The obligation to have regard does have some weight, because the issue cannot be completely ignored. I do not think it would be adequate to simply pay lip service to it and not give it any real regard, so I would not dismiss the legislation as drafted.
I would point to the clauses that we have recently discussed, such as clause 15, under which content of democratic importance—which includes debating current issues and not just stuff said by an MP or candidate—gets additional protection. Some of the content that my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley referred to a second ago would probably also get protection under clause 14, under which content of democratic importance has to be taken in account when making decisions about taking down or removing particular accounts. I hope that provides some reassurance that this is a significant step forwards compared with where the internet is today.
Alex Davies-Jones
I share the Minister’s sentiments about the Bill protecting free speech; we all want to protect that. He mentions some of the clauses we debated on Tuesday regarding democratic importance. Some would say that debating this Bill is of democratic importance. Since we started debating the Bill on Tuesday, and since I have mentioned some of the concerns raised by stakeholders and others about the journalistic exemption and, for example, Tommy Robinson, my Twitter mentions have been a complete sewer—as everyone can imagine. One tweet I received in the last two minutes states:
“I saw your vicious comments on Tommy Robinson…The only reason you want to suppress him is to bury the Pakistani Muslim rape epidemic”
in this country. Does the Minister agree that that is content of democratic importance, given we are debating this Bill, and that it should remain on Twitter?
Chris Philp
That sounds like a very offensive tweet. Could the hon. Lady read it again? I didn’t quite catch it.
Alex Davies-Jones
Yes:
“I saw your vicious comments on Tommy Robinson…The only reason you want to suppress him is to bury the Pakistani Muslim rape epidemic”
in this country. It goes on:
“this is a toxic combination of bloc vote grubbing and woke”
culture, and there is a lovely GIF to go with it.
Chris Philp
I do not want to give an off-the-cuff assessment of an individual piece of content—not least because I am not a lawyer. It does not sound like it meets the threshold of illegality. It most certainly is offensive, and that sort of matter is one that Ofcom will set out in its codes of practice, but there is obviously a balance between freedom of speech and content that is harmful, which the codes of practice will delve into. I would be interested if the hon. Lady could report that to Twitter and then report back to the Committee on what action it takes.
Chris Philp
At the moment, there is no legal obligation to do anything about it, which is precisely why this Bill is needed, but let us put it to the test.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Record-keeping and review duties
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Barbara Keeley
Record-keeping and review duties on in-scope services make up an important function of the regulatory regime that we are discussing today. Platforms will need to report all harms identified and the action taken in response to this, in line with regulation. The requirements to keep records of the action taken in response to harm will be vital in supporting the regulator to make effective decisions about regulatory breaches and whether company responses are sufficient. That will be particularly important to monitor platforms’ responses through risk assessments—an area where some charities are concerned that we will see under-reporting of harms to evade regulation.
Evidence of under-reporting can be seen in the various transparency reports that are currently being published voluntarily by sites, where we are not presented with the full picture and scale of harm and the action taken to address that harm is thus obscured.
As with other risk assessments, the provisions in clauses 20 and 30 could be strengthened through a requirement on in-scope services to publish their risk assessments. We have made that point many times. Greater transparency would allow researchers and civil society to track harms and hold services to account.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister has eloquently introduced the purpose and effect of the clause, so I shall not repeat what she has said. On her point about publication, I repeat the point that I made on Tuesday, which is that the transparency requirements—they are requirements, not options—set out in clause 64 oblige Ofcom to ensure the publication of appropriate information publicly in exactly the way she requests.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 21 to 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Children’s risk assessment duties
Amendment proposed: 16, in clause 25, page 25, line 10, at end insert—
“(3A) A duty for the children’s risk assessment to be approved by either—
(a) the board of the entity; or, if the organisation does not have a board structure,
(b) a named individual who the provider considers to be a senior manager of the entity, who may reasonably be expected to be in a position to ensure compliance with the children’s risk assessment duties, and reports directly into the most senior employee of the entity.” —(Alex Davies-Jones.)
This amendment seeks to ensure that regulated companies’ boards or senior staff have responsibility for children’s risk assessments.
The Chair
I call Kirsty Blackman to move amendment 22. [Interruption.] Sorry—my bad, as they say. I call Barbara Keeley to move amendment 22.
Barbara Keeley
I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 31, page 31, line 17, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment removes the condition that applies a child use test to a service or part of a service.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 32 stand part.
That schedule 3 be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Clause 33 stand part.
Barbara Keeley
The purpose of the amendment is to remove the child use test from the children’s access assessment and to make sure that any service likely to be accessed by children is within the scope of the child safety duty. The amendment is supported by the NSPCC and other children’s charities.
Children require protection wherever they are online. I am sure that every Committee member believes that. The age-appropriate design code from the Information Commissioner’s Office requires all services that are likely to be accessed by children to provide high levels of data protection and privacy. Currently, the Bill will regulate only user-to-user and search services that have a significant number of child users or services for which children form a significant part of their user base. It will therefore not apply to all services that fall within the scope of the ICO’s code, creating a patchwork of regulation that could risk uncertainty, legal battles and unnecessary complexity. It might also create a perverse incentive for online services to stall the introduction of their child safety measures until Ofcom has the capacity to investigate and reach a determination on the categorisation of their sites.
The inclusion of a children’s access assessment in the Bill may result in lower standards of protection, with highly problematic services such as Telegram and OnlyFans able to claim that they are excluded from the child safety duties because children do not account for a significant proportion of their user base. However, evidence has shown that children have been able to access those platforms.
Other services will remain out of the scope of the Bill as currently drafted. They include harmful blogs that promote life-threatening behaviours, such as pro-anorexia sites with provider-generated rather than user-generated content; some of the most popular games among children that do not feature user-generated content but are linked to increasing gambling addiction among children, and through which some families have lost thousands of pounds; and other services with user-generated content that is harmful but does not affect an appreciable number of children. That risks dozens, hundreds or even thousands of children falling unprotected.
Parents have the reasonable expectation that, under the new regime introduced by the Bill, children will be protected wherever they are online. They cannot be expected to be aware of exemptions or distinctions between categories of service. They simply want their children to be protected and their rights upheld wherever they are.
As I say, children have the right to be protected from harmful content and activity by any platform that gives them access. That is why the child user condition in clause 31 should be deleted from the Bill. As I have said, the current drafting could leave problematic platforms out of scope if they were to claim that they did not have a significant number of child users. It should be assumed that platforms are within the scope of the child safety duties unless they can provide evidence that children cannot access their sites, for example through age verification tools.
Although clause 33 provides Ofcom with the power to determine that a platform is likely to be accessed by children, this will necessitate Ofcom acting on a company-by-company basis to bring problematic sites back into scope of the child safety duties. That will take considerable time, and it will delay children receiving protection. It would be simpler to remove the child user condition from clause 31, as I have argued.
Kirsty Blackman
I would have been quite happy to move the amendment, but I do not think the Opposition would have been terribly pleased with me if I had stolen it. I have got my name on it, and I am keen to support it.
As I have said, I met the NSPCC yesterday, and we discussed how clause 31(3) might work, should the Minister decide to keep it in the Bill and not accept the amendment. There are a number of issues with the clause, which states that the child user condition is met if
“a significant number of children”
are users of the service, or if the service is
“likely to attract a significant number of users who are children”.
I do not understand how that could work. For example, a significant number of people who play Fortnite are adults, but a chunk of people who play it are kids. If some sort of invisible percentage threshold is applied in such circumstances, I do not know whether that threshold will be met. If only 20% of Fortnite users are kids, and that amounts only to half a million children, will that count as enough people to meet the child access assessment threshold?
Fortnite is huge, but an appropriate definition is even more necessary for very small platforms and services. With the very far-right sites that we have mentioned, it may be that only 0.5% of their users are children, and that may amount only to 2,000 children—a very small number. Surely, because of the risk of harm if children access these incredibly damaging and dangerous sites that groom people for terrorism, they should have a duty to meet the child access requirement threshold, if only so that we can tell them that they must have an age verification process—they must be able to say, “We know that none of our users are children because we have gone through an age verification process.” I am keen for children to be able to access the internet and meet their friends online, but I am keen for them to be excluded from these most damaging sites. I appreciate the action that the Government have taken in relation to pornographic content, but I do not think that this clause allows us to go far enough in stopping children accessing the most damaging content that is outwith pornographic content.
The other thing that I want to raise is about how the number of users will be calculated. The Minister made it very clear earlier on, and I thank him for doing so, that an individual does not have to be a registered user to be counted as a user of a site. People can be members of TikTok, for example, only if they are over 13. TikTok has some hoops in place—although they are not perfect—to ensure that its users are over 13, and to be fair, it does proactively remove users that it suspects are under 13, particularly if they are reported. That is a good move.
My child is sent links to TikTok videos through WhatsApp, however. He clicks on the links and is able to watch the videos, which will pop up in the WhatsApp mini-browser thing or in the Safari browser. He can watch the videos without signing up as a registered user of TikTok and without using the platform itself—the videos come through Safari, for example, rather than through the app. Does the Minister expect that platforms will count those people as users? I suggest that the majority of people who watch TikTok by those means are doing so because they do not have a TikTok account. Some will not have accounts because they are under 13 and are not allowed to by TikTok or by the parental controls on their phones.
My concern is that, if the Minister does not provide clarity on this point, platforms will count just the number of registered users, and will say, “It’s too difficult for us to look at the number of unregistered users, so in working out whether we meet the criteria, we are not even going to consider people who do not access our specific app or who are not registered users in some way, shape or form.” I have concerns about the operation of the provisions and about companies using that “get out of jail free” card. I genuinely believe that the majority of those who access TikTok other than through its platform are children and would meet the criteria. If the Minister is determined to keep subsection (3) and not accept the amendment, I feel that he should make it clear that those users must be included in the counting by any provider assessing whether it needs to fulfil the child safety duties.
Kim Leadbeater
I agree with thon. Lady’s important point, which feeds into the broader question of volume versus risk—no matter how many children see something that causes harm and damage, one is one too many—and the categorisation of service providers into category 1 to category 2A and category 2B. The depth of the risk is the problem, rather than the number of people who might be affected. The hon. Lady also alluded to age verification—I am sure we will come to that at some point—which is another can of worms. The important point, which she made well, is about volume versus risk. The point is not how many children see something; even if only a small number of children see something, the damage has been done.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree. In fact, I have tabled an amendment to widen category 1 to include sites with the highest risk of harm. The Minister has not said that he agrees with my amendment specifically, but he seems fairly amenable to increasing and widening some duties to include the sites of highest risk. I have also tabled another new clause on similar issues.
I am glad that these clauses are in the Bill—a specific duty in relation to children is important and should happen—but as the shadow Minister said, clause 31(3) is causing difficulty. It is causing difficulty for me and for organisations such as the NSPCC, which is unsure how the provisions will operate and whether they will do so in the way that the Government would like.
I hope the Minister will answer some of our questions when he responds. If he is not willing to accept the amendment, will he give consideration to how the subsection could be amended in the future—we have more stages, including Report and scrutiny in the other place—to ensure that there is clarity and that the intention of the purpose is followed through, rather than being an intention that is not actually translated into law?
Chris Philp
Colleagues have spoken eloquently to the purpose and effect of the various clauses and schedule 3 —the stand part component of this group. On schedule 3, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, asked about timing. The Government share her desire to get this done as quickly as possible. In its evidence a couple of weeks ago, Ofcom said it would be publishing its road map before the summer, which would set out the timetable for moving all this forward. We agree that that is extremely important.
I turn to one or two questions that arose on amendment 22. As always, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked a number of very good questions. The first was whether the concept of a “significant number” applied to a number in absolute terms or a percentage of the people using a particular service, and which is looked at when assessing what is significant. The answer is that it can be either—either a large number in absolute terms, by reference to the population of the whole United Kingdom, or a percentage of those using the service. That is expressed in clause 31(4)(a). Members will note the “or” there. It can be a number in proportion to the total UK population or the proportion using a service. I hope that answers the hon. Member’s very good question.
Kirsty Blackman
My concern is where services that meet neither of those criteria—they do not meet the “significant number” criterion in percentage terms because, say, only 0.05% of their users are children, and they do not meet it in population terms, because they are a pretty small platform and only have, say, 1,000 child users—but those children who use the platform are at very high risk because of the nature of the platform or the service provided. My concern is for those at highest risk where neither of the criteria are met and the service does not have to bother conducting any sort of age verification or access requirements.
Chris Philp
I am concerned to ensure that children are appropriately protected, as the hon. Lady sets out. Let me make a couple of points in that area before I address that point.
The hon. Lady asked another question earlier, about video content. She gave the example of TikTok videos being viewed or accessed not directly on TikTok but via some third-party means, such as a WhatsApp message. First, it is worth emphasising again that in order to count as a user, a person does not have to be registered and can simply be viewing the content. Secondly, if someone is viewing something through another service, such as WhatsApp—the hon. Lady used the example of browsing the internet on another site—the duty will bite at the level of WhatsApp, and it will have to consider the content that it is providing access to. As I said, someone does not have to be registered with a service in order to count as a user of that service.
On amendment 22, there is a drafting deficiency, if I may put it politely—this is a point of drafting rather than of principle. The amendment would simply delete subsection (3), but there would still be references to the “child user condition”—for example, the one that appears on the same page of the Bill at line 11. If the amendment were adopted as drafted, it would end up leaving references to “child user condition” in the Bill without defining what it meant, because we would have deleted the definition.
Barbara Keeley
Is the Minister coming on to say that he is accepting what we are saying here?
Chris Philp
No, is the short answer. I was just mentioning in passing that there is that drafting issue.
On the principle, it is worth being very clear that, when it comes to content or matters that are illegal, that applies to all platforms, regardless of size, where children are at all at risk. In schedule 6, we set out a number of matters—child sexual exploitation and abuse, for example—as priority offences that all platforms have to protect children from proactively, regardless of scale.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister has not addressed the points I raised. I specifically raised—he has not touched on this—harmful pro-anorexia blogs, which we know are dangerous but are not in scope, and games that children access that increase gambling addiction. He says that there is separate legislation for gambling addiction, but families have lost thousands of pounds through children playing games linked to gambling addiction. There are a number of other services that do not affect an appreciable number of children, and the drafting causes them to be out of scope.
The Chair
There is no hard and fast rule about moving the Adjournment motion. It is up to the Government Whip.
Chris Philp
I have a few more things to say, but I am happy to finish here if it is convenient.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Steve Double.)
Public Order Bill (First sitting)
Thursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 View all Public Order Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 9 June - (9 Jun 2022)
The Chair
I have a few preliminary announcements. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. Date Time Witness Thursday 9 June Until no later than 12.15 pm The National Police Chiefs’ Council Thursday 9 June Until no later than 1.00 pm High Speed 2 (HS2) Limited; National Highways Thursday 9 June Until no later than 2.45 pm United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association; Thursday 9 June Until no later than 3.05 pm Adam Wagner, Doughty Street Chambers Thursday 9 June Until no later than 3.25 pm News UK Thursday 9 June Until no later than 4.10 pm Sir Peter Martin Fahy QPM, retired police officer; Matt Parr CB, HM Inspector of Constabulary and HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services; Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby, West Midlands Police Thursday 9 June Until no later than 4.55 pm Amnesty International; Justice; Liberty
We will consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about questions between the oral evidence sessions. In view of the time available, I hope that we can take these matters formally, without debate. I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed on Tuesday 7 June by the Programming Sub-Committee for this Bill.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 11.30 am on Thursday 9 June) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Thursday 9 June;
(b) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 June;
(c) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 June;
(d) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 June;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
3. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 21 June.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
The Committee will proceed to line-by-line consideration of the Bill on Tuesday 14 June at 9.25 am.
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee room and will be circulated to Members by email.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make declarations of interest in connection with the Bill? No, I take it. We will now hear oral evidence from Chief Constable Chris Noble, lead for protest on the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who is joining us via Zoom. I remind Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion. The Committee has agreed that, for this session, we have until 12.15 pm. Can the witness please introduce themselves for the record?
Chris Noble: Good morning, Chair. My name is Chris Noble. I am the chief constable of Staffordshire Police.
The Chair
Thank you, Mr Noble. If, at any time, you have any difficulty in hearing the questions, please indicate and we will make the necessary technical adjustments.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Q
Chris Noble: Thank you, Minister. There is a lot, in terms of looking back. There have been a number of trends. We have seen global causes land on our shores very quickly and having significant impacts. Black Lives Matter is a good example. We have seen causes overlapping, both in terms of membership and tactics. There have been some very novel—without giving them any credit—and highly disruptive tactics; that is reflected on the contents page of the Bill. If we look across the breadth of protest organisations and groups, we see that they are very aware of some of the legal gaps, inadequacies and shortcomings; that is very clear from their engagement with police, as well as their tactics. There is a focus, albeit not exclusively, around what we would call non-violent direct action, which is slightly different from previous protest phases, where violence was maybe more commonplace. That said, it is not completely exclusively non-violent.
Most protests are still relatively non-contentious. However, in terms of complexity, intensity and tactics, there has been a step up, and the assessment going forward is very clear that we will still see those challenges around complexity and the co-ordination and the adapting of protests, and we have significant gaps around our information and intelligence. Even though we will have our own, home-grown causes that people will wish to protest against, I anticipate that a lot of protest will potentially be generated from outside these shores. That is a little bit of the picture on what has been, and what may well be to come.
On impacts, there are safety challenges across the board, including safety risks to some of the protestors, challenges to members of the community on our roads or, indeed, in their communities, and challenges for police officers and private contractors in dealing safely with tactics that we will perhaps talk about. Also, there may be increasing cost as we try to deal with more complex issues—costs either to communities, the businesses impacted, or indeed the police, be it financial or opportunity cost, in terms of officers not being able to work in neighbourhoods, or in serious and organised crime, or in the other roles on which they clearly want to be focused. Those are real challenges, but still, the backdrop is that the vast majority of protest activity is relatively non-contentious. However, there is a hard core, a small element, that I do not see going away any time soon.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: In Staffordshire, we have a very experienced protest removal team, and on occasion they have dealt with individuals glued to the top of fuel tankers by cutting them loose, using cutting equipment. There are obvious risks in that. Equally, if you go on to a busy motorway and glue yourself to it, there is a raft of risks from traffic, and risk to police officers. Understandably, we have seen members of the public, through sheer frustration, look to take matters into their own hands. You can translate that to power stations and other vulnerable sites. Although this may be attention-grabbing and headline-grabbing, the risks to the protestors, the police and members of the public are becoming ever more significant.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: There is quite a disciplined training regime. The training is licensed through the College of Policing. You have command training at what we call gold, silver and bronze levels. The strategists—those who develop a plan—are at the silver level; those who carry it out on the ground are at the bronze level. There is not only initial very intense and comprehensive training for those individuals, but annual continual professional development, which is annotated and logged. There is also re-accreditation to ensure that people are still fit for operation. There are also annual inputs on what has changed—training on new legislation, new powers, learning from court cases, different protest tactics and emerging risks—so there is a continual learning cycle, as well as a very detailed pass-or-fail approach to training.
This week, we had an early morning dial-in with the vast majority of gold commanders across the country to break out some peer learning around Just Stop Oil. It was about what we could do differently, and how we could learn. There are specialist teams in policing that share information and liaise with the Health and Safety Executive and other bodies on how we do our very best to minimise danger to protesters, the wider public and police officers.
The challenge for policing is that training is at one point in time, and tactics and intentions are constantly moving. There is a constant challenge in making police training fit for purpose. The one thing that stays consistent—you alluded to this—is the police commitment to striking the balance between our positive and negative obligations to protest, and our ongoing responsibility to those impacted by protest.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: In short, yes, we would. You have already partly qualified that. For us, the more intrusive our tactics, the more they need to be focused on the harm being caused. In our approach, there has to be a constant test of what is proportionate, and that is subject to significant internal and external scrutiny.
We can see greater risk of harm to communities and protesters if things are left to run. An example was the G7 operation. I was speaking to one of the senior commanders recently, and they described a lack of powers around stop and search for people with items that could only have be used for generating a lock-on device. They had to intervene later in the day, with more significant powers, on a wider group of protesters, therefore interfering with more people’s rights. As long as early intervention and prevention are subject to proportionality tests, and are applied precisely, they are preferable to some of the risks that protesters place themselves under, and some of the significant disruption that they cause to other individuals.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Chris Noble: Sadly, I am no longer a practising operational commander, so I will talk vicariously. You also have Phil Dolby coming to speak to you. He will be able to give you a flavour of the west midlands region. There is a range of powers, but the policing operation begins with communication and engagement. As soon as we are aware of a protest, the first thing we will do is link in with the organisers and understand how we can do our very best to minimise any intrusion on their rights and safeguard the right to protest. Our most powerful tactic is engagement and communication.
Very, very rarely will we ever ban a protest. We hear the lazy soundbite at times that police are looking to ban protests. It has not happened in many years. Even when we apply conditions under sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, which were the subject of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, their usage is limited. We will record those. They are tested, and they are very often subject to court testing as well.
Then we have a range of other powers, depending on the level of criminality or risk that we identify in the protest. We are able to seize items and search properties, but that would be under a plethora of legislation and would be very specific to what we know in advance. In current protests, we often know little until something presents, or until very close to the event time. We have a range of powers, but they are not particularly coherent in the light of what is often a very poor line of sight around protest activity.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes. I will take the example of obstructing the highway; those powers have recently been adjusted. With Insulate Britain and some of the obstruction of the M25 motorway, we were dealing with legislation that was drafted without those tactics or activities in mind. The powers are relatively low level, in terms of consequences; individuals who were arrested could be back on the scene the next day. The capability of some of those powers to deal with repeat protest or reckless protest is very limited, and I think a significant number of the protesters were very aware of that.
On criminal damage, there are opportunities, through those powers, for us to intervene where people are carrying specified items and going equipped to commit criminal damage. Aggravated trespass, which you alluded to, is particularly relevant. In the private space, there is no right to protest in anything like the way that there is in the public space. That is just a flavour of a number of the offences that most commonly come into play in protest. There are others that are perhaps a little more rare, including conspiracy to commit various offences.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: We have tried to make an assessment about the impact of injunctions, especially around Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. The feedback we have had is that when they are appropriately framed and developed at an appropriate pace, they can be very useful in terms of what we are trying to control and how we are trying to shape people’s behaviour. I think, in general though, while they are a key tool, they are not the only one we need.
We have worked hard with private industry to give them information and knowledge about injunctions. I have worked closely with an industry on my own patch that is very up for taking on the responsibility along-side the police service for trying to target harder and prevent protest. On occasions, they will then look to obtain injunctions in terms of trying to prevent harm from being caused to their business, property and employees. Injunctions have been used increasingly frequently, but the challenge is framing them appropriately and securing them within a reasonable timescale so they can have maximum impact.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Again, this is slightly outside my corporate memory, but there have been very lengthy conversations as far back as 2019 with policing, in terms of the public order and public safety portfolios, about the adequacy of some of the powers. That refined itself down into some further conversations around some bespoke powers, many of which appear in the Act you have just referred to.
There is an ongoing conversation around policy in terms of public order and public safety. For example, in some of the Just Stop Oil protests we have seen a cross-departmental approach. The police were clear in identifying where they see some inadequacies and in the effects that they want to achieve. In many ways, there is a rolling conversation around public policy, some of which will translate into legislation at one point or another.
Sarah Jones
Q
You also had some concerns about things in the Bill that he talks about—for example, the potential chilling effect on freedom of assembly that the stop-and-search powers, in particular, could have. Could you give us your view on the non-legislative suggestions that he had and how important they are? What is your view on his concerns about some of the things we are talking about, in particular the suspicionless stop and search and the scope of police power that that provides to you?
Chris Noble: For clarity, when you talk about non-legislative suggestions, what are thinking about?
Sarah Jones
Not changes in the law; most of the recommendations in his report are not about changing the law. They are about
“equipping police commanders with up to date, accessible guidance…ensuring that they consider the levels of disruption or disorder above which enforcement action will be considered; improving the way that police assess the impact of protests…improving the quality of police intelligence on protests…addressing a wide variation in the number of specialist officers available for protest policing throughout England and Wales”.
It goes on. They are all non-legislative recommendations. They are about how you train and support, gather intelligence and have the right people in the right place.
Chris Noble: Absolutely. Thank you. For me, having the right powers is clearly going to be very important. I think the policing ask about the powers is very current, in terms of being up to date with the challenges we face and clear about where the policing remit sits, and the powers being coherent and capable of being implemented. While the approach around legislation is important, there are some qualifiers on it.
Equally, you are right because, in some ways, irrespective of the legislation we are debating today, the overwhelming police commitment, around policing in a human rights-compliant way—policing by consent—fundamentally cuts across all the relevant legislation. That would probably be my key point.
I absolutely agree in terms of training, leadership and learning as we go what we do and do not do well. Having scrutiny around public order operations, whether they be protests or other things, is fundamental in terms of public confidence. This is also about making sure there is no unhelpful orthodoxy of approach within policing; constantly checking and evaluating our training; sharing information within policing; and listening to, and perhaps on occasion challenging, critical voices to make sure we pick up the wide perspective of views around how the police protest policing.
It is also about ensuring that we are accountable. I have a local police, fire and crime commissioner who has a real interest around protest policing and how it is delivered and relevant scrutiny panels, which will look at other matters, such as use of force or disproportionality. One part of the jigsaw is undoubtedly the powers we have. They are important, but as important, and in many ways more important, is how this is done and how policing maintains and secures public confidence.
On that note, I can talk about stop and search as the second element. Again, we recognise this is contentious. Whether this is within protest policing or tackling violent crime, the checks and balances are exactly the same, but there is a gap for us at the minute in terms of, as we alluded to earlier, being able to intervene earlier to try and prevent the more significant harm and disruption that takes place.
This is not about stopping someone protesting. I have no doubt there will be circumstances where we will stop and search and maybe even seize an item from someone, but they will still be facilitated in taking part in a protest. It is very much about recognising that particular articles and equipment are now being used to maximise disruption. Whether it is a suspicion-led or suspicionless power, we see real value in being able to intervene and ensure that the rights of everyone impacted by protest, as well as the rights of those expressing their views through protest, are protected.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, code A will very much apply in terms of how it is done and how records are kept. If we move to a section 60 type power, which is similar to the one in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, again, it would be a senior officer check and balance, and there will be appropriate scrutiny of how it is done. Of course, that can step into the realms of the inspection bodies reviewing it, and indeed of it ultimately being tested in court. We see it as a necessary power. There is a gap, but these things absolutely have to be done proportionately and transparently.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: If we are talking about the serious disruption prevention orders, although the critical decisions will be made by members of the judiciary, obviously the police have a role to play in terms of potentially initiating these. Again, we would anticipate a high threshold. They will be for the most persistent and most reckless offenders, but we have seen a number of individuals who on occasions are making a mockery of not just the law, and less importantly the police service, but communities of interest in terms of their behaviours. I would not anticipate their being used on a common basis, but having the capability around some of the most persistent and reckless offenders would be helpful. There are significant checks and balances built in around capability and assurance in terms of who would grant those.
You are right that the powers exist in other parts of the criminal justice environment, with the supposed mantra being about controlling behaviour and not criminalising it, but we have heard quite a bit of noise from various parties about these things, so I think the rules and the protocols that exist, and the judicial test that would be applied, would be very important to ensure that orders are focused on the most potentially harmful individuals.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Q
Chris Noble: It probably comes back a little bit to the challenge we talked about earlier about thresholds. Quite appropriately, whenever we look at protests, it is baked into part of a democratic society. In terms of articles 9, 10 and 11, from a police point of view, we of course respect those and want to give them appropriate regard. Social media, on the one hand, can be a help to us, in terms of getting a flavour of public sentiment, what is going to happen and where, and where the issues are. It can maybe give us a line of inquiry to follow, in terms of who we might want to engage with and maybe try to support and, where appropriate, in terms of shaping some of the protest’s behaviour and activities.
On other occasions, there may well be offences committed on social media, which clearly we would need to look at, consider and progress with. Very often, most of the conversations taking place around protest are behind closed doors in social media, in various protected groups. Again, the thresholds that we currently work to would not allow us, as a general rule, to penetrate those and find out more information. So social media can be of use, but in terms of the most useful information about understanding the impact on the life of a community, some of that most significant information is not taking place in any sort of public forum at all.
Lee Anderson
Q
Chris Noble: We are open to using new technologies, whether digital technologies or the more traditional capabilities and assets that we have. I think that the challenge that we face, in terms of policing protests is that, again, whenever we look at the various elements of the Bill under discussion, around lock-ons and some other behaviours, there is a real complexity to the devices that, from a policing point of view, will take significant time to deal with, and, indeed, from a private company point of view, can take significant time and effort to deal with too.
Of course, the challenge is that a wide range of people are, on occasions, involved in protest—it might well be their first time within protest; it may well not—so in terms of offending behaviours and previous criminal records, some of the elements there, which may well be appropriate in bringing someone to account, may well not be there. We are open to using any and all tactics within protest, but as I say, probably the common theme around protest is around non-violent direct action; people who are very legally aware; flash protests, which emerge with limited notice; and some quite complex lock-ons, which individuals know we need to be very thoughtful in how we deconstruct, with regard to rights and safety.
There is no magic bullet to dealing with modern protest. It is a combination, as we have just heard, around legislation, engagement and appropriate tactics, and then constantly trying to be innovative in trying to strike the balance between competing rights.
Lee Anderson
Q
Chris Noble: This is very close to home. We have a live operation in Staffordshire, which has been running now for some time, involving a number of protesters. It is incredibly complex, clearly. We have a limited idea of what is going on under the ground, in terms of what risks might be there. Are they near utilities? What risk could there be in terms of collapse of tunnels? It is clearly not a safe environment unless it is done by professional tunnellers. There is an inherent risk there, as well as the impact on the legitimate business going on in that area.
At this point—this probably goes to the core of one of the key issues that police are keen to discuss within the Committee—the vast majority of that work is done by the landowners and private companies that are skilled and experienced within this work. While I have some dedicated resources allocated to that at present, if that responsibility was to significantly shift to policing, it would cost me probably in the region of £80,000 a day to resource that. It would need significant officer resources, which clearly would need to come from elsewhere, so it is not only inherently dangerous; it is costing significant money and it is undoubtably impacting on the genuine, legitimate business interests of various companies.
The key, for me, is not so much even, necessarily, an offence around tunnelling, because we may well have powers that, broadly speaking, exist to deal with it—we are keen to develop that conversation. The challenge is in preventing it in the first place, and then in how we can work with industry and landowners on how we could potentially remove individuals more quickly. However, we are concerned that we have seen tunnelling come back on the radar again, and people will be held to account for what they do.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Q
Chris Noble: From a gold point of view, we probably have two or three officers who are trained or just about to do a credit, but we are also able to draw on neighbouring forces for that strategic support and command role, and top that up as necessary. Silver-wise, it is probably more in the region of maybe a dozen officers, again either accredited or being trained. For bronze, it is probably more in the region of a couple of dozen officers.
Now, this is not their day job. They do not wake up every morning and become a bronze commander and that is all they do—they are neighbourhood officers, they work in the criminal investigation department, they work in public protection teams—so while we have significant numbers of command officers, they are constantly being drawn for other matters. Whenever we have environmental protests or protests around High Speed 2 or other areas, there is a drain of that leadership role from elsewhere. We maintain hundreds of other officers within Staffordshire with a range of public order skills and capabilities but, again, none are completely dedicated to it. We would have about two dozen officers trained, as a minimum, in some other specialist skills as well. It is a significant commitment to maintain that training, but Staffordshire has definitely attracted some significant protest activity, so it is a necessary investment.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: Training for the more specialist roles could be at least two or three weeks a year, in terms of the various skills that they need to maintain. For general public order trained officers, you are talking about two to three days per year to maintain that. From a command point of view, depending on refreshers, it could be a week a year. The bigger challenge is when they are deployed. If we take, for example, Just Stop Oil—we supported colleagues in a neighbouring force. Our protest removal team was essentially out of force for two weeks, consistently maintained within those deployments. There are abstractions around training, but we are finding because of the dynamics of the protest environment at the minute, either in force or supporting other parts of the country, those abstractions are increasing.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: I see your line of questioning. I suppose we would be hopeful that by being able to intervene earlier, we could maybe limit the impact of protest. I think the proof of that will come out in terms of whatever moves from the Bill into formal legislation.
The biggest challenge that policing has at the minute—one we are keen to discuss as the Bill progresses—is any shift from public realm protest policing. If we moved more into a private space than currently, we would see that as potentially being incredibly significant for money and opportunity lost in terms of policing communities. Those abstractions would probably quite fundamentally change my local model of policing, in terms of being able to maintain that. That does not mean that we are any less committed to working with businesses and organisations to try to minimise the extreme disruption that can be caused to them on occasions.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: Not within Staffordshire. That said, when you look at the challenge that is applied to policing of protest from those who protest, from those who are not happy with protest and those in the media looking on, I am not quite sure why some people would want to, but they do—they step up. They are excellent. They come back from training. They seek out the roles. They are open to feedback and learning and training. I have a huge amount of regard for them.
I have not found people being reticent to step up because, fundamentally, it is a core part of our democracy. Having local officers dealing with local protest, who are then policing those communities the next day, is incredibly important for me. I have not seen a reticence, but it is an incredibly challenging job. Very often, there is a perception that we do not get it right, when actually the inspection report was very clear that in the vast majority of occasions we did and a minor recalibration was required around the balance we needed to strike.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: There is a rolling assessment with a part of policing called NPoCC, which is the police co-ordination body. As it becomes clearer what legislation will take place, those conversations will step up in terms of what it might mean for other jurisdictions, whether the legislation applies and whether the learning transfers across. We are constantly in contact with the devolved Administrations, and with European colleagues more widely, about legislation, tactics and police capability. Rest assured that those conversations will continue.
The Chair
Andrew Bridgen and then Anne McLaughlin, but we will need quick questions and quick answers if everybody who wants to participate can get a chance.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Q
Chris Noble: No, not as yet, but we are very aware that as legislation is cast, people will look to see where it begins and ends, so I think it will be a constant piece of scrutiny from us.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Chris Noble: I think it has that potential. Clearly, as to how it actually works on the ground, each circumstance will need its own assessment and its own operation. That will play through, but there is no doubt that a number of the elements in the Bill are clearly responding to current challenges for policing. But ultimately, this will still be down to individual choices, decisions made on the day and the attempt to try to balance the rights that are at play. This is not a science for police officers in day-to-day public order policing: it is an art, it is discretion and it is matters of judgment. As elected Members, I know that you appreciate that. As we said earlier, this is a key element around trying to have current and up-to-date legislation, but there are elements of the Bill where defining a bit more what they mean and do not mean would be very helpful for day-to-day policing, however we achieve that precision of language and detail.
The Chair
Anne McLaughlin and, if there is time, Rupa Huq, but we have to finish at 12.15 pm.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Q
Chris Noble: I do not want to broadcast too easily what people might want to use, but it is a good challenge. There will be very obvious elements, such as bamboo poles or scaffolding, which would probably give us a bit of a hint. But you are right: there are other, more innocuous items, such as bicycle locks—clearly, there are many cyclists around—glue and so forth. It will have to be very context-specific. It may well be relevant to other behaviours at the time—what else is going on, and have we picked up something on social media? It will be down to individual discretion. Again, this is not about criminalising people. The outcome we are looking for is minimising disruption, so the policing focus will be around how we do that, as opposed to how we criminalise someone for having an item that can be very difficult to prove exactly what it is for.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
“We agree with the police and Home Office that such orders would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”
Do you agree with that? If not, could you say why, and how issuing one of these to someone without any criminal conviction is compatible with human rights legislation?
Chris Noble: The language is slightly different, albeit the concept is broadly similar—HMICFRS was looking at and discussing protest banning orders. From a policing point of view, unless we knew the exact circumstances of the individual it would be hard to say how exactly the orders could be justified. As I alluded to earlier, we would see them as potentially being relevant to more persistent and reckless offenders when other methods of intervening were not seen as successful or were not capable. The standard tests on proportionality would be applied, and ultimately it would be a matter for the relevant judge to make a decision as to how they could be justified or not. I would not rule out them ever being used—I see it very much as a top-end tactic or power—but I would not want to preclude the creativity and ingenuity of protesters meaning the orders might well be the only thing left open to us.
The Chair
Mr Noble, I wanted to allow you to finish that answer, but that brings us to the end of our allotted time. Thank you.
Examination of Witnesses
John Groves and Nicola Bell gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from John Groves, Chief Security and Resilience Officer at High Speed 2 Ltd, and Nicola Bell, Regional Director South East at National Highways. For this panel, we have until 1 pm. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Nicola Bell: Hello. My name is Nicola Bell and I am the regional director for National Highways in the south-east. On a day-to-day basis I am responsible for the day-to-day running of the motorway and A road network in the south-east of England.
John Groves: Good afternoon. I am John Groves and I am the chief security and resilience officer for HS2 Ltd. My role principally involves protecting and safeguarding HS2 and, in this context, dealing with the protestor risk.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you say, we are under constant attack from illegal protest. We work closely with the police and seek their support in dealing with that, but in the past we have had to use three High Court injunctions on different parts of the route because we felt we were not getting where we needed to through using the police.
We have applied for a route-wide injunction, there has been a hearing and we are waiting for the outcome. Rather than going back every time to each parcel of land, we have asked the court to give us a full route-wide injunction, which we hope will have some effect on the behaviour of the illegal protestors. The decision by HS2 to seek that High Court injunction was taken in between the failure of the previous legislation and the introduction of this legislation. We hope the High Court injunction will have a positive effect, but it is still limited and we still look to the police to support us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It can vary. We can secure a High Court injunction pretty quickly, depending on the circumstance, but it can take a long time—two to three months. Our application for the current injunction went in in March and there was a hearing at the end of May. We are still waiting for the outcome of that decision, and as soon as we hear, we will want to get moving on it.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you said at the beginning, they are very expensive, and they do not always have the effect that we are seeking. Fundamentally, what we are seeking to do is deter illegal protester behaviour and stop it happening. What we have seen, as the chief constable alluded to, is that HS2 is running an operation right now in Staffordshire with people who have been subject to court action in the past, and just continue to come back and repeat the same behaviour against us. It is useful, but it is not having the full effect that we need.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Absolutely. Just to put it in context, we look after something like 4,500 miles of motorway and A roads, and the difference we saw this time around was that they are not just related to a site, like HS2 for example. We had protesters literally popping up everywhere; you did not know where they were going next. The police were arresting them using their existing powers—obstruction of the highway, maybe—but they were telling us that that was not a deterrent to them coming back out literally the next day, which was why we then sought to get injunctions ourselves.
We ended up applying for four injunctions in total. We were granted all of them, and if those people then went back out again, ultimately we had to follow that through with committal proceedings, which take a lot of time and effort. That alone—those people breaching that injunction order—was the thing that meant they would be sent to prison or ordered to pay costs. In total, we ended up with 34 defendants. Some were sent immediately to prison, which I think ranged from 24 days to six months, and then you had 18 people who ended up with two-year suspended sentences, but it was for National Highways to pursue that, not the police, because the injunctions that we were granted did not come with a power of arrest. If you are a local authority, for example, you can get a power of arrest with an injunction. We are a private limited company, so we cannot, and therefore it is up to us to keep on going with the injunction process.
It is important to point out that you then have two processes running in parallel. The civil proceedings have now happened, and the police are only now starting the criminal proceedings, which will probably run until December this year. Remember, that is for protests that happened on our network at the tail end of last year. The first protest by Insulate Britain was on 13 September, and the last one was on 2 November, so we had over 30 protests in 15 locations in less than two months.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: We have recorded 1,600 incidents against HS2 since the end of 2017. All of that is unlawful activity—trespass, violence against staff, criminal damage. Not all of those offences will lead to an arrest or any legal action. So, for us, this legislation is about the deterrent effect—absolutely. The extent to which it will cause a behavioural change in those who are participating is, I guess, the open question, but I would certainly see that tougher sentences and more police action would help—absolutely.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. It is probably everything and anything. We have seen violence against both staff and against those who are building the railway—so it is not just security staff who engage with them. These are protests that are taking place not just on the ground, but in tunnels. I am sure that you will all remember what happened at Euston; there was a 25-tunnel network under Euston. When we went in there to remove the protesters, the protesters were using lock-on devices sub-surface. There was violence against staff in there.
We have seen large-scale trespass. In Buckinghamshire, we did an operation to remove protesters from a site. We secured the venue, but they came back with about 100 people. They shone lasers in the eyes of staff members, they threw human waste around—I mean, it is the full panoply. What is different between what you see against HS2 as compared with other locations is that it is probably quite invisible to most of the public. Again, we have got an operation live at the moment. I have four protesters in a tunnel at the moment and they have been there since 10 May, and that is costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money. The safety risk to them, not just to the people who are working on the surface to support them, is significant. As you say, up until the end of March, £126 million of taxpayers’ money has had to go into protester removal or the cost to HS2 of the delay that these illegal protesters are causing us.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Indeed, yes.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Yes. I mean, if you consider the definition of “protest”, you have people protesting in Swynnerton, Staffordshire—they are not particularly visible to the public. Other than probably at Euston, that is what we have seen consistently right across the piece. I would say that nearly every day there is something—there is an incident, an unlawful act against HS2.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: I hope so. I mean, it is about the deterrent. The overwhelming issue for us is tunnelling, because it is the thing that causes us the most significant cost and delay. We can, with the support of specialist contractors, move people off our land, but when there are tunnels involved, or high structures, which we also see quite regularly—they will build structures on the surface, at height, and underground. However, the tunnels are the most significant, for us, in terms of removal and, again, the safety risk is significant.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes, absolutely. The thing is that I think a lot of people at the time thought that an injunction was the thing to go and do, but you must see it through; you must follow up with the committal proceedings, and it is that that then takes the time. We had to apply for a very urgent injunction, sometimes overnight, with things being prepared at pretty breakneck speed in order to try and protect what we were seeing. I am sure you are all aware of what we saw on the M25, with people either gluing themselves or sitting on the road. It is about the resource intensity that is needed to follow that up and follow that through. If I take the example of a day that they were protesting, on 8 October, by the time that got to court, that was at the end of November and by then Insulate Britain had called off its protests.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes, two years.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: No. I think you heard from the chief constable earlier that the arrests being made on the day were being made for low-level criminal offence—I think they were the words the chief constable used—for obstruction of the highway. It was literally going to the police station, getting processed and, the very next day, often the same person going out to another part of the M25 to do the very same thing again.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes. I am a civil engineer not a lawyer, but—sorry.
Kit Malthouse
Q
So in your view, would it be a sensible move to combine the best of both? Effectively having a power of arrest for an offence that attracts a not dissimilar level of sentencing, which might act as a deterrent, that you would get under an injunction.
Nicola Bell: I think the level of offence is a matter for the police. For me, it is the same as John has mentioned. It is about the deterrent and, for me, it is really about safety. Walking on to a 70-mph road is not wise. If you look on Insulate Britain’s website, you will see evidence of the day they blocked the M25 at junction 25, where four protestors came out and sat on the road. They did exactly the same on the opposite side of the carriageway and that footage clearly shows the police in danger, my traffic officers in danger and the protestors in danger as people are trying to swerve, brake and avoid them. What is included in the Bill, I hope, offers that deterrent. That is what I would like to see given that my job is about trying to keep the motorway network flowing as freely and as safely as possible. If something deters them in terms of the locking on or interfering with infrastructure—of course, we have talked a little bit about the serious disruption prevention orders that might be available—maybe that might mean that you do not have to apply for an injunction because, actually, those repeat offenders could be tackled through that means.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: I do not have the exact figure, but I will just give you a couple of examples. There is a day when they protested at Littlebrook interchange, just off junction 1A of the M25—maybe some of you will know it. Four protestors sat across our traffic signal control junction. You might have thought that was not going to cause too much impact because it is just a little bit off the M25. The impact was 4 km of slow-moving and queuing traffic over the Dartford crossing, and it took until lunchtime for the effects of that to disappear. The day they protested down at the port of Dover, they sat on the road, but two protestors climbed up the side of an oil tanker and glued themselves to the top of the oil tanker while we got rid of the people on the road. By mid-morning, the effects of that around the roads in Dover were felt until about half-past 5 in the evening. The economic impact of that alone, given the importance of road freight to the UK and goods coming in and out of Dover, probably speaks for itself.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
John Groves: I come back to the tunnel point I made earlier. I assume that those that participate in going on to land and trespassing on land and digging tunnels know that they are breaking the law. but they do not see the current law as a significant deterrent to stop them from doing that. The police will always seek the balance between lawful protest and the rights of the landowner or whoever. Invariably, that often means issues with access to sites.
Access to some of our sites has been delayed for about eight hours. We cannot do any work. We cannot move vehicles in or out of our sites, because protesters are sat down outside at the access point, sometimes locked on, sometimes not. The police are there but they will not take action because they are allowing the right to protest. Because the protestors are not on HS2 land, we cannot do anything about that. We cannot move them on—on the public highway, only the police can move them on.
My sense is that this Bill, if enacted, will provide a deterrent effect for the protestors. I come back to the safety point—I am sorry to keep going on about tunnelling. Four people in a tunnel is such a serious thing; I am concerned that we will have a fatality at some point in the future. We have been really lucky. We have had four or five tunnel incidents and we have yet to have any serious injury, but I suspect it will come one day, if it continues in the way it is going. If we look at our data, we are seeing protestors turning to tunnelling more readily. In the operation we have just run, there were four shafts on one piece of land; they moved on to another piece of land very quickly and they started to dig a tunnel. We were able to get in quickly and move them on. That is my principal concern.
Anne McLaughlin
Do you want to respond, Nicola? You do not have to.
Nicola Bell: No, it is the same as what I was talking about before. It is about the fact that the police recognised that there was nothing that would stop somebody just keeping on doing this. They could arrest them, but it was a low-level criminal offence and ultimately that was not going to deter what we were seeing, which was pretty unprecedented, really—that level of protest in the south-east of England over the tail end of last year.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Q
I was hoping you could expand on your earlier answer to give the Committee more of a feel for the impact of this kind of traffic disruption on the Kent and Dover economy and its importance to the strategic network for the nation, and for some of the safety and other challenges in dealing with these incidents that are different from the ordinary traffic disruption that your team deal with on a more regular basis.
Nicola Bell: The bounds of my responsibility would be, for example, the traffic officers that you see as they patrol the network. On the day of a protest, our role would be to try and create a safe space for the police to then get in and do their job. For example, on the day that they protested down in Dover, that was about protecting the area to allow the police to get specialist people in to get protestors off the top of the tanker and to therefore get the port open again and get things running.
On your point about the economy, as I mentioned earlier, 80% of domestic freight still uses road, so that is a pretty big impact on the economy. We know that most of our goods come in and out of the port of Dover, so therefore the roads they take—the M20, the A20 and the A2—are very significant indeed. Ultimately, the cost also relates to people not getting to where they need to be on time—whether that is missed appointments or freight not getting to where it needs to get to on time. I do not have an exact figure for the impact on the economy. I know that some of that has been worked on, and we can perhaps provide that to the Committee in writing afterwards.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q
Nicola Bell: What we saw was that, first, they got themselves on to the road and sat down, then they waited until the police arrived, and then they started to lock on so that they were causing maximum delay. I would say that, on average, if you had 10 of them sat down, at least three quarters of them were glued.
Tom Hunt
Q
Nicola Bell: You can see in some of the footage, which is freely available on Insulate Britain’s website, that the police are trying to stop them putting their hands down on the road surface. As soon as they put their hand on the road surface, specialist teams need to come in to de-bond them, as it were. That adds to the safety risk but it also adds to the delay.
Tom Hunt
Q
John Groves: In the most recent experience I can talk about, the police were frustrated that they were not able to step in and deal with it. They were not on the ground immediately. Certainly, there is frustration from my team on the ground that the police are not more direct with some of the protesters; that is certainly true. Invariably, what happens on HS2 sites is that protests get there some weeks ahead of when we plan to take possession of land, so they are always looking forward and looking at what we are about to do. We publish all this information online about where the route is and when we will be taking possession, and they are always ahead of that.
Lee Anderson
Q
John Groves: It has a significant impact on morale. Invariably, my security team and my security contractors, who are somewhat used to dealing with difficult people—if I can put it like that—are subjected to verbal abuse pretty much all the time they are confronted with legal protestors.
Obviously, there is a broader range of people who are supporting and delivering for HS2 who did not sign up to being verbally abused or being chased around a field when they are trying to undertake an ecology assessment, for instance. We have also seen throughout our joint ventures that the tier 1 contractors that are doing the work of building the railway are having to invest in a lot more physical security and a lot more support for staff across a broad range, so it does have a significant impact.
Lee Anderson
Q
John Groves: Absolutely, that is an issue for the economy—job retention and retaining the skills we need to build the new railway. As you can see from my evidence, we are putting a lot of money into physical security, and we are working through the joint ventures, which have some responsibility for their own staff. Fundamentally, as I said earlier, if this legislation is enacted and it provides that prevention, those risks will reduce, our costs will reduce and, you would hope, the staff who have been impacted will feel far more comfortable and at ease in coming to work every day.
Sarah Jones
Q
I have a couple of follow-up questions. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has not yet come into force, there are lots of changes to protesting. They are not yet law, but they will become law as soon as the Government get around to doing that. One change is that obstruction of a highway will carry a prison sentence of up to six months. The Minister was talking about it being a fine—it will now be a prison sentence of up to six months. There is also a raft of stuff about imposing conditions on static protests, so, if you are organisers of static protests, there are conditions on those, and, again, you can be imprisoned for that.
What is your assessment of the impact that that legislation will have when it comes into force? There is a question as to whether we should implement that legislation to see whether it has an impact before we move on to other things. What is your assessment? Will it have an impact?
John Groves: From HS2’s perspective, it will be limited. Protest on the public highway is limited in terms of the impact it has on us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It may have some positive effect, but—I am sorry to repeat myself—tunnelling is the biggest issue for us, and I do not believe the Bill deals with that. Lock-on, as well, has a serious impact on us.
Nicola Bell: From my perspective, it is about seeing what impact that has and what the outcome will be. Obviously, it will be for the police to decide whether or not they are going to then use that new power to do exactly as you said. It is really about the impact that it has and whether it will be enough to act as a deterrent against people coming back. If it does, that is positive as far as running the strategic road network on a daily basis is concerned.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. The protestors state that in their social media posts and in the things they say directly to us when we are talking to them. They are intent on stopping the project. They want to stop the railway. They believe it is the wrong thing to do.
We have had to shift how we approach the removal operation by taking land earlier, to build in sufficient time for removal, so that it does not have a direct impact on the programme. We have learned as we have gone along and, as the protestor strategy has changed, our reaction to that has changed. Again, it is expensive work, having to have a High Court enforcement team, paramedics and mine rescue there 24/7, since 10 May, until they come out. Then we hand that over to the police and also probably the ambulance service.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
John Groves: I would expect that, if the legislation is enacted and the police pursue charges against individuals who are breaking these laws, it will have a direct effect. At the moment, when you compare the number of incidents we are seeing against the number of prosecutions and convictions, there is a disparity. I would hope this legislation would initially have a significant effect, and hopefully the deterrent effect will tail off after that and we would see a reduction in it. That is how I see it.
Nicola Bell: Similar to what I said earlier, for me it is about that repeat offence, where people keep going back out. That is one of the biggest impacts for us—what could be used under the serious disruption prevention order. I guess it is about them having more powers. All I can say is that, with the system as it is working at the moment, the police are telling us they do not have anything to deter and so they continue this repeated behaviour—hence why the injunctions were sought.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
John Groves: I do not know. In terms of the numbers of people we see protesting against HS2, we think there is roughly about 150 that are the core. Within that, there is a focused 20 people. It is not a big number, but we also see that they move between different causes and different protests. I suspect that we will see some of the people Nicola has been talking and vice versa. They will move. If there were a new Heathrow runway being built or a new nuclear build, they would probably move in those directions as well.
It is a relatively, I think, small community, albeit they draw in quite a large number every now and then. They will move on to other things, which is probably why the order would be helpful in that respect. At the moment, we are focused on HS2 actions in terms of our security and injunction work, but if the order has a broader effect across protester activity in general, that would be positive.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
John Groves: It is not just standard security for a site, which you would expect to see anywhere. The direct costs of protester activity to the taxpayer up to the end of March were £126 million. We estimate that by the end of next year, that could in a worst-case scenario reach £200 million.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
John Groves: Certainly, looking at the Bill when it was published, the things we have seen and discussed today are important. The introduction of the tunnelling amendment is very positive from our perspective. I have not got any comment on the timing of it.
Anne McLaughlin
I suppose that is a question for the Minister, but I am not allowed to ask the Minister.
The Chair
We are questioning the witnesses at this stage. In due course, I am sure you will have the opportunity to question the Minister.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Q
John Groves: All I can say is that it is about the penalty that could follow an arrest. As I said earlier, if you contrast the number of incidents we have seen on HS2 sites against the number of arrests, there is a disparity. If there are more arrests as a result of what they are doing today, and there are more penalties, that should have a deterrent effect. In terms of fines, it is interesting that we have seen some offences being prosecuted and resulting in a fine. What sometimes happens, and we have seen this in other places, is that they will crowdfund and those penalties will be paid by others.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
John Groves: We want the legislation to work so that it provides that deterrent. I do not think I can say any more than that.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Absolutely.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: To your first point, once people saw that injunctions were being followed through, committal proceedings were happening and people were going to prison, that did have a deterrent effect, because we have not seen a protest on the strategic road network since 2 November. Three of the injunctions, particularly covering the south-east—the M25, M25 feeder roads, and the roads down to Dover—still exist and are still in place. Certainly, the public mood was something that was different as the protest happened. By the time we saw things through in court the protests were finished. Nobody was seeing them every day, whereas the first time we went it was fresher in people’s memories. People were mostly peaceful but then realised the impact that it could have on their lives—that was clear.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
Public Order Bill (Second sitting)
Thursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. We will hear oral evidence from Elizabeth de Jong, chair of the United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association, and Steve Griffiths, managing director of London Stansted airport, part of MAG, the Manchester Airports Group. Welcome to our witnesses. This session will run until 2.45 pm. Please will the witnesses introduce themselves for the record?
Elizabeth de Jong: Hello. I am Elizabeth de Jong, the chief executive of UKPIA, the Petroleum Industry Association. We represent companies involved with oil refining, fuel production, terminal operations and petrol stations, some of which have been targeted by Just Stop Oil.
Steve Griffiths: Good afternoon. I am Steve Griffiths, the managing director of London Stansted airport, the fourth largest airport in the UK. I have been invited today as an airport operator to discuss the scale and impact of any disruptions to airport operations.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Our experience of protests until April this year was that they were mainly peaceful and occasional. However, their nature changed considerably in April; they have become more widespread, longer and more confrontational. Our main concerns include the safety of staff and protestors. There are significant safety risks, an impact on fuel supply, and increased costs.
In April 2020, 11 terminals were targeted for a number of days, and two forecourts suffered damage and were blocked. A significant number of arrests were made during that period. We followed the tweeting of Essex police, and halfway through April, they were talking about almost 500 arrests; some 12% of those arrested were arrested multiple times.
On the types of activities and the safety risks, there has been locking on, which is dealt with in the Bill. We have seen people lock themselves on, or attach themselves, to the top of stationary tankers, even when they are full, and when asked, they have not moved to empty ones, which would be safer. We have also seen locking on at height, which is when people attach themselves to machinery, pipes or vehicles high up, which means a risk of falls. People have even made their own stretchers to attach themselves to, which can be difficult to deconstruct safely. We have seen smoking on terminal storage tanks, with the safety risks that go with that. Cables have been cut on road tankers, which affects braking, and roads have been undermined—networks of tunnels have been dug under roads, affecting main and emergency access roads.
That causes great concern about safety. Refineries and terminals, as I am sure you can imagine, store potentially dangerous substances such as oil, other flammable substances, and substances that can cause chemical burns and can generate extreme heat. There can be a real danger of explosion and of falls from buildings. The activities on such sites are strictly regulated under COMAH—the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015—and of course protestors are not following those regulations; they are putting themselves and staff in danger. There have also been impacts on fuel deliveries and costs to companies.
On what the police can do and what the response has been, the industry has increased security staffing at some sites. There is already fencing and closed circuit television, and there are inspections by operational staff. Some sites have increased security around the clock. However, security staff have limited powers; they can only ask people to leave. Companies have also taken out civil injunctions, which is an option open to them; a number of our members have done so. That is of limited effect, because they do not come with powers of arrest and they take time to put in place, which allows people to come back and target the locations while the injunctions are being put in place. We have encouraged local authorities to take out injunctions, which are a more powerful tool, but, again, they take time to put in place and are costly. During the protests in April, two were put in place, in Essex and Warwickshire.
Steve Griffiths: From my experience as an operator of Stansted airport, which is clearly very much a live operational environment where there are complex, high-risk operations, any protests pose a serious risk to human life—the lives of our staff, our customers, the travelling public, and the protesters—and cause major disruption to the operation.
Our last major significant event was back in 2017, and it related to a deportation flight to Africa. The protesters cut through the security fence around the airport, which ensures its safety and security, using bolt cutters, and breached the airfield. Fourteen protesters then locked themselves around a Boeing 767 jet, which was due to fly the deportation flight to Africa. The impact of that was that the runway was closed for approximately one hour. This was at night time, so there was no daytime visibility, and incoming and departing flights were grounded during that period. Approximately 25 flights registered delays during that hour, and 11 were cancelled, including the flight in question, which was due to fly to Nigeria. We estimated that about 1,700 to 1,800 passengers were impacted by that disruption.
The protesters were arrested by the police, but were ultimately acquitted. We understand from media reporting of the case that they were charged with intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990, but the court acquitted them because the offence requires some element of terrorist activity, which was not deemed to be present in this event. We understand that the Crown Prosecution Service charged the protesters with that offence because other offences that the perpetrators may have been charged with did not carry sentences that adequately reflected the seriousness of the circumstances that we experienced on that night—of forcibly gaining access to a security restricted live airport operation. That is the direct impact of the last major event.
Clearly, we support the right to protest at the airport, and we have designated areas, but this is about cases that infringe on parts of the airport outside those designated areas. I can talk only on behalf of London Stansted, but events have happened across UK airports.
Sarah Jones
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes. I can see a direct reference to locking on. There are a number of elements in the Bill that will be helpful. These are new challenges for us, and the Bill makes a number of enhancements to mechanisms that will be available to the police. The police will, of course, give their view about whether they will help or not.
From what I have read, the Bill will give the police a power to arrest in a timelier and more straightforward way. The current way of giving powers through injunctions could lead to a patchwork of different injunctions in different places, and be confusing, which would mean that police felt less confident in making decisions. The Bill specifically refers to two things: locking on—that looks as though it will be potentially useful—and the definition of key national infrastructure; again, that would enhance the powers and make their use more practicable.
Sarah Jones
Q
I guess my question is whether an offence of locking on—I think that it has its own problems because of the very broad way it is drafted—will be any more helpful than those 500 arrests that the police made; you are talking about people who just come back afterwards.
Elizabeth de Jong: My understanding is that the legislation will reduce the time and cost spent getting the injunctions that allow the arrests. It clearly says, “This is an offence. We don’t need to go through the injunction process.” The issue is the time it takes to get the injunctions; that allows people to reoffend. There might be an opportunity for faster processing as well, but clearly local authority injunctions will allow court appearances to take place sooner.
Steve Griffiths: There is nothing I could add to that. I am really here to talk about the impact of disruption, and I am probably not qualified to comment intensely on the Bill; I leave that to the police.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: The particular areas are Kingsbury and Esso Purfleet; it has been around Essex and Warwickshire. It has also been nationwide, but those are the current ones that have been focused on.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Currently, but the difference that we are seeing in these protests is that they are more widespread, both in number and geography. I think it will be, potentially, that other aspects of supply chains are focused on in the future.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I do not have an opinion on the police response. We have been working together with them, but I am really focusing on what would make their role easy.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It has had an impact on fuel deliveries. It has been hard to estimate that, but, for example, I can give you evidence that for the week ending 3 April, there was a 9% drop, week on week, in fuel deliveries. We have calculated that.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I cannot equate that to an impact on cost; I can say just that there was an impact on deliveries. However, the costs of obtaining injunctions across our members and across the different sites, for example, have run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds—we estimate tipping over the £1 million mark. Our estimate for the cost of obtaining injunctions for local authorities is that they will also be spending that. The cost of security staff has also been at the hundreds of thousands of pounds mark, tipping into the millions. There is an increase in the cost base, and a need to repair for industry, but I am not here to comment on prices at all; that is not something that we address.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Q
I want to explore the Stansted situation a bit more. You have your highly secure zone—that goes without saying for national infrastructure—and people break in through a security fence and close a runway. I think you said that 25 flights were grounded as a result.
Steve Griffiths: Yes.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, indeed. Obviously, the security of the airport is critical to its safe operation, as you said. We have practices and procedures, CCTV and patrols, as well as what we call a “critical” part of the airport for maintaining security. We know about the security that we experience just as travelling passengers; that is equally important around the whole perimeter of the airport.
It is very serious, and any situation like that requires our staff to respond to it as well as ensuring the continued safety of the operation of incoming aircraft and aircraft that could be departing at that time.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Steve Griffiths: No. Obviously, we work with the local police, so we very much have a partnership between the airport police and Essex Police, and they look at intelligence and so on. All the intelligence suggested that it was a protest rather than terrorism.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
“We recognise that the various summary-only offences with which the appellants were originally charged…might…not reflect the gravity of their actions.”
I think that underlines the importance of the matters before us. At the Court of Appeal, Lord Burnett referred specifically to disruption “likely to endanger” the safe operation of the airport or the safety of people there. We have heard from your evidence that the actions that were taken were grave and had real impacts on the airport’s operations and security.
Steve Griffiths: Yes, they did indeed.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: We follow guidance produced by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. New guidance on the security of sites was issued in April by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with the support of national counter-terrorism police and the National Police Coordination Centre. Lots of site security plans are already put in place using guidance and experience, and there are updates; that is continually being reviewed using the best available guidance. It is a tiered system, as people gain access and then further access into the site, but one of the points I wanted to make is that the sites are very large indeed. CCTV and fencing are already there, but it is very hard to stop a large number of people—
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Large perimeters, and a large number of people who are determined to get in and willing to put their own safety at risk. Should security guards or other people want to remove them, they have almost no powers to do so, apart from asking them and pointing out that it is not safe. We have been relying on the police, and in my opinion, we need to make sure that the police have the powers of arrest in order to remove those people, for their safety as much as anybody else’s.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It would be a proper emergency catastrophe—explosions, fire, life-ending.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I do not have that figure off the top of my head, I am afraid, but all the sites that have been targeted, all the areas of the supply chain—the petrol stations as well—are places that have the potential for explosions. Safe working is needed in those areas, and that is what we are very concerned about. In fact, petrol stations are one of the areas that are specifically not included in the new Bill. One of our asks is for that to be considered, and for the scoping of the Bill to be as wide as possible in order to include all aspects of the supply chain, because petrol stations could endanger the public—in fact, arguably more so than oil terminals. That would put staff as well as protesters at risk.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Steve Griffiths: Obviously, the Home Office determines those deportation-type flights and works with all of the UK airports. There is no doubt that that will become more public and more prevalent, and it does heighten the potential risk to us as an airport as well.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
Steve Griffiths: Certainly from my perspective, I do not feel qualified to answer that question, unfortunately.
Mr Mohindra
Elizabeth, do you want to give it a go?
Elizabeth de Jong: I have not researched that myself, but the companies we represent are international companies. If it would be of interest to the Committee, I could ask how that operates for them as well. Let me know if that is something you would like me to follow up on.
Mr Mohindra
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: That is exactly what we would be seeking as well. Just in the same way as we have seen an evolution in the last year of the types of protest down and around the supply chain, we would like the drafting to reflect the continued evolution of protests and to cover as much of the supply chain as possible, and what the next target might be. In terms of “key national infrastructure”, the “downstream oil” sector is very useful to have. I think it will give the police confidence that this is an area where they can intervene and make arrests. But we would like the definition of key national infrastructure to be more specific and to include roads as well as buildings, to include vessels—tankers, for example—and infrastructure under construction. All these things are important to the supply chain, but also very important for the safety of the protesters, staff and the public. Specifically, as I have mentioned, petrol stations have been excluded; we think that they are important for safety as well.
Mr Mohindra
Thank you. Steve, is there anything from you?
Steve Griffiths: No, nothing to add from me, thank you.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Steve, you have said, and I would agree, that we absolutely support the right to peaceful protest. We absolutely support the right to free speech. That is really important to us as a trade association. Free speech—debate—is very important for you as well. However, what we are looking at here is the impact on people’s safety. That is also very important.
Anne McLaughlin
I understand that, but I am asking about—
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes, I promise I will try to answer that. Our industry is vital to achieving net zero, and there is lots the oil industry is already doing, and is wanting to invest in, to be part of the solution. We are producing more low-carbon biofuels. We are delivering and manufacturing sustainable aviation fuels. We are running some of the biggest hydrogen and carbon capture projects in the country. We are delivering the electric vehicle charging network; we are producing lubricants for electric vehicles as well. Personally, we think dialogue is very important. That is the essence of our democracy. But we also support peaceful protests and free speech in all ways. But if we are focused on dealing with protests and spending money on protests, that money arguably could instead help continue the work that we are doing to achieve net zero.
Steve Griffiths: I would echo everything that Elizabeth has said. It is obviously important, from the perspective of the aviation industry, that the Government have set out a plan to achieve net zero carbon by 2050. That is a plan that all of the industry has signed up to. As the largest airport group in the UK, MAG has a plan to achieve that by 2038, which is 12 years ahead of the Government target. Again, contributions to further advancing that would only help our industry, and that is what we will be looking for. As we have said, we have no objections about the right to protest, but it should be done peacefully.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
The Chair
I think we are straying into the debate around net zero rather than the issue in hand.
Anne McLaughlin
What I am really trying to say is that they disagree with the answers that you have given me; if they have a different view, they must have the right to protest. How can they do that and make an impact, while dealing with the safety and disruption concerns we have talked about?
Steve Griffiths: I can only comment in a limited way on this. Advancing this subject is really about innovation, technology and research and development. Obviously, we have to be realistic about the step changes that we can make, which is why in the industry that I work in the Government have set out a very clear plan. I know that all parts of the industry are looking at ways to achieve that a lot earlier. At the heart will be design, research, innovation and technology—that will drive it. Those elements have to be at the top of the industry’s and the Government’s agenda if we are to achieve that.
Elizabeth de Jong: And creating the right investment environment for the investments and the innovation as well. It is that type of dialogue that can speed this along. Some 96% of energy used in the transport sector currently comes from oil, so to just stop oil would have quite catastrophic impacts on society and the economy, but there are plenty of ways to debate this and to look at the policies that are needed.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I am afraid I am going to have to leave that for the police and those who work in that area who have studied what the best incentives are for people. We are definitely focused on how to make things safe in our industry and how our society can work more efficiently and effectively.
Steve Griffiths: I cannot really comment on that. It is really for the police to determine, but we obviously support their having the right tools because, at the heart of this, as Elizabeth has said, is the safety of the protesters, the general public and customers, as well as our colleagues. That is really important.
Matt Vickers
Q
Steve Griffiths: I am here to talk about the disruptions; I cannot really talk about the policy itself.
Elizabeth de Jong: The areas we have focused on are the definitions of key national infrastructure. Locking on is important, and it is important that petrol stations are included. We do not have views on the other areas of the Bill, around stop and search for example. That is for people who have studied and are expert in what deters people or does not deter people.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Q
Steve Griffiths: That is clearly one obvious option, yes.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, certainly. We work with the police on intelligence and they do a lot of scanning to try to look at risks that are presented at the airport, but certainly, having those facilities to stop people directly and search them would be helpful.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, we have a very well-defined plan that is a joint plan between the airport, the airport police and Essex police. That is really around the seriousness with which we take breaches on the airport. We have to have a very clear escalation plan and very clear, constant monitoring in place, because the seriousness of the disruption it causes, and also the threat to safety, is significant to us as an operating airport.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes. Site security and risk assessment per se, given that we work in such a tightly regulated and potentially dangerous environment, are very much at the core of all operations throughout the downstream oil sector.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Indeed.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, there seem to be slightly different issues. The issue with the flight was a slight one-off, in that people were objecting to that particular flight going away. There is a particular problem, it seems, with people trying to block entire infrastructure programmes across the country. They are two quite different things and I think they need a slightly different response.
I want to confirm with you, Mr Griffiths, that the police arrested the people but that the issue was that the charge was not right. It was not that they were not arrested and taken away; it was just that the charge did not stick because the right charge was not there, if you see what I mean.
Steve Griffiths: Yes, you have the fact that the incident occurred in the first place and then, as you say, the perpetrators were arrested, but then the subsequent charge fell apart because of, presumably, a gap in legislation, in that the route taken for prosecution did not stand up. On your first question, I do not have that answer with me today.
Elizabeth de Jong: I have some information on the first one. We received police intelligence about the attacks and that intelligence was broadly correct.
Sarah Jones
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It was very helpful indeed.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank our witnesses for the evidence. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Adam Wagner gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Adam Wagner, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. We have until 3.5 pm for this session. Will Mr Wagner introduce himself for the record?
Adam Wagner: Good afternoon. My name is Adam Wagner and I am a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. I practice in human rights law and public inquiries, and I do a lot of work on protest law.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: Okay. I will start with the general question about what I think of the legislation. It is important to frame this debate properly. In this country, our tradition is that protest is something that is permitted. It is not seen as a social evil; it is seen as a social good. A certain level of disruption is inevitable in any successful protest. That is how you get people’s attention: you disrupt, and you put yourself in front of them. That is not a new thing; it is very old. It goes back to the suffragettes, who I am sure many people giving evidence will mention.
Every social movement in history that has a protest element has always used an element of disruption, and there will of course be times when disruption steps over the line into violence and such serious disruption that society will not tolerate it. At that point, the criminal law will intervene, and there is always an uneasy balance between where you put the line, because you accept that conscientious protest about important issues is something that democracy needs for the public to communicate directly to the rest of society and to you—the people who are in charge. That is always the context.
All the court authorities on these kinds of issues recognise that protest is disruptive, unruly and something that annoys people, particularly if they do not agree with the views. If somebody does not agree with a view, that is a very good reason to not allow them to be in charge of whether the person can be express it. That is why it is very dangerous to start tinkering with a law because of views you do not approve of, because the next lot will come along and do the same for the views you do approve of. So we keep a level of tolerance towards protest—that is the way I would frame it.
For the most part, the mechanisms that the Bill puts in place essentially criminalise peaceful protest. That is what the Bill does: it criminalises peaceful protest in a way that has not been done before. It treats peaceful protest like knife crime, drug dealing or terrorism. I do not mean that metaphorically; I mean it directly. Serious crime disruption orders and terrorism disruption orders stop people doing something in future—those are the kinds of methods we have used to disrupt terrorism, knife crime, drug dealing and gang violence. I have been involved in lots of cases involving those kinds of orders. If the Bill is used by police—they will be under pressure to use it in particular instances—the end result will be lots more protesters in the criminal courts, in very long and complicated trials that involve looking at the proportionality of the protest in question, as we saw with the Colston statue case. But it will be 100 times more, because all these offences have a reasonable excuse—I can come to that. I think that is one thing you will see.
The other thing you will see is a lot more protesters in prison—and a lot more peaceful protesters in prison. I do not have any issue with, and I do not think human rights law has any issue with, violent protesters being treated as criminals—the European convention on human rights entirely accepts that violent protest does not fall under the protection of the right to protest—but all these provisions are about peaceful protest, and it will end up with hundreds and hundreds of protesters in the prison system. I see that from my own work. An increasing amount of protesters are going to end up in prison because of the injunctions. That is my general view, but I can talk about specifics.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, we heard from previous witnesses about cases in which people have glued themselves to motorways in a dangerous way, and about people locking themselves on and tunnelling under things—doing things that are criminal and dangerous. That is the problem that the Bill is seeking to tackle: the small number of people who are repeatedly doing things that are dangerous for themselves and others. It would be helpful for you to explain how that marries with your view that the Bill will affect loads of peaceful protesters.
Adam Wagner: Hard cases make bad law, is the aphorism. I think that is true. I listened to a previous witness say that locking on is a new phenomenon; the suffragettes were locking on and Gandhi was locking on—these are very old protest methods. Anybody that breaks into an airport or an oil refinery, or blocks a motorway, can be arrested and charged under existing criminal law. That is absolutely uncomplicated.
One of the misapprehensions about the Insulate Britain protests—I read it in the newspapers—was that the police could not arrest people until there was an injunction in place. That is completely the wrong way round. Injunctions do not give powers of arrest to the police; court enforcement officers gain powers of arrest from injunctions, but the police can arrest people for obstruction of the highway in the same way that they have been able to for a long time. There are all sorts of other criminal offences that can be used—aggravated trespass is the other catch-all one. When someone is on the road they can still be trespassing if they are not using it for a permitted purpose. Aggravated trespass applies to any private land, including airports, oil refineries and petrol stations.
In terms of dealing with the issue at the time and on the ground, the Bill is not going to make any difference at all. The police can go in and arrest people—there is nothing stopping them. They can use reasonable force to unlock people who are locked on. The police will have exactly the same powers to do that under all these new offences. The difference—to use a term that has come up—is the downstream. Instead of those people potentially going to prison for a bit, or not going to prison at all, they will end up going to prison for a long time. The clauses of the Bill create a culminative effect—it is like being a petty criminal: once you start and are in the criminal justice system, you get longer and longer sentences and everything stacks up, one after the other. The courts have more and more draconian powers that they can use against you. The Bill creates that culminative effect for peaceful protesters.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: A serious disruption prevention order follows the model of lots of other such orders in our laws, such as serious crime prevention orders, gang orders and drug dealing prevention orders. It is the same exact model. As drafted, a serious disruption prevention order allows a court a power if someone is convicted of any offence under the new offences.
For example, having superglue in their pocket would be an offence under the regulations, because it could be used for a lock-on. Arguably, too, a bicycle lock on their bicycle could be used for a lock-on. Once that is triggered and they get convicted of an offence, the court can then look at their background and, if they have been involved in a protest that even potentially might cause serious disruption, that is all that is needed—
“capable of causing serious disruption to two or more”—
and could trigger the power for the judge to impose an order of up to two years that prevents them from doing all sorts of things. They might not be allowed into a town centre for two years, or to associate with particular people, or they could be given electronic tagging requirements. Once that is in place, they could be dragged back in if they breach a requirement and be given a prison sentence as a result. It is a protest banning order, effectively.
In fact, there are two different kinds of order: clause 13, which is the serious disruption prevention order, and then another one, whereby a police officer—even if the person has not been convicted of an offence, but just so long as they have participated in a protest and the judge thinks they might participate in another or maybe take some superglue along with them—can prevent them from going into a town centre or associating with particular people. The orders can even be applied to organisations, so it is not just individuals; it could be a charity or a campaigning organisation. It is a really huge expansion of court powers against protesters.
Let me talk a bit about the psychology of some of the people I represent, who are some of the more hardcore protesters who are at the centre of a lot of these movements. They will not be deterred by this legislation. If we look at Insulate Britain, which I guess is on the extreme end of disruption versus expressing the right to protest—it is not directed; the people they were disrupting were not the people they were protesting against, which makes the courts the least sympathetic to those actions—a lot of them said, “Well, I will go to prison for the cause.” A lot of environmental and Black Lives Matter protesters—whichever cause you think of—will say, “It’s going to be a badge of honour to go to prison.”
The prison system will start to be full of those people. It will not deter them; the people it will deter are the people who are not willing to go to prison, but who will also not be doing anything illegal at protests. They will just not want to go along, “Because I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. I have a bicycle outside; I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. What happens if I get arrested because I have a bicycle lock? I didn’t know one of these orders allowed police to do suspicionless search.” It will deter those people; it won’t deter the people you are worried about or the previous witnesses were worried about. It will deter lots of other people who you are not worried about, but you should be worried about.
Kit Malthouse
Q
I want to ask you a couple of questions. First, you seem to be quite happy for those who profess to be protesters to go to prison in certain circumstances. So, if someone glues themselves on to a fuel gantry, bringing themselves and others into danger, you are quite happy for those people to go to prison—the only question in your mind is for how long. I presume you accept that part of the role of sentencing is not just to punish, but to deter. In circumstances where somebody is persistently committing those offences, whether or not they are subject to the order that you talked about, would you not expect them to get increasing sentences as they reoffended?
Adam Wagner: The first thing I would say is that I have come here voluntarily. I did not come here to have someone be personally rude to me, and I really do not appreciate it. I do not understand the benefit of that to anyone.
The second point is that I am not happy for any protester to go to prison. That is the criminal law as it is. The question this Committee is asking is: does the criminal law need to change to deal with the problems that the Bill is supposedly dealing with? I just do not think it does. If the aim of the Bill is to send a lot of peaceful protesters to prison, it will do that. By peaceful, I mean non-violent. Locking on to something is not a violent protest. It is disruptive and annoying for the people who are trying to do whatever they are going to do in the location the protester has locked on to, but it is a classic form of protest. It is something that has always been used. It is something that society generally tolerates.
If we want lots more people like that to go to prison, this is the Bill to do it. However, if you want to stop people blocking roads, oil refineries or fracking sites—whatever the cause at the moment is—this is not the Bill to do that. I can tell you that, because I know these people; they will continue doing what they are doing. The difference is that they will end up in prisons all around the country, and I am not sure that is a good look for the country.
Kit Malthouse
I understand. I apologise if I was rude before.
Adam Wagner: Thank you.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Adam Wagner: First, it depends on whether the police are charging under that. I have not really talked about the relationship between the police and the public. The police will have to think really carefully about whether they want any of the aggravation of having to recommend for charging people who are not violent criminals, but are, in fact, peaceful protesters expressing their views.
Secondly, you cannot guarantee at all that the judges will send people to prison. There has been a step change through Insulate Britain. I have acted in a lot of these contempt cases—where people breach injunctions. The big difference with Insulate Britain is that these people are being sent to prison, and the courts’ reasoning, as I said, is that the protest is not directed at the social evil that the protesters are protesting. They are blocking the highway, and not blocking anybody who is insulating or not insulating anything. That is why they are sending people to prison.
However, what the judges have not done is send to prison people who, like my clients, were protesting at the entrance of a fracking site in Blackburn at Preston New Road, or people protesting on the HS2 line. The courts have said very directly: “We tend not to send people to prison for that.” It is quite possible that the courts will not oblige. Who knows? The powers will be there.
Kit Malthouse
Q
The Chair
A short answer, Mr Wagner, because we are in the final minute.
Adam Wagner: It is a mixed bag. You might end up with a judge who is not very used to the criminal law, because a lot of them are in civil courts, but you also might end up with a whopping cost order at the end of it. For some of the cases I have been involved in, it has been tens of thousands of pounds. It is a mix, but civil injunctions have their own problems more widely.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of you, Mr Wagner. I thank you, on behalf of the Committee, for your evidence.
Examination of Witness
David Dinsmore gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
David Dinsmore: I am David Dinsmore, chief operating officer at News UK. For the purposes of this, News UK is the owner of Newsprinters Ltd, which prints a lot of the newspapers in this country.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: This started on the evening of 4 September 2020 and continued to midday on the 5th. We have three print sites across the UK: one at Broxbourne to the north of London, one in Knowsley in Merseyside, and one at Eurocentral, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the Eurocentral site, there was a small, peaceful protest that broke up very quickly and did not get in the way of any of our business. However, at both Broxbourne and Knowsley, starting at about 9.45 pm, a collection of vans, boats on trailers and a bamboo superstructure were put in place at the exits to the plants. In the Broxbourne case, 50-plus people got on to those structures, many of them locking themselves on. At Knowsley, I think the number was about 30. Certainly, there were 51 arrests at Broxbourne, and 30 arrests and 28 charges at Knowsley.
The police were called immediately and were on the scene within half an hour, but they did not start removing people properly until 4 am at Broxbourne and 11 am at Knowsley. Both sites were finally cleared at midday on the 5th. This was a Friday, into Saturday. Saturday is the biggest newspaper sale of the week. Between The Sun and The Times, we would normally expect to sell about 2 million papers that day. We also print for The Daily Telegraph. We print some of the Daily Mail and some of the Financial Times, and we also deliver a direct-to-consumer service, although we do not print them, for The Guardian out of the Broxbourne site, so you will see that we are at the heart of the news industry in the country, whatever your flavour may be.
All the exits were blocked, which meant that all our trucks and drivers were blocked inside. Although we printed the run of about 2.5 million papers, they all had to be pulped. We had to use other print sites around the country to print those newspapers, and we delivered from them. The net result was that we lost a significant sale, as we did not get to many newsagents until past midday. The cost to us as a company was about £1.2 million. I would say we had 155 staff who were trapped on site until midday the following day, and we still have senior staff attending court hearings. They have had to block out of their diaries about 150 man/woman days—they are not having to attend court, but there is definitely serious disruption.
The final point I would make is that those 51 people at Broxbourne were all charged under obstructing highways, and those at Knowsley were charged under the aggravated trespass legislation. Some of the people at Knowsley have been found not guilty because it was not clear whose land they were trespassing on, and at Broxbourne, most people who have been found guilty have been given conditional discharges—costs of £150. One of them even glued himself on to the court table and still got a conditional discharge.
It feels to us to be a major, serious and co-ordinated attack. It caused considerable material disruption and continues to do so. The legislation is not in place to provide a deterrent to this. There is not even a catch-all law that people can be charged under, even if they do commit the crime. It felt like we were powerless to do anything other than work around this huge disruption, which had a massive impact. There is another impact worth mentioning. We go to wholesalers, who were hugely disrupted, and then we go to 44,000 retailers, who were similarly disrupted. That ends up with 2 million or 3 million customers who cannot get their paper when they turn up to buy it in the morning. The disruption to freedom of speech and our democracy in this instance was huge.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: My understanding is that you need specialist teams to remove protesters who are locked on at a height.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: It was chains. At Broxbourne, they brought a purpose-made bamboo super structure, which they were able to erect at speed and put themselves on to.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: We call it the nightly miracle that we get from literally a blank sheet of paper at 9 o’clock at night to 44,000 retailers at 6 o’clock the following morning around the country. While I like the aspiration, the idea that we could get specialist teams there and remove blockages and get all that cleared without having significant disruption to the network and that delivery is, I think, pretty ambitious.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: Indeed.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
The Chair
We cannot go into the detail. The concept of how a protest can be taken forward is, however, a legitimate question.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
David Dinsmore: News brands are a very good channel for campaigning. We would see ourselves as giving a voice to the voiceless. One of the ironies of this particular protest was that on page 10 of The Sun that day, there was a piece from David Attenborough about exactly what Extinction Rebellion were campaigning on. They were going after one of the vessels that would probably be a good way of disseminating protest and counter-voices. Newspapers have campaigned legally and peacefully for centuries on many issues successfully and got law changes. If we want to go into the details of the great Sunday Times investigation campaign on thalidomide, I think there are many routes through which you can get outcomes that do not require the law to be broken.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
David Dinsmore: On the Black Lives Matter issue, we have, as an organisation, carried a huge amount of coverage. We have done things explicitly and internally on diversity. It is something that we do take very seriously. The Sun has recently run a series on Black History Month, et cetera, et cetera. I will not go into the detail, but I can give you much more on what we do as an organisation on those kinds of issues.
There are many, many routes to protest in this country. I am just giving you the specifics around our particular route. There are petitions and social media. There are many ways in which you can get a story, a campaign or a point of view across without disruption and breaking the law.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
David Dinsmore: I think the best example we have got is the pandemic we have just lived through and the requirement for quality, trustworthy information. That showed how vital and valuable that is. We, as professional journalists, provide that information on what used to be a daily basis and is now a minute-by-minute basis, and the public need that more than ever.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
David Dinsmore: But it could be just as easily threatened by this kind of protest.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
David Dinsmore: I do think that the way the law is structured protects the rights of the few against the rights of the many. That feels to me to be anti-democratic. So, without going into the specifics of it, yes, I do think that. On that point of “you can get it online”, there is still a significant cohort in the community—principally older readers—who cannot or do not get it online, and do get their news in print.
Kit Malthouse
Q
David Dinsmore: I do not know if we know for a fact that that is the case. However, certainly, in a lot of protests that we see—and believe you me, we see a lot of protests—an anti-Murdoch element always comes out. We are big, grown-up girls and boys, and we deal with most of that in our daily work, but on that occasion, the level of disruption caused was well beyond what would be acceptable.
Kit Malthouse
Q
David Dinsmore: Apart from the fact that it was Extinction Rebellion, I would need to go back. I think there was a lot of assumption about what it was against—I think they did some tweeting at the time, but I will need to come back to you with the specifics around what was actually said and claimed at the time.
The Chair
Do any Members wish to ask further questions? On that basis, Mr Dinsmore, I thank you for your evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Sir Peter Martin Fahy QPM, Matt Parr CB and Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: I am Peter Fahy. I was the chief constable of Greater Manchester police and, before that, the chief constable of Cheshire constabulary. I was a police officer for 34 years and a chief constable for 13 years.
Matt Parr: I am Matt Parr. I am one of four of Her Majesty’s inspectorates of constabulary. My focus is primarily on the Met and non-Home Office forces. In specialism terms, I look at such things as counter-terrorism policing and, in this case, public order.
Phil Dolby: Good afternoon. My name is Phil Dolby. I am a chief superintendent for West Midlands police and I am a trained and accredited tactical public order/public safety commander and have been for some time, and I have been through quite a few adventures.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: The first thing I would say is that there is a threat to public confidence in policing from the police not being seen to be effective when they are dealing with issues like those we have heard about—issues like the Insulate Britain protest—but there is a danger that this Bill is trying to produce the wrong solution. The problem we have, as you heard from the gentleman from News UK, is that we do not have a standing army of police officers in this country. We are not like France, Spain and Italy, which have paramilitary police forces. If this had happened in France, they would have turned out the CRS very rapidly. They are very highly specialist and trained: they would use water cannon, they would probably use rubber bullets, and essentially the French population would accept that level of force. Thankfully, we do not live in a country like that, and the trouble is that when these events happen—I had a similar thing in Cheshire, with milk protests outside Morrisons and Tesco—in the middle of the night, it is extremely difficult to get together enough officers to safely disperse that protest. If anything, that has got far worse, because in those days we did not have everything filmed and on social media and all those things.
Essentially, it seems to me that we have three problems. The first is the inability to get officers quickly together, with the right equipment—I would like to be able to move lorries, vans and stuff like that quickly—because that is not how British policing is set up. The second issue is that you then have to clear and arrest people, and the trouble is that the rules on bail are very narrow. In most cases, the police have to release that person on bail, which makes them free to go back and rejoin the protest. Even if you are able to get them to court immediately, the court will probably bail them out, because they plead not guilty and are back out on the street again. That is essentially the problem: they are able to keep on going back and repeat their behaviour.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: No, it will not deal with any of these three practical issues unless you address the issues of a lot more police officers being available; the public appetite for those officers to be able to use force, confident that the public, the media, and even people like the Independent Office for Police Conduct will support that use of force; and court procedures being able to deal with that and, if necessary, keep people in custody if they are persistent in going back. Just having more powers does not really solve any of those practical issues. Some people will be deterred by harsher sentences, but we know that a lot will not be.
On the other hand, part of that is absolutely that there is a danger to public confidence. That is really critical. I just visited Westminster Abbey and saw the statue of Sir Robert Peel, who laid down some remarkable principles of policing way back in the 1820s. It was very much about the police being impartial, acting under the rule of law, and not seeming to follow any particular initiative. There is absolutely a risk in this. Most protests are short-lived and move on very quickly. We have talked largely today about national protests, such as those on the M25, where there is not really a local community, but most protests and the most difficult protests are often very local protests about things like fracking and road developments, where there are very strong local public emotions. Yes, there may be some outsiders who join it, but most of it is very local people. If the police are involved in gathering intelligence around those people and criminalising them in a way that those local people do not think is fair, and it destroys their confidence in what their local police force is there to do, there is absolutely a risk in that.
Very quickly, I found the Sarah Everard vigil that Matt did a review of interesting in a way, because most of the police service were really clear that that gathering was illegal under the coronavirus regulations. The inspectorate did an inspection and said, “No, it was a very good policing operation done very well.” It didn’t matter. Media, most politicians and public opinion said, “No, that was wrong”, on the basis of two images that ended up on the front of the Sunday newspapers. That is the difficult environment that police officers are operating in, some of them very junior and without the chance to have a great deal of training, and dealing with very complex issues, such as more legislation, more powers and more definitions of what is serious disruption, whether something is national infrastructure or not and whether something is the highway or private ground. Those are difficult issues for individual police officers, even inspectors, to make sense of in the heat of the moment, with strong emotions and the potential need to use force on people.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: Yes. We cannot be naive: the training level for police officers is still very poor. There is no formal qualification for superintendents. They do their best, but we put them into very difficult situations with complex consequences if they get it wrong.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Phil Dolby: Certainly from a West Midlands police perspective it is extremely difficult when we have a protracted protest, because all of those cops come from the normal, business as usual police, often at the front end of demand, as opposed to detectives or safeguarding officers. They are the first response and are often the ones trained to be ready to police such events. The opportunity cost, as well as the financial costs, can be significant.
The British model of policing of protests in the last 10 years has matured and advanced. There is more to do, but work has been done on balancing the rights of all; trying to make sure that it is seen as a community issue and not just a policing issue, so the officers do not come into an area and then leave, and how that affects the community; and protest liaison officers who are specialists in how to engage and try to negotiate before we use force.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Matt Parr: I suspect I am here because I wrote not just the report on the Sarah Everard vigil but the report you mention, at the Home Secretary’s request, on what was then a series of proposals, some of which have made their way into the Bill and some of which have not. That report covered much more than legislation: it made the point that getting the legislation right is not a panacea. A dozen or so recommendations were made in the report, and they covered issues such as greater expertise, increased training, better intelligence and more debriefing afterwards. The problem is not solved by legislation. It is solved by a mixture of legislation, greater training, awareness and preparation for decision-makers and police.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Obviously, your report from 2021 considered protest banning orders, which was something suggested by the Met. Your report stated that
“such orders would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”
What are your views on the serious disruption orders in the Bill, given what you have said previously?
Matt Parr: I can only comment on what we said in the report. We looked at them and at what the Home Office said about a protest ban at the time. It opposed a ban, saying that it
“essentially takes away a person’s right to protest and…would very likely to lead to a legal challenge…Consequently, we believe it unlikely the measure would work as hoped.”
The report agreed. We said:
“We remain unconvinced that such orders would either be compatible with human rights legislation or create an effective deterrent.”
We supported many of the other measures, some of which have not made it into the Bill.
Wendy Chamberlain
We shall find out from the Minister why he has changed his mind.
Sarah Jones
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: You mention the level of resources. Certainly, when you look at the number of officers per head of population in the UK roughly compared with France, Italy and Spain, you see that we have about half the number that they have. Why is that? Because they have national police forces and paramilitary police forces that essentially are part of the military, live in barracks and are able to respond in that militaristic way. That is not our history whatsoever and I would absolutely not want it to be, but it possibly gives you some indication of the level of resource.
Even if the chief superintendent had double the number of officers, I am not sure that he would necessarily want to put them into this form of policing, because he is absolutely right that when officers had to be on motorway bridges at the time of Insulate Britain to try to be available to clear the protests, they were officers who would have been investigating rapes, burglaries or whatever. There is a practical issue here: could we ever have the level of resources to be able to effectively—? The fact is that the protesters will always be fleeter of foot than the police, because they have the element of surprise.
In terms of what can be done to help people like Newsquest, Morrisons and other people I have dealt with who were absolutely very concerned about the future of their businesses, for me it is about being prepared to look at issues like bail. In the more immediate sphere, it is for the courts to be able to keep people in custody, rather than having to wait for a court case a few months down the line, or for one of these particular orders.
I would still doubt whether the appetite would be there—the judicial appetite. Police officers are very wary, and you heard the exact reason for that from Newsquest: when cases get to court, the judiciary or the magistrates often give out very minor sentences—whatever might be allowed in the legislation. They find, as happened with the Sarah Everard case, that higher courts then disagree and bring in human rights legislation, or bring in a different interpretation that is in the legislation, which then completely takes the legs of the police from underneath them.
That can only really be covered partly by legislation but essentially by judicial practice, because you can bring in all the laws you like—it will not actually solve those practical issues that the police face. There is also a real difficulty with definitions. This Bill talks about “protests”. Previous legislation, such as the Public Order Act 1986, talks about “gatherings”. We seem to have brought in this word “protests”, and I am not sure there is a legal definition of what is a protest.
The 1986 Act uses the phrase,
“serious disruption to the life of the community”.
I dealt with a really difficult protest in the centre of Manchester, which essentially put the Jewish community and the Muslim community at odds. I actually contacted the Home Office and said, “Please can you tell me the definition of serious disruption to community life?” They said, “The legislation’s never been used. We can’t tell you.” I was left wondering whether I should go around the shops of Manchester and try to work out whether their takings were up or down as a result of the protest.
With words such as “serious disruption”, on the face of it, yes, they are common sense and everybody knows what it looks like. In reality, however, when it gets into the courts that is exactly where the lawyers make their money from, but it absolutely undermines the police action and seriously means that police forces may be sued for unlawful arrest, and officers may be more liable to receive complaints because the conviction was not secured. It is a really complex issue, as Matt has said, and it needs a range of things, but just having more legislation without dealing with those other issues—you would certainly need an absolutely huge investment in training.
That would be my concern about this legislation. It is quite complex legislation. How, for instance, are West Midlands police supposed to train that, with all the day-to-day of policing? There is no time in policing for training. Again, those officers who are going to be on training courses have to be taken away from other duties. In my time, in my early stage there was very little change to the law. It is now changing almost month by month, and trying to keep police officers—who, with due respect to them, do not have the sort of professional background on how to interpret legislation—up to date with that is really difficult, because we are putting them into a totally different scenario, in terms of their level of accountability and the level of transparency that has now come from mobile phones and social media.
Sarah Jones
Q
The third question is just about any thoughts you might have on things in the Bill that you have not looked at. You might not have had thoughts because the Government have not asked you to do a report on it—I think I am right that they have not asked you. Do you have any thoughts on things that you have not looked at before?
Matt Parr: I will deal with the easiest one of those questions first. The policing response to our report has been possibly the most professional and thorough response that I have seen in any report I have done in six years as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. The then National Police Chiefs’ Council lead picked it up, gathered a group together, and it has been a model of how policing as a whole should respond to a report. That has been really good. We have not been back to inspect, but I am pretty confident that progress has been made against every recommendation we made. I think they have almost all been ticked off. That is very encouraging. That is not standard fare with reports from us, sadly.
On your point about what bits of the legislation we looked at, we were asked to look at five changes. The history of this is that in 2019 the Home Secretary wrote to the commissioner of the Met, and the commissioner then wrote back with a series of 19 potential changes to the law. There was a big roundtable involving the Home Office and lots of people in policing in mid-2020. After that it was decided that they would take forward five. We supported all five of those—with a little bit of teeth-sucking about a couple. Generally, we thought that they all had the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the policing of protests, and would help achieve the “modest reset” I referred to in the report.
The Bill contains one of those changes, and that is the one about extending stop and search to look for lock-ons. It contains other changes that were not in there: obstructing major transport works; interference with key national infrastructure; serious disruption prevention orders, which we have already mentioned; and, lastly, lowering the rank in the Met for authorisations.
On extending stop and search, we said that because of its preventive nature it has the clear potential to enhance police effectiveness. It would also act as a deterrent. We recognised it was controversial, and we registered concerns about modelling it on current section 60 legislation—we thought that was potentially problematic. It is trying to achieve two very different things. We were nervous about a potential effect on minorities, and therefore we would like to see strong safeguards around that.
Finally, we said there must be appropriate thresholds and correct authority levels. I think the Bill says inspector, which is probably as low a rank as I would want to go. However, in general we remain supportive. There was broad support for the stop and search proposal from across the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and policing generally. Some people raised some difficulties, but we concluded:
“our view is that, with appropriate guidance and robust and effective safeguards, the proposed stop and search powers would have the potential to improve police efficiency”.
I have mentioned that we were not supportive of SDPOs. We did not really look at the others. I will touch on changing the minimum rank of assistant commissioner to commander in the Met. That strikes me as entirely pragmatic. If you look at the Met, the real expertise in public order tends to be at commander rank, rather than above, where people get a bit more generalist. The deep professional experts in London, in my experience, are the commanders. That strikes me as perfectly sensible. The other two changes we simply have not looked at. I would say that they strike me as consistent with the aim I was in support of. Currently, the balance is not being got right on a regular basis; the level of disruption between those who have a right to protest, and those who are bystanders and affected by protest, is not in the right place. Those changes strike me as consistent with resetting that balance.
Everybody I talked to in the course of this inspection or since—every police officer and everybody involved in this—absolutely recognises the right to protest. There is no question about that. Frankly, I think some of the criticism of the Bill, and some of the interpretation of it, goes too far. It is not a police state.
Sarah Jones
Q
Matt Parr: Both. Any changing of where the pendulum sits does not automatically mean the introduction of a police state. To me, they look like sensible measures to redress the balance. I note that the Government’s note accompanying the Bill links to a YouGov survey that shows where the public are on this issue, and those findings were entirely consistent with the survey we did as part of the Bill. To be honest, I was quite surprised at the time, but the YouGov poll is in exactly the same place.
Sarah Jones
Q
Phil Dolby: No one protest is the same as any other, even if it might be about the same cause. Some of the most challenging ones we have had have not necessarily been Extinction Rebellion or High Speed 2. The issues in Gaza led to some go-slow protests that were going to churn up the city, which I had to deal with.
Another protest was in the paper a few years ago. A school was hoping to do a teaching element about same-sex relationships, and some of the local Muslim community were upset about that. We have also had Sikh tensions at the Indian consulate general, the Kisan protests and so forth. Sometimes you can start your tour of duty and something appears on Al Jazeera—suddenly, you can feel the tension rising during that same tour of duty.
The first thing is very much: what relationships do we have with communities before there is a protest? What kind of neighbourhood local policing service do we have? What is our community engagement across the spectrum of age, ethnicity, communities and so on? That is the most important. One of the most important briefings I give to everyone—including protesters—at the beginning of any operation, be it pre-planned or spontaneous, is always about the style and tone of what we are about to do. That is about being a fair service that is not afraid to make decisions when it needs to.
I will give you a couple of quick examples, starting with when we had the go-slow. Like most cities, Birmingham has a ring road, and it does not take much for that artery to suddenly be blocked, which means that nobody is going anywhere. We had a protest about Gaza whereby they were going to do a go-slow with their vehicles and do a circuit around the city. Because it kept moving, we tolerated that. We did some traffic management around it, kept the city moving and made sure that really important things, such as hospitals and so forth, were not affected. They then went for a second lap, and that was where I had a threshold with a gold commander who had given me a strategy that said, “That’s enough now, because everyone else in the city has the right to peaceful enjoyment of the transport system and to get around.”
We currently have a power under section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986—this goes to Sir Peter’s point—that already has the term “serious” within it. There is a test called 3DI—serious damage, disorder, disruption or injury —but the definition of “serious” is still quite open to interpretation. You also need to have an organiser. During the pandemic, people did not want to show that they were organisers, because they would then be potentially prosecuted under the coronavirus regulations. That has kind of stayed. Before then, people were quite happy to say, “I was the organiser,” but that is less so now.
The go-slow had no clear organiser, but through the CCTV around the city, I was able to see who the organiser was. There were probably about 200 vehicles involved in it, and I just gave a warning about the police’s power to who I was evidentially satisfied was the organiser. I negotiated and said, “Look, I’ve got this power. It’s ready, and here it is. Do you want to carry on, or can I encourage you to stop? You have had your opportunity, and you need to move on.” There was a negotiated approach that I thought tried to keep the balance for everyone.
Similarly, Extinction Rebellion recently blocked a fairly minor road. We were a little confused about the road they chose. If we had been doing it, we would have chosen a different one. They had a tactic whereby instead of staying in the middle of the road all the time, they would use the pelican crossing but let the traffic stop by the traffic furniture. They would then occupy the road for about five minutes and when the traffic built up, they would move away. That was an interesting application of the law but, again, what we did was start negotiations with them.
We have our protest liaison teams, and there is a five-step appeal that officers go through, which we document and fill, giving every opportunity for the protesters to reach the decision themselves. Eventually, I said, “Okay. There is a power here to stop you. This is an unlawful assembly because it is now causing serious disruption. There’s a children’s hospital that is starting to be affected, so now that’s enough.”
I brought forward the van that is a mobile prison cell—kind of a show of strength, really—and said, “That is what I am prepared to use”. They said, “Okay”, and that was enough. Again, both the powers were available to us. They were being prepared to be used. We were not just tolerating it; there was a negotiated approach, and both of those are examples of where that has been successful. On the serious disruption element in the Bill, I would encourage as much precision for that definition as possible.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Matt Parr: We made that point in the report. There are certain things that probably would have a deterrent effect—the £37 million is something that we referred to. I think it is relevant. It is difficult to say that you cannot put a price on articles 10 and 11 and, of course, you are right. However, just for context, the two operations we looked at in London cost £37 million. That is twice the annual budget of the violent crime taskforce, so it does have a significant effect.
The other general observation I would make is that protest has been increasing and the complexity and demand on policing has increased. It does not seem likely to us that it will go in a different direction in the years to come, so something has to be done to prevent it becoming too much of a drain. Yes, I think that some of these act as a deterrent, of course. It rather depends on how they end up progressing through the courts—if, indeed, they are brought to court—and if it turns out that they are not meaningfully prosecuted and there are not meaningful convictions, any deterrent effect will pretty soon dissipate after that, I would have thought.
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: I would make the same point. Anything that could be put in the legislation to clarify the issue about “serious”, which absolutely could be some financial calculation, would be extremely useful. You have to remember that it was quite clear that the vast majority of people thought the Insulate Britain protests were extremely disruptive and pointless.
There are certainly some protests where you have two sides. Therefore, you will get pressure from one side to use this legislation, and we should not be naive about the pressure that police leaders come under from local politicians to do that. I will be honest: they were some of the most uncomfortable times in my police career when that happened. Therefore, having clarity about the legislation is really important, as is anything that can be put in to help that.
I do not know whether there is actually any evidence that people are deterred. Common sense says that some people will be deterred by harsher sentences and the threat of a conviction in court, but clearly some people are so determined, and have a certain lifestyle where it does not really have any consequence for them, that—if anything—it makes them martyrs. Certainly, as Matt said, if they are not convicted or get found not guilty, if anything that gives them a greater status as a martyr and leads to further criticism of the police.
Phil Dolby: I want to make a point on the precision of the legislation. When looking to consider stop and search without suspicion, I think no matter how hard you try, there will be a complete, solid line in the public discourse between that and section 60, which is the existing power to have targeted stop and search around violence principally. That is a tool that is being used increasingly with the challenges we are all facing around youth violence and knife crime. It is also something around which communities have not always necessarily experienced fair treatment.
With all that we are trying to do now, it is still a key point of discussion and, sometimes, contention. We have the community coming in and scrutinising how we have used it. They watch our body-worn video of what we tried to do. We have even got youth versions of that for young people. I do not know how you would do the same kind of thing with protest. I think there is something that needs to be done there. There is best practice advice on how to conduct stop and search, and I think there is potentially some real thinking if those go ahead to start with that position as opposed to learning those lessons as we go along.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: On your point about the Sarah Everard vigil, there is a question about what the difference is between a vigil and a protest, which is really critical for policing. Again, I would come back to that point: it did not really matter how legal or professional the police operation was. Because of that wider context, the public view of it is really clear.
Going back to what the chief superintendent said, you have to take into account absolutely the feelings of your local community. I would say that on things like this extension of stop and search, for me there would need to be a well-documented community impact assessment, where the police worked with other agencies and community groups to assess what the impact is going to be. I am not sure about the psychological impact. It is about the fact that this is how policing is judged now, and that is the risk.
I would bring in the issue of disruption orders. Anything that is about gathering intelligence is extremely problematic. Even if you go way back to the 1970s and the big scandal about undercover policing, that came from a desire to try to gather intelligence about protesters, and look where it got the police service. This is about what could be a group of people here organising a protest against a local road development and the police using the local council CCTV to try to show that, for instance, three people had met and a gentleman had put something on Facebook to bring about the protest. That is the form of intelligence gathering that I would suggest some of your constituents, if they were involved in something that was local and very emotional, would find extremely disturbing.
I think the police service has to be very careful about going down that route. Again, I think most people would say that we want the police to use intelligence gathering against serious criminals. It would need to be a very serious degree of public protest and disruption for the police to be using some of those tactics, in terms of the degree of trying to hold on to public confidence in law and police powers and tactics.
Matt Parr: As the person who conducted the study into that vigil, I was genuinely shocked. I had a team significantly composed of female senior police offers—mostly detectives or people with firearms backgrounds. Therefore, they had done relatively little public order in their careers. I found astonishing the look on their face at some of the evidence they saw from that night and the abuse that the police took. There was a very, very clear difference between an entirely well conducted and peaceful vigil that lasted until a certain time of the night, and the disorder that—
Dr Huq
That was what it looked like. It was like—
Matt Parr: Exactly. The vigil and the disorder that came after were two entirely different things. That is a significant point as well, of course, because we talked at the start about getting the resources and it is increasingly difficult, in many forces, to persuade people to volunteer to do public duty, for reasons of the social media aspect and also, frankly, because to do so means you will be on the receiving end of some real nastiness from certain—not all, by any means—members of the public.
When it comes to your wider point about how you take into account the seriousness and the psychological aspects and the presentational aspects, I think they are all absolutely relevant factors to take account of. One of our recommendations in the report was that police decision makers should be given better tools to be able to assess what serious disruption looks like. It cannot be as simple as financial cost; it has to be far more complex than that. At the moment, we have seen a number of cases where senior decision makers had clearly been left floundering by not understanding the nature of the disruption that was likely to be a consequence of a particular protest and therefore they shrank from making sensible decisions. Better tools for understanding when the thresholds for the nature of disruption have been crossed strike me as an essential part of this.
Phil Dolby: There is a sense in which we are always doomed to look like we are failing in some of these incidents—even though the right thing may have been done—because we are the ones in uniform, with personal protective equipment that makes us look quite tough. You have a passive protester, for example, or somebody at a vigil. Say it is an older person. To safely take that person away requires five officers—to take a corner each and the head. The newspaper photograph of that looks like a lovely old person being taken away by five militaristic-looking police officers. They are actually doing that because that is the duty of care they have—to safely remove that person who will not move. The reporting is usually of a very solid moment.
Something that could be interesting relates to the body-worn devices that we currently have, which we are using to invite the public to come after the fact and see how we have done and give us learning points and their views, particularly from communities that we have not necessarily always got the correct engagement with. The next generation of these will be live, and there might be some instances where we would invite affected members of the community in to watch what we are doing and give us live-time feedback. That will not necessarily always change decision making, but it is another part of the decision-making model to say, “Well, actually, that community impact we are describing”—
Tom Hunt
Q
Also, I just want a point of clarification—I think this discussion was again with Sir Peter—in terms of how we can improve things and how we can get to a point where perhaps there is a more dedicated team of people who are very trained and specialist. If we believe that these protests are becoming more frequent and more of an issue, although we do not want to go down the route of France, there have been occasions when I think that has been a temptation—when we have seen some of these out-of-control protests. I want to know what this new team that could help us get to a better place looks like.
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: Point No. 1 is that absolutely the police must never be swayed by a popularity contest. It is exactly what the chief superintendent says. Sometimes you have to stand above all that, and you are never going to win. Also, you might lose the battle, but you win the war. But the fact and the reality of policing is that you have to judge that. You have to talk to community leaders. You have to try to balance that. You have to make a decision. You have to try to involve people. One of the frustrations I had with that particular protest in Manchester is that I could not persuade anybody like the local council, the university or anybody to take this issue away from the street. It was an issue about what was going on in Palestine, and Israeli action. “Take this away”—but they would not do it. Sometimes, you need a mediation mechanism that takes that away from the street and that sort of public protest. It will not work on every occasion.
It is also about who makes that decision. Interestingly, the chief superintendent talked about using community panels to help you in your decision making. That was used with COP26 in Glasgow. Clearly, in Northern Ireland, they have the Parades Commission to make decisions on contentious protests and where they should and should not go. I find it interesting that we never mention police and crime commissioners, who are locally elected and, in some ways, should be representing local people. PCCs could possibly have a role in this, or it could be that more goes to the judiciary, so it is not so dependent on the police, with all the consequences for public confidence.
If you are looking at capability, there is a much wider debate, which the policing Minister will be aware of, about the structure of policing in 51 police forces and whether that is appropriate for the current situation. It is very difficult in our policing system, where we do not have paramilitary operation, policing is by consent and, rightly, the public have a particular attitude towards the use of force, to come up with something that would have the capability to deal with the sort of situations we are talking about. There would need to be a huge shift in the public mood and I think British policing is not really set up and does not have the mentality to use the degree of force that you see in other countries.
People do not realise that we are pretty unique. When you hear about the sophistication and negotiation the chief superintendent talked about, that is the British style. In all the protests it is escalation, which looks in the early stages like the police are being weak, but in the background they are talking to people and they are escalating. They are saying, “If you keep on coming back, we will use this power and that power. Have you heard about that?” That is the British style of policing. You do not start with the heaviest. You work up to it, and that then maintains the confidence in your legality and proportionality.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: It can get very low. Unfortunately, that is not part of the public discourse. I think the public think that there are lots of police officers sitting around in police stations doing nothing, whereas the reality is—somehow the police service needs to find a better way of articulating this—that no, even the Metropolitan police does not have loads of spare officers. So absolutely, that is part of the huge frustration for policing and where it sometimes feels it does not get the support of local politicians and the media—and, crucially, the courts—to deal with this.
Matt Parr: One of the things we criticise a lot, not just in London but across the country, is abstraction and the disruptive effect it has on building up long-term relationships. It is not necessarily detectives being taken off their work and therefore serious investigations not getting followed through. It is more likely to be neighbourhood policing that gets depleted, or response that gets depleted, and therefore you get longer response times or neighbourhood cops just not doing their job. It is rather difficult to quantify what the long-term effects of that are, but we definitely see in the inspectorate the negative effects of abstraction for a whole range of things, and this is one of the more serious ones.
Phil Dolby: At the same time that there are more protests—and more complexity around them—the service is also facing increased demand. There is a national shortage of the word “unprecedented” now because we have used it so much, but the demand that we are currently seeing as a service across the country is unprecedented. It is not only the amount of calls we are receiving—so volume—but, because hopefully we are doing better with our partners around vulnerability, more people are telling us about things that are really quite complex. The theft of a Mars bar is one call and “Twenty years ago, myself and my entire scout group were unfortunately the victims of something” is one call, but the complexity and the resource the latter needs is massive, and those are both going up at the same time.
There is not a standing army waiting to deal with protest. They come out of normal policing when they are required to do so, and the amount of neighbourhood policing that is affected by just keeping up with that demand is already quite acute. I just wonder whether, when we define organisations in the Bill, there is something about the organisations having some kind of responsibility to do what they can do to prevent— through their design, their target hardening and whatever staff they might put on—and to contribute to this as well and reduce it. Actually, we are talking about the cost of policing and the financial cost, but communities—with the reduction in policing that they are receiving—are the ultimate people bearing the cost. Perhaps we could do something with this, as we have with the Protect duty coming in under the terrorism Bill, putting responsibilities on local authorities and other people to do those kind of things.
We have had a very expensive protest recently around Amazon warehouses. Those drew in different forces and specialist policing. Some of the protesters were so long there in the cold that it became a medical emergency, and officers had to do some life-saving stuff around the protesters. With all those normal cops who have come away from other work, Amazon could have done more.
The Chair
I have to draw you to a close, Chief Superintendent. That is the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Olly Sprague, Stephanie Needleman and Martha Spurrier gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Olly Sprague, military security and police programme director, Amnesty International; Stephanie Needleman, legal director, Justice, via Zoom; and Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty. I should say to Ms Needleman, please alert us if any technical issues arise during the course of your evidence. We have until 4.55 pm for this session. I invite the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record.
Stephanie Needleman: I am Stephanie Needleman, the legal director of Justice. Justice is an all-party law reform and human rights organisation working to strengthen the UK justice system.
Martha Spurrier: I am Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, the human rights and civil liberties campaigning organisation.
Olly Sprague: I am Olly Sprague, programme head at Amnesty International UK for our work on military policing and security matters. This is my first physical Committee for two and a half years—it is good to be physically in the room.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
Martha Spurrier: There can be little doubt that a Government should spend time looking at the root causes of a protest, whether that is the climate crisis rather than climate protesters, or racism rather than Black Lives Matter protesters. Of course, it is not news to say that protest is a foundational right, and that it is an article of faith in any democratic country that if there is something you disagree with, you can take to the streets to make your voice heard. It is of great concern to Liberty and those of us who work in this area—I am a lawyer, and I have been working in this area for the best part of 15 years—to see provisions in a Bill that not only have been rejected by Parliament once, but significantly expand police powers, often doing so in a very over-broad and imprecise way, such that it is difficult to see how they will be effectively implemented.
We would expect a disproportionate impact on marginalised communities from the exercise of those powers. We would also expect that they will fundamentally undermine the right to protest, and will not do what they are purported to do—deal with a hard core of some supposedly extremely disruptive protesters—but will in fact have a dragnet effect of chilling people’s right to protest and free expression, and deter ordinary people from exercising their fundamental rights. There is a whole range of examples in the Bill that we could talk about where it is very difficult to see why those measures are proportionate and justified ways of dealing with the perceived problem, let alone whether there is a problem as articulated.
Olly Sprague: I echo what Martha said. For an organisation such as Amnesty, it is not a case of either/or: we do not want to balance the harm that might be caused by climate change versus the positive duty that all states have to uphold the right to freedom of assembly and association and the right to protest. You have to manage all things.
One of the things that we bring here is that we are an international human rights monitoring organisation: we look at human rights internationally, and we look at where the UK is on the standards, obligations and legal frameworks that exist. It is worrying to say that for most of the provisions in the Bill, we see a clear gap between what the international standards require of the UK and what the UK proposes here, and it is the wrong gap. The UK is on the wrong side of where it should be. I am sure we will have the opportunity to go into why we think that and the areas where we think that is the case, but that is a very worrying direction of travel, especially when in terms of its foreign, defence and security policy aspirations, the UK sees itself very much as a champion of civil society space. It sees and acknowledges the fact that the world is becoming increasingly authoritarian, and wants to do things to stop that.
As a quick example, in April this year, Lord Ahmad—a Government Minister from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—was giving his closing remarks to the 49th session of the Human Rights Council. In that, he made specific reference to a very important resolution about the need to promote and respect the rights of human rights defenders around the world. It was a resolution that was welcomed and strongly supported by the UK Government; it was a very important resolution. That resolution essentially requires that all states refrain from measures that excessively criminalise human rights defenders and their rights to freedom of expression, so you have a bit of a disconnect here between the statements that the UK puts out internationally and the role we see ourselves playing in the world community, and the kinds of measures we are putting in place on our own domestic legislative front. They are out of step with each other, and it is not joined up.
Stephanie Needleman: I completely agree with what Martha and Olly have said. Picking up on something that Olly said about the disconnect between what the UK is doing internationally and what we are doing domestically, there is also an internal disconnect in what we are doing domestically in the UK. The right to protest is an element of the right to freedom of expression and assembly. On the one hand, that is being championed under the Bill of Rights consultation and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, but on the other hand, it is being severely restricted in this Bill, so there is an internal inconsistency there as well.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
“Disruption” is such a vague term. What would a person have to have done for the police to be able to go down this route? I should probably ask the Minister, because I think the answer at the moment is that we do not really know, but how do you see this panning out?
Stephanie Needleman: I cannot see if Martha and Ollie are indicating that they will answer, but I can kick off, if that is helpful.
I think you have hit the nail on the head in raising the vagueness of when these serious disruption prevention orders can be imposed. They can be imposed not necessarily on conviction, as you said. The orders can cover an incredibly broad range of circumstances. Under clause 13(2)(a)(v), all you need to prove is that on two separate occasions somebody
“caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person”—
they do not even have to have done the act even themselves; it could be done by someone else—
“activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”.
You do not need to have carried out the
“activities related to a protest”;
you just have to have “caused or contributed” to them. Those are incredibly vague and broad terms; they could cover almost anything done to assist someone doing anything related to a protest. For example, it could be driving somebody to a protest, or to shops selling paint or glue, if the person the glue is sold to subsequently glues themselves to something.
Linked to that, there does not seem to be any requirement for the person to have had knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption when they “caused or contributed” to the carrying out of those activities. That could capture a vast range of behaviour.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Stephanie Needleman: It has to be proved, but it only has to be found, on the balance of probabilities—the civil standard of proof—that one of the conditions has been met. As I said, the conditions are so broad and vague that it should not be that problematic for the police to approve. So yes, involvement would have to be proved, but given the vagueness and the broadness of the conditions, it is likely that it can be easily proved.
Martha Spurrier: It is right that, for example, legal aid would not be available to someone defending themselves against having one of those orders imposed on them, and of course they can be renewed; there is a suggestion in the Bill that they could be renewed indefinitely. Once the order was in place, you would not get legal aid for a lawyer’s assistance in dislodging it.
It is worth stepping back a little and looking at the serious disruption prevention orders. These have been proposed by the Met police before, under the name of protest banning orders. The Home Office was against bringing them in, on the grounds that they were neither compatible with human rights nor an effective deterrent that would solve the problem that they purported to. That relates to a slippage in principle and language that we see across the Bill. It is important to pay attention to it, because this is law; cases will be decided on these words. Article 10 of the European convention on human rights is of course not an absolute right. It can be interfered with. There is a balance to be struck between the interests of a protester and the interests of the wider community, for example.
There are many grounds on which you can interfere with the right to protest; one of them is crime and disorder, and another is the rights of other people. You already have a human rights framework for limiting protest in certain constrained situations, but what we see in this Bill is not the language of crime, disorder, or abuse of others’ rights, but the language of disruption, inconvenience and nuisance. That is a significant, conceptual, legal change in the language. As Stephanie says, it takes you into the territory of criminalising what we have hitherto understood to be non-criminal conduct—of criminalising protest tactics that have a long history and previously would not have been considered criminal acts. People who may have participated in a couple of protests over five years may suddenly find themselves within the purview of the criminal law, although hitherto both criminal and human rights law would simply never have brought them into that space. When thinking about all these definitions and new offences, it is important to recognise that significant paradigm shift in the concept of how you go about policing protest.
Add to that the fact that these new concepts, including the idea of serious disruption, will be defined in secondary legislation. This significant interference with the fundamental right of protest may result in terms being defined by a politician who gives the definition very little parliamentary scrutiny. The measures would then be implemented by a police service that interprets them as it sees fit; we do not need to go into the times when they get it right and the times when they get it wrong. There are lots of layers to this before you even get to the detail of what happens if someone is subject to one of these orders, how they would shift it, and whether being subject to an order would mean that they could no longer protest.
Olly Sprague: My colleagues have covered everything that I wanted to say on the domestic aspect. It is worth coming back to the question: where do the international standards sit? The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s general comment from 2020 is most useful here. It allows the criminalisation of individuals taking part in a demonstration only in very specific circumstances, and it sets the threshold at incitement to violence. It sets the time limit as “as short as possible”; it talks in terms of a few hours. The international standard allows individuals to be prevented from accessing a process, but the bar is very high. The Bill sets an extraordinarily low bar. There are two levels by which these orders can be put in place. One is based on a person having two previous convictions on the civil standard burden of proof; the other is not based on conviction at all, which is even worse. The UK is so far out of step with where it should be under international standards; it is quite alarming.
Kerry McCarthy
I could understand it to a point if somebody’s presence at a future protest could lead to a dangerous situation, which is what you say the international comparison would be; but under the Bill, basically your right to protest could be removed for five years because you had not behaved impeccably on previous protests.
Olly Sprague: The Bill would also potentially hold you responsible for the conduct of other people at a protest that you were organising. One of the great unfortunate misconceptions of protest, especially around violence and disruptive protest, is that a protest somehow gets characterised as being inherently violent because actions of violence occurred within it. It is perfectly legitimate for law enforcement officers to deal with and prevent those violent actions and make arrests. However, you cannot characterise a whole protest as violent just because some aspect of it was violent.
With the way the serious disruption prevention orders are drafted, you could, in theory, be held responsible for an altogether peaceful protest where a violent action that was completely beyond your control took place. You cannot really be held responsible for something that you were not responsible for, if that makes sense.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: We have to be careful when making international comparisons. We do not really not compare and rank countries in some kind of league table. We look at each country individually and see where it marks up. It is interesting, though, that there are not that many examples around the world of measures akin to a protest banning order.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: We have not looked at 600 different laws for the purpose of this sitting. However, where we have looked, we found corresponding powers of a similar nature in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Belarus, Russia and Egypt, I think. In all the cases where they have a measure that is similar to a protest banning order, it has been on the organisation of protests, not the participation.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: Yes.
The Chair
Q
Stephanie Needleman: Yes, please. I want to add that when we talk about what these protest banning orders do, we should note that they do not necessarily just ban people from attending or organising protests. They have significantly wider, far-reaching applications into everyday aspects of people’s lives. As long as they are imposed for one of the purposes listed, the conditions that can be imposed when someone has been given one of these orders can be anything. Look at the conditions listed in the Bill: they can prevent people using the internet, associating with particular persons or participating in particular activities. It is not necessarily limited to protest. We are talking about activities that are far, far broader than just being prevented from attending protests.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Well, there is a potential difference in how it would be applied, but the serious disruption prevention orders have the capacity to be absolute bans in the same way as the protest banning orders.
Kit Malthouse
Under judicial supervision.
Martha Spurrier: Yes, under judicial supervision—but, as we have said, to a low standard of proof, based on no criminal conduct.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I don’t think so, because I do not think you could attach the same invasive conditions. I do not think you could have electronic monitoring, for example, if you had an injunction. That is my understanding.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I would not describe them as unlimited powers, but judges absolutely can impose injunctions. It goes to the broader point of whether these additional powers are needed, and I know that there have been people giving evidence that—
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I do not understand the question. A civil injunction and an SDPO are both civil procedures with criminal sanctions attached.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: If you are going to face imprisonment, you will always have access to counsel—to legal aid. You may face those sanctions either directly from a breach of the criminal law or, if you are under a civil order that has criminal sanctions attached to it, from breaching that civil order. I cannot see an argument that any person is better off having an SDPO, as opposed to an injunction or any other offence. The fact of the matter is that an SDPO is a novel legal provision that, for all the reasons we have gone over, captures non-criminal conduct as well as criminal.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Well, the impact of an SDPO is much, much wider, because you could end up having a civil order attached to you that has invasive conditions, such as electronic monitoring, that could be renewed indefinitely, and if you breach them you could face almost a year in prison and an unlimited fine. I do not think they are comparable at all. We do not have anything like that currently, whereby, for non-criminal acts, you could face that kind of civil or criminal sanction.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: You can. What I am saying is that you would not currently have an injunction based on non-criminal conduct—the kind of non-criminal conduct we are talking about with this Bill—that then has attached to it invasive conditions such as electronic monitoring. There is no comparison with what this Bill is doing.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Olly Sprague: I do not want to give a non-answer here. Obviously, policing is a devolved matter, so our offices in Scotland have an equivalent of me. They are involved in a number of policing and scrutiny panels, and they are actively involved in the human rights framework around public order policing. They were involved in a scrutiny panel for the COP protests, for example. These are discussions that our colleagues have with the Scottish Government all the time. I am not fully abreast of the details of those, but I can tell you that we have them. Where we are critical, we make that known.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Liberty’s position on buffer zones is to support as limited a buffer zone as is possible to protect access to reproductive rights for the people who need to use the services of the clinic, while also protecting the right to protest. One of the amendments proposes a 150-metre buffer zone, and we think that that limit is acceptable, although it should be dependent on circumstances—if a narrower one is possible, that should be used. There are some aspects of the amendment that we agree with, and some that we think are too broad and could infringe the right to protest. I have to say that of all our concerns about this Bill, buffer zones around abortion clinics are not high on the list. There are much more egregious interferences with the right to protest in this Bill than those proposed in that amendment.
Kit Malthouse
Q
The Chair
Ms Needleman, would you like to comment?
Stephanie Needleman: Sorry; I could not hear very well. Were you asking me whether I wanted to comment?
The Chair
Order. I am going to come to you, Dr Huq, but I will decide who speaks and when. The Minister is currently speaking, and we are asking Ms Needleman, who is joining us by Zoom, whether she wishes to give a response.
Stephanie Needleman: I do not think I have that much to add—Justice, as an organisation, does not have a formal position on this—but I agree in terms of protecting the rights of women to access abortion services, obviously, and that should be done in a way that does not infringe the right to protest. The right to protest is not an unlimited right, so there is scope to do something, but it needs to be limited so that it is within the bounds of articles 10 and 11.
Olly Sprague: We agree totally with that. In general, we would take a very dim view of the idea of protest buffer zones, unless there are exceptionally good reasons. We would be looking at things like drawing on existing regulations around incitement to hatred and privacy rights—those sorts of things. A way of protecting rights on both sides would be seen as important. As Martha said, what mitigation could be allowed to make sure that one right does not overshadow the other, if that makes sense? But, obviously, this is an incredibly sensitive and difficult area.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Liberty has a long history of working on the right to protest, both in terms of protestors and members of other communities. For example, we have a rich history of tackling the difficult issue of far right protest and incitement to hatred, where Liberty has very much supported the idea of communities needing to be protected when they are faced with far right, extremist protests. One of the other things that article 10 does, and that policing has had to grapple with since the advent of the Human Rights Act, is to protect counter-protests and protests. You very often have two protests going on at the same time where there is a clash. Again, Liberty has done lots of work to make sure that both protest groups, acting within the law, are protected with their article 10 rights upheld, in so far as that can be done, compatibly with each other.
I absolutely refute the idea that this is subject-specific. The abortion buffer zones case is a really good example. As with many other cases, it is a fact that we have public order laws in this country and we accept that things such as preventing violence and preventing incitement to violence, for example, are an important infringement on protest. Many of those considerations are in play when you think about abortion buffer zones. It is when you are dealing with rights that butt up against other rights that you have to make difficult calls, for sure, but we are saying that the Bill fundamentally gets the balance wrong.
I do not know whether we will have time to get on to the stop-and-search proposals or the offence of locking on. However, thinking about locking on as an example, just very briefly, those who are policing a protest are confronted with a dynamic situation. They are trying to work out at what point that crosses the line and might need to be shut down. If someone locks themselves to an animal testing centre—let us take it out of modern, current examples—the police have to work out at what point that person’s right to lock themselves to the testing centre becomes an infringement of other rights. It might be that the police think, “Actually, that guy can be there for two days and it doesn’t really matter. It’s a perfectly lawful and acceptable exercise of his protest rights. But, at a certain point, it is going to become a problem and we are going to consider removing him.”
If you create an offence of locking on—if you criminalise such specific protest tactics—the minute a man puts his padlock around that testing centre, he has committed a crime. There is no ability for the police to act in a dynamic way, to assess, and to do the balancing act of comparing competing rights. That is it: the tactic is criminalised and that man can be removed immediately, regardless of whether there is any impact on other people.
Of course, any of us who work in this area are really adept at trying to manage competing rights, and that is what the police have to do all the time. But the proposals in the Bill are blunt instruments that will criminalise hitherto lawful activity. They will have a chilling effect on the ability to protest, and they will not deter normal people who want to make their voices heard from trying to do so—instead, the Bill will just criminalise them. It will not deter the hard core, who have breaking the law as one of their tactics, because the provision just falls into what they already do.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: What should we do about protests?
Kit Malthouse
No, what should we do about the hard core that you are talking about?
Martha Spurrier: What about the hard core we already have? The police already have a whole range of measures to deal with hard-core protesters. We have criminal offences and we have specially trained police officers dealing with those people. Someone earlier talked about not living in perfect harmony. A measure of disruption and nuisance is going to be a factor of any protest about any hot political issue at any one time, whether you are talking about the civil rights movement in America, the movement for votes for women with the suffragettes in this country, or the climate justice movement now. You cannot take the sting out of it entirely, because then there would not be protest, and then we would not live in a democracy any more.
The Chair
Ms Needleman, do you wish to say anything?
Stephanie Needleman: On the measures that already exist, there is obviously the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has literally just been passed, which includes measures—the expanded circumstances —under which the police can impose conditions on protests. That just adds to the existing measures. I do not think these new measures have even come into force yet, so we do not know what effect they will have. There is no evidence base that further measures are needed.
Dr Huq
Q
The distance need not be 150 metres. We just took that from Ealing, because that is where the main road is, so then it is not in the eyeline. But it again comes back to this question of what is a vigil—those people would say they are doing a prayer vigil—what is a protest and what is harassment. In the eyes of the woman who is going in for a traumatic procedure, it feels like that, and it can be psychologically distressing. The French legislation allows for psychological distress to be considered.
Is there a right to privacy as well? I ask that because the London Borough of Ealing has acted under local authority powers, and only three local authorities in the whole country have done so since 2018, because the process is too onerous. Every time a case has gone to the High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, the privacy of the person having their procedure has trumped freedom of thought, expression, conscience, belief—all that stuff. I just wondered where the three of you stand on that. Again, I am disappointed, because with Sarah Everard, we said so many times, “This should never happen again; she was only walking down the street,” but, in my eyes, these people are just trying to access the pavement to have a perfectly legal procedure. As the Minister pointed out to me in the House the other day, this has been lumped in with the vax protests. I think it is about women—a marginalised community who should be protected, as you said at the start—being able to use the pavement. They should be able to do so unimpeded. What do you three of you think?
Martha Spurrier: Absolutely there is a right to privacy. One of the conditions in your amendment is to prohibit the filming and photographing of people using the services. We would say that no one has a right to capture someone else’s identifying information and record it. I do not have the amendment in front of me, but the points about harassment, being physically approached or being physically manhandled—anything of that nature—would be a breach of women’s rights and would fall down in favour of women and the buffer zone, not in favour of the protestors.
However, there are also conditions in the amendment on things such as seeking to influence and showing distressing imagery. Our view is that that falls on the other side of the line. People are entitled, as part of their right to protest, to seek to influence people, as long as they do not do so in a way that is harassing. Similarly, if you walk past certain embassies in London—the Chinese embassy, for example—there will often be very distressing images on show as part of protest against states’ policies. The same applies outside abortion clinics, where distressing images may be shown, but may be part of a legitimate right to protest. There is a balancing act.
Dr Huq
Q
Olly Sprague: The only thing I would add is that your location point is quite interesting. The mitigation measure or countermeasure that you might put in place to balance those two rights in a proportionate way might differ depending on the location. In the case you mentioned, it may well be the location of the pavement—I do not know where the clinic is—but for another clinic, there might be a more concealed side entrance or something else that could be used. You would have a different approach to maintaining the dignity and security of women having a perfectly lawful procedure, and managing a counter-protest. You could apply a different model depending on geography.
Dr Huq
Q
I want to ask about suspicionless stop and search—no one has said anything about it—which corrodes trust for BME communities, and about how body cameras could be a way out of completely suspicionless stop and search.
Martha Spurrier: Again, just to set the context, the proposal to extend suspicionless stop and search into this area is extraordinary. At the moment, suspicionless stop and search is available in the context of serious violence. It was available in the context of terrorism. It was struck down and Theresa May had to abandon it. That is in the context of crimes that will potentially kill many, many people.
We know that stop-and-search powers are implemented in a racist way. Under suspicion-led stop-and-search powers, a black person—a person of colour—is seven times more likely to be stopped than a white person. Suspicionless stop and search is twice as racist, at 14 times more likely. The idea that you would take a corrosive, racist and deeply controversial policing tool and apply it in the context of protest is extraordinary to us. We cannot see how it will do anything other than cause huge damage for particularly marginalised communities and have a chilling effect on seeking to exercise protest rights, particularly for them. There is a wealth of evidence on the detrimental impact of stop and search, and if there is a threat that people may be stopped and searched at a protest, there is every chance that they simply will not go and make their voice heard.
Olly Sprague: I agree 100% on suspicionless stop and search. It is enormously problematic and, on this one, Amnesty would say that the proposal fails the test of lawfulness—we talk about proportionate necessity, but there is also one of lawfulness. For example, the confiscation powers that go behind the stop-and-search powers around the locking-on offence capture an enormously broad range of items that an officer could argue might be capable of causing an offence. You have so many caveats that you will get into a situation where an ordinary person could have no idea why they were stopped, or why somebody might be taking an item off them that was completely lawful—everything from string to a bit of glue. It fails on that basic principle of lawfulness, which I think is incredibly problematic.
The Chair
Order. You will have to draw it to a close, Mr Sprague, because we are at the end.
Olly Sprague: Oh, I am sorry, Chair.
The Chair
It is not your fault; the Committee had determined certain timescales for the panels, and we have reached the end of the timescale for this panel. My apologies to those I was not able to call during this section.
My thanks to our witnesses—those in the room, and Ms Needleman, who has joined us by Zoom. We are grateful to all the witnesses for their contributions.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
Online Safety Bill (Eighth sitting)
Thursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 9 June 2022 - (9 Jun 2022)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 32 stand part.
That schedule 3 be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Clause 33 stand part.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
When the sitting was suspended for lunch, I was concluding my remarks and saying that where children are the victim of illegal activity or illegal content, all of that is covered in other aspects of the Bill. For areas such as gambling, we have separate legislation that protects children. In relation to potentially harmful content, the reason there is a “significant number” test for the child user condition that we are debating is that, without it, platforms that either would not have any children accessing them or had nothing of any concern on them—such as a website about corporation tax—would have an unduly burdensome and disproportionate obligation placed on them. That is why there is the test—just to ensure that there is a degree of proportionality in these duties. We find similar qualifications in other legislation; that includes the way the age-appropriate design code works. Therefore, I respectfully resist the amendment.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 34, page 33, line 41, after “service” insert “that targets users”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 24, in clause 35, page 34, line 34, after “service” insert “that targets users”.
New clause 5—Duty to distinguish paid-for advertisements—
“(1) A provider of a Category 2A service must operate the service using systems and processes designed to clearly distinguish to users of that service paid-for advertisements from all other content appearing in or via search results of the service.
(2) The systems and processes described under subsection (1)—
(a) must include clearly displaying the words “paid-for advertisement” next to any paid-for advertisement appearing in or via search results of the service, and
(b) may include measures such as but not limited to the application of colour schemes to paid-for advertisements appearing in or via search results of the service.
(3) The reference to paid-for advertisements appearing “in or via search results of a search service” does not include a reference to any advertisements appearing as a result of any subsequent interaction by a user with an internet service other than the search service.
(4) If a person is the provider of more than one Category 2A service, the duties set out in this section apply in relation to each such service.
(5) The duties set out in this section extend to the design, operation and use of a Category 2A service that hosts paid-for advertisements targeted at users of that service in the United Kingdom.
(6) For the meaning of “Category 2A service”, see section 81 (register of a categories of service).
(7) For the meaning of “paid-for advertisement”, see section 189 (interpretation: general).”
New clause 6—Duty to verify advertisements—
“(1) A provider of a Category 2A service must operate an advertisement verification process for any relevant advertisement appearing in or via search results of the service.
(2) In this section, “relevant advertisement” means any advertisement for a service or product to be designated in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(3) The verification process under subsection (1) must include a requirement for advertisers to demonstrate that they are authorised by a UK regulatory body.
(4) In this section, “UK regulatory body” means a UK regulator responsible for the regulation of a particular service or product to be designated in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(5) If a person is the provider of more than one Category 2A service, the duties set out in this section apply in relation to each such service.
(6) For the meaning of “Category 2A service”, see section 81 (register of a categories of service).
(7) Regulations under this section shall be made by statutory instrument.
(8) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.”
Barbara Keeley
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for her work on drafting these amendments and others relating to this chapter, which I will speak to shortly. She has campaigned excellently over many years in her role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse. I attended the most recent meeting of that group back in April to discuss what we need to see changed in the Bill to protect people from scams online. I am grateful to those who have supported the group and the anti-ticket touting campaign for their insights.
It is welcome that, after much flip-flopping, the Government have finally conceded to Labour’s calls and those of many campaign groups to include a broad duty to tackle fraudulent advertising on search engines through chapter 5 of part 3 of the Bill. We know that existing laws to protect consumers in the online world have failed to keep pace with the actors attempting to exploit them, and that is particularly true of scams and fraudulent advertisements.
Statistics show a steep increase in this type of crime in the online world, although those figures are likely to be a significant underestimate and do not capture the devastating emotional impact that scams have on their victims. The scale of the problem is large and it is growing.
The Financial Conduct Authority estimates that fraud costs the UK up to £190 billion a year, with 86% of that fraud committed online. We know those figures are increasing. The FCA more than doubled the number of scam warnings it issued between 2019 and 2020, while UK Finance data shows that there has been a significant rise in cases across all scam types as criminals adapt to targeting victims online. The pandemic, which led to a boom in internet shopping, created an environment ripe for exploitation. Reported incidents of scams and fraud have increased by 41% since before the pandemic, with one in 10 of us now victims of fraud.
Being scammed can cause serious psychological harm. Research by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute suggests that three in 10 online scam victims felt depressed as a result of being scammed, while four in 10 said they felt stressed. Clearly, action to tackle the profound harms that result from fraudulent advertising is long overdue.
This Bill is an important opportunity but, as with other issues the Government are seeking to address, we need to see changes if it is to be successful. Amendments 23 and 24 are small and very simple, but would have a profound impact on the ability of the Bill to prevent online fraud from taking place and to protect UK users.
As currently drafted, the duties set out in clauses 34 and 35 for category 1 and 2A services extend only to the design, operation and use of a category 1 or 2A service in the United Kingdom. Our amendments would mean that the duties extended to the design, operation and use of a category 1 or 2A service that targets users in the United Kingdom. That change would make the Bill far more effective, because it would reduce the risk of a company based overseas being able to target UK consumers without any action being taken against them—being allowed to target the public fraudulently without fear of disruption.
That would be an important change, because paid-for advertisements function by the advertiser stating where in the world, by geographical location, they wish to target consumers. For instance, a company would be able to operate from Hong Kong and take out paid-for advertisements to target consumers just in one particular part of north London. The current wording of the Bill does not acknowledge the fact that internet services can operate from anywhere in the world and use international boundaries to circumvent UK legislation.
Other legislation has been successful in tackling scams across borders. I draw the Committee’s attention to the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, which made it a crime to sell a ticket to the Olympics into the black market anywhere in the world, rather than simply in the UK where the games took place. I suggest that we should learn from the action taken to regulate the Olympics back in 2012 and implement the same approach through amendments 23 and 24.
New clause 5 was also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West, who will be getting a lot of mentions this afternoon.
Barbara Keeley
New clause 5 would tackle one of the reasons people become subject to fraud online by introducing a duty for search engines to ensure that all paid-for search advertisements should be made to look distinct from non-paid-for search results. When bad actors are looking to scam consumers, they often take out paid-for advertising on search results, so that they can give consumers the false impression that their websites are official and trustworthy.
Paid search results occur when companies pay a charge to have their site appear at the top of search results. This is valuable to them because it is likely to direct consumers towards their site. The new clause would stop scam websites buying their way to the top of a search result.
Let me outline some of the consequences of not distinguishing between paid-for and not-paid-for advertisements, because they can be awful. Earlier this year, anti-abortion groups targeted women who were searching online for a suitable abortion clinic. The groups paid for the women to have misleading adverts at the top of their search that directed them towards an anti-abortion centre rather than a clinic. One woman who knew that she wanted to have an abortion went on researching where she could have the procedure. Her search for a clinic on Google led her to an anti-abortion centre that she went on to contact and visit. That was because she trusted the top search results on Google, which were paid for. The fact that it was an advertisement was indicated only by the two letters “AD” appearing in very small font underneath the search headline and description.
Another example was reported by The Times last year. Google had been taking advertising money from scam websites selling premier league football tickets, even though the matches were taking place behind closed doors during lockdown. Because these advertisements appeared at the top of search results, it is entirely understandable that people looking for football tickets were deceived into believing that they would be able to attend the games, which led to them being scammed.
There have been similar problems with passport renewals. As colleagues will be very aware, people have been desperately trying to renew their passports amid long delays because of the backlog of cases. This is a target for fraudsters, who take out paid advertisements to offer people assistance with accessing passport renewal services and then scam them.
New clause 5 would end this practice by ensuring that search engines provide clear messaging to show that the user is looking at a paid-for advertisement, by stating that clearly and through other measures, such as a separate colour scheme. A duty to distinguish paid-for advertising is present in many other areas of advertising. For example, when we watch TV, there is no confusion between what is a programme and what is an advert; the same is true of radio advertising; and when someone is reading a newspaper or magazine, the line between journalism and the advertisements that fund the paper is unmistakable.
We cannot continue to have these discrepancies and be content with the internet being a wild west. Therefore, it is clear that advertising on search engines needs to be brought into line with advertising in other areas, with a requirement on search engines to distinguish clearly between paid-for and organic results.
New clause 6 is another new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West. It would protect consumers from bad actors trying to exploit them online by placing a duty on search engines to verify adverts before they accept them. That would mean that, before their adverts were allowed to appear in a paid-for search result, companies would have to demonstrate that they were authorised by a UK regulatory body designated by the Secretary of State.
This methodology for preventing fraud is already in process for financial crime. Google only accepts financial services advertisements from companies that are a member of the Financial Conduct Authority. This gives companies a further incentive to co-operate with regulators and it protects consumers by preventing companies that are well-known for their nefarious activities from dominating search results and then misleading consumers. By extending this best practice to all advertisements, search engines would no longer be able to promote content that is fake or fraudulent after being paid to do so.
Without amending the Bill in this way, we risk missing an opportunity to tackle the many forms of scamming that people experience online, one of which is the world of online ticketing. In my role as shadow Minister for the arts and civil society, I have worked on this issue and been informed by the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West.
In the meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse in April, we heard about the awful consequences of secondary ticket reselling practices. Ticket reselling websites, such as Viagogo, are rife with fraud. Large-scale ticket touts dominate the resale site, and Viagogo has a well-documented history of breaching consumer protection laws. Those breaches include a number of counts of fraud for selling non-existent tickets. Nevertheless, Viagogo continues to take out paid-for advertisements with Google and is continually able to take advantage of consumers by dominating search results and commanding false trust.
If new clause 6 is passed, then secondary ticketing websites such as Viagogo would have to be members of a regulatory body responsible for secondary ticketing, such as the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, or STAR. Viagogo would then have to comply with STAR standards for its business model to be successful.
I have used ticket touting as an example, but the repercussions of this change would be wider than that. Websites that sell holidays and flights, such as Skyscanner, would have to be a member of the relevant regulatory group, for example the Association of British Travel Agents. People would be able to go to football matches, art galleries and music festivals without fearing that they are getting ripped off or have been issued with fake tickets.
I will describe just a few examples of the poor situation we are in at the moment, to illustrate the need for change. The most heartbreaking one is of an elderly couple who bought two tickets from a secondary ticketing website to see their favourite artist, the late Leonard Cohen, to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. When the day came around and they arrived at the venue, they were turned away and told they had been sold fake tickets. The disappointment they must have felt would have been very hard to bear. In another instance, a British soldier serving overseas decided to buy his daughter concert tickets because he could not be with her on her birthday. When his daughter went along to the show, she was turned away at the door and told she could not enter because the tickets had been bought through a scam site and were invalid.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I rise to agree with all the amendments in this group that have been tabled by the Opposition. I want to highlight a couple of additional groups who are particularly at risk in relation to fraudulent advertising. One of those is pensioners and people approaching pension age. Because of the pension freedoms that are in place, we have a lot of people making uninformed decisions about how best to deal with their pensions, and sometimes they are able to withdraw a significant amount of money in one go. For an awful lot of people, withdrawing that money and paying the tax on it leads to a major financial loss—never mind the next step that they may take, which is to provide the money to fraudsters.
For pensioners in particular, requiring adverts to be clearly different from other search results would make a positive difference. The other thing that we have to remember is that pensioners generally did not grow up online, and some of them struggle more to navigate the internet than some of us who are bit younger.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
I speak with some experience of this issue, because I had a constituent who was a pensioner and who was scammed of £20,000—her life savings. Does my hon. Friend realise that it is sometimes possible to pressurise the banks into returning the money? In that particular case, I got the money back for my constituent by applying a great deal of pressure on the bank, and it is worth knowing that the banks are susceptible to a bit of publicity. That is perhaps worth bearing in mind, because it is a useful power that we have as Members of Parliament.
Kirsty Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for his public service announcement. His constituent is incredibly lucky that my hon. Friend managed to act in that way and get the money back to her, because there are so many stories of people not managing to get their money back and losing their entire life savings as a result of scams. It is the case that not all those scams take place online—people can find scams in many other places—but we have the opportunity with the Bill to take action on scams that are found on the internet.
The other group I want to mention, and for whom highlighting advertising could make a positive difference, is people with learning disabilities. People with learning disabilities who use the internet may not understand the difference between adverts and search results, as the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South mentioned. They are a group who I would suggest are particularly susceptible to fraudulent advertising.
We are speaking a lot about search engines, but a lot of fraudulent advertising takes place on Facebook and so on. Compared with the majority of internet users, there is generally an older population on such sites, and the ability to tackle fraudulent advertising there is incredibly useful. We know that the sites can do it, because there are rules in place now around political advertising on Facebook, for example. We know that it is possible for them to take action; it is just that they have not yet taken proper action.
I am happy to support the amendments, but I am also glad that the Minister has put these measures in the Bill, because they will make a difference to so many of our constituents.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North for her latter remarks. We made an important addition to the Bill after listening to parliamentarians across the House and to the Joint Committee, which many people served on with distinction. I am delighted that we have been able to make that significant move. We have heard a lot about how fraudulent advertising can affect people terribly, particularly more vulnerable people, so that is an important addition.
Amendments 23 and 24 seek to make it clear that where the target is in the UK, people are covered. I am happy to assure the Committee that that is already covered, because the definitions at the beginning of the Bill—going back to clause 3(5)(b), on page 3—make it clear that companies are in scope, both user-to-user and search, if there is a significant number of UK users or where UK users form one of the target markets, or is the only target market. Given the reference to “target markets” in the definitions, I hope that the shadow Minister will withdraw the amendment, because the matter is already covered in the Bill.
New clause 5 raises important points about the regulation of online advertising, but that is outside the purview of what the Bill is trying to achieve. The Government are going to work through the online advertising programme to tackle these sorts of issues, which are important. The shadow Minister is right to raise them, but they will be tackled holistically by the online advertising programme, and of course there are already codes of practice that apply and are overseen by the Advertising Standards Authority. Although these matters are very important and I agree with the points that she makes, there are other places where those are best addressed.
New clause 6 is about the verification process. Given that the Bill is primary legislation, we want to have the core duty to prevent fraudulent advertising in the Bill. How that is implemented in this area, as in many others, is best left to Ofcom and its codes of practice. When Ofcom publishes the codes of practice, it might consider such a duty, but we would rather leave Ofcom, as the expert regulator, with the flexibility to implement that via the codes of practice and leave the hard-edged duty in the Bill as drafted.
Barbara Keeley
We are going to press amendments 23 and 24 to a vote because they are very important. I cited the example of earlier legislation that considered it important, in relation to selling tickets, to include the wording “anywhere in the world”. We know that ticket abuses happen with organisations in different parts of the world.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is perfectly entitled to press to a vote whatever amendments she sees fit, but in relation to amendments 24 and 25, the words she asks for,
“where the UK is a target market”,
are already in the Bill, in clause 3(5)(b), on page 3, which set out the definitions at the start. I will allow the hon. Lady a moment to look at where it states:
“United Kingdom users form one of the target markets for the service”.
That applies to user-to-user and to search, so it is covered already.
Barbara Keeley
The problem is that we are getting into the wording of the Bill. As with the child abuse clause that we discussed before lunch, there are limitations. Clause 3 states that a service has links with the United Kingdom if
“the service has a significant number of United Kingdom users”.
It does not matter if a person is one of 50, 100 or 1,000 people who get scammed by some organisation operating in another part of the country. The 2006 Bill dealing with the sale of Olympic tickets believed that was important, and we also believe it is important. We have to find a way of dealing with ticket touting and ticket abuse.
Turning to fraudulent advertising, I have given examples and been supported very well by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. It is not right that vulnerable people are repeatedly taken in by search results, which is the case right now. The reason we have tabled all these amendments is that we are trying to protect vulnerable people, as with every other part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
That is of course our objective as well, but let me just return to the question of the definitions. The hon. Lady is right that clause 3(5)(a) says
“a significant number of United Kingdom users”,
but paragraph (b) just says,
“United Kingdom users form one of the target markets”.
There is no significant number qualification in paragraph (b), and to put it beyond doubt, clause 166(1) makes it clear that service providers based outside the United Kingdom are within the scope of the Bill. To reiterate the point, where the UK is a target market, there is no size qualification: the service provider is in scope, even if it is only one user.
Barbara Keeley
Does the Minister want to say anything about the other points I made about advertisements?
Chris Philp
Not beyond the points I made previously, no.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 45, in clause 35, page 34, line 2, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
“(1) A provider of a Category 2A service must operate the service using proportionate systems and processes designed to—
(a) prevent individuals from encountering content consisting of fraudulent advertisements by means of the service;
(b) minimise the length of time for which any such content is present;
(c) where the provider is alerted by a person to the presence of such content, or becomes aware of it in any other way, swiftly take down such content.”
This amendment brings the fraudulent advertising provisions for Category 2A services in line with those for Category 1 services.
Government amendments 91 to 94.
Clause 35 stand part.
Amendment 44, in clause 36, page 35, line 10, at end insert—
“(4A) An offence under Part 3 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.”
This amendment adds further offences to those which apply for the purposes of the Bill’s fraudulent advertising provisions.
Clause 36 stand part.
Barbara Keeley
I am aware that the Minister has reconsidered the clause and tabled a Government amendment that is also in this group, with the same purpose as our amendment 45. That is welcome, as there was previously no justifiable reason why the duties on category 1 services and category 2A services were misaligned.
All three of the duties on category 1 services introduced by clause 34 are necessary to address the harm caused by fraudulent and misleading online adverts. Service providers need to take proportionate but effective action to prevent those adverts from appearing or reappearing, and when they do appear, those service providers need to act quickly by swiftly taking them down. The duties on category 2A services were much weaker, only requiring them to minimise the risk of individuals encountering content consisting of fraudulent advertisements in or via search results of the service. There was no explicit reference to prevention, even though that is vital, or any explicit requirement to act quickly to take harmful adverts down.
That difference would have created an opportunity for fraudsters to exploit by focusing on platforms with lesser protections. It could have resulted in an increase in fraud enabled by paid-for advertising on search services, which would have undermined the aims of the Bill. I am glad that the Government have recognised this and will require the same proactive, preventative response to harmful ads from regulated search engines as is required from category 1 services.
Chris Philp
As we have heard already, these clauses are very important because they protect people from online fraudulent advertisements for the first time—something that the whole House quite rightly called for. As the shadow Minister said, the Government heard Parliament’s views on Second Reading, and the fact that the duties in clause 35 were not as strongly worded as those in clause 34 was recognised. The Government heard what Members said on Second Reading and tabled Government amendments 91 to 94, which make the duties on search firms in clause 35 as strong as those on user-to-user firms in clause 34. Opposition amendment 45 would essentially do the same thing, so I hope we can adopt Government amendments 91 to 94 without needing to move amendment 45. It would do exactly the same thing—we are in happy agreement on that point.
I listened carefully to what the shadow Minister said on amendment 44. The example she gave at the end of her speech—the poor lady who was induced into sending money, which she thought was being sent to pay off creditors but was, in fact, stolen—would, of course, be covered by the Bill as drafted, because it would count as an act of fraud.
The hon. Lady also talked about some other areas that were not fraud, such as unfair practices, misleading statements or statements that were confusing, which are clearly different from fraud. The purpose of clause 35 is to tackle fraud. Those other matters are, as she says, covered by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which are overseen and administered by the Competition and Markets Authority. While matters to do with unfair, misleading or confusing content are serious—I do not seek to minimise their importance—they are overseen by a different regulator and, therefore, better handled by the CMA under its existing regulations.
If we introduce this extra offence to the list in clause 36, we would end up having a bit of regulatory overlap and confusion, because there would be two regulators involved. For that reason, and because those other matters—unfair, misleading and confusing advertisements —are different to fraud, I ask that the Opposition withdraw amendment 44 and, perhaps, take it up on another occasion when the CMA’s activities are in the scope of the debate.
Barbara Keeley
No, we want to press this amendment to a vote. I have had further comment from the organisations that I quoted. They believe that we do need the amendment because it is important to stop harmful ads going up in the first place. They believe that strengthened provisions are needed for that. Guidance just puts the onus for protecting consumers on the other regulatory regimes that the Minister talked about. The view of organisations such as StepChange is that those regimes—the Advertising Standards Authority regime—are not particularly strong.
The regulatory framework for financial compulsion is fragmented. FCA-regulated firms are clearly under much stronger obligations than those that fall outside FCA regulations. I believe that it would be better to accept the amendment, which would oblige search engines and social media giants to prevent harmful and deceptive ads from appearing in the first place. The Minister really needs to take on board the fact that in this patchwork, this fragmented world of different regulatory systems, some of the existing systems are clearly failing badly, and the strong view of expert organisations is that the amendment is necessary.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 35
Duties about fraudulent advertising: Category 2A services
Amendments made: 91, in clause 35, page 34, line 3, leave out from “to” to end of line 5 and insert—
“(a) prevent individuals from encountering content consisting of fraudulent advertisements in or via search results of the service;
(b) if any such content may be encountered in or via search results of the service, minimise the length of time that that is the case;
(c) where the provider is alerted by a person to the fact that such content may be so encountered, or becomes aware of that fact in any other way, swiftly ensure that individuals are no longer able to encounter such content in or via search results of the service.”
This amendment alters the duty imposed on providers of Category 2A services relating to content consisting of fraudulent advertisements so that it is in line with the corresponding duty imposed on providers of Category 1 services by clause 34(1).
Amendment 92, in clause 35, page 34, line 16, leave out “reference” and insert “references”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 91.
Amendment 93, in clause 35, page 34, line 18, leave out “is a reference” and insert “are references”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 91.
Amendment 94, in clause 35, page 34, line 22, leave out
“does not include a reference”
and insert “do not include references”.—(Chris Philp.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 91.
Clause 35, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 36
Fraud etc offences
Amendment proposed: 44, in clause 36, page 35, line 10, at end insert—
“(4A) An offence under Part 3 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.”—(Barbara Keeley.)
This amendment adds further offences to those which apply for the purposes of the Bill’s fraudulent advertising provisions.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
Amendment 96 has been tabled by Carla Lockhart, who is not on the Committee. Does anyone wish to move amendment 96? No.
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 65, in clause 37, page 36, line 27, at end insert—
“(ia) organisations that campaign for the removal of animal abuse content, and”.
This amendment would add organisations campaigning for the removal of animal content to the list of bodies Ofcom must consult.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 63, in schedule 4, page 176, line 29, at end insert “and
(x) there are adequate safeguards to monitor cruelty towards humans and animals;”.
This amendment would ensure that ensuring adequate safeguards to monitor cruelty towards humans and animals is one of the online safety objectives for user-to-user services.
Amendment 64, in schedule 4, page 177, line 4, at end insert “and
(vii) the systems and process are appropriate to detect cruelty towards humans and animals;”.
This amendment would ensure that ensuring systems and processes are appropriate to detect cruelty towards humans and animals is one of the online safety objectives for search services.
Amendment 60, in clause 52, page 49, line 5, at end insert—
“(e) an offence, not within paragraph (a), (b) or (c), of which the subject is an animal.”
This amendment brings offences to which animals are subject within the definition of illegal content.
Amendment 59, in schedule 7, page 185, line 39, at end insert—
“Animal Welfare
22A An offence under any of the following provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006—
(a) section 4 (unnecessary suffering);
(b) section 5 (mutilation);
(c) section 7 (administration of poisons);
(d) section 8 (fighting);
(e) section 9 (duty of person responsible for animal to ensure welfare).
22B An offence under any of the following provisions of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006—
(a) section 19 (unnecessary suffering);
(b) section 20 (mutilation);
(c) section 21 (cruel operations);
(d) section 22 (administration of poisons);
(e) section 23 (fighting);
(f) section 24 (ensuring welfare of animals).
22C An offence under any of the following provisions of the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011—
(a) section 4 (unnecessary suffering);
(b) section 5 (prohibited procedures);
(c) section 7 (administration of poisons);
(d) section 8 (fighting);
(e) section 9 (ensuring welfare of animals).
22D For the purpose of paragraphs 22A, 22B or 22C of this Schedule, the above offences are deemed to have taken place regardless of whether the offending conduct took place within the United Kingdom, if the offending conduct would have constituted an offence under the provisions contained within those paragraphs.”
This amendment adds certain animal welfare offences to the list of priority offences in Schedule 7.
Amendment 66, in clause 140, page 121, line 8, at end insert—
“(d) causing harm to any human or animal.”
This amendment ensures groups are able to make complaints regarding animal abuse videos.
Amendment 67, in clause 140, page 121, line 20, at end insert
“, or a particular group that campaigns for the removal of harmful online content towards humans and animals”.
This amendment makes groups campaigning against harmful content eligible to make supercomplaints.
Alex Davies-Jones
It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. Amendment 65 would add organisations campaigning for the removal of animal content to the list of bodies that Ofcom must consult. As we all know, Ofcom must produce codes of practice that offer guidance on how regulated services can comply with its duties. Later in the Bill, clause 45 makes clear that if a company complies with the code of practice, it will be deemed to have complied with the Bill in general. In addition, the duties for regulated services come into force at the same time as the codes of practice. That all makes what the codes say extremely important.
The absence of protections relating to animal abuse content is a real omission from the Bill. Colleagues will have seen the written evidence from Action for Primates, which neatly summarised the key issues on which Labour is hoping to see agreement from the Government. Given this omission, it is clear that the current draft of the Bill is not fit for tackling animal abuse, cruelty and violence, which is all too common online.
There are no explicit references to content that can be disturbing and distressing to those who view it—both children and adults. We now know that most animal cruelty content is produced specifically for sharing on social media, often for profit through the monetisation schemes offered by platforms such as YouTube. Examples include animals being beaten, set on fire, crushed or partially drowned; the mutilation and live burial of infant monkeys; a kitten intentionally being set on by a dog and another being stepped on and crushed to death; live and conscious octopuses being eaten; and animals being pitted against each other in staged fights.
Animals being deliberately placed into frightening or dangerous situations from which they cannot escape or are harmed before being “rescued” on camera is becoming increasingly popular on social media, too. For example, kittens and puppies are “rescued” from the clutches of a python. Such fake rescues not only cause immense suffering to animals, but are fraudulent because viewers are asked to donate towards the rescue and care of the animals. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Indeed, as part of its Cancel Out Cruelty campaign, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals conducted research, which found that in 2020 there were nearly 500 reports of animal cruelty on social media. That was more than twice the figure reported for 2019. The majority of these incidents appeared on Facebook. David Allen, head of prevention and education at the RSPCA, has spoken publicly about the issue, saying:
“Sadly, we have seen an increase in recent years in the number of incidents of animal cruelty being posted and shared on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.”
John Nicolson
I totally agree with the points that the hon. Lady is making. Does she agree that the way in which the Bill is structured means that illegal acts that are not designated as “priority illegal” will likely be put at the very end of companies’ to-do list and that they will focus considerably more effort on what they will call “priority illegal” content?
Alex Davies-Jones
I completely agree with and welcome the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. It is a very valid point and one that we will explore further. It shows the necessity of this harm being classed as a priority harm in order that we protect animals, as well as people.
David Allen continued:
“We’re very concerned that the use of social media has changed the landscape of abuse with videos of animal cruelty being shared for likes and kudos with this sort of content normalising—and even making light of—animal cruelty. What’s even more worrying is the level of cruelty that can be seen in these videos, particularly as so many young people are being exposed to graphic footage of animals being beaten or killed which they otherwise would never have seen.”
Although the Bill has a clear focus on protecting children, we must remember that the prevalence of cruelty to animals online has the potential to have a hugely negative impact on children who may be inadvertently seeing that content through everyday social media channels.
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
The hon. Lady knows that I am a great animal lover, and I obviously have concerns about children being exposed to these images. I am just wondering how she would differentiate between abusive images and the images that are there to raise awareness of certain situations that animals are in. I have seen many distressing posts about the Yulin dogmeat festival and about beagles being used in laboratory experiments. How would she differentiate between images that are there to raise awareness of the plight of animals and the abusive ones?
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. Like me, she is a passionate campaigner for animal welfare. It was a pleasure to serve on the Committee that considered her Glue Traps (Offences) Act 2022, which I know the whole House was pleased to pass. She raises a very important point and one that the Bill later explores with regard to other types of content, such as antisemitic content and racist content in terms of education and history and fact. The Bill deals specifically with that later, and this content would be dealt with in the same way. We are talking about where content is used as an educational tool and a raising-awareness tool, compared with just images and videos of direct abuse.
To give hon. Members a real sense of the extent of the issue, I would like to share some findings from a recent survey of the RSPCA’s frontline officers. These are pretty shocking statistics, as I am sure Members will all agree. Eighty-one per cent. of RSPCA frontline officers think that more abuse is being caught on camera. Nearly half think that more cases are appearing on social media. One in five officers said that one of the main causes of cruelty to animals is people hurting animals just to make themselves more popular on social media. Some of the recent cruelty videos posted on social media include a video of a magpie being thrown across the road on Instagram in June 2021; a woman captured kicking her dog on TikTok in March 2021; a teenager being filmed kicking a dog, which was shared on WhatsApp in May 2021; and videos posted on Instagram of cockerels being forced to fight in March 2021.
I am sure that colleagues will be aware of the most recent high-profile case, which was when disturbing footage was posted online of footballer Kurt Zouma attacking his cat. There was, quite rightly, an outpouring of public anger and demands for justice. Footage uploaded to Snapchat on 6 February showed Zouma kicking his Bengal cat across a kitchen floor in front of his seven-year-old son. Zouma also threw a pair of shoes at his pet cat and slapped its head. In another video, he was heard saying:
“I swear I’ll kill it.”
In sentencing him following his guilty plea to two offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, district judge Susan Holdham described the incident as “disgraceful and reprehensible”. She added:
“You must be aware that others look up to you and many young people aspire to emulate you.”
What makes that case even more sad is the way in which the video was filmed and shared, making light of such cruelty. I am pleased that the case has now resulted in tougher penalties for filming animal abuse and posting it on social media, thanks to new guidelines from the Sentencing Council. The prosecutor in the Zouma case, Hazel Stevens, told the court:
“Since this footage was put in the public domain there has been a spate of people hitting cats and posting it on various social media sites.”
There have been many other such instances. Just a few months ago, the most abhorrent trend was occurring on TikTok: people were abusing cats, dogs and other animals to music and encouraging others to do the same. Police officers discovered a shocking 182 videos with graphic animal cruelty on mobile phones seized during an investigation. This sickening phenomenon is on the rise on social media platforms, provoking a glamorisation of the behaviour. The videos uncovered during the investigation showed dogs prompted to attack other animals such as cats, or used to hunt badgers, deer, rabbits and birds. Lancashire police began the investigation after someone witnessed two teenagers encouraging a dog to attack a cat on an estate in Burnley in March of last year. The cat, a pet named Gatsby, was rushed to the vet by its owners once they discovered what was going on, but unfortunately it was too late and Gatsby’s injuries were fatal. The photos and videos found on the boys’ phones led the police to discover more teenagers in the area who were involved in such cruel activities. The views and interactions that the graphic footage was attracting made it even more visible, as the platform was increasing traffic and boosting content when it received attention.
It should not have taken such a high-profile case of a professional footballer with a viral video to get this action taken. There are countless similar instances occurring day in, day out, and yet the platforms and authorities are not taking the necessary action to protect animals and people from harm, or to protect the young people who seek to emulate this behaviour.
I pay tribute to the hard work of campaigning groups such as the RSPCA, Action for Primates, Asia for Animals Coalition and many more, because they are the ones who have fought to keep animal rights at the forefront. The amendment seeks to ensure that such groups are given a voice at the table when Ofcom consults on its all-important codes of practice. That would be a small step towards reducing animal abuse content online, and I hope the Minister can see the merits in joining the cause.
I turn to amendment 60, which would bring offences to which animals are subject within the definition of illegal content, a point raised by the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire. The Minister will recall the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021, which received Royal Assent last year. Labour was pleased to see the Government finally taking action against those who commit animal cruelty offences offline. The maximum prison sentence for animal cruelty was increased from six months to five years, and the Government billed that move as them taking a firmer approach to cases such as dog fighting, abuse of puppies and kittens, illegally cropping a dog’s ears and gross neglect of farm animals. Why, then, have the Government failed to include offences against animals within the scope of illegal content online? We want parity between the online and offline space, and that seems like a sharp omission from the Bill.
Placing obligations on service providers to remove animal cruelty content should fall within both the spirit and the scope of the Bill. We all know that the scope of the Bill is to place duties on service providers to remove illegal and harmful content, placing particular emphasis on the exposure of children. Animal cruelty content is a depiction of illegality and also causes significant harm to children and adults.
If my inbox is anything to go by, all of us here today know what so many of our constituents up and down the country feel about animal abuse. It is one of the most popular topics that constituents contact me about. Today, the Minister has a choice to make about his Government's commitment to preventing animal cruelty and keeping us all safe online. I hope he will see the merit in acknowledging the seriousness of animal abuse online.
Amendment 66 would ensure that groups were able to make complaints about animal abuse videos. Labour welcomes clause 140, as the ability to make super-complaints is a vital part of our democracy. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South and other Members have mentioned, the current definition of an “eligible entity” is far too loose. I have set out the reasons as to why the Government must go further to limit and prevent animal abuse content online. Amendment 66 would ensure that dangerous animal abuse content is a reasonable cause for a super-complaint to be pursued.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister raises important issues to do with animal cruelty. The whole House and our constituents feel extremely strongly about this issue, as we know. She set out some very powerful examples of how this terrible form of abuse takes place.
To some extent, the offences are in the Bill’s scope already. It covers, for example, extreme pornography. Given that the content described by the hon. Lady would inflict psychological harm to children, it is, to that extent, in scope.
The hon. Lady mentioned the Government’s wider activities to prevent animal cruelty. That work goes back a long time and includes the last Labour Government’s Animal Welfare Act 2006. She mentioned the more recent update to the criminal sentencing laws that increased by a factor of 10 the maximum sentence for cruelty to animals. It used to be six months and has now been increased to up to five years in prison.
In addition, just last year the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced an action plan for animal welfare, which outlines a whole suite of activities that the Government are taking to protect animals in a number of different areas—sentience, international trade, farming, pets and wild animals. That action plan will be delivered through a broad programme of legislative and non-legislative work.
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the Minister for agreeing to look at this issue further. However, we do see it as being within the scope of the Bill, and we have the opportunity to do something about it now, so we will be pressing these amendments to a vote. If you will allow me, Ms Rees, I would also like to pay tribute to the former Member of Parliament for Redcar, Anna Turley, who campaigned tirelessly on these issues when she was a Member of the House. We would like these amendments to be part of the Bill.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 38 stand part.
That schedule 4 be the Fourth schedule to the Bill.
New clause 20—Use of proactive technology in private messaging: report—
“(1) OFCOM must produce a report—
(a) examining the case for the use of proactive technology in private messaging where the aim is to identify CSEA content; and
(b) making recommendations to whether or not proactive technology should be used in such cases.
(2) The report must be produced in consultation with organisations that have expertise and experience in tackling CSEA.
(3) The report must be published and laid before both Houses of Parliament within six months of this Act being passed.”
Alex Davies-Jones
On clause 37, it is welcome that Ofcom will have to prepare and issue a code of practice for service providers with duties relating to illegal content in the form of terrorism or child sexual exploitation and abuse content. The introduction of compliance measures relating to fraudulent advertising is also very welcome. We do, however, have some important areas to amend, including the role of different expert groups in assisting Ofcom during its consultation process, which I have already outlined in relation to animal cruelty.
On clause 38, Labour supports the notion that Ofcom must have specific principles to adhere to when preparing the codes of practice, and of course, the Secretary of State must have oversight of those. However, as I will touch on as we proceed, Labour feels that far too much power is given to the Secretary of State of the day in establishing those codes.
Labour believes that that schedule 4 is overwhelmingly loose in its language, and we have concerns about the ability of Ofcom—try as it might—to ensure that its codes of practice are both meaningful to service providers and in compliance with the Bill’s legislative requirements. Let me highlight the schedule’s broadness by quoting from it. Paragraph 4 states:
“The online safety objectives for regulated user-to-user services are as follows”.
I will move straight to paragraph 4(a)(iv), which says
“there are adequate systems and processes to support United Kingdom users”.
Forgive me if I am missing something here, but surely an assessment of adequacy is too subjective for these important codes of practice. Moreover, the Bill seems to have failed to consider the wide-ranging differences that exist among so-called United Kingdom users. Once again, there is no reference to future-proofing against emerging technologies. I hope that the Minister will therefore elaborate on how he sees the codes of practice and their principles, objectives and content as fit for purpose. More broadly, it is remarkable that schedule 4 is both too broad in its definitions and too limiting in some areas—we might call it a Goldilocks schedule.
I turn to new clause 20. As we have discussed, a significant majority of online child abuse takes place in private messages. Research from the NSPCC shows that 12 million of the 18.4 million child sexual abuse reports made by Facebook in 2019 related to content shared on private channels. Recent data from the Office for National Statistics shows that private messaging plays a central role in contact between children and people whom they have not met offline before. When children are contacted by someone they do not know, in nearly three quarters of cases that takes place by private message.
Schedule 4 introduces new restrictions on Ofcom’s ability to require a company to use proactive technology to identify or disrupt abuse in private messaging. That will likely restrict Ofcom’s ability to include in codes of practice widely used industry-standard tools such as PhotoDNA and CSAI Match, which detect known child abuse images, and artificial intelligence classifiers to detect self-generated images and grooming behaviour. That raises significant questions about whether the regulator can realistically produce codes of practice that respond to the nature and extent of the child abuse threat.
As it stands, the Bill will leave Ofcom unable to require companies to proactively use technology that can detect child abuse. Instead, Ofcom will be wholly reliant on the use of CSEA warning notices under clause 103, which will enable it to require the use of proactive technologies only where there is evidence that child abuse is already prevalent—in other words, where significant online harm has already occurred. That will necessitate the use of a laborious and resource-intensive process, with Ofcom having to build the evidence to issue CSEA warning notices company by company.
Those restrictions will mean that the Bill will be far less demanding than comparable international legislation in respect of the requirement on companies to proactively detect and remove online child abuse. So much for the Bill being world leading. For example, the EU child abuse legislative proposal published in May sets out clear and unambiguous requirements on companies to proactively scan for child abuse images and grooming behaviour on private messages.
If the regulator is unable to tackle online grooming sufficiently proactively, the impact will be disproportionately felt by girls. NSPCC data shows that an overwhelming majority of criminal offences target girls, with those aged 12 to 15 the most likely to be victims of online grooming. Girls were victims in 83% of offences where data was recorded. Labour recognises that once again there are difficulties between our fundamental right to privacy and the Bill’s intentions in keeping children safe. This probing new clause is designed to give the Government an opportunity to report on the effectiveness of their proposed approach.
Ultimately, the levels of grooming taking place on private messaging platforms are incredibly serious. I have two important testimonies that are worth placing on the record, both of which have been made anonymous to protect the victims but share the same sentiment. The first is from a girl aged 15. She said:
“I’m in a serious situation that I want to get out of. I’ve been chatting with this guy online who’s like twice my age. This all started on Instagram but lately all our chats have been on WhatsApp. He seemed really nice to begin with, but then he started making me do these things to prove my trust to him, like doing video chats with my chest exposed.”
The second is from a boy aged 17. He said:
“I’ve got a fitness page on Instagram to document my progress but I get a lot of direct messages from weird people. One guy said he’d pay me a lot of money to do a private show for him. He now messages me almost every day asking for more explicit videos and I’m scared that if I don’t do what he says, then he will leak the footage and my life would be ruined”.
Those testimonies go to show how fundamentally important it is for an early assessment to be made of the effectiveness of the Government’s approach following the Bill gaining Royal Assent.
We all have concerns about the use of proactive technology in private messaging and its potential impact on personal privacy. End-to-end encryption offers both risks and benefits to the online environment, but the main concern is based on risk profiles. End-to-end encryption is particularly problematic on social networks because it is embedded in the broader functionality of the service, so all text, DMs, images and live chats could be encrypted. Consequently, its impact on detecting child abuse becomes even greater. There is an even greater risk with Meta threatening to bring in end-to-end encryption for all its services. If platforms cannot demonstrate that they can mitigate those risks to ensure a satisfactory risk profile, they should not be able to proceed with end-to-end encryption until satisfactory measures and mitigations are in place.
Tech companies have made significant efforts to frame this issue in the false binary that any legislation that impacts private messaging will damage end-to-end encryption and will mean that encryption will not work or is broken. That argument is completely false. A variety of novel technologies are emerging that could allow for continued CSAM scanning in encrypted environments while retaining the privacy benefits afforded by end-to-end encryption.
Apple, for example, has developed its NeuralHash technology, which allows for on-device scans for CSAM before a message is sent and encrypted. That client-side implementation—rather than service-side encryption—means that Apple does not learn anything about images that do not match the known CSAM database. Apple’s servers flag accounts that exceed a threshold number of images that match a known database of CSAM image hashes, so that Apple can provide relevant information to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. That process is secure and expressly designed to preserve user privacy.
Homomorphic encryption technology can perform image hashing on encrypted data without the need to decrypt the data. No identifying information can be extracted and no details about the encrypted image are revealed, but calculations can be performed on the encrypted data. Experts in hash scanning—including Professor Hany Farid of the University of California, Berkeley, who developed PhotoDNA—insist that scanning in end-to-end encrypted environments without damaging privacy will be possible if companies commit to providing the engineering resources to work on it.
To move beyond the argument that requiring proactive scanning for CSAM means breaking or damaging end-to-end encryption, amendments to the Bill could provide a powerful incentive for companies to invest in technology and engineering resources that will allow them to continue scanning while pressing ahead with end-to-end encryption, so that privacy is preserved but appropriate resources for and responses to online child sexual abuse can continue. It is highly unlikely that some companies will do that unless they have the explicit incentive to do so. Regulation can provide such an incentive, and I urge the Minister to make it possible.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister, who made some important points. I will focus on clause 37 stand part. I pay tribute to the Minister for his incredible work on the Bill, with which he clearly wants to stop harm occurring in the first place. We had a great debate on the matter of victim support. The Bill requires Ofcom to produce a number of codes of practice to help to achieve that important aim.
Clause 37 is clear: it requires codes of practice on illegal content and fraudulent advertising, as well as compliance with “the relevant duties”, and it is on that point that I hope the Minister can help me. Those codes will help Ofcom to take action when platforms do things that they should not, and will, I hope, provide a way for platforms to comply in the first place rather than falling foul of the rules.
How will the codes help platforms that are harbouring material or configuring their services in a way that might be explicitly or inadvertently promoting violence against women and girls? The Minister knows that women are disproportionately the targets of online abuse on social media or other platforms. The impact, which worries me as much as I am sure it worries him, is that women and girls are told to remove themselves from social media as a way to protect themselves against extremely abusive or harassing material. My concern is that the lack of a specific code to tackle those important issues might inadvertently mean that Ofcom and the platforms overlook them.
Would a violence against women and girls code of practice help to ensure that social media platforms were monitored by Ofcom for their work to prevent tech-facilitated violence against women and girls? A number of organisations think that it would, as does the Domestic Abuse Commissioner herself. Those organisations have drafted a violence against women and girls code of practice, which has been developed by an eminent group of specialists—the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Glitch, Carnegie UK Trust, the NSPCC, 5Rights, and Professors Clare McGlynn and Lorna Woods, both of whom gave evidence to us. They believe it should be mandatory for Ofcom to adopt a violence against women and girls code to ensure that this issue is taken seriously and that action is taken to prevent the risks in the first place. Clause 37 talks about codes, but it is not specific on that point, so can the Minister help us? Like the rest of the Committee, he wants to prevent women from experiencing these appalling acts online, and a code of practice could help us deal with that better.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree with the points that have been made about the violence against women code of conduct. It is vital, and it would be a really important addition to the Bill. I associate myself with the shadow Minister’s comments, and am happy to stand alongside her.
I want to make a few comments about new clause 20 and some of the issues it raises. The new clause is incredibly important, and we need to take seriously the concerns that have been raised with us by the groups that advocate on behalf of children. They would not raise those concerns if they did not think the Bill was deficient in this area. They do not have spare people and cannot spend lots of time doing unnecessary things, so if they are raising concerns, those are very important things that will make a big difference.
I want to go a little further than what the new clause says and ask the Minister about future-proofing the Bill and ensuring that technologies can be used as they evolve. I am pretty sure that everybody agrees that there should be no space where it is safe to share child sexual exploitation and abuse, whether physical space or online space, private messaging or a more open forum. None of those places should be safe or legal. None should enable that to happen.
My particular thought about future-proofing is about the development of technologies that are able to recognise self-generated pictures, videos, livestreams and so on that have not already been categorised, do not have a hash number and are not easy for the current technologies to find. There are lots of people out there working hard to stamp out these images and videos online, and I have faith that they are developing new technologies that are able to recognise images, videos, messages and oral communications that cannot currently be recognised.
I agree wholeheartedly with the new clause: it is important that a report be produced within six months of the Bill being passed. It would be great if the Minister would commit to thinking about whether Ofcom will be able to require companies to implement new technologies that are developed, as well as the technologies that are currently available. I am not just talking about child sexual abuse images, material or videos; I am also talking about private messaging where grooming is happening. That is a separate thing that needs to be scanned for, but it is incredibly important.
Some of the stories relayed by the shadow Minister relate to conversations and grooming that happened in advance of the self-generated material being created. If there had been a proactive action to scan for grooming behaviour by those companies whose platforms the direct messaging was taking place on, then those young people would potentially have been in a safer place, because it could have been stopped in advance of that self-generated material being created. Surely, that should be the aim. It is good that we can tackle this after the event—it is good that we have something—but tackling it before it happens would be incredibly important.
Jane Stevenson
Online sexual exploitation is a horrific crime, and we all want to see it ended for good. I have concerns about whether new clause 20 is saying we should open up all messaging—where is the consideration of privacy when the scanning is taking place? Forgive me, I do not know much about the technology that is available to scan for that content. I do have concerns that responsible users will have an infringement of privacy, even when doing nothing of concern.
Kirsty Blackman
I do not know whether everybody draws the same distinction as me. For me the distinction is that, because it will be happening with proactive technology—technological means will be scanning those messages rather than humans—nobody will see the messages. Software will scan messages, and should there be anything that is illegal—should there be child sexual abuse material—that is what will be flagged and further action taken.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East heard during my contribution, but this technology does exist, so it is possible. It is a false argument made by those who believe that impacting end-to-end encryption will limit people’s privacy. The technology does exist, and I named some that is able to scan without preventing the encryption of the data. It simply scans for those images and transfers them over existing databases. It would have no impact on anybody’s right to privacy.
Kirsty Blackman
I thank the shadow Minister for her assistance with that intervention, which was incredibly helpful. I do not have concerns that anybody will be able to access that data. The only data that will be accessible is when the proactive technology identifies something that is illegal, so nobody can see any of the messages except for the artificial intelligence. When the AI recognises that something is abuse material, at that point the Bill specifies that it will go to the National Crime Agency if it is in relation to child abuse images.
Jane Stevenson
My concern is that, at the point at which the data is sent to the National Crime Agency, it will be visible to human decision making. I am wondering whether that will stop parents sharing pictures of their babies in the bath? There are instances where people could get caught up in a very innocent situation that is deemed to be something more sinister by AI. However, I will take the advice of the hon. Member for Pontypridd advice and look into the technology.
Kirsty Blackman
In terms of the secondary processes that kick in after the AI has scanned the data, I assume it will be up to Ofcom and the provider to discuss what happens then. Once the AI identifies something, does it automatically get sent to the National Crime Agency, or does it go through a process of checking to ensure the AI has correctly identified something? I agree with what the Minister has reiterated on a number of occasions; if it is child sexual abuse material then I have no problem with somebody’s privacy being invaded in order for that to be taken to the relevant authorities and acted on.
I want to make one last point. The wording of new clause 20 is about a report on those proactive technologies. It is about requiring Ofcom to come up with and justify the use of those proactive technologies. To give the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East some reassurance, it is not saying, “This will definitely happen.” I assume that Ofcom will be able to make the case—I am certain it will be able to—but it will have to justify it in order to be able to require those companies to undertake that use.
My key point is about the future-proofing of this, ensuring that it is not just a one-off, and that, if Ofcom makes a designation about the use of proactive technologies, it is able to make a re-designation or future designation, should new proactive technologies come through, so that we can require those new proactive technologies to be used to identify things that we cannot identify with the current proactive technologies.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I want to associate myself with the comments of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, and to explore the intersection between the work we are doing to protect children and the violence against women and girls strategy. There is one group, girls, who apply to both. We know that they are sadly one of the most vulnerable groups for online harm and abuse, and we must do everything we can to protect them. Having a belt and braces approach, with a code of conduct requirement for the violence against women and girls strategy, plus implementing new clause 20 on this technology that can protect girls in particular, although not exclusively, is a positive thing. Surely, the more thorough we are in the preventive approach, the better, rather than taking action after it is too late?
Kirsty Blackman
I agree 100%. The case that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd, made and the stories she highlighted about the shame that is felt show that we are not just talking about a one-off impact on people’s lives, but potentially years of going through those awful situations and then many years to recover, if they ever do, from the situations they have been through.
I do not think there is too much that we could do, too many codes of practice we could require or too many compliances we should have in place. I also agree that girls are the most vulnerable group when considering this issue, and we need to ensure that this Bill is as fit for purpose as it can be and meets the Government’s aim of trying to make the internet a safe place for children and young people. Because of the additional risks that there are for girls in particular, we need additional protections in place for girls. That is why a number of us in this room are making that case.
Chris Philp
This has been an important debate. I think there is unanimity on the objectives we are seeking to achieve, particularly protecting children from the risk of child sexual exploitation and abuse. As we have discussed two or three times already, we cannot allow end-to-end encryption to frustrate or prevent the protection of children.
I will talk about two or three of the issues that have arisen in the course of the debate. The first is new clause 20, a proposal requiring Ofcom to put together a report. I do not think that is strictly necessary, because the Bill already imposes a requirement to identify, assess and mitigate CSEA. There is no optionality here and no need to think about it; there is already a demand to prevent CSEA content, and Ofcom has to produce codes of practice explaining how it will do that. I think what is requested in new clause 20 is required already.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd mentioned the concern that Ofcom had to first of all prove that the CSEA risk existed. I think that might be a hangover from the previous draft of the Bill, where there was a requirement for the evidence to be “persistent and prevalent”—I think that might have been the phrase—which implied that Ofcom had to first prove that it existed before it could take action against it. So, for exactly the reason she mentioned, that it imposed a requirement to prove CSEA is there, we have changed the wording in the new version. Clause 103(1), at the top of page 87, instead of “persistent and prevalent”, now states “necessary and proportionate”. Therefore, if Ofcom simply considers something necessary, without needing to prove that it is persistent and prevalent—just if it thinks it is necessary—it can take the actions set out in that clause. For the reason that she mentioned, the change has been made already.
Dame Maria Miller
I think my hon. Friend’s list goes on to page 37, which means there would be a number of different relevant duties that would presumably then be subject to the ability to issue codes of practice. However, the point I was making in my earlier contribution is that this list does not include the issue of violence against women and girls. In looking at this exhaustive list that my hon. Friend has included in the Bill, I must ask whether he might inadvertently be excluding the opportunity for Ofcom to produce a code of practice on the issue of violence against women and girls. Having heard his earlier comments, I felt that he was slightly sympathetic to that idea.
Chris Philp
Clearly, and as Members have pointed out, women and girls suffer disproportionately from abuse online; unfortunately, tragically and disgracefully, they are disproportionately victims of such abuse. The duties in the Bill obviously apply to everybody—men and women—but women will obviously disproportionately benefit, because they are disproportionately victims.
Obviously, where there are things that are particular to women, such as particular kinds of abuse that women suffer that men do not, or particular kinds of abuse that girls suffer that boys do not, then we would expect the codes of practice to address those kinds of abuse, because the Bill states that they must keep children safe, in clause 37(10)(b), and adults safe, in clause 37(10)(c). Obviously, women are adults and we would expect those particular issues that my right hon. Friend mentioned to get picked up by those measures.
Dame Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is giving me a chink of light there, in that subsection (10)(c) could actively mean that a code of practice that specifically dealt with violence against women and girls would be admissible as a result of that particular point. I had not really thought of it in that way—am I thinking about it correctly?
Chris Philp
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. To avoid answering a complicated question off the cuff, perhaps I should write to her. However, I certainly see no prohibition in these words in the clause that would prevent Ofcom from writing a particular code of practice. I would interpret these words in that way, but I should probably come back to her in writing, just in case I am making a mistake.
As I say, I interpret those words as giving Ofcom the latitude, if it chose to do so, to have codes of practice that were specific. I would not see this clause as prescriptive, in the sense that if Ofcom wanted to produce a number of codes of practice under the heading of “adults”, it could do so. In fact, if we track back to clause 37(3), that says:
“OFCOM must prepare and issue one or more codes of practice”.
That would appear to admit the possibility that multiple codes of practice could be produced under each of the sub-headings, including in this case for adults and in the previous case for children. [Interruption.] I have also received some indication from officials that I was right in my assessment, so hopefully that is the confirmation that my right hon. Friend was looking for.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 37 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 38 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 4
Codes of practice under section 37: principles, objectives, content
Amendment proposed: 63, in schedule 4, page 176, line 29, at end insert “and
(x) there are adequate safeguards to monitor cruelty towards humans and animals;”.—(Alex Davies-Jones.)
This amendment would ensure that ensuring adequate safeguards to monitor cruelty towards humans and animals is one of the online safety objectives for user-to-user services.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
Before we begin the next debate, does anyone wish to speak to Carla Lockhart’s amendment 97? If so, it will be debated as part of this group; otherwise, it will not be selected. The amendment is not selected.
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 48, in clause 39, page 37, line 17, at beginning insert—
“(A1) OFCOM must prepare the draft codes of practice required under section 37 within the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
This amendment requires Ofcom to prepare draft codes of practice within six months of the passing of the Act.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clauses 42 to 47 stand part.
Alex Davies-Jones
This is a mammoth part of the Bill, and I rise to speak to clause 39. Under the clause, Ofcom will submit a draft code of practice to the Secretary of State and, provided that the Secretary of State does not intend to issue a direction to Ofcom under clause 40, the Secretary of State would lay the draft code before Parliament. Labour’s main concern about the procedure for issuing codes of practice is that, without a deadline, they may not come into force for quite some time, and the online space needs addressing now. We have already waited far too long for the Government to bring forward the Bill. Parliamentary oversight is also fundamentally important, and the codes will have huge implications for the steps that service providers take, so it is vital that they are given due diligence at the earliest opportunity.
Amendment 48 would require Ofcom to prepare draft codes of practice within six months of the passing of the Act. This simple amendment would require Ofcom to bring forward these important codes of practice within an established time period—six months—after the Bill receives Royal Assent. Labour recognises the challenges ahead for Ofcom in both capacity and funding.
On this note, I must raise with the Minister something that I have raised previously. I find it most curious that his Department recently sought to hire an online safety regulator funding policy adviser. The job advert listed some of the key responsibilities:
“The post holder will support ministers during passage of the Online Safety Bill; secure the necessary funding for Ofcom and DCMS in order to set up the Online Safety regulator; and help implement and deliver a funding regime which is first of its kind in the UK.”
That raises worrying questions about how prepared Ofcom is for the huge task ahead. That being said, the Government have drafted the Bill in a way that brings codes of practice to its heart, so they cannot and should not be susceptible to delay.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is very kind in giving way—I was twitching to stand up. On the preparedness of Ofcom and its resources, Ofcom was given about £88 million in last year’s spending review to cover this and the next financial year—2022-23 and 2023-24—so that it could get ready. Thereafter, Ofcom will fund itself by raising fees, and I believe that the policy adviser will most likely advise on supporting the work on future fees. That does not imply that there will be any delay, because the funding for this year and next year has already been provided by the Government.
Alex Davies-Jones
I appreciate that intervention, but the Minister must be aware that if Ofcom has to fundraise itself, that raises questions about its future capability as a regulator and its funding and resource requirements. What will happen if it does not raise those funds?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady’s use of the word “fundraise” implies that Ofcom will be going around with a collection tin on a voluntary basis.
Chris Philp
I will find the relevant clause in a moment. The Bill gives Ofcom the legal power to make the regulated companies pay fees to finance Ofcom’s regulatory work. It is not voluntary; it is compulsory.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification. Perhaps he should make that more obvious in the job requirements and responsibilities.
Chris Philp
The fees requirements are in clauses 70 to 76, in particular clause 71, “Duty to pay fees”. The regulated companies have to pay the fees to Ofcom. It is not optional.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification.
The Government have drafted the Bill in a way that puts codes of practice at its heart, so they cannot and should not be susceptible to delay. We have heard from platforms and services that stress that the ambiguity of the requirements is causing concern. At least with a deadline for draft codes of practice, those that want to do the right thing will be able to get on with it in a timely manner.
The Age Verification Providers Association provided us with evidence in support of amendment 48 in advance of today’s sitting. The association agrees that early publication of the codes will set the pace for implementation, encouraging both the Secretary of State and Parliament to approve the codes swiftly. A case study it shared highlights delays in the system, which we fear will be replicated within the online space, too. Let me indulge Members with details of exactly how slow Ofcom’s recent record has been on delivering similar guidance required under the audio-visual media services directive.
The directive became UK law on 30 September 2020 and came into force on 1 November 2020. By 24 June 2021, Ofcom had issued a note as to which video sharing platforms were in scope. It took almost a year until, on 6 October 2021, Ofcom issued formal guidance on the measures.
In December 2021, Ofcom wrote to the verification service providers and
“signalled the beginning of a new phase of supervisory engagement”.
However, in March 2022 it announced that
“the information we collect will inform our Autumn 2022 VSP report, which intends to increase the public’s awareness of the measures platforms have in place to protect users from harm.”
There is still no indication that Ofcom intends to take enforcement action against the many VSPs that remain non-compliant with the directive. It is simply not good enough. I urge the Minister to carefully consider the aims of amendment 48 and to support it.
Labour supports the principles of clause 42. Ofcom must not drag out the process of publishing or amending the codes of practice. Labour also supports a level of transparency around the withdrawal of codes of practice, should that arise.
Labour also supports clause 43 and the principles of ensuring that Ofcom has a requirement to review its codes of practice. We do, however, have concerns over the Secretary of State’s powers in subsection (6). It is absolutely right that the Secretary of State of the day has the ability to make representations to Ofcom in order to prevent the disclosure of certain matters in the interests of national security, public safety or relations with the Government of a country outside the UK. However, I am keen to hear the Minister’s assurances about how well the Bill is drafted to prevent those powers from being used, shall we say, inappropriately. I hope he can address those concerns.
On clause 44, Ofcom should of course be able to propose minor amendments to its codes of practice. Labour does, however, have concerns about the assessment that Ofcom will have to make to ensure that the minor nature of changes will not require amendments to be laid before Parliament, as in subsection (1). As I have said previously, scrutiny must be at the heart of the Bill, so I am interested to hear from the Minister how exactly he will ensure that Ofcom is making appropriate decisions about what sorts of changes are allowed to circumvent parliamentary scrutiny. We cannot and must not get to a place where the Secretary of State, in agreeing to proposed amendments, actively prevents scrutiny from taking place. I am keen to hear assurances on that point from the Minister.
On clause 45, as I mentioned previously on amendment 65 to clause 37, as it stands, service providers would be treated as complying with their duties if they had followed the recommended measures set out in the relevant codes of practice, as set out in subsection (1). However, providers could take alternative measures to comply, as outlined in subsection (5). Labour supports the clause in principle, but we are concerned that the definition of alternative measures is too broad. I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate on his assessment of the instances in which a service provider may seek to comply via alternative measures. Surely the codes of practice should be, for want of a better phrase, best practice. None of us want to get into a position where service providers are circumnavigating their duties by taking the alternative measures route.
Again, Labour supports clause 46 in principle, but we feel that the provisions in subsection (1) could go further. We know that, historically, service providers have not always been transparent and forthcoming when compelled to be so by the courts. While we understand the reasoning behind subsection (3), we have broader concerns that service providers could, in theory, lean on their codes of practice as highlighting their best practice. I would be grateful if the Minister could address our concerns.
We support clause 47, which establishes that the duties in respect of which Ofcom must issue a code of practice under clause 37 will apply only once the first code of practice for that duty has come into force. However, we are concerned that this could mean that different duties will apply at different times, depending on when the relevant code for a particular duty comes into force. Will the Minister explain his assessment of how that will work in practice? We have concerns that drip feeding this information to service providers will cause further delay and confusion. In addition, will the Minister confirm how Ofcom will prioritise its codes of practice?
Lastly, we know that violence against women and girls has not a single mention in the Bill, which is an alarming and stark omission. Women and girls are disproportionately likely to be affected by online abuse and harassment. The Minister knows this—we all know this—and a number of us have spoken up on the issue on quite a few occasions. He also knows that online violence against women and girls is defined as including, but not limited to, intimate image abuse, online harassment, the sending of unsolicited explicit images, coercive sexting and the creation and sharing of deepfake pornography.
The Minister will also know that Carnegie UK is working with the End Violence Against Women coalition to draw up what a code of practice to tackle violence against women and girls could look like. Why has that been left out of the redraft of the Bill? What consideration has the Minister given to including a code of this nature in the Bill? If the Minister is truly committed to tackling violence against women and girls, why will he not put that on the face of the Bill?
Kirsty Blackman
I have a quick question about timelines because I am slightly confused about the order in which everything will happen. It is unlikely that the Bill will have been through the full parliamentary process before the summer, yet Ofcom intends to publish information and guidance by the summer, even though some things, such as the codes of practice, will not come in until after the Bill has received Royal Assent. Will the Minister give a commitment that, whether or not the Bill has gone through the whole parliamentary process, Ofcom will be able to publish before the summer?
Will Ofcom be encouraged to publish everything, whether that is guidance, information on its website or the codes of practice, at the earliest point at which they are ready? That will mean that anyone who has to apply those codes of practice or those regulations—people who will have to work within those codes, for example, or charities or other organisations that might be able to make super-complaints—will have as much information as possible, as early as possible, and will be able to prepare to fully implement their work at the earliest possible time. They will need that information in order to be able to gear up to do that.
Dame Maria Miller
I have three short questions for the Minister about clause 40 and the Secretary of State’s powers of direction. Am in order to cover that?
Chris Philp
I will do my best to make sure that we come to it very quickly indeed, by being concise in my replies on this group of amendments.
On amendment 48, which seeks to get Ofcom to produce its codes of practice within six months, obviously we are unanimous in wanting that to be done as quickly as possible. However, Ofcom has to go through a number of steps in order to produce those codes of practice. For example, first we have to designate in secondary legislation the priority categories of content that is harmful to children and content that is harmful to adults, and then Ofcom has to go through a consultation exercise before it publishes the codes. It has in the past indicated that it expects that to be a 12-month, rather than a six-month, process. I am concerned that a hard, six-month deadline may be either impossible to meet or make Ofcom rush and do it in a bad way. I accept the need to get this done quickly, for all the obvious reasons, but we also want to make sure that it is done right. For those reasons, a hard, six-month deadline would not help us very much.
Alex Davies-Jones
Why does the Minister believe that six months is out of scope? Does he think that Ofcom is not adequately resourced to meet that deadline and make it happen as soon as possible?
Chris Philp
There are a number of steps to go through. Regardless of how well resourced Ofcom is and how fast it works, first, we have to designate the priority categories by secondary legislation, and there is a lead time for that. Secondly, Ofcom has to consult. Best practice suggests that consultations need to last for a certain period, because the consultation needs to be written, then it needs to open, and then the responses need to be analysed. Then, Ofcom obviously has to write the codes of practice. It might be counterproductive to set a deadline that tight.
There are quite a few different codes of practice to publish, and the hon. Lady asked about that. The ones listed in clause 47 will not all come out at the same time; they will be staggered and prioritised. Obviously, the ones that are most germane to safety, such as those on illegal content and children’s safety, will be done first. We would expect them to be done as a matter of extreme urgency.
I hope I have partly answered some of the questions that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked. The document to be published before the summer, which she asked about, is a road map. I understand it to be a sort of timetable that will set out the plan for doing everything we have just been debating—when the consultations will happen and when the codes of practice will be published. I guess we will get the road map in the next few weeks, if “before the summer” means before the summer recess. We will have all that set out for us, and then the formal process follows Royal Assent. I hope that answers the hon. Lady’s question.
There were one or two other questions from the hon. Member for Pontypridd. She asked whether a Secretary of State might misuse the power in clause 43(2)—a shocking suggestion, obviously. The power is only to request a review; it is nothing more sinister or onerous than that.
On clause 44, the hon. Lady asked what would happen if Ofcom and the Secretary of State between them—it would require both—conspired to allow through a change claiming it is minor when in fact it is not minor. First, it would require both of them to do that. It requires Ofcom to propose it and the Secretary of State to agree it, so I hope the fact that it is not the Secretary of State acting alone gives her some assurance. She asked what the redress is if both the Secretary of State and Ofcom misbehave, as it were. Well, the redress is the same as with any mis-exercise of a public power—namely, judicial review, which, as a former Home Office Minister, I have experienced extremely frequently—so there is legal redress.
The hon. Lady then asked about the alternative measures. What if a service provider, rather than meeting its duties via the codes of practice, does one of the alternative measures instead? Is it somehow wriggling out of what it is supposed to do? The thing that is legally binding, which it must do and about which there is no choice because there is a legal duty, is the duties that we have been debating over the past few days. Those are the binding requirements that cannot be circumvented. The codes of practice propose a way of meeting those. If the service provider can meet the duties in a different way and can satisfy Ofcom that it has met those duties as effectively as it would under the codes of practices, it is open to doing that. We do not want to be unduly prescriptive. The test is: have the duties been delivered? That is non-negotiable and legally binding.
I hope I have answered all the questions, while gently resisting amendment 48 and encouraging the Committee to agree that the various other clauses stand part of the Bill.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee divided:.
Public Order Bill (First sitting)
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Chair
I have a few preliminary announcements. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. Date Time Witness Thursday 9 June Until no later than 12.15 pm The National Police Chiefs’ Council Thursday 9 June Until no later than 1.00 pm High Speed 2 (HS2) Limited; National Highways Thursday 9 June Until no later than 2.45 pm United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association; Thursday 9 June Until no later than 3.05 pm Adam Wagner, Doughty Street Chambers Thursday 9 June Until no later than 3.25 pm News UK Thursday 9 June Until no later than 4.10 pm Sir Peter Martin Fahy QPM, retired police officer; Matt Parr CB, HM Inspector of Constabulary and HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services; Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby, West Midlands Police Thursday 9 June Until no later than 4.55 pm Amnesty International; Justice; Liberty
We will consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about questions between the oral evidence sessions. In view of the time available, I hope that we can take these matters formally, without debate. I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed on Tuesday 7 June by the Programming Sub-Committee for this Bill.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 11.30 am on Thursday 9 June) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Thursday 9 June;
(b) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 June;
(c) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 June;
(d) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 June;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
3. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 21 June.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
The Committee will proceed to line-by-line consideration of the Bill on Tuesday 14 June at 9.25 am.
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee room and will be circulated to Members by email.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Kit Malthouse.)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make declarations of interest in connection with the Bill? No, I take it. We will now hear oral evidence from Chief Constable Chris Noble, lead for protest on the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who is joining us via Zoom. I remind Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion. The Committee has agreed that, for this session, we have until 12.15 pm. Can the witness please introduce themselves for the record?
Chris Noble: Good morning, Chair. My name is Chris Noble. I am the chief constable of Staffordshire Police.
The Chair
Thank you, Mr Noble. If, at any time, you have any difficulty in hearing the questions, please indicate and we will make the necessary technical adjustments.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Q
Chris Noble: Thank you, Minister. There is a lot, in terms of looking back. There have been a number of trends. We have seen global causes land on our shores very quickly and having significant impacts. Black Lives Matter is a good example. We have seen causes overlapping, both in terms of membership and tactics. There have been some very novel—without giving them any credit—and highly disruptive tactics; that is reflected on the contents page of the Bill. If we look across the breadth of protest organisations and groups, we see that they are very aware of some of the legal gaps, inadequacies and shortcomings; that is very clear from their engagement with police, as well as their tactics. There is a focus, albeit not exclusively, around what we would call non-violent direct action, which is slightly different from previous protest phases, where violence was maybe more commonplace. That said, it is not completely exclusively non-violent.
Most protests are still relatively non-contentious. However, in terms of complexity, intensity and tactics, there has been a step up, and the assessment going forward is very clear that we will still see those challenges around complexity and the co-ordination and the adapting of protests, and we have significant gaps around our information and intelligence. Even though we will have our own, home-grown causes that people will wish to protest against, I anticipate that a lot of protest will potentially be generated from outside these shores. That is a little bit of the picture on what has been, and what may well be to come.
On impacts, there are safety challenges across the board, including safety risks to some of the protestors, challenges to members of the community on our roads or, indeed, in their communities, and challenges for police officers and private contractors in dealing safely with tactics that we will perhaps talk about. Also, there may be increasing cost as we try to deal with more complex issues—costs either to communities, the businesses impacted, or indeed the police, be it financial or opportunity cost, in terms of officers not being able to work in neighbourhoods, or in serious and organised crime, or in the other roles on which they clearly want to be focused. Those are real challenges, but still, the backdrop is that the vast majority of protest activity is relatively non-contentious. However, there is a hard core, a small element, that I do not see going away any time soon.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: In Staffordshire, we have a very experienced protest removal team, and on occasion they have dealt with individuals glued to the top of fuel tankers by cutting them loose, using cutting equipment. There are obvious risks in that. Equally, if you go on to a busy motorway and glue yourself to it, there is a raft of risks from traffic, and risk to police officers. Understandably, we have seen members of the public, through sheer frustration, look to take matters into their own hands. You can translate that to power stations and other vulnerable sites. Although this may be attention-grabbing and headline-grabbing, the risks to the protestors, the police and members of the public are becoming ever more significant.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: There is quite a disciplined training regime. The training is licensed through the College of Policing. You have command training at what we call gold, silver and bronze levels. The strategists—those who develop a plan—are at the silver level; those who carry it out on the ground are at the bronze level. There is not only initial very intense and comprehensive training for those individuals, but annual continual professional development, which is annotated and logged. There is also re-accreditation to ensure that people are still fit for operation. There are also annual inputs on what has changed—training on new legislation, new powers, learning from court cases, different protest tactics and emerging risks—so there is a continual learning cycle, as well as a very detailed pass-or-fail approach to training.
This week, we had an early morning dial-in with the vast majority of gold commanders across the country to break out some peer learning around Just Stop Oil. It was about what we could do differently, and how we could learn. There are specialist teams in policing that share information and liaise with the Health and Safety Executive and other bodies on how we do our very best to minimise danger to protesters, the wider public and police officers.
The challenge for policing is that training is at one point in time, and tactics and intentions are constantly moving. There is a constant challenge in making police training fit for purpose. The one thing that stays consistent—you alluded to this—is the police commitment to striking the balance between our positive and negative obligations to protest, and our ongoing responsibility to those impacted by protest.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Chris Noble: In short, yes, we would. You have already partly qualified that. For us, the more intrusive our tactics, the more they need to be focused on the harm being caused. In our approach, there has to be a constant test of what is proportionate, and that is subject to significant internal and external scrutiny.
We can see greater risk of harm to communities and protesters if things are left to run. An example was the G7 operation. I was speaking to one of the senior commanders recently, and they described a lack of powers around stop and search for people with items that could only have be used for generating a lock-on device. They had to intervene later in the day, with more significant powers, on a wider group of protesters, therefore interfering with more people’s rights. As long as early intervention and prevention are subject to proportionality tests, and are applied precisely, they are preferable to some of the risks that protesters place themselves under, and some of the significant disruption that they cause to other individuals.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Chris Noble: Sadly, I am no longer a practising operational commander, so I will talk vicariously. You also have Phil Dolby coming to speak to you. He will be able to give you a flavour of the west midlands region. There is a range of powers, but the policing operation begins with communication and engagement. As soon as we are aware of a protest, the first thing we will do is link in with the organisers and understand how we can do our very best to minimise any intrusion on their rights and safeguard the right to protest. Our most powerful tactic is engagement and communication.
Very, very rarely will we ever ban a protest. We hear the lazy soundbite at times that police are looking to ban protests. It has not happened in many years. Even when we apply conditions under sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, which were the subject of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, their usage is limited. We will record those. They are tested, and they are very often subject to court testing as well.
Then we have a range of other powers, depending on the level of criminality or risk that we identify in the protest. We are able to seize items and search properties, but that would be under a plethora of legislation and would be very specific to what we know in advance. In current protests, we often know little until something presents, or until very close to the event time. We have a range of powers, but they are not particularly coherent in the light of what is often a very poor line of sight around protest activity.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes. I will take the example of obstructing the highway; those powers have recently been adjusted. With Insulate Britain and some of the obstruction of the M25 motorway, we were dealing with legislation that was drafted without those tactics or activities in mind. The powers are relatively low level, in terms of consequences; individuals who were arrested could be back on the scene the next day. The capability of some of those powers to deal with repeat protest or reckless protest is very limited, and I think a significant number of the protesters were very aware of that.
On criminal damage, there are opportunities, through those powers, for us to intervene where people are carrying specified items and going equipped to commit criminal damage. Aggravated trespass, which you alluded to, is particularly relevant. In the private space, there is no right to protest in anything like the way that there is in the public space. That is just a flavour of a number of the offences that most commonly come into play in protest. There are others that are perhaps a little more rare, including conspiracy to commit various offences.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: We have tried to make an assessment about the impact of injunctions, especially around Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. The feedback we have had is that when they are appropriately framed and developed at an appropriate pace, they can be very useful in terms of what we are trying to control and how we are trying to shape people’s behaviour. I think, in general though, while they are a key tool, they are not the only one we need.
We have worked hard with private industry to give them information and knowledge about injunctions. I have worked closely with an industry on my own patch that is very up for taking on the responsibility along-side the police service for trying to target harder and prevent protest. On occasions, they will then look to obtain injunctions in terms of trying to prevent harm from being caused to their business, property and employees. Injunctions have been used increasingly frequently, but the challenge is framing them appropriately and securing them within a reasonable timescale so they can have maximum impact.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Again, this is slightly outside my corporate memory, but there have been very lengthy conversations as far back as 2019 with policing, in terms of the public order and public safety portfolios, about the adequacy of some of the powers. That refined itself down into some further conversations around some bespoke powers, many of which appear in the Act you have just referred to.
There is an ongoing conversation around policy in terms of public order and public safety. For example, in some of the Just Stop Oil protests we have seen a cross-departmental approach. The police were clear in identifying where they see some inadequacies and in the effects that they want to achieve. In many ways, there is a rolling conversation around public policy, some of which will translate into legislation at one point or another.
Sarah Jones
Q
You also had some concerns about things in the Bill that he talks about—for example, the potential chilling effect on freedom of assembly that the stop-and-search powers, in particular, could have. Could you give us your view on the non-legislative suggestions that he had and how important they are? What is your view on his concerns about some of the things we are talking about, in particular the suspicionless stop and search and the scope of police power that that provides to you?
Chris Noble: For clarity, when you talk about non-legislative suggestions, what are thinking about?
Sarah Jones
Not changes in the law; most of the recommendations in his report are not about changing the law. They are about
“equipping police commanders with up to date, accessible guidance…ensuring that they consider the levels of disruption or disorder above which enforcement action will be considered; improving the way that police assess the impact of protests…improving the quality of police intelligence on protests…addressing a wide variation in the number of specialist officers available for protest policing throughout England and Wales”.
It goes on. They are all non-legislative recommendations. They are about how you train and support, gather intelligence and have the right people in the right place.
Chris Noble: Absolutely. Thank you. For me, having the right powers is clearly going to be very important. I think the policing ask about the powers is very current, in terms of being up to date with the challenges we face and clear about where the policing remit sits, and the powers being coherent and capable of being implemented. While the approach around legislation is important, there are some qualifiers on it.
Equally, you are right because, in some ways, irrespective of the legislation we are debating today, the overwhelming police commitment, around policing in a human rights-compliant way—policing by consent—fundamentally cuts across all the relevant legislation. That would probably be my key point.
I absolutely agree in terms of training, leadership and learning as we go what we do and do not do well. Having scrutiny around public order operations, whether they be protests or other things, is fundamental in terms of public confidence. This is also about making sure there is no unhelpful orthodoxy of approach within policing; constantly checking and evaluating our training; sharing information within policing; and listening to, and perhaps on occasion challenging, critical voices to make sure we pick up the wide perspective of views around how the police protest policing.
It is also about ensuring that we are accountable. I have a local police, fire and crime commissioner who has a real interest around protest policing and how it is delivered and relevant scrutiny panels, which will look at other matters, such as use of force or disproportionality. One part of the jigsaw is undoubtedly the powers we have. They are important, but as important, and in many ways more important, is how this is done and how policing maintains and secures public confidence.
On that note, I can talk about stop and search as the second element. Again, we recognise this is contentious. Whether this is within protest policing or tackling violent crime, the checks and balances are exactly the same, but there is a gap for us at the minute in terms of, as we alluded to earlier, being able to intervene earlier to try and prevent the more significant harm and disruption that takes place.
This is not about stopping someone protesting. I have no doubt there will be circumstances where we will stop and search and maybe even seize an item from someone, but they will still be facilitated in taking part in a protest. It is very much about recognising that particular articles and equipment are now being used to maximise disruption. Whether it is a suspicion-led or suspicionless power, we see real value in being able to intervene and ensure that the rights of everyone impacted by protest, as well as the rights of those expressing their views through protest, are protected.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, code A will very much apply in terms of how it is done and how records are kept. If we move to a section 60 type power, which is similar to the one in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, again, it would be a senior officer check and balance, and there will be appropriate scrutiny of how it is done. Of course, that can step into the realms of the inspection bodies reviewing it, and indeed of it ultimately being tested in court. We see it as a necessary power. There is a gap, but these things absolutely have to be done proportionately and transparently.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: If we are talking about the serious disruption prevention orders, although the critical decisions will be made by members of the judiciary, obviously the police have a role to play in terms of potentially initiating these. Again, we would anticipate a high threshold. They will be for the most persistent and most reckless offenders, but we have seen a number of individuals who on occasions are making a mockery of not just the law, and less importantly the police service, but communities of interest in terms of their behaviours. I would not anticipate their being used on a common basis, but having the capability around some of the most persistent and reckless offenders would be helpful. There are significant checks and balances built in around capability and assurance in terms of who would grant those.
You are right that the powers exist in other parts of the criminal justice environment, with the supposed mantra being about controlling behaviour and not criminalising it, but we have heard quite a bit of noise from various parties about these things, so I think the rules and the protocols that exist, and the judicial test that would be applied, would be very important to ensure that orders are focused on the most potentially harmful individuals.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Q
Chris Noble: It probably comes back a little bit to the challenge we talked about earlier about thresholds. Quite appropriately, whenever we look at protests, it is baked into part of a democratic society. In terms of articles 9, 10 and 11, from a police point of view, we of course respect those and want to give them appropriate regard. Social media, on the one hand, can be a help to us, in terms of getting a flavour of public sentiment, what is going to happen and where, and where the issues are. It can maybe give us a line of inquiry to follow, in terms of who we might want to engage with and maybe try to support and, where appropriate, in terms of shaping some of the protest’s behaviour and activities.
On other occasions, there may well be offences committed on social media, which clearly we would need to look at, consider and progress with. Very often, most of the conversations taking place around protest are behind closed doors in social media, in various protected groups. Again, the thresholds that we currently work to would not allow us, as a general rule, to penetrate those and find out more information. So social media can be of use, but in terms of the most useful information about understanding the impact on the life of a community, some of that most significant information is not taking place in any sort of public forum at all.
Lee Anderson
Q
Chris Noble: We are open to using new technologies, whether digital technologies or the more traditional capabilities and assets that we have. I think that the challenge that we face, in terms of policing protests is that, again, whenever we look at the various elements of the Bill under discussion, around lock-ons and some other behaviours, there is a real complexity to the devices that, from a policing point of view, will take significant time to deal with, and, indeed, from a private company point of view, can take significant time and effort to deal with too.
Of course, the challenge is that a wide range of people are, on occasions, involved in protest—it might well be their first time within protest; it may well not—so in terms of offending behaviours and previous criminal records, some of the elements there, which may well be appropriate in bringing someone to account, may well not be there. We are open to using any and all tactics within protest, but as I say, probably the common theme around protest is around non-violent direct action; people who are very legally aware; flash protests, which emerge with limited notice; and some quite complex lock-ons, which individuals know we need to be very thoughtful in how we deconstruct, with regard to rights and safety.
There is no magic bullet to dealing with modern protest. It is a combination, as we have just heard, around legislation, engagement and appropriate tactics, and then constantly trying to be innovative in trying to strike the balance between competing rights.
Lee Anderson
Q
Chris Noble: This is very close to home. We have a live operation in Staffordshire, which has been running now for some time, involving a number of protesters. It is incredibly complex, clearly. We have a limited idea of what is going on under the ground, in terms of what risks might be there. Are they near utilities? What risk could there be in terms of collapse of tunnels? It is clearly not a safe environment unless it is done by professional tunnellers. There is an inherent risk there, as well as the impact on the legitimate business going on in that area.
At this point—this probably goes to the core of one of the key issues that police are keen to discuss within the Committee—the vast majority of that work is done by the landowners and private companies that are skilled and experienced within this work. While I have some dedicated resources allocated to that at present, if that responsibility was to significantly shift to policing, it would cost me probably in the region of £80,000 a day to resource that. It would need significant officer resources, which clearly would need to come from elsewhere, so it is not only inherently dangerous; it is costing significant money and it is undoubtably impacting on the genuine, legitimate business interests of various companies.
The key, for me, is not so much even, necessarily, an offence around tunnelling, because we may well have powers that, broadly speaking, exist to deal with it—we are keen to develop that conversation. The challenge is in preventing it in the first place, and then in how we can work with industry and landowners on how we could potentially remove individuals more quickly. However, we are concerned that we have seen tunnelling come back on the radar again, and people will be held to account for what they do.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Q
Chris Noble: From a gold point of view, we probably have two or three officers who are trained or just about to do a credit, but we are also able to draw on neighbouring forces for that strategic support and command role, and top that up as necessary. Silver-wise, it is probably more in the region of maybe a dozen officers, again either accredited or being trained. For bronze, it is probably more in the region of a couple of dozen officers.
Now, this is not their day job. They do not wake up every morning and become a bronze commander and that is all they do—they are neighbourhood officers, they work in the criminal investigation department, they work in public protection teams—so while we have significant numbers of command officers, they are constantly being drawn for other matters. Whenever we have environmental protests or protests around High Speed 2 or other areas, there is a drain of that leadership role from elsewhere. We maintain hundreds of other officers within Staffordshire with a range of public order skills and capabilities but, again, none are completely dedicated to it. We would have about two dozen officers trained, as a minimum, in some other specialist skills as well. It is a significant commitment to maintain that training, but Staffordshire has definitely attracted some significant protest activity, so it is a necessary investment.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: Training for the more specialist roles could be at least two or three weeks a year, in terms of the various skills that they need to maintain. For general public order trained officers, you are talking about two to three days per year to maintain that. From a command point of view, depending on refreshers, it could be a week a year. The bigger challenge is when they are deployed. If we take, for example, Just Stop Oil—we supported colleagues in a neighbouring force. Our protest removal team was essentially out of force for two weeks, consistently maintained within those deployments. There are abstractions around training, but we are finding because of the dynamics of the protest environment at the minute, either in force or supporting other parts of the country, those abstractions are increasing.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: I see your line of questioning. I suppose we would be hopeful that by being able to intervene earlier, we could maybe limit the impact of protest. I think the proof of that will come out in terms of whatever moves from the Bill into formal legislation.
The biggest challenge that policing has at the minute—one we are keen to discuss as the Bill progresses—is any shift from public realm protest policing. If we moved more into a private space than currently, we would see that as potentially being incredibly significant for money and opportunity lost in terms of policing communities. Those abstractions would probably quite fundamentally change my local model of policing, in terms of being able to maintain that. That does not mean that we are any less committed to working with businesses and organisations to try to minimise the extreme disruption that can be caused to them on occasions.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: Not within Staffordshire. That said, when you look at the challenge that is applied to policing of protest from those who protest, from those who are not happy with protest and those in the media looking on, I am not quite sure why some people would want to, but they do—they step up. They are excellent. They come back from training. They seek out the roles. They are open to feedback and learning and training. I have a huge amount of regard for them.
I have not found people being reticent to step up because, fundamentally, it is a core part of our democracy. Having local officers dealing with local protest, who are then policing those communities the next day, is incredibly important for me. I have not seen a reticence, but it is an incredibly challenging job. Very often, there is a perception that we do not get it right, when actually the inspection report was very clear that in the vast majority of occasions we did and a minor recalibration was required around the balance we needed to strike.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Chris Noble: There is a rolling assessment with a part of policing called NPoCC, which is the police co-ordination body. As it becomes clearer what legislation will take place, those conversations will step up in terms of what it might mean for other jurisdictions, whether the legislation applies and whether the learning transfers across. We are constantly in contact with the devolved Administrations, and with European colleagues more widely, about legislation, tactics and police capability. Rest assured that those conversations will continue.
The Chair
Andrew Bridgen and then Anne McLaughlin, but we will need quick questions and quick answers if everybody who wants to participate can get a chance.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Q
Chris Noble: No, not as yet, but we are very aware that as legislation is cast, people will look to see where it begins and ends, so I think it will be a constant piece of scrutiny from us.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Chris Noble: I think it has that potential. Clearly, as to how it actually works on the ground, each circumstance will need its own assessment and its own operation. That will play through, but there is no doubt that a number of the elements in the Bill are clearly responding to current challenges for policing. But ultimately, this will still be down to individual choices, decisions made on the day and the attempt to try to balance the rights that are at play. This is not a science for police officers in day-to-day public order policing: it is an art, it is discretion and it is matters of judgment. As elected Members, I know that you appreciate that. As we said earlier, this is a key element around trying to have current and up-to-date legislation, but there are elements of the Bill where defining a bit more what they mean and do not mean would be very helpful for day-to-day policing, however we achieve that precision of language and detail.
The Chair
Anne McLaughlin and, if there is time, Rupa Huq, but we have to finish at 12.15 pm.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Q
Chris Noble: I do not want to broadcast too easily what people might want to use, but it is a good challenge. There will be very obvious elements, such as bamboo poles or scaffolding, which would probably give us a bit of a hint. But you are right: there are other, more innocuous items, such as bicycle locks—clearly, there are many cyclists around—glue and so forth. It will have to be very context-specific. It may well be relevant to other behaviours at the time—what else is going on, and have we picked up something on social media? It will be down to individual discretion. Again, this is not about criminalising people. The outcome we are looking for is minimising disruption, so the policing focus will be around how we do that, as opposed to how we criminalise someone for having an item that can be very difficult to prove exactly what it is for.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
“We agree with the police and Home Office that such orders would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”
Do you agree with that? If not, could you say why, and how issuing one of these to someone without any criminal conviction is compatible with human rights legislation?
Chris Noble: The language is slightly different, albeit the concept is broadly similar—HMICFRS was looking at and discussing protest banning orders. From a policing point of view, unless we knew the exact circumstances of the individual it would be hard to say how exactly the orders could be justified. As I alluded to earlier, we would see them as potentially being relevant to more persistent and reckless offenders when other methods of intervening were not seen as successful or were not capable. The standard tests on proportionality would be applied, and ultimately it would be a matter for the relevant judge to make a decision as to how they could be justified or not. I would not rule out them ever being used—I see it very much as a top-end tactic or power—but I would not want to preclude the creativity and ingenuity of protesters meaning the orders might well be the only thing left open to us.
The Chair
Mr Noble, I wanted to allow you to finish that answer, but that brings us to the end of our allotted time. Thank you.
Examination of Witnesses
John Groves and Nicola Bell gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from John Groves, Chief Security and Resilience Officer at High Speed 2 Ltd, and Nicola Bell, Regional Director South East at National Highways. For this panel, we have until 1 pm. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Nicola Bell: Hello. My name is Nicola Bell and I am the regional director for National Highways in the south-east. On a day-to-day basis I am responsible for the day-to-day running of the motorway and A road network in the south-east of England.
John Groves: Good afternoon. I am John Groves and I am the chief security and resilience officer for HS2 Ltd. My role principally involves protecting and safeguarding HS2 and, in this context, dealing with the protestor risk.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you say, we are under constant attack from illegal protest. We work closely with the police and seek their support in dealing with that, but in the past we have had to use three High Court injunctions on different parts of the route because we felt we were not getting where we needed to through using the police.
We have applied for a route-wide injunction, there has been a hearing and we are waiting for the outcome. Rather than going back every time to each parcel of land, we have asked the court to give us a full route-wide injunction, which we hope will have some effect on the behaviour of the illegal protestors. The decision by HS2 to seek that High Court injunction was taken in between the failure of the previous legislation and the introduction of this legislation. We hope the High Court injunction will have a positive effect, but it is still limited and we still look to the police to support us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It can vary. We can secure a High Court injunction pretty quickly, depending on the circumstance, but it can take a long time—two to three months. Our application for the current injunction went in in March and there was a hearing at the end of May. We are still waiting for the outcome of that decision, and as soon as we hear, we will want to get moving on it.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you said at the beginning, they are very expensive, and they do not always have the effect that we are seeking. Fundamentally, what we are seeking to do is deter illegal protester behaviour and stop it happening. What we have seen, as the chief constable alluded to, is that HS2 is running an operation right now in Staffordshire with people who have been subject to court action in the past, and just continue to come back and repeat the same behaviour against us. It is useful, but it is not having the full effect that we need.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Absolutely. Just to put it in context, we look after something like 4,500 miles of motorway and A roads, and the difference we saw this time around was that they are not just related to a site, like HS2 for example. We had protesters literally popping up everywhere; you did not know where they were going next. The police were arresting them using their existing powers—obstruction of the highway, maybe—but they were telling us that that was not a deterrent to them coming back out literally the next day, which was why we then sought to get injunctions ourselves.
We ended up applying for four injunctions in total. We were granted all of them, and if those people then went back out again, ultimately we had to follow that through with committal proceedings, which take a lot of time and effort. That alone—those people breaching that injunction order—was the thing that meant they would be sent to prison or ordered to pay costs. In total, we ended up with 34 defendants. Some were sent immediately to prison, which I think ranged from 24 days to six months, and then you had 18 people who ended up with two-year suspended sentences, but it was for National Highways to pursue that, not the police, because the injunctions that we were granted did not come with a power of arrest. If you are a local authority, for example, you can get a power of arrest with an injunction. We are a private limited company, so we cannot, and therefore it is up to us to keep on going with the injunction process.
It is important to point out that you then have two processes running in parallel. The civil proceedings have now happened, and the police are only now starting the criminal proceedings, which will probably run until December this year. Remember, that is for protests that happened on our network at the tail end of last year. The first protest by Insulate Britain was on 13 September, and the last one was on 2 November, so we had over 30 protests in 15 locations in less than two months.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: We have recorded 1,600 incidents against HS2 since the end of 2017. All of that is unlawful activity—trespass, violence against staff, criminal damage. Not all of those offences will lead to an arrest or any legal action. So, for us, this legislation is about the deterrent effect—absolutely. The extent to which it will cause a behavioural change in those who are participating is, I guess, the open question, but I would certainly see that tougher sentences and more police action would help—absolutely.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. It is probably everything and anything. We have seen violence against both staff and against those who are building the railway—so it is not just security staff who engage with them. These are protests that are taking place not just on the ground, but in tunnels. I am sure that you will all remember what happened at Euston; there was a 25-tunnel network under Euston. When we went in there to remove the protesters, the protesters were using lock-on devices sub-surface. There was violence against staff in there.
We have seen large-scale trespass. In Buckinghamshire, we did an operation to remove protesters from a site. We secured the venue, but they came back with about 100 people. They shone lasers in the eyes of staff members, they threw human waste around—I mean, it is the full panoply. What is different between what you see against HS2 as compared with other locations is that it is probably quite invisible to most of the public. Again, we have got an operation live at the moment. I have four protesters in a tunnel at the moment and they have been there since 10 May, and that is costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money. The safety risk to them, not just to the people who are working on the surface to support them, is significant. As you say, up until the end of March, £126 million of taxpayers’ money has had to go into protester removal or the cost to HS2 of the delay that these illegal protesters are causing us.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Indeed, yes.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Yes. I mean, if you consider the definition of “protest”, you have people protesting in Swynnerton, Staffordshire—they are not particularly visible to the public. Other than probably at Euston, that is what we have seen consistently right across the piece. I would say that nearly every day there is something—there is an incident, an unlawful act against HS2.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: I hope so. I mean, it is about the deterrent. The overwhelming issue for us is tunnelling, because it is the thing that causes us the most significant cost and delay. We can, with the support of specialist contractors, move people off our land, but when there are tunnels involved, or high structures, which we also see quite regularly—they will build structures on the surface, at height, and underground. However, the tunnels are the most significant, for us, in terms of removal and, again, the safety risk is significant.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes, absolutely. The thing is that I think a lot of people at the time thought that an injunction was the thing to go and do, but you must see it through; you must follow up with the committal proceedings, and it is that that then takes the time. We had to apply for a very urgent injunction, sometimes overnight, with things being prepared at pretty breakneck speed in order to try and protect what we were seeing. I am sure you are all aware of what we saw on the M25, with people either gluing themselves or sitting on the road. It is about the resource intensity that is needed to follow that up and follow that through. If I take the example of a day that they were protesting, on 8 October, by the time that got to court, that was at the end of November and by then Insulate Britain had called off its protests.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes, two years.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: No. I think you heard from the chief constable earlier that the arrests being made on the day were being made for low-level criminal offence—I think they were the words the chief constable used—for obstruction of the highway. It was literally going to the police station, getting processed and, the very next day, often the same person going out to another part of the M25 to do the very same thing again.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes. I am a civil engineer not a lawyer, but—sorry.
Kit Malthouse
Q
So in your view, would it be a sensible move to combine the best of both? Effectively having a power of arrest for an offence that attracts a not dissimilar level of sentencing, which might act as a deterrent, that you would get under an injunction.
Nicola Bell: I think the level of offence is a matter for the police. For me, it is the same as John has mentioned. It is about the deterrent and, for me, it is really about safety. Walking on to a 70-mph road is not wise. If you look on Insulate Britain’s website, you will see evidence of the day they blocked the M25 at junction 25, where four protestors came out and sat on the road. They did exactly the same on the opposite side of the carriageway and that footage clearly shows the police in danger, my traffic officers in danger and the protestors in danger as people are trying to swerve, brake and avoid them. What is included in the Bill, I hope, offers that deterrent. That is what I would like to see given that my job is about trying to keep the motorway network flowing as freely and as safely as possible. If something deters them in terms of the locking on or interfering with infrastructure—of course, we have talked a little bit about the serious disruption prevention orders that might be available—maybe that might mean that you do not have to apply for an injunction because, actually, those repeat offenders could be tackled through that means.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: I do not have the exact figure, but I will just give you a couple of examples. There is a day when they protested at Littlebrook interchange, just off junction 1A of the M25—maybe some of you will know it. Four protestors sat across our traffic signal control junction. You might have thought that was not going to cause too much impact because it is just a little bit off the M25. The impact was 4 km of slow-moving and queuing traffic over the Dartford crossing, and it took until lunchtime for the effects of that to disappear. The day they protested down at the port of Dover, they sat on the road, but two protestors climbed up the side of an oil tanker and glued themselves to the top of the oil tanker while we got rid of the people on the road. By mid-morning, the effects of that around the roads in Dover were felt until about half-past 5 in the evening. The economic impact of that alone, given the importance of road freight to the UK and goods coming in and out of Dover, probably speaks for itself.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
John Groves: I come back to the tunnel point I made earlier. I assume that those that participate in going on to land and trespassing on land and digging tunnels know that they are breaking the law. but they do not see the current law as a significant deterrent to stop them from doing that. The police will always seek the balance between lawful protest and the rights of the landowner or whoever. Invariably, that often means issues with access to sites.
Access to some of our sites has been delayed for about eight hours. We cannot do any work. We cannot move vehicles in or out of our sites, because protesters are sat down outside at the access point, sometimes locked on, sometimes not. The police are there but they will not take action because they are allowing the right to protest. Because the protestors are not on HS2 land, we cannot do anything about that. We cannot move them on—on the public highway, only the police can move them on.
My sense is that this Bill, if enacted, will provide a deterrent effect for the protestors. I come back to the safety point—I am sorry to keep going on about tunnelling. Four people in a tunnel is such a serious thing; I am concerned that we will have a fatality at some point in the future. We have been really lucky. We have had four or five tunnel incidents and we have yet to have any serious injury, but I suspect it will come one day, if it continues in the way it is going. If we look at our data, we are seeing protestors turning to tunnelling more readily. In the operation we have just run, there were four shafts on one piece of land; they moved on to another piece of land very quickly and they started to dig a tunnel. We were able to get in quickly and move them on. That is my principal concern.
Anne McLaughlin
Do you want to respond, Nicola? You do not have to.
Nicola Bell: No, it is the same as what I was talking about before. It is about the fact that the police recognised that there was nothing that would stop somebody just keeping on doing this. They could arrest them, but it was a low-level criminal offence and ultimately that was not going to deter what we were seeing, which was pretty unprecedented, really—that level of protest in the south-east of England over the tail end of last year.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Q
I was hoping you could expand on your earlier answer to give the Committee more of a feel for the impact of this kind of traffic disruption on the Kent and Dover economy and its importance to the strategic network for the nation, and for some of the safety and other challenges in dealing with these incidents that are different from the ordinary traffic disruption that your team deal with on a more regular basis.
Nicola Bell: The bounds of my responsibility would be, for example, the traffic officers that you see as they patrol the network. On the day of a protest, our role would be to try and create a safe space for the police to then get in and do their job. For example, on the day that they protested down in Dover, that was about protecting the area to allow the police to get specialist people in to get protestors off the top of the tanker and to therefore get the port open again and get things running.
On your point about the economy, as I mentioned earlier, 80% of domestic freight still uses road, so that is a pretty big impact on the economy. We know that most of our goods come in and out of the port of Dover, so therefore the roads they take—the M20, the A20 and the A2—are very significant indeed. Ultimately, the cost also relates to people not getting to where they need to be on time—whether that is missed appointments or freight not getting to where it needs to get to on time. I do not have an exact figure for the impact on the economy. I know that some of that has been worked on, and we can perhaps provide that to the Committee in writing afterwards.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q
Nicola Bell: What we saw was that, first, they got themselves on to the road and sat down, then they waited until the police arrived, and then they started to lock on so that they were causing maximum delay. I would say that, on average, if you had 10 of them sat down, at least three quarters of them were glued.
Tom Hunt
Q
Nicola Bell: You can see in some of the footage, which is freely available on Insulate Britain’s website, that the police are trying to stop them putting their hands down on the road surface. As soon as they put their hand on the road surface, specialist teams need to come in to de-bond them, as it were. That adds to the safety risk but it also adds to the delay.
Tom Hunt
Q
John Groves: In the most recent experience I can talk about, the police were frustrated that they were not able to step in and deal with it. They were not on the ground immediately. Certainly, there is frustration from my team on the ground that the police are not more direct with some of the protesters; that is certainly true. Invariably, what happens on HS2 sites is that protests get there some weeks ahead of when we plan to take possession of land, so they are always looking forward and looking at what we are about to do. We publish all this information online about where the route is and when we will be taking possession, and they are always ahead of that.
Lee Anderson
Q
John Groves: It has a significant impact on morale. Invariably, my security team and my security contractors, who are somewhat used to dealing with difficult people—if I can put it like that—are subjected to verbal abuse pretty much all the time they are confronted with legal protestors.
Obviously, there is a broader range of people who are supporting and delivering for HS2 who did not sign up to being verbally abused or being chased around a field when they are trying to undertake an ecology assessment, for instance. We have also seen throughout our joint ventures that the tier 1 contractors that are doing the work of building the railway are having to invest in a lot more physical security and a lot more support for staff across a broad range, so it does have a significant impact.
Lee Anderson
Q
John Groves: Absolutely, that is an issue for the economy—job retention and retaining the skills we need to build the new railway. As you can see from my evidence, we are putting a lot of money into physical security, and we are working through the joint ventures, which have some responsibility for their own staff. Fundamentally, as I said earlier, if this legislation is enacted and it provides that prevention, those risks will reduce, our costs will reduce and, you would hope, the staff who have been impacted will feel far more comfortable and at ease in coming to work every day.
Sarah Jones
Q
I have a couple of follow-up questions. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has not yet come into force, there are lots of changes to protesting. They are not yet law, but they will become law as soon as the Government get around to doing that. One change is that obstruction of a highway will carry a prison sentence of up to six months. The Minister was talking about it being a fine—it will now be a prison sentence of up to six months. There is also a raft of stuff about imposing conditions on static protests, so, if you are organisers of static protests, there are conditions on those, and, again, you can be imprisoned for that.
What is your assessment of the impact that that legislation will have when it comes into force? There is a question as to whether we should implement that legislation to see whether it has an impact before we move on to other things. What is your assessment? Will it have an impact?
John Groves: From HS2’s perspective, it will be limited. Protest on the public highway is limited in terms of the impact it has on us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It may have some positive effect, but—I am sorry to repeat myself—tunnelling is the biggest issue for us, and I do not believe the Bill deals with that. Lock-on, as well, has a serious impact on us.
Nicola Bell: From my perspective, it is about seeing what impact that has and what the outcome will be. Obviously, it will be for the police to decide whether or not they are going to then use that new power to do exactly as you said. It is really about the impact that it has and whether it will be enough to act as a deterrent against people coming back. If it does, that is positive as far as running the strategic road network on a daily basis is concerned.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. The protestors state that in their social media posts and in the things they say directly to us when we are talking to them. They are intent on stopping the project. They want to stop the railway. They believe it is the wrong thing to do.
We have had to shift how we approach the removal operation by taking land earlier, to build in sufficient time for removal, so that it does not have a direct impact on the programme. We have learned as we have gone along and, as the protestor strategy has changed, our reaction to that has changed. Again, it is expensive work, having to have a High Court enforcement team, paramedics and mine rescue there 24/7, since 10 May, until they come out. Then we hand that over to the police and also probably the ambulance service.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
John Groves: I would expect that, if the legislation is enacted and the police pursue charges against individuals who are breaking these laws, it will have a direct effect. At the moment, when you compare the number of incidents we are seeing against the number of prosecutions and convictions, there is a disparity. I would hope this legislation would initially have a significant effect, and hopefully the deterrent effect will tail off after that and we would see a reduction in it. That is how I see it.
Nicola Bell: Similar to what I said earlier, for me it is about that repeat offence, where people keep going back out. That is one of the biggest impacts for us—what could be used under the serious disruption prevention order. I guess it is about them having more powers. All I can say is that, with the system as it is working at the moment, the police are telling us they do not have anything to deter and so they continue this repeated behaviour—hence why the injunctions were sought.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
John Groves: I do not know. In terms of the numbers of people we see protesting against HS2, we think there is roughly about 150 that are the core. Within that, there is a focused 20 people. It is not a big number, but we also see that they move between different causes and different protests. I suspect that we will see some of the people Nicola has been talking and vice versa. They will move. If there were a new Heathrow runway being built or a new nuclear build, they would probably move in those directions as well.
It is a relatively, I think, small community, albeit they draw in quite a large number every now and then. They will move on to other things, which is probably why the order would be helpful in that respect. At the moment, we are focused on HS2 actions in terms of our security and injunction work, but if the order has a broader effect across protester activity in general, that would be positive.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
John Groves: It is not just standard security for a site, which you would expect to see anywhere. The direct costs of protester activity to the taxpayer up to the end of March were £126 million. We estimate that by the end of next year, that could in a worst-case scenario reach £200 million.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
John Groves: Certainly, looking at the Bill when it was published, the things we have seen and discussed today are important. The introduction of the tunnelling amendment is very positive from our perspective. I have not got any comment on the timing of it.
Anne McLaughlin
I suppose that is a question for the Minister, but I am not allowed to ask the Minister.
The Chair
We are questioning the witnesses at this stage. In due course, I am sure you will have the opportunity to question the Minister.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Q
John Groves: All I can say is that it is about the penalty that could follow an arrest. As I said earlier, if you contrast the number of incidents we have seen on HS2 sites against the number of arrests, there is a disparity. If there are more arrests as a result of what they are doing today, and there are more penalties, that should have a deterrent effect. In terms of fines, it is interesting that we have seen some offences being prosecuted and resulting in a fine. What sometimes happens, and we have seen this in other places, is that they will crowdfund and those penalties will be paid by others.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
John Groves: We want the legislation to work so that it provides that deterrent. I do not think I can say any more than that.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Absolutely.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Nicola Bell: To your first point, once people saw that injunctions were being followed through, committal proceedings were happening and people were going to prison, that did have a deterrent effect, because we have not seen a protest on the strategic road network since 2 November. Three of the injunctions, particularly covering the south-east—the M25, M25 feeder roads, and the roads down to Dover—still exist and are still in place. Certainly, the public mood was something that was different as the protest happened. By the time we saw things through in court the protests were finished. Nobody was seeing them every day, whereas the first time we went it was fresher in people’s memories. People were mostly peaceful but then realised the impact that it could have on their lives—that was clear.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
Public Order Bill (Second sitting)
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. We will hear oral evidence from Elizabeth de Jong, chair of the United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association, and Steve Griffiths, managing director of London Stansted airport, part of MAG, the Manchester Airports Group. Welcome to our witnesses. This session will run until 2.45 pm. Please will the witnesses introduce themselves for the record?
Elizabeth de Jong: Hello. I am Elizabeth de Jong, the chief executive of UKPIA, the Petroleum Industry Association. We represent companies involved with oil refining, fuel production, terminal operations and petrol stations, some of which have been targeted by Just Stop Oil.
Steve Griffiths: Good afternoon. I am Steve Griffiths, the managing director of London Stansted airport, the fourth largest airport in the UK. I have been invited today as an airport operator to discuss the scale and impact of any disruptions to airport operations.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Our experience of protests until April this year was that they were mainly peaceful and occasional. However, their nature changed considerably in April; they have become more widespread, longer and more confrontational. Our main concerns include the safety of staff and protestors. There are significant safety risks, an impact on fuel supply, and increased costs.
In April 2020, 11 terminals were targeted for a number of days, and two forecourts suffered damage and were blocked. A significant number of arrests were made during that period. We followed the tweeting of Essex police, and halfway through April, they were talking about almost 500 arrests; some 12% of those arrested were arrested multiple times.
On the types of activities and the safety risks, there has been locking on, which is dealt with in the Bill. We have seen people lock themselves on, or attach themselves, to the top of stationary tankers, even when they are full, and when asked, they have not moved to empty ones, which would be safer. We have also seen locking on at height, which is when people attach themselves to machinery, pipes or vehicles high up, which means a risk of falls. People have even made their own stretchers to attach themselves to, which can be difficult to deconstruct safely. We have seen smoking on terminal storage tanks, with the safety risks that go with that. Cables have been cut on road tankers, which affects braking, and roads have been undermined—networks of tunnels have been dug under roads, affecting main and emergency access roads.
That causes great concern about safety. Refineries and terminals, as I am sure you can imagine, store potentially dangerous substances such as oil, other flammable substances, and substances that can cause chemical burns and can generate extreme heat. There can be a real danger of explosion and of falls from buildings. The activities on such sites are strictly regulated under COMAH—the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015—and of course protestors are not following those regulations; they are putting themselves and staff in danger. There have also been impacts on fuel deliveries and costs to companies.
On what the police can do and what the response has been, the industry has increased security staffing at some sites. There is already fencing and closed circuit television, and there are inspections by operational staff. Some sites have increased security around the clock. However, security staff have limited powers; they can only ask people to leave. Companies have also taken out civil injunctions, which is an option open to them; a number of our members have done so. That is of limited effect, because they do not come with powers of arrest and they take time to put in place, which allows people to come back and target the locations while the injunctions are being put in place. We have encouraged local authorities to take out injunctions, which are a more powerful tool, but, again, they take time to put in place and are costly. During the protests in April, two were put in place, in Essex and Warwickshire.
Steve Griffiths: From my experience as an operator of Stansted airport, which is clearly very much a live operational environment where there are complex, high-risk operations, any protests pose a serious risk to human life—the lives of our staff, our customers, the travelling public, and the protesters—and cause major disruption to the operation.
Our last major significant event was back in 2017, and it related to a deportation flight to Africa. The protesters cut through the security fence around the airport, which ensures its safety and security, using bolt cutters, and breached the airfield. Fourteen protesters then locked themselves around a Boeing 767 jet, which was due to fly the deportation flight to Africa. The impact of that was that the runway was closed for approximately one hour. This was at night time, so there was no daytime visibility, and incoming and departing flights were grounded during that period. Approximately 25 flights registered delays during that hour, and 11 were cancelled, including the flight in question, which was due to fly to Nigeria. We estimated that about 1,700 to 1,800 passengers were impacted by that disruption.
The protesters were arrested by the police, but were ultimately acquitted. We understand from media reporting of the case that they were charged with intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990, but the court acquitted them because the offence requires some element of terrorist activity, which was not deemed to be present in this event. We understand that the Crown Prosecution Service charged the protesters with that offence because other offences that the perpetrators may have been charged with did not carry sentences that adequately reflected the seriousness of the circumstances that we experienced on that night—of forcibly gaining access to a security restricted live airport operation. That is the direct impact of the last major event.
Clearly, we support the right to protest at the airport, and we have designated areas, but this is about cases that infringe on parts of the airport outside those designated areas. I can talk only on behalf of London Stansted, but events have happened across UK airports.
Sarah Jones
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes. I can see a direct reference to locking on. There are a number of elements in the Bill that will be helpful. These are new challenges for us, and the Bill makes a number of enhancements to mechanisms that will be available to the police. The police will, of course, give their view about whether they will help or not.
From what I have read, the Bill will give the police a power to arrest in a timelier and more straightforward way. The current way of giving powers through injunctions could lead to a patchwork of different injunctions in different places, and be confusing, which would mean that police felt less confident in making decisions. The Bill specifically refers to two things: locking on—that looks as though it will be potentially useful—and the definition of key national infrastructure; again, that would enhance the powers and make their use more practicable.
Sarah Jones
Q
I guess my question is whether an offence of locking on—I think that it has its own problems because of the very broad way it is drafted—will be any more helpful than those 500 arrests that the police made; you are talking about people who just come back afterwards.
Elizabeth de Jong: My understanding is that the legislation will reduce the time and cost spent getting the injunctions that allow the arrests. It clearly says, “This is an offence. We don’t need to go through the injunction process.” The issue is the time it takes to get the injunctions; that allows people to reoffend. There might be an opportunity for faster processing as well, but clearly local authority injunctions will allow court appearances to take place sooner.
Steve Griffiths: There is nothing I could add to that. I am really here to talk about the impact of disruption, and I am probably not qualified to comment intensely on the Bill; I leave that to the police.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: The particular areas are Kingsbury and Esso Purfleet; it has been around Essex and Warwickshire. It has also been nationwide, but those are the current ones that have been focused on.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Currently, but the difference that we are seeing in these protests is that they are more widespread, both in number and geography. I think it will be, potentially, that other aspects of supply chains are focused on in the future.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I do not have an opinion on the police response. We have been working together with them, but I am really focusing on what would make their role easy.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It has had an impact on fuel deliveries. It has been hard to estimate that, but, for example, I can give you evidence that for the week ending 3 April, there was a 9% drop, week on week, in fuel deliveries. We have calculated that.
Tom Hunt
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I cannot equate that to an impact on cost; I can say just that there was an impact on deliveries. However, the costs of obtaining injunctions across our members and across the different sites, for example, have run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds—we estimate tipping over the £1 million mark. Our estimate for the cost of obtaining injunctions for local authorities is that they will also be spending that. The cost of security staff has also been at the hundreds of thousands of pounds mark, tipping into the millions. There is an increase in the cost base, and a need to repair for industry, but I am not here to comment on prices at all; that is not something that we address.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Q
I want to explore the Stansted situation a bit more. You have your highly secure zone—that goes without saying for national infrastructure—and people break in through a security fence and close a runway. I think you said that 25 flights were grounded as a result.
Steve Griffiths: Yes.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, indeed. Obviously, the security of the airport is critical to its safe operation, as you said. We have practices and procedures, CCTV and patrols, as well as what we call a “critical” part of the airport for maintaining security. We know about the security that we experience just as travelling passengers; that is equally important around the whole perimeter of the airport.
It is very serious, and any situation like that requires our staff to respond to it as well as ensuring the continued safety of the operation of incoming aircraft and aircraft that could be departing at that time.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Steve Griffiths: No. Obviously, we work with the local police, so we very much have a partnership between the airport police and Essex Police, and they look at intelligence and so on. All the intelligence suggested that it was a protest rather than terrorism.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
“We recognise that the various summary-only offences with which the appellants were originally charged…might…not reflect the gravity of their actions.”
I think that underlines the importance of the matters before us. At the Court of Appeal, Lord Burnett referred specifically to disruption “likely to endanger” the safe operation of the airport or the safety of people there. We have heard from your evidence that the actions that were taken were grave and had real impacts on the airport’s operations and security.
Steve Griffiths: Yes, they did indeed.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: We follow guidance produced by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. New guidance on the security of sites was issued in April by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with the support of national counter-terrorism police and the National Police Coordination Centre. Lots of site security plans are already put in place using guidance and experience, and there are updates; that is continually being reviewed using the best available guidance. It is a tiered system, as people gain access and then further access into the site, but one of the points I wanted to make is that the sites are very large indeed. CCTV and fencing are already there, but it is very hard to stop a large number of people—
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Large perimeters, and a large number of people who are determined to get in and willing to put their own safety at risk. Should security guards or other people want to remove them, they have almost no powers to do so, apart from asking them and pointing out that it is not safe. We have been relying on the police, and in my opinion, we need to make sure that the police have the powers of arrest in order to remove those people, for their safety as much as anybody else’s.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It would be a proper emergency catastrophe—explosions, fire, life-ending.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I do not have that figure off the top of my head, I am afraid, but all the sites that have been targeted, all the areas of the supply chain—the petrol stations as well—are places that have the potential for explosions. Safe working is needed in those areas, and that is what we are very concerned about. In fact, petrol stations are one of the areas that are specifically not included in the new Bill. One of our asks is for that to be considered, and for the scoping of the Bill to be as wide as possible in order to include all aspects of the supply chain, because petrol stations could endanger the public—in fact, arguably more so than oil terminals. That would put staff as well as protesters at risk.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
Steve Griffiths: Obviously, the Home Office determines those deportation-type flights and works with all of the UK airports. There is no doubt that that will become more public and more prevalent, and it does heighten the potential risk to us as an airport as well.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
Steve Griffiths: Certainly from my perspective, I do not feel qualified to answer that question, unfortunately.
Mr Mohindra
Elizabeth, do you want to give it a go?
Elizabeth de Jong: I have not researched that myself, but the companies we represent are international companies. If it would be of interest to the Committee, I could ask how that operates for them as well. Let me know if that is something you would like me to follow up on.
Mr Mohindra
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: That is exactly what we would be seeking as well. Just in the same way as we have seen an evolution in the last year of the types of protest down and around the supply chain, we would like the drafting to reflect the continued evolution of protests and to cover as much of the supply chain as possible, and what the next target might be. In terms of “key national infrastructure”, the “downstream oil” sector is very useful to have. I think it will give the police confidence that this is an area where they can intervene and make arrests. But we would like the definition of key national infrastructure to be more specific and to include roads as well as buildings, to include vessels—tankers, for example—and infrastructure under construction. All these things are important to the supply chain, but also very important for the safety of the protesters, staff and the public. Specifically, as I have mentioned, petrol stations have been excluded; we think that they are important for safety as well.
Mr Mohindra
Thank you. Steve, is there anything from you?
Steve Griffiths: No, nothing to add from me, thank you.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Steve, you have said, and I would agree, that we absolutely support the right to peaceful protest. We absolutely support the right to free speech. That is really important to us as a trade association. Free speech—debate—is very important for you as well. However, what we are looking at here is the impact on people’s safety. That is also very important.
Anne McLaughlin
I understand that, but I am asking about—
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes, I promise I will try to answer that. Our industry is vital to achieving net zero, and there is lots the oil industry is already doing, and is wanting to invest in, to be part of the solution. We are producing more low-carbon biofuels. We are delivering and manufacturing sustainable aviation fuels. We are running some of the biggest hydrogen and carbon capture projects in the country. We are delivering the electric vehicle charging network; we are producing lubricants for electric vehicles as well. Personally, we think dialogue is very important. That is the essence of our democracy. But we also support peaceful protests and free speech in all ways. But if we are focused on dealing with protests and spending money on protests, that money arguably could instead help continue the work that we are doing to achieve net zero.
Steve Griffiths: I would echo everything that Elizabeth has said. It is obviously important, from the perspective of the aviation industry, that the Government have set out a plan to achieve net zero carbon by 2050. That is a plan that all of the industry has signed up to. As the largest airport group in the UK, MAG has a plan to achieve that by 2038, which is 12 years ahead of the Government target. Again, contributions to further advancing that would only help our industry, and that is what we will be looking for. As we have said, we have no objections about the right to protest, but it should be done peacefully.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
The Chair
I think we are straying into the debate around net zero rather than the issue in hand.
Anne McLaughlin
What I am really trying to say is that they disagree with the answers that you have given me; if they have a different view, they must have the right to protest. How can they do that and make an impact, while dealing with the safety and disruption concerns we have talked about?
Steve Griffiths: I can only comment in a limited way on this. Advancing this subject is really about innovation, technology and research and development. Obviously, we have to be realistic about the step changes that we can make, which is why in the industry that I work in the Government have set out a very clear plan. I know that all parts of the industry are looking at ways to achieve that a lot earlier. At the heart will be design, research, innovation and technology—that will drive it. Those elements have to be at the top of the industry’s and the Government’s agenda if we are to achieve that.
Elizabeth de Jong: And creating the right investment environment for the investments and the innovation as well. It is that type of dialogue that can speed this along. Some 96% of energy used in the transport sector currently comes from oil, so to just stop oil would have quite catastrophic impacts on society and the economy, but there are plenty of ways to debate this and to look at the policies that are needed.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I am afraid I am going to have to leave that for the police and those who work in that area who have studied what the best incentives are for people. We are definitely focused on how to make things safe in our industry and how our society can work more efficiently and effectively.
Steve Griffiths: I cannot really comment on that. It is really for the police to determine, but we obviously support their having the right tools because, at the heart of this, as Elizabeth has said, is the safety of the protesters, the general public and customers, as well as our colleagues. That is really important.
Matt Vickers
Q
Steve Griffiths: I am here to talk about the disruptions; I cannot really talk about the policy itself.
Elizabeth de Jong: The areas we have focused on are the definitions of key national infrastructure. Locking on is important, and it is important that petrol stations are included. We do not have views on the other areas of the Bill, around stop and search for example. That is for people who have studied and are expert in what deters people or does not deter people.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Q
Steve Griffiths: That is clearly one obvious option, yes.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, certainly. We work with the police on intelligence and they do a lot of scanning to try to look at risks that are presented at the airport, but certainly, having those facilities to stop people directly and search them would be helpful.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Steve Griffiths: Yes, we have a very well-defined plan that is a joint plan between the airport, the airport police and Essex police. That is really around the seriousness with which we take breaches on the airport. We have to have a very clear escalation plan and very clear, constant monitoring in place, because the seriousness of the disruption it causes, and also the threat to safety, is significant to us as an operating airport.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes. Site security and risk assessment per se, given that we work in such a tightly regulated and potentially dangerous environment, are very much at the core of all operations throughout the downstream oil sector.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Indeed.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, there seem to be slightly different issues. The issue with the flight was a slight one-off, in that people were objecting to that particular flight going away. There is a particular problem, it seems, with people trying to block entire infrastructure programmes across the country. They are two quite different things and I think they need a slightly different response.
I want to confirm with you, Mr Griffiths, that the police arrested the people but that the issue was that the charge was not right. It was not that they were not arrested and taken away; it was just that the charge did not stick because the right charge was not there, if you see what I mean.
Steve Griffiths: Yes, you have the fact that the incident occurred in the first place and then, as you say, the perpetrators were arrested, but then the subsequent charge fell apart because of, presumably, a gap in legislation, in that the route taken for prosecution did not stand up. On your first question, I do not have that answer with me today.
Elizabeth de Jong: I have some information on the first one. We received police intelligence about the attacks and that intelligence was broadly correct.
Sarah Jones
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: It was very helpful indeed.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank our witnesses for the evidence. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Adam Wagner gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Adam Wagner, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. We have until 3.5 pm for this session. Will Mr Wagner introduce himself for the record?
Adam Wagner: Good afternoon. My name is Adam Wagner and I am a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. I practice in human rights law and public inquiries, and I do a lot of work on protest law.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: Okay. I will start with the general question about what I think of the legislation. It is important to frame this debate properly. In this country, our tradition is that protest is something that is permitted. It is not seen as a social evil; it is seen as a social good. A certain level of disruption is inevitable in any successful protest. That is how you get people’s attention: you disrupt, and you put yourself in front of them. That is not a new thing; it is very old. It goes back to the suffragettes, who I am sure many people giving evidence will mention.
Every social movement in history that has a protest element has always used an element of disruption, and there will of course be times when disruption steps over the line into violence and such serious disruption that society will not tolerate it. At that point, the criminal law will intervene, and there is always an uneasy balance between where you put the line, because you accept that conscientious protest about important issues is something that democracy needs for the public to communicate directly to the rest of society and to you—the people who are in charge. That is always the context.
All the court authorities on these kinds of issues recognise that protest is disruptive, unruly and something that annoys people, particularly if they do not agree with the views. If somebody does not agree with a view, that is a very good reason to not allow them to be in charge of whether the person can be express it. That is why it is very dangerous to start tinkering with a law because of views you do not approve of, because the next lot will come along and do the same for the views you do approve of. So we keep a level of tolerance towards protest—that is the way I would frame it.
For the most part, the mechanisms that the Bill puts in place essentially criminalise peaceful protest. That is what the Bill does: it criminalises peaceful protest in a way that has not been done before. It treats peaceful protest like knife crime, drug dealing or terrorism. I do not mean that metaphorically; I mean it directly. Serious crime disruption orders and terrorism disruption orders stop people doing something in future—those are the kinds of methods we have used to disrupt terrorism, knife crime, drug dealing and gang violence. I have been involved in lots of cases involving those kinds of orders. If the Bill is used by police—they will be under pressure to use it in particular instances—the end result will be lots more protesters in the criminal courts, in very long and complicated trials that involve looking at the proportionality of the protest in question, as we saw with the Colston statue case. But it will be 100 times more, because all these offences have a reasonable excuse—I can come to that. I think that is one thing you will see.
The other thing you will see is a lot more protesters in prison—and a lot more peaceful protesters in prison. I do not have any issue with, and I do not think human rights law has any issue with, violent protesters being treated as criminals—the European convention on human rights entirely accepts that violent protest does not fall under the protection of the right to protest—but all these provisions are about peaceful protest, and it will end up with hundreds and hundreds of protesters in the prison system. I see that from my own work. An increasing amount of protesters are going to end up in prison because of the injunctions. That is my general view, but I can talk about specifics.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, we heard from previous witnesses about cases in which people have glued themselves to motorways in a dangerous way, and about people locking themselves on and tunnelling under things—doing things that are criminal and dangerous. That is the problem that the Bill is seeking to tackle: the small number of people who are repeatedly doing things that are dangerous for themselves and others. It would be helpful for you to explain how that marries with your view that the Bill will affect loads of peaceful protesters.
Adam Wagner: Hard cases make bad law, is the aphorism. I think that is true. I listened to a previous witness say that locking on is a new phenomenon; the suffragettes were locking on and Gandhi was locking on—these are very old protest methods. Anybody that breaks into an airport or an oil refinery, or blocks a motorway, can be arrested and charged under existing criminal law. That is absolutely uncomplicated.
One of the misapprehensions about the Insulate Britain protests—I read it in the newspapers—was that the police could not arrest people until there was an injunction in place. That is completely the wrong way round. Injunctions do not give powers of arrest to the police; court enforcement officers gain powers of arrest from injunctions, but the police can arrest people for obstruction of the highway in the same way that they have been able to for a long time. There are all sorts of other criminal offences that can be used—aggravated trespass is the other catch-all one. When someone is on the road they can still be trespassing if they are not using it for a permitted purpose. Aggravated trespass applies to any private land, including airports, oil refineries and petrol stations.
In terms of dealing with the issue at the time and on the ground, the Bill is not going to make any difference at all. The police can go in and arrest people—there is nothing stopping them. They can use reasonable force to unlock people who are locked on. The police will have exactly the same powers to do that under all these new offences. The difference—to use a term that has come up—is the downstream. Instead of those people potentially going to prison for a bit, or not going to prison at all, they will end up going to prison for a long time. The clauses of the Bill create a culminative effect—it is like being a petty criminal: once you start and are in the criminal justice system, you get longer and longer sentences and everything stacks up, one after the other. The courts have more and more draconian powers that they can use against you. The Bill creates that culminative effect for peaceful protesters.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: A serious disruption prevention order follows the model of lots of other such orders in our laws, such as serious crime prevention orders, gang orders and drug dealing prevention orders. It is the same exact model. As drafted, a serious disruption prevention order allows a court a power if someone is convicted of any offence under the new offences.
For example, having superglue in their pocket would be an offence under the regulations, because it could be used for a lock-on. Arguably, too, a bicycle lock on their bicycle could be used for a lock-on. Once that is triggered and they get convicted of an offence, the court can then look at their background and, if they have been involved in a protest that even potentially might cause serious disruption, that is all that is needed—
“capable of causing serious disruption to two or more”—
and could trigger the power for the judge to impose an order of up to two years that prevents them from doing all sorts of things. They might not be allowed into a town centre for two years, or to associate with particular people, or they could be given electronic tagging requirements. Once that is in place, they could be dragged back in if they breach a requirement and be given a prison sentence as a result. It is a protest banning order, effectively.
In fact, there are two different kinds of order: clause 13, which is the serious disruption prevention order, and then another one, whereby a police officer—even if the person has not been convicted of an offence, but just so long as they have participated in a protest and the judge thinks they might participate in another or maybe take some superglue along with them—can prevent them from going into a town centre or associating with particular people. The orders can even be applied to organisations, so it is not just individuals; it could be a charity or a campaigning organisation. It is a really huge expansion of court powers against protesters.
Let me talk a bit about the psychology of some of the people I represent, who are some of the more hardcore protesters who are at the centre of a lot of these movements. They will not be deterred by this legislation. If we look at Insulate Britain, which I guess is on the extreme end of disruption versus expressing the right to protest—it is not directed; the people they were disrupting were not the people they were protesting against, which makes the courts the least sympathetic to those actions—a lot of them said, “Well, I will go to prison for the cause.” A lot of environmental and Black Lives Matter protesters—whichever cause you think of—will say, “It’s going to be a badge of honour to go to prison.”
The prison system will start to be full of those people. It will not deter them; the people it will deter are the people who are not willing to go to prison, but who will also not be doing anything illegal at protests. They will just not want to go along, “Because I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. I have a bicycle outside; I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. What happens if I get arrested because I have a bicycle lock? I didn’t know one of these orders allowed police to do suspicionless search.” It will deter those people; it won’t deter the people you are worried about or the previous witnesses were worried about. It will deter lots of other people who you are not worried about, but you should be worried about.
Kit Malthouse
Q
I want to ask you a couple of questions. First, you seem to be quite happy for those who profess to be protesters to go to prison in certain circumstances. So, if someone glues themselves on to a fuel gantry, bringing themselves and others into danger, you are quite happy for those people to go to prison—the only question in your mind is for how long. I presume you accept that part of the role of sentencing is not just to punish, but to deter. In circumstances where somebody is persistently committing those offences, whether or not they are subject to the order that you talked about, would you not expect them to get increasing sentences as they reoffended?
Adam Wagner: The first thing I would say is that I have come here voluntarily. I did not come here to have someone be personally rude to me, and I really do not appreciate it. I do not understand the benefit of that to anyone.
The second point is that I am not happy for any protester to go to prison. That is the criminal law as it is. The question this Committee is asking is: does the criminal law need to change to deal with the problems that the Bill is supposedly dealing with? I just do not think it does. If the aim of the Bill is to send a lot of peaceful protesters to prison, it will do that. By peaceful, I mean non-violent. Locking on to something is not a violent protest. It is disruptive and annoying for the people who are trying to do whatever they are going to do in the location the protester has locked on to, but it is a classic form of protest. It is something that has always been used. It is something that society generally tolerates.
If we want lots more people like that to go to prison, this is the Bill to do it. However, if you want to stop people blocking roads, oil refineries or fracking sites—whatever the cause at the moment is—this is not the Bill to do that. I can tell you that, because I know these people; they will continue doing what they are doing. The difference is that they will end up in prisons all around the country, and I am not sure that is a good look for the country.
Kit Malthouse
I understand. I apologise if I was rude before.
Adam Wagner: Thank you.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Adam Wagner: First, it depends on whether the police are charging under that. I have not really talked about the relationship between the police and the public. The police will have to think really carefully about whether they want any of the aggravation of having to recommend for charging people who are not violent criminals, but are, in fact, peaceful protesters expressing their views.
Secondly, you cannot guarantee at all that the judges will send people to prison. There has been a step change through Insulate Britain. I have acted in a lot of these contempt cases—where people breach injunctions. The big difference with Insulate Britain is that these people are being sent to prison, and the courts’ reasoning, as I said, is that the protest is not directed at the social evil that the protesters are protesting. They are blocking the highway, and not blocking anybody who is insulating or not insulating anything. That is why they are sending people to prison.
However, what the judges have not done is send to prison people who, like my clients, were protesting at the entrance of a fracking site in Blackburn at Preston New Road, or people protesting on the HS2 line. The courts have said very directly: “We tend not to send people to prison for that.” It is quite possible that the courts will not oblige. Who knows? The powers will be there.
Kit Malthouse
Q
The Chair
A short answer, Mr Wagner, because we are in the final minute.
Adam Wagner: It is a mixed bag. You might end up with a judge who is not very used to the criminal law, because a lot of them are in civil courts, but you also might end up with a whopping cost order at the end of it. For some of the cases I have been involved in, it has been tens of thousands of pounds. It is a mix, but civil injunctions have their own problems more widely.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of you, Mr Wagner. I thank you, on behalf of the Committee, for your evidence.
Examination of Witness
David Dinsmore gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
David Dinsmore: I am David Dinsmore, chief operating officer at News UK. For the purposes of this, News UK is the owner of Newsprinters Ltd, which prints a lot of the newspapers in this country.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: This started on the evening of 4 September 2020 and continued to midday on the 5th. We have three print sites across the UK: one at Broxbourne to the north of London, one in Knowsley in Merseyside, and one at Eurocentral, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the Eurocentral site, there was a small, peaceful protest that broke up very quickly and did not get in the way of any of our business. However, at both Broxbourne and Knowsley, starting at about 9.45 pm, a collection of vans, boats on trailers and a bamboo superstructure were put in place at the exits to the plants. In the Broxbourne case, 50-plus people got on to those structures, many of them locking themselves on. At Knowsley, I think the number was about 30. Certainly, there were 51 arrests at Broxbourne, and 30 arrests and 28 charges at Knowsley.
The police were called immediately and were on the scene within half an hour, but they did not start removing people properly until 4 am at Broxbourne and 11 am at Knowsley. Both sites were finally cleared at midday on the 5th. This was a Friday, into Saturday. Saturday is the biggest newspaper sale of the week. Between The Sun and The Times, we would normally expect to sell about 2 million papers that day. We also print for The Daily Telegraph. We print some of the Daily Mail and some of the Financial Times, and we also deliver a direct-to-consumer service, although we do not print them, for The Guardian out of the Broxbourne site, so you will see that we are at the heart of the news industry in the country, whatever your flavour may be.
All the exits were blocked, which meant that all our trucks and drivers were blocked inside. Although we printed the run of about 2.5 million papers, they all had to be pulped. We had to use other print sites around the country to print those newspapers, and we delivered from them. The net result was that we lost a significant sale, as we did not get to many newsagents until past midday. The cost to us as a company was about £1.2 million. I would say we had 155 staff who were trapped on site until midday the following day, and we still have senior staff attending court hearings. They have had to block out of their diaries about 150 man/woman days—they are not having to attend court, but there is definitely serious disruption.
The final point I would make is that those 51 people at Broxbourne were all charged under obstructing highways, and those at Knowsley were charged under the aggravated trespass legislation. Some of the people at Knowsley have been found not guilty because it was not clear whose land they were trespassing on, and at Broxbourne, most people who have been found guilty have been given conditional discharges—costs of £150. One of them even glued himself on to the court table and still got a conditional discharge.
It feels to us to be a major, serious and co-ordinated attack. It caused considerable material disruption and continues to do so. The legislation is not in place to provide a deterrent to this. There is not even a catch-all law that people can be charged under, even if they do commit the crime. It felt like we were powerless to do anything other than work around this huge disruption, which had a massive impact. There is another impact worth mentioning. We go to wholesalers, who were hugely disrupted, and then we go to 44,000 retailers, who were similarly disrupted. That ends up with 2 million or 3 million customers who cannot get their paper when they turn up to buy it in the morning. The disruption to freedom of speech and our democracy in this instance was huge.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: My understanding is that you need specialist teams to remove protesters who are locked on at a height.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: It was chains. At Broxbourne, they brought a purpose-made bamboo super structure, which they were able to erect at speed and put themselves on to.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: We call it the nightly miracle that we get from literally a blank sheet of paper at 9 o’clock at night to 44,000 retailers at 6 o’clock the following morning around the country. While I like the aspiration, the idea that we could get specialist teams there and remove blockages and get all that cleared without having significant disruption to the network and that delivery is, I think, pretty ambitious.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: Indeed.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
The Chair
We cannot go into the detail. The concept of how a protest can be taken forward is, however, a legitimate question.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
David Dinsmore: News brands are a very good channel for campaigning. We would see ourselves as giving a voice to the voiceless. One of the ironies of this particular protest was that on page 10 of The Sun that day, there was a piece from David Attenborough about exactly what Extinction Rebellion were campaigning on. They were going after one of the vessels that would probably be a good way of disseminating protest and counter-voices. Newspapers have campaigned legally and peacefully for centuries on many issues successfully and got law changes. If we want to go into the details of the great Sunday Times investigation campaign on thalidomide, I think there are many routes through which you can get outcomes that do not require the law to be broken.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
David Dinsmore: On the Black Lives Matter issue, we have, as an organisation, carried a huge amount of coverage. We have done things explicitly and internally on diversity. It is something that we do take very seriously. The Sun has recently run a series on Black History Month, et cetera, et cetera. I will not go into the detail, but I can give you much more on what we do as an organisation on those kinds of issues.
There are many, many routes to protest in this country. I am just giving you the specifics around our particular route. There are petitions and social media. There are many ways in which you can get a story, a campaign or a point of view across without disruption and breaking the law.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
David Dinsmore: I think the best example we have got is the pandemic we have just lived through and the requirement for quality, trustworthy information. That showed how vital and valuable that is. We, as professional journalists, provide that information on what used to be a daily basis and is now a minute-by-minute basis, and the public need that more than ever.
Andrew Bridgen
Q
David Dinsmore: But it could be just as easily threatened by this kind of protest.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
David Dinsmore: I do think that the way the law is structured protects the rights of the few against the rights of the many. That feels to me to be anti-democratic. So, without going into the specifics of it, yes, I do think that. On that point of “you can get it online”, there is still a significant cohort in the community—principally older readers—who cannot or do not get it online, and do get their news in print.
Kit Malthouse
Q
David Dinsmore: I do not know if we know for a fact that that is the case. However, certainly, in a lot of protests that we see—and believe you me, we see a lot of protests—an anti-Murdoch element always comes out. We are big, grown-up girls and boys, and we deal with most of that in our daily work, but on that occasion, the level of disruption caused was well beyond what would be acceptable.
Kit Malthouse
Q
David Dinsmore: Apart from the fact that it was Extinction Rebellion, I would need to go back. I think there was a lot of assumption about what it was against—I think they did some tweeting at the time, but I will need to come back to you with the specifics around what was actually said and claimed at the time.
The Chair
Do any Members wish to ask further questions? On that basis, Mr Dinsmore, I thank you for your evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Sir Peter Martin Fahy QPM, Matt Parr CB and Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: I am Peter Fahy. I was the chief constable of Greater Manchester police and, before that, the chief constable of Cheshire constabulary. I was a police officer for 34 years and a chief constable for 13 years.
Matt Parr: I am Matt Parr. I am one of four of Her Majesty’s inspectorates of constabulary. My focus is primarily on the Met and non-Home Office forces. In specialism terms, I look at such things as counter-terrorism policing and, in this case, public order.
Phil Dolby: Good afternoon. My name is Phil Dolby. I am a chief superintendent for West Midlands police and I am a trained and accredited tactical public order/public safety commander and have been for some time, and I have been through quite a few adventures.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: The first thing I would say is that there is a threat to public confidence in policing from the police not being seen to be effective when they are dealing with issues like those we have heard about—issues like the Insulate Britain protest—but there is a danger that this Bill is trying to produce the wrong solution. The problem we have, as you heard from the gentleman from News UK, is that we do not have a standing army of police officers in this country. We are not like France, Spain and Italy, which have paramilitary police forces. If this had happened in France, they would have turned out the CRS very rapidly. They are very highly specialist and trained: they would use water cannon, they would probably use rubber bullets, and essentially the French population would accept that level of force. Thankfully, we do not live in a country like that, and the trouble is that when these events happen—I had a similar thing in Cheshire, with milk protests outside Morrisons and Tesco—in the middle of the night, it is extremely difficult to get together enough officers to safely disperse that protest. If anything, that has got far worse, because in those days we did not have everything filmed and on social media and all those things.
Essentially, it seems to me that we have three problems. The first is the inability to get officers quickly together, with the right equipment—I would like to be able to move lorries, vans and stuff like that quickly—because that is not how British policing is set up. The second issue is that you then have to clear and arrest people, and the trouble is that the rules on bail are very narrow. In most cases, the police have to release that person on bail, which makes them free to go back and rejoin the protest. Even if you are able to get them to court immediately, the court will probably bail them out, because they plead not guilty and are back out on the street again. That is essentially the problem: they are able to keep on going back and repeat their behaviour.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: No, it will not deal with any of these three practical issues unless you address the issues of a lot more police officers being available; the public appetite for those officers to be able to use force, confident that the public, the media, and even people like the Independent Office for Police Conduct will support that use of force; and court procedures being able to deal with that and, if necessary, keep people in custody if they are persistent in going back. Just having more powers does not really solve any of those practical issues. Some people will be deterred by harsher sentences, but we know that a lot will not be.
On the other hand, part of that is absolutely that there is a danger to public confidence. That is really critical. I just visited Westminster Abbey and saw the statue of Sir Robert Peel, who laid down some remarkable principles of policing way back in the 1820s. It was very much about the police being impartial, acting under the rule of law, and not seeming to follow any particular initiative. There is absolutely a risk in this. Most protests are short-lived and move on very quickly. We have talked largely today about national protests, such as those on the M25, where there is not really a local community, but most protests and the most difficult protests are often very local protests about things like fracking and road developments, where there are very strong local public emotions. Yes, there may be some outsiders who join it, but most of it is very local people. If the police are involved in gathering intelligence around those people and criminalising them in a way that those local people do not think is fair, and it destroys their confidence in what their local police force is there to do, there is absolutely a risk in that.
Very quickly, I found the Sarah Everard vigil that Matt did a review of interesting in a way, because most of the police service were really clear that that gathering was illegal under the coronavirus regulations. The inspectorate did an inspection and said, “No, it was a very good policing operation done very well.” It didn’t matter. Media, most politicians and public opinion said, “No, that was wrong”, on the basis of two images that ended up on the front of the Sunday newspapers. That is the difficult environment that police officers are operating in, some of them very junior and without the chance to have a great deal of training, and dealing with very complex issues, such as more legislation, more powers and more definitions of what is serious disruption, whether something is national infrastructure or not and whether something is the highway or private ground. Those are difficult issues for individual police officers, even inspectors, to make sense of in the heat of the moment, with strong emotions and the potential need to use force on people.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: Yes. We cannot be naive: the training level for police officers is still very poor. There is no formal qualification for superintendents. They do their best, but we put them into very difficult situations with complex consequences if they get it wrong.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Phil Dolby: Certainly from a West Midlands police perspective it is extremely difficult when we have a protracted protest, because all of those cops come from the normal, business as usual police, often at the front end of demand, as opposed to detectives or safeguarding officers. They are the first response and are often the ones trained to be ready to police such events. The opportunity cost, as well as the financial costs, can be significant.
The British model of policing of protests in the last 10 years has matured and advanced. There is more to do, but work has been done on balancing the rights of all; trying to make sure that it is seen as a community issue and not just a policing issue, so the officers do not come into an area and then leave, and how that affects the community; and protest liaison officers who are specialists in how to engage and try to negotiate before we use force.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Matt Parr: I suspect I am here because I wrote not just the report on the Sarah Everard vigil but the report you mention, at the Home Secretary’s request, on what was then a series of proposals, some of which have made their way into the Bill and some of which have not. That report covered much more than legislation: it made the point that getting the legislation right is not a panacea. A dozen or so recommendations were made in the report, and they covered issues such as greater expertise, increased training, better intelligence and more debriefing afterwards. The problem is not solved by legislation. It is solved by a mixture of legislation, greater training, awareness and preparation for decision-makers and police.
Wendy Chamberlain
Q
Obviously, your report from 2021 considered protest banning orders, which was something suggested by the Met. Your report stated that
“such orders would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”
What are your views on the serious disruption orders in the Bill, given what you have said previously?
Matt Parr: I can only comment on what we said in the report. We looked at them and at what the Home Office said about a protest ban at the time. It opposed a ban, saying that it
“essentially takes away a person’s right to protest and…would very likely to lead to a legal challenge…Consequently, we believe it unlikely the measure would work as hoped.”
The report agreed. We said:
“We remain unconvinced that such orders would either be compatible with human rights legislation or create an effective deterrent.”
We supported many of the other measures, some of which have not made it into the Bill.
Wendy Chamberlain
We shall find out from the Minister why he has changed his mind.
Sarah Jones
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: You mention the level of resources. Certainly, when you look at the number of officers per head of population in the UK roughly compared with France, Italy and Spain, you see that we have about half the number that they have. Why is that? Because they have national police forces and paramilitary police forces that essentially are part of the military, live in barracks and are able to respond in that militaristic way. That is not our history whatsoever and I would absolutely not want it to be, but it possibly gives you some indication of the level of resource.
Even if the chief superintendent had double the number of officers, I am not sure that he would necessarily want to put them into this form of policing, because he is absolutely right that when officers had to be on motorway bridges at the time of Insulate Britain to try to be available to clear the protests, they were officers who would have been investigating rapes, burglaries or whatever. There is a practical issue here: could we ever have the level of resources to be able to effectively—? The fact is that the protesters will always be fleeter of foot than the police, because they have the element of surprise.
In terms of what can be done to help people like Newsquest, Morrisons and other people I have dealt with who were absolutely very concerned about the future of their businesses, for me it is about being prepared to look at issues like bail. In the more immediate sphere, it is for the courts to be able to keep people in custody, rather than having to wait for a court case a few months down the line, or for one of these particular orders.
I would still doubt whether the appetite would be there—the judicial appetite. Police officers are very wary, and you heard the exact reason for that from Newsquest: when cases get to court, the judiciary or the magistrates often give out very minor sentences—whatever might be allowed in the legislation. They find, as happened with the Sarah Everard case, that higher courts then disagree and bring in human rights legislation, or bring in a different interpretation that is in the legislation, which then completely takes the legs of the police from underneath them.
That can only really be covered partly by legislation but essentially by judicial practice, because you can bring in all the laws you like—it will not actually solve those practical issues that the police face. There is also a real difficulty with definitions. This Bill talks about “protests”. Previous legislation, such as the Public Order Act 1986, talks about “gatherings”. We seem to have brought in this word “protests”, and I am not sure there is a legal definition of what is a protest.
The 1986 Act uses the phrase,
“serious disruption to the life of the community”.
I dealt with a really difficult protest in the centre of Manchester, which essentially put the Jewish community and the Muslim community at odds. I actually contacted the Home Office and said, “Please can you tell me the definition of serious disruption to community life?” They said, “The legislation’s never been used. We can’t tell you.” I was left wondering whether I should go around the shops of Manchester and try to work out whether their takings were up or down as a result of the protest.
With words such as “serious disruption”, on the face of it, yes, they are common sense and everybody knows what it looks like. In reality, however, when it gets into the courts that is exactly where the lawyers make their money from, but it absolutely undermines the police action and seriously means that police forces may be sued for unlawful arrest, and officers may be more liable to receive complaints because the conviction was not secured. It is a really complex issue, as Matt has said, and it needs a range of things, but just having more legislation without dealing with those other issues—you would certainly need an absolutely huge investment in training.
That would be my concern about this legislation. It is quite complex legislation. How, for instance, are West Midlands police supposed to train that, with all the day-to-day of policing? There is no time in policing for training. Again, those officers who are going to be on training courses have to be taken away from other duties. In my time, in my early stage there was very little change to the law. It is now changing almost month by month, and trying to keep police officers—who, with due respect to them, do not have the sort of professional background on how to interpret legislation—up to date with that is really difficult, because we are putting them into a totally different scenario, in terms of their level of accountability and the level of transparency that has now come from mobile phones and social media.
Sarah Jones
Q
The third question is just about any thoughts you might have on things in the Bill that you have not looked at. You might not have had thoughts because the Government have not asked you to do a report on it—I think I am right that they have not asked you. Do you have any thoughts on things that you have not looked at before?
Matt Parr: I will deal with the easiest one of those questions first. The policing response to our report has been possibly the most professional and thorough response that I have seen in any report I have done in six years as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. The then National Police Chiefs’ Council lead picked it up, gathered a group together, and it has been a model of how policing as a whole should respond to a report. That has been really good. We have not been back to inspect, but I am pretty confident that progress has been made against every recommendation we made. I think they have almost all been ticked off. That is very encouraging. That is not standard fare with reports from us, sadly.
On your point about what bits of the legislation we looked at, we were asked to look at five changes. The history of this is that in 2019 the Home Secretary wrote to the commissioner of the Met, and the commissioner then wrote back with a series of 19 potential changes to the law. There was a big roundtable involving the Home Office and lots of people in policing in mid-2020. After that it was decided that they would take forward five. We supported all five of those—with a little bit of teeth-sucking about a couple. Generally, we thought that they all had the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the policing of protests, and would help achieve the “modest reset” I referred to in the report.
The Bill contains one of those changes, and that is the one about extending stop and search to look for lock-ons. It contains other changes that were not in there: obstructing major transport works; interference with key national infrastructure; serious disruption prevention orders, which we have already mentioned; and, lastly, lowering the rank in the Met for authorisations.
On extending stop and search, we said that because of its preventive nature it has the clear potential to enhance police effectiveness. It would also act as a deterrent. We recognised it was controversial, and we registered concerns about modelling it on current section 60 legislation—we thought that was potentially problematic. It is trying to achieve two very different things. We were nervous about a potential effect on minorities, and therefore we would like to see strong safeguards around that.
Finally, we said there must be appropriate thresholds and correct authority levels. I think the Bill says inspector, which is probably as low a rank as I would want to go. However, in general we remain supportive. There was broad support for the stop and search proposal from across the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and policing generally. Some people raised some difficulties, but we concluded:
“our view is that, with appropriate guidance and robust and effective safeguards, the proposed stop and search powers would have the potential to improve police efficiency”.
I have mentioned that we were not supportive of SDPOs. We did not really look at the others. I will touch on changing the minimum rank of assistant commissioner to commander in the Met. That strikes me as entirely pragmatic. If you look at the Met, the real expertise in public order tends to be at commander rank, rather than above, where people get a bit more generalist. The deep professional experts in London, in my experience, are the commanders. That strikes me as perfectly sensible. The other two changes we simply have not looked at. I would say that they strike me as consistent with the aim I was in support of. Currently, the balance is not being got right on a regular basis; the level of disruption between those who have a right to protest, and those who are bystanders and affected by protest, is not in the right place. Those changes strike me as consistent with resetting that balance.
Everybody I talked to in the course of this inspection or since—every police officer and everybody involved in this—absolutely recognises the right to protest. There is no question about that. Frankly, I think some of the criticism of the Bill, and some of the interpretation of it, goes too far. It is not a police state.
Sarah Jones
Q
Matt Parr: Both. Any changing of where the pendulum sits does not automatically mean the introduction of a police state. To me, they look like sensible measures to redress the balance. I note that the Government’s note accompanying the Bill links to a YouGov survey that shows where the public are on this issue, and those findings were entirely consistent with the survey we did as part of the Bill. To be honest, I was quite surprised at the time, but the YouGov poll is in exactly the same place.
Sarah Jones
Q
Phil Dolby: No one protest is the same as any other, even if it might be about the same cause. Some of the most challenging ones we have had have not necessarily been Extinction Rebellion or High Speed 2. The issues in Gaza led to some go-slow protests that were going to churn up the city, which I had to deal with.
Another protest was in the paper a few years ago. A school was hoping to do a teaching element about same-sex relationships, and some of the local Muslim community were upset about that. We have also had Sikh tensions at the Indian consulate general, the Kisan protests and so forth. Sometimes you can start your tour of duty and something appears on Al Jazeera—suddenly, you can feel the tension rising during that same tour of duty.
The first thing is very much: what relationships do we have with communities before there is a protest? What kind of neighbourhood local policing service do we have? What is our community engagement across the spectrum of age, ethnicity, communities and so on? That is the most important. One of the most important briefings I give to everyone—including protesters—at the beginning of any operation, be it pre-planned or spontaneous, is always about the style and tone of what we are about to do. That is about being a fair service that is not afraid to make decisions when it needs to.
I will give you a couple of quick examples, starting with when we had the go-slow. Like most cities, Birmingham has a ring road, and it does not take much for that artery to suddenly be blocked, which means that nobody is going anywhere. We had a protest about Gaza whereby they were going to do a go-slow with their vehicles and do a circuit around the city. Because it kept moving, we tolerated that. We did some traffic management around it, kept the city moving and made sure that really important things, such as hospitals and so forth, were not affected. They then went for a second lap, and that was where I had a threshold with a gold commander who had given me a strategy that said, “That’s enough now, because everyone else in the city has the right to peaceful enjoyment of the transport system and to get around.”
We currently have a power under section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986—this goes to Sir Peter’s point—that already has the term “serious” within it. There is a test called 3DI—serious damage, disorder, disruption or injury —but the definition of “serious” is still quite open to interpretation. You also need to have an organiser. During the pandemic, people did not want to show that they were organisers, because they would then be potentially prosecuted under the coronavirus regulations. That has kind of stayed. Before then, people were quite happy to say, “I was the organiser,” but that is less so now.
The go-slow had no clear organiser, but through the CCTV around the city, I was able to see who the organiser was. There were probably about 200 vehicles involved in it, and I just gave a warning about the police’s power to who I was evidentially satisfied was the organiser. I negotiated and said, “Look, I’ve got this power. It’s ready, and here it is. Do you want to carry on, or can I encourage you to stop? You have had your opportunity, and you need to move on.” There was a negotiated approach that I thought tried to keep the balance for everyone.
Similarly, Extinction Rebellion recently blocked a fairly minor road. We were a little confused about the road they chose. If we had been doing it, we would have chosen a different one. They had a tactic whereby instead of staying in the middle of the road all the time, they would use the pelican crossing but let the traffic stop by the traffic furniture. They would then occupy the road for about five minutes and when the traffic built up, they would move away. That was an interesting application of the law but, again, what we did was start negotiations with them.
We have our protest liaison teams, and there is a five-step appeal that officers go through, which we document and fill, giving every opportunity for the protesters to reach the decision themselves. Eventually, I said, “Okay. There is a power here to stop you. This is an unlawful assembly because it is now causing serious disruption. There’s a children’s hospital that is starting to be affected, so now that’s enough.”
I brought forward the van that is a mobile prison cell—kind of a show of strength, really—and said, “That is what I am prepared to use”. They said, “Okay”, and that was enough. Again, both the powers were available to us. They were being prepared to be used. We were not just tolerating it; there was a negotiated approach, and both of those are examples of where that has been successful. On the serious disruption element in the Bill, I would encourage as much precision for that definition as possible.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Matt Parr: We made that point in the report. There are certain things that probably would have a deterrent effect—the £37 million is something that we referred to. I think it is relevant. It is difficult to say that you cannot put a price on articles 10 and 11 and, of course, you are right. However, just for context, the two operations we looked at in London cost £37 million. That is twice the annual budget of the violent crime taskforce, so it does have a significant effect.
The other general observation I would make is that protest has been increasing and the complexity and demand on policing has increased. It does not seem likely to us that it will go in a different direction in the years to come, so something has to be done to prevent it becoming too much of a drain. Yes, I think that some of these act as a deterrent, of course. It rather depends on how they end up progressing through the courts—if, indeed, they are brought to court—and if it turns out that they are not meaningfully prosecuted and there are not meaningful convictions, any deterrent effect will pretty soon dissipate after that, I would have thought.
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: I would make the same point. Anything that could be put in the legislation to clarify the issue about “serious”, which absolutely could be some financial calculation, would be extremely useful. You have to remember that it was quite clear that the vast majority of people thought the Insulate Britain protests were extremely disruptive and pointless.
There are certainly some protests where you have two sides. Therefore, you will get pressure from one side to use this legislation, and we should not be naive about the pressure that police leaders come under from local politicians to do that. I will be honest: they were some of the most uncomfortable times in my police career when that happened. Therefore, having clarity about the legislation is really important, as is anything that can be put in to help that.
I do not know whether there is actually any evidence that people are deterred. Common sense says that some people will be deterred by harsher sentences and the threat of a conviction in court, but clearly some people are so determined, and have a certain lifestyle where it does not really have any consequence for them, that—if anything—it makes them martyrs. Certainly, as Matt said, if they are not convicted or get found not guilty, if anything that gives them a greater status as a martyr and leads to further criticism of the police.
Phil Dolby: I want to make a point on the precision of the legislation. When looking to consider stop and search without suspicion, I think no matter how hard you try, there will be a complete, solid line in the public discourse between that and section 60, which is the existing power to have targeted stop and search around violence principally. That is a tool that is being used increasingly with the challenges we are all facing around youth violence and knife crime. It is also something around which communities have not always necessarily experienced fair treatment.
With all that we are trying to do now, it is still a key point of discussion and, sometimes, contention. We have the community coming in and scrutinising how we have used it. They watch our body-worn video of what we tried to do. We have even got youth versions of that for young people. I do not know how you would do the same kind of thing with protest. I think there is something that needs to be done there. There is best practice advice on how to conduct stop and search, and I think there is potentially some real thinking if those go ahead to start with that position as opposed to learning those lessons as we go along.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: On your point about the Sarah Everard vigil, there is a question about what the difference is between a vigil and a protest, which is really critical for policing. Again, I would come back to that point: it did not really matter how legal or professional the police operation was. Because of that wider context, the public view of it is really clear.
Going back to what the chief superintendent said, you have to take into account absolutely the feelings of your local community. I would say that on things like this extension of stop and search, for me there would need to be a well-documented community impact assessment, where the police worked with other agencies and community groups to assess what the impact is going to be. I am not sure about the psychological impact. It is about the fact that this is how policing is judged now, and that is the risk.
I would bring in the issue of disruption orders. Anything that is about gathering intelligence is extremely problematic. Even if you go way back to the 1970s and the big scandal about undercover policing, that came from a desire to try to gather intelligence about protesters, and look where it got the police service. This is about what could be a group of people here organising a protest against a local road development and the police using the local council CCTV to try to show that, for instance, three people had met and a gentleman had put something on Facebook to bring about the protest. That is the form of intelligence gathering that I would suggest some of your constituents, if they were involved in something that was local and very emotional, would find extremely disturbing.
I think the police service has to be very careful about going down that route. Again, I think most people would say that we want the police to use intelligence gathering against serious criminals. It would need to be a very serious degree of public protest and disruption for the police to be using some of those tactics, in terms of the degree of trying to hold on to public confidence in law and police powers and tactics.
Matt Parr: As the person who conducted the study into that vigil, I was genuinely shocked. I had a team significantly composed of female senior police offers—mostly detectives or people with firearms backgrounds. Therefore, they had done relatively little public order in their careers. I found astonishing the look on their face at some of the evidence they saw from that night and the abuse that the police took. There was a very, very clear difference between an entirely well conducted and peaceful vigil that lasted until a certain time of the night, and the disorder that—
Dr Huq
That was what it looked like. It was like—
Matt Parr: Exactly. The vigil and the disorder that came after were two entirely different things. That is a significant point as well, of course, because we talked at the start about getting the resources and it is increasingly difficult, in many forces, to persuade people to volunteer to do public duty, for reasons of the social media aspect and also, frankly, because to do so means you will be on the receiving end of some real nastiness from certain—not all, by any means—members of the public.
When it comes to your wider point about how you take into account the seriousness and the psychological aspects and the presentational aspects, I think they are all absolutely relevant factors to take account of. One of our recommendations in the report was that police decision makers should be given better tools to be able to assess what serious disruption looks like. It cannot be as simple as financial cost; it has to be far more complex than that. At the moment, we have seen a number of cases where senior decision makers had clearly been left floundering by not understanding the nature of the disruption that was likely to be a consequence of a particular protest and therefore they shrank from making sensible decisions. Better tools for understanding when the thresholds for the nature of disruption have been crossed strike me as an essential part of this.
Phil Dolby: There is a sense in which we are always doomed to look like we are failing in some of these incidents—even though the right thing may have been done—because we are the ones in uniform, with personal protective equipment that makes us look quite tough. You have a passive protester, for example, or somebody at a vigil. Say it is an older person. To safely take that person away requires five officers—to take a corner each and the head. The newspaper photograph of that looks like a lovely old person being taken away by five militaristic-looking police officers. They are actually doing that because that is the duty of care they have—to safely remove that person who will not move. The reporting is usually of a very solid moment.
Something that could be interesting relates to the body-worn devices that we currently have, which we are using to invite the public to come after the fact and see how we have done and give us learning points and their views, particularly from communities that we have not necessarily always got the correct engagement with. The next generation of these will be live, and there might be some instances where we would invite affected members of the community in to watch what we are doing and give us live-time feedback. That will not necessarily always change decision making, but it is another part of the decision-making model to say, “Well, actually, that community impact we are describing”—
Tom Hunt
Q
Also, I just want a point of clarification—I think this discussion was again with Sir Peter—in terms of how we can improve things and how we can get to a point where perhaps there is a more dedicated team of people who are very trained and specialist. If we believe that these protests are becoming more frequent and more of an issue, although we do not want to go down the route of France, there have been occasions when I think that has been a temptation—when we have seen some of these out-of-control protests. I want to know what this new team that could help us get to a better place looks like.
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: Point No. 1 is that absolutely the police must never be swayed by a popularity contest. It is exactly what the chief superintendent says. Sometimes you have to stand above all that, and you are never going to win. Also, you might lose the battle, but you win the war. But the fact and the reality of policing is that you have to judge that. You have to talk to community leaders. You have to try to balance that. You have to make a decision. You have to try to involve people. One of the frustrations I had with that particular protest in Manchester is that I could not persuade anybody like the local council, the university or anybody to take this issue away from the street. It was an issue about what was going on in Palestine, and Israeli action. “Take this away”—but they would not do it. Sometimes, you need a mediation mechanism that takes that away from the street and that sort of public protest. It will not work on every occasion.
It is also about who makes that decision. Interestingly, the chief superintendent talked about using community panels to help you in your decision making. That was used with COP26 in Glasgow. Clearly, in Northern Ireland, they have the Parades Commission to make decisions on contentious protests and where they should and should not go. I find it interesting that we never mention police and crime commissioners, who are locally elected and, in some ways, should be representing local people. PCCs could possibly have a role in this, or it could be that more goes to the judiciary, so it is not so dependent on the police, with all the consequences for public confidence.
If you are looking at capability, there is a much wider debate, which the policing Minister will be aware of, about the structure of policing in 51 police forces and whether that is appropriate for the current situation. It is very difficult in our policing system, where we do not have paramilitary operation, policing is by consent and, rightly, the public have a particular attitude towards the use of force, to come up with something that would have the capability to deal with the sort of situations we are talking about. There would need to be a huge shift in the public mood and I think British policing is not really set up and does not have the mentality to use the degree of force that you see in other countries.
People do not realise that we are pretty unique. When you hear about the sophistication and negotiation the chief superintendent talked about, that is the British style. In all the protests it is escalation, which looks in the early stages like the police are being weak, but in the background they are talking to people and they are escalating. They are saying, “If you keep on coming back, we will use this power and that power. Have you heard about that?” That is the British style of policing. You do not start with the heaviest. You work up to it, and that then maintains the confidence in your legality and proportionality.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: It can get very low. Unfortunately, that is not part of the public discourse. I think the public think that there are lots of police officers sitting around in police stations doing nothing, whereas the reality is—somehow the police service needs to find a better way of articulating this—that no, even the Metropolitan police does not have loads of spare officers. So absolutely, that is part of the huge frustration for policing and where it sometimes feels it does not get the support of local politicians and the media—and, crucially, the courts—to deal with this.
Matt Parr: One of the things we criticise a lot, not just in London but across the country, is abstraction and the disruptive effect it has on building up long-term relationships. It is not necessarily detectives being taken off their work and therefore serious investigations not getting followed through. It is more likely to be neighbourhood policing that gets depleted, or response that gets depleted, and therefore you get longer response times or neighbourhood cops just not doing their job. It is rather difficult to quantify what the long-term effects of that are, but we definitely see in the inspectorate the negative effects of abstraction for a whole range of things, and this is one of the more serious ones.
Phil Dolby: At the same time that there are more protests—and more complexity around them—the service is also facing increased demand. There is a national shortage of the word “unprecedented” now because we have used it so much, but the demand that we are currently seeing as a service across the country is unprecedented. It is not only the amount of calls we are receiving—so volume—but, because hopefully we are doing better with our partners around vulnerability, more people are telling us about things that are really quite complex. The theft of a Mars bar is one call and “Twenty years ago, myself and my entire scout group were unfortunately the victims of something” is one call, but the complexity and the resource the latter needs is massive, and those are both going up at the same time.
There is not a standing army waiting to deal with protest. They come out of normal policing when they are required to do so, and the amount of neighbourhood policing that is affected by just keeping up with that demand is already quite acute. I just wonder whether, when we define organisations in the Bill, there is something about the organisations having some kind of responsibility to do what they can do to prevent— through their design, their target hardening and whatever staff they might put on—and to contribute to this as well and reduce it. Actually, we are talking about the cost of policing and the financial cost, but communities—with the reduction in policing that they are receiving—are the ultimate people bearing the cost. Perhaps we could do something with this, as we have with the Protect duty coming in under the terrorism Bill, putting responsibilities on local authorities and other people to do those kind of things.
We have had a very expensive protest recently around Amazon warehouses. Those drew in different forces and specialist policing. Some of the protesters were so long there in the cold that it became a medical emergency, and officers had to do some life-saving stuff around the protesters. With all those normal cops who have come away from other work, Amazon could have done more.
The Chair
I have to draw you to a close, Chief Superintendent. That is the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Olly Sprague, Stephanie Needleman and Martha Spurrier gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Olly Sprague, military security and police programme director, Amnesty International; Stephanie Needleman, legal director, Justice, via Zoom; and Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty. I should say to Ms Needleman, please alert us if any technical issues arise during the course of your evidence. We have until 4.55 pm for this session. I invite the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record.
Stephanie Needleman: I am Stephanie Needleman, the legal director of Justice. Justice is an all-party law reform and human rights organisation working to strengthen the UK justice system.
Martha Spurrier: I am Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, the human rights and civil liberties campaigning organisation.
Olly Sprague: I am Olly Sprague, programme head at Amnesty International UK for our work on military policing and security matters. This is my first physical Committee for two and a half years—it is good to be physically in the room.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
Martha Spurrier: There can be little doubt that a Government should spend time looking at the root causes of a protest, whether that is the climate crisis rather than climate protesters, or racism rather than Black Lives Matter protesters. Of course, it is not news to say that protest is a foundational right, and that it is an article of faith in any democratic country that if there is something you disagree with, you can take to the streets to make your voice heard. It is of great concern to Liberty and those of us who work in this area—I am a lawyer, and I have been working in this area for the best part of 15 years—to see provisions in a Bill that not only have been rejected by Parliament once, but significantly expand police powers, often doing so in a very over-broad and imprecise way, such that it is difficult to see how they will be effectively implemented.
We would expect a disproportionate impact on marginalised communities from the exercise of those powers. We would also expect that they will fundamentally undermine the right to protest, and will not do what they are purported to do—deal with a hard core of some supposedly extremely disruptive protesters—but will in fact have a dragnet effect of chilling people’s right to protest and free expression, and deter ordinary people from exercising their fundamental rights. There is a whole range of examples in the Bill that we could talk about where it is very difficult to see why those measures are proportionate and justified ways of dealing with the perceived problem, let alone whether there is a problem as articulated.
Olly Sprague: I echo what Martha said. For an organisation such as Amnesty, it is not a case of either/or: we do not want to balance the harm that might be caused by climate change versus the positive duty that all states have to uphold the right to freedom of assembly and association and the right to protest. You have to manage all things.
One of the things that we bring here is that we are an international human rights monitoring organisation: we look at human rights internationally, and we look at where the UK is on the standards, obligations and legal frameworks that exist. It is worrying to say that for most of the provisions in the Bill, we see a clear gap between what the international standards require of the UK and what the UK proposes here, and it is the wrong gap. The UK is on the wrong side of where it should be. I am sure we will have the opportunity to go into why we think that and the areas where we think that is the case, but that is a very worrying direction of travel, especially when in terms of its foreign, defence and security policy aspirations, the UK sees itself very much as a champion of civil society space. It sees and acknowledges the fact that the world is becoming increasingly authoritarian, and wants to do things to stop that.
As a quick example, in April this year, Lord Ahmad—a Government Minister from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—was giving his closing remarks to the 49th session of the Human Rights Council. In that, he made specific reference to a very important resolution about the need to promote and respect the rights of human rights defenders around the world. It was a resolution that was welcomed and strongly supported by the UK Government; it was a very important resolution. That resolution essentially requires that all states refrain from measures that excessively criminalise human rights defenders and their rights to freedom of expression, so you have a bit of a disconnect here between the statements that the UK puts out internationally and the role we see ourselves playing in the world community, and the kinds of measures we are putting in place on our own domestic legislative front. They are out of step with each other, and it is not joined up.
Stephanie Needleman: I completely agree with what Martha and Olly have said. Picking up on something that Olly said about the disconnect between what the UK is doing internationally and what we are doing domestically, there is also an internal disconnect in what we are doing domestically in the UK. The right to protest is an element of the right to freedom of expression and assembly. On the one hand, that is being championed under the Bill of Rights consultation and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, but on the other hand, it is being severely restricted in this Bill, so there is an internal inconsistency there as well.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
“Disruption” is such a vague term. What would a person have to have done for the police to be able to go down this route? I should probably ask the Minister, because I think the answer at the moment is that we do not really know, but how do you see this panning out?
Stephanie Needleman: I cannot see if Martha and Ollie are indicating that they will answer, but I can kick off, if that is helpful.
I think you have hit the nail on the head in raising the vagueness of when these serious disruption prevention orders can be imposed. They can be imposed not necessarily on conviction, as you said. The orders can cover an incredibly broad range of circumstances. Under clause 13(2)(a)(v), all you need to prove is that on two separate occasions somebody
“caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person”—
they do not even have to have done the act even themselves; it could be done by someone else—
“activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”.
You do not need to have carried out the
“activities related to a protest”;
you just have to have “caused or contributed” to them. Those are incredibly vague and broad terms; they could cover almost anything done to assist someone doing anything related to a protest. For example, it could be driving somebody to a protest, or to shops selling paint or glue, if the person the glue is sold to subsequently glues themselves to something.
Linked to that, there does not seem to be any requirement for the person to have had knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption when they “caused or contributed” to the carrying out of those activities. That could capture a vast range of behaviour.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Stephanie Needleman: It has to be proved, but it only has to be found, on the balance of probabilities—the civil standard of proof—that one of the conditions has been met. As I said, the conditions are so broad and vague that it should not be that problematic for the police to approve. So yes, involvement would have to be proved, but given the vagueness and the broadness of the conditions, it is likely that it can be easily proved.
Martha Spurrier: It is right that, for example, legal aid would not be available to someone defending themselves against having one of those orders imposed on them, and of course they can be renewed; there is a suggestion in the Bill that they could be renewed indefinitely. Once the order was in place, you would not get legal aid for a lawyer’s assistance in dislodging it.
It is worth stepping back a little and looking at the serious disruption prevention orders. These have been proposed by the Met police before, under the name of protest banning orders. The Home Office was against bringing them in, on the grounds that they were neither compatible with human rights nor an effective deterrent that would solve the problem that they purported to. That relates to a slippage in principle and language that we see across the Bill. It is important to pay attention to it, because this is law; cases will be decided on these words. Article 10 of the European convention on human rights is of course not an absolute right. It can be interfered with. There is a balance to be struck between the interests of a protester and the interests of the wider community, for example.
There are many grounds on which you can interfere with the right to protest; one of them is crime and disorder, and another is the rights of other people. You already have a human rights framework for limiting protest in certain constrained situations, but what we see in this Bill is not the language of crime, disorder, or abuse of others’ rights, but the language of disruption, inconvenience and nuisance. That is a significant, conceptual, legal change in the language. As Stephanie says, it takes you into the territory of criminalising what we have hitherto understood to be non-criminal conduct—of criminalising protest tactics that have a long history and previously would not have been considered criminal acts. People who may have participated in a couple of protests over five years may suddenly find themselves within the purview of the criminal law, although hitherto both criminal and human rights law would simply never have brought them into that space. When thinking about all these definitions and new offences, it is important to recognise that significant paradigm shift in the concept of how you go about policing protest.
Add to that the fact that these new concepts, including the idea of serious disruption, will be defined in secondary legislation. This significant interference with the fundamental right of protest may result in terms being defined by a politician who gives the definition very little parliamentary scrutiny. The measures would then be implemented by a police service that interprets them as it sees fit; we do not need to go into the times when they get it right and the times when they get it wrong. There are lots of layers to this before you even get to the detail of what happens if someone is subject to one of these orders, how they would shift it, and whether being subject to an order would mean that they could no longer protest.
Olly Sprague: My colleagues have covered everything that I wanted to say on the domestic aspect. It is worth coming back to the question: where do the international standards sit? The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s general comment from 2020 is most useful here. It allows the criminalisation of individuals taking part in a demonstration only in very specific circumstances, and it sets the threshold at incitement to violence. It sets the time limit as “as short as possible”; it talks in terms of a few hours. The international standard allows individuals to be prevented from accessing a process, but the bar is very high. The Bill sets an extraordinarily low bar. There are two levels by which these orders can be put in place. One is based on a person having two previous convictions on the civil standard burden of proof; the other is not based on conviction at all, which is even worse. The UK is so far out of step with where it should be under international standards; it is quite alarming.
Kerry McCarthy
I could understand it to a point if somebody’s presence at a future protest could lead to a dangerous situation, which is what you say the international comparison would be; but under the Bill, basically your right to protest could be removed for five years because you had not behaved impeccably on previous protests.
Olly Sprague: The Bill would also potentially hold you responsible for the conduct of other people at a protest that you were organising. One of the great unfortunate misconceptions of protest, especially around violence and disruptive protest, is that a protest somehow gets characterised as being inherently violent because actions of violence occurred within it. It is perfectly legitimate for law enforcement officers to deal with and prevent those violent actions and make arrests. However, you cannot characterise a whole protest as violent just because some aspect of it was violent.
With the way the serious disruption prevention orders are drafted, you could, in theory, be held responsible for an altogether peaceful protest where a violent action that was completely beyond your control took place. You cannot really be held responsible for something that you were not responsible for, if that makes sense.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: We have to be careful when making international comparisons. We do not really not compare and rank countries in some kind of league table. We look at each country individually and see where it marks up. It is interesting, though, that there are not that many examples around the world of measures akin to a protest banning order.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: We have not looked at 600 different laws for the purpose of this sitting. However, where we have looked, we found corresponding powers of a similar nature in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Belarus, Russia and Egypt, I think. In all the cases where they have a measure that is similar to a protest banning order, it has been on the organisation of protests, not the participation.
Kerry McCarthy
Q
Olly Sprague: Yes.
The Chair
Q
Stephanie Needleman: Yes, please. I want to add that when we talk about what these protest banning orders do, we should note that they do not necessarily just ban people from attending or organising protests. They have significantly wider, far-reaching applications into everyday aspects of people’s lives. As long as they are imposed for one of the purposes listed, the conditions that can be imposed when someone has been given one of these orders can be anything. Look at the conditions listed in the Bill: they can prevent people using the internet, associating with particular persons or participating in particular activities. It is not necessarily limited to protest. We are talking about activities that are far, far broader than just being prevented from attending protests.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Well, there is a potential difference in how it would be applied, but the serious disruption prevention orders have the capacity to be absolute bans in the same way as the protest banning orders.
Kit Malthouse
Under judicial supervision.
Martha Spurrier: Yes, under judicial supervision—but, as we have said, to a low standard of proof, based on no criminal conduct.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I don’t think so, because I do not think you could attach the same invasive conditions. I do not think you could have electronic monitoring, for example, if you had an injunction. That is my understanding.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I would not describe them as unlimited powers, but judges absolutely can impose injunctions. It goes to the broader point of whether these additional powers are needed, and I know that there have been people giving evidence that—
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: I do not understand the question. A civil injunction and an SDPO are both civil procedures with criminal sanctions attached.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: If you are going to face imprisonment, you will always have access to counsel—to legal aid. You may face those sanctions either directly from a breach of the criminal law or, if you are under a civil order that has criminal sanctions attached to it, from breaching that civil order. I cannot see an argument that any person is better off having an SDPO, as opposed to an injunction or any other offence. The fact of the matter is that an SDPO is a novel legal provision that, for all the reasons we have gone over, captures non-criminal conduct as well as criminal.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Well, the impact of an SDPO is much, much wider, because you could end up having a civil order attached to you that has invasive conditions, such as electronic monitoring, that could be renewed indefinitely, and if you breach them you could face almost a year in prison and an unlimited fine. I do not think they are comparable at all. We do not have anything like that currently, whereby, for non-criminal acts, you could face that kind of civil or criminal sanction.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: You can. What I am saying is that you would not currently have an injunction based on non-criminal conduct—the kind of non-criminal conduct we are talking about with this Bill—that then has attached to it invasive conditions such as electronic monitoring. There is no comparison with what this Bill is doing.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Olly Sprague: I do not want to give a non-answer here. Obviously, policing is a devolved matter, so our offices in Scotland have an equivalent of me. They are involved in a number of policing and scrutiny panels, and they are actively involved in the human rights framework around public order policing. They were involved in a scrutiny panel for the COP protests, for example. These are discussions that our colleagues have with the Scottish Government all the time. I am not fully abreast of the details of those, but I can tell you that we have them. Where we are critical, we make that known.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Liberty’s position on buffer zones is to support as limited a buffer zone as is possible to protect access to reproductive rights for the people who need to use the services of the clinic, while also protecting the right to protest. One of the amendments proposes a 150-metre buffer zone, and we think that that limit is acceptable, although it should be dependent on circumstances—if a narrower one is possible, that should be used. There are some aspects of the amendment that we agree with, and some that we think are too broad and could infringe the right to protest. I have to say that of all our concerns about this Bill, buffer zones around abortion clinics are not high on the list. There are much more egregious interferences with the right to protest in this Bill than those proposed in that amendment.
Kit Malthouse
Q
The Chair
Ms Needleman, would you like to comment?
Stephanie Needleman: Sorry; I could not hear very well. Were you asking me whether I wanted to comment?
The Chair
Order. I am going to come to you, Dr Huq, but I will decide who speaks and when. The Minister is currently speaking, and we are asking Ms Needleman, who is joining us by Zoom, whether she wishes to give a response.
Stephanie Needleman: I do not think I have that much to add—Justice, as an organisation, does not have a formal position on this—but I agree in terms of protecting the rights of women to access abortion services, obviously, and that should be done in a way that does not infringe the right to protest. The right to protest is not an unlimited right, so there is scope to do something, but it needs to be limited so that it is within the bounds of articles 10 and 11.
Olly Sprague: We agree totally with that. In general, we would take a very dim view of the idea of protest buffer zones, unless there are exceptionally good reasons. We would be looking at things like drawing on existing regulations around incitement to hatred and privacy rights—those sorts of things. A way of protecting rights on both sides would be seen as important. As Martha said, what mitigation could be allowed to make sure that one right does not overshadow the other, if that makes sense? But, obviously, this is an incredibly sensitive and difficult area.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: Liberty has a long history of working on the right to protest, both in terms of protestors and members of other communities. For example, we have a rich history of tackling the difficult issue of far right protest and incitement to hatred, where Liberty has very much supported the idea of communities needing to be protected when they are faced with far right, extremist protests. One of the other things that article 10 does, and that policing has had to grapple with since the advent of the Human Rights Act, is to protect counter-protests and protests. You very often have two protests going on at the same time where there is a clash. Again, Liberty has done lots of work to make sure that both protest groups, acting within the law, are protected with their article 10 rights upheld, in so far as that can be done, compatibly with each other.
I absolutely refute the idea that this is subject-specific. The abortion buffer zones case is a really good example. As with many other cases, it is a fact that we have public order laws in this country and we accept that things such as preventing violence and preventing incitement to violence, for example, are an important infringement on protest. Many of those considerations are in play when you think about abortion buffer zones. It is when you are dealing with rights that butt up against other rights that you have to make difficult calls, for sure, but we are saying that the Bill fundamentally gets the balance wrong.
I do not know whether we will have time to get on to the stop-and-search proposals or the offence of locking on. However, thinking about locking on as an example, just very briefly, those who are policing a protest are confronted with a dynamic situation. They are trying to work out at what point that crosses the line and might need to be shut down. If someone locks themselves to an animal testing centre—let us take it out of modern, current examples—the police have to work out at what point that person’s right to lock themselves to the testing centre becomes an infringement of other rights. It might be that the police think, “Actually, that guy can be there for two days and it doesn’t really matter. It’s a perfectly lawful and acceptable exercise of his protest rights. But, at a certain point, it is going to become a problem and we are going to consider removing him.”
If you create an offence of locking on—if you criminalise such specific protest tactics—the minute a man puts his padlock around that testing centre, he has committed a crime. There is no ability for the police to act in a dynamic way, to assess, and to do the balancing act of comparing competing rights. That is it: the tactic is criminalised and that man can be removed immediately, regardless of whether there is any impact on other people.
Of course, any of us who work in this area are really adept at trying to manage competing rights, and that is what the police have to do all the time. But the proposals in the Bill are blunt instruments that will criminalise hitherto lawful activity. They will have a chilling effect on the ability to protest, and they will not deter normal people who want to make their voices heard from trying to do so—instead, the Bill will just criminalise them. It will not deter the hard core, who have breaking the law as one of their tactics, because the provision just falls into what they already do.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Martha Spurrier: What should we do about protests?
Kit Malthouse
No, what should we do about the hard core that you are talking about?
Martha Spurrier: What about the hard core we already have? The police already have a whole range of measures to deal with hard-core protesters. We have criminal offences and we have specially trained police officers dealing with those people. Someone earlier talked about not living in perfect harmony. A measure of disruption and nuisance is going to be a factor of any protest about any hot political issue at any one time, whether you are talking about the civil rights movement in America, the movement for votes for women with the suffragettes in this country, or the climate justice movement now. You cannot take the sting out of it entirely, because then there would not be protest, and then we would not live in a democracy any more.
The Chair
Ms Needleman, do you wish to say anything?
Stephanie Needleman: On the measures that already exist, there is obviously the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has literally just been passed, which includes measures—the expanded circumstances —under which the police can impose conditions on protests. That just adds to the existing measures. I do not think these new measures have even come into force yet, so we do not know what effect they will have. There is no evidence base that further measures are needed.
Dr Huq
Q
The distance need not be 150 metres. We just took that from Ealing, because that is where the main road is, so then it is not in the eyeline. But it again comes back to this question of what is a vigil—those people would say they are doing a prayer vigil—what is a protest and what is harassment. In the eyes of the woman who is going in for a traumatic procedure, it feels like that, and it can be psychologically distressing. The French legislation allows for psychological distress to be considered.
Is there a right to privacy as well? I ask that because the London Borough of Ealing has acted under local authority powers, and only three local authorities in the whole country have done so since 2018, because the process is too onerous. Every time a case has gone to the High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, the privacy of the person having their procedure has trumped freedom of thought, expression, conscience, belief—all that stuff. I just wondered where the three of you stand on that. Again, I am disappointed, because with Sarah Everard, we said so many times, “This should never happen again; she was only walking down the street,” but, in my eyes, these people are just trying to access the pavement to have a perfectly legal procedure. As the Minister pointed out to me in the House the other day, this has been lumped in with the vax protests. I think it is about women—a marginalised community who should be protected, as you said at the start—being able to use the pavement. They should be able to do so unimpeded. What do you three of you think?
Martha Spurrier: Absolutely there is a right to privacy. One of the conditions in your amendment is to prohibit the filming and photographing of people using the services. We would say that no one has a right to capture someone else’s identifying information and record it. I do not have the amendment in front of me, but the points about harassment, being physically approached or being physically manhandled—anything of that nature—would be a breach of women’s rights and would fall down in favour of women and the buffer zone, not in favour of the protestors.
However, there are also conditions in the amendment on things such as seeking to influence and showing distressing imagery. Our view is that that falls on the other side of the line. People are entitled, as part of their right to protest, to seek to influence people, as long as they do not do so in a way that is harassing. Similarly, if you walk past certain embassies in London—the Chinese embassy, for example—there will often be very distressing images on show as part of protest against states’ policies. The same applies outside abortion clinics, where distressing images may be shown, but may be part of a legitimate right to protest. There is a balancing act.
Dr Huq
Q
Olly Sprague: The only thing I would add is that your location point is quite interesting. The mitigation measure or countermeasure that you might put in place to balance those two rights in a proportionate way might differ depending on the location. In the case you mentioned, it may well be the location of the pavement—I do not know where the clinic is—but for another clinic, there might be a more concealed side entrance or something else that could be used. You would have a different approach to maintaining the dignity and security of women having a perfectly lawful procedure, and managing a counter-protest. You could apply a different model depending on geography.
Dr Huq
Q
I want to ask about suspicionless stop and search—no one has said anything about it—which corrodes trust for BME communities, and about how body cameras could be a way out of completely suspicionless stop and search.
Martha Spurrier: Again, just to set the context, the proposal to extend suspicionless stop and search into this area is extraordinary. At the moment, suspicionless stop and search is available in the context of serious violence. It was available in the context of terrorism. It was struck down and Theresa May had to abandon it. That is in the context of crimes that will potentially kill many, many people.
We know that stop-and-search powers are implemented in a racist way. Under suspicion-led stop-and-search powers, a black person—a person of colour—is seven times more likely to be stopped than a white person. Suspicionless stop and search is twice as racist, at 14 times more likely. The idea that you would take a corrosive, racist and deeply controversial policing tool and apply it in the context of protest is extraordinary to us. We cannot see how it will do anything other than cause huge damage for particularly marginalised communities and have a chilling effect on seeking to exercise protest rights, particularly for them. There is a wealth of evidence on the detrimental impact of stop and search, and if there is a threat that people may be stopped and searched at a protest, there is every chance that they simply will not go and make their voice heard.
Olly Sprague: I agree 100% on suspicionless stop and search. It is enormously problematic and, on this one, Amnesty would say that the proposal fails the test of lawfulness—we talk about proportionate necessity, but there is also one of lawfulness. For example, the confiscation powers that go behind the stop-and-search powers around the locking-on offence capture an enormously broad range of items that an officer could argue might be capable of causing an offence. You have so many caveats that you will get into a situation where an ordinary person could have no idea why they were stopped, or why somebody might be taking an item off them that was completely lawful—everything from string to a bit of glue. It fails on that basic principle of lawfulness, which I think is incredibly problematic.
The Chair
Order. You will have to draw it to a close, Mr Sprague, because we are at the end.
Olly Sprague: Oh, I am sorry, Chair.
The Chair
It is not your fault; the Committee had determined certain timescales for the panels, and we have reached the end of the timescale for this panel. My apologies to those I was not able to call during this section.
My thanks to our witnesses—those in the room, and Ms Needleman, who has joined us by Zoom. We are grateful to all the witnesses for their contributions.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
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Backbench Business
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Menopause
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the menopause.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. It has been four years since I first spoke in a debate in this place on the menopause. Each year that followed, I duly put my name down to speak in the annual debate on or around World Menopause Day, but it was not enough. While it might have gone some way towards breaking down barriers and lifting the taboo on this great unspoken issue, speaking about the menopause was not doing anything for the millions of women across the country who were suffering the symptoms and in desperate need of help. This issue was something I had a burning desire to champion as I learned more and more about how support and services are failing women across the country, and my opportunity came when I was successful in the private Member’s ballot last year.
The twenty-ninth of October 2021 felt like a momentous day. As we gathered in Parliament Square, there were cheers of joy and tears of relief; the Minister herself was there, so she will know what I mean when I say that you could feel the utter delight in the atmosphere as women celebrated what they perceived as a victory. It is no exaggeration to say that, since that day, I have been bombarded with messages asking when the annual prescription charge for hormone replacement therapy in England will be introduced. We now know—I am sure the Minister will explain the technical reasons for this—that the answer is April 2023: 18 months after the commitment was made, 18 months after the cheers and the tears, and 18 months after that delightful taste of victory, which is so rapidly turning sour.
Naturally, I am frustrated. I have been angry, and I have been very vocal. All the explanations for how and why this has happened mean nothing. They do not help the women who are struggling through a cost of living crisis and can barely afford food and heating, let alone “luxuries” like their medication.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
As a woman of a certain age, I put on record my personal thanks to my hon. Friend for her tireless campaigning on this important issue and thank her on behalf of many of my family and friends who have repeatedly shared with me their praise and admiration for her work. Does she agree that the menopause is not a minor condition, but can severely impact every part of a woman’s life, and that the only way we can properly support menopausal women is by taking a holistic approach, looking at everything from employment to medicines and mental and physical health, and of course—as my hon. Friend is rightly doing—by keeping this important issue firmly on the agenda?
Carolyn Harris
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. As she knows, my passion for this subject means that I will champion every one of the issues she has brought to my attention.
Women such as Brioni say:
“We live in deprived communities where HRT is considered a luxury item. The women I support work part time for minimum wage and on temporary contracts. We simply can’t afford the resources, products, private consultations that other women from more privileged backgrounds can.”
I can testify to the truth of that. I discovered quite early on that my own menopause was menopause, not depression, and when I spoke publicly about it, my friends said to me, “You’re posh having a menopause, Carolyn”—posh, because all the symptoms they were experiencing were things they just put up with and shut up with. I put it under the label of menopause, and the fact that I was able to have HRT—because I went private—made me posh. That was the only time in my life I have ever been called posh.
Brioni is from Doncaster, but what she says is relevant in working-class communities right across the country. Women will always put the needs of their families first, and as long as they have to choose between feeding their kids and paying for their prescriptions, we know where they are going to put their money. To all the Brionis out there struggling, I send my personal apologies that their hopes were prematurely raised. It is not what I expected or wanted, and it is certainly not what I am prepared to accept.
Outside this place, the menopause is a priority, and credit for that must go to all those who are campaigning for change at a grassroots level. Thanks to the willingness of so many of them to work together for the greater good, we now have the menopause mandate in place. We are joining women’s voices into a chorus whose mantra is menopause, menopause, menopause, amplifying the individual voices of grassroots campaigners so that all those individuals and their cases, with all their passions, are brought together in one collective.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech, and we are all very grateful. One of my constituents, who wrote to me recently, wants to be one of the voices joining my hon. Friend in calling for change. She says:
“I’m tired of worrying about my next prescription. Will I be able to talk to the GP? Can I persuade the receptionist to talk to the GP on my behalf and get them to issue a repeat? Will the prescribed HRT be available? Will the pharmacy leave me guessing and calling daily for updates? Will they eventually admit they can’t get hold of it? I don’t want to feel helpless, anxious, potentially suicidal again. Not when this is easily and cheaply treatable.”
She is right, isn’t she? Those are precisely the problems that we need to sort out.
Carolyn Harris
My sympathy goes to my hon. Friend’s constituent, because the story that she tells is a story that I and other colleagues hear day in, day out from women who are troubled, anxious and scared that they are not getting the treatment or that, if they have the treatment, they cannot get their medication.
I am so proud to work with everyone involved in the menopause mandate, and I am heartened by the work that each and every one of them is doing—whether they are on a national television programme addressing millions of people and spreading the message, or helping a handful of women in their local community. Every one of them is making a difference. We have people such as Davina McCall, Lisa Snowdon, Patsy Kensit, Mariella Frostrup and Gabby Logan. These are strong women with loud voices, who are prepared to share their stories to help support women right across this country to get justice. The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and I contribute the political platform for the mandate. We have both made it our mission to mention the menopause in every single policy area right across Whitehall, because it deserves a place at every one of those tables.
Obviously, the Department of Health and Social Care has the biggest role to play when it comes to support and treatment for the physical and psychological impact of the symptoms. It is not just about the prescription charges or the availability of products, because I have grave concerns about the suicide rates among women of menopausal age. There is a 16% increase in risk for this cohort, and there have been some devastating stories in the press recently about women who failed to get a diagnosis and treatment, and who consequently ended their lives. Just a fortnight ago, Penny Lancaster sent me a clip from her local paper about a local solicitor who had taken her life after spending 18 months trying to convince her GP to diagnose her and prescribe her HRT.
However, other Departments have a huge role to play in this endeavour, including the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We have seen women in their 40s and 50s leaving the workplace in growing numbers due to the lack of support. The Department for Work and Pensions deals with the fallout from this, with women suddenly claiming benefits—possibly for the first time in their lives. The Home Office needs to consider the impact that the menopause is having on victims of domestic abuse. We know from research by AVA—Against Violence & Abuse—that domestic abuse escalates when a woman is experiencing menopausal symptoms, and that the symptoms are worse for those who are victims of violent relationships. Education is key if we are to ensure not only that medical professionals are sufficiently trained to diagnose and treat the menopause, but that the next generation are more prepared than any of us were.
Something that really concerns me is the disparity in HRT products currently available in the country. We only have to look at the local formularies to realise that levelling up appears to have overlooked menopausal women. Oxfordshire is recommending the use of newer products, while Manchester’s first-line treatment recommendation is cheap oral medication with synthetic progestogens, with patches reserved for more complex cases, such as those with underlying health conditions. That treatment postcode lottery must be taken seriously. I will continue to campaign for a national formulary, so that all women have fair access to all treatment, regardless of where they live.
Something that came to my attention today, which I am now looking into, is the disparity in the advertising of medications on social media. It is my understanding that on Instagram, medication for erectile dysfunction has free rein to be advertised, but lubricants for vaginal dryness and menopause medications are blocked because they relate to the female genitalia and are therefore assumed to be of a sexual nature. I will be writing to Instagram, and indeed other platforms, to clarify the situation. If that is the case, why are male sexual wellness products given the green light, yet medications for women with menopause are categorised as pornographic? If that is the case, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport can also expect to hear from me.
At Women and Equalities questions on Wednesday, I raised the issue of menopausal support for women on the prison estate. With 39% of women prisoners aged 40 or over, and 38% aged 30 to 39, I would have assumed that it was vital for a menopause strategy to be in place to provide for those women while they serve their sentences. That is primarily because we know that menopause and perimenopause symptoms affect our physical and mental health, as well as our behaviours.
Next Monday is Menopause Monday, and we are bringing Menopause Mandate to Parliament. All Members will have received invites, but will anyone who has not please let my office know? I encourage everyone to come along to the Jubilee Room and meet the fantastic group of women guests and speakers that we have lined up. I am delighted that, in the afternoon, the Fawcett Society will join us to present its recent report on menopause in the workplace. It is a fantastic piece of work, and many of the areas highlighted as concerns are exactly the same as those that colleagues have mentioned today and that are in the menopause mandate. We will also have clinicians, experts and academics explaining why getting the right treatment and support is so important for both physical and mental health. Finally, we will have women telling their own stories about the barriers they have faced in accessing support and treatment for their symptoms.
When Menopause Mandate was first launched, we invited women to not just sign our petition on the implementation of the single prescription charge, but share their own experiences if they felt able to, and it has been humbling to see how many have done that. I urge colleagues, especially those on the Front Benches, to read the submissions on the website, because they really paint a picture of what some women experience every single day.
Take Lucinda from Kent, who told us about her difficulties in being diagnosed and about the impact of her experience:
“My symptoms started at 41. Three and half years and nine GP appointments later, it was the dentist who first said the word perimenopause to me. By this time my confidence was non-existent, I was unemployable, I was being a terrible parent, a vile and unreasonable housemate, and didn’t think anything would ever improve. I thought about removing myself far too often”—
it was that bad. Lauren told us about the impact on her work:
“I was a senior leader in financial services…but in my early forties I left my job, thinking I had early-onset dementia. I went from being an uber-confident competent leader and the only female in a peer group of 18 men to losing all my self-confidence.”
We also heard from Catherine, who told us about the “painful hell” she descended into after being dismissed by her GP and prescribed anti-anxiety medication:
“I was in so much distress, but I was labelled as a ‘challenging patient’. I felt every subsequent doctor was influenced by this label and that prevented them from doing proper investigations.”
Thankfully, all three women eventually got put on to treatment paths that worked for them. In fact, Lauren says that when her doctor finally diagnosed her, she was the happiest menopausal woman in Bristol. Despite the heartbreaking circumstances those women originally faced, it is encouraging to read their stories and to know that they are now content and able to cope, but there are plenty more out there still living the nightmare that Lucinda, Lauren and Catherine previously experienced.
Women have been denied HRT because their doctors are not properly educated in diagnosing the menopause or in the benefits of the treatment. Women have been prescribed HRT, but struggle with the cost of their prescriptions as they wait for the annual prescription charge. Women who have been given a new lease of life since taking HRT, but who have vivid memories of hot flushes, sleepless nights, brain fog and extreme anxiety, are now terrified of the very real prospect of the symptoms returning due to shortages of the product that literally changed their lives. There are women who cannot take HRT, who need more support, and who feel broken, lost and helpless. We want all those women to be like Lucinda, Lauren and Catherine and to find what works for them. We want them to get the support they need and to be the happiest menopausal women in every town and city up and down this country. That is why we will keep fighting.
One good thing that came out of my private Member’s Bill was the establishment of the menopause taskforce, which I co-chair with the Minister. It brings together decision makers, policy advisers and experts in the field from across the four nations. We can share what works, and what does not, and make joint decisions that will help us all to provide the best possible care and resource for women in future.
I am sure the Minister, the civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Health Secretary himself have had quite enough of me going on and on about the menopause and the Government’s failure to prioritise this area of women’s health. I know I sound like a broken record—I very often get on my own nerves—but I will not stop, because everyone experiencing symptoms of the menopause deserves more. They deserve fair and equal access to affordable treatment and to be listened to, supported and prioritised. They deserve to be able to carry on their lives once menopause hits.
I wish I could put my arms around every one of those broken and desperate women who have reached out on our website, and even more so around the ones who have not had the chance or the courage to do so. I wish I could tell them that everything will be okay, that the prescription charges and the stock crisis will be sorted and that life will get better. I care passionately about this issue, and I know that there are MPs of all parties right across the House who care passionately too, whether or not they are in this room today.
Mr Speaker himself has pledged his support, and I am delighted to say that on Monday evening he will be signing the Wellbeing of Women menopause workplace pledge, which signals the House of Commons position as a progressive and supportive employer. Employers showing that they understand and support their staff is such a positive step, and I am thrilled that Mr Speaker has embraced that and is leading by example.
We are making progress, albeit slowly, and it would appear that globally the UK is seen as a leader in the field. Since last October, I have heard, as has the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North, from the press, politicians and experts from across the world. People expressed a desire to learn from what we are doing—from Australia, Canada, Japan, and across mainland Europe. But if we are going to be the world leaders, we need to get it right ourselves. What is so frustrating is that what is needed to completely change women’s lives is so simple. We need to improve support services and access to treatment and give women’s health the priority it deserves. I know the women’s health strategy is on its way, but it is 2022. Why has it taken until now for women’s health to be prioritised? Some 51% of the population are reliant on this, and they have been left out.
No more delays or false hopes. The time for warm words and gestures has well and truly passed. We cannot let menopausal women today suffer any longer, and we must ensure that future generations do not suffer the same experiences as those who came before them. We need a commitment that this will be a priority, and a promise that it will be taken seriously. We need action, and we need it now.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and, dare I say—I do not wish to be rude—an even greater pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has been such a champion on this issue.
As I said at an event earlier this week, having got to the grand old age of nearly 50, I am now a woman in a hurry. I do not feel as if I have an awful lot of time left to effect real change and I have got to the point with the menopause where I am determined that we see change, and we see change quickly. I think it is an age thing, but I have turned into a woman in a hurry. I want there to be change, support and help for women.
Over the last 12 years in this place, one thing I have learned—apologies, Mr Robertson—is that women do things differently in Parliament. We have become very pragmatic. We look at the solutions and the answers, not at the problems and the ideologies. There is no political ideology around the menopause; we just want it sorted, and as quickly as possible. That is why it has always been a huge privilege to work in tandem with the hon. Member for Swansea East. She and I come from different parts of the country and different political persuasions, but we have both recognised a problem that just needs solving.
Women across the country do things pragmatically. We heard from the hon. Member for Swansea East about different support groups, and it really struck me that women, usually of a certain age, come together to provide each other with support, advice, hints and tips about how to get through the menopause. We have all done it in this place, and turned to someone who may be a little bit older or wiser than us to ask them for advice. Last October, I gave up a weekend away. Fridays tend to be precious to Members of Parliament, and none of us likes being in here for private Members’ Bills on a Friday, but occasionally a private Member’s Bill comes along and one thinks, “That is worth it. That is where I will be this Friday. Instead of going away for a nice weekend, I will be in Parliament to make sure that we effect real change.”
On that day, I sat and I listened to a speaker from the other side of the House who cannot be here today because, absolutely fabulously, she is on maternity leave; that speaker was the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who spoke about her own menopause symptoms. It took real bravery and courage for her to stand up in a packed Chamber of the House of Commons and start listing off all the weird and wonderful symptoms she was suffering. She identified anxiety, sleeplessness and night sweats, and I sat there thinking, “I get that. Yes, I get that. Yes, I get that too.”
I then trotted downstairs and found Dr Louise Newson sitting in Portcullis House and said, “The speech by the hon. Member for Leicester West was absolutely fascinating and it made me think that I am suffering from some of those things.” Dr Louise Newson turned to me and said, “Will you please go and get yourself a prescription for HRT?” For me, it was a lightbulb moment that showed that in this place, and indeed outside, people can learn so much from their peers.
I take my hat off to my constituent Jo Ibbott, who runs the naughtily entitled What the Fog? group, which is specifically designed for menopausal women in the Romsey area. Jo is a menopause guru and a fount of advice. She wanted to come and talk to me about the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Leicester West and about the menopause, and instead she found herself sat in Costa Coffee in Romsey giving me advice about what I needed, the importance of body identical HRT and not allowing myself to be fobbed off with anything that was a lesser product. She managed to persuade the Chamber of Commerce in Romsey to bring together a group of employers, and she has held a number of seminars, in the evening, talking to employers in the town about what they can do to support menopausal women.
That brings me to the whole raison d’être of the Women and Equalities Committee over the course of the last year. It feels as if we have been talking about the menopause forever, and I am not going to stand here and trail the recommendations of our report, because it is not yet public but is coming very soon indeed. We have taken evidence from some brilliant and interesting men and women about what we can do to help menopausal women in the workplace. It is not good enough to have policies that sit in filing cabinets gathering dust. They have to be real, living documents that both employers and employees can talk about, so that people can highlight the challenges of their symptoms and be open about them and the flexibilities and changes that might help.
I have spent the last two years trying to find some positives from the pandemic. One of the positives we have learned is that, while flexible working can be a benefit to everyone, it can particularly work for women. I get terribly cross when male employers say that it has been great for women in the workforce. It has been great for everyone—men as well—and particularly for people suffering from hot flushes, anxiety or sleeplessness. We all know how debilitating insomnia can be. Flexible working could be something that helps menopausal women stay in the workplace.
Standard Chartered and the Fawcett Society have done research on this. They learned that 50% of women do not take on additional responsibilities at work if they are going through menopausal symptoms. I scratched my head and thought, “What does that mean?” It means that they do not take promotions, which means they have less income, which means that they make smaller pension contributions. The menopause does not just affect women physically; it affects them financially, because those promotions are gone.
We know that 25% of women consider leaving work altogether. That is not just an additional income forgone. It is their whole income and whole pension contribution forgone. Is it any wonder that we suffer from a gender pensions gap when over a million women have left the workplace because of the menopause and many more have been forced to take career breaks? That brings me on to some of the wider governmental issues.
I am not going to copy the speech of the hon. Member for Swansea East. Members will have noticed me tearing up pages of my speech, because she covered the issues I wanted to speak about. There is a whole Government challenge around the menopause. I desperately want to see the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy working hand in hand. It is crucial that if somebody is lost from the workplace, there are routes back into it. It is important that work coaches are given support and training so that they understand what the challenges may be for women in their late 40s and early 50s returning to work.
The menopause can give people anxiety, so it is about restoring confidence and giving people the belief in themselves to be able to take on new challenges. Perhaps we need to be looking at retraining programmes that are gendered. I get terribly cross from time to time with the employment Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), who tells me that she must look at employment policies in the round. We have lost a million women going through the menopause from the jobs market. How can we get them back? What additional training and programmes might be put in place in order to achieve that?
We heard yesterday from the Minister for Children and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), about the work being done in schools and the statutory nature of what I refer to as PSHE and what he refers to as RSHE. It is crucial that we focus not just on building resilient young people and teaching them how not to get pregnant, how to respect each other and about their own bodies; we do have to have to those conversations, but there will come a time in every girl’s life when they will not be able to get pregnant any more. How will it impact them?
I got to the age of 49 without knowing the slightest thing about the menopause. I have managed to turn myself over the course of the last year into something of an expert. We do not educate children and young women enough about the changes that the menopause will bring to their body and how important it is that they have knowledge and the ability and confidence to talk about it, whether it be with their employer, family or friends.
We heard moving evidence during the course of the Select Committee’s inquiry. It would be unfair to stand here and reel off a great long list; Members would get bored by me, but I do want to highlight some particular challenges. No two women will experience the menopause in the same way. Yes, of course, there will be many similarities, but it is different for each woman. I would particularly like to highlight these challenges for the sake of younger women, for those who might be going through a surgical menopause and for those who go through very early menopause. It can suddenly be very debilitating and feel completely out of kilter with their age and the experience of their peer group. We have to realise that those women need particular assistance.
There are other groups. We heard evidence from a fantastic woman called Karen Arthur, who set up the organisation Menopause Whilst Black. I was being very bad that day and did not take part in a Division that was happening in the House. Instead, I snuck out into the corridor to talk to her about her personal experience. My goodness—she was the most incredibly inspirational and motivating woman. It is true not only that different ethnicities experience the menopause differently but that there are different cultural expectations. It may well be harder for those people to talk to their friends and family about it, and we have to keep breaking down those stigmas.
We heard from representatives from the police service and the ambulance service. I personally picked up the phone to one of the Justice Ministers and begged them to allow the Davina documentary into a prison to talk about the work that was being done not only with inmates but with staff going through the menopause. Every organisation, large or small, has menopausal women in its workforce.
I have been bowled over by the constituents who email or phone me to thank me for doing this, including Simon Parkes, who runs a tiny company in Romsey. Sometimes people say to me, “Will you please stop banging on about the menopause?”, but he rang me up to say, “Will you please keep talking about the menopause?” He has very few female employees, but he said that suddenly the penny dropped about what was going on with his wife and what the challenge was with staff members. We have to be able to talk about this and give women in the workforce the support they need.
There were some shocking, sad, awful stories too. I was stunned by how many people wanted their evidence kept confidential. I was struck by an email from the female human resources director of a major blue chip company, who emailed me with her personal story of the menopause and finished by saying, “Please keep this confidential, because I would never want my employers to know what I am going through.” That is the HR director of an organisation who did not want her employers to know what she was going through, so we have a long way to go in beating down the taboo.
I am conscious that I have probably spoken for far too long, but I want to make a final plea to the Minister. These are my asks for the Government. The hon. Member for Swansea East rightly focused on prescriptions and the shortages of some HRT products. The DHSC is working hard to resolve that matter, and I very much welcome the establishment of the taskforce and the appointment of Maddy McTernan. I think we are beginning to see progress on that front, and that gives me hope. It would be wrong of me not to reiterate that we were promised last October that there would be the £18.70 charge for 12 months-worth of prescriptions. I know there are IT challenges and that it is difficult, but please can that be expedited?
I implore BEIS and the DWP to work hand in hand. Why do we still not have an employment Bill that promises flexible working from day one? Why do we not have programmes targeted at retraining women over 45? Why are work coaches not easily able to identify the additional challenges of menopausal women who want to get back into the workforce? I have pointed out the challenges with personal, social, health and economic education and the importance of the Department for Education in ensuring girls are educated about the challenges they will face later in life.
It is really important that we have a women’s health ambassador to champion these issues. I raised that with the Minister just yesterday, and it would be remiss of me not to remind her of it. We need to see that appointment. I want to see somebody in place who is experienced, dedicated and committed, and will be a real champion for women up and down the country on a wide range of issues, but please can menopause be front and centre in that?
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, I believe for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate and on all the campaigning she has done to raise awareness about the barriers women face when accessing HRT prescriptions. There is certainly a lot more work to be done, including on the interaction between black and Asian women and healthcare professionals.
For the last 10 years, I have experienced a multitude of symptoms, including hot flushes, memory loss, fatigue and poor sleep, but I just thought it was this job—boo hoo—so I used the lockdown to press the reset button. I thought, “If I do my bloods, maybe I can find out what is wrong with me.” My doctor did not advise me to do my bloods, but I thought I would use my own agency, so I turned up and said to my doctor, “This is what I want to do,” and my doctor said, “Okay, go and do your bloods. Let’s see what’s wrong with you.” Bear in mind that for the last 10 years, I have been experiencing different symptoms intermittently, but my doctor did not join the dots for me, and did not explain or say, “Possibly, Kate, this is what you’re going through.” What came back from the bloods was that I was pre-diabetic—another menopause symptom, but my doctor looked at my results and said, “You are pre-diabetic. You need to change the way you are eating and possibly you will be okay and will not become diabetic.”
This was not what I was expecting to find out. I was trying to find out why I was having all the other symptoms, but the bloods showed up different symptoms. I used lockdown and the time I had to reset the button and turn my food habits around and, fortunately, I was able to take my body back to where it should be. I am no longer pre-diabetic and I did not become diabetic— I was really happy about that—but my GP did not explain to me that the persistent symptoms were related. If I am honest, it was not until I watched Davina McCall’s recent TV show on menopause that I connected the dots.
I grew up, as many of us in this room did, watching Davina on “Big Brother” and all her other shows. She is relatable, she is fun—she is like a friend I have never met. She is a trusted voice. Her view and her vulnerability made me look at the symptoms she was presenting and made me think, “Okay, that could be me.” I was not alone. So many women I have spoken to watched the same show and said that Davina turned on the light for them. I thank her for that.
I then had to go on to speak to my GP. Now I had the information I needed, which I had not been given before, and I had the agency to tell my GP, “This is what I want.” We had a long discussion and my GP offered me antidepressants. Many women may have taken that option, but I know, from watching Davina’s show, that it is an option that a lot of women were being offered. I could have taken the antidepressants, not knowing that it was almost like a barrier put up to stop women getting HRT. I listened, we had a little discussion and my GP agreed to give me HRT. I should not have had to have that conversation and I feel really sorry for those women who do not get past that barrier, accept the antidepressants and just carry on existing, taking the antidepressants but not dealing with the symptoms.
Many black women experience menopause disproportion- ately. Many black women I speak to say that there is no point going to the GP. It is not something we discuss in our community; it is not something that is passed down to us. We are encouraged to be strong, as black women. We are encouraged to carry the family and to sort out our problems privately. That is not a slight on the community—it is about how we hold ourselves together—but as individuals in the community, at times we need the support when we do go to the doctor. That could be to have antidepressants, but in this instance it is to talk about HRT. That is something we do not do.
I am standing up in Parliament to say, “Let’s talk about it. Let’s have that discussion. Let’s help each other and let’s think about the next generation, who will be able to say, there is the blueprint and these are the things that we should be looking for, and when they come up we will go to our doctor and have agency and have strength.” We should do that, rather than being quiet and thinking, “My mother never spoke to me about this and my aunties never spoke to me about it, so it must be something to do with my job or my partner or my friends or whatever”. It is something that is part of every woman, whether they are black, white or Asian.
I also want to say that black women’s voices are less likely to be heard or shared in the media. Black women are less likely to appear in media campaigns. In the menopause landscape, we do not exist. We need to be heard. Our experiences are really important. The next generation need a reference point.
As I said, in our community we are taught to be strong. Slogans like “Black Girl Magic” are associated with strength and glamour, against all odds, which is fantastic, but trying to live up to that all the time puts a lot of pressure on us. We need a wider discussion as a community, but we also need the media and health professionals to get involved, to reach out to us and to explain, “These symptoms appear at a certain age and if they do, this is what you should do.” The media and companies should be looking for black women to front their campaigns to ensure that women feel that there are relatable faces and voices. Yes, here we all know Davina McCall, but not everyone knows Davina—I should not say that; Davina might not be happy. On a serious note, when someone is young and looking up to people, they want to see faces that look like theirs—that is really important. If the Black Lives Matter movement showed us anything, it showed the globe that all lives matter. We should work together.
Do not get me wrong, there are some fantastic black and Asian British women who are raising menopause awareness. There is Karen Arthur, who runs the Menopause Whilst Black Instagram account; she also has a podcast where she shares black women’s stories of menopause. There is Dr Arif, the family GP who specialises in women’s health—she is a bit of a celebrity now. Dr Arif says:
“NHS practitioners are not trained in menopause. They often don’t realise you can have menopausal symptoms during perimenopause, or have symptoms and still have your period. And that there’s no blood test that can reliably tell you if you’re perimenopausal as hormones fluctuate. That’s a barrier to all women.”
Today I want to take this opportunity to look forward, based on my own experience, to how we can be better and more productive in the relationships between black women, GPs and advertising. All women need to be included in the menopause debate. Let’s be honest: if any other issue had been found to cause one million people to leave the labour market, cause problems with sleeplessness, anxiety, brain fog and countless other overlooked symptoms, and impose an unacceptable and unappreciated burden, then the tabloids would be in overdrive. It is a basic issue of equality in the workplace, and should be treated as such. There should be endless debates and significant Government legislation needs to be passed.
A study earlier this year by Koru Kids found that a quarter of women going through the menopause feel unhappy at the lack of support on offer. Many are likely to be the next workers to drop out of the labour market. While employees can claim some protection through existing legislation, such as the Equality Act 2010, clearly it is falling short. There remains no legislation which expressly puts obligations on employers to ensure they provide necessary adjustments for women going through the menopause. Therefore, I would like to make a few recommendations to the Government.
First, legislation should be passed ensuring women going through the menopause are protected in the workplace in the same way that other protected characteristics are, such as those that exist around pregnancy and maternity discrimination. Workplace menopause policies should be made mandatory. Many employers already recognise the importance of bringing in a menopause policy, but need a little nudge. The Mayor of London announced City Hall’s policy on International Women’s Day this year, which Unison helped develop. That policy includes tackling discrimination and stigma around menopausal symptoms, as well as introducing temperature-controlled rooms and flexible adjustments to the workday to accommodate symptoms. Leading examples should be admired, yet progress remains too slow across the board and the best way to enforce minimum standards is by statutory change.
Secondly, the Government should take a proactive approach to promoting best practice on workplace policies. The Government should work alongside the TUC, which has produced a series of recommendations for employers. Those include: awareness training for all staff; risk assessments; and a confidential point of contact for women in their workplace for problems arising due to the menopause.
Lastly, flexible working should be made the default for all workers, unless there are reasons why it is not possible. Sadly, the employment Bill was not included in the Queen’s Speech, which is a great shame for all workers —especially those who are going through menopause. Without that right, many workplaces will continue to fall short on making reasonable adjustments, and women will continue to feel their health suffer as they are forced to work hours that do not meet their health needs. These changes are a necessity if we aspire to have a truly equal workplace.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to follow the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor). I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing the debate, on her brilliant private Member’s Bill that went through last year, and on setting up the incredibly important menopause taskforce with the Minister. I am looking forward to Menopause Monday next week, and I shall look for the invitation in my inbox. I have just checked my diary and shall try to clear it so that I can come along. The work that the hon. Lady is doing is incredibly important, because she is shining a light on something that has been swept under the carpet for a long time.
I feel lucky that I had a mother who was open and who answered the incredible number of curious questions that I had as a teenager. She is 30 years older than me, so I was 18 when she was 48, and I am nearly 48. I remember her going off to the doctor and being diagnosed with depression. This is such a perennial story, and I cannot believe that, 30 years later, we still have women being diagnosed with depression instead of perimenopause, which is what she was going through. She did not get on with the antidepressants, so she stopped taking them and went back to her old doctor—she had moved area—who prescribed her HRT. She did not get on with that either, but that was probably due to my mother’s sensitivity to changes. Throughout my life, I have not been able to cope with hormones from certain forms of birth control and such things. I have never really wanted to use them or got on with them, and I think a lot of people are sensitive to them. Because my mother did not have a very good experience with HRT, I thought, “When I get to that time of my life, I’m just going to be tough and see it through,” like we all have to do.
I loved the hon. Lady’s comment about HRT being a posh woman’s thing. It probably is, to some extent. She is absolutely right to talk about the postcode lotteries. However, the majority of women—they are busy and getting on with their lives, because they are working or have children at various different ages—put themselves last. We do not put ourselves first, and it often takes something quite significant for us to seek the medical help that we need, as we all lead busy lives.
I first experienced menopausal symptoms last summer —it was a bit before my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and before the debate last October. During the summer I thought, “Have I got long covid again?” I had had covid in March 2020 and had nine months of long covid, which involved complete and utter exhaustion. I got over it and got my lung function back again, and I thought, “Why am I so tired? Why am I exhausted all the time?” Like the hon. Member for Edmonton, I thought, “Is it just this job?”
I was curious to hear my right hon. Friend talk about the HR director saying, “I don’t want anybody to know I’ve got this.” I can promise Members that, as an MP, I rely on the fact that people realise that I work hard for my constituents seven days a week. Why would I want to tell them that I am absolutely exhausted, that I am struggling to sleep at night, that I am having hot flushes, and that it takes me about five attempts to get up in the morning? That is what it was like with long covid.
The point I want to make to the Minister is that about 2 million people in the country are currently suffering from long covid. It is really important for women who are over the age of 40 and who are suffering from long covid to double-check and make sure that they are not also having to deal with perimenopause or the menopause. There could be an easy solution for them, such as taking HRT. The symptoms include brain fog and not being able to find the right words, which is a serious problem in a job like this. When your brain stops working and you are in the middle of a speech, you think, “I know what the answer is. Why can’t I find it? What’s going on?” It is due to perimenopause, and there is a good solution for it.
I decided in August last year—thankfully, we were on recess—that I could not wait any longer. I needed to go and see a doctor, and I did the research. I am lucky: I am able to spend time googling. I am looking up things all the time, and I found Dr Alex Standring at the Surrey Park Clinic, who had put together a whole load of informative videos about symptoms and what women were going through. I got in touch with her and managed to get myself a prescription, and the change was immediate. Almost within two weeks, I felt like a different person.
I came into this place thinking, “I don’t want to be boxed in talking about women’s issues. I’ve got to talk about the economy, defence, justice and big meaty things”, but we have to speak our truth and talk about what we are going through. As women, we have powerful voices in this place. We ask women to stand for Parliament, and it is quite often at this time in their life that they are ready to make that sort of contribution, yet they might come in and find themselves suffering with perimenopausal symptoms, and then probably from impostor syndrome—“What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. I can’t do this job.” We absolutely can do this job, and we need more women to come into this place. We have hit the prime of our life. Quite often, women have had their children—or they may not have had children, but they are at a point in their career when they should absolutely be humming. It is such a shame to see so many women step back from what they can potentially be in the workplace and in everything they are doing because these awful symptoms of perimenopause and menopause come along. Many role models have been mentioned, and I just wanted to say that Sophie, Countess of Wessex, is also doing a brilliant job in raising awareness.
My colleagues have already mentioned asks of Government in their speeches, so I will not repeat them, but it is important that we keep talking about this issue and raising awareness. I am pleased that steps seem to be being taken on a more regular basis, due to the one- woman campaign machine that is the hon. Member for Swansea East, as well as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, keeping these things at the forefront of everyone’s mind. I thank all Members present for their indulgence, because it is important that we are able to tell our stories and talk about what we have experienced. I also thank the Minister for her tireless work behind the scenes; it is not always easy.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I offer my warmest commendations and congratulations to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has done such a magnificent job of raising awareness and understanding of the menopause. She has ensured that many women feel heard and understood, but crucially has also galvanised change—information, services, policy, and a strategy—to normalise and support something that half of the population are going to go through at some point. Many of us share her righteous frustration about the delay in implementing many of these changes, but the conversations and actions of the hon. Member and others now constitute a real movement for change and progress in this area, so that fewer women will suffer in silence or experience anxiety and ill health.
I also commend the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), whose Committee is on the frontline of so many of the issues facing women, and the all-party parliamentary group on menopause that is capturing and organising all of the actions and ideas that are now flowing.
I particularly want to speak up for women in Northern Ireland, who feel that this—like other issues that affect women, women’s health and women’s lives—is an area in which we are lagging behind other parts of these islands. Over the past couple of years, primarily through the entry point of HRT supply issues, which Members have referenced, I have been engaging with constituents and others about the need for a co-ordinated approach to menopause support, one that is funded and joined up between the many Departments and areas of responsibility that have been identified today, and hopefully will be ultimately underpinned by legislation. That approach, of course, starts with awareness and understanding, which thankfully is improving as a result of many of the people in this room and others pushing the issue.
Last night, I posted on social media that I would be taking part in today’s debate. I was amazed by the number of replies from people who are experiencing challenges with the menopause and those who are just delighted by this fresh climate of support and action. Many had very developed and constructive ideas for how to improve the situation.
I am grateful to all the people who got in touch, particularly Siobhan Kearney of At One Wellbeing and Anne McGale at Menopause Wellbeing NI for sharing with me the benefit of their research and experience as practitioners. I also pay tribute to Marie-Louise Connolly, BBC Northern Ireland’s redoubtable health correspondent, who has been brilliant at forcing this issue on to the agenda in Northern Ireland and keeping it there; Members will appreciate that the policy agenda in Northern Ireland is fairly cluttered at the best of times.
Although many will experience few or manageable menopause symptoms, for some women the menopause is intense and bleak, and women often enter into it without having the right information or the right access to decisions. One woman—a robust and well-regarded professional at home—told me:
“I’m going through it. It’s something I find difficult to discuss. I’m surprised at myself but just can’t. Rotten symptoms, making life miserable. Open to HRT but due to personal and family medical history, it might be difficult. GP says I need to see specialist at the clinic in Belfast but the waiting list is 4 years...It feels like a death sentence, bringing back trauma about family and my own medical conditions, and my physical symptoms make me feel like a stranger in my own body which is attacking me. It feels like a death sentence, there is no escape.”
I found that really difficult to hear from somebody I regard as strong and confident and able to articulate herself well. I feel so much for others who may be unnecessarily going through this situation in the dark, without knowing that there is a definable cause and without knowing that there are things that can be done to help them. I also heard from other women who had been in a very difficult place but who now, having received the right support, are on the other side and desperate to ensure that other women need not fight the same battle that they have.
The dearth of appropriate services is a core problem. Although many GPs have been brilliant, and able to guide and advise their patients, we know that primary care is overwhelmed and under-resourced. Many people cannot get access to their GP, or there is inadequate continuing professional development and education for GPs on this issue, and insufficient time for them to explore and pinpoint some of the issues, so that they can holistically address them. Then, of course, there are few or no specialists to refer to. Enhanced specialist clinics now available in the south of Ireland. There are two in Northern Ireland, but the majority of NHS trusts do not have one, and I have already referred to the long waiting lists.
We know that many doctors are either not sold on HRT or are cautious about complicating factors, and people often tell me about the pushback that they have experienced. I am not sure whether other Members are watching “Borgen”; if they are not, I warmly recommend it, as it is an excellent series. I was struck, while watching the new episodes on Sunday night, that the brilliant character of Birgitte Nyborg, a former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister, had a scene in which she explained her menopause symptoms and the impact they were having on her work. I was struck by her being, I suppose, brushed off. I mean, medical reasons were discussed, but I thought it was telling that a woman with all of that character’s powers of communication also felt unable to access the services that we need.
Numerous constituents report feeling brushed off or—of course—being offered inappropriate antidepressants. Members have addressed the acute problems caused by shortages of HRT drugs and I ask the Minister when the HRT tsar is expected to be able to report. That issue is causing real concern for people who are worried that, having finally found this solution to their problem, it will suddenly drop. I am hearing of people sharing medication, which obviously brings its own complications.
Menopause is also very much a workforce issue. Currently, about 9 million women in the UK are experiencing or will experience the menopause, and around 3.5 million of them are in the workplace. Policy is not in place to support and protect those women, who might be experiencing some of the symptoms that have been referred to here today, including tiredness, anxiety, brain fog, mood swings, headaches, joint pain and the spill-over effects from things such as insomnia and relationship challenges that the menopause can exacerbate.
There is no policy in place to protect and retain the huge skills and experience bank that these women offer. Other Members have referred to the point in people’s lives and careers when they are particularly valuable for the workplace, so the menopause is also an economic issue. If more women have to leave the workforce, that will exacerbate existing issues such as the gender pay gap. We are all increasingly aware of the benefits for public policy, decision making and economic activity when women are at the table. We know that childbearing and caring responsibilities mean that many women are deleted from that area of their lives and face marginalisation and exclusion later in their careers or soon after.
A growing number of employers are taking the issue very seriously and putting policy and guidance in place, but that is far from universal, perhaps due to lack of awareness, embarrassment, or not understanding the relevance. Workplaces need guidance and, in time, legislation to ensure that that guidance is in place. They also need support. Some practitioners have developed a really good skillset and go into workplaces big and small.
Menopause is an economic issue and an equality and public health issue. We need to normalise all aspects of women’s health so that they can be addressed like every other health and wellbeing issue, so that people do not feel alone, inadequate, confused or unprepared, and so that they feel empowered to make choices, whether about their lifestyle or medical support, to help them walk this path.
In her excellent speech, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North was right to say that this is not an ideological issue, but there is no doubt in my mind that if men experienced a similar, universal change, it would be a massive part of political discourse and culture. I can imagine all the movies and books that would be made and written about this time in life. Given that issues such as menstruation, women’s reproductive health, low-paid care work, the pension changes experienced by WASPI women, and childcare primarily affect women, they do not reach the top of the policy agenda. We need to address that.
We also have an opportunity to establish menopause as a rite of passage—hopefully, a rite of passage to a stage in a woman’s life when they are valued for the benefits, talents and wisdom that come with having lived decades of life. I commend the motion, the work and all the policy suggestions that have been made here today.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I want to start by congratulating my dear friend, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), on securing this debate and on all her brilliant work highlighting the importance of speaking about the menopause. I am very proud to be a vice chair of the APPG on menopause, which she chairs. We have done some brilliant work together and will continue to do so. We have finally lifted the lid off the menopause jar—the genie is out of the bottle. I could refer to other sayings, but it is important that finally we are ensuring this is no longer a taboo subject where we whisper, “the change”.
The issue crosses over every demographic—from royalty, including the Countess of Wessex, all the way through. I was fascinated to hear the hon. Member for Swansea East refer to it as a “posh” issue. That is so depressing, but she is absolutely right that some women feel that HRT products and help and support are available only if they are posh and can demand them. She is right that in the cost of living challenge we are now living through, too many women will be putting food on the table for their children rather than spending £18 on the vital HRT products that they need.
I welcomed the Minister and the Secretary of State for Health’s support for the private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Swansea East. They agreed to her proposals, but it is disappointing that we have to wait until April 2023, given that there are women in England who are desperately waiting for an annual prescription.
It was interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). The issue applies to all four nations, and it is a shame that England is still the poor relation of the four. She reminded me of a close friend of mine who lives in Northern Ireland and is a constituent of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). She was telling me a few weeks ago of all the symptoms she had. She had been to her GP in Northern Ireland and he was suggesting antidepressants. I begged her and said, “Please, you are 51. You are going through the menopause. Go back to that GP and demand.” She did, and now she is on HRT. She is an educated woman who has been to university and has a high-profile job, but she still has to beg her GP to take her seriously. That is unacceptable. There is more to do to ensure that GPs across the four nations have the right advice and training.
I want to highlight Pausitivity, an organisation I know very well and whose posters I have previously mentioned in the Chamber. I wrote to the Minister recently and I hope she will respond positively. We need to support Pausitivity’s Know Your Menopause campaign. Its leaflets are a signpost for women and highlight symptoms, so that they can go back to their GPs and demand support and help.
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend makes an important point about Pausitivity. Claire Hattrick from Hampshire has published a whole book about self-help. There is a brilliant case for the Department of Health and Social Care to consider making small funding streams available to ensure that the work of all those smaller, regional self-help and campaign groups can be disseminated much more widely. All of us have friends, like my hon. Friend’s friend in Northern Ireland, who have not had the confidence, knowledge or expertise to go to their GP and say, “This is what I have got. Please can I have?” We need to spread the information. Perhaps DHSC should look at how it can fund that.
Nickie Aiken
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I wrote in my letter to the Minister that we need to support organisations such as Pausitivity so that women can use them as a signpost. Its posters are brilliant. They are in Urdu, Punjabi, French, Dutch, German, English and also, as the hon. Member for Swansea East will be delighted to know, Cymraeg. Let us support women from all walks of life, and let us also support families.
This morning I went to talk to a group of year 10 pupils at Pimlico Academy. They asked me what I was doing this afternoon and I said that I would be speaking in the menopause debate. I said, “It is really important that you guys, aged 15—boys and girls—are aware.” I said to the girls, “PMT and periods are tough enough, but you wait: the menopause is something to really know about. You have to know for your mums who are going through it, or are about to go through it, and for your grandmothers and your aunties. It is really important that you know about the menopause so that you can support them and so that you know that when they are screaming at you, there is probably a reason for it. It is not because of you, but because they are probably having a really tough time because they haven’t slept for five days, they feel like they are having an out-of-body experience, they do not feel themselves and then they take that out on their families.” It is really important that husbands, partners, brothers and fathers also understand what women are going through.
We have come a long way. The Government have been listening. I know that the Minister takes a lead on this issue and I absolutely welcome the Government’s real emphasis on it, but we still have issues with a shortage of HRT products. When I went to get my prescription a few months ago, I was told that I could not have my Oestrogel because it is not in supply at the moment. I was really worried. I have one bottle left and am squeezing every single ounce of it. I hope to God that it will be back in when I go back to the GP next week. I urge the Minister to do all she can to make sure that the products get back on the shelves. I fear for my Chief Whip and my Whip if I do not get my HRT product. I am just putting that out there to the Minister—you have been warned.
More seriously, there is so much more that we have to do on education and for businesses. I am extremely proud that this week the Cabinet Office—the Minister was also at this event—became the largest organisation to sign the menopause workplace pledge. More than 1,000 organisations have now done so. That is a start, and it is amazing. The Government are actually taking the lead, but as many have said here today, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, there is much more that each Government Department can do—like not working in silos. We know that when Governments work in silos, nothing gets done. There has to be a holistic approach. Let us get this done.
It is very important to ensure that women are aware of the symptoms of menopause, but also that they can be symptoms of other conditions. I have recently been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, and the symptoms are very much related to the menopause. Although I may have been going through the menopause, I wonder whether the vast majority of my issues over the past two or three years were because of my thyroid problem. I am now on thyroxine, and it is changing my life, but women need to understand that their symptoms might not just be from the menopause. GPs have to understand that, too. Again, I would like there to be more information and for GPs to have a better understanding of those issues.
To conclude, being in politics can be very difficult. We have so many arguments, and there is so much that can divide us, but women’s health—particularly issues such as the menopause—unites us. We can see Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English MPs here today in support of getting more help for the menopause. That is what makes it great to be a Member of Parliament—we can come together and join forces to ensure that we support women and men in all walks of life. The menopause revolution has only just begun. It is only the start, but I am sure that, working together, we will ensure that women have the products and support they need to carry on with their lives. The menopause is a change. It is the midpoint in our lives. It should never be the end of women’s lives. I feel that I am just beginning my life.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
As always, I am thankful to be able to speak on behalf of my constituents. I want to start by congratulating the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I have been fortunate in my life to have always been surrounded by powerful women. It was my mother to start with, then my wife, and in the political sphere the hon. Member for Swansea East, who is a really powerful lady. Whenever she asks me to be involved with debates, she is pushing on an open door. She knows I will be more than happy to support her—I always have been.
When the hon. Member for Swansea East started this campaign some time ago, she and I talked about it, and she was very keen to have a man on board. I am very happy to give my support, for a number of reasons. I do it because the request is right: it is about raising awareness. As a man, I do not find these subject matters particularly easy to discuss—it is probably my old-fashioned, traditional nature—but I know that these things happen. It happened to my wife, Sandra. We have been married 35 years. She is an extremely powerful lady. She is very understanding and has stuck with me for 35 years, so I think that tells you all about that lady.
I remember that when we married she had period problems. The doctor she went to see was very good and he said, “Sandra, when you have children, everything will change.” Well, it did not. We had three children fairly quickly in a period of five to six years. We both wanted children. I was very fortunate to get three boys. I think Sandra would have liked a wee girl, but it did not work out that way. Throughout her life, she always had problems with her periods—they were always very heavy—but then she came to the menopause.
I am pleased to speak in this debate and give a man’s point of view. I am giving a husband’s point of view, too, because I understood from the very beginning what the problems were for my wife. It was all the things that the hon. Members for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) and for Guildford (Angela Richardson) referred to: the night sweats, the brain fog, the pain, the agony. She just could not get settled and was always restless. I understood why that change was coming in Sandra’s life. I was not there all the time—perhaps that was better for her, actually—but whenever I was, on those three and a half days a week, I understood that she was having terrible difficulties. We are lucky that the boys have left the house, but the two cats and the dog absolutely dote on her. They do not understand what is happening, but they trot alongside her.
I tell that story because I want the ladies here—the right hon. and hon. Members—to know that I do understand, although I have not experienced it personally. The hon. Member for Belfast South asked what would happen if men could live through this. I tell you what—we would have a different attitude. I have lived through it with my wife, and I think I understand it—I hopefully understand it well.
I have been very pleased to see more businesses and people seeing the benefit of bringing menopause into the light. The civil service has launched a menopause strategy, citing that females account for 50% of the 24,000 Northern Ireland civil service workforce, and that more than 55% of the female employees are over the age of 45, so a significant number of employees are likely to be affected by the menopause. The aim of the policy is to raise awareness and understanding of menopause and outline the support available.
The hon. Member for Belfast South and I, as Northern Ireland MPs, understand this debate from a Northern Ireland perspective, but also because we are active constituency MPs. We understand the importance of having a good workforce who are able to do the work and understand when things are not right.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) referred to GPs. I have seen a change—I just whispered this to the hon. Member for Belfast South—in GPs and doctors in my constituency. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster inadvertently, or maybe purposely, referred to her friend from Killinchy. Men have retired and ladies have taken their place, so I hope that means that there will be better understanding. Giving depression and anxiety mediation is the wrong thing to do; HRT should be given. I hope to see those changes. I see them in my doctor’s surgery and in the surgeries and clinics in Newtownards. That seems to be replicated across the whole of the constituency, and I suspect it is happening in other parts of Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Belfast South, in conversations we have had, has said that women GPs and doctors have to take time out to look after their families. That happens at times, but I see a change coming, with a better understanding, so that in the future we will hopefully not have the problems that we once had in the past.
I referred to the strategy for the 24,000 members of the Northern Ireland civil service workforce, and that comes on the back of the first meeting of the UK-wide menopause taskforce, which has been established to strengthen co-ordination across Government and raise awareness of the impact of menopause, improving care and support for women and ending the taboos and stigmas what still surround a natural part of ageing.
I echo the request that every other Member has made. I am very pleased to see the Minister in her place. I have seen more of her this week than I have seen of my wife—she has been in this Chamber on three or four occasions to respond to debates. She said to me, “You’re back again,” to which I said, “Well, I never leave here.” I am so pleased to see her in her place. I know that she has understanding of the issue and compassion. When the hon. Member for Swansea East was introducing the debate, the Minister was cheering as much the hon. Lady was—that’s the Minister. I look forward to her response.
I am pleased that the taskforce is attempting to lead the way. While I am thankful to all the big businesses that are stepping in to acknowledge this medical issue, my mind turns to those smaller businesses that do not have a human resources department to guide them. I ask the Minister—I do not know whether this is under her control; responsibility might lie with another Minister —what support are the Government offering smaller businesses to help them understand the issues that their workforce are facing, and to support their workforce throughout their journey?
I am very fortunate to have always had powerful women in my life. I have six ladies in my office—apart from me, it is a purely female staff. That sometimes gives me an understanding of what happens in the office among ladies. One of the lovely ladies in my office had a hysterectomy and went through her menopause in her mid-50s. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred to the age of 51 in relation to the menopause. I do not miss too much in the office; I usually have a fairly good idea of what is cooking. One of the other girls in the office did a small thing that I think made a big difference. She bought her a wee pink fan—I use the word “wee” all the time; it is a Northern Ireland thing—that sat on her desk and made a psychological difference for her. The girls were telling her, “We know what you are going through.”
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman makes a brilliant point about the small pink fan. Some of the interventions, changes and support measures that employers can put in place are small, cheap, unobtrusive and not difficult.
Jim Shannon
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. As with constituents, the small things that we do are big things in their lives.
At the same time that my staff member had her hysterectomy, one of the younger girls in the office—I have two girls in their early 20s in my office—was going through endometriosis treatment, and her medication pushed her into menopause. It was drastic for a such a young girl, and one who is keen to have children someday— I very often feel for her.
The issue of menopause and perimenopause affects a large amount of the working population. It is great that work has begun to recognise that, but that support should be in every avenue of work, not simply the big companies. Can the Minister therefore give us some indication of what is happening for smaller companies in that regard?
The hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster and for Belfast South asked about HRT. We would really appreciate an update on the supply of HRT medication. When ladies present themselves to GPs, there needs to be a better understanding of how to respond. In this House we need to ask ourselves how we can come alongside the small business owner to ensure that they are aware of how the small things—as the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said—can make a huge difference to the quality of life of their employees, as well as to the environment and productivity in the workplace. It has been said for many years that a contented workforce is a productive workforce, and which of us does not want to understand how to get the best work out of our employees and allow them a decent quality of life?
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster and I must have been speaking to the same script writer. I remember the days when people muttered under their breath, in hushed tones, that someone “must be going through the change.” People almost whispered it—“don’t say it too loudly.” Today’s debate is about saying it loudly, because it is important. That is what the hon. Member for Swansea East has done, right down the line. I admire her courage and determination to make things happen, which is infectious—I come to all her debates and support her in everything she does. I do it because I want to, but also because it is right. This is a debate that is right.
It is time for us not to be ashamed of the menopause or to try to hide it; we should accept that it is a part of life with medical implications. We need appropriate responses in the workplace and appropriate responses from the general public—from men and all those out there who do not understand it. That may be because they do not want to, or because they have a wee bit of trepidation about it. We should give those businesses the opportunity to learn more, and put in place effective policies. That is up to the Departments for Work and Pensions and for Health and Social Care, working in partnership and, respectfully, what I believe we must see.
Again, I am thankful for the opportunity to represent my constituents, and to represent my wife, obviously, since I have first-hand knowledge of how this has affected her. I have always tried very hard to be supportive and understanding. I hope that this will not be another lost opportunity, where words are spoken but no action is taken. To be fair, today’s debate is about actions, and there are people here who drive actions.
I said this in the last debate, and I will say it again:
“Eighty per cent. of women suffer from menopausal symptoms; 100% of women deserve support.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2021; Vol. 701, c. 1023.]
For me, this debate is about every one of those 80% of the ladies, and giving them my 100% support, as everyone else here today does. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response shortly, and to the participation of my male colleague, the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar).
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you serve in the Chair, Mr Robertson. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing the debate, and for her ongoing commitment to pursuing wider public understanding and support for menopausal and perimenopausal women. The fact that all four nations of the UK are represented here is a real testament to the diligence, determination and doggedness of her campaigning. Having spoken in the debate that she secured last year, I am pleased that this is now a regular feature, and that the needs and experiences of women undergoing this stage of life are now being properly considered.
According to Hansard, the first time that the word “menopause” was used in our Parliament was in 1943, in the Lords, in a debate on “population problems”. It was not mentioned in the Commons until 1964, and the 100th reference was not until 2017. We are in a much healthier position now that we can consider it as one of the areas of life that we should properly appreciate.
I was struck by the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea about the experiences of women wrongly prescribed antidepressants and anxiety medication when what they needed was HRT. I know at first hand the life-saving potential of medications of that type, but only when they are appropriately prescribed. Side effects can often include excessive sweating, insomnia, agitation, anxiousness and dizziness—all things that can, themselves, be symptoms of menopause. That means that the wrongful prescription of those medications could actually exacerbate the very misery that caused affected women to seek medical support in the first place. At best, it would be treating some of the symptoms but not the underlying causes.
Let us hope that, as a Parliament, we are reflecting a society that increasingly understands and accommodates the symptoms of menopause, which affect so many in our country—around 5.1 million women aged between 45 and 55. As the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) made clear, many younger women, and people who do not define themselves as women at all, also experience this. They may find it even more difficult to access support as they do not fit the typical profile.
It is essential that every affected person feels confident and able to discuss their symptoms with their employers, and to have requests for workplace adjustments met. We have all now had the chance to see the value of flexible working, and if a woman suffering from hot flushes asks to wear a more forgiving uniform, or to change her work hours so that she is not commuting in crammed transport during rush hour, that should be granted. That is an area that should have been included in the long-promised employment Bill that was so glaringly absent from the Queen’s Speech.
Throughout my career I have often been lucky enough to be one of the youngest, if not the youngest, women within my team, and to have been surrounded by women who were older and more experienced, and who were often going through symptoms of the menopause or the perimenopause. It has meant that I have had the benefit of watching them, listening to them and hearing them. Their generosity, in talking about what they were going through, means that when I get to that stage of life I will know what to look out for, what treatments are available, and what adjustments I should be able to ask for, demand and expect from my employer. We need to foster cultures in every workplace that allow people to have those conversations with each other, with younger colleagues and with their employer, and importantly, to be listened to so that accommodations can be made. That will set a really positive precedent for our society as we move forward.
An important part of that wider societal understanding is the inclusion of menopause in relationship and sex education classes in schools. I am glad that that has been the case since 2019, but I would like to hear from the Minister about how widespread that teaching is. It would be ironic if our children now learn more about menopause than our medical professionals do. Last year I challenged the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), about gaps in training at medical schools, as 41% do not teach about the menopause. She promised improvements by 2024, but I would like to know what the figures are now, because we cannot improve what we are not consistently measuring and tracking.
Many of the physical challenges of the menopause can be addressed through HRT, but access should not be a postcode lottery dependent on GP understanding or sympathy. In Wales and Scotland, women benefit from free prescriptions, including for HRT treatments. Can the Minister tell us what more the Government will do to ensure affordable access, particularly in the context of our current cost of living crisis, and what steps are being taken to address the issues of supply that have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members across the House?
To conclude, I am delighted that this is becoming a regular discussion, not least because we can therefore hold Ministers accountable on progress. I hope our questions are answered today. If not, we will continue to raise them at every opportunity, because suffering is not a necessary or inevitable part of ageing.
Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)
We now come to the Front-Bench speeches.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson—also for the first time, I believe. I join other Members in thanking the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing the debate and informing us all so well on the subject. Her contributions on this matter through the years have clearly made a big impact in this place, and I commend her for that.
Those with an old-fashioned mindset will perhaps look at me standing here and say, “You are a man. What do you know about the menopause? What has it to do with you?” There are many more out there who would agree with that position—that is the current reality—but I say to those people that, as the son of a beloved mother and the father of a daughter first and foremost, conditions that affect women and girls today are just as important to me as any that I might face due to my being a man. That is why I did not hesitate to come along to today’s debate on behalf of the Scottish National party. Hearing the valuable contributions of Members and others from across society can only help my understanding and, hopefully in turn, that of my constituents.
Understanding is the key to this whole debate. It both puzzles and worries me that although women make up half of our population, the menopause remains a taboo subject: one that we will not mention, shrouded in stigma, hidden away, and perhaps even leaving feelings of shame being common. In particular, we as men cannot allow ignorance of conditions affecting the other sex—the women in our lives—to pose a danger to their health and mental wellbeing or their happiness. Also, why should women be made to feel that the men in their life might not want to be bothered talking about the often debilitating effects that the menopause is having on them? That shushing-up mentality must stop, and men can play their part in that.
The veil that too often covers discussions about the menopause is damaging for women who are experiencing it. There are often health and wellbeing implications to the menopause, and if those symptoms are even acknowledged at all, they are often dismissed as “women’s troubles”. Few men probably realise that the menopause can have a serious physical and psychological impact on women. I have heard my own mum refer to “the change of life”. As a man, the term “the change of life” seems to be a pretty dramatic and traumatic thing, so why do we just dismiss it out of hand in the manner that we do?
We have heard today from the hon. Member for Swansea East about the HRT lottery being experienced, particularly in deprived areas. I am so proud of the Scottish Government and their policy of abolishing prescription charges. This is exactly why policies like that matter. The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) outlined the obstacles to career progression and the financial implications that can be caused by the menopause throughout a lady’s life and, indeed, her career. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) outlined her experiences and the impact of the matter and the attitudes around the discussions that need to be had within our communities, across all these nations and across ethnic diversities. I thank all hon. Members today for their excellent contributions.
On top of the abolition of prescription charges and the introduction of free sanitary products in schools and community buildings across Scotland, I am proud to say once again that progressive action has been taken by the Scottish Government on the matter of menopause, because shying away from the issues that matter will not help the people to which they matter most of all: the women in our individual lives and the women who power the four nations of the United Kingdom. With a focus on earlier education about the menopause, the Scottish school curriculum includes meaningful learning about this vitally important subject. Our younger generation can now learn and grasp why menopause understanding is vital, seeing it as a relevant health condition. I would like to hear the Minister’s plans in that respect. What action are the UK Government taking now and in future to educate and involve younger persons in the discussion?
Supplementing that educational work, in August 2021 the SNP Scottish Government published a new women’s health plan, which set out 66 individual actions to ensure that all women enjoy the best possible healthcare, suited to their needs throughout their lives. Instead of making decisions behind closed doors, the real-life experiences of women are sought out and considered, recognising the importance of their feedback in effective policy making. From that, the menopause specialists network was established, whereby primary care teams meet on a regular basis to provide specialist, consistent and updated advice and training. This is what effective policy looks like: putting power into the hands of those most affected by the menopause, and enabling them to input and inform the best outcomes for their own lives.
Scotland is providing more than just hope to women that the menopause is to be seen as a normal thing and everyone in the health community is there to support them. I know the Minister here takes note of the outstanding work being done in Scotland on other matters. I hope that she will do the same on menopause matters as well.
We also note that implications of the menopause, unfortunately, display themselves most of all in the workplace. Those experiencing the menopause are the fastest growing demographic in the workplace. Recent data found that 62% of women report being stigmatised by their employers for requesting leave or specialised support to deal with their early menopausal years. Too many employers are choosing to take an ageist and outdated approach to specific healthcare needs and are, frankly, in grave danger of losing out on exceptional talent and experience by taking the decision to treat older women differently from other staff.
Although employment law is a reserved matter, the Scottish Government are working to make our country a fair work nation, where all employers will offer flexible working and support equal working practices by 2025. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned the pink fan. Those are all matters that need to be taken on board to make the workplace a more practical place for women going through the menopause.
I believe that the UK Government could go further. If they need any inspiration, they can look to our European counterparts. Spain has recently made landmark changes in introducing menstrual leave, whereby employers make workplaces a comfortable place for women to support them from a medical perspective and also take necessary time out for painful periods or menopausal symptoms. I urge the Government to take similar action. If we want to reflect the growing awareness of employee health and wellbeing and to prioritise it, we must integrate such progressive approaches into our entire working culture, rather than depending on individual businesses taking individual actions.
Lastly, as a man, I want to see the Government normalise the menopause discussion and make it a conversation we can all have openly, before finding and offering the solutions we know are required. I want to see more men in this place and across wider society speak up for women and stand in solidarity with them for fair treatment by employers, in particular on matters such as the menopause. We will all experience gender-specific issues in life. The more we learn about and understand those issues, the better we, as a society, can effectively deal with them, for the good of us all.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing the debate. She has gone above and beyond in pursuit of this cause, empowering women across the country to stand up against a system that is simply not working for them. She inspires me and so many others in this place, and I am proud to call her a colleague and a friend.
I thank all Members for their passionate and important contributions, especially those who have shared their experience and the experiences of their constituents. I praise the work of campaign groups such as Menopause Support and Menopause Mandate, which do great advocacy work and provide women with the information and support they need in what are often incredibly difficult situations.
As we have heard from hon. and right hon. Members throughout this debate, too many menopausal women are suffering unnecessarily in silence. This remains a national health scandal. Too many women are still being dismissed and told that menopause is a natural part of life—that they just need to put up with it. That is simply not good enough. Women should not be made to put up with it. I am pleased to say that, seeing the recent campaigns and hearing Members speak today, I am confident that it will not continue for too long.
Change needs to start with ensuring that healthcare professionals are properly informed and have the confidence to give women the advice and treatment that work for them. We know that, at present, that is simply not the case. As we have heard today, women are still being fobbed off and given the wrong treatment. In 2021, Menopause Support revealed that 41% of UK medical schools did not have mandatory menopause education on their curriculum. Healthcare professionals are not adequately trained to give women the right solution and treatment or even to identify menopause in the first place.
When it comes to treatment, hormone replacement therapy is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as a first-line and proven treatment for menopause symptoms, but that is only if patients can get it. We have heard today about the recent shortage of HRT. It is reported that the Health Secretary knew of the shortage as early as October 2021, and yet he did nothing. It took until May—seven months on—for the Government to allow pharmacists to make swaps to women’s HRT prescriptions to deliver the care they need. It took a mass public outcry for the Government to listen to the needs and voices of women. A failure to plan left women unable to access the treatment they so desperately need.
The situation is even worse for black and ethnic minority women, as set out so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), and I thank her for sharing her personal experience. It is even harder for black, Asian and minority ethnic women to get diagnoses or to be heard. A report by the Fawcett Society showed that 45% of BAME women required multiple appointments for their GPs to realise they were experiencing menopause or perimenopause. I hope the Minister heard my hon. Friend’s helpful suggestions, and that she will do more to ensure that black and Asian women’s voices and experiences of the menopause are heard and that the campaigns my hon. Friend mentioned are recognised.
Menopause is yet another example of women’s health being ignored. In the Government’s own survey on women’s healthcare, 84% of respondents said there had been instances where they had not been listened to by healthcare professionals. In recent years, we have seen a string of healthcare scandals primarily affecting women. The Minister needs to wake up to the fact that women are still not listened to when it comes to health. Let me just some of those scandals: nearly 2,000 reported cases of avoidable harm ands death in maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford; more than 1,000 women operated on unnecessarily by a rogue breast surgeon, Ian Paterson; and thousands in the UK given faulty PIP breast implants. There is a really long list of health scandals, which indicate that women are still not heard in the health system.
On access to HRT, the Government have delayed changes to prescription charges, leaving some women paying £200 more this year for HRT, making it inaccessible to many women in the middle of a cost of living crisis that is particularly felt by women in BAME and deprived communities, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. In some communities, HRT is considered a luxury. That is a scandal in the fifth richest country in the world. How can we be in this place? It is disgraceful that women are being priced out of getting treatments that they need while trying to make ends meet.
The recent shortage of HRT, unfortunately, merely adds to the ever growing list. The Government have failed to take meaningful action to improve women’s health. They are a Government of tsars, taskforces and reviews but no action. There is a huge list of reviews that have been commissioned by the Government, the recommendations of which they have refused to fully implement. The menopause taskforce, which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea mentioned, will run for 18 months and there will only be nine meetings. How will that create meaningful change for women?
I have a lot of respect for the Minister, and I believe she is one of the hardest working Ministers in the Health Department, but she works very hard to act as a gatekeeper for the Treasury. How do we make sure that this taskforce is not yet another example of the Government covering their own back, with no action? The Government had promised their comprehensive women’s health strategy by the end of last year, but it has still not appeared. Waiting lists across the NHS are at a record high, and when it comes to health issues affecting women, the waiting lists for essential appointments are even longer. The Government must start taking women’s health seriously.
We have heard great suggestions about raising awareness of the menopause, including from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). Making it easier for women to access HRT and improving the education and training of health professionals is essential. That is the only way we will get women across the country the right diagnosis and right treatment at the right time. However, it is clear, sadly, that health continues to be an afterthought for this Government, and the voices of women have been, at best, ignored and, at worst, silenced.
Will the Minister commit to finally publishing the women’s health strategy and listening to women by delivering the healthcare they need, when and where they need it? Furthermore, when will she finally deliver the Government’s commitment to enable women to pay a single annual prescription for HRT? As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea said: no more warm words—women need the Minister to act. If history tells us anything, it is that women will not sit back in the face of injustice. From what I have heard today, we can be sure that those voices will not go away—they will get louder and louder. I hope the Government wake up and start to act.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on once again securing a debate on this important issue. It is good to see all four nations represented here this afternoon and both men and women involved in the debate. It is my wedding anniversary today, and it is a pleasure to share it with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and to show our continuing working relationship—[Laughter.]
To reassure hon. Members, progress has been made since the debate held by the hon. Member for Swansea East last October. It was one of the first debates I took part in as a new Minister, and I can honestly say that virtually every day since then we have worked on many of the issues addressed in that debate to improve outcomes for women going through the menopause. This is an important issue for me not only because it is a key priority area in my portfolio, but because I went through an early menopause over 10 years ago. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) described her struggle to get her GP to take her seriously, but for someone in their 30s it is even more difficult, and it can be a lonely experience if your peers are not going through the same thing. They are busy getting married and having children; they are certainly not talking about hot flushes and not being able to sleep. It can be a very difficult experience. So, for me, this is a personal mission as well as a ministerial one.
I want to reassure colleagues that I absolutely have a laser focus on delivering many of the pledges made in the previous debate. On the cost of HRT, we announced in that debate that we would accept the move towards reducing the costs. It only affects women in England, but it is an important issue. Around 89% of all prescriptions issued in England are free. People qualify for free prescriptions when they are on income support, universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance and pension credit, so the vast majority of people getting general prescriptions are entitled to free prescriptions.
However, women going through the menopause often do not meet those criteria. I fully recognise that the cost is very high, particularly for women who are on two hormones or who have multiple products that they need dispensing. That is why we are committed to introducing the bespoke prepayment certificate for HRT by April next year. It is very different from the prepayment certificates that exist for general medicine. However, there are steps that we have to take. We are expected to consult the professional bodies involved. There will be changes to both dispensing and prescribing. A statutory instrument needs to be laid to make those changes happen. IT changes are also needed to make these things happen in practical terms, so that when women turn up at the chemist, their prescriptions are actually there for them to collect. We are not making excuses, and this will happen by April next year, not from April next year. If we can do it any quicker, we will. The prescription will be £18.70 for all HRT products, whether that is for two hormones or multiple products, and that will be a considerable cost saving for women.
The supply of HRT has been a challenge. We have seen more than a 30% increase in demand, thanks to all the campaigners raising the profile of the menopause but also highlighting the benefits of HRT and breaking the taboos. GPs and doctors were often worried about the safety of HRT, but campaigners have explained that some of the research that was around 10 or 15 years ago is out of date and that HRT is a safe and effective product for many women. So there has been a huge increase in demand. We have met trade suppliers, manufacturers and pharmacists to discuss the challenges they face and to try to overcome them. Of the more than 70 products that are available, we are now down to pressures on three or four, and even with those we are seeing significant progress.
The hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) asked for an update. Maddy McTernan, the head of HRT supply, updated the taskforce this week. We are making good progress. There is commercially sensitive information, which we cannot share, but manufacturers are stepping up to the plate to produce extra supplies. It is not about meeting the demand now. Demand will continue to grow, and we need to future-proof to ensure that we are not in the same situation in six months.
The prepayment certificate will also help. Women will no longer have to try to get a prescription for three or four months in order to keep the cost down. They will be able to get a monthly supply and not have to pay an increased cost for doing so. That will help manage supplies overall. We have also introduced three serious shortage protocols for the three products, so that we can manage the amount that is being dispensed and have better stock control. It will also give powers to pharmacists to give alternative products. That is not always ideal, because I know that some women notice instantly a difference in the effect of a drug, even if it is the same drug but with a change in manufacturer. It is not ideal, but it is helping us get through this acute period, and it will enable us to better control stocks in the longer term. We will be updating colleagues as we go through this, and Maddy and the team from BEIS have been helping us hugely with that.
The UK menopause taskforce that has been set up was one of the asks from the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark); it was not a Government suggestion. We agreed to it and have had our second meeting. There are four key areas where we want to make recommendations. Those include education—for women, men, boys and girls, and healthcare professionals too. The taskforce will also look at the workplace, health provision, and research into areas such as testosterone, where we need to be breaking some barriers.
In the short time I have, I would like to touch on the workplace issue, which is crucial. One of the key things about the taskforce is that it is not just about health. We have a BEIS Minister and an employment Minister, and we are going to invite, as was suggested earlier, a Minister from Justice as well so that we reach out to all women affected by the menopause. I am really pleased that the civil service led the way this week when we signed Wellbeing of Women’s menopause workplace pledge. That will not just help women in the civil service who are going through the menopause it is to show other employers the sorts of small changes, such as the pink fan mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that can make a big difference. It will also enable women and employers to feel confident to have those discussions at work. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) said, these women are in the prime of life. We have women with extraordinary experience and talent who we should be harnessing, not letting go.
We are really serious about improving GP training. It has been difficult for GPs to get that specialist advice and support, as this is a growing area, but the General Medical Council will be including the menopause as part of its licensing assessment, so it will be a core part of training. The NHS England menopause programme will be producing resources for all types of healthcare professionals so that we can make sure that people are trained.
I know I have to let the hon. Member for Swansea East come back in—
Maria Caulfield
Okay. The NHS itself is setting up a training programme to make sure that at every point that a woman approaches the health service—when meeting GPs or nurses—they get the specialist training they need.
The women’s health strategy is coming forward. I would rather spend time getting it right than rush it through to meet a deadline. We are weeks away from publishing. We have already published our vision and the findings from the consultation, and the strategy will build on that. The menopause will be a priority area within that document. We will also be announcing a women’s health ambassador very shortly, who will be holding my feet to the fire, as will the hon. Member for Swansea East.
I hope I have reassured colleagues that we are doing so much work in this area. Debates such as this are not just about holding me to account. They are about breaking taboos and having lightbulb moments for women across the country, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the House and in all four nations to improve the experience for women.
Carolyn Harris
Thank you, Mr Robertson. I will not take the hour that is left for my summing up, although I could start all over again.
I want to make just a few points. First, I thank everybody for being here and for sharing their personal stories—I am looking in a certain direction. I know it is painful and hard, but when people in this place talk about their personal experiences, it makes us look like what we are—real people with real lives and real feelings—to the outside world. That gives confidence to women out there who are thinking that nobody cares and nobody is listening. Unless we talk to those women, we will not know how they feel. When Nicola Sturgeon appears on “Loose Women” and talks about her menopause, it is inspirational for women right across the UK. When a certain Jim Shannon gets a shout-out as a menopause ambassador on “Loose Women”, it gives confidence to women across the UK that we politicians are listening.
The celebrities who are coming in on Monday are really nervous about coming to Westminster. They think they are coming into a world where they are expected to perform in a particular way, and that we will all be looking at them and thinking, “What do you know about politics?” Through the work they have done, they have proved that they may do politics better than we do, and that they have used their platform to change actually things, without making it party political, which we try not to do on this subject. They are using their platform to share really important messages and really personal stories, in an industry where, traditionally, nobody wants to admit to being a certain age or to potentially being menopausal, because they would be seen as getting on a bit. I really want to thank them.
One thing that it is really important to say is that I would like to see the Davina effect enshrined in legislation—perhaps we can have a show of hands on that—because Davina McCall has played a huge role. I do not think any of us could really have done what we have done without Davina’s documentaries and the work she has done.
Nickie Aiken
On that point, rather than having the Davina McCall effect, perhaps we should all write to whomever we are meant to write to, to ask whether Davina McCall should become a Dame.
Carolyn Harris
That is a perfect suggestion, and it is something that has been playing on my mind lately.
Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)
Order. This is a winding-up speech and should last only two minutes.
Carolyn Harris
Yes, two minutes.
The last thing I will say is that everything that everybody has said is wonderful, but as long as women do not have a single prescription charge, do not have a proper diagnosis and proper medication, are giving up work and do not have equal treatment, we are failing. We cannot continue to fail women.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the menopause.
Written Statements
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Storm Arwen Review: Final Report
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)
The Energy Emergencies Executive Committee Storm Arwen review was commissioned in December 2021 by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, due to unacceptable levels of power disruption following Storm Arwen. The interim report was published in February 2022, and the final report has now been completed and published on gov.uk.
The review has been a joint endeavour between Government, industry and the regulator (Ofgem) with the aim of identifying lessons to be learned and actions to take forward. These actions will drive improvements to Great Britain’s electricity network resilience to severe weather events. The actions recommended by this review address concerns under the three pillars of system resilience, consumer protection and additional support.
The majority address improvements to be made across all electricity distribution network operators regardless of their impact during this particular storm. Lessons from subsequent storms that hit the UK in February 2022 have also been incorporated and reflected as part of this final report. While improvements will be made, no electricity system can be totally immune from disruption.
The Energy Emergencies Executive Committee will be responsible for the implementation of these actions, in collaboration with other partners as appropriate, alongside my Department which will ensure the delivery and implementation of the actions recommended.
[HCWS84]
Transforming for a Digital Future: 2022-25 Roadmap
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
Later today, I will publish “Transforming for a Digital Future: Government’s 2022-25 Roadmap for Digital and Data”, which sets out an ambitious plan to ensure that, by 2025, we deliver a transformed, more efficient digital Government that provides better outcomes for everyone. I have requested that a copy of the full text be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses in Parliament.
The importance of digital and data
Digital and data are key to unlocking many of this Government’s priorities, from generating efficiencies to net zero and levelling up. Better digital systems and access to data will allow smaller teams across Government to work faster, make better decisions, and deliver better policies. Modern technology will minimise waste and reduce our reliance on paper-based forms. A more digitally skilled civil service, working across the UK, will ensure that citizens get access to the same great services no matter where they live.
The opportunity
The Government have some excellent digital services and examples of digital transformation, but we still need to harness the full potential of digital transformation at scale. Many services are in need of improvement to deliver the right outcomes, our technology is in need of refreshing to give value for money, we have significant and persistent gaps in skills and expertise, and our business systems are in need of reform to keep pace with the digital age.
If we maintain the current course, we will miss opportunities to deliver the experiences and outcomes that citizens expect and we have committed to deliver, we will see talented digital and data professionals choosing to work elsewhere, and we will miss out on efficiency savings.
Cross-Government support and collaboration
This road map has been collectively agreed by the Cabinet Economic and Domestic Implementation Committee.
The road map is the result of an unprecedented level of collaboration from digital leaders across Government. The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) in the Cabinet Office has worked with representatives from Departments to develop the road map, including regular engagement with the permanent secretary-level Digital and Data Board.
CDDO will continue to work closely with Departments to support and monitor progress against the road map . Each mission has a senior civil servant “executive sponsor” who will act as an advocate for that mission and support work to progress against the specific commitments.
As a result, I am confident that there is sufficient support and momentum behind this road map to ensure we will meet all of the commitments it sets out by 2025.
What we will deliver by 2025
The road map sets out a bold vision for change which is supported by a set of clear, feasible and measurable commitments that Departments have collectively agreed to deliver between now and 2025.
By 2025 the most frequently used critical services will have great user experience and incorporate efficient processes that reduce their cost to run. We will provide a single, efficient and accessible digital identity process for citizens, and ensure that data which is central to priority Government objectives will be safely shared and used to improve policy and service delivery. We will build digital technology in a consistent way, improving the quality of what we build and our speed to deployment. We will be an employer of choice for digital talent, with highly skilled teams and leaders, and have funding structures and delivery approaches that enable and incentivise modern, efficient and user-centric investment and high-quality services.
The pace of technological change and the growing expectations of citizens and businesses mean we must renew our focus and go further than ever before to realise the opportunities presented by digital transformation. I am confident that, by fulfilling the commitments set out in the road map, we will be able to do exactly that.
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Smokefree 2030: Independent Review
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
In 2019, this Government set the bold ambition for England to be smokefree by 2030—reducing smoking rates to 5% or less.
Today, Dr Javed Khan OBE published his independent review on Smokefree 2030, providing this Government with a wide range of recommendations for how we can achieve this ambition.
Tragically, smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death across the country. There are still almost 6 million smokers in England—and two out of three will die from smoking unless they quit.
Although smoking rates have fallen, we know that they are currently not falling fast enough.
The Government are committed to levelling up society and extending the same chances in life to all people and all parts of our country. However, smoking is one of the largest drivers of health disparities and rates vary substantially across different parts of the country. As stated by Dr Khan in his independent review, at its most extreme, smoking prevalence is 4.5 times higher in Burnley than in Exeter.
Smoking is a significant drain on the household finances of our most disadvantaged families. In Halton in Cheshire, smokers spend an estimated £3,551 a year on tobacco, nearly 15% of their income. Reducing smoking presents a huge economic opportunity in higher disposable income and higher labour productivity.
Smoking is particularly high amongst certain populations, and one third of all cigarettes smoked in England are smoked by people with a mental health condition. Nearly 10% of mothers smoke at the time of giving birth, increasing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome by over three times compared to mothers who do not smoke. Further, the risk of stillbirth is increased by at least 60% if the father smokes. Smoking is also known to increase the risk of miscarriage.
Behind all of these statistics are individuals, families and communities who are suffering from the harms of tobacco. This Government are committed to doing more to help smokers to quit and stop people from taking up this deadly addiction. We also know that most smokers want to quit.
For these reasons, we asked Dr Khan to undertake this independent review to help the Government reduce the devastation that smoking causes in our communities. There are a number of recommendations in Dr Khan’s independent review. The Government will now consider their response.
There is a call for greater investment—from local authority-led stop smoking services, through to improved data and evidence. The Government are already investing funding through the public health grant, but we will examine where we can go further.
There is a call to offer vaping as a substitute for smoking. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking and is an effective quitting device. It is recognised that there is much more Government can do to tackle the myths and misconceptions that surround vaping. We have worked with the MHRA to provide guidance to support bringing e-cigarettes to market as licensed therapies and this Government will take forward a range of work on vaping as a substitute for smoking in due course.
Dr Khan also calls for the NHS to prioritise further action to stop people from smoking. Smoking costs the NHS £2.5 billion every year. The benefits of focusing on preventing smoking-related illnesses, rather than treating them, are clear for patients and the NHS themselves.
This Government are determined to address the challenges raised in the independent review and to meet the Smokefree 2030 target. We know that more action needs to be taken to protect our people from this dangerous addiction.
The Department will now carefully consider the recommendations set out in this independent review. The independent review will help to inform our upcoming White Paper on health disparities, which we plan to publish this summer. To complement this, the Department will also be publishing a new tobacco control plan in due course.
We would like to thank Dr Khan for his far-reaching work on the independent review, and for his clear and challenging recommendations.
A copy of the independent Khan review will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
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Medical Examiners
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is our intention to work towards commencing implementation plans for the statutory medical examiner system from April 2023, recognising the need for all relevant Government Departments to be ready and aligned to enable successful implementation. The statutory medical examiner system will be centrally funded in England. This follows the required amendment to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which has now been made through the Health and Care Act 2022, to host medical examiners in England in NHS bodies rather than local health authorities.
The National Medical Examiner has published the report for year 2021 which sets out the non-statutory medical examiner system progress to date. The medical examiner system will introduce an additional layer of scrutiny of the cause of death by the medical practitioner, improving the quality and accuracy of the medical certificate of cause of death and thereby informing the national data on mortality and patient safety. The medical examiner system will increase transparency and facilitate discussions with the bereaved about any concerns they may have, providing new levels of scrutiny to improve detection of criminal activity or poor practice.
After the statutory medical examiner system has been introduced, all non-coronial deaths will be scrutinised by a medical examiner, for both burials and cremations.
[HCWS85]
Serious Violence Duty: Draft Statutory Guidance Consultation
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
The Government are today announcing the publication of a consultation on the draft statutory guidance on the serious violence duty (the duty) which will be issued by the Secretary of State as statutory guidance under chapter 1 of part 2 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 to support specified authorities and organisation exercising functions in relation to the duty.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 introduced the duty to ensure specified authorities, being police, fire and rescue authorities, local authorities, specified health authorities and criminal justice agencies and organisations work collaboratively, to share data and information, understand the causes and consequences of serious violence, focusing on prevention and early intervention, and put in place plans informed by evidence to prevent and reduce serious violence. In addition, section 6(1) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 has been amended to ensure that serious violence is an explicit priority for community safety partnerships and that a strategy is in place to explicitly tackle serious violence.
The duty is a key part of the Government’s programme of work to reduce serious violence and put an end to the tragedies afflicting our communities. It is very important we work together, across Government, statutory, private, and voluntary sectors to deliver this crucial change. The Government have made £130 million available this financial year, 2022-23, to tackle serious violence, including murder and knife crime.
This Government committed to update and formally consult on the draft statutory guidance published in May 2021 on before the duty’s implementation. Officials have revised the guidance by engaging with other government departments, stakeholders and wider partners. Government amendments are also reflected in the new draft, and these:
provide clarity that the definition of violence for the purpose of the duty includes domestic abuse and sexual violence,
exclude patient information and in addition health or social care authorities cannot share personal information under the data sharing provisions in respect of the duty,
restrict data requests from local policing bodies, PCCs, and in London the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Common Council of the City of London as police authority, to information already held by an authority to whom the request is made,
require that the Secretary of State lays a copy of the final statutory guidance for the serious violence duty in Parliament,
clarify on the face of the legislation that specified authorities must publish a strategy and that regulations will provide further detail about the publication or dissemination of a strategy.
Specific guidance is included for authorities operating in Wales, to reflect the distinct Welsh legislative and operational context as well as additional content on housing and homelessness. The outline policy for secondary legislation on the publication and dissemination of local partnerships serious violence strategies and local policing bodies’ discretionary role to support the development and implementation of the local serious violence strategy is included.
The consultation, which launches today, 9 June, will run for a period of six weeks, closing on 21 July. Once the response to the consultation along with a final version of the guidance have been published, the duty and associated secondary legislation will be commenced to enable local partnerships to work towards publication and dissemination of their serious violence strategies.
A copy of this consultation and the draft statutory guidance will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and also made available on gov.uk.
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Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme Review: Supplementary Consultation
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Tom Pursglove)
Today I have laid before Parliament a public consultation on one of the eligibility rules of the statutory criminal injuries compensation scheme 2012 (the scheme). This follows the criminal injuries compensation review 2020 in which we consulted on proposals to improve the experience of victims applying for compensation, by making the scheme simpler and easier to navigate.
The statutory scheme exists to compensate victims of violent crime in Great Britain, to recognise, through compensation, the injuries and harm they experienced. The so-called unspent convictions rule has been an eligibility requirement since the first statutory scheme came into force in 1996. The 2012 scheme sets out the circumstances in which an award will be withheld or reduced where the applicant has an unspent conviction. In the 2012 scheme an exclusion was introduced which means that an applicant is not eligible if they have an unspent conviction that resulted in a custodial or community sentence. The rationale for this is to prevent individuals who have committed serious illegal acts benefiting from state-funded compensation, to reflect the degree of harm done to others and the cost to society of offending behaviour.
Since 2012 there have been varying calls for abolition of the rule or reform of it to reintroduce discretion, particularly in relation to certain victim groups or specific circumstances such as compulsion or childhood trauma. As part of our review of the scheme leading up to the 2020 consultation, options for reform were carefully explored and in the consultation our conclusions for proposing no change to the rule were explained.
In July 2021 the Supreme Court determined that the rule in the 2012 scheme is lawful and proportionate, and stated that the exclusionary approach is an acceptable one and has the advantage of leading to consistency and clarity. The Supreme Court also noted that the legislator is entitled to adopt a scheme with clearly defined rules for determining entitlement to publicly-funded compensation. However, in a separate case the High Court found that the Government had not met a legitimate expectation to consult on reform of the unspent convictions rule. This was because the 2020 consultation did not ask a specific question on whether it should be revised in line with a recommendation made by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in 2018. As required by the High Court we are publishing this supplementary consultation to invite views on reform of the rule.
We are looking at the rule afresh. The consultation poses broad questions about retaining the rule unchanged, which remains an option, and on the following potential reforms: introducing exemptions so that not all claims are automatically rejected on the basis of a specified unspent conviction; amending the terms of the rule to reduce the number of claims that are automatically rejected; and removing the exclusionary part of the rule so that no claims are automatically rejected.
After this second consultation we will decide whether or not to revise the rule and share our conclusions and proposals about reform of the scheme as a whole following our comprehensive review.
The consultation is available in full at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/criminal-injuries-compensation-scheme-review-supplementary-consultation. The consultation will close 5 August 2022.
[HCWS88]
Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail: Public Consultation
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
Today, my department launches a public consultation on the primary legislative changes required to deliver structural reform of our railways. This follows publication of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail in May 2021, which heralded the start of the biggest transformation of Great Britain’s railways in three decades, and the announcement in the Queen’s Speech on 10 May 2022 of the introduction of a transport Bill to Parliament which will modernise rail services, put passengers and freight customers first, deliver for taxpayers and combine the best of the public and private sectors.
The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail highlighted the need for change. It was clear that our railways had become fragmented, the system was complicated, and passengers deserved better. This, alongside spiralling costs, delays to upgrades and commercial failures, pointed to a railway in need of fundamental reform. Getting this right means that we can ensure this historic industry delivers for its users, setting it on a more sustainable and secure footing. It also means delivering a stronger, more levelled up and increasingly green economy, of which the railways are a crucial part.
Many of the commitments set out in the plan for rail do not require legislation in order to be taken forward, and the Government are already working in close partnership with the rail industry to deliver rapid improvements for passengers and freight customers. For example, new flexible season tickets went on sale last summer and we continue to work with train operators to roll out digital ticketing to make journeys easier. We are also undertaking a comprehensive accessibility audit of stations across Great Britain, continuing to cut the costs and time of infrastructure work through Project SPEED and developing a 30-year whole industry strategic plan.
In addition to this, we have launched the Great British Railways Transition Team, under the leadership of Andrew Haines, to drive forward reforms and develop the model for a new arm’s-length body, Great British Railways, including its initial structure, leadership and people. GBRTT is focused on establishing a new, customer-focused industry culture, driving revenue recovery efforts and establishing an interim strategic freight unit to work collaboratively with the sector, ensuring an immediate focus on delivery of the Government’s ambitions for rail freight. GBRTT is also currently overseeing a competition for the location of a national headquarters for Great British Railways, to be based outside of London, in line with this Government’s commitment to levelling up.
However, primary legislation is required to deliver key elements of structural reform set out in the plan for rail. This includes providing Great British Railways with the powers and authority it needs to act as the single guiding mind for the railways, ending years of fragmentation. The consultation launched today seeks views of all those with an interest in our railways, to help shape these reforms.
The consultation is focused across three key areas as outlined below.
The first is on the establishment of Great British Railways, including its proposed functions and duties and how we propose to legislate and work with stakeholders to enable Great British Railways to become the single guiding mind for the railways.
The second is focused on how we will ensure clear accountabilities in the rail sector through a new governance framework, including the regulator’s role in providing independent scrutiny and challenge.
The third centres on reform of wider industry structures and processes that are needed to deliver transformation of the railways and a new industry culture, including a new passenger champion role for transport focus and proposals for open data sharing.
Great British Railways is key to delivering a customer-focused railway. The plans outlined in this consultation will deliver a rail system that is the backbone of a cleaner, greener public transport system, offering passengers and freight customers a better deal and greater value for money for taxpayers. The private sector has played an integral role in improving our railways over the past 25 years; these plans are designed to take the best of the private sector and fuse it with a single guiding mind that can drive benefits and efficiencies across the system as a whole.
I hope that all those with an interest in our railways will find the time to participate and share their views through this consultation. Sharing your views will help to ensure the legislative changes that we enact will deliver the vision set out in the plan for rail, securing our railways so that they are able to flourish into the future and as we approach their bicentenary in 2025.
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